Good article on music and $$$

[Juana]

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/201 ... onsidered/

This was written in response to an intern that posted on the NPR site I found it to be a pretty good read all in all.

[farrellgirl99]

Good article. Made me feel shitty.

i used to buy all my music on cds up until about a year ago when I realized how much money i could save. now i only buy it if its one of my favorites, like trent or janes and i have the rest of their albums.

i still dont have an extra $100 to spend a month on music any way you cut it so ill keep downloading.

[Juana]

I do not judge anyone for downloading it was just an insteresting perspective. I get a lot of my downloads off of Google Play since its usually $3-4 per album and I have a set up with Google so I get a bit more storage than most for free with keeping the music on the cloud so I can stream it from anywhere, so to me I'm still paying for the product just not the overhead and other stuff.

There will have to be give and take because of how much money is in it else where from downloading and pirating as was pointed out in the article. Either way someone is getting paid and there are huge companies that are taking part in the pillaging that people do not think about.

[Larry B.]

Good read, but I disagree with most of the points in the article.

I do purchase music every now and then, but only if I've heard it before. I love paying for good stuff. I don't mind paying A LOT for good stuff. Chile has the highest ticket prices in the world and I've paid quite a lot to see U2, Faith No More, Regina Spektor, Paul McCartney and many others. I've also been to Lolla and Maquinaria. I even went to Brazil to see Jane's and to Argentina to see U2. It's not like I happened to be there: I actually went across the border and paid for tickets.

I download a lot of music. I like discovering new stuff. I had the entire discography of U2 and yet I bought every album, because I really really enjoy their music and I feel great paying them for this "artistic service" they provide me (which is a lot more than that.) Same with Jane's: I went to Lolla Chile 2011 even though I didn't like what they had become. I've purchased each one of their albums until Strays (included.) Yet I kinda felt like I still owed them. Jane's helped saved my life.

The thing is, I'm gonna gonna pay for Animal Collective's first album. I downloaded their discography and I basically hate everything they did until Merriweather Post Pavillion. I'm in love, DEEPLY in love with that album. So, after a couple of years of obsessing about it, I bought it. If they come, I'll go. If Panda Bear comes to Chile to display his collection of used condoms, I'd probably buy a ticket (but I wouldn't attend.) I'm not gonna pay for something I don't like.

Something similar happens to me with websites. There are blogs that I visit and since I achieved some purchasing power, I like paying for things that I enjoy. I recently bought some shit I didn't need from www.theoatmeal.com, because I've been visiting that site for 2 or 3 years and I think it's hilarious. They didn't have a donation option, so I bought some random shit and gave it away.

Hype recommended me some books of John Swatzelder (writer of The Simpsons when they were awesome.) I didn't pay for them, I downloaded 4 or 5. LOVED them. Made me laugh my fucking ass off. I bought a couple of his books (which I thought were expensive; I thought that amount was worth 7 books) and I felt like I had cleared my debt to him.

I think it's unethical if you don't pay a creator for stuff you love. But I can understand that you gotta feel a connection to it. It's art, after all.

[Essence_Smith]

Definitely appreciated the gravity of what's being said in this piece...we're all a bunch of thieves myself included...and yep, its definitely kinda silly considering how cheap music downloads are compared to when cd's cost 20 bucks a few years back etc and considering what people for internet connection, laptops, devices and smartphones...I buy singles here and there...I probably spend around a hundred bucks a years, usually when I get an amazon gift card or something to that effect, but I definitely still pay for music...there were some old James Brown singles I could find anywhere that I bought off amazon, where I also got a Ray Charles collection for like 4 bucks...if I were to cop those on cd a decade ago it'd have been three times that...so really there's no excuse...

[Hokahey]

I download a lot of stuff I would have never bought, and in turn wind up supporting that artist in other ways that I never would have under the traditional model. I'm sure this doesn't compensate for downloading the stuff I would have bought, but it has to be taken in to account. I think artists that care about it should sell to and appeal to their fans more. Go to this "net neighborhood" (from the article) where everyone is looting from your business and stand out front of the store. I understand that the article is making the point that behavior shouldnt change to suit the criminals, but if there simply isn't the police force there to make a difference you have to evolve or die. If Perry were to have appealed directly to the fans and engaged with the people that have put the money in his pocket and said "we put our blood, sweat and tears in to this album, please click this link and buy it directly from us" he would have had an additional sale from me. The article also vaguely references how artists aren't making that much from the tours and adds (for now). The model is changing. I'm sure those in the industry that post here can correct me or better enlighten us.

[Juana]

Just a heads up that article was written by David Lowery. Who along with being a someone that works for University of Georgia is a musician as well (Camper Von Beethoven, Cracker, produced Sparklehorse). So that is why I thought it was an interesting POV on the matter.

[elportosurfer9]

I kind of feel for musicians to a degree. I am going to be moving in September so i am trying to free up some space. I went through my CD collection and am selling half of them to Amoeba. The only bands i really wanted to keep are Nirvana, Janes, NIN, The Cure, Siouxsie, RHCP, as well as a couple of random bands . I find myself always going back to those cd's, as well as the killer deluxe editions of The Cure. I will never get rid of those. They have been my favorite band ever. All the other cd's i bought over the years have only had a couple of good songs. Rip them in itunes and call it a day. To the muscians it isn't alright to make a cd with only ten songs and no dvd. Since this a Jane's sight i will use them as an example. Where's is the extra shit? The dvd of a really rare concert, them recording, commentary? This stuff need's to be included with the "Cd."

Me and my best friend have spent an obscene amount of money over the year's for cd's that are diposable. Can't really feel sorry for that. With all the money I spent on music i could of been pipin'....sort of? Anyways i feel the quality need's to get better. Better music, a special disc, promotional shit, DVD'd included in the cd. So i do somewhat feel sorry for the musician's, but at the same time the product need's to get better. Just my thought..

[Essence_Smith]

The article also vaguely references how artists aren't making that much from the tours and adds (for now). The model is changing. I'm sure those in the industry that post here can correct me or better enlighten us.

I haven't been on tour in three years, but in 2009 and I got to go on my first national one and depending on the sponsorship, the deal the booking agent gets for you, etc you can do ok if you're a single person with no one to support...I played in an unknown band in support of nationally/internationally known acts....we did venues that were from 500 to 2000 people a night, had the typical tour rider deal, etc and I was living the dream, but had next to nothing left to send home and it definitely was NOT profitable. You make enough to support moving from place to place...when we finally were offered a deal by Universal it was a 360 deal...standard issue these days and the label basically has their hands in your pocket every step of the way, including your tour money and merchandising. We were basically told we'd have to go platinum to really make anything and the number the article puts up which I think was 35K is pretty accurate...not exactly what people have in mind when they think about what a "rock star" should be making...fun stuff if you're in your 20's, no kids, etc but yeah, its the 1% of artists out there who become millionaires off touring these days and even they getted robbed pretty bad along the way...

[Hokahey]

The article also vaguely references how artists aren't making that much from the tours and adds (for now). The model is changing. I'm sure those in the industry that post here can correct me or better enlighten us.

I haven't been on tour in three years, but in 2009 and I got to go on my first national one and depending on the sponsorship, the deal the booking agent gets for you, etc you can do ok if you're a single person with no one to support...I played in an unknown band in support of nationally/internationally known acts....we did venues that were from 500 to 2000 people a night, had the typical tour rider deal, etc and I was living the dream, but had next to nothing left to send home and it definitely was NOT profitable. You make enough to support moving from place to place...when we finally were offered a deal by Universal it was a 360 deal...standard issue these days and the label basically has their hands in your pocket every step of the way, including your tour money and merchandising. We were basically told we'd have to go platinum to really make anything and the number the article puts up which I think was 35K is pretty accurate...not exactly what people have in mind when they think about what a "rock star" should be making...fun stuff if you're in your 20's, no kids, etc but yeah, its the 1% of artists out there who become millionaires off touring these days and even they getted robbed pretty bad along the way...

I suppose I was talking about established acts or ones that are clearly joining the national stage. Kids thinking about getting in to the arts should never expect to make millions.

[Essence_Smith]

The article also vaguely references how artists aren't making that much from the tours and adds (for now). The model is changing. I'm sure those in the industry that post here can correct me or better enlighten us.

I haven't been on tour in three years, but in 2009 and I got to go on my first national one and depending on the sponsorship, the deal the booking agent gets for you, etc you can do ok if you're a single person with no one to support...I played in an unknown band in support of nationally/internationally known acts....we did venues that were from 500 to 2000 people a night, had the typical tour rider deal, etc and I was living the dream, but had next to nothing left to send home and it definitely was NOT profitable. You make enough to support moving from place to place...when we finally were offered a deal by Universal it was a 360 deal...standard issue these days and the label basically has their hands in your pocket every step of the way, including your tour money and merchandising. We were basically told we'd have to go platinum to really make anything and the number the article puts up which I think was 35K is pretty accurate...not exactly what people have in mind when they think about what a "rock star" should be making...fun stuff if you're in your 20's, no kids, etc but yeah, its the 1% of artists out there who become millionaires off touring these days and even they getted robbed pretty bad along the way...

I suppose I was talking about established acts or ones that are clearly joining the national stage. Kids thinking about getting in to the arts should never expect to make millions.

I think even for the established guys its very tough...the cards were already stacked against the major label artists to begin with and now because the labels aren't seeing anywhere near the profits they used to they have an even bigger excuse to try and screw you top to bottom than they did before...at the very least a band usually had a large percentage of their merchandise and now the label takes a good chunk of that too...

[Juana]

Yeah and I do not think that its just because of downloading but it does show a bunch of different things and how the artists are not doing as well as we think they are. I mean there are pretty successful musicians in the Austin scene that play on national tours and things like that and really the only one that seems to be doing pretty good is Grupo Fantasma who was Prince's backing band for a while. The rest are living in cheap apartments and trying to make ends meet with the revenue that the happen to pull in or a second job.

[elportosurfer9]

Speaking of poverty. I pretty much know Flea from the Pepper's was pretty much living in poverty in 1990. They were already a sucessful band back than. Kinda sad. Music was awesome though.

[Matz]

If Flea was living in poverty in 1990 it's because he was a complete fool with money, the Chili Peppers were doing well then

I admire that this guy who wrote that phone book of an article about this has the energy to do it, but it's not gonna change anything, the industry is fucked, realize it and move on

[Matov]

this is a nice response to Lowery's article:

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry ... 0352.story

Guest Post: In Defense of NPR Intern Emily White, by Dave Allen
junio 26, 2012 | By Dave Allen, Portland, OR

Editor's Note: Amid all the things that happened last week during the Universal-EMI Senate hearing, the New Music Seminar, A2IM's indie week and more, nothing seems to have captured the attention of the music industry than a blog post written by an NPR intern named Emily White called " I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With." While she probably didn't intend to kick the hornets' nest so hard -- friends of hers we've heard from have said as much -- she's ended up representing the digital generational divide: The younger generation that's never had any reason to own or pay for music, versus older ones -- represented at great length by Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven singer David Lowery -- railing against what they perceive to be rampant and thoughtless intellectual piracy.

Nine days later, the blogstorm rages on. The best post we've seen in recent days, after we reposted Jay Frank's fine "Is Stealing Music Really The Problem?," comes from Gang of Four bassist Dave Allen (director of interactive strategy for Portland-based brand agency North and an adjunct lecturer at the University of Oregon, Eugene), who takes David Lowery to task for his criticisms of White. His views should not be construed as representing those of Billboard or its staff -- to cite just one difference of opinion, some of us have enjoyed Lowery's music over the years and found this blog post's original title -- " The Internet could not care less about your mediocre band," posted on the North website -- to distract from the thought-provoking points he makes. Allen thought so as well, as he explains in the following lengthy intro he wrote especially for this re-post (his original blog post begins where the italics end)...

I really appreciate Billboard for letting me have the chance to air my thoughts on their website and also for allowing me to write this intro to my post.

It is said, and rightly so if I am honest with myself, that I am often blunt. Yet when it comes to musicians and how they approach the Internet if it's possible I often become blunter. Let's call it being passionate.

And here's the issue; I have to remind working musicians that at some point they made a career choice. They decided that they would make a living making music, so they became business people, or their band became a small business under that definition. They chose a music career as a profession that would support their lifestyle of choice. They may be single which makes it easier to scrape by, or they may be raising a family which requires a higher level of income to support. However we slice and dice it though they are in business. All well and good - for a while.

Then along came the Internet. The Internet affected everything - culture, society, business. And not in the best way for many. In my post below I am asking that musicians stop for a minute and understand what the Internet has wrought. It is their duty as business people to at least understand it, especially if they're going to hate it for existing. In short it entirely changed the music business, the business that musicians make a living from. That's why they have to understand it. And more importantly, they have to understand that the web is a people-powered network. Then they have to understand how people, their fans, are using it.

Railing against the Internet is pointless. Haranguing your fans for using it in a way that you don't like (as Billy Corgan did at this year's SXSW conference,) will only lose you fans.

Musicians, whether they like it or not, now require a new business plan to address how their fans are accessing their music. 20 year-old Emily, the woman who kicked off this thread with her post on NPR, is at the tail end of her generation - and she has only known digital and the Internet. What of the 10 year olds coming up behind her? What do we think they are doing? We should be concerned about how they will access music. All of this points to musicians needing to create new markets - because the old ones may not support them for too much longer. And there is hope if they embrace the fact that the Internet is the solution not the problem. To deny that may mean their business will go out of business, just like Kodak.

And just in case you think I'm all gloom and doom about the future of music, I'm not. I'd like to say that by becoming a board member for Cash Music, a non-profit organization that builds open source digital tools for musicians and labels, I may have finally found a way to really help musicians help themselves. I look forward to its success and the success of musicians who use the platform.

What you are about to read is perhaps me at the height of bluntness (if that's even correct grammer.) It is a rebuttal of David Lowery's "Letter to Emily." Emily, an intern at NPR, posted in all honesty how she accesses music, or has accessed it in her young life. It was very brave. The tone of Lowery's post I found condescending, but worse were the comments left by his giddy cohorts. There was much to dislike there - they wanted blood basically. So this 20 year-old scared them obviously. I wanted to defend her as her points were concise and she represented to me everything that is great about young people, even down to her self-incriminating candor. (We'll probably discover in a day or two that it was all a complete hoax, but C'est La Vie..) I began writing in a furious mood having tracked this discussion for almost a week. Unless you are a budding Ernest Hemingway I would advise staying away from that method. The result of my approach, pecking and hunting on the keyboard angrily, had me writing a less than artful description of Lowery's musings on this difficult subject. So, a regretful moment, but there you have it. And by the way, the post title is meant to be ironic and has nothing to do with Lowery's bands. I just forgot that we are living in a post-ironic world - at least according to Graydon Carter (look it up!) My errors are a consequence of living in public on the Social Web.

Last week I read with fascination the outcry of the self-appointed, self-centered "defenders" of musicians vs the Internet. i.e. musicians. The brouhaha had been kindled by a 20 year-old intern at NPR, Emily White, who made a confession that upset the maudlin, mildly-talented David Lowery and grownups in general who can write. They piled on trying to savage her, but not to worry; as UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher most famously retorted after being criticized by Geoffrey Howe, a member of her cabinet - "..it was like being savaged by a dead sheep." So yes, bring on the dead sheep.

Why were people jumping all over Emily? Her post was titled: I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With. Here's the first part of her post:

"A few days before my internship at All Songs Considered started, Bob Boilen posted an article titled "I Just Deleted All My Music" on this blog. The post is about entrusting his huge personal music library to the cloud. Though this seemed like a bold step to many people who responded to the article, to me, it didn't seem so bold at all.

"I never went through the transition from physical to digital. I'm almost 21, and since I first began to love music I've been spoiled by the Internet.

"I am an avid music listener, concertgoer, and college radio DJ. My world is music-centric. I've only bought 15 CDs in my lifetime. Yet, my entire iTunes library exceeds 11,000 songs.

"I wish I could say I miss album packaging and liner notes and rue the decline in album sales the digital world has caused. But the truth is, I've never supported physical music as a consumer. As monumental a role as musicians and albums have played in my life, I've never invested money in them aside from concert tickets and T-shirts.

"But I didn't illegally download (most) of my songs. A few are, admittedly, from a stint in the 5th grade with the file-sharing program Kazaa. Some are from my family. I've swapped hundreds of mix CDs with friends. My senior prom date took my iPod home once and returned it to me with 15 gigs of Big Star, The Velvet Underground and Yo La Tengo (I owe him one).

"During my first semester at college, my music library more than tripled. I spent hours sitting on the floor of my college radio station, ripping music onto my laptop. The walls were lined with hundreds of albums sent by promo companies and labels to our station over the years.

"All of those CDs are gone. My station's library is completely digital now, and so is my listening experience."

This is a 20 year old student telling it like it is. My only concern is that she may have never heard the sonorous sound of a vinyl recording. Other than that she has my utmost support.

Musicians (and as a member of Gang of Four I include myself here) don't automatically deserve to make a living. They are not a special subset of society that should be supported at all cost. If that were the case there would surely be an honest argument against the States who are laying off teachers, police and firefighters; teachers educate our children, police and firefighters protect us from harm and sometimes death. Musicians, like all artists, are part of the foundation of our cultural groundswell and music is part of our reptilian past - every living thing has a heartbeat. Yet we talk of the "music business" and that's where The Rime of the Ancient Mariner comes in..

The constant whining by David Lowery (this isn't the first time) proves only that, whether he knows it or not, he doesn't understand the Internet and how people use it (more on this later in the post.) Like many, many people who have had their lives or businesses upended by the Internet, his nostalgia runs so deep he wants everything to be the way it used to be. Ain't gonna happen. If he looked long and hard in the mirror he might confess to himself that the way it used to be was a tragedy for the majority of musicians, and probably not that great for himself either, as his bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, like Gang of Four, were not exactly in the upper echelons of fame. We scraped out a living by touring and yes, David, selling T-shirts. The adage that musicians always pay back the mortgage to the labels but never own the house is entirely true in so many cases. We can't blame the Internet for that.

This is where Lowery outlines his case. I take issue with it in its entirety because Lowery is attempting to solve the wrong problem. He is attempting in the present to solve a problem of the past - lack of music sales; ergo, damage to musicians income levels or lack thereof since the advent of the Internet. (Oddly he doesn't mention that the music industry is most likely the only industry to ever, ever, sue its own customers. An inconvenient truth.) He even lays out in fine detail how much Emily would owe if she'd paid for all of her music (most of which came from the labels as "promos". Once again Lowery doesn't mention how music writers and radio DJ's sold those promos to record stores..just saying.) He then asks her to cough up the dough for starving musicians.

He also rather insensitively points out, while undermining his argument, that "the average income of a musician that files taxes is something like 35k a year w/o benefits." That's almost $10k more than the current US median wage. There are around 8 million unemployed people here in the USA, many without a place to call home, who would gladly take that income. I find him so condescending that I want to break something right now.

I also find it disgusting that Lowery conjoins the deaths by suicide of Vic Chesnutt and Mark Linkous to this topic. He knows very well that those two brave artists, much braver than he, suffered through circumstances that were extremely personal and difficult to control. Had they been musicians or not, had nothing to do with the incredibly unfortunate outcome of their lives. It only goes to show how shallow and specious his entire argument is if he has to pivot it on their deaths.

Jay Frank wrote a post in response to all of this. In it he points out that Lowery need not worry about people downloading his music. Frank provides us a snapshot of a Google search: "when I went to look on Google Insights to see the level of demand for free music by David Lowery's group Camper Van Beethoven, the message I get is, "Not enough search volume to show graphs." "This basically means, from what I can gather, that less than 50 people per month in the entire world are even showing intent to steal his music. Statisticians basically refer to this as essentially zero."

Here's Emily again:
If my laptop died and my hard-drive disappeared tomorrow, I would certainly mourn the loss of my 100-plus playlists, particularly the archives of all of my college radio shows. But I'd also be able to rebuild my "library" fairly easily. If I wanted to listen to something I didn't already have in my patchwork collection, I could stream it on Spotify.

As I've grown up, I've come to realize the gravity of what file-sharing means to the musicians I love. I can't support them with concert tickets and T-shirts alone. But I honestly don't think my peers and I will ever pay for albums. I do think we will pay for convenience.

That last line is the most important in this context. It also spells doom for musicians wanting to make a living by just selling music. The convenience that Emily is searching for is, as she mentions, provided by Spotify - by doing so she shows us that a musician's enemy is not the music downloader. The enemy is Spotify, MOG, Rdio et al who license entire music catalogs from labels at great cost. The labels (in my case Warner Bros) then pay a pittance in royalties to the artists. The winners in this vast charade are the labels and venture capitalists.

Believe me I know. I recently received a royalty statement from Warner Bros in which I found that one of our most popular songs, 'Natural's Not In It' had been streamed or downloaded through paid online services, almost 7000 times. That netted me $17.35. Now that was just one song out of our entire Gang of Four catalog. The statement amount in total, my share, came to $21.08. There was a big, red-inked stamped message on the last page that read, "Under $25 do not pay."

Lowery points out in his passive/aggressive "Letter to Emily" that people are buying less music these days. I wonder if it has ever occurred to him that maybe that's because they are being served up an all-you-can-eat cheap buffet of music from the likes of Spotify?

Anyway, I thought that this issue was long behind us. I wrote about where music and musicians were heading back in 2008. Here's an updated version of The End of the Music Album as the Organizing Principle. And here's Dear Musicians, Please Be Brilliant or Get Out of the Way.

Anyway, back to the Internet.

In what may, or may not, have been a misstep, Lowery posted his rant to The Trichordist blog whose tag line, Artists For An Ethical Internet, says it all. In using that tag line they show in brilliant light how much they misunderstand what the Internet is. And by doing so they undermine the very validity of their presence on the Internet. They can yell at the Internet into infinity and it will never blink.

The Internet can not be ethical. Only users of the Internet can be said to be ethical, moral, or philosophical; they may be terrorists, kidnappers, racists, deviants; they could also be atheists, religious zealots or spiritualists; they might be gay, straight, bi, married, divorced; employed, destitute…the list goes on. Whoever they may be they are users. The Internet is its own thing. The Internet doesn't give a damn about musicians or your mediocre band.

And finally there's this - Lowery writes about "immoral and unethical business models." And includes this - "..they are "legitimate" companies like Google." What's with the quotes around "legitimate" does Lowery think Google is not legitimate? No, he thinks Google is the problem (read Devil..) because Google in his mind owns the "Unethical Internet" because of its advertising prowess. And I quote - "Google is also selling ads in this neighborhood and sharing the revenue with everyone except the people who make the stuff being looted." Looted! Unbelievable.

He then rambles on about the "cost" of free music downloading - the $1000 laptop, the costly iPhone or Tablet, as if people only use these products to download music! He also falls into the same trap that U2′s manager, the ISP bully Paul McGuinness, falls into - blame the ISP's for allowing access to the Internet, where as we know, people only go to steal music.. McGuinness is so well informed about the Internet that in the Billboard article I linked to he talks about the Googles! And he also said this about Apple and Google - "They didn't invent the MP3, they just made the best one." Erm.., what?

Clearly this a fool's errand. At least we know who the fools are. They are what the economist Paul Krugman calls "Very Serious People," for only they know how to fix things. Unfortunately, everything they do or say has no grounding in reality.

Grownups fear youth. That's unfortunate. By sharing her reality, Emily White shows us she is grounded.

[Update] This just in, literally. @AmazonMP3 If you wanna get 19 of Paul Simon's solo hits for $2.99, you're gonna have to do it by tomorrow: amzn.to/KHsARp Now who's fooling who about the declining incomes of musicians?

[Juana]

That is a good response, I wonder how much this will be going on because it seems like its as the article stated "kicked the hornets nest"

[kv]

ya know dain makes a good point...they should just tac on some tax to internet costs.....if shit is free people aren't gonna pay for it...if apple farmer todd is selling his apples for a buck for 5 and apple farmer tom across the street says take all you want for free...todd is fucked...i have over 600 cd's i used to spent over 100 bucks every single time i went into a record store...last thing i bought was a gift for someone...last thing for me was jane's box ( which had a value above it's download)....i am just rambling here but most people who ipod it up aren't even listening to full albums they are just random playing playlists...so usage isn't even the same...but again what dain said made me think...if internet was all exclusive license to legally download music and film...it would prob help save both industries and people would pay it...but of course they would have to start going after people who didn't pay the higher internet fees for full access...the internet is the wild west...you can't/shouldn't imho control it...but you can control access to it...after all how many people would cancel the internet if it was 20 bucks more a month but you could legally download whatever the fuck you wanted? not me

[Pandemonium]

ya know dain makes a good point...they should just tac on some tax to internet costs.....if shit is free people aren't gonna pay for it...if apple farmer todd is selling his apples for a buck for 5 and apple farmer tom across the street says take all you want for free...todd is fucked...i have over 600 cd's i used to spent over 100 bucks every single time i went into a record store...last thing i bought was a gift for someone...last thing for me was jane's box ( which had a value above it's download)....i am just rambling here but most people who ipod it up aren't even listening to full albums they are just random playing playlists...so usage isn't even the same...but again what dain said made me think...if internet was all exclusive license to legally download music and film...it would prob help save both industries and people would pay it...but of course they would have to start going after people who didn't pay the higher internet fees for full access...the internet is the wild west...you can't/shouldn't imho control it...but you can control access to it...after all how many people would cancel the internet if it was 20 bucks more a month but you could legally download whatever the fuck you wanted? not me

Problem with that idea is *everything* can be had for free - music, games, software, movies.... anything that can be digitized even at low quality, there's a big percentage of people who will grab it in lieu of paying for the product. And unrestricted, unmonitored access to the internet can be had by anyone with even a marginal bit of tech savvy. The real issue becomes how is any sort of "internet usage royalty tax" divided up among artists, software developers, businesses, etc? Does the (US) government enforce it? What about other countries? You know a country like China wouldn't go for it and they're among the top intellectual property thieves by volume on the planet. Some movie studio or software company would inevitably bitch about not getting their fair share. Such an undertaking would be akin to every nation banding together to agree to a set tax levy on water consumption.

[kv]

you could only go country by country

[Juana]

It's obvious that the model is broken but there has to be a way to focus on at least making it better for not only the artist but the consumers/people downloading. I have downloaded a few things thru out the years but normally I get turned on to things by going to festivals and seeing the lessen known acts live.

[Hokahey]

Haven't bands like Radiohead and NIN already figured out the new model? Sell online directly to the fans and let them pay what they want. Sell deluxe models for the die hards.

[Hype]

Yeah the good articles came out in 2003... the new model for artists is "TOUR". They've just inverted the model back to the way it was prior to portable music. Bands that can tour their asses off can now make a living. The albums are there to promote the next tour, instead of the other way around.

I like it because it makes good music.

[Essence_Smith]

Yeah the good articles came out in 2003... the new model for artists is "TOUR". They've just inverted the model back to the way it was prior to portable music. Bands that can tour their asses off can now make a living. The albums are there to promote the next tour, instead of the other way around.

I like it because it makes good music.

Yeah I find this to be true...my friends Hypnotic Brass aren't household names and don't sell millions of albums but they tour pretty much 10 months a year and get calls from Gorillaz, Mos Def and even Prince to come support their tours and I know they're not missing out by not being on the Billboard charts or whatever...dudes are never home and have a hectic life but they still make a damn good living all based on the live show and still put out great music...

[Hype]

I know of Hypnotic Brass. Interesting fusion type stuff.

Seriously though... at the height of the 90s music industry scene, it was all industry created derivative garbage like Puddle of Mudd, 3 Doors Down, Nickleback, etc... all cashing in on the alt-grunge wave that had already crested after Layne Stayley died.

It's not like a great new artist in 1998 could make money selling records while Limp Bizkit was all over the radio.

Napster made it possible for people to stop listening to the garbage they were feeding us. So now people will go see great musicians, instead of relying on the industry execs to spoonfeed us.

[Matov]

That's pretty much it Hype, except for the fact that Staley died in 2002, years after the alt generic rock wave reached its saturation point... it was back to bubblepop by then, i think