Electronic music veteran Moby recently released his 11th studio album, Innocents, which features guest contributions from Wayne Coyne, Cold Specks, Mark Lanegan and Skylar Grey. In addition to distributing the album in traditional formats, he also offered it as a BitTorrent Bundle, meaning anyone could download the stems and remix them.
Moby was initially unfamiliar with BitTorrent, but he now says it's the perfect opportunity to take a hands off approach to releasing music. The bundle has been downloaded more than 2 million times, with at least 50 people uploading remixes to SoundCloud.
See also: BitTorrent Bundles Turn Songs Into Stores
In a recent interview, Moby told Mashable about the project, his experience in the music industry and his perspective on digital disruption and what artists can do to adapt.
Mashable: Tell me about your BitTorrent partnership.
Moby: About 5 years ago, I started a website called mobygratis.com, which gives free music to indie filmmakers, film students, non-profit organizations. I really like the idea of putting music out into the world and having no idea what sort of life it's going to have. One of the reasons I now have my own record company is that when I was with EMI, they really wanted to control the way music was released into the world and existed in the world. My approach is to not try and control it at all. I really like the idea of not just giving people finished content. It's giving them something that if they choose to they can manipulate and play with however they want. There's absolutely no restrictions on it and that makes me happy. When people try to control content in the digital world, there’s something about that that seems kind of depressing to me. The most interesting results happen when there is no control. I love the democratic anarchy of the online world.
Are people really free to do whatever they want? Can they sell their recordings?
I met with the BitTorrent people and they were asking, "What if someone comes up with their own remix and they sell it?" They were wondering what I would want them to do with the money. And my response was that they could take their friends out to dinner or give money to their favorite charity. Even if I make the stems, if they made the effort to make the remix, they should be the ones to profit from it.
Is your view on this informed by having been around in the early era of piracy?
In the world of culture, it's more interesting to err on the side of openness as opposed to the side of restriction. Imposing restrictions on content seems like a fool's errand. It's incredibly difficult and arbitrary.
Is there anything you remember the label doing to protect your music from being pirated?
It was about 7 or 8 years ago when I was on EMI, and someone at EMI business affairs contacted my manager and told him that I wasn't allowed to play my own music when I DJ'ed because they didn't want people in the audience pirating it. This was back in the days of the Nokia flip phone. If someone recorded a song in a nightclub it would be the worst sounding recording you could possibly imagine. You probably wouldn't even be able to identify the song. That seemed like nonsense to me. That's when I realized my personal and professional ethos regarding music and the way it exists in the world was so diametrically opposed to the way EMI were perceiving it.
Do you use services like Spotify personally for consumption?
I do. For me the criteria is convenience. Because I travel quite a lot I still mainly buy music on iTunes. But whether it is Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora, I think they're all great. I have gotten involved in lobbying efforts to try and block Congress and the RIAA from penalizing them. Ultimately, I think the more access people have to music, the better.
Do you feel that they represent a sustainable model for artists?
Artists who are adaptable are doing fine. A musician who makes records, tours, DJs, remixes, does music for video games and films is doing fine. If you can learn how to adapt — it's really weird and unhealthy when people talk about restricting progress to accommodate the inability of people to adapt. Every industry has been impacted by [changes in technology] in both negative and positive ways, but I feel like to complain is pointless. I love Thom Yorke, but when I heard him complaining about Spotify, I'm like, "You're just like an old guy yelling at fast trains." I love anything that enables people to have more music in their lives.
Do you feel a kinship with what's going on in electronic music right now?
It's a hard question to answer for the simple fact that there's so much going on in the world of electronic music. There's big, tacky top 40 remixes in the world of EDM, and weird electronic Berlin techno, there's ambient music — there's so many different types of music being made essentially with the same software that it's hard for me to generalize. But yeah, I feel a kinship with basically anyone making electronic music.
How has DJ or producer culture changed?
It's really odd. I played classical music, and then I was in punk bands, and I got into DJ and EDM when I was 20. This was the mid-80s. At this point, DJ culture was so underground. I was a straight white guy DJing in Latino, African American and gay clubs because that's where dance music existed. I had this weird moment — I've been friends with James Murphy and the DFA guys for a while and I went to see one of LCD Soundsystem's shows a few years ago. They were playing the song "Losing My Edge," where he talks about legendary DJs in New York. I had this odd, slightly discomfiting moment because first of all, everything he sings about in the song, I was there. So in the mid-late 80s when I DJ'ed, I was the only white person there. That was completely normal. I loved that dance music was so foreign to the suburban culture I grew up with. I was watching this LCD Soundsystem show with a few thousand people and I looked around, and there's not a single non-white person here. It was one of those moments where it was so odd that dance music has moved so far from gay, black, Latino culture and it's become almost exclusively white affluent suburban culture. I like LCD Soundsystem a lot and it's not a criticism of them or their audience. That's just one way it's changed. The demographics of dance music are so different.
Is there a geographic center for electronic music or club culture anymore?
One of the beautiful things about electronic dance music is that it's truly international. Whoever has software and a good idea can have success regardless of where they're from.
Below, check out a Spotify playlist curated by Moby featuring his album inspirations.
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Image: Mute Records