beat stevie blog

preaching to the choir and then passing them the church bag

It has always puzzled me that in music your key fan base are seen as the ones to exploit rather than reward. This doesn't make any sense.  The early adopters, the ones who latch on to new music first, who play it to their mates, who shout from the rooftops about how great a track is, who create single handedly a ground swell of support for your new music, these are also the people who pay for it all.
These early fans buy everything as soon as it comes out, partly because they have to, because it's not online yet, but also because they feel loyal and they want to give something back to the artist they love, to support and nurture them so they continue to make music for them. These fans are the ones who convert small bands into big bands, who open up their music to a wider audience. Yet the wider audience, the huge numbers that break a band into the mainstream, this great flood of followers, they just download it for free.

Surely this set up is wrong?  Shouldn't we find a way that the early fans get rewarded instead of financially punished?  Without them most bands wouldn't survive to make it big, yet the bigger bands just seem to go on screwing royally their most loyal audience. Producing multiple formats of a release, a load of  different remixes, exclusive packaging, all this stuff is done by record labels to squeeze extra units and extra income out of ther core fanbase.  It's not the casual listener who pays for any of this stuff, the people who will move ruthlessly onto the next big thing.

Shouldn't we look to find a way that we can switch this round?  Find a way for the early fans to be rewarded for what is essentially being your pr team.

there's probably no more buses for a while so stop worrying and enjoy your cigarette

i've always been slightly irrated by the fact that those who do have a belief system of some sort feel the need to push it down other peoples throats. What's more they seem to have the ability and motivation to go out and raise cash and then spend this on advertising said belief. In comparison those non-believers or people merely apathetic in any way can't really be bothered to go around preaching their own ideology. I suppose it’s quite difficult to go around popularizing your beliefs if you’re not quite sure what they are. it would be much more honest but i guess it doesn't have the same sort of didactic tone to it.

For this reason, I was extremely happy when the No God bus campaign started doing the rounds, which you might have seen if you live in London,  or if not you can see it above. It just felt so new and invigorating that people had donated money in their droves to counter the one sided polemic from the Christian church. How strange that what is, as far as I am concerned, the most widely held belief in England should appear so rarely in public.

Of course the Church couldn’t stand by and let this one go. So they have now responded in kind with a new campaign that says 'There definitely is a God: so join the Christian Party and enjoy your life.'.What a bunch of cunts.  And then to further enrage me a Mr Hargreaves from Christian Action states “The humanist campaign was an own goal. Stating there ‘probably’ was not God simply said they couldn’t be sure. Well, I am sure, and so are millions of Christians throughout the world who enjoy his presence on a daily basis and enjoy life."

 Mr Hargreaves should check his facts. The Atheists were forced to include the word "probably" by law so as to avoid offending anyone. Why is it that Atheists have to allow for the possibility that there is a God but the Christians don’t have to provide for the off chance that there isn’t? This is completely unfair. Enjoys his presence!  Who enjoys God's presence on a daily basis. Can they provide evidence of that? Now i would like to find  a lawyer who is willing to take Hargreaves to court on this fact. In the meantime I am going to report him to the Advertising standards authority anyway. will let you know if i get a response.

Can we go and raise funds for more interesting poster campaigns then? the Keep Calm and Carry on poster, designed for the invasion of britain seems to have had a resurgence in popularity at the moment as everyone feels stressed and runs around in a Mr Mainwairing style flap. Maybe we can update it to something like "mustn't grumble",  "be careful"  or  "do you have to be such a wanker"

how to get yourself hit more often

Now that searching online is pretty much the first ting we do when we want to find out about a company or a person or anything really it surprises me that there hasn't been a massive growth in interesting and uniquely spelled names.   why not?

Surely it would make complete sense right now if you're going to name anything to give it something unique. intelligently run companies have always done this to make sure that they have an identifiable brand name but what about people?

it's fucking annoying to try and get an email or log in and have to call yourself JohnSmith76. and it sounds rubbish. and if you meet someone in a bar and their name is John Smith how the fuck are you going to find them on facebook. it's not going to happen is it?  but if you were called Tiger Smizzen you would have no problem. Birds could google you, you'd have a nice URL all to yourself it would make life easy.  Just think of the start you'd be giving your kid in life!

if you've already got a name it's not too late. you can change your name by deed poll. if you're sick of having to log in as KerryWilson82 simply get your name changed to Kerry Wilson78. It's would be a great conversation starter. Or if you're into cars don't bother getting a personalised registration simply change your name to B129KSD.

shops are dead, music isn't

i wonder why the human mind seems so slow to react to change? is it something hardwired in our brains through evolution or is it simply greed that drives a fear of altering the status quo?

the internet has changed everything, it has been as radical a change to the way we go about our lives as the industrial revolution, yet people are acting like the amish and hoping that it will just be a blip. if you think i'm overstating the case then what are you doing now? reading a blog and surfing the net for information and products. what's more where we're at now is just the very surface of a huge change to our culture that is going to take place over the next few years.

the demise of major shop chains has recently been in the news but it amazes me that this seems to have come as a shock to people particularly the shareholders. what did you last buy in woolworths? what does it stand for? why would you rather go in a zavvi than an Our price or an HMV.  what's with this shareholder buyout thing?  why buy a failing company with your own money, give it a lick of paint but don't change anything fundamental and then expect the money to roll in.

working in music you tend to see this in a  stark way when you realise no one you know consumes or learns about music in the old way. and yet there are still music companies attemptng to sell music to an audience they know don't exist. people do not consume music like this. nor do they own it.

 software such as spotify is really heralding the end of ownersip of music completely as a concept. if you have universal access to any music you like why do you need to own it?  when you've got a hand held device that can plug in at broadband speeds to the web this will be a reality, and this reality really isn't that far away. what then? even the most geeky of music nerds will not actually own anything, they'll just be the trainspotters of the future jotting down endless lists of information, collecting stats that anyone else can just google.

 i believe future generations will find it just as impossible to get their heads round the fact that you can own music as the native americans and aborigines did that a man could own a piece of land. it's going to be really exciting. we are at an age when everything we understood about music is about to change and some people want to bury their heads in the sand.  the new ice age is coming and people are turning up the heating.  we just need to embrace it. the gramophone wasn't the end of live bands. the end of ownership will not be the end of recorded music.  only the fittest model for the new environment is gonna survive. don't be a dodo.