Slashdot Mirror

This

message is to every musician speaking out against file sharing:
get your facts straight, and stop regurgitating everything the major label tells you.
Anyone still clinging to the cage-format for music is either a middleman or lazy. Squidnecks

You major label suckers make me laugh
Do you really think your label would come out and say, "Hey we cut your paycheck in half because you've got to help pay for the 250 billion copies we give away. Have they mentioned when they cut new releases by 25% sales dropped 4.1% and they blamed it on P2P? Have they mentioned that they responded to that drop by raising the cost of your CD $1 every year? Does that seem like a good business move to you? Or does that smell like fear?
Ask yourself what kind of business would cut research and development first? I'll tell you: the business that's about to make it's bed up in a mother fuckin hearse.
While Hilary Rosen and the RIAA are trying to convince you that free listeners are a bad thing, those same five labels that pay them are charging you $500,000 to buy you spins
While you're negotiating whether or not the latest Napster pays you 1/3 of a cent per download, Comcast and AOL are turning the information highway into a toll road.
you know the end is near when Britney Spears is calling it a moral issue
they've positioned you right between their wallets and your fans
they can't really expect to turn the tide with a few pathetic lawsuits
So you gotta ask yourself how does one stop a flood? You build a damn.
IT'S THE ISPs, IT'S THE ISPs!
Comcast will have every last consumer on their knees
starting with 5.3 million subscribers to cable access high speed
they own the wires, so they can discriminate with bandwidth and queuing fees
guaranteed monopoly by the FCC so

We're standing on the verge of an artistic cleansing of biblical proportions I say bring it
when the wickedness of big business is great in the earth
and it will even try to sell the waters that it's drowning in
marching two rappers
two rockers
two composers
two programmers
onto a pirate ship
in a free-market flood
until businessmen are businessmen
and art is art again. Rock

this is not an issue of children not recognizing value in art
this is an issue of children recognizing value-less art
getting artists paid doesn't even play a part
The truth is
for the first time since it's creat

Very much worth noting is the fact that Courtney Love's article is nothing but a poor rehash of a much better article by Steve Albini that was written at least a year before Courtney Love basically repeated it and took credit for doing some kind of expose by herself.

I think we're at an important time in music right now, because as the iPod proliferates, this sort of thing will not stand with consumers. Normally, they just keep buying and taking what they get and dealing with it. I don't see that happening much longer if Sony comes up with something that's more difficult to get around.

As far as the argument that "you sold the copyright, you lost control" - that doesn't make what Sony is doing any less stupid. Also, I don't know if Fair Use is supposed to be a right we cannot have taken away (as IANAL), but Sony is certainly on their way to doing that despite the fact that it's one of our rights.

this essay by Steve Albini explains the situation perfectly...

Small correction to the above: I assume you mean Negativland (noe "e").
--
I'm not politically incorrect, I'm just differently articulate

I have a similar way of thinking about this, but I don't think the solution is to eliminate copyrights. What is needed is to eliminate the major corporations who's business is to completely control the music industry.

We need to damage their bottom line enough by not buying their products, so that they get smaller and smaller and eventually become as insignificant as any other independent label, at which point independent music will be on an even footing, and therefore able to flourish in a marketplace that is currently totally dominated by the majors.

I am a musician and producer of sorts, and would probably have gone on to make a career from it if it wasn't for the completely undesirable market that is the modern music industry. I know a shitty job when I see one, thanks! To put it bluntly, musicians get anally raped by the industry - if you want to know how, read: The Problem With Music, by Steve Albini.

Copyright was actually intended as a good thing, but in order for it to be good, it needs to be limited in certain ways. For it to be any use, it requires a shelf-life and expiry date, which is what is being fucked at the moment.

I would suggest something like 10 years maximum before published copyrighted works become public domain, because it is absolutely not a god-given right to continue to profit forever from work one has done in the past! The benefits would be society-wide, since information and art enriches life for everyone, and should not be put aside at the whim of companies such as Disney that wish to reap massive profits by extending their copyrights forever.

Copyright is there to serve the people and protect their work, not to be abused by corporations. Of course, when you look at who has the money and the influence, it's no surprise the system is fucked and will possibly never be repaired... which is why we have what we have now, where most people just ignore an obvious load of crap, copy whatever the want, and get on with their lives. No time to waste messing around - who can blame them?

Still, in the last week alone, I have purchased through the Interweb: a CD direct from an independent artist (through his website), and have also bought a second-hand CD album that I use to love in about 1987. So it's not that CD sales are going down, it's just that they're changing because technology makes it easier to track down the more obscure stuff. Old stuff that was always cool, and new stuff that hasn't been turned into some crappy plastic product for the masses.

Get rid of the major labels, and that's when music will really start to get interesting and cool again. If anything, it will offer a viable career for millions of budding young musicians, who are currently kept locked out of the mainstream by the industry payola.

The death of the international megastar would herald the birth of a new type of musical star: musicians who have a smaller, more dedicated, more personal fanbase. Musicians who are able to earn a living wage (not a fortune) from being famous locally, and who can reach a wider audience directly via the Internet.

But I don't need to preach about this, because it's already happening. That's what's really going to derail the industry's gravy train - loss of the control of the market that they have dominated for so long through radio and TV payola. Well, now our voices can be just as loud as theirs, and their distribution problem (getting physical CDs to shops) is our distribution panacea (online sales).

The death of the giant that is the music industry will be when music really, really, really starts to get cool again. Mark my words.

i think i will trust people who have actually done it over hyperbole and conjecture: http://www.negativland.com/minidis.html and bear in mind the prices in their essay are mid-nineties prices. please disseminate at will.

After meeting "their" A & R guy, the band will say to themselves and everyone else, "He's not like a record company guy at all! He's like one of us." And they will be right. That's one of the reasons he was hired.

I don't think that this is the primary reason, why the cartelists so much hate the internet. The reason is control or loss thereof. Prior to the internet you had virtually no chance in hell to get your music published, unless you agreed to a contract, which makes slavery actually look like the prefered choice. The Internet can change all that. Everybody with a [insert favorite instrument], a cheap microphone and a recording device can be a publisher now and circumvent the established distribution channels. If anybody listens to such music is a whole other question, of course.

If the music industry doesn't change their business model from a mere media distribution model (media in my book include DRMd files) to a value adder (promotion, marketing, infrastructure, artist scouts, etc) and continues their rather odd "criminalize-thy-customer" business model my prediction is that 10 years from now they are deader then Jimmy Hoffa.

And given that he's a top producer (i.e. Nirvana) I'd wager that his word has more weight in this matter.

All creation is somewhat original. Take Negativland for example. These guys have used everything from out-takes of American Top 40 tapings to pepsi/coke commercials and made music out of it. If I write a piece of music on my guitar, do I owe it to the manufacturer of the strings that I use to give them credit for making them?

In short, all creation is a process of recombining what is already there. Ask any great musician how they write and they will tell you: "well, I got my inspiration for XYZ from this piece of music, and the lyrics are a take on this poet's writing, and the timbre I take from aboriginal African music"... or whatever.

I do not believe that someone should be able to take credit for another's work, but I think that we can all intuit with fair accuracy what is recombination and what is plagiarism.

"This part always amazes me. The artist has chosen to use the business services of a record label. The label deals with a jillion details for the artist - from venue contracting, accounting, marketing, distribution and fronting cash for studio time and more. There is overhead involved, and they often lose a ton of money on some artists - most, in fact."

There's where you're wrong. Major recording labels NEVER lose money. Many artists end up in crippling debt if their "works for hire" for the labels don't, according to the labels' extremely shady book keeping, recoup the labels' costs plus interest. Here's a link to an excellent piece on the ugly realities of the music industry that I've posted before in similar threads.

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

I'm an artist myself, and have been approached with offers from major label reps and declined to be involved, even though I'm *very* poor. I distribute some work through online indie distributors, but currently, even the more successful indie artists make relatively little. I don't fault most artists that sign with a label, because the labels have strived for decades now to be the "only game in town", and music is an expensive game. Looked at the prices of quality guitars and amps recently? P.A. systems? Lighting?

I agree that the artists did enter into the labels' contract(s) voluntarily, but until independent distribution matures further, there's not much choice if you want to be distributed through mainstream brick-and-mortar resellers, and have any chance at all of recouping the investment the artists make in their music, including time, equipment, travel, etc.

Live performances are where I make *some* money, but with the popularity of karaoke and DJs, and increases in insurance costs for venues that employ live music, venues that will consider live music at all are becoming fewer and fewer, while the money those venues are willing/able to pay is shrinking.

I sell self-produced CDs at gigs, and give away more than I sell, in order to get heard. I also print a release on these CDs allowing (encouraging even) sharing/loaning/copying by individuals, as long as it's not simply taken and sold for profit.

Although home recording has progressed to an amazing degree the last 20 years, the cost of recording equipment of a quality sufficient to produce a truly professional-quality recording is still beyond most artists' means. The equipment in the mobile recording truck that came out to record me and my band cost in excess of $150,000, not counting the vehicle or generators, etc., and was limited, compared to a normal studios' equipment and capabilities. It cost $1500 for 2 hours' time on-site, which is barely enough time to get enough material recorded to make ~45 minutes of usable material. This doesn't include mixdowns and mastering, or any track overdubs. Just a raw recording.

I create and perform music out of love for music and playing. As a very good musician friend of mine is fond of saying, "players play". I can't write and play as much as I'd like. I need to eat, and pay rent and all that. Current copyright policies and the distribution models that they prop up prevent me from creating and distributing more works.

Just wanted to share a little real-world actual experience from an artists' perspective, since the thread took the turn towards artists.

Cheers!

Strat

Bands get screwed all the time... check out this article... it's a little old school... Written by Steve Albini, producer for nirvana, and the pixies...

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

"Which would you be more concerned about if you're heavily investing large quantities of money into funding the creation, recording, and promotion of music?"

Not arguing anything, but I thought it might be good to point out here that the artist pays for all the recording and promotional costs. Artists usually receive no payment after a recording is made from the recordings' sale until, in the labels' opinion, it's costs have been repaid. There's a very good piece on how things work between labels and artists here:

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

I've posted this link before when the labels' investment in the artists and recording/distribution has popped up here, but I feel it bears repetition, as too many people outside the industry don't understand how things go down, and might buy into some of the misinformation spread by the RIAA and the labels.

Cheers,

Strat

When you look at the legal line on a CD, it says copyright 1976 Atlantic Records or copyright 1996 RCA Records. When you look at a book, though, it'll say something like copyright 1999 Susan Faludi, or David Foster Wallace. Authors own their books and license them to publishers. When the contract runs out, writers gets their books back. But record companies own our copyrights forever.

The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid.

Courtney Love's article on the subject

Producer Steve Albini's take

Long story short: Stay the fuck away from major labels. Even if 'nobody has heard of you' as an independent artist, you're still more likely to make money than by being shackled to the RIAA.

good read:

The Problem with Music

for those who dont know him: he's a very good musician and a famous producer (nirvana etc), too.

They've invented a faceless entity called the "RIAA" who does every evil thing you can imagine. I hear they even rip off artists! Though I never cite an actual, specific instance.

The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month. The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it.

In reality, the RIAA has nothing to do with the contracts artists sign. The RIAA is just a lobbying group for the record labels, and artists hire entertainment lawyers to work out their contracts with the labels. And then willingly sign them.

If you really care about making money, then you definitely want to avoid the industry contract.

Steve Albini published an excellent rundown of how the industry screws signed bands. In summary:

The Balance Sheet: This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game.

Record company: $ 710,000
Producer: $ 90,000
Manager: $ 51,000
Studio: $ 52,500
Previous label: $ 50,000
Agent: $ 7,500
Lawyer: $ 12,000
Band member net income each: $ 4,031.25

But seeing has how the RIAA and its many incarnations worldwide have been deaf [dum dum TISHHH] to the demands of those they depend on for SO LONG, I say pirate on my friend. It's quite simple really... the RIAA can quit living in the mid-to-late 20th century and get with the program, or alternatives will find their way into market and force the RIAA to change to survive. A brief rundown of the MANY shortcomings of the RIAA: - They DO NOT do justice to your average artist [Steve Albini, producer of Nirvana's "In Utero" album, explaining how the artist is screwed: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html ] - Convicted of breaking federal anti-trust laws for price fixing et al multiple times - They keep pushing forward this one-hit-wonder crap assembly line style, making you pay the $12 (use to be $20 before anti-trust suit) for one or two songs. They don't want you to download online per-song [see the older Slashdot article about them wanting to raise the rate for an online download], because that threats this model of forcing you to pay for extra music that sucks. - They have NO concept of fair use. They've made it pretty evident they don't want you to rip your CDs into your own mix... or *gasp* put your mix on an mp3 player. How pirate of you. iTunes? Hope you don't like burning your mixes too often to change them around. We wouldn't you to get fair use of that piece of "intellectual property" you just PURCHASED THE RIGHTS TO now would we? For extra credit class, please view KoRn's music video "Ya'll Want A Single" --> it is bootlegged online in many places, and the video even requests you download it. "Film makers can offer their audience a choice of ways to see movies -- they can view them in the theater, rent them, or buy them. Music companies are much less flexible. It's hard to buy one song. You're forced to buy the CD." - Peter Chernin, CEO Fox Entertainment Group Quite frankly, the RIAA has shown it doesn't care if it craps on me, so I don't mind seeing everybody crap on them. Karma is a b**** aint it?

I'm not saying all filesharers aren't hypocrits (altough I could come op with a lot of examples of hypocricy that are 'worse', in my opinion), so I don't disagree with your post as such.

One point I would like to make is this. The music industry is a monopoly. The top 5 labels own 80% of the music that you hear. Why? Because they control the distribution as well. There are a bazillion small labels. Sign with them and never get heard, doesn't matter how good you are. Sign with a major and get heard by millions, no matter how much you suck (insert obvious examples here). Remember that most new and upcoming bands are a couple of young unexperienced guys with guitars who would do anything for a bit of recognition. They only go Wilco after years, if ever.

There are also labels that sell cd's for less. http://www.cdbaby.com/ The general public doesn't know about their existence because they don't get distributed like the majors do.

It's a classic example of a monopoly.

Required reading: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html The Problem With Music by Steve Albini
(Steve Albini is an independent and corporate rock record producer most widely known for having produced Nirvana's "In Utero")

Aren't record companies in business to make money? It's well and good for us to tell the record companies that they should instead be concentrating more on unprofitable bands, but it is they, not we, who are responsible to their employees.
As much as this is true, it's a sad fact for music. You rightfully conclude that the music industry (yes, industry) is all about money and not about music. With this statement, you validate their monopoly and say that it is their right to control what we hear, what we see, what we do. Although it is wrong to break the law and the law is being broken, I cannot agree with these practices.

" Sorry, it is kind of hard to find Royalty who will pay you to simply sit around and compose for them.

Music subsidies don't work today like then did then. Also not everyone with a family can just pick up and tour."

Isn't it odd, then, that both in the US and Europe musicians earn their keep (and pay off their huge debts to the recording companies) through performing and teaching?

Producer Steve Albini: "The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month."

Professor of Information Jurisprudence Martin Kretschmer: "Only a small minority of artists reaches ordinary living standards from copyright income. [...] Earnings from non-copyright, and even non-artistic activities, are an important source of income for most creators."

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

I thought Albini's article should be required reading for everyone--and it was written about ten years ago! The only ones who get nickels from the big labels the RIAA represents are the ones you see on MTV every day, not the ones who show up on "120 minutes" (or whatever the alterno-MTV thing is these days).

And many of them feel shafted by the music industry too. Look at Prince. *sigh* [/end rant]

the RIAA's members have a good bit of skill at picking out good artists

I don't think so. They have just been the only choice for a long time.
That way, you can squeeze the artist in many different ways.

Killing p2p would be very, very easy ... make everything, even out of print stuff available online so it's easier to find stuff you want in the store than in some p2p network. Lower the prices (slowly) (for both soft and hard copies) to the point where people wouldn't bother to rip a CD but just buy the album again in the format they prefer. Make it so cheap that people woun't even bother to borrow albums from eachother!

The reason that 99.99% of those independent artists aren't signed is because they aren't as good as the competition, or more simply, because they suck

Different strokes for different folks. Music is not a competition, it's an expression. You might like what the artist has to say, you might not.
With the amount of songs Apple have sold now, they can do some serious datamining. They know who bought what.. for the last year! That's very valuable information.
You have bought this, that means you might be interested in this too?

[How stupid is it to demand information should be free, then pay someone else to get it?]

Not stupid at all. You pay for the distribution and other assorted services, not for the information.

For the record, this is not much different from what you do when you buy a CD from the record store. For the first hundred thousands of copies of any given CD, 100% goes to the intermediaries. (At first sight, this may seem to be a peculiarity of the US system, but the same appears to be true for Germany and the UK.)

The Problem with Music by Steve Albini

Steve Albini should know a little about this stuff, he produced Nirvana's In Utero. He was also a member of the band Big Black in the '80s (any Ministry fans should give them a listen) and worked with bands such as the Pixies and the Breeders as well as Seattle stuff like Tad.

Pretty obnoxious, expecting to actually get paid for their work.

Almost as obnoxious as expecting to make money on an album, instead of accepting an advance which then gets taken out of album sales and paid back to the record label, so that you never actually see any money from it even if people do buy it. Look at the figures.

Before you read on, read this article by Steve Albini (one of the best known producers in the world) about the reality of the economics of the music industry. If anything it understates the degree to which the music industry is broken.

I'm a musician as are many of my friends. Musicians, or the vast majority of them anyway, do not make music to make money but to make music. Historically of course, it was ever thus. Before the means of recording music, there WAS no recording industry. The vast majority of great music in history was written without the RIAA's help and without the 'protection' of copyright. It didn't seem to bother Beethoven.

The small minority of professional musicians mostly make their money from live performances (cruise ships, bars etc). A small minority of the small minority of professional musicians make money from recording, but a large part of this is non-consumer oriented such as film soundtracks, game scores, stings, jingles, ads and so on.

The current inflection of the recorded music industry benefits only the major corporations and a few bands who have enough leverage to make deals that actually result in money. The vast majority of bands who record make little or no money.

If we were drowning in a sea of great music produced by the members of the RIAA I would be the first to defend them, but we aren't. We're drowning in garbage, and thousands of good bands languish unsigned and unproduced. You only have to watch American Idol to see how the process works.

Fortunately now the innards of a pro recording studio can reside on your home PC or Mac, and raison d'etre of the major studios no longer exists. Musicians can go back to doing what they have always done -- making music. Once the recording industry finally dies, those who make great music will earn lots of money from live performances and direct-pay-downloads spread by viral word-of-mouth.

If you think I'm wrong, consider this: poetry. Pretty much nobody makes any money out of poetry. But it still gets written. The same is true of music. The sooner the industry dies, the better.

MOD PARENT UP - SQUANT.

Actually, with the RIAA out of the way, it would be a lot *easier* for artists to make a living: http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

For every artist who makes it big, there are hundreds who don't even get their costs back.

The only real reason for the RIAA trying to kill P2P is to prevent independent artists and producers from being able to distribute their own music, at no significant cost, and without requiring the RIAA cartel.

I am not a pirate, I purchase all of my own songs, online or on CD, and the assumption on your behalf that I am a pirate is a good example of what the RIAA and the MPAA are using in their justification to sue people.

Herea good article by the guy responsible for putting out the Nirvana: In Utero album, you just might want to read it to find out who truly are the thieves in the industry, the people who steal the songs are just as likely to buy their CD's, all you are paying for is the CD, not the music

A person who expects compensation for their art regardless of the quality of the art is a business person, not an artist, and in my mind they are subject to whatever marketplace competition is due to them, and if they can't bring their product to market in a reasonable amount of time with reasonable expectation of consumer interest, then they should get out of the business all together.

To paraphrase what Ian MacKay states in this article with downhillbattle.org, "I may have written the song, so I think, 'I authored that song' but it's not property, it's not property for anybody!"
Interview with Ian MacKay of the Fugazi record label and Dischord

I am sorry to say my friend, but you accuse me of being a pirate, when I download the song to listen to see if I want to buy it, exactly like if it were playing on the radio, I don't keep the file download, because that would be truly stupid. If the music industry wouldn't have essentially "bribed" radio broadcasters into playing their "hit" songs over and over again, we might actually have a place that we could be exposed to decent music from new bands.

Don't assume that someone is a pirate just because they are defending their fair-use rights under copyright law, yes I rip songs from my CD's and place them on my hard drive for future musical compilations, (notice I didn't say MY songs because I don't own the songs), but I don't give them to someone else.


When the United States were still just British colonies, there taxes placed on various normal items, such a paper, and tea. These were placed by a corrupt Pariliament who wanted to bail out the East India Company from bankruptcy by removing most of the taxes on tea, and stifling smuggling of tea into the US, which was one of the few ways that the American colonies could make any money due to the oppressive taxes already in place for other goods.

Because of this repeal of the taxes on tea, the East India Company could sell the tea at a cheaper price, but none of proceeds would benefit the colonists, and furthermore it would allow Parliament to raise the overall prices of goods and services through the enactment of port controls and further taxation.

When the governor of the region met with some 5000 people, from Boston and surrounding towns, to send the ships carrying the "cheaper" tea back to England due to popular discontent with the situation, the governor refused to allow this to happen.

On December 16, 1773, 60 men from Boston dressed as mohawk indians raided the ships carrying the tea and dumped the tea into the boston harbor.
The Encyclopedia Americana (Connecticut; Grolier Incorporated, 1988)

The colonists back then were considered thieves, due to the fact that they rose up against a company that was colluding with a corrupt government, to dilute the value of a good used by other persons to maintain their livelihoods, as well as provide their families with food on the table.

But truly is this theivery? These were great men in history, men who stood up for their human right to provide for their families and make sure that their struggling societies survived, this among other things, is what formed the ideal to separate from the British empire, and become our own country.


The music industry is taxing those persons who wish to listen to music, through exhorbita

MTV2 - which just plays fringe crap that only New York snob MTV producers would like

I listen to "fringe crap" you insensitive clod!

Sorry, but if they really played 'fringe' music I would actually watch it. Every time I've checked it, they're playing some indie-poseur crap like the Strokes or Coldplay. Try listening to the Residents* or Acid Mothers Temple or Negativland or Lightning Bolt or Sun Ra sometime and get back to me ;-)

*MTV actually played Residents videos when it first started out (which comes off as very bizarre if you know their music). They were actually pioneers of the music video format, and some of their early works are archived at MOMA.
I highly recomend their DVD "Icky Flix" to anyone into Dadism, Surrealism or just plain visual and aural insanity.

...and who gives a shit?

her "math" is a complete ripoff of steve albini's breakdown:

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

i don't know how this can be passed of as hers...

Seeing as the subject of artist-label relations has come up again, I'll post this link to an excellent piece from a music industry veteran again http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

Personally, being a musician myself, I will not sign with a label as they are now. New means of distribution are growing, and that is truly what they fear. Not possible lost sales due to personal sharing, but the rise of distribution and marketing channels independent of their control. That control is why artists up until now and for some time to come will be at a disadvantage. At least until the alternate channels mature.

Strat

If you want to talk about the RIAA's business interests, then talk about what their mission statement is: "Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality." Something tells me that when such a tiny percentage of the money you pay for a CD goes to the actual artist, the RIAA is not promoting their members "financial vitality." So really, if the RIAA doesn't even adhere to its own mission and doesn't even have a shred of loyalty to its own members, how can you expect them to "play by the rules" when dealing with anyone else? In addition, the EFF posted that sample just as that, a sample. The legislation is worded such that they could sue anyone (whether or not they have a financial interest in their success) like Bram Cohen.

If you can't logically conclude from the RIAA's position on various legislation that it would like to see filesharing stopped all together, then I really am sorry that your reasoning ability was lost somewhere along the line. The RIAA doesn't have to come out and say "All filesharing is evil" for them to think basically that.

Do you think the royalties earned by artists on musical works are too high? Are the artists being too -- there's that word again -- greedy?

No. Actually, the groupthink is that most recording artists are underpaid rather than overpaid, largely because the label deducts expenses before paying royalties to the recording artist. Read "The Problem with Music" by Steve Albini for the gory details. On the other hand, the label pays mechanical royalties to the songwriter's publisher before deducting expenses; a singer-songwriter who somehow manages to avoid a Bright Tunes fight may get a check from the music publisher (for the CDs) and from BMI (for radio play) before the album recoups.

Perfect for putting these MP3s on. Or these ones, which will suit any non-RIAA approved device.

Perfect for putting these MP3s on. Or these ones, which will suit any non-RIAA approved device.

I've posted this URL several times in various threads where music industry-artist relations come up. I'm a semi-pro (not sure what may formally qualify one to be called "pro"..I've made a living at it for significant periods, but not exclusively, so I include the "semi" tag) musician myself, and can attest to some of the facts in this excellent piece. Worth a read.

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

Strat

http://www.negativland.com/audio.html

http://www.deuceofclubs.com/write/negativl.htm

...and who gives a shit!

ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI (of which I am an affiliate) don't pay most of their artists. Their collection scheme is somewhat misleading. For the most part, they only pay artists that gross over a certain amount, that make a certain amount of money on tour, sell a certain number of records, and have a significant amount of airplay. So basically only Britney Spears gets paid, and the millions of artists that are touring and sell a small number of records through distribution often never see the money. I know I never have.
The Performers Rights Organizations (PRO's) are in bed with the RIAA and the record labels. If anyone is ripping the artists off, it's the labels and the PRO's, not the filetraders. I refer you to a brilliant article at http://www.negativland.com/albini.html written by Steve Albini, producer of Nirvana's "In Utero" and mastermind behind the band Big Black.

Yes, sarcastic! The republicans here recently tried to ban gay marriage in the U.S. - and their reasons for banning it come from their christian beliefs. I think that is stupid. (Note I said "_their_ christian beliefs" - I don't believe all christians are stupid or unspiritual.)

I don't think it makes sense for them to be mucking about in the relationships of others. None of their damnable business.

The bible is filled with laws and rules, many of which are broken by today's christians, the very ones who want to ban gay marriage, so the Amendment list was made to protest their very un-christian-like judgemental behavior. Their biblical god reserves the right to judge and punish, but many christians seem to've taken it upon themselves to do judge and punish those whom they don't like, who are different. I wonder if their god considers that good or bad?

Peace.

Phew, so the artists aren't really starving, but we still can't all go back to "borrowing" music from our friends instead of each purchasing our own copy.

Actually, the artists are still starving, it's the labels that aren't... see The Problem With Music, by Steve Albini. The labels are making plenty of money, choking the artist's bankrolls, and then blaming piracy for the supposed industry decline (and convincing artists it's piracy that is killing their bankrolls)...

"The community can't make sample-based music because sample-based music relies on evoking the connotations of the original work, which requires the original work to be well-known, and all the well-known samples are locked up at the labels behind proprietary all-rights-reserved licenses."

No, sample-based music does not need the original work to be well known. (It does not even need to use samples from existing music). Eg De La Soul - ever heard of The Turtles?, Public Enemy, Mechanics of Destruction, negativland. Sample-based music that isn't just using a catchy sample to bootstrap some appeal is common enough, and some of it is very good. Such music can use samples of arbitrary things (including other music) effectively as new instruments.

Waaa, waaa, cry me a fucking river.

The RIAA is a cartel that terrorizes children, college kids, senior citizens and entire families with a quasi-legal 'pay-or-I'll-break-your-financial-knees' tactic.

They rape every artist dumb enough to go near them six ways from Sunday and then turn around and quash musical diversity and creativity because these both cut into their profit margins. The only real compensation I see happening here is the dick sucking going on between RIAA lobbyists and our favorite corporate rental government 'representatives' to keep the racket going.

What's legal and what's moral sometimes diverage. In the United States music industry, that divergence makes a fucking shit-lined canyon.

Alternative coloUr models habe been around for a while

This won't be a fully complete standard until they include squant in their color model.

Well if the music industry wants to educate children about the blessings of copyright - despite their support of "sampling" rap and RnB artists - I am sure they won't mind education into their industry's contracts that make artists subject to indentured servitude, which is considered illegal if, say, you had a border farm employing Mexicans smuggled in lorries. But apparently not in the great lobbying industry, sorry, I meant music industry.

Oh, not to mention they own your name while under contract. Gee, what a nice bunch they are. They truly deserve to decide what children learn.

Coming up in history education, a pamphlet from the NRA with the "real" version of the second amendment, which removes that confusing "A well-regulated militia" bit, which goes against the obvious need of individuals to own guns without the responsibility of being part of any defence force.