Institubes R.I.P.
Jean-René Etienne and Emile Shahidi now offer a
requiem for
Institubes, of late the artistic home of Alizée, which I excerpt immediately below. Their words echo the economic anxieties we have voiced in this thread, and sought to ameliorate.
I could write ten pages about the realities and difficulties of the music business... We never lived those halcyon days some industry elders tend to rave about. We always moved through a post-apocalyptic, terminally pauperized landscape... It’s always been a bit of an uphill battle. But it got worse and worse... We’re closing shop because the operation is losing too much money... ours is a struggling industry, where 90% of your time is spent “staying afloat”... our post-Napster economy itself is defective... The only honest way for a record label to make money is by selling records. We’ve always been uneasy about selling anything else.
And our current cultural economy isn’t healthy either... Consumer practices are fucked. You don’t need me to tell you that music is devalued... tracks are peaking faster than tumblr memes. In our historical moment, music is everywhere but second or third or tenth to many other interests and areas of culture...
a closing event (= a massive party) is going to be announced very soon. Keep checking www.institubes.com for updates... Pretty much every mailbox we ever had is clogged so we’ve just set up this new e-mail: byebye@institubes.com