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Pay Lars
adimarco writes: "According to this article at Wired, a San Francisco company started paylars.com in response to Metallica's recent lawsuit against the music industry, their fans, and Napster. Major credit cards are accepted, and donations will be sent to the band. " This cracks me up.
Lars used to be a big-time rock star. Now his Rolls-Royce has been repossessed and his drug dealer will not front him any blow. There are hundreds of rock stars like Lars. Won't you find it in your heart to help just one needy rock star? If you don't help, Lars may have to get a real job.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
hahahah that's so funny, a fund to pay pooor the metallica lusers for all that money they lost from mp3's.
i especially enjoyed reading how Q1/2000 has had a greater increase in sales than the last several Q1 increases. mega-profits all around.
here's an idea: maybe the DOJ should find every prisoner or criminal with a metallica-related tattoo, or is willing to sign that metallica influenced their urge to commit crimes, and then sue Metallica under the RICO statues for:
1) Recover the cost of incarceration;
2) Recover lost tax revenue over the life of the unproductive citizen;
3) Establish a retirement fund for a "Metallica Druggies/Losers/Sluts Rest Home" so they aren't a drain on the social security fund;
Furthermore, anytime USA law enforement gets a call on noise complaints, the offender's music collection is seized, and the artists similarly sued under RICO for disturbing the peace.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
man...I see how slashdot is now...they respect only the people's rights they care about, their own. The amount of money a person has, should have NOTHING to do with their rights. if Bruce P. was filthy rich, would everyone in slashdot agree that he should stand up for his rights??
That's what FREEDOM is all about...but I guess when you only have the the words of the godly Richard Stallman in your mind, it doesn't matter.
If I was getting fucked out of some money, that I worked damn hard for, I would be pissed too.
what would happen if you worked for an employer, and they just decided one day that you only derserve half your paycheck, because "you had enough money already". You would be just as pissed as Metallica is right now.
Yale backs down in this story with the headline: "Yale drops Napster, Metallica drops case against school".
___
Don't commodities exact a price?
commodity (k-md-t) n., Something useful that can be turned to commercial or other advantage.
Last time I checked, using Napster was free. Metallica is the party making the work into a commodity, as they are selling it. Art, historically, is something that is meant to bring enjoyment to the masses.
Personally, I love it when my fans copy my tapes and CD's. I look at it as a compliment. Granted, I don't sell them in the first place. I do think that someone wanting to hear my music is more important than money.
Oh, Lars's definition is probably this:
Art - something that is sold to benefit the 'artist'.
Commodity - Something that is bought, sold, traded with no royalty or any kind of payment to the 'artist'.
Someone tell the museums around the world that they aren't hanging art (esp. of the dead artists), but 'commodity'
This is a model where the artists really *could* get payed. If every band set up a site, and said "pay us $5 for every album's worth of music that you download", and everyone who would have bought the disc downloads it and pays for it, the musicians would make more money per CD than they would through the record companies.
Getting people to respect an honor system like that is going to be tough though.
Bands don't make much money when it comes to album sales. Many bands owe the record company money if there album sales are not in the millions and millions. Infact, a band will not make money off their album sales until their 2nd or 3rd really successful album.
So where do they make their money? Concerts. There is a reason that bands do 250+ shows in a year. Same crap night in and night out. There is a reason you pay $40+ to see a band. If the band does not own their own label, they are getting screwed. Even the big names get screwed, and there is a reason they all own their own labels.
Linux O Muerte!
As a big Dave Matthews Band fan, I like to download live recordings from their latest concert. DMB allows the recording of their shows for personal use and trading, and nothings easier than trading MP3s. Read their taping policy for more details. Napster is perfect for this purpose, allowing the latest shows to be traded quicker than traditional means (tapes, CDR).
So, there is one of the legal uses of Napster that you were looking for.
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I use Napster for one thing: MP3s of music I own on vinyl. I don't have a working phonograph, and a good chunk of these records are out of print in any format, but I can find MP3s of the contents on Napster.
Just one data point.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Actually, I asked Larry Fast (of Synergy fame) if I could send him money for download his MP3's. He told me that if I did, he'd have to refuse it, because he signed that right over to his record company. One of the downsides of being a signed artist.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
-- $SIGNATURE
I can't believe how much it upsets them to get ripped off a little bit. But, yet they don't seem concerned that their fans get ripped off by having to fork over $20 for a CD that costs $0.20 to duplicate. Napster may be growing, but it's still very small. Even if a thousand people download Metallica songs from Napster and subsequently DON'T buy the album, would Metallica's accountant even notice? I mean, what is 1000 lost sales out of 2-3 million? The band has their own jet, Lars has 4 cars and they are all millionaires several times over. Proportionately, Metallica suing for loosing a few album sales is like the average Joe suing for loosing a nickle in a pay phone. F-Metallica!
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
What about the rest of us?
There's this assumption that only major label acts count, that the rest of us are geeky guitar player or ReBirth-diddling dirtbags who don't _deserve_ to be popular. This, in the face of legis lation that rapes musician's interests even worse than usual- now musicians will be pressured into contracts that sign away their music FOREVER to the label. Is that fair? Is that right? If Metallica are part of that system do they deserve sympathy? Certainly. Do they deserve for people to support it just because Metallica are associated with it? Well....
Meanwhile, I for one am feeling much like the Linux camp in "Cryptonomicon"- the guys with the free tanks that get 60 mpg and go 120 mph with air conditioning and cruise control and fuzzy dice. I go "Please, download my music! I've been playing and composing for more than fifteen years and my heart and soul is in the work, plus I build my own equipment and share my information and ideas freely with others and offer to help people get samples off my tapes if they want any!" and then what?
I'll tell you what- then I post in Slashdot threads, because I love Slashdot and this musician is user #580... there are lots of musicians who read Slashdot. There are lots of _listeners_ who read Slashdot. Yet, I won't bother even asking if I can get a feature on the way I am trying to bring free-software principles into music, because it'd be 'promotion'- but Lars Ulrich GETS THE FEATURE on Slashdot, and the 'Pay Lars' site GETS the hits- why? Because they are 'newsworthy'! Because they are MAINSTREAM and joking about how some website wants to pay them is considered more important than my sweat and blood and heart and soul. It's a question of numbers. How are you going to stop the mainstream industry from smothering you if you just feed it every chance you get? Even bad attention is attention!
TO HELL WITH THAT. I may not be able to get a Slashdot feature- I _wrote_ a Slashdot feature and am friendly with roblimo, but I am just too close to this one- maybe the mainstream media still makes a sick joke of journalistic objectivity but _I_ take it seriously enough that I won't try to 'sneak in' promotion in the guise of an article, even a good passionate persuasive one. Somebody should write that article, though. How many Slashdot articles have given hits to Metallica, the RIAA and their supporters, and how many have supported the musical equivalent of free software and Linux- the artists out there trying to use mp3 for good, inventing a whole new marketplace dynamic based on what free _software_ has taught us? Are we to be totally ignored, do you _really_ want to just only support the major labels here?
And meanwhile- heck with being shy, Metallica is not shy, the RIAA are not shy, and I for one am getting steamrollered. BUY MY ALBUM . Yes, I know that every song on it (actually I have _five_ albums up at mp3.com) is downloadable at no cost- I'm doing that on purpose, dammit! It's important to me that I give freely- I also share my production tips and technical tricks with musicians on the mp3.com boards quite freely. BUY MY ALBUM anyway. There are several to choose from, my favorite is 'anima' a set of rock instrumentals based on animal themes, some are really damn good music. You can hear them all you want, totally free, with my blessing- download them from that page and there's no strings attached and I'm not _forcing_ you to do anything. I'm asking, like someone who has just seen yet another Metallica publicity-boosting article even here on Slashdot where I go to get away from that crap, to BUY MY ALBUM . The Metallica is what, $14? $17? MY ALBUMS are all $5.99- if they'd let me set the price lower, I would! And I'm _still_ getting 50% of that, more per album than Metallica will ever see. Buy the damn things! Argh! *g*
Not only that, if you go here like I am piteously begging you to do- you can download, again free with my total blessing, the first track on another killer album I'm putting together- a groundbreaking techno album so new I don't even have a cover for it or a CD of it yet! The sound rivals or kicks the ass of any major label release in this genre, especially bass-wise, and the music is TOO INNOVATIVE for the labels to cope with- the whole album is techno in unusual time signatures! "Fire Dragon" , the first track to be created (not 'released'- when I do 'em you get 'em that day!) is in 7/4 time! It still dances, but this stuff is too innovative for anything but FREE MUSIC as we indie artists are doing it. You'll never see anything this fresh on a major label! They're even kicking Clive Davis out of Arista so they can get safer and more corporate!
You can even get "Fire Dragon" direct from here and not even visit the page- here is a link to download the mp3 file without even leaving Slashdot. It's only 4.7 megs, even if you're not into fierce innovative techno please give me just the seconds or minutes to download the song anyhow? You might like it, and as an indie musician I really could use the support. :)
And _while_ I'm at it, I want to mention some really nice people- a sort of coalition of artists (of which I'm one) gathering together to try and promote their work in the face of this horrible indifference and in spite of how much more power the major labels have- Liquid Dreams Records . I am just one of _lots_ of neat independent bands working together on this, and we deserve the page-visit and listen! Trust me that there's a lot of wonderful stuff... one of my favorites was corruptdata , who does neat fierce electronica that I kept listening to over and over and over :) please, go hunt down the free indie artists and talk about us and support us! Do you _want_ to be listening to nothing but re-releases of Metallica for the rest of your lives? (besides which, depending on their contract they might not even own their music at all)
They said "I ain't gonna play Sun City"- now it's time to say "I ain't gonna waste my time talking about major labels!" To hell with 'em! Please help us real artists- and not 'help us to get signed' either, hell with that, it's too horribly corrupt, help us establish a new industry, one that is decentralised like Linux! Because you know what?
WE OWN OUR MUSIC. We are _allowed_ to use mp3. And we're doing just that- HELP us.
-chris
Umm, your own "hypothetical" example argues against your point. Bruce Perens is filthy rich, and we still support him when she stands up for his rights.
/. feature he wrote a while back about what new-found Open Source millionaires (including himself) should do to give back to the movement that spawned their wealth, but i can't find a link to it by searching...
References:
He's the CEO of a VC firm
There's also a
Yet most people still supported him in the recent licensing issue with BeOS
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10