Brad Sucks – »Out Of It«

“A One Man Band With No Fans” // This is what Brad Sucks (Brad Turcotte) says about his music. Well, he is a one man band but he is definitely not with no fans. Since 2001 he releases his music freely on the web and ever since he is using blogs and P2P-technology to spread his works. He can be considered as one of the first fully open source web-based recording artists and he just released his second album “Out of it”.

His debut “I don’t know what I’m doing” (2003) was well received in the online community and made him become one of the first “web-musicians” who gained attention beyond the digital world.

“[…] Despite giving my music away for free online, my songs have been licensed for television, played on commercial and campus radio, and I made enough money from licensing and sales to do a real pressing of my first CD […] “ (Brad Turcotte)

“I don’t know what I’m doing”, that was often compared to the sound of Beck, led to countless remixes that were featured on ccMixter, a Creative Commons remix-platform. Some of these remixes were put on the album “I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Remixed”.

“I put the source files for my album I Don’t Know What I’m Doing online and people made a lot of remixes. I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Remixed is a compilation of some of my favorites.” (Brad Turcotte)

For his new album “Out of it” he allready made source files available and it will surely not take long for new remixes to come up. “Out of it” continues the melodic sound of “I don’t know what I’m doing” but this time Brads indie/alternative rock comes along with stronger beats and even more obvious guitars.

Besides his great music, Brad Sucks is one of only a few “web-musicians” who fully adapted the open source licencing model to music. He uses the BY-SA Creative Commons license, that also allows commercial use of his works (Usually netlabels and musicians go for a noncommercial license that restricts commercial use).

“A lot’s changed since I started putting music on the Internet way back in 2001. Artist-endorsed free downloads were shocking. Flexible pricing was still an untested novelty. It was rare to find source files from artists and sharing music wasn’t encouraged by new artists. Recently I was asked if I’d do anything different this time around. Would I still give the music away for free? Would I still give away my source files? Would I still be easygoing about copyright? Surely I could pull back now and try to cash in. And I honestly couldn’t imagine why I’d do things different. The only reason I, a dude who made an album by himself in a country basement, has had any sort of success is because people took it upon themselves to share my music with their friends. They remixed it, they used it in their videos, they played it on their podcasts, they included it in software and games and it took on a life of its own. To sabotage that would be a huge, retarded mistake. Instead I’ll be grateful if Out of It worms around the world in even close to the same freaky way I Don’t Know What I’m Doing did and continues to.” (Brad Turcotte)

If you want to know more about Brad, visit his website and listen to this Interview (Podcast), done by the Redhat Magazine.

Brad Sucks – »Out Of It«

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