Malintenti Dischi Analysis

V: How do you evaluate Malintenti Dischi/ Sergio’s opinion on your work?
R: Sergio’s opinion is important for us, but it is not crucial. I mean, he always sees what we see, and he always agree on our work, even if sometimes it is too risky, and we see he is kind of scared by our profligate works. He understands us and values us, no matter what. And if he does not foresee what we do, we do not intend to change our work. Let’s say Sergio would not have appreciated the material we have sent him almost two week ago, ok? What if he would have told us: “It’s different from your previous works. It’s no good. You need to change and readjust it”? He would have betrayed Omosumo’s essence, of course. Firstly, our work cannot be changed, it would mean
Nowadays doing music is arrogant gesture, it is more to impose you and please yourself with it. Nowadays is really easy to record your own song, look around you: we can produce something right now just with this few instruments, a pc, and some good software. Almost everyone could record a song, he just need some technical material and to follow the current “wave”, without valuing the artistic depth of the work itself. That is why Italian Music market is very crowed and homogenized. There is no room for curiosity, for newness, no willingness for thinking out of the box. It is probably due different factors: firstly the generation gap, the cultural impoverishment, an elderly audience, a poor offer, or maybe a too much crowed offer but is substantially poor on quality. Today is quantity over quality. Right now, for instance, cantautori and canzone d’autore [songwriting and songwriters] are quite popular in the Indie scene, and the result is a Market crowded with these presumed artists, which are not really different the one from another. Take Calcutta, for instance, which is particularly successful right now. It is not to criticize him, I have nothing against him and I am really happy for him, but I do not really find much difference between him or Lo Stato Sociale, Brunori Sas and so on, the list is endless. All these artists work well on this market because it is what the public looks for. Few labels are willing to take the
Technicians, business people around the Music Industry, musicians, and everything that revolves around music is more professionalized: people actually study how to get in the industry, how to be successful, even at a higher educational level. I mean…look at you, you are writing a Master Thesis about this stuff. In Italy is fairly uncommon. Another difference that comes in my mind are foreign sales, which are much higher, and this led to a better music economy, so to say. Just to make a basic example: in Australia, in 2015, there have been 100 albums sold on iTunes more than in Italy, where digital consumption and piracy is much spread and make the market suffer. This is the major difference. It is due to a different mindset approach to music: foreigners perceive musicians’ work as worthy; they better understand the value of what they are consuming, and what is behind a single piece of music, how much a musician has to work on it. They know they are buying the musicians’ work, his efforts, his struggles, and they are more willing to “reward” him. Italians are really different on this matter. For instance, if someone asks me what I am doing for a living, and I tell him that I am a musician, in Italy they look at you with conceit, even mocking you in a way, telling: “A musician? That’s cool…and what is your job, instead?”.