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Shez Raja

pwilson

pwilson

Supporting Member
Jul 8, 2011
407
1,490
Kirkland, WA, USA
#1
I saw Shez Raja play at Ronnie Scott's in London last night, with the amazing Guthrie Govan on guitar in his band. It was a good 90 minutes of bass driven jazz fusion.

Shez Raja is a British/Indian jazz fusion bass player and his music draws inevitable comparisons to Mahavishnu Orchestra (which is fair tbh).

He's promoting his new album Spellbound. Unfortunately (inexplicably) he doesn't put his music on streaming which is a shame as he's very good.

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#3
pwilson said:
Unfortunately (inexplicably) he doesn't put his music on streaming which is a shame
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That makes him smart.
Check out STOPify's current artist agreement - condensed form available on many YT vids now. You'd run away too.

Back to topic:

I love Guthrie's playing, and have been admiring his work for decades. It's a shame we cannot hear, but I'll try Bandcamp and see what I can find. If this guy's hanging with Guthrie, I'm interested.
 
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#5
pwilson said:
I did buy the album and it's very good.
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Bingo.
This appears to be the only "right" answer, at the moment, to the dismal world of marketing music.

As a kid, I'd hop a bus to town, buy albums from artists I knew or recently heard on the radio, and even take chances on artist's I'd been told were respected, and yes, sometimes just because of the album cover! I picked up a few duds, but man, the vast majority opened doors to compositions I can still only marvel at to this day. It was a magical time of discovery, anxiously riding home, anticipating that first drop of the needle to the vinyl.
Can you imagine? That was how I found music in the 80's. Just wild.

Get familiar with Bandcamp. Let me know if I'm missing similar platforms. The fact that the artist can communicate directly with fresh releases, fresh merch and tour dates gives fans a real connection, and that is what we seem to be craving on the consumer end of the equation.
I hope this model of musician/fan takes hold. Much more equitable and fulfilling to all involved.

Let's make music about connecting.
Thank you for sharing this artist, so we may all might have a chance to enjoy.
 
#7
Michedelic said:
Why not just buy the album?
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jTrolt said:
That makes him smart.
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I'd like to defend my comment that he should put his music on the streaming services. My perspective is:
  • Even before the internet and streaming, jazz musicians never made much money
  • The expectation that we now pay higher ticket prices because of the shift from concerts-promoting-records to recordings-promoting-concerts helps all genres, including Jazz musicians apparently: Shez sold out 2 shows at Ronnie Scotts on Wednesday, a 250 seat venue. I happily paid £55 ($74.50) for my ticket.
  • If he made his music easier to access with today's infrastructure he'd make more fans and could play bigger venues.
Far be it for me to tell him how to manage his career - he seems to be doing just fine without my advice. And I could well be wrong about all of this. But imho it's a shame he's making such great music and then making it hard for people to find it.
 
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#9
pwilson said:
I'd like to defend my comment that he should put his music on the streaming services. My perspective is:
  • Even before the internet and streaming, jazz musicians never made much money
  • The expectation that we now pay higher ticket prices because of the shift from concerts-promoting-records to recordings-promoting-concerts helps all genres, including Jazz musicians apparently: Shez sold out 2 shows at Ronnie Scotts on Wednesday, a 250 seat venue. I happily paid £55 ($74.50) for my ticket.
  • If he made his music easier to access with today's infrastructure he'd make more fans and could play bigger venues.
Far be it for me to tell him how to manage his career - he seems to be doing just fine without my advice. And I could well be wrong about all of this. But imho it's a shame he's making such great music and then making it hard for people to find it.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. No defense needed. I apologize if you felt challenged by my statements. Indeed, a shame this is not made available to more listeners.

However, please read STOPify's most recent updated artist agreement. Seriously. Read it. You'll want to scream. It's absolute lunacy to give them one more note of music at this point.

Thanks DJ Bebop for the vid- great content.
 
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#12
jTrolt said:
No defense needed. I apologize if you felt challenged by my statements
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I only felt challenged in a good way 😊

I was offered a pretty senior job at Spotify in 2017. I didn't take it, mainly because I didn't want to live in Stockholm. It's a shame - at that time all the people I met at Spotify seemed like good people, genuinely interested in creating a healthy ecosystem for music on the internet.

I agree that artists deserve to be paid more than Spotify is paying them, but music streaming services are much better than the video streaming where you have to chase your favorite shows between the different services, each of which costs the same as Spotify/Amazon Music/etc.

Based on this data...

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...Amazon is the most artist friendly, or was in 2024. I hadn't thought about it until now, but I'll do some more research and try it out.

I remember seeing on Benn Jordan's YT channel - Benn Jordan, lots of interesting Spotify content - that Peleton pays artists very well but you have to buy a $2000 bike to access it 🤣
 

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