L, T Bone Burnett; R, Bob Dylan
After selling his catalog for $300m, Bobby D has rerecorded an old hit and proven it still worth every penny.
A newly recorded, one-of-a-kind record of Bob Dylan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” sold at an auction at Christie’s in London Thursday for over its estimated value — going for $1,769,508 million.
The price was well over the estimate the auction house had posted for the recording, which was in the range of $716,000-$1,194,000.
The recording is a one of a kind piece that was recorded directly to a newly invented kind of acetate recording. The inventor and producer, T Bone Burnett, spoke about the exclusivity and fans concerns that it wasn’t fair that only one person could ever listen to it.
Burnett pointed out something “I think it is important to know for people who are concerned about the exclusivity of what we are doing. An Ionic Original is not a ‘copy.’ It is an original recording. We are not contriving scarcity. This is actually scarce. It is a unique, handmade, original recording. We have all been conditioned to accept the terms of and react to things from the frame of mass production. This is not that.
“This really started because recorded music has been commoditized to zero over the last 20-30 years. Because we work in an age of mechanical reproduction, musicians have had to accept the definition of the value of their music from the government, from corporations, from technologists, from record companies, from streamers. Well, in this case, we have taken matters into our own hands, and we control the means of production and we control the copyright. We’ll be able to explore: What is the value of a song? What is the true value of Bob Dylan singing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ 60 years after he wrote it, in this environment? And we’re gonna find out.
“But the intention has always been to create a new one-of-one program. In fact, what I’m trying to do is enter a music space in the fine arts market. Because music is to the United States as wine is to France — it’s the most valuable and important part of our culture. And for the last 25-30 years, we’ve had parts of the audience telling us that we ought to put our music out for free. This is a chance for us as artists to work at complete autonomy. It’s something both Bob and I have done to the degree we could for our whole lives, but this is a chance now to do it not just for Bob, but for many other artists who are gonna do this with us, who’ve already signed up. With any luck, this is the way I’ll spend the rest of my working life, doing these beautiful one-of-one pieces of high art.”
