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David Bowie on Music, Copyrights, Distribution
EddydaSquige writes "In this New York Times article David Bowie talks about his new album, distribution deal with Sony, and how he's "fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing." Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?"
Sure the artist should be credited for the creation of a song but why should a corporation I dont care about make 5 times the money the writer does. IP and copywrite needs a complete overhaul. Fair use people
It is about time the bigger well established artists started acting like this. They make far more money personing than via RIAA cds
/me goes out and buys every david bowie CD he can find
Rock on david.
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Was ahead of his time by packaging and selling the rights to his current/future music back in the early 90s. If I remeber correctly, he picked up along the line of US$ 53 million from his stock sale. He has little to fear from copyright violations from a personal standpoint.
Here's the text
David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur
By JON PARELES
IN a Manhattan rehearsal studio, Gerry Leonard seemed to be noodling on his guitar as the rest of David Bowie's band waited. He played some sustained notes and a bit of minor-key arpeggio; he worked his effects pedals, adding echoes. A digital stutter entered the pattern, and suddenly the music gelled into "Sunday," the song that opens Mr. Bowie's new album, "Heathen," which will be released on Tuesday.
Chords from a phantom chorus wafted from a keyboard, and Mr. Bowie intoned: "It's the beginning of an end, and nothing has changed. Everything has changed."
Mr. Bowie sang somberly about searching for signs of life, about fear and hope. At the end of the song, he shivered like someone coming out of a trance. "Ahhh," he said and grinned. "Good morning!" It was just after 11 a.m. and Mr. Bowie, 55, had already worked out at the gym and given an extended interview before starting the day's rehearsal for his summer tour.
Lean and affable, he was wearing a skintight gray T-shirt and stylishly understated gray pants. His gaze, with different-colored eyes because of a childhood accident that paralyzed his left pupil, has grown less disconcerting; he laughs easily. When asked what he considered the central point of his work, he said, "I write about misery" and chuckled.
Visions of cataclysm and professional aplomb: that's Mr. Bowie's life in his fourth decade as a rock star. One of rock's most astute conceptualists since the 1960's, he has toyed with the possibilities of his star persona, turned concerts into theater and fashion spectacles, and periodically recharged his songs with punk, electronics and dance rhythms. Now he has emerged as one of rock's smartest entrepreneurs.
"Heathen" is the first album from Mr. Bowie's own recording company, Iso, which has major-label distribution through Sony. In 1997, he sold $55 million of Bowie Bonds backed by his song royalties; the next year, he founded the technology company Ultrastar and his own Internet service provider-cum-fan club, Bowienet (davidbowie.com). In a nod to his art-school background, his bowieart.com sells promising students' work without the high commissions of terrestrial galleries.
His deal with Sony is a short-term one while he gets his label started and watches the Internet's effect on careers. "I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way," he said. "The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."
"Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity," he added. "So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you think it's exciting or not; it's what's going to happen."
With his wife, Iman, he has a 22-month-old daughter, Alexandria, for whom he's keeping to a minimum his time away from home in Manhattan. When Mr. Bowie signed on as a headliner for Moby's Area:Two tour this summer, he made sure the schedule allowed him to return home between each of the six East Coast dates. He is also organizing, and performing at, Meltdown, a contemporary music, film and visual arts festival in London. (One songwriter he booked is Norman Carl Odam, known as the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, from whom he took Ziggy Stardust's last name in the 1970's; on "Heathen," he sings the Cowboy's "Gemini Spacecraft," about an astronaut obsessed with a girl he left behind.)
Mr. Bowie no longer expects to compete with performers in their 20's. "I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable," he said. "You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth."
HIS fans among musicians, including Moby and Nine Inch Nails, have toured with Mr. Bowie, introducing him to a younger generation.
Back in 1990, Mr. Bowie tried to jettison his past. He billed an arena tour as the last time he would play his old hits. "I really did think I meant that," he said. "I got quite a way into the 90's before I started thinking, `Well, if you want an audience, David, you may want to consider putting some songs into your sets that they've actually heard.' Yes, I know, I went back on my word completely and absolutely."
He's now more comfortable riffling through his huge body of work. This week, the Museum of Television and Radio, in New York and Los Angeles, opened "Sound + Vision," a retrospective of Mr. Bowie on video that continues through Sept. 15. A restored version of "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars," the D. A. Pennebaker documentary of the 1972 tour that defined glam-rock, will be released on July 10.
"Heathen" was produced by Tony Visconti, who last collaborated with Mr. Bowie on his 1980 album, "Scary Monsters." He worked on most of Mr. Bowie's 1970's albums, including the celebrated Berlin trilogy of "Low," " `
On "Heathen," Mr. Bowie knowingly hints at his past. He echoes the song " `Heroes' " in "Slow Burn," which wonders, "Who are we in times such as these?" He revives analog keyboard sounds like that of the Stylophone, a miniature electric organ played with a stylus that was heard on "Space Oddity" in 1969 and reappears in the new "Slip Away." When Mr. Bowie starts his tour with a show for fan-club members at Roseland on Tuesday, he plans to play all 12 songs on "Heathen," followed by all of "Low." Hearing the music 25 years later "makes the hairs on my arm stand up," he said.
To make "Low," Mr. Bowie recalled: "I had brought the idea of having fundamentally an R & B rhythm section working against this new zeitgeist of electronic ambience that was happening in Germany. It was terribly exciting to know that one had stumbled across something which was truly innovative.
"At that time, I was vacillating badly between euphoria and incredible depression. Berlin was at that time not the most beautiful city of the world, and my mental condition certainly matched it. I was abusing myself so badly. My subtext to the whole thing is that I'm so desperately unhappy, but I've got to pull through because I can't keep living like this. There's actually a real optimism about the music. In its poignancy there is, shining through under there somewhere, the feeling that it will be all right."
Drug problems are long behind him, Mr. Bowie said. He now hesitates to take even an Advil because. "I have such an addictive personality," he said.
Making "Heathen," he and Mr. Visconti were leery of nostalgia. "One thing we haven't tried to be is cutting edge," Mr. Bowie said. "The other thing we've tried not to do is to delve too far into the past and rely on our known strengths, our known previous work. We do know, between us, how to landscape a song and give it a real place, an identity and a character. I guess that's the vestiges of the more theatrical things."
The album starts with "Sunday" and ends with its title song, both hushed and haunted by mortality. In "Heathen," Mr. Bowie sings, "Still on the skyline, sky made of glass/ Made for a real world, all things must pass." The album was written before Sept. 11, however, and the songs join a long line of Mr. Bowie's apocalyptic scenarios.
"I hope that a writer does have these antennae that pick up on low-level anxiety and all those Don DeLillo resonances within our culture," he said. "But I don't want to say that it was in any way trying to suggest that it was going to happen. It's not like it's something new to me. These are all personal crises, I'm sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It's as simple as that."
Between his own ruminations, he borrows "Gemini Spacecraft," the Pixies' "Cactus" and Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting for You"; in songs like "Afraid" and "I Would Be Your Slave," he sings about love, insecurity and transience.
"I tried to make a checklist of what exactly the album is about and abandonment was in there, isolation," he said. "And I thought, well, nothing's changed much. At 55, I don't really think it's going to change very much. As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I've got left?
"When it's taken that nakedly, these are my subjects. And it's like, well, how many times can you do this? And I tell myself, actually, over and over again. The problem would be if I was too self-confident and actually came up with resolutions for these questions. But I think they're such huge unanswerable questions that it's just me posing them, again and again."
http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html might come in handy for some
I'd love to hear more of what he has to say about media decentralization and the gargantuan shift from megastars to niche artists. Can we try and do one of those "ask Bowie 20 questions" thingies?
I still think there's room for artists to sell music in a physical medium, with disks, nice cover art, books, perhaps a box set. I've downloaded just about everything by Tommy Guerrero but I'm collecting the CDs anyways... better sound quality, more permanent, nice cover art, and the pleasure of owning them and knowing I've contributed something to the artist. (TG does amazing grooving downtempo Cali-Latin style funky jazzy ambient blues, kinda like Booker T meets Tortoise with a bottle of wine on Carlos Santana's back porch.).
G
I recommend DeLillo's book "White Noise" for insights into Bowie's mindset. It's very much in keeping with the comments in the NYT piece about Bowie's emotional space. And an easy read for a postmodern novel.
In 1997, David Bowie issued bonds to pay interest from his old song royalties. Prudential Insurance Co. of America bought them all. Read about it, and David Pullman, the guy who helped him do it. The offering "allowed Bowie to collect $55 million up front, using some of the money to buy out a former manager and keep control of his music."
That's funny.
If I believed that everything was milk and honey, and that people would be kind to each other, I wouldn't be opposed to the copyright system because I would think that people wouldn't abuse it as they do now.
These days, people (like the record industry and the software publishing industry) exploit the public by abusing copyright.
These people put their long tentacles of control on everything they publish. You buy that record? Well, sonny, you better not copy it or you're gonna pay!
Your sweetheart asks for a copy? Are you going to be loyal to her/him or to the copyright owner?
Sharing copies with other people shouldn't be a crime, it's a nice thing to do.
These days, everythings not "milk and honey", because the laws are set up to reward miserliness and punish friendliness.
The problem is that our current distribution model for intellectual property, especially music, does not work given the nominal distribution costs of internet-based music distribution. No digital form of distribution provides an equivalent level of moderation provided by the music industry, it is almost impossible to find the best quality content out of the giant databases like IUMA or MP3.com. We still need some way to sort the good stuff from the banal. It probably makes sense to use Gnutella to download pop music today, but from a long term perspective, we need to create an entirely new paradigm for music proliferation.
"...What is good for General Motors is good for America." -Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense and fmr President of GM
Does anyone out there buy a record because it's on Island vs. Maverick vs. Sony? (Okay, Maverick is owned by Madonna, which may make me think twice...). Through the selling of bonds, his ISP, and now these comments, it's obvious he's making himself a brand that people know and trust, and therefore are willing to pay for. When music is a commodity in the post-copyright world (which is coming, whether the RIAA likes it on not), the people who have a distinctive style that engenders brand loyalty will have the following willing to pay for music instead of getting it for free. An example of this from the last two decades was The Grateful Dead.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Copyright is necessary as incentive for the creation of new works. I and others are happy creating GPL'ed software, but we are a very small minority of people producing creative works. So, I don't see copyright going away anytime soon.
What will have to change, however, is our perception of copyright. At this point, copyright is considered (however incorrectly) an inalienable right that often trumps even the first amendment. This situation is untenable. What I already see happening is the start of a movement to put the teeth back in the public side of the copyright bargain.
In the best case, I see copyright terms decreasing significantly and fair use rights being enforced by law. The first increases the incentive to produce by shortening the term of the artificial monopoly we the People grant to authors and artists.
The second means that the People's right to use works protected under copyright in any reasonable way they choose will be formally encoded, perhaps even to the point of outlawing fair use prevention technologies (what is usually called "copy protection") on works protected by copyright: this would restore the same balance that used to exist for patents before the DMCA.
I'll leave the worst case to others. =)
[ home ]
Not in 10 years. This is going to take a legislative policy change... there could be some changes in the courts, but as we all know, court decisions will probably come down on the side of those with the most money (large corps/very rich individuals with a lot of IP to lose). Most of the public is simply not aware enough of IP issues, and most legislators probably beleive in a conservative view of IP.
I think it'll have to get worse before it gets better in order for the public to start examining it. But I also think in about 20 years, we'll start to get a crop of legislators that are not quite so corporate. I think it's partly a demographic thing.
Of course, it will help if the average slashdot guy becomes a little more activist. Should you run for congress?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Was ahead of his time by packaging and selling the rights to his current/future music back in the early 90s.
Unfortunately, BowieBanc didn't fare as well ("Bowie bank leaves the stage") -
On the other hand, it seems the Thin White Duke had a way with words back almost two years, with respect to digital piracy -
Visionary, or just outspoken?
It's kinda ironic that you violated the NY Time's copyright to cut and paste and article about copyright issues isn't it?
/. with the DCMA in it's fist.
I don't like the required registration BS either, but you know what I do about it? I haven't registered and therefore don't read the Times (or their advertisers)... voting with my eyeballs.
I would be wise if people stop doing stupid stuff like this. I would be interesting (in a bad way) to have the Time's come after
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
Copyright is necessary as incentive for the creation of new works
Tell that to Bach, Shakespeare or any one else before probably 1900.
It may in a few instances encourage people to produce new works, but I bet in more cases it discourages people from using established works as the basis for new works. I bet it's a wash whether copyright helps or hinders in the grand picture.
All it really does is enable a few to get filthy rich while not helping the other 99.99% at all. Especially considering the few plagiarism cases that come to trial, where some rich artist (or corporation) is sued by some nobody for stealing his idea. The big guys can afford to steal and violate copyright because they have the lawyers to beat down the poor guys.
Infuriate left and right
All off his new CD's will be autographed on the outer rim with a sharpie :)
and he's very much a good businessman and artist. he was ahead of the herd with musical styles and fashions and he's very likely right on this one as well. of course, he's in a position to not care that much, since he's got control of his back catalogue, a huge fanbase, other businesses (bowienet, etc) and lots of unreleased stuff in the can just waiting for a boxset release.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
In a world without copyright, I still think that RMS and FSF would be happy.
Still, totally abolishing copyright is not a stated goal of the FSF. They just want more rights for the users of published software.
If I produce software, music, or writings, these are the results of my work and efforts, and nobody is entitled to steal them!
But CDs aren't the results of your work. The music, or words, are. If I, as an artist, burn a CD of my music, and give it to someone, I have lost nothing other than the 50 cents for the media. The music in my head has not gone away.
Intellectual property is no less than private property.
Yes, intellectual property is arguably property, but the mistake is in treating it exactly like physical property.
The problem is not in the idea of "intellectual property" (referencing the originator of a work, acknowledging the creativity that went into it), but in the mistake of using the word property which has connotations that don't directly apply to the very different ideas of a physical thing (a piece of land, a car, a radio), and an idea.
How would you feel if someone stole your computer because presumably they have a better use for it?
If someone stole my computer, I would no longer have the use of my computer. But if I write a song and someone tapes me singing it, what have I lost?
I write music, and I make no money off of it, because I like the idea of people listening to my music. Artists will produce music even if they can't eat off money made from selling CDs. "Artists" who are paid to manufacture generic music for mass-sale will probably go away, but that won't stop real music from happening. It will just stop non-musicians who have a career in music.
Now it may be that in the future, society will agree as a whole that using someone else's intellectual property (singing someone else's song, manufacturing drugs using someone else's formula) will be considered a form of stealing, but it is a mistake to consider it the same form of stealing as taking another person's computer, or stealing their car. That is what exists now, it's too rooted in laws of physical appropriation for it to apply to reality, and that is where these arguments start. When people discuss "stealing" IP they're really talking about two different things.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Particularly with regards to this: If I produce software, music, or writings, these are the results of my work and efforts, and nobody is entitled to steal them! Intellectual property is no less than private property.
That's not how it works. We have copyright laws in order to benefit the public. If this happens to satisfy artists, that's great, but not necessary. Benefits to artists are merely a 'carrot' used to extract useful works out of them. They didn't earn it merely by virtue of the act of creation. Were this so, the lack of copyright anywhere in the world prior to roughly 300 years ago would be entirely inexplicable.
The public benefit comes first and foremost. Anything else is merely happy chance.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
PVRs and computerized audio recording are going to eliminate any need for "Prime Time", or for any sort of scheduled broadcast entertainment.
Time shifting will give control of life-scheduling back to the public.
If the machines skip commercials, then broadcast entertainment may be doomed, unless something like the British television-licensing model comes into play. Cable rates would have to jump by a hundred dollars per month to keep the same revenues going into the system.
P2P won't make so great a dent as to obviate copyright. Mass-market bandwidth is too low, and it's too easy to recognize the traffic signature of illegal file traders. The Xerox machine didn't kill publishing, and Napster didn't kill the RIAA.
--Blair
An artist, a rather good one at that, has stepped forward and made a move for the greater good.
Now the question is, will the Slashdot community - a group always bitching about these issues - use its large, unified presence to mirror that good act? I was just discussing with my girlfriend that we ought to go out and purchase the CD as soon as it becomes available.
If there's a huge show of support for Bowie's move here, it will reflect that his ideals are good ones. Others will follow his lead (lots of other artists have - but after seeing his success). So go out and actually buy a disc with confidence that most of the money is going to the artist, instead of some rich old wind-bag's pocket.
Why bother.
These artists are brave enough to prove the future of the music industry does not need to include the "industry". This has been a long time comming and I hope that the general population supports this mentality so that music can be appreciated based on its true value, which is not how much money the big labels can thow at the flavor of the week, but on pure talent.
Sound waves should be free!
If the Bowie model of doing bonds makes more money than the current revenue model, then the record companies might start to listen, but Bowie's catalog is reasonably consistent. Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, Pinups, and The Man Who Sold the World are (presumably) all steady sellers. We're not talking Pink Floyd or The Beatles here, commercially, but still...
Point being, you can't apply this model to an artist that doesn't have that kind of track record. Try floating "Britney Bonds" or "'Nsync Notes" and see how far those fly. They won't, because they don't have any chance of producing the kind of steady cashflow that Bowie's sales produce over time.
Even looking at more relevant bands of this era (choose your own), they are ALL likely to fade within 10 years, and won't provide the sheer volume of Bowie's output. I happen to love the Pixies, but I have trouble thinking that anybody's chasing down "Bossanova" in their local Tower Records.
Neato model, points to Bowie's finance team for developing it, but applicable in a miniscule number of cases. If Bowie, in fact, owns his own IP, it might even be unique.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
So true dude. Unfortunately, I think you should change jobs as soon as possible :) That's what I'm doing.
You know, that thing that allows you and people all around the world to see these words? And I don't even have the backing of a major publisher!
:)
The Internet is the way that music is going to be distributed in the future. The record companies are welcome to come along, but they aren't needed anymore. Which makes your argument even more ironic.
The enemies of Democracy are
He sold BONDS which were to be paid back from the royalties earned by his music.
I f he really believes copyright will be dead in the near future, then he will probably be on the receiving end of a pretty darn hefty fraud investigaion.
It would be like oh Donald Trump selling Bonds to finance a new casino in Atlantic City, with the casino revenues to repay the bonds all the while expecting the state of New Jersey to outlaw all casino gambling 5 years after the casino opens.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html
if it doesn't work the first time, try again
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Why doesn't someone just register in the name of /., and we all use this to read the stories?
/.ers could use instead of www.nytimes.com? This way, we wouldn't have to register and they would still know that /.ers were reading the site, so they could still target their ads. Both sides win.
Or how about having NYT set up slashdot.nytimes.com, which
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Nevertheless, I've never seen any mp3s on his web-site.
Besides, with Bowie's Al-Gorish claims to geekdom in the past, and a webpage that insists I go get a new plugin... Hey, where's the non-flash version?
This sort of eyecandy whoredom that goes with most bands' web-sites is rather quite sickening. If you're in a band, what would your fans want?
I refuse to believe that if you're in a band, that your fans really want lots of eyecandy that's just that--eyecandy.
If you're an artist in the visual sense, then perhaps some eyecandy is to be expected. But in a band--no. And flash? Flash might do some okay things, but it's never used right....
Bowie has had some interesting quips in his day, but he seems altogether too self-absorbed. Okay, the music is okay, some of it. But his 15 minutes of fame are over.
Don't get upset at the copyrights, get upset at the contracts these corporations impose on the artists, and the monopolies they have with major distribution chains.
Try to find your local indie band at any national record chain, and chances are unless they're on MTV or Clear Channel, they'll not be found. This is because the national chains go through publishers or huge distributors, where only the top publishing houses can sell through.
You'd have to go to a local chain or a mom and pop store to find indie artists most of the time, or just to the artists themselves.
What we need is an overhaul of the music distribution chain. Sites like eMusic and MP3.com were set to do that until they were bought out by big publishers. They weren't bought out because they were failing, they were bought because they imposed a threat on the distribution network.
Hell, if you want to be rich, it's not making a religion, it's not winning the lottery, is threatening legally the bottom line of a multi-national conglomerate. Find a better, legal way to do what the publishers do, and they'll find a way to offer you money to go away.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
So start making and selling CDs. Or do performances, which will most likely earn you a better chunk of change. The sad thing for people in the manufacturing business is that our economy is moving towards service oriented businesses. That means you get paid as you do the work, so either artists will get paid a set wage for producing a song, and not be earning huge chunks of change off of last years work, or they will start performing and earn money that way. No one is saying you shouldn't get money for your efforts, it's when you get money for everytime your song is heard that people start to get bothered.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
According to Bowie, rock musicians better get used to a lot of touring. Well, that's the ONLY way most rock musicians make money. Even if you get signed by a major label, they are under no obligation to promote your band. YOU have to promote YOUR OWN music BY TOURING. And you had better get on it, because you have to pay back that big advance the record company floated you to buy new equipment, which you needed for all the TOURING you're going to be doing! Also, I've been in three rock bands, and made lots of IMHO excellent original music, and never turned a significant profit. So I guess people will make music for reasons other than insatiable greed.
But why isn't the artist hiring the record company? Does anyone else see the strangeness of a record company hiring the artist? Isn't that sort of like TDK hiring EA to produce a game so that TDK can sell CDs?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?"
Do not doubt the power of David Bowie's Area
I'm serious: Take for example the only people you see speaking out in public against the idiotic "War on Terror"--they are old! Even academics who find it just as stupid as I do keep their mouths shut, even if they have tenure.
The same goes for this "Intellectual Property" debate. I would be shocked if there weren't many young artists who agree with every word that Bowie says about the subject. Still, they keep a low profile and don't rock the boat, because we live in a climate where that gets you severely punished. I wasn't there, but I suspect in the 60's and 70's people faced the same dilemmas, but they said "fuck it, I'll say what I think and see what happens." But then again, maybe the government and the corporations have us under a tighter clamp now than any other time in Western history since constitutions started being written.
Sure, we all have a right to free speech, but the system has made it so that speaking freely is severely against our interest. This means that even though we won't go to jail, we will get fired, spied upon, harassed, and vilified as friends of terrorists. (How long will it take before somebody argues that abolishing IP laws would be "caving in to terrorism"? Surely they will find some stupid, tenuous connection.)
Anyway, this era makes me sick. You people suck. I might as well burn my books now to save you the trouble, because when these old-school rebels die, nobody will raise their voice in protest.
There are actualy quite a few groups that sell their music without heavy marketing. In fact, if you're good, marketing really isn't a big issue as word of mouth will get you places. So the only thing that's really left is the mass production costs, which could technicaly be filled on a bit by bit basis. Who ever decided that you needed to press a thousand copies of an album before you even begin selling? Start small. But regardless, I see your point for a need to have some way of paying for production up front, but I would like to see some numbers on whether an artist would be better off (short and long term) signing a contract, or taking out loans and doing the production themselves.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
So unless we want 'art' to become merely the realm of the fabulously wealthy, copyright is indeed a good idea.
-
>you wouldn't have ever heard of any of the artists you listen to today
:)
Huh, I wasn't under the impression that all the good electronica was produced by Sony.
Well, I'm thumbing through my collection, and other than a couple of virgin releases, I don't see much by major name labels.
I could live without those two CDs
>The costs involved in producing and massively distributing an album are so high that no startup band could ever hope to afford them.
Yes, I mean it costs me $20 a month for a usenet account, and it costs about $100 a month for a business-level high speed internet connection, so at $120 a month to post your CD to usenet and have everyone in the world have it, I'd say the distribution costs are massively high.
As far as producing goes, I again suppose that if your entire band can't afford the couple of thousand renting a studio for a couple of nights costs, perhaps you're broke and need to MMF?
>they have precisely a snowball's chance in Hell of distributing nationwide.
When did Usenet go offline? I seem to have missed this...
I did notice in another post you complain about pots making downloading slow.
Well, you can download overnight one high-quality album over most POTS lines (I know because I've done that before I got high-speed, and I connected at 21.6k).
One album a night is more than most people can afford with the current $20 an album system.
I also noticed you mentioned that standalone MP3 players are expensive. I suggest you look more closely. It cost me $75 for my last portable MP3 player. If that's expensive, I'd like to buy my chocolate bars for $0.25 each again!
And yes, this MP3 player has a simple headphone out jack. I had to buy a "special" cable from my mini-mart to convert from a headphone jack to RCA jacks. Cost me $3...
(sorry if this double posts... slashdot crapped out last time)
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
First to go is the definition of Copy.
Not the mechanical act. That is now cost free and not sustainable as an economic base (Sorry xxAAs but you're gonna die. There's no reason for you to exist anymore. When I'm picking up the cost for storage on my own box and the cost of transmission to my own, the thing is MINE, not yours.)
Copyright is going to go, uh, right, back to the _person(s)_ who created the work.
Given the economies of scale (the internet makes China look like a local market,) and of distribution, (got a [hosted] server hooked up to a T3 switch? You're a media giant,) and the ability to charge for one-time or subscription access to a web page with content scaled for content (sampling, scaling,) combined with the IPv6 capability to identify exactly where a message or some content originated from, the artists are about to start raking in the money themselves.
I think that the packaged album is going to be a casualty if this shift though. If there's only ONE song you want to listen to, you shouldn't be stuck with the other ones that the company decided they wanted to use to fill out the rest of the CD.
The xxAAs are going to wither on the vine. I don't think that Hillary Rosen could hum anything I'd want to hear. Nor do I want to see Jack Valenti's holiday slides.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Right now we've got Habib Koite, Vaartinaa (sp?), Baaba Maal and sundry other artists in the CD changer. Not a one has a major label deal. All are on indies of various sorts. Somehow I managed to hear about these bands/people, most likely because I actually listen to community/public radio instead of Clearchannel.
Major labels are nothing more than a scheme to spoonfeed pablum to people who are too lazy to actually have any taste.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
Maybe he's changed his mind since, but didn't Bowie sue Vanilla Ice for sampling "Under Pressure" without paying royalties? And now he's arguing that copyright is obsolete? WTF?
And further, much of his revenue came from live shows. How is one supposed to use that with a medium that does not lend itself to live performance? Such as books or articles.
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The whole point of the bonds is that Bowie is not collecting royalties from those songs anymore. He securitized the future income stream of the royalties from his existing songs, and sold the securities (bonds) to other people. He got $55 million up front; the people who own his bonds get the royalties from now on. Bowie no longer has any claim on that income.
I think, as the legendary CmdrTaco once said, it will be somewhere inbetween.
There is so much FUD and flaming about the future and viability of OpenSource and FairUse on the one hand and ClosedSource and IPR on the other these days that it is really difficult to make up one's mind as to what one supports.
As artists or a coders, a lot of us seem to have that idealistic streak in us that we like to share our creative efforts and quite a few of us enjoy being able to look at the sources of works without having to fear harrasment from some omnipotent Agency or company. On the other hand we need to eat and most of us wouldn't say no to high salary or royalty checks. The problem is that it seems that the big salary and royalty checks mostly go to those who control the big companies or organisations, not to small artists or codeslaves in their cubicles. I think that Bowie is right in that the situation will change, but not in the direction it will take.
It seems, gathering from the J Carroll-esque and MS funded FUD that the boys in Redmond are very, very frightened of the effect that OSS is having, even if they probably wouldn't really stand to lose much in real world terms because of their huge dominance on PC OS's. The same for the big Labels and Studios. They seem scared. I can't imagine that the amount of money that these companies and organisations are spending on their campaigns is negligable and they do stand a good chance of using their massive lobbying presence in the law and media to eventually sway a lot of things their way.
On the other side the sheer inescapability of the fact that the GPL keeping code alive in spite of attempts to kill the projects and the true benefits of many people doing small tasks on a large project and peer review and feedback means that OSS is steadily gaining ground. There is no way that Linux/Moz or OpenOffice are going to go away. And the non ownership means that people who are scared of being blackmailed by corporations can use it without fear and this fact seems to be a major factor in the industry. With musicians starting to realise that they stand to gain much more in terms of "street credibility" by releasing their works over the net, and having very little to lose in any case, the big labels are getting caught in a bind. Do they try to fight these musicians whom they don't usually treat with much respect in any case, and risk boycott actions snowballing against them (where is Metallica today?) or do they go with the flow.
I think that companies like Apple with it's open core OS, Darwin and closed UI, and SuSE's UnitedLinux and RedHat moving to models that comply with the GPL but no longer do everything for you for free (compile it yourself) are starting to address some of the shortcomings of the everything for free as in beer model. Likewise I think that the music industry, in the end will probably go for a compromise where lower quality recordings are available for download and if you want something better you pay.
There is a lot to be said for compromise.
magazines got their articles from indepedent authors and paid them accordingly. however, some unscrupulous editors would steal articles from other magazines and not compensate the authors. as such, these magazines could charge cheaper prices and would outsell those legitimate magazines that did pay their authors.
Who got screwed? The author. This is why copyright exists, and why it will not go away and why it should not go away.
You completely ignored the magazine article author, which is the principal form of most writers' income.
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Sharing isn't nice when it involves breaking your word, even when it's implicitly given. And unless it's explicitly stated, a content provider is ALWAYS asking you to not "share"...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Or how about having NYT set up slashdot.nytimes.com, which /.ers could use instead of www.nytimes.com? This way, we wouldn't have to register and they would still know that /.ers were reading the site, so they could still target their ads. Both sides win.
At least this way they can be sure their server was slashdotted.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Personaly, I'd rather my money go to the artist themselves. I paid for the music, not the media or the packaging or the advertisement.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
That has been the justification for some of the stupidest decisions in our history. Lets make sure we are not rebelling, but are in actuallity preserving what this country was founded for (and by). If you do not like what this country stands for (and I am talking about in relation to its founding principles not what it has changed into) then please leave this country and let other enjoy it. Just as I would never walk into your home and demand you let me in, feed me the food I love and let your daughter and wife have sex with me... I do not accept any attempt to destroy my liberty and freedom by 'well meaning' individuals.
Notice though that 'well meaning' is the chant for how we got into this mess in the first place, so it is not an issue of left vs right, or any other crap like that. It is a 'let me be or not' fight.
Should IP be done away with, or like violent crime should the abuse and misuse of it be what is dealt with. After all, who doesn't use knives in their homes. Who does not drive? Yet cars and sharp objects (including sticks) are the leading causes of accidental death, that includes drunk drivers and rage drivers as well. Then we have murder stats... tisk tisk tisk. Like 'hate crimes' we must ensure that we do not end up watering down the existing 'responsibility contract' more than it already has. (i.e. all murder/beatings are hate crimes, why water those down by introducing ideology?)
And so now he's supporting the destruction of the whole system by which he used to get that income, since he doesn't believe it has a future. Hee! I love it. Kinda sucks to be Prudential though :D
Only for about the next 10 years...
Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?" No. But the man has my respect for setting an example and putting more than idle chatter behind it. His bowieart.com project, for example, is another way of using his power to give back to the kinds of people he was and hung out with (art students and new artists). He's an expert at the uses of media, and open to trying new ideas. I think the Creative Commons initiative is also a good similarly-minded idea to look at.
Copyrights are through
:)
And there's nothing you can do
(cheesey, yes, but somebody had to do it
If you're looking for thousands of young people marching in D.C. or holding sit-ins on college campuses, then yes you're going to get the impression that there aren't any young rebels. I, and I'd suspect many other young people, have no interest in being on the receiving end of tear gas, a policeman's nightstick, incarceration, or hot lead in the name of idealism when it's unlikely to result in any real change or even significant media attention. I'm a rebel, but a pragmatic one. I know plenty of others and they are similarly pragmatic. We'll speak out when there is an opportunity for real change to occur and take what individual actions we can take to work for incremental changes. It makes no sense for Gen-Xers to take on the system directly. Just from the standpoint of demographics, we're vastly outnumbered by aging boomers (who are now the supporters of the status quo). We change what we can, subvert the system when given opportunity, and bide our time until the "Me Generation" steps aside so we can fix the world (if the planet is still inhabitable).
The courts are slow and inefficient, even when they are honest. I have not heard of a single case where copyright has been enforced. Every so often, the police do a big public action where they raid the CD markets, but the same sellers spring up somewhere else. The record companies do a bit of anti-piracy advertising but in general, I think that they have realize that there is not much that they can do, so they have reduced the prices of official CDs, and just resigned themselves to it. This means that artists make money, as far as I can see, by advertising, and by touring. There are five or six big casinos who hire big name Russian artists, and very small-name Western artists (e.g. Boney M) to play as a means of attracting punters. This works for the bands that appeal to an older audience, and you get some of the bars hiring the younger bands. The teenybopper bands spend most of their time doing regional tours, as far as I can see. This presumably means that the record companies take a more direct role in their acts, especially in the tours, since this is the main revenue source. They all have videos, and these are paid for in order to increase profile for the touring audience. Presumably the record companies are investing in acts now in the hope that they can also make some money off the official CDs (there are people who prefer to be honest, or certain of the product's quality) and will make more, when they find a way to beat the illegal CD market. I think that this is not that different from Bowie's vision of the future, and I can't be sure if it will make it harder or easier for small bands to develop. It seems to me that you still need record labels, or management companies, or some corporate entity that can help an artist become famous, just as they do now. For one thing, most artists make bad businessmen or women, regardless of their field. Of course, there are exceptions, like Madonna, but these are basically exceptions. There was another good article in the NYT over the weekend about how hard it is to persuade newly rich artists to properly handle their finances. Bottom line - corporates will always find a way to make money, but they will have to be flexible in doing this. It probably means that the music corporations will get bigger, not smaller, and will start to look after artists' tours as well. And all their image rights, and publicity appearances - I'm sure there's something in William Gibson about all this.
The music industry has seen the light with great clarity for quite a while. That's why we got the DMCA and why we're getting the too-long-to-pronounce law. Don't phrase this as a matter of clueless old farts who should "see the light" and join the internet age. It's a matter of an entrenched, wealthy, intelligent elite which will fight to the death to preserve and enhance its privileges and income.
The implication of this "see the light" comment is that the music industry should adapt to changing conditions. But an excellent quote which I can't find right now says, in effect: "Individual organisms do not adapt to changing conditions - the species adapts via the death of ill-adapted organisms".
Gee, 99% of the 60s radicals wanted an excuse to do drugs and have sex. They railled against society and used it as an excuse for permiscuity. They were all then extremely comfortable moving out to the suburbs to live in an all-white community without minorities. From these comfortable homes, they shielded their children from society, voted for tough-on-crime measures, and support the war-on-drugs. They are extremely concerned that their children will be exposed to sex and drugs. In a word, the 60s as a culture has been invented by an entire GENERATION of spoiled brats. The "greatest generation" spoiled their children, and to this day they need to assert their superiority over everyone else. Notice that the same "hippies" that spit on our servicemen returning from Vietnam and protested Vietnam are all flying the USA Flag on their SUVs in suburbia?
I watched the past 6 years, it was amazing. We saw young technologists unleash disruptive technology that turned out understanding of retail and markets upside down. Sure the dumb money caused a boom-and-bust, but such is capitalism. There are numerous people publishing on the web, providing information. Sure most of the "clicks" are with a few major companies, but so what. Most of the time I don't need unusual information, major news sites handle my needs, but the wealth of information available when I am looking is astounding.
Look buddy, I have nothing against 17-22 years old that idolize the 60s and rail against the establishment. Good for you, have fun. Just try to realize when you're sitting in a coffee shop talking about the establishment being pathetic that you are full of shit. I love my lefty friends, but I also know to laugh at them when they talk about the evils of corporate America while sending the credit card bill home to daddy and spending his money.
The thing that makes America work is our willingness to get shit done. The French sit and whine, wanting a 35-hour work week, never to see battle, and a seat at the UN Security Council. Americans understand that when it comes time to do the heavy-lifting, its going to fall on us. While lefties (American and European) seem to have unlimited amounts of energy to bitch and moan about people benefiting from this heavy-lifting, most Americans realize that if the rock is going to move, we're going to move it.
The American people aren't pathetic, you are. Waxing philosophical about the irony of another Cold War ally taking our training and using it against us doesn't help. Facts not in dispute: Hussein (who, along with his sons, is a truly evil individual; which has nothing to do with our hegemonic reasons for fighting Iraq, but his family DOES consist of truly evil people) was dealt with 10 years ago, and may need to be dealt with again. Bin Ladin took our training and build an army for holy war, which is especially ironic given that our friends the Saudis fund it (and they ARE our friends, we back the House of Saud, they keep the oil flowing).
So, we created our nightmares? What's the point? We did what we had to do to win the Cold War, and we did win the Cold War. There are some costs that we are paying now. Most Americans realized that we were going to have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and head off to stop Al Qaeda. Sure most Americans don't understand Islam, have a trivial understanding of why they hate us, but have a terrific understanding of something that you are lacking "They hate us AND our way of life," at least when our way of life involves stationing troops in Arabia to keep the corrupt House of Saud in power (which we explain as keeping Iraq out of Saudi Arabia).
These "old radicals" were absurd in their day, and absurd now. The difference is that they were revered by the suburbanite middle class when they were "hippies" so they get to go on camera and be silly.
Geeze buddy, grow up.
Alex
Bzzt! Wrong answer, thanks for playing.
Baaba Maal has no contract with Island. His latest was released on Palm Pictures.
Varttina is currently available on North Side, a specialty label that appears to associated with the "Boiled in Lead" crowd.
Just because a major released one or two albums by a given artist doesn't mean that the artist is a "major label artist". Sometimes a major will take a gamble on a well established small market artist, and drop 'em like a rock when they don't sell enough in the U.S. market. Believe it or not there are people working for the majors that care deeply about music and want to see their organizations put out good stuff.
I'll grant your point that most "indies" are really just arms of the corporate giants, but I far prefer alternative tentacles.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
Bowie laughs, says, "Because they're crazy. I don't care about any format; I download it from the Internet."
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill