Slashdot Mirror
Prince Gets Wordy About Napster
pezpunk sent in a link to an ABC News story about Prince putting his two cents in about Napster. Prince has actually been on the cutting edge of distribution technology for years. Say what you want about his style, but Prince knows where it's at. He's been running his own label, Paisley Park, for a while, and he features artists like George Clinton.
which some may remember as being named as "Parliment Funkadelic" ("P-Funk")
If i remember right they used to be James Brown's back up band
I always thought he had brains as well as beauty. Beats Michael Jackson all t'hell. :-)
I loved listening to his LP's as I learned on my old Vic20.
To be honest, considering such 'artists' as Britney Spears, NSync and the Backstreet Boys, I'd have to say that the subsidized music industry _is_ full of complete crap. The industry as it stands pushes a small number of artists, ones that it's either sure will make money, or those that can be molded into something that will. These 'artists' are the ones that are likely to receive any reasonable amount of money from their music in the short term, and frankly they probably would never have gotten anywhere without those companies. If that's the sort of thing you want to hear, the current system works.
Now consider this. If you go over to MP3.com, you can listen to whatever songs are posted. These songs come from artists who are able to put together their music on their own, without a record company behind them, and obviously it didn't take them $500,000 to put it together. If you think something is crap, you simply move on to another artist. If you like something enough that you'd want it, you can always purchase the CD.
How much was that again? You mean you can get an album for less than $10, and the artist gets more per CD than they would have from a record company? And horror of horrors, there's noone preventing you from listening to the music, for free, as much as you like before the purchase?
It's obvious that there's a serious paradigm shift happening in the record industry. As has always happened, they'll either adapt or die. If they disappear, I for one won't miss them.
Mr. Hankey
GPL: Free as in will
But. . .how? I'm just me, inside this body, composed of my thoughts.
'Ultimately, the fact music is not, and never will be, free is not due to a limitation of technology. It's because the people who make music have to eat'; we're not so far away from some point where food is not a problem, where labour is in the hands of artificial intelligence, where people may well spend all their time making music/art/sleeping and taking drugs. 'I hate this argument already. It's so clear to me now that those who insist that music should be free just haven't thought about what the consequences of that' napster etc. is necessary as an antithesis to the situation we have at the moment, and will ultimately lead to more common sense. to say that napster has no use is to be anachronisitic, napster is a definitive part of the evolution of the net/music/something, whatever, and as such is of use, along with those who say music should be free; they're provoking debate and thus moving people forward; although people aren't perhaps ever happier than they would have been, more is achived, even if this acheivement is pointless. apologies for my incoherence, this is rushed.
the artist formerly known as O(+> ?
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Dr. Wiggy Wrote: /. readers spend their lives writing algorithms. They spend their time effectively regurgitating mathematics. They often get paid for it. Hang on, does that mean that we are all claiming that mathematical algos. are not free? That you have to pay us for them? Dispicable!
****************
In the same sense, the majority of
*************
Mathematical algorithms are (and should be) free. I don't pay anyone
for use of the metropolis algorithm nor SVD decomposition. If someone
wants me to be around to tell them what algorithm they should use and
how to best implement it for their purposes, they will have to pay me.
BUT they are not paying for the metropolis etc. algorithms. I don't
have to pay royalties to the inventors at Los Alamos anymore than I
have to pay royalties to Newton/Leibniz for calculus or Halbert White
for the latest fix for deviations from normality in data. You should
realize how much the work we do depends on the UNCOMPENSATED sweat
and tears of other talented people.
I'm getting really tired of reading posts by people who are silly and
arrogant enough to think that they actually marginally contribute a
lot and that all real work needs to be payed for. Hey dude, unlike
the creators of the Metropolis algorithm, if you died today, the world
of science/technology would progress in a fine manner. But most
merely competent techie people, if they so choose, can make much more
money than these great scientists/technologists.
Exactly. Lessee here... I've found a:
Beastie Boys concert in Germany from their 'Ill Communication' Tour
A currenly undistrbuted version of 'Incubus - Live in France'
And my prize - Jimi Hendrix and BB King at the LA Forum, 1966.
Not to mention disturbing amount of classical music.
I've also used it to find B-Sides to singles that I refuse to pay $15 for.
I'm not saying napster is right or wrong, but for most of my uses, I think they're validated.
-Erik-
Um....
I know lots of underground bands that manage to pay a LOT less than hundreds of thousands of dollars to record.... And the recordings don't sound poor at all. For $2000 you can get a days' worth of studio time at a lot of places.
-Erik-
Get more info here.
In all seriousness, if you've never heard of George Clinton, the above link will give you an idea of who he is, even if it is satire.
...shouldn't that be:
The Application Formerly Known As Napster??
We are still accepting entries for the new unpronouncable symbol to describe The Application Formerly Known As Napster.
I rember when he ran afowl with his recording studio and had to give up his recording name for a while (a loophole in the contract.. they owned music recorded under than name if he recorded music under a diffrent name it was his).
// with a $2,000 sound card, and lots of really expensive ram and a really expensive 20 meg hard disk would be able to record music digitally and reproduce it at CD quality.
The problem was he's a prolific artist and wanted to release all his music. The recording studio didn't like that idea and would only release a fraction of his stuff.
I suspect the contract expired. We are talking the 1980s and it was probably a 5 year contract.
So getting away from all that and doing stuff under his own lable gives him a connection to the fans that he as an artist can be emethetic to.
Also his experence with a recording company controlling his music (in his case simply saying how much he can produce) gives him a heathly distast for the traditional recording companys.
In the mean time I'd like to add something.
Recording companys had plenty of warning as to what's to come in the 1980s.
An Apple
Also really expensive sound sample keyboards could record short samples.
Computers were imporving and it was purely a matter of time when that $2,000 sound card was $50 that 20 meg hd was in everybodys computer and the ram was cheap (however not expecting that everyone would need that much ram for the OS but every time there is more ram there are apps to use it).
Audio tape allready existed and was costing the music industry. But the losses were limited as anolog loses quality per copy.
They didn't look forward. They didn't see a threat comming at them at a snails pace.
Then digital audio tape. They paniced and got that banned. Ok now ferther warning of what was to come.
Did they think they could just get the sound cards banned?
Late 1980s the sound cards came down in price. 1990s they reached a point where every computer had a sound card and a CD rom drive that can rip music. Then the Internet.
Still not worryed.... MP3s.... panic again...
What is it with thies people? A little forsite they'd have from the early part of the 1980s to the late part of the 1990s to prepair for the eventual arival of MP3s. The unavoidable.
They had that long to create a busness plan that would handle this situation.
I'm not gona dream up a busness plan for them to folow in under 5 seconds someone could pick apart pritty easly.
The point is the music industry could have spent the time working with busness experts to devise a busness plan. Come on people you had 10 years you think your own busness managment experts couldn't come up with a few good ideas in that time?
They got one item banned. They think that is goning to happen forever? Just becouse it's inconvenent to them?
I wonder what they'd have done if the Dat was released in it's origial form with no anti-piracy technology? I wonder what would happen if the white house felt the industry needed to addapt to the new technology instead of passing laws restricting technology in the name of protecting industry.
I wonder what they'd do if that law was eliminated and DAT could be sold un-encombered.... Politics are fickle things people. It can happen. Elect a techno friendly presedent and maybe it will...
BTW.. dose anyone know of anyone with a tech clue running for the presedents office?
Gore.. no: Encryption
Bush.. no: he dosn't seem to have much of any clue (My personal bies)
I don't actually exist.
Now, Metallica and Dr Dre, and probably quite a few other artists, do not want their music distributed throught Napster et al. What would you say fair treatment would be in this case:
I'll give you a clue - the first answer is a load of rubbish...
Game dev and music blog
live shows, these ten be even more pricely than CDs and you have top pay for every one you go.
Artist could have sponors, just like some some sports players have now. (and this do not mean selling his music to them, just using their logos in public apperances)
Seling their image. comercial are a very lucrative for celebritys.
Creating music "for hire" to movies or comercial. Off course not every music would like to do this, but it can done right?
And I am not even counting the new ways, that are either being experimented (like the stephen king new book) or were not yet invented.
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Of course music costs money to make. Music isn't free beer. It is, however, free speech. Bootleggers and copyright "pirates" have known this all along. Yes, it's illegal, but only because that specific law, in this case, is wrong.
Music creation costs money - usually the artist pays for it, and he is paid either by the publisher or the fans. Music distribution costs money, however, the publishers and artists don't need to spend a thing on distribution, once it's out there. The fans will distribute the music to the rest of the fans, and they all will pay for the music in small, different ways. Bandwidth, blank tapes, cdrs, headphones, expensive stereos, good speakers, etc... if the RIAA wants to make money honestly off music, it should buy stock in the music hardware companies... but for all I know, they've probably already done that.
Music's best distribution channel has always been, is, and always will be the fans that give the music value in the first place. Music is just sound, just noise, just bits on a disc, scratches on a piece of vinyl. It has value to the artist, who put his love into creating it, and the fans, that put their love into collecting it. Music does not belong to the publishers, and it never has.
Fans create distribution channels for their favorite music, fan-run websites and magazines, newsgroups where they talk about and trade the latest songs and news, websites to collect lyrics to their favorite songs, etc...
I pay money for music. I go to the The Record Exchange down the street, and buy/trade/sell great piles of music, I'm quite popular there, actually. I pay money for music in the bandwidth I spend downloading music from napster. I'll pay quite a lot of money for music, but not one penny goes to the RIAA.
I have no right to free beer music. I have every right to free speech music.
I have never much cared for prince TILL NOW..
I am impressed. I hope even more artist do this.
sherm
the original article as found at yahoo.... if you are interested.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It's amazing. I guess the guys at the teleprompter factory must be happy.
His other rants are available here.
I see. I guess all of the Hesperion XX songs available on Napster were posted by members of Jordi Savall's huge teenybopper following.
You sure they dont fear the fact millions of people are stealing their material. That could be part of it too. Just a thought.
Those quoted recording costs do not always have to be the case these days!
When I'm not busy spending time in front of a computer, I spend the rest of my time playing in bands and recording them. My setup is rather modest, but I've managed to put together some pretty good cd's for friends bands and for my own. No one I've recorded has spent over $2000 for the complete process of duplication plus recording. My band's last cd cost $700 in all (and you can add an extra $200 if I actually charged myself for recording) split 3 ways. Besides myself, there are plenty of other small to medium studios out there with significantly better equipment and results than I generate and still accessible rates ($30-$50 per hour).
Part of the reason for this is the large boom in the consumer recording industry market. Take a look in the music periodicals section of Borders or Barnes and Nobles and see how many magazines cater to the home recording industry. And even in Mix magazine, one of the major professional recording magazines, you'll find ads for equipment a reasonably well paid schlep can afford.
Now, the product coming out of a smaller studio is obviously not going to sound like it was recorded at Abbey Road, but for many people who just like to listen to good music, it's not going to make a big difference how expensive the production is. Often you'll find the most involved productions on the lowest quality music as an attempt to compensate -- polished turds. There exist many anecdotes about mainstream cd's put out with tracks taken from a 4-track rather than the same song recorded on expensive equipment because the "energy and feel" were significantly better than a studio take.
Another point of importance: when an artist or group is given a large sum of money to work on a recording for a label, sometimes the artists actually spend the time in the studio working on composing the music itself. In some situations that's a necessity, especially with electronica, etc. But why would a "Led Zeppelin" of today need to compose songs in studio? And that's not even considering the time and money spent on digital editing equipment so your pop diva can record 12 versions of the vocals for one song from which you can extract and combine your favorite lines to create the perfect single take (note: this is the norm, not the exception). Talk about sanitized! "Look kids! Thanks to effects that can correct your pitch and rhythm, you don't have to be a competent musician anymore!" Bear in mind, I'm not against digital equipment, but using it to take the place of talent and skill is pretty pathetic.
The indie music scene has thrived on lower fidelity recordings. And that's not to mention that the media format du jour is the Mp3. Personally, I hate the way they sound, but that's more because I spend my spare time trying to make the best recordings I can. Your average joe doesn't seem to mind, as evidenced by Napster's popularity.
I'd just like to emphasize that in many cases, the cost of recording is NOT an issue anymore, thanks to newer cheaper recording technology and the grand majority of the population's less-than-audiophile fidelity standards.
There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses.
Hmm actually I have heard of them, think I even have a couple of their albums, on vinyl, I guess I should get a record deck sometime and listen to some of the ~500 albums I have.
:)
They aren't out of print though, amazon has 4 or 5 of their albums. Probably politically correct music stores do as well
~ppppppppö
Well, no group has "made it" in the sense that they're as successful as someone like Britney Spears, but there are probably 2 reasons for this. First, there are the big record labels that buy out lots of the good bands before they get good. So they may have been successful w/o the help of the record label, but we only see them with the help of the record label. Also, imagine what it would be like w/o any big record labels. Would we be without any ultra-popular groups? I doubt it, even if it was a small label with little publicity, if it was good, it would get around the country.
Second, it depends on how you define "make it." While all artists would love to make millions on their music, few actually do. And I would think that most musicians would be happy to be able to make a living doing their music, not necessarily being millionairs. Someone previously made a point that an artist only has to sell 10,000 CDs at $8 each and receive a $4 royalty for each cd to make $40,000 a year. That's a decent income based on a small number of CD sales.
So what if no grassroots artists has made it as big as the artists under major record labels? They don't have to make it that big to be good or happy. Popularity and sales does not define good music.
No, it used to be "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince".
Now he's changed his name back, so I guess it's "Prince, Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known as Prince."
But I'll just call him Bob.
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
"The notion of copyright was not invented by artists to protect themselves from honest individuals sharing their enthusiasm about their work," he writes. "It was invented by artists to protect themselves from dishonest and hypocritical individuals and companies exploiting their work without their consent."
The notion of copyright was not invented by artists.
You can't handle the truth.
Probably more accurate is that it was created for PUBLISHERS, not artists (or, writers, actually).
The basis for the legal notion of copuright was the agreements between various early printers for their own economic needs. There was a lot of risk in publishing and advertising a book -- it was expensive, and the book may flop. The risk was especially high if the other 15 printers in town would simply reset your book after they knew it was a hit -- they had low risk, but it screwed you out of recouping your costs. So the printers made deals with each other basically agreeing to not do that. That way, the overall risk was lower, and more books were published.
Artists and writers benefitted -- their work was being published -- but they weren't the ones making the agreements nor directly benefitting from them.
Who is George Clinton. Has he made anything big?
It doesn't cost anywhere near "several hundred thousand dollars" to make a record. Didn't Nirvana make their "Bleach" album for $500?
I have been making, recording and selling music for years. It is not that expensive. I give alot of it away too.
"the devil finds work for idle circuits"
The hypocrisy of of Napster is one thing, but as for artists willingly signing their contracts, so did indentured servants. That doesn't change the fact that it's a horrible, corrupt system.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
One point that he touches on, which is not commonly expressed, is that motivation- love vs. consumption. If you put in some work (years of it) studying music, production, sound engineering, you gradually become more able to target the median of consumer desires, and you learn how to avoid including anything that would offend a consumer- and then you get to be mainstream, possibly a million seller, if you're properly hyped.
This is not art, but commerce.
Prince has in some ways used 'commercially popular' techniques (good production, intense vocals, high squealy notes and high squealy guitar solos etc etc etc) but he is also one of the few who's genuinely shown an experimental spirit- perhaps best illustrated by one of his monster hits, 'When Doves Cry'. The production of this remains unusual but at the time that it came out, was quite shocking- sparse, largely empty, producing more impact by virtue of the sheer bareness of the track. Prince was known to record many parts in the studio and then work by subtraction, taking out this and that track and seeing what combination of parts worked best- in "When Doves Cry" this subtractive technique was carried to an extreme. It breaks all the rules for 'popular' music production, and breaks them so well that it became a breakout monster hit.
The important thing to remember about art is that it is individual, and it's not possible to achieve artistic peaks and still avoid making enemies of your work. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin- the nearer you come to some person's love, the more another person will hate what you've done. A real artist (and I do consider Prince a real artist) will ignore this, accept the hate, refuse to water down their artistic vision.
Naturally I consider my music art ;) more significantly, _only_ since I started to accept it as art have I liked it worth a damn. I produced music for years, in an agony of trying to tailor it to what I thought people would like. (This is all pre-Internet and little remains of this stuff.) It was OK- never managed to get beyond my own idiosyncracies and never succeeded in making truly commercial music. Then I started again, and for particular reasons (access to mp3.com) I decided to do some music that was just what _I_ felt like doing- to do a lot of different music based only on what I felt like playing and composing and hearing.
Since then, it's been freaking awesome! :) I've talked with a lot of other musicians, made a lot of really rabid fans, a lot of really rabid enemies, and a kinda-lot of money (to me, a couple hundred bucks is a lot). I've seen people fixate on the strangest things and be delighted, and I've had people take GREAT PAINS to convince me and anyone else reading that I'm a complete loser who's not good enough to be commercial. And I love every bit of it. My artist side was long suppressed and restrained, but now when I see someone come off all negative and totally scorn my music, I'll laugh at them and tell them to listen to stuff like the 'Hard Vacuum' noise album, or 'Bone Dragon' or 'Water Dragon' from the Dragons album which are downright weird, or I'll just sneer back at them and go off and produce some more music that they'd hate even worse. Because I do what _I_ like- I do what I think is good, and I like a lot of truly peculiar music :)
I've tried to arrange my mp3.com page so that it explains to people a little better what they're getting into- but what I'm about is not being 'the Microsoft of music' or pinning down the widest possible range of consumers. What illustrates me best is the picture of me running a roaring shortwave radio through homebrewed multiband compression and screwing with the controls to produce a definitive Noise track (White Dwarf), something which most of the world might think is just crap! But there are Noise fans out there, protesting at the tendency for industrial techno to genre-trespass into Noise charts, people who understand _immediately_ just what's being attempted in 'White Dwarf' and instantly recognise it as canonical Noise, from a hitherto unheard source. Or the image might be the composing of 'Water Dragon', spending _days_ painstakingly filling in the froth of flickering piano notes around the spacey lead piano theme, and composing a drum part that is so relentlessly experimental that it seems to stretch and contract in a peculiar disjointed rhythm- which evokes the unforgiving wasteland of the sea. You can't dance to the sea. You could drown in it. You can't understand it. It's not necessarily pretty- but there's a validity to trying to express it in sound and music- and when Prince talks about people listening to music for love of it and teaching themselves to understand it, he's not talking about making more crappy manufactured hits, he's talking about the forces that eventually got me onto my own artistic path- of people exchanging and learning from stuff that's beyond what the major labels feed 'the consumer'.
How many of you have used Napster or something like it to try and find something really _obscure_ or weird or unpopular? Never mind if you found it- that'll come. Have you searched for something that Warner Bros. would not sell you, because there's 'no market' for it? This is what Prince is really talking about. This is the reason I've so often asked for my music to be openly traded on Napster This is the only way towards cultural education now that there's no market for culturally educating people in school...
I really wonder how their position might have differed if the argument were raised today. Bootleg recordings are of course quite different from ripped CDs, but the issues are still quite similar. At the time of this earlier discussion (when I remember it, anyway,) there were mostly tapes and some CDs being distributed in pretty small quantities.
PointlessGames.com -- Go waste some time.
MassMOG.com -- Visit the site; Use the word.
I agree with you, but remember that the assignment operator goes from right to left not left to right!
This model has been in use for software for at least 2 decades. It is known as "Shareware".
You downloaded the software from the BBS, you sent a check to the author. On the honor system.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I think the most important point he makes in this article is that Napster gives people a chance to develop taste individually; they can just get a bunch of things to try, and listen to music they actually like. There's not the advertising that gets done in the traditional channels telling people what they should like. In fact, there are parody songs and mixes which are actually reasonably well known (e.g., the Eminem+other stuff mixes) which probably haven't even got spare-time ads.
It's a very different world where people only have to invest the time of listening to try something new. There's much more pressure to have the music actually be good, because that's all the exposure it'll get; only word of mouth is a fast enough advertisement when you listen to whatever you happen to want to at the moment. Of course, there still needs to be an incentive for people to make their music do well, but that'll certainly come eventually-- whether tour sales, nicely packaged CDs, or direct fan support.
Of course, silly. I consider myself to have some fairly unique and unusual tastes in music, but you will find a few top 40 songs on my computer... but not the rest of that groups/artist's album. Yet, those top 40 songs form the minority of my mp3 collection; most of it is hard-to-find stuff. But in the end, a search on those top 40 songs will pop up the ONE song that a million people have, whereas searches for quality stuff that only appeals to, say, %10 of the music-listening population will get... you guessed it, about ten percent of the hits.
I certainly don't consider having the one song morally wrong. it's no different than me taping that MASSIVELY OVERPLAYED song off the radio. (And for everything else, I either own the CD and use mp3s as a medium of convenience or you can't *find* a CD).
--
These are *MY* opinions.
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
OK, firstly the infrastructure costs money. It's not free. You have to pay for it *somehow*.
The cost of the distribution infrastructure (read: internet) for digital art is already borne entirely by the end user, in the form of ISP fees and the local equipment to view, download, and store, and share such art. This is a non-issue which completely misses the point.
The cost of putting together an album is actually quite inexpensive, unless it is the recording companies (as opposed to individual bands) doing it, in which case the prices are artifically inflated by orders of magnitude. Why? Because this is a cost that is charged by the recording companies to the bands, thus, the higher the (artifically inflated) cost of recording, the more money goes into the pockets of the record company and is taken from the pockets of the artists. That is a very strong incentive for the recording companies to inflate their prices, and they do.
Even if we say that we can reduce all these costs by making all music purchasable on-line, somebody somewhere is going to have to pay for servers and bandwidth. A popular artist is going to use a lot of bandwidth. Especially if we're talking about 6Mb tracks.
Napster, GNUtella, and FreeNet have all already addressed (and solved) this issue. Bandwidth is paid by the end user (ISP fees). Servers and clients are peer to peer -- each user is paying for storage of the art, both for their personal use and for the use of others (as "servers") who wish to download said art from their local drives. Again, this is a non-issue. (I wonder, do you actually even understand the technology you are trying to critique?)
What I was trying to get across originally was that music will not, and will never, be free.
Music was free for most of the three million years of human existence. It is only within the last few hundred years, and primarilly within the last century, that it has become at first a luxery for the wealthy, and then a commodity for the masses (to be traded like so many pork bellies). This is not a "natural state" for music, it is an anomoly stemming from an imperfect interim technology and the distribution channels (and cartels) it engendered. Those times are now past.
Much music is and will be free. You do not pay for music you hear on the radio, do you? No. You pay for the radio itself, and that is the end of it. When I was growing up, that was my sole source of music. It did not cost me a penny, it was free.
What I did pay for were concert tickets, tee-shirts, and posters. Later, when I made money, I did get sucked into buying the records (and later CDs), a habit I have mostly broken thanks to my boycott of the RIAA.
It's called capitalism, it works, and it benefits those who contribute to "the system".
Capitalism works (with modifications such as anti-trust legislation) for systems in which there is natural scarcity. Physical products fall into the category.
However, there are other categories of products for which capitalism is at best dysfuncitonal, and at worst completely inappropriate. Areas requiring human compassion (care for the elderly, medical care) map very imperfectly to the capitalist model, with some very alarming deficiencies as a result.
With digital products, where there is no scarcity whatsoever (unless artifically applied through draconian legislation and the force of the gun), capitalism falls completely on its face. The Free Software/Open Source phenomenon vs. the ever less successful "closed source" approach is one example. Digitized music is another.
Now, the alternative is to maintain an incorrect paradigm (capitalism) against the real world reality (no scarcity, abundance for all), but in so doing you will need laws of such draconian strength and breadth as to make the communist regimes of Asia and Eastern Europe look like liberal democracies in comparison (these regimes were, ironically, a mirror example of applying an incorrect paradigm -- communism -- to the real world of physical scarcity). This is far too high a price to our society simply to maintain the profitability of an obsolete institution, or even to promote the much more noble cause of insuring the artists get compensation.
As others have pointed out, there are numerous alternatives for the artists to receive compensation, making the notion of a choice between "draconial legislation or starving artists" a false dichotomy of the highest order.
As to your last point, you are in no way qualified to determine who is and is not "deserving" of their music, much less to set an arbitary benchmark to define such.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
he's a BRILLIANT musician. but in the context you're speaking, let's remember that he signed his first contract at the age of 17!!! they could have made him sign anything!
--
And Justice for None
--
And Justice for None
You can't blame Napster or the music consumer (to use Prince's phrasing) for popular music being so widespread as MP3s. The record companies put a lot of effort into directing the market that way, and the consumers are accepting the message, but switching their supplier. What I think Prince is trying to say is that free exchange of music allows a music consumer to become a music lover, and in the process advance the art. The consumer can use Napster to get *any* artist with the same ease, so the challenge to the consumer-turned-lover is to figure out their own tastes in music and support (be in money or mindshare) the artist that created it.
Why not depend on the broadcast mediums to do the culling-out of good music? Rather than taking money from advertisers to pay RIAA royalties, why not play free music and consider the advertising revenue the cost to provide this service? The broadcast mediums are how music gets popular currently anyway. The record companies may decide that Britney Spears is going to be the next big thing, but they have to depend on the media to get the message out to all the 12-year-old girls. The infrastructure already exists. We don't need record companies for distribution or promotion...
Nonperiodic Central Trajectory
With apologies to Mark Knopfler ...
...
Look at them yo-yo's, that's the way you do it
You be an exec in the industry
That ain't workin', that's the way you do it
Money for nothing, and checks for free
That ain't workin', that's the way you do it
Let me tell you, them guys ain't dumb
Maybe get a band wrapped around your finger
Maybe get a band trapped under your thumb
We got to exploit popular artists
Keep the rights and delay the release
We got to sign more indentured servants
We got to lower their royalties
That little maggot with the lawyers and the contracts
Yeah buddy, his deals are fair
That little maggot's got his own jet airplane
That little maggot he's a billionaire
We got to exploit popular artists
Keep the rights and delay the release
We got to sign more indentured servants
We got to lower their royalties
No need to learn to play the guitar
No need to learn to play them drums
Let the bands do it, then we'll take all their money
Man, what could be more fun?
Look at that, what's that? MP3 downloads?
We'll sue 'em and we'll squawk like we're chimpanzees
That ain't workin', that's the way you do it
Money for nothing, and checks for free
We got to exploit popular artists
Keep the rights and delay the release
We got to sign more indentured servants
We got to lower their royalties
That ain't workin', that's the way you do it
You be an exec in the industry
That ain't workin', that's the way you do it
Money for nothing, and checks for free
I want my, I want my, I want my SUV
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
If you're interested...
---
if the RIAA wants to make money honestly off music, it should buy stock in the music hardware companies... but for all I know, they've probably already done that.
Wow. You are really, really confused. The RIAA is a non-profit organization and does not make money off of anything, music or music hardware, or anything else. You may have noticed that it is a dot-org?
Assuming you irresponsibly meant "the large record companies", at least two of the major five (soon to be four) record companies are deeply steeped in the hardware business: Sony (which owns Sony Music Entertainment, and a plethora of consumer hardware products), and EMI (by far the largest record company, and owns Philips/Maganvox). They make money if you buy the CD, or illegally pirate it, since they own much of the hardware infrastructure. Their bases are covered whether or not illegal piracy succeeds.
The people who will be most hurt in your scenario are the independent record companies, who put out the best music, but own no part of any music hardware business. All of those profits from CD-R's, and mobile MP3 players will be re-invested back to develop Britney Spears, N*Sync, and Backstreet Boys, while the most talented musicians, who are on independent labels, will wallow in poverty.
Or K-Rad, I can't remember.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
yeah, I bet the Artist Formerly Known as Prince did it all himself too--he sure can "C the Future".
I know its 'artsy' typing, but someone ought to do him a favor and teach him the keyboard shortcut for spellcheck in Word with a big stick.
http://students.washington.edu/steve0/
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
George Clinton released whole albums of remixes JUST TO allow rap artists to legally sample songs that were technically owned not by him but by the record companies. You couldn't necessarily legally sample "Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication" (G. Clinton, B. Collins, B. Worrell, G. Shider)- but George Clinton would do a remix of it so that you could sample the backing tracks! He literally remixed loads of songs explicitly to get around that record company-imposed limitation, and allow people to sample his tracks.
George Clinton deserves _much_ respect for the actions he's taken to back up his beliefs.
We could have had an MP3 party like it's 1999.
Let's see... nowadays, anybody can produce software, and moreover, in the Free Software movement, there is no distinction between amateur and professional software. Does this mean that it is impossible to locate the best software? Just how is music different from software with this respect?
Maybe what the music industry needs is a distribution system modeled after the GNU Public License.
I hear ya on that one... I stopped using napster a while ago as I was couldn't find anything I was looking for (a lot of it is out of print or only available in boxed sets of OTHER artists)
Last week I happened to load it up for no reason what so ever and I found that artists who previously only returned 1 or 2 hits on a good day were now regularly returning 10 to 20 on bad days. In fact the other day I found old bootleg recordings of Rocket From The Tombs (thats Tombs, not Crypt, you don't know how many times I'm told I have the name wrong) In fact, those recordings are some of the ones that seem to be transfered the most often.
Napser isn't the place to go to talk about good music, the chat areas seem to be filled with 1337 d00dz most of the time, but you can find some good, hard to find music on it if your willing to look.
-GreenHell
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
"Music production costs money. We all accept this as fact, the cost of the musicians, the studio time, the editing, hardware, and the donuts and coffee."
Granted, I don't know much about making music, but who says the band has to buy hardware? Hardware's expensive, costs roughly the same amount no matter how much or little you use it, and it needs upgraded and replaced from time to time. It's a big investment. Why don't bands that already have hardware, but aren't successful, just start teaming up with other bands? They let these other bands rent/share their hardware, and they use the money for food, rent, upkeep of the hardware, etc...
There are ways to make making music cost less. Not zero, but it doesn't have to cost as much as it does now.
"Ok, so how do they make money?"
Playing gigs at clubs, concerts, micropayments, product endorsements, Bruce Perens' Street Preformer Protocol, selling cds on mp3.com or their own websites, banner ads, etc...
"You are claiming that distribution should be free. Why? Without making the money in the distribution channel there will be no incentive to produce the music to begin with."
Thousands of amateur and professional programmers donate their spare time to help open source projects that will probably pay them no money. Why? Where's the motivation? Programming and writing music aren't the same, but they are both art that takes a lot of skill, and they are similar. Both also require large upfront investments in hardware, and years of practice to get good.
I'm not saying it's a good thing that these programmers are not paid for their amazing work. I'm saying that even without the lure of great gobs of money, the artists and musicians will still produce music.
"I have a hard time stomaching people who enjoy something, but are unwilling to compensate for their use of it."
I used to buy cds all the time, from any place I saw them. Shortly after getting my hundredth cd, at an average cost of $10-$15, I learned about the RIAA, and since have refused to give them one penny. I still buy used cds, since the RIAA doesn't benefit from that. I'm willing to pay quite a bit of money for my music. Money is not the issue. The issue is freedom.
I never said that music should be free beer. I said music should be free speech.
Yes, Prince ditched the symbol earlier this year. I (and probably others) submitted this several times, and they were all rejected. (What, me bitter?)
"You're not going to make enough money with one industry to support two industries, unless you jack up the prices in that one. You want to pay $5 for a blank CD or $2000 for a low end stereo?"
As long as there's a healthy amount of competition, the prices will be limited to something reasonable. I've heard, though, that RIAA members already have a huge stake in audio and music hardware. They took my suggestion years ago.
Your other two points I addressed in my post to sheldon.
Still, it's nice to see someone a little more eloquent than that Limp Bizkit dude on our side.
B
Uh... simultaneously?
There are three or four large venues in my area which routinely fill up for monster rock concerts. U2, the Dead, Prince, whoever. One is a professional football stadium. Ticket sales rake in a small fortune. Go ahead, put *that* on Napster.
Napster isn't just the latest crap on the radio.
Yes it is.
Lately people have been putting up some rather obscure stuff. I downloaded some tracks by a band called Camel (Heard of 'em?, didn't think so...), and while listening, I heard some faint noise in the background. Vinyl scratches!
People think Camel is obscure now? Wow. They are definitely one of the most popular 10 or 15 British progressive bands of the 1970's, and aren't anything even remotely close to obscure. I find it extremely odd that you would consider Camel obscure. I own almost every Camel album on the original vinyl, and a couple on CD, both of which are readily available in any independent store in the US. Some of their music is OK, but nothing to fight over. Some of my favorite progressive bands are ones like Echolyn, Anglagard, Anekdoten, Museo Rosenbach, PFM, and a bunch of others. I wouldn't consider any of those obscure, but only a couple have any presence at all on Napster!
Every serious music lover I have ever met loathes the selection of music on Napster, because it is just teeny bop top 40 type music. Try to find classical (the main embarrasment of Napster!), folk (no selection except a couple of tracks for the most mainstream artists), African pop (no tracks whatsoever), or jazz (OK selection for the biggest old names, but poor for newer and more obscure artists).
I think the problem is that people who are relatively new to music find somebody who isn't played on the biggest top 40 stations, and finds it on Napster, then declares that Napster has obscure music. When you try anything remotely obscure, something that doesn't have a huge following amoung junior high school students, you get no hits at all.
actually, Atom and His Package isn't all that obscure...in fact, its quite popular among college students...that guy gets alot of attention via college word-of-mouth aka, if he was really obscure, you probably wouldn't see him being mentioned here so often.
Hmm.. ok.. maybe that will work then.
Thanks for the quarter!
If anybody else wants to send me money to prove a point, please feel free.
EOF
Two corrections:
1. Now he's The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.
2. I doubt he can do much more than "Visual Basic the Future".
Not that his diatribe against the labels wasn't thoroughly enjoyable.
No, copyright in the written word was invented by publishers - it was felt that writers would create regardless, but publishers needed an incentive. However, copyright in music is a much more recent developement, and I believe artists (or more specifically composers and songwriters) were very active in first applying copyright to sheet music, and then to public performances. Not sure where copyright on recordings first appeared, but presumably its derivative of the idea that a license is necessary in order to perform.
For a long time I thought Prince was a joke, patricularly that business where he changed his name. Some time ago, I found out why he'd done it: the contract he had signed gave his masters the rights to the name 'Prince' and any name he later changed to, even if he left the label. Bound by this provision, and wanting to depart, he changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph. I presume that, since he's gotten his name back, there must have been some time limit in the contract. No one I've ever spoken to about him has been aware of this story, attributing his name change to some sort of flighty 'artiste' whim. I still don't like his music, but the guy's not stupid. His opinions on Napster are therefore of interest.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
It's called X-Sponge right? It's a VB program.
Yeah, he probably could have make $50k/year, but that's not enough to run his business, much less his life.
His house, if he still even has it, set him back about $10mil and even then that was a bargain at the time because the previous owners were having financial problems.
Paisley park was also rather extravagent at the time.
He also sold out of most of his club interests downtown, although I think he might still own the Quest.
I don't think you fully grok just how much money it costs to keep a large scale music empire in business.
- Plus lots more... its worse then trying to read that 31337 crap...
Oh, Does this make it any better?;-)
Might this further illustrate just how much the record companies control what music people get to hear?
And guess what for?? The save napster hack attack. I wonder if hacktivism is what napster really needs on its side right now. Hopefully attrtition will get a mirror up or someone with more bandwidth than me. Here is most of what was said:- -----------
- ----------
AND...
-------------------------------------------------- ----------
- ------------------
-------------------------------------------------
To Metallica:
Filing a law suit against Napster has probably made you lose your image, fans, and sales. All because you either wanted more money(not like you had enough to begin with, right!?) or because you wanted publicity. Well you got your publicity. If you haven't realized you have also caused a chain reaction of other problems. Software developers looking for the same fame Napster got(which probably wasn't intended) -- but now everyone is devising plans to make themselves popular like Napster did, if they shut down. In turn making your so called "problems" even worse. If you wanted it this way, you got it.
P.S. To tell you the truth, I really wasn't a Napster user and I'm still not. So before you go on a spree to defend yourselves with "napster users are hackers! shut 'em down!" -- think again. I'm speaking out. I just saw something wrong, and I'm doing what I can to help right it.
-------------------------------------------------
One last note:
Music is art, an extension of ourselves. Major label record companies do not sell art, they sell 50 cents of plastic at $15 because they see music as an industry they can control. Maybe 5% of your $15 will end up going to the artist. The artists (Metallica, Dre) that complain about napster obviously care a great deal about the money involved with their art, rather than the art itself. Perhaps because they are also producers, in the business of selling 50 cents of plastic at $15? Maybe.
The RIAA is a joke. the RIAA does not represent your favorite music artists. They represent rich record executives. These are the fat cats who make profit from the other 95% of cd sales. These people are so filthy rich, the only thing they know how to do is squabble over how rich they are and how they dont want anything to happen to their wealth and power. There's more to life than money fellas. Also may I say I applaud the lawsuit bought by 26 states against the big 5 music labels for cd price fixing and violating anti-trust laws. This is a great positive step towards decentralization of power in these companies.
"This I say to you, what I say is true: emotions aren't a product to sell and cannot be consumed." (-Jesse Michaels) Hi Mom!
-----------------------------------------------
Here are the other sites the attacker listed: www.paisleyparkstudios.com | www.sisterstv.com | www.thinkitreal.com | www.planettheory.com | www.taborvisual.com | www.virtualflow.com | www.kilborne.com | www.ethailand.com | www.appdc.com | www.abc123.com | www.actor.com | www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us | www.acoe.k12.ca.us | www.erusd.k12.ca.us | www.cwire.com | showtimes.hollywood.com | www.cmmarathon.com | www.active.com | www.onthesneaktip.com | www.odysseychannel.com | www.metroent.com | www.justdoit.com.tw | www.festivalfinder.com | www.atmanbooks.com | www.dunerecords.com | www.beatweb.com | www.gigmania.com
It isn't about the "internet" adopting a stance on copyright. It's about the artists. With the internet, artists will soon see that they have more control of their art and their labour. I agree that this "bribe for free stuff" idea is one of the many more intelligent methods to disseminate one's product, but there are many more. However, it should be entirely up to the artist to set the terms of their labour, not some pimple-faced kid who happens to think that said artists product must be free, or an orginized profiteer selling stolen art.
Let the artists decide which method they wish to get their work out into the hands of consumers, not some amorphous, undefinable entity like "the internet".
Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the ruler formerly known as prince of this world will be driven out.
Ignorence is blis.
"Bootleg recordings are of course quite different from ripped CDs, but the issues are still quite similar. At the time of this earlier discussion (when I remember it, anyway,) there were mostly tapes and some CDs being distributed in pretty small quantities."
Just about all bootleg stuff is made in small batches. Only the real hardcore fans tend to buy the stuff, and the fly-by-night producers who make the bootlegs can't waste money pressing too many. These CDs are also quite expensive ($25 at least). Most of the bootleg stuff floating around on Napster were ripped from (or CDRs of) these rare, expensive CDs. And that is my main use of Napster, to get these hard-to-get (and some cases out of print) bootlegs. The bands on these haven't seen a dime when they were released, and ripping/uploading them won't make any difference. The people who made the CDs have stopped. Try finding a copy of a bootleg Pink Floyd show from the Swinging Pig label. If you can, you'll be paying an arm and a leg. The only people who profit from these rarites are sellers (who tend to be rather on the con-artist side) who drive the price way up, EVEN FOR CDRs OF THESE CDS!!!
Now by using Napster, I can hear all of these for nothing. The bands lose nothing (unless they release the material, which rarely happens) because they never got a dime from the release in the first place. And it is possible for artists to make money from bootleg CDs. A while back (when he was still alive), Frank Zappa put out a collection of shows that were being bootleged, and made his CDs cost less than half of the bootleg version. He "beat the boots".
An artist publishes his work on the internet. for free. no charge. this way he builds a reputation. Once his/her reputation is sufficient, he may then look for ways to get paid. Suppose, for example,I write a book, and I am well known as a writer. I set up a system where my book is held by a trustee, who is collecting fees in an account for me. (This person/business does not have to be anyone terribly special, a nominal lawyer fee at most.) When the account reaches a predetermined $ amount, the book is released to the internet, I still hold the copyrights, but allow non-commercial use. The bank account is released to me, and I have been paid for my work. No middlemen, other than the accountant(or lawyer). This benefits everyone. If publishing company X wants to print it, I have more leverage, because its proven to be a success already. I win again. How is it that artists are still not getting paid for thier work? As long as it is quality, there should be no problem. The road is more difficult to get published via the traditional channels, IMHO. It is not the companies who need to be converted to making money on the web. It is the artists who need to learn how to promote themselves, and stand on thier own two feet. I love books, and I love music. I have written both. I would rather publish it the way I want it published than let others manhandle my work, if I wished to have my work published.
But again, don't worry about getting the companies onboard. The paradigm has already changed. Let the artists know what to do. Everything else will follow.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
People can have sudden "spiritual" experiences, spontaneous feelings of union with nature etc. But while the experience is "real", the person is left with the problem of how to interpret the experience. Like, wow, what was that?* Some people may think they've gone mad, or if they live in a culture where a particular religion predominates, and "spiritual" is equated with that particular religion, then they may join that.
I'm not saying any of this relates to Prince. I know nothing about him. I'm suggesting the possibility that some people may be religious because they were taught to be by their parents etc, and some may be "religious" because they had some spontaneous "illumination" and religion was the only game in town.
Historically it was somewhat risky to have mystical visions... you might be called a saint, or you might be burned at the stake, depending on how the people around you interpreted what you said.
* It doesn't take much. Just for a moment, stop identifying with the thoughts inside your head, and instead expand your identification to include the whole world around "you", or rather, "in you".
The page has this lovely gem up at the top:
if (top.location == self.location) {
top.location = "../../freedomnews.html"
}
I can't wait til somebody hacks mozilla to add useful buttons to the toolbar. Like an enable, disable javascript button instead of the useless home and search buttons in netscape. It wolud help a lot with abusive javascript like this.
I have no problems with stuff like 2 = to 4 = for u = you however, stuff like 4mat and 4m is a pain in the ass trying to read. I can see replacing commonly used words with shortcuts (even Slashdotters are guilty or this...words like "mobo" and the equivalent) but hell, when you just start making any old word out of these things, it just gets to be a little too much.
I presume you mean "sheer"? Next time you slam someone for their writing, why don't you check your own first? And I mean use your brain and an awareness of the culture behind the language, not just your spell-checker.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
On the other hand, a lot of independent music is created for virtually nothing (like the stereotype of indiepop created in peoples' bedrooms).
The existence of large record companies with deep pockets is what permits and encourages these expensive recordings. Things would certainly be different if they did not exist and all recordings had to be made with smaller budgets. I'm not sure we would be worse off in that case; maybe we would be better off.
I'm no conspiracy theorist, but by encouraging bands to spend a lot of money on recordings, one could claim the record companies are just trying to make themselves useful.
Actually, he changed his name back to Prince a few months ago.
--
Ok, you're still in college and so you probably think that $40,000 a year is a *LOT* of money.
It isn't.
I haven't made that little for 4 years now as a computer programmer. Now if you were to tell me I'd have to travel 300 days a year on top of that, I'd tell ya to shove off.
I will also disagree that popularity and sales do not have any correlation with good music. While I don't like the backstreet boys there are 3 million young girls out there that do. If you like something, then chances are to you it is good.
I'm slightly confused by some of the arguments I have seen here and other places. In what way are we talking about free speech? The word "free" has at least two given meanings - one as in "free of cost" and the other as in "liberated". When people speak of "free speech" they are speaking about the the right to liberated speech. The right to express yourself without retribution from the government or other groups (at least that is our ideal). When you talk about distribution of music as free speech, it seems that you talking about something completely different. Philosophers, political critics, and religious groups write volumes and rely on the concept of free speech in order to protect themselves. People who trade pirated music on napster are not expressing themselves, they are repeating the ideas of others and profitting from it. They are getting "free music" not "free speech..." Has anyone else felt confused by this argument of the napster supporters?
Well, this really isn't technology related, but I find it kinda telling... You see, while the major labels can definately be said to have ignored the entire MP3 debate until it has become bigger than even they can control, this isn't the first time they've ignored and then tried to squash something when they realized they had no control.
Back in the 50's, you know back around the time of Johnny B. Goode, Rocket 88 (hope that ones right) and the early Elvis recordings, when rock n' roll was new and cutting edge, the major labels had no part of it, all this was released on independent labels (Sun, Chess, etc) in fact the recording industry/major labels tried to introduce various fads to stop the spread of rock (I'm afraid I fail to remember exactly what they were) and when that didn't work tried to subvert it by having squeaky clean manufactured groups (the Crew Cuts) remake the songs into a more 'commercial' (acceptable by industry standards) format (anyone see a corelation between this bit and the SDMI?)
Finally, when they realized they couldn't stop it, they bought it out, that IMHO is what we are going to be seeing next in the RIAA vs. MP3 cases, the labels are going to buy the means of distributing the MP3's so they have full control.
(Off-topic maybe, but I still think its interesting)
-GreenHell
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
I don't particularly like it when people dictate to me how and when I can make money.
As long as I'm not doing anything illegal, I have every right in this country to take my skills and package them in a way that people will pay me for.
If people won't pay me for my product, then fine I'll drop that idea and look for something else.
But you do *NOT* have the right to tell me that I should continue doing the same thing I have been doing, but instead I have to give my product away for free and hopefully make up the lost income on support business.
If you want to prove that your way is better, then why don't *YOU* go out and start a business where you give music away for free, and then make income by selling their image to commercials.
I don't see you jumping at the opportunity.
Face it, if you don't like paying for music then don't. Go out and buy a VooDoo 4000 graphics AGP card and play video games with your time.
Or maybe VooDoo should be giving their product away for free as well?
You don't seem to get it.
Music production costs money. We all accept this as fact, the cost of the musicians, the studio time, the editing, hardware, and the donuts and coffee.
Most people seem to get this point. I think.
Ok, so how do they make money?
Well in the current system they make money through distribution. Whether that be selling CD's or going on tour.
You are claiming that distribution should be free. Why? Without making the money in the distribution channel there will be no incentive to produce the music to begin with.
Our financial system operates off of risk and reward. You put forth the money and risk it on some idea, and if it's successful you make money. If the idea's a flop, nobody pays for it and you lose money.
I have a hard time stomaching people who enjoy something, but are unwilling to compensate for their use of it.
Ahhh, tis a never ending connundrum.
I think it is important to note that Spiritual (of the spirit) is an influence.
It can happen externaly, like at a high school football game where cheer leaders chant and dance as spirit leaders, or when you feel influenced and motivated externaly to be a part of a team, and enjoy it thats a team spirit. Alchohol is refered to as "spirits" while, driving when drunk is driving under the "influence". When we hear a speaker speak with lots of influece we call it "spirited."
In that matter one can say that everything from a book (when read) or TV shoe (when watched) has a spirit or an influence to it. I think somehow we've intitutionalized "Spiritual" to mean "religious" (as in a spiritual message is a religious message) becuase to many people over time thought thats the only spirit that mattered, but that is a falicy in my opinion.
Interestingly enough people have spirits too. Ever felt like you knew someone when you met them? Could that be that you feel an influence that you recognize, and pretty much know what kind of person would exute that influence (mostly out of personal experience)? Ever feel the creeps around some people, comfort around others, anger around some too? Thats our reactions to their influence. And its transfered through their animation, their style more than some ethereal dimention.
Anyway I don't know where I'm going with this, but I thought it might be food for thought since you were wondering in general about spiritual influences. (And yes, I find it interesting that every culture that I know of has words for and ways to describe that there is a ethereal spiritual connection where we can feel influenced even if no one is there. And the influece to help build and create beauty is generaly prevelant as is the influence to mock and destroy beauty.) I guess all I'm saying is that if we don't try to build extravagance into it then the term spiritual becomes something that is more tangible and makes sence.
That doesn't make it any less silly. I just wanted to make a clarification.
Oh. and if you're old enough to remember his first album... fascinating.
Think Babelfish will come up with a translator for all this? 1337-speak and Prince jargon? :-)
:-)
Seriously though, while I can't say I've always been the biggest fan of TAFKA Prince's music, I agree dead on with his philosophy. That a person would imply that music *shouldn't* be free is pretty disgusting. To use Prince's analogy (sort of...) If you love your music, you'll want it to be free, such that as many people can experience it as possible. If you love money more than your music, well... I suppose that shows what sort of artist you are.
You know, there's just something wrong when you have to change your name to regain your freedom. Some might call that terrorism. I call it BS
Mr. Hankey
GPL: Free as in will
Little Richard is the same way. Was a preacher and a drag queen.
"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm; usually because they could not walk" Nietzsche
Why was this moderated down?
Napster isn't just the latest crap on the radio. Lately people have been putting up some rather obscure stuff. I downloaded some tracks by a band called Camel (Heard of 'em?, didn't think so...), and while listening, I heard some faint noise in the background. Vinyl scratches! This was copied from a out-of-print album! This shows quite a bit of dedication on someone's part, that he/she liked this music so much, they took the time to copy it and share it. Why? They must have known it was rather rare. So it's a numbers game. If enough people use Napster, there is a better chance someone will have something you like, even if it's rare.
If Napster was just a bunch of greedy bastards, you couldn't download anything because nobody whould be SHARING anything. Some people have to look at their music collection, figure that someone may like this stuff, and serve it up.
I just paypaled you $0.25.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Music wants to be free! ;-)
-- Eavy (: Linux Is Not UniX
Trciky one this. The exec hasn't made himself clear. The media, distribution of media, etc. is all non-free. The people who sell you the music in the store want to make money, the artist who recorded it wants to make money, the execs who look after the logistics (and they do matter - do you think that your favourite artists really could organise world tours, album launches, etc. on their own) all require a salary.
/. readers spend their lives writing algorithms. They spend their time effectively regurgitating mathematics. They often get paid for it. Hang on, does that mean that we are all claiming that mathematical algos. are not free? That you have to pay us for them? Dispicable! Well, in that case, I'd best ask my boss not to pay me anymore because all this stuff should be free.
To argue that all music should be free is a romantic notion, but one that is actually pretty hypocritical when you think about it. I like to drink lots of water, and water is free, and if anybody tried arguing against that I'd get really upset. I'm still prepared to pay for a bottle of Perrier though. In the same sense, the majority of
It is very easy for Prince to argue that the music industry is all messed up and that Napster is fantastic. It's easy because he's so damned rich that he doesn't need any more money. How did he get this money? By any chance would it be because of those execs down at the record company pushing his music? So, after he's made all this money (note: he didn't complain at the time, did he?) he now makes a sweep at the record company. He score a few popularity points, gets his name in the media, and everybody thinks he's great. Does he give his money back to the fans? Ummmm...
Ultimately, the fact music is not, and never will be, free is not due to a limitation of technology. It's because the people who make music have to eat. I know there have been some rumours going around that Michael Jackson is actually run from mains electricity, but it's not true. He eats and craps on the toilet and pays taxes and has friends and family just like the rest of us. Get used to the fact that you have no right to listen to his or any other artists performances, in exactly the same way my boss does not have the right to expect me to write code whenever he wants free of charge.
I hate this argument already. It's so clear to me now that those who insist that music should be free just haven't thought about what the consequences of that.
Let's look at the consumer end of the issue; the side which is supposed to come out in the top in our economic system.
Drinkable water is a resource. When you use it, it requires infrastructure to store and deliver and clean it; that is much of what you pay for. The more you consume, the less there is for everyone else. Thus it is economically efficient to control water usage by market pricing. If water were free, businesses/consumers would waste more of it and there would be little incentive to save it. Thus, in the end, it's far better that we price water through the free market.
In the case of digitizable art, such as digital music, the infrastructure already exists to deliver it to many people at very low costs. If I listen to a song, I am not depriving anyone else of the song. It is not a depletable resource. It is bits which can be duplicated over and over and over with trivial cost. The best outcome for the consumer is a maximal amount of art that they enjoy at the lowest possible price.
Usually, such a goal can be achieved through competition. However, in art, that's not the case. If you like the Beatles, you'll pay $20 for a CD, even though the Ruttles might only charge $10. Furthermore, there is additional price-fixing between the large labels (as evidenced by recent rulings against them).
What's the solution here? I don't know. Usually, businesses, which have maximizing profits as their goals, are the mediators of this optimization of consumer good. However, in this case, the maximization of profit by businesses is not coinciding with the best interest of the consumer. Furthermore, the profit motive of the businesses isn't coinciding with the best interest of the artists, who tend to sign on to the first thing they see (most good artists are in music because they enjoy music; not because they want to be the next millionaire).
Personally, I feel that there is far too much money in digitized music, and not nearly enough going into real music coming out of people (i.e. live performances). Here's some free digitized music: http://lsjumb.stanford.edu/Soundz/
Pun intended. (-:
Prince supporting Napster won't make or break it. However, his voice will mean more to authorities since in theory the artists are supposed to b on the recording industry's side.
In the end, stepping on Napster will only boost FreeNet and friends. The Internet will route around the problem, as it always does. Unfortunately, in the case of spam.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If the mp3 technology didn't exsist i still wouldn't buy records. I have more important stuff to spend my money on like a new 3d prophet II gts video card. Music is not really supposed to be about money its supposed to be about music. The artists should be happy for napster because it is promoting their music.
"'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be: but as it isn't it a
I would hope he could come up with a better publicity stunt than a well formed and thought provoking article about an abusive system that has been going on for the past 80+ years!
"It's like polishing a turd." -FZ
But. . .how? I'm just me, inside this body, composed of my thoughts.
Oops, I didn't see the replies, so this is probably a little late...
If "you" are composed of thoughts, how can "you" be aware of the thought? To illustrate this, bring to mind a "picture" of the the room you are sitting in. See yourself sitting in the room. See that the you in the room is currently seeing a picture of the room, which contains another you that is seeing a picture of the room that contains another you... forever till absurdity.
Similarly, if you feel like "you" are "inside" your head, like there's a little person inside your head, then who is the little person inside the head of the little person? How many "you's" are there?
To get out of this problem, it could simply be that anything that is in your awareness is not you. If it was you, or a part of you, then you'd have to include you in you in you in you etc. Just like the eye cannot see itself, so anything that is in awareness, being experienced, cannot be you. This includes the table, "your" body, "your" feelings, "your" thoughts... they are all phenomena passing before you like clouds passing across the sky.
Everything is "in" awareness. There's no real inside/outside split. If there is no split, then that would mean that to harm another would be like harming "yourself". Sound familiar? --- There is a famous Albert Einstein quote, that illustrates this beautifully,
But rather than have my second hand version, check out a professionally written piece, So Who Are You?
"The notion of copyright was not invented by artists to protect themselves from honest individuals sharing their enthusiasm about their work," he writes. "It was invented by artists to protect themselves from dishonest and hypocritical individuals and companies exploiting their work without their consent."
I couldn't put it better. It isn't the technology of Napster that is feared, it's the distribution channel.
www.npgonlineltd.com
Thats certainly easy to remember.....
Not a bad looking site.... but all frames and flash..
do you mean the artist formally known as prince? or is there a guy named prince? forgive me i'm l4m3 :)
ERROR: Keyboard not attached. Press F-1 to continue.
...but doesn't it look a lot like Prince is doing 2 things 1) Getting back back at the BIG BAD company. 2) Getting free publicity.
Sorry, No sig!
after his contract with Warner Bros. records expired.
- - - - -
- - - - -
automatictaxistopelectriccigarettelovebaby
Usually the artists, who would like to make a living from their work. Dumbass.
You've got a company exec who says, "An increasing number of young people don't buy albums, so we are not only losing that immediate revenue. They are growing up with a notion that music is free and ought to be free." Who says that it shouldn't be free? Who appointed this exec God? Or, who appointed "tradition" as fact? The idea that sound is a commodity is a rather strange development that arose due to the limitations of technology and some clever businessmen.
- - - - -
- - - - -
automatictaxistopelectriccigarettelovebaby
I still cant find decent indie rock, avant garde, free jazz, etc. using napster
_joshua_
You notice how you miss things when you don't sleep. I thought it said "Price gets a woody over napster." Just thought I would share.
_joshua_
Prince's passion has always been dance clubs. It's really what he lives for. His music. Not so much the money, And it's nice to be able to not have to make the money elsewhere, but through all of the years, It really seems he's in it to make his music. Some of his latest albums (Emancipation, Crystal ball) Were 3 and 4 cd's respectively. And released right after eachother.
And although his biggest issue DOES seem to be his annoyance with record companies, I've always enjoyed his music and always will..
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
It's like hitting the lottery for some of these groups barely out of high school. What do they care about the "art" after they "make it"? They probably only care about whether they can buy another Ferrari, pick up chicks, and get laid constantly before and after ever concert in the dressing rooms. These people get their 15 minutes of fame and love it.
Anyway, straying off the subject... but how do you get the public to hear the music made by people who really are just concerned about their art and not about winning the RIAA Pop Lottery? Before Napster/Gnutella and MP3.com I'm not sure there WAS a way. These people don't get air time except on college stations so where would you hear them unless they played a concert in your local pub?
There is a point in the original post, though. It does get hard to read sometimes (the lyrics of i hate u were especially fun to read on a tired night. ;) And it shouldn't have been moderated down.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
In the case of digitizable art, such as digital music, the infrastructure already exists to deliver it to many people at very low costs. If I listen to a song, I am not depriving anyone else of the song. It is not a depletable resource. It is bits which can be duplicated over and over and over with trivial cost. The best outcome for the consumer is a maximal amount of art that they enjoy at the lowest possible price.
OK, firstly the infrastructure costs money. It's not free. You have to pay for it *somehow*. At the moment the primary form of music distribution in most countries is still through the "hump boxes onto a truck, drive them out to store, unpack and sell CDs in store" which costs money. The music itself also costs money to produce professionally, studio time, promotion (no good in making music if nobody knows it's out there, right?), and the artist might want to do some live stuff that needs to be managed. All in all it's pretty expensive.
Even if we say that we can reduce all these costs by making all music purchasable on-line, somebody somewhere is going to have to pay for servers and bandwidth. A popular artist is going to use a lot of bandwidth. Especially if we're talking about 6Mb tracks.
Your last point about maximal amount of art at the lowest possible price is fair. What I was trying to get across originally was that music will not, and will never, be free. It will always cost money, even if it's a small amount and there are reasons for that. Even if we started seeing an uprise in GPL'ed music (for want of a better description), just like GPL software, somebody, somewhere pays for it. It might be the author who puts in the money he has earned in his real job, or it may require the intervention of a company to assist that project. Either way there is always some commercial element to it. It's called capitalism, it works, and it benefits those who contribute to "the system".
All I'm saying, is if you want good music, don't winge when it costs you less than 0.5% of your monthly salary. If you do, you don't deserve it.
I've perused these Napster discussions and have not noticed any mention of how the "jambands" are doing things. For those not familiar with this method, here is the 2 sentence version. The bands tour as much as humanly possible. Fans tape the shows and trade them for free amongst themselves. It's not much more complicated than that. Most of these bands have some sort of Grateful Dead influence because they were the ones who started this whole thing back in the sixties. In truth, they got the idea of allowing bootleggers from the bluegrass festivals that Jerry Garcia would go to in the fifties.
The point is this. Their fans, for the most part, are music lovers. The issue of copyrights only comes up when some jerk tries to sell the bootlegs, but this is so heavily frowned upon that it is really not that big of an issue. The bands are compensated for performing their music and hocking their wares at the shows or off their website. Sounds good in theory, but does it work? Well if you look at Phish, the most popular of the bunch, only 10% of their gross revenues come from album sales. The other 90% comes from concerts and paraphernalia. As a side note, jambands are just the most commonly acknowledged group that does this. DJs, for example, have relatively few album sales and make most of their money by performing music.
"It's like polishing a turd." -FZ
I'm from Minneapolis, and we hear about Prince a lot because he's local.
Personally I think that Prince is talented and I liked a lot of his work.
But after his split from the recording industry he went downhill. I think part of the problem was that he wasn't allowed to play his older stuff. But he also unfortunately didn't come out with any newer stuff that was near the quality of his earlier stuff.
Now it's possible he did have some good stuff, but that wasn't what I was hearing. He'd occasionally get played on local radio or TV and I didn't like it such that I'd buy the CD.
Anyway, as a result, his sales plummeted. As a result of that his income plummeted. There was a huge amount of speculation that Paisley Park was going to go bankrupt. I know he had trouble keeping his house in repair, etc.
Last year in honor of "1999" he came to some deal with the record company that let him use his old songs and his old name. Which was cool. He came out to the local music festival and wowed the crowd again, and of course this was all followed up with the Party of 1999 on Pay Per View for $75 or something like that.
He appears to be back in the black again, making some money... that's cool and I wish him luck.
But before going around touting him as the savior of Napster and the only one who just really gets it.... Prince isn't a very smart musician. While I certainly can agree with him that the recording industry was ripping him off, he missed a point that there is a symbiotic relationship there. That being, he never would have had any popularity if it had not been for the recording industries publicity machine.
Think about it. I'm waiting for the really really popular grassroots artists who has "made it" as a result of mp3.com, Napster and other alternatives who will tell the people "You don't want the Recording Industry"
Hasn't happened yet. Instead we have some washed up older artists whose popularity is waning... Hmm.
Do you have any clue what you are talking about?
Metallica has been speaking out against the recording industry for years, even going so far as to sue for the rights of their music back, etc.
The difference is, Metallica is a band formed by mature, intelligent individuals. Prince on the other hand has the maturity and actions of a child.
Anybody who remembers his lollipop incident at the music awards show would realize that.
I just finished looking over many of the details of how Prince disseminates his music now. Its very similar to what Stephen King is doing with his new e-Book. The basic idea is, 'If you all want my book to freely use and trade etc, at least X amount of you have to buy it'. Or, to subsidize it, for it to be free to everyone else. I think this is Exactly the model the Internet should adopt to compensate artists. Its very elegant.
http://www.npgonlineltd.com/freedomnew s.html
/. post is "Prince gets wordy about Napster", but reading his article was shear hell....
The site will not let you link to the article directly, so its the first one listed...
Also the name of this
If Prince wants people to really take him seriously..
2 = to
4 = for
4m = form
u = you
Plus lots more... its worse then trying to read that 31337 crap...
I remember trading mp3s several years ago. Almost everyone you chatted with (people would sometimes do that back then) had taste in music. I wouldn't say everyone had good taste, but they knew what they liked and they cared enough to try to figure out what else they would like.
Napster and similar services may make life easier for someone trying to find the latest Christina Agulargagainabottle to sonicly beat off to but it doesn't do much good if you love music and are looking for like minded people to trade tips with.
I'm sure there's still a few dark corners of the internet where people who love music still gather, far from the bright lights of commerical pop, but for know I think I'll just go back to hanging out at the record store every now and then and shoot the shit with people who care.
EOF
Add Prince (Artist Formerly Known as?) to the list of artists who support the new music technologies such as Napster. It's nice to see respected artists come forward against the record labels and their quick to sue attitudes.
Prince's Statements (4 the love of music) are smart and straight-forward. He points out hypocrisy among the record labels own statements about this whole issue. He sets forth a good distinction between music "lovers" and music "consumers." I don't care for the way he chooses to write, reading his article with all those strange contractions and abbreviations gets kind of annoying, but it is well written and intelligent.
If only more artists saw the issues at hand the way Prince does. Thank You Prince.
Speaking of Napster, there is an article over at http://www.fetchnews.com about a new program endorsed by the porn industry that allows people to trade porn clips, like MP3's in Napster. They think it will help promote the business.
"The notion of copyright was not invented by artists to protect themselves from honest individuals sharing their enthusiasm about their work," he writes. "It was invented by artists to protect themselves from dishonest and hypocritical individuals and companies exploiting their work without their consent."
Many people see napster as falling into that second group who is exploiting the work. True or not--- that is the image. And, when you have kids all over the place saing things like "dude, i downloaded Artist XYZ's entire album last night, so now I dont have to buy it...."
well, its tough to argue.
Prince cites Napster as an illustration of "the growing frustration over how much the record companies control what music people get to hear."
If thats true, then why is napster over run by mainstream songs. Do a search on any top forty hit song and you get 100+ hits back on THAT SONG. And yet, there are well known artist out there and you can't get 100 hits on ALL their songs together.
I guess what I'm saying here is --- it cuts both ways.
"I mean, All you can definately say about a fellow who thinks he's a poached egg, is; He's in the minority." James Burke
--
--
--
My name is Prince, and I am funky
My name is Prince, the one and only
And it was actually Prince - off his O(+> album (1991)
--
This black-and-white world of yours sounds quite comfortable, but here in the real world things are a little more complicated. The issue here is not whether it costs money to make music, or whether artists and programmers need to eat, but rather how they get their daily bread. The pay-per-copy scheme currently in place just doesn't work. It impedes innovation and creates a great many more wealthy middle-men (like record company executives) than wealthy artists.
The idea that you don't have the right to listen to music until you've paid is a little like saying you don't have the right to breathe until you've paid the air tax -- both are a little twisted. Fortunately, though it costs money to keep the air clean, we structure the payments a little differently. We can do the same with music and software.
For example, technical support can partially fund software development, and the street performer protocol (mentioned by some other posts and used by the likes of Stephen King and Prince) can be used to fund some artistic works. These are pieces of a solution that is not quite complete, but people continue to work on the problem. You need to come to terms with the fact that there is a problem and start thinking about how to solve it. That's much more productive than making snide remarks about people who don't share the opinions of `enlightened' kurmdgeons like you.
--
--
If by 'making mixtapes for friends' you mean 'letting everybody who asks take unlimited copies of your music'.
----------------------------