I recently had the chance to interview one of my favorite musician/studio owners, Peter Gabriel. The situation involved me and three other writers sitting in a wooden shed with an SSL AWS 900+ console at one end, in the middle of the trade show floor at the NYC AES event. Ostensibly Peter was there as co-owner of Solid State Logic, as well as promoting the inspiration behind this "purchase a shed and console and SSL will build it in your yard" product, but we couldn't resist asking Peter his thoughts on studios and the future of the music world. We're pestering Peter for an in-depth interview, but for now enjoy these thoughts. -LC
New Music World
When I'm out of my contract with EMI in the UK I think it's going to be a lot easier to open up the process and bring stuff out when it feels right rather than being pressed to release an album. There's all sorts of flexibility on the Internet that people are exploiting. The economic model changes a hundredfold. For example, The Incredible String Band wanted to come and record at our studio and they didn't have the budget for it, so through the Internet they found 120 fans who would pay sixty pounds each for a ticket to come and watch one of their favorite artists make an album. With that they had money to buy something like a week in one of our rooms — it was the big room so it could house all the people — and they filmed it and then had not only an album but a web broadcast. The old economic model was obviously a record company needs to reach a hundred thousand people or something before they're going to give the funding. I know now a lot of bands are self-sustaining. But what that new economic model should do is transform the nature of the music made. In other words, a lot of experimental things, collaborations, that were not viable because no one thought they were going to sell anything are now feasible to create. As long as you find a small number of people who are going to be interested in that particular album it should be possible to do it. That sort of Renaissance I don't think has happened yet and I hope it does.
Radiohead's "Pay What You Want"