Moby released his 11th studio album, Innocents, this past September which featured collaborations with The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, Mark Lanegan, Skylar Grey and more, confirming Moby’s reputation as “one of music’s most outstanding creative forces” according to our Tone Deaf reviewer.
But now the electronic music master is expanding his collaborative pool to the world wide web, with fans being given the chance to download his new album and remix it. In fact, the man born Richard Melville Hall is encouraging it.
The stems and raw audio of all 12 tracks of Moby’s latest record were made available as part of a special release of Innocents released through P2P network, BitTorrent, and the 48-year-old musician and producer tells Mashable in an interview that the site’s innovative BitTorrent Bundle distribution model is opening up the possibilities of sharing and reworking his material directly with his fans.
“My approach is to not try and control it at all. I really like the idea of not just giving people finished content,” Moby explains of the remix-ready version of the album.
“It’s giving them something that if they choose to they can manipulate and play with however they want. There’s absolutely no restrictions on it and that makes me happy,” he continues. “My approach is to not try and control it at all… It’s giving them something that if they choose to they can manipulate and play with however they want.”
A number of people have already taken up Moby on his offer, with the BitTorrent Bundle of Innocents having already been downloaded more than 2 million times and around 50 budding remixers have already uploaded their versions to a moderated SoundCloud page.
The man behind the music isn’t even fussed if remixers want to profit from their versions – as long as they use it for a good cause.
“I met with the BitTorrent people and they were asking, ‘What if someone comes up with their own remix and they sell it?’ They were wondering what I would want them to do with the money,” says Moby. “And my response was that they could take their friends out to dinner or give money to their favorite charity. Even if I make the stems, if they made the effort to make the remix, they should be the ones to profit from it.”
The refreshingly open approach to letting fans manipulate his music is part of Moby’s overall perspective that the music industry that survives is one that reflexively adapts. “Imposing restrictions on content seems like a fool’s errand. It’s incredibly difficult and arbitrary,” he says.
“When people try to control content in the digital world, there’s something about that that seems kind of depressing to me. The most interesting results happen when there is no control. I love the democratic anarchy of the online world.” “I love Thom Yorke, but when I heard him complaining about Spotify, I’m like, ‘You’re just like an old guy yelling at fast trains’.”
Rather than worrying about music piracy, or the proverbial ‘better to pay pittance than nothing’ substitutes of streaming services, Moby takes a contrary view to the musical chorus of detractors concerned that the digital era is devaluing music.
Unlike music contemporaries like Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich of Atoms For Peace, punk cabaret star Amanda Palmer, Talking Head David Byrne, and the Swedish Musicans’ Union, Moby actually regularly uses and encourages services like Spotify.
“For me the criteria is convenience. Because I travel quite a lot I still mainly buy music on iTunes,” says Moby of his listening habits. “But whether it is Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora, I think they’re all great. I have gotten involved in lobbying efforts to try and block Congress and the RIAA from penalizing them. Ultimately, I think the more access people have to music, the better.
“Every industry has been impacted by [changes in technology] in both negative and positive ways, but I feel like to complain is pointless,” he continues. “I love Thom Yorke, but when I heard him complaining about Spotify, I’m like, ‘You’re just like an old guy yelling at fast trains’.”
That may be a bit rich from a man who’s no doubt still benefiting from the royalties of blockbuster 1999 album Play – the first album to ever every one of its 18 tracks licensed, for use in film, TV, and commercials – but his view does at least offer a different perspective.
The release of Innocents also brought Moby to Australia for a rare one-off DJ set at Sydney’s Chinese Laundry this past September, and while in town, Melville also found time to channel his artistic side, creating doodles of his ‘Little Idiot’ character on a pair of custom Converse sneakers for an online charity auction, as well as for Sydney radio station FBi for their own ‘Brush With Fame’ auction.
