De La Soul to Make Entire Catalog Available for Free

They can't give out any kind of licenses for these songs, because the rights for the samples they're built from are a tangled mess.

TL;DR They're doing this to build their email list to create a direct channel for marketing future material.

Only if people actually find out who De La Soul is. Considering they started in 1987 and their last album was out in 2009, I'm not sure most kids this side of 1997 really know who they are or care about their music.

It would be cool if they did get the exposure. I feel without a concentrated PR campaign, besides a few articles over the next few days, not sure their sales are going to get a big bounce from doing this.

Getting their music out there increases their visibility and, therefore, desirability, meaning more people will be willing to pay to see them live.

One trouble is that booking artists for live shows is (or used to be) very driven by album sales, so perhaps we'll start seeing other interesting metrics - like Youtube/FB followers, # downloads, etc - achieving the status a "more official" indicator.

There is a nice link to buy tickets to their concert at Shephard's Bush Empire in London in May. Now very tempted.

Well, if their primary source of revenue were the releases, then the switch to digital (and the ease of just getting it from a pirate say even for people who would have ordinarily bought the LP/CD), then their total revenue is significantly harmed to begin with.

So, with sales hampered, mostly gimmicks like merchandise remain (for bands that catter to immature people buying branded t-shirts and the like, e.g not gonna really work for jazz or classical or tons of other genres).

And, of course, concerts. But those mostly apply to genres and bands with big enough fanbases to be able to have concerts and make a buck. For the rest, concerts are mostly lossing money (and were historically loss leaders for records sales for most bands).

The earliest De La Soul albums were jam packed with samples that wound up getting them hit with a few lawsuits/out-of court settlements that severely hampered their ability to release this music in various new media/formats. They're definitely an artifact of the more wild-west times of hip-hop sampling.

Having said that, I can't help but get nitpicky about a few things (I hope you take this as constructive criticism).

Filling in the blanks: Jackhigh is from the UK, Odd Nosdam is from the midwest but lives in Berkeley, Nocow is Russian (St. Petersburg). Shlohmo is from Los Angeles, not New York. Lunice is from Montreal, not the UK. Dakim is definitely from Detroit, but moved to California a while back. Mike Slott is marked as New York, where he lives now, but he's originally from Glasgow.

Ssaliva and Cupp Cave are the same person. His occasional collaborator Dem Hunger (who is an insane genius) seems only to be releasing music under the Wanda Group moniker of late. Jeremiah Jae is included, as is his older group material with Young Black Preachers, but not the newer stuff as Black Jungle Squad. The DJ for that group, Pbdy, signed to Brainfeeder not too long ago, runs a few regular nights in LA as well as his own label (TAR), and should probably be included, as should many others.

However, the most egregious omissions from the list are Kutmah and Daddy Kev. Daddy Kev is one of the residents and founders of Low End Theory, and the man behind Alpha Pup Records, a label which has released work by many—perhaps even most—of the artists on that list. Kutmah founded Sketchbook, the art/music night which evolved into Low End Theory. When Ras G releases a song called "One 4 Kutmah"—one of many instances of a producer naming a track "One for/4 x" as a nod to Dilla's "One for Ghost" on Donuts—that pretty well establishes you as a godfather of the scene. Without the contributions of those two guys that huge circle covering Los Angeles on the map gets a lot smaller.

And that kind of gets to the heart of what's really missing from this graphic—the personal connections. You're documenting an art movement which is very much alive, not only in the sense that it's constantly evolving, but that it's filled with real people who are friends and coworkers and share ideas (and experiences and meals and even sometimes bathrooms and lease agreements) with each other.

The fact that a handful of producers from across the map all dabble in samples that might qualify their work as "world music" is sort of interesting, I guess. What I find a great deal more interesting is that Kutmah used to earn extra cash by picking up shifts at Poo-Bah Records in Pasadena, one of the best independent record stores on the planet, which just so happens to be co-owned and managed by Take (who is going by Sweatson Klank these days).

Other employees of that shop have included Ras G, Black Monk, and Detective Tully, who himself has long been the stage manager (and frequent opening act) at Low End Theory, and is a founding member of the My Hollow Drum crew along with Teebs, yuk., Co. Fee, Bahwee, and others. MHD made their name playing a residency at the The Crosby in Santa Ana, which was co-owned by Chris Alfaro a.k.a. Free the Robots, a venue which more recently has played host to frequent performances by members of the Soulection and Team Supreme collectives, who have been making huge moves lately and are completely absent from your list. (Even more recently, The Crosby was forced to shut its doors, though I'm certain something incredible will rise from its ashes.)

Similarly, Kutmah was also one of the earliest participants in dublab, one of the first touchstones of the beat scene in Los Angeles. Its founder, frosty, was once a member of Adventure Time alongside Daedelus, and another early and frequent dublab collaborator matthewdavid would go on to release his own work on Brainfeeder, and put out tapes by Ras G, Samiyam, Odd Nosdam, Ahnnu, Dakim, Dem Hunger, yuk. and many others on his Leaving Records imprint, which just last year signed a distribution deal with Stones Throw.

And that brings us back to Dilla, as so many things do. His impact is wide and deep, and he inspired a great many people to do a great many things, including inspiring you to create that graphic, which itself just barely scratches the surface.

Actual URL: http://home.no/dwaynie/beat_scene.png

Edit: Need to double-read what I respond to.

Now is a time when the music industry desperately needs to make the case for value. These kind of gags don't help anybody.