> File Sharing, Illegal Downloading Blah Etc...,

  On 10/2/2009 at 2:58 PM, loganfive said:

the other real issue i have is of people with gigs and gigs of lists of tunes in their media player. meaningless lists of words with various star ratings, which they expended no effort to get.

 

i mean, having a terrabyte of tunes seems to be something to boast about at the moment, but imhotep, there's no way you can form any kind of personal relationship with the art. it's too nebulous and meaningless in that format.

 

'bang the player on shuffle man'

now this i agree 100%. You d/l that much and it's automatically less special.

  On 10/2/2009 at 2:31 PM, loganfive said:

 

nobody has an issue with professional sportmen now, do they?

 

no, I have a SERIOUS issue with that bull shit.

I also think copy rights shouldn't last longer than 20 years (at most). Fuck Disney.

I do believe an artist should be able to profit of his work, but for example think of a painter. A painter will sell his painting to one person for 20,000 dollars. Then that person will display it in their gallery were likely for free, up to thousands of people can see it.

There are more efficient ways to be a successful artist than to just charge for the general enjoyment of your art. I think the reason on a forum like this people will say it kills the industry the most is they listen mostly to electronic music that can't be performed live to most demographics and be enjoyed. It's prevalently home-listening/head-phone music. Thus making the "make money playing shows" ideals very problematic for more complicated single-act computer sequenced music etc. I still believe in supporting artists, but when I do so I do most of it at shows, t-shirts, stickers etc. Tangible items I can kind-of use. I could not possibly ever buy every CD I want to. For one it would cost more than my college tuition which is pretty high already, and 2 I would have to pay rent for a much bigger living space to fit it all. A LOT of music I like to listen to still isn't even sold in MP3 stores yet, so there goes that solution.

Also, the whole buying bread and stealing some too. I've totally done that plenty, because it makes life affordable, and I don't care about the huge corporate places that have been "hurt" by it. (they haven't, I'm barely dipping into their general costs of waste)

Also what about the idea, that there is no direct correlation between pirating and lower profits? In experiments, if you have two factors, and they move in a similar direction, it doesn't mean one causes the other. I'm not saying this is true, but I'm saying it's very possible other factors play a role in this almost as much as piracy (if not possibly more just theoretically) Such as the ability to make your own music is becoming more and more possible. A person with a 400$ laptop can pirate fruity-loops and recreate what in the early 90's would of taken hundreds if not thousands of dollars of gear, and other musical production materials are still in production and I feel the number of people able to make at-home recordings has only steadily grown. What does that mean? More musicians - same market size - less sales. There's also the general fact the economy has been doing pretty bad since 2001. (fluctuating of course, but over all not as good in times past) I'm sure there are lots of other factors that play into this, and people are not using correlative theory to realize piracy isn't even proven to be the only cause. It could easily be a lot of disgruntled finger pointing with less grounding than one might think.

Oh yeah, a better wording for the more musicians thing, is the act of making the music you want to make has become more democratized. It's becoming more and more plausible for ANY ONE to make the music they want. Making it much harder and rare for some one to succeed at what they make. The same thing has always occurred with books. That's why very few writers (especially poets) ever were successful and especially a very few were rich. (even shakespeare had to make his work into plays that would be performed so people would have to pay to see them) Thinking that all indie labels can survive a lavish self-employed lifestyle is a bit juvenile in the first place in a world were information is democratized that way. Of course it would be great if we could all just make a label and live off it, but it really is historically and statistically even without pirating in play a hard thing to ever succeed at. Labels were dying out before piracy, they died out before cassettes etc. It's nothing new, it's just there's a new phenomenon happening simultaneously and it has become the scape goat for people.

Like I've said I can't say this is 100% true, but neither can the people who braid information piracy. Just trying to give out other ideas than just: PIRACY DOES OR DOES NOT CAUSE LOSS OF MONEY FOR ARTISTS, because nothing in the world is that black and white.

  On 10/2/2009 at 3:26 PM, Glass Plate said:

  On 10/2/2009 at 2:31 PM, loganfive said:

 

nobody has an issue with professional sportmen now, do they?

 

 

 

Also, the whole buying bread and stealing some too. I've totally done that plenty, because it makes life affordable, and I don't care about the huge corporate places that have been "hurt" by it. (they haven't, I'm barely dipping into their general costs of waste)

i'm not talking about large corporations. i'm talking about artisan labels

otherwise, i'm mostly in agreement with you except for on a couple of points. yes the market is saturated, but signal to noise ratio has never been worse. it's equally as easy or difficult as it has ever been to make GOOD QUALITY music, bacause you need more than just software to do that, you need talent. secondarily, putting some tunes on myspazz doesn't guarantee you a worldwide audience. the same applies to this theory as applies to the terrabyte of tunes peole. there's so much out there that it devalues that which is worthwhile.

also, all of the midrange indie artisan labels i'm in touch with are reporting drops in sales despite the fact that more and more people seem to be obtaining and listening to their output.

otherwise, you make a pretty good argument.

yeah, It's common knowledge though a lot of people ONLY listened to that music was for free, and doesn't mean that if piracy was there that more of them would be buying music. This applies to more than just NEW music. I could list 1,000s of albums by dead people that I would have never heard if I had to buy the music. 1, because I'm not paying money for music that isn't going to the musician or a GREAT label/person.. 2, because I couldn't afford it.

There's also the fact I download TONS of music that I end up realizing I would never buy. People listening to it doesn't mean they DO want to buy it. People constantly talk about how they use piracy to sample music, so it could be an example of how people find out that band with the cool name REALLY does suck, and thus they don't do well.

Another aspect I think no one really talks about, and why popular music seems to get worse is this theory I have. I guess a good name for would be Niche Filling. Ever since music has become tangible in the idea of vinyls, than cassettes, reels, mp3s etc. People can listen to what music they want to, WHEN they want to. The artists is no longer in control of when people receive the audio frequencies they want to receive. Once THE BEATLES, have produced an album, people can hear that album when ever they want. They are less likely to go out to find another Beatles album. As time goes on, more and more people have the needed collection of music they need. I remember a LOT of people from Kentucky who still listen to the same few AC/DC and Lynard Skynard albums they've been listening to since the 80's. The reason we don't see another Bon Jovi on the top 40, or another Beatles, is for the most part, every one already has Bon Jovi and the Beatles, to have something on the radio it has to be something different. The problem with THAT is, if we make something really great and different most people don't have tuned enough listening skills to appreciate or understand the reason why this difference is GOOD. A lot of these people's musical niches are already filled and don't even NEED new music. I mean the number of complexities that arise with the instant availability of what you want to hear is very complicated. Even if every record costs 100$ and every one was all for it, at some point a lot of people will have enough records very quickly because they feel fine re-listening and re-listening. Cost isn't the total issue, but the general fact a lot of people feel fine with what they have etc.

I don't know, the niche theory explanation isn't very fully explained, but I think you get an idea of something that is very true about music and information consumerism in 20th/21st centuries.

I also just want to say as much as I love benbecula, they kind of made their own downfall. The last few years they added so many different artists to the roster that were all so drastically different from one another, and all of whom were very unheard of. It was just begging for failure. I mean I think some of their best and most likened stuff was their IDM type releases like Christ. and Frog Pocket, then you go out releases ambient guitar music and basically straight up alternative/indie albums. You're giving your label crowd mixed signals and forcing the artists themselves to pick up most of the sales. Once again I'd like to stress i LOVED benbecula, one of my favorite labels for a while, but that was a bad move on their behalf, and I think it's pretty obvious piracy wasn't the only issue at hand.

fully.

ding, you win the prize for the most coherent 'outside of the box' take on file sharing and piracy that i've read on my entire (fuck is it?) 6 years on this board.

interesting read.

  On 10/2/2009 at 4:41 PM, loganfive said:

fully.

 

 

ding, you win the prize for the most coherent 'outside of the box' take on file sharing and piracy that i've read on my entire (fuck is it?) 6 years on this board.

 

interesting read.

@plate: it's an interesting theory, and i think we agree on a lot more than i originally would have thought. i think intellectual copyright needs serious reworking also. but i think even major labels provide a good argument against your niche-filling theory - the fact that they survive by investing millions (billions?) into the creation and marketing of new music. i think some people reach a musical asymptote, but in the pop and indie communities alike, there's a strong culture of the Next Big Thing; baby boomers can fund Skynyrd on the radio for many years, but the kids and the music-lovers are funding the real moneymakers on the market.

i'm with you on benbecula's demise also. a label is a very tricky business to run and lots of them aren't cut out for it. however, i still think the creation of art should by nature be optionally for profit, and that the market will sooner or later provide a method that is suitable to everyone. i also think that limiting intellectual copyright would force successful artists to stay relevant and invested in current events.

this article seems to be down at the moment: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php but it's an interesting take on the industry. he puts forth the idea that if you can fill a niche with your music, it's possible to reach a critical mass of patrons, and make a decent living. not an easy life, but nobody said it was!

try here: http://web.archive.org/web/20080619195332/http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php

  On 10/2/2009 at 2:56 AM, titsworth_courier said:

have you read this?

interesting but awfully written

thou shalt not end sentences in prepositions!

i don't download music anymore. and i don't buy music anymore really. not new music anyway. i'm buying up the neil young discography but i'm not hearing any new music. i don't listen to music radio.

so how did i used to find new music?

someone would mention a release. i'd soulseek it and if i really liked it i'd buy it.

this worked for a while but eventually you buy less and less as you like too much (or you feel less guilty for having the music for free). so you only buy the stuff you *really really* like.

eventually i gave up. uninstalled soulseek and settled into old age. fuck you

my wife is wondering the same thing "how do i hear new music?" her answer is itunes. i'm not convinced.

recently i've been listening to some pandora internet radio jobby. that introduced me to a few bands but now theres more adverts than i'd like so i don't listen as often.

the best model i see is:

music for free.

music with some fine ass packaging = money.

live show = money.

merchandise and shit = money