Just what is it we are winning?

Like 'em or not (I do), care about charts and sales numbers or not (I don't really), the one great thing about the Arcade Fire's recent success is that it's sparked some conversation about the importance of all of these things. I had no idea AF's new The Suburbs was Merge Records third top 10 album of the year following Spoon and She & Him. Congrats again to Merge. I can't think of many more deserving of some real genuine homegrown success.

If you keep up with a lot of music industry news, and editorial type stuff, one term that keeps coming up, in relation to the collapse (I prefer "change") of the biz in general, is this concept of "winning" and "losing." Basically, it's a bunch of bunk. As Merge's co-founder (and Superchunk bassist) Laura Balance told the L.A. Times yesterday: "The whole chart thing is kind of like sports. The need to have a ranking is kind of meaningless. I'm more like, 'It did good? That's great.'" Merge is doing things the right way - because they believe in it, and it's what they'd be doing if they got to number one or not. They have been doing it for 21 years! There is no winning or losing. That whole concept is as absurd as the concept of "he who dies with the most toys wins." You're still fucking dead.

One other subject specific to this event that has been mentioned quite a bit is that Amazon's MP3 store helped out by selling the album for $3.99 for a week thus, somehow, "devaluing" the music, or more to the point, music in general. Point one: If the sale happened like any of the other countless sales Amazon has run over the last couple of years - selling huge artists albums at a serious markdown - the label and the artist get paid the same as they would had the MP3 album sold for $9.99. It's Amazon that takes the financial hit. They do it to generate buzz, and get folks into the store - it's called a loss leader, except the label/artist is not being asked to participate in the loss as might have happened in the past at physical stores. Point two: It's not "devaluing" music. If Amazon wants to sell whatever they sell at whatever price they want to, it's their choice. As long as the wholesaler is not having to take the loss. And if they sell it at a price that gets a whole bunch of folks to buy it who otherwise might not, then great! You never know, there might be some 12 or 13 year old out buying the first album of their life, for whatever price, and they'll remember it for the rest of their lives. Isn't that what we should really value?

There's a whole lot more to this subject I'd love to expound upon, but I'm a little lazy when it comes to writing all of this crap out. For those who take the time to read this, this is my two cents for now.