M.I.A., the artist who made it safe for indie kids to listen to dancehall, got absolutely huge without the help of mainstream radio or anyone huge players in the music biz. Her secret to out-manouvering the established pecking order of the music industry? Super hot beats, infectious choruses, and the internet.
In an interview with Music Activism site Downhill Battle, M.I.A. discusses her blisteringly quick ascent to indie stardom in terms of the net, file sharing, and all the other nerdy things that I find interesting:
M.I.A.: But then it comes back to (the question of) how you get that stuff out, without selling yourself to a record label. And it's like the internet is the only thing. But then, it means your skin, and you can't get out onto the road, can't do shows, and you're still working at the shop. But you've made a song and it's out and it could be all over the world. So maybe we're just in the early days and there's another way of doing it, and i-tunes kind of makes sense I suppose because it's like 79p a song, but then that still goes through the managers.
HOLMES: Well if you're on a major it still goes through the managers, but if you're not then its a pretty good deal. There's this one system that people have been kicking around where they say o.k. well, there's file sharing software out there, let's legalize it and then track it, so every time someone downloads something it's tracked, and then charge people. You know how they're suing people in America? Well what if you said o.k. you pay five dollars a month and you don't get sued. You get internet at thirty five dollars a month, and pay five dollars a month for music. That five dollars goes into a pool and gets distributed according to how many downloads you get. Would you go for that, if you were a politician?
M.I.A.: Yeah definitely.
HOLMES: It's one of those things that they don't want to do because it means less control. Because anybody can come up and make money, and get popular.
So I guess Holmes from the site asks M.I.A. an incredibly leading question that happens to agree precisely with my digital rights party line, but I can't help but feel that M.I.A. agrees - it's pretty much all there - M.I.A. was asked to censor a few of her songs in the interest of making it big in the US of A, and wouldn't do it. File sharing coupled with internet only hype (I think I remember Arular being talked about on Pitchfork about 9 months in advance) allowed M.I.A. to break big and remain a DIY artist - industry free! Now ask yourself why the powers that be have so much contempt for their customers having the freedom to make choices about what they want to pay for. Oh, and here's M.I.A.'s enthusiastic endorsement of webbin' it up.
M.I.A.: Yeah I suppose it's kind of like, early days, but I'll vote for it. I mean I've done it in such a higgledy-piggledy sort of way, you know my album was out, and then I did a mix-tape, everybody downloaded the album, everybody downloaded the mix tape, and then "Galang" came out and it was more widespread on the internet, It never got radio play, you know what I mean?
HOLMES: The video is amazing.
M.I.A.: Yeah and I get like two million hits a month on my website or whatever and it's kind of like, you know, I totally believe in the power of the internet. (laughing) I BELIEVE!"
