Danger Mouse, Sparkle­horse and David Lynch have put together an all-star team of musi­cians (includ­ing Julian Cas­ab­lan­cas of The Strokes, Gruff Ryhs of Super Furry Anim­als, Frank Black of Pix­ies, Iggy Pop, and James Mer­cer of The Shins) and released a beau­ti­ful record blank CD-R accom­pan­ied by a book of pho­to­graphs by David Lynch.

A spokes­per­son for Danger Mouse has said that “due to an ongo­ing dis­pute with EMI” the “100+ page book” book by David Lynch will no longer come with a CD con­tain­ing the songs, but rather a blank CD-R labeled: “For legal reas­ons, enclosed CD-R con­tains no music. Use it as you will.”.

The songs them­selves are freely avail­able from NPR (stream­ing only), and the book + CD-R can be bought from the Dark Night of the Soul store. This is already one of my favour­ite albums of 2009, and the con­tro­versy of the release is a bril­liant example of the issues raised in this art­icle writ­ten by Brian Eno earlier this month.

The duplic­ab­il­ity of record­ings has had another unex­pec­ted effect. The pres­sure is on to develop con­tent that isn’t eas­ily copy­able — so now everything other than the recor­ded music is becom­ing the valu­able part of what artists sell. People who won’t pay £15 for a CD will pay £150 for the lim­ited edi­tion ver­sion with addi­tional art­work, pho­tos, book­let and DVDs. They often already own the music, down­loaded — but now they want the art. That sug­gests to me the pos­sib­il­ity of a refresh­ingly demo­cratic art mar­ket: a new way for visual artists, design­ers, anim­at­ors and film-makers to make a living.

So, as one busi­ness folds, sev­eral oth­ers open up.
A liv­ing art reborn, Pro­spect Magazine, Brian Eno.