A little bit about Jim Warren: Jim recorded you never wash up after yourself (my iron lung ep, 1994), mixed permanent daylight (my iron lung ep, 1994) mixer and producer of 'high & dry' (the bends, 1995), mixer on 'the bends' (1995). Engineered all the demos for the album "The Bends". He continues to work extensively with Radiohead in the studio and provide their live shows with the sound that band and fans alike have come to expect.
Jim Warren also does Peter Gabriel's live sound and has produced and engineered albums by Jocasta and Pineforest Crunch. Jim has produced the second Unbelievable Truth album and has also been working with new act Darling, Gintare and Wock. Most recently Jim has just produced a single for Damien Saez.
Laura: How do you think the emerging digital music industry has affected artists? Do you think its been largely beneficial or detrimental?
Jim: For most artists, beneficial. It's now a lot easier to get your music heard by a larger audience without the help of a record company or an agent.
L: How do you think record labels are currently handling the issue of digital music (and the fact that it has dropped their revenue dramatically in the last few years)?
J: I think they're finally beginning to catch up, but they are dinosaurs who had been doing business in the same way for 70+ years, and were surprisingly conservative in their approach and marketing strategies, considering the "cool" product they were trying to sell. There were a few small label exceptions.
L: Any case studies/examples in your experience that have included the digital music realm? (i.e. RH's 'In Rainbows', whats your take on it, from the artists', record labels, and as an individual/'insider' who has the experience of the processes and sees the developments in the industry first hand)
J: I know that Radiohead made more from the "pay what you want" download than they would have done if they'd released the album oniTunes when they were signed to Parlophone, Record companies always put a clause in contracts to reduce the artist's share of income from "new media". This is supposedly to cover the extra costs to the record company, and they tried to justify it to me once by explaining how expensive it was to change all the shelves in music shops when they switched from LP to CD! These clauses have no time limit though, so in 25 years, your still paying for their new shelves. This was the situation Radiohead were in. iTunes taking a big cut of a reduced price, and the record company taking most of what was left, so they refused to release their music on iTunes unless the rec co. got less greedy.
Also check out my mate Tim Arnold. He was in a band I worked with years ago, but now promotes himself pretty successfully on his own website, and even does regular "gigs" from his 2 room flat in Soho to an audience around the world, rather than playing to no-one for nothing in a shitty little club somewhere.
L: Any ideas on the future? How far will the digital and online scene alter music?
J: Massively. There will be a much wider range of music available, because people can release their own "niche" music, and soon be selling it to small markets al over the world. The big record co setup could never have done that, they had to make a bigger profit.
Also, digital recording equipment gives artists the means of producing their own music to master quality, which in itself will lead to loads of (sometimes badly recorded) music, but some interesting new groundbreaking ideas.
L: Any suggestions/possible ideas on how record labels could utilize the digital/online realm?
J: Sky's the limit really. All of a sudden there is the potential for getting feedback from the people listening to the music, which could be just in the form of comments, or could be like minds sending in their own stuff, or check out the Nine Inch Nails idea of putting multi track versions of the songs online so that fans could do their own remixes.
Thanks for your time Jim!
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