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Gabriel and Eno Start Digital Music Artist Union
An anonymous reader writes "We have long heard stories about how the record companies cheat their own artists with audit techniques that would make Enron blush. They are already applying the same techniques to the revenues they draw from digital download sites like Apple iTunes, which is one reason many artists have refused to allow their music be sold through them (those who can control it at least). Looking to take a stand in the digital music arena before these practices become status quo Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are starting a new union the "Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists" or MUDDA. Gabriel, co-founder of OD2 - an iTunes competitor - has that company as a first source to negotiate terms with the new union."
He's done a lot of work for charity, and lots of his songs point out inequality/bigotry/social issues. I have a lot of respect for a bloke who can make good music with such activism inherent in the whole thing. It'll take a guy with this level of credibility to really hit the music industry where it hurts. ... cos basically we want to reform it, so we can start actually buying CD's and so on again, right ? Or download (and pay for) them from the internet... Oh happy day...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
This sounds all well and good from what's in the article. But what are it's chances for success??
I'm not bashing it at all, I'd really love to see it succeed.
Well, all the shit moving around music and copyright I think only is leaving a poor image of the artists. I mean, there must be a large bunch of them who like their word, want to earn their living, but are not benefiting of all the DMCA noise around them. Selling by themselves their music in the Internet are good news. The money for those who work, the artists, not for intermediates.
We need something that did what the old mp3.com did, create a direct link between the artists and the public. The record industry as it is today is so totally redundant.
Give me quality music that is digitally available, rated through a balanced criticism system like Slashdot, that I can copy onto my systems and play as I like, and I will subscribe tomorrow.
Anyhow, I always liked Gabriel and Eno. Go, guys!
Ceci n'est pas une signature
"MUDA" is a portuguese word to mean "DUMB".
<smallprint>
female form. double "d"'s do not change the pronounce
</smallprint>
-><- no
So where are Prince and Bowie? The four of them are the big names that are getting into this in a very constructive way and I think that they would be a powerhouse of influence.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Do I undertand that the problem is that the record companies are NOT passing the low manufacturing costs on to the musician? Or is it that Apple is doing something bad?
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
The real issue is going to be "How to make these Unions work within the larger global music arena". Peter Gabriel has made strides in bringing global music to western ears, (among much other musical work, I first heard the Qawwali of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan thanks to Real World Records) but how to incorporate all that talent into an architecture that can help promote and disseminate funds to those artists around the world is daunting. I guess, like the model held forth with the small independent music stores, a healthy music industry (like the computer industry and most biological systems) needs diversity and the fewer huge corporations in music demanding defined profit margins the better.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
All of those "hidden" promoting/distributing/in-my-pocket costs that have long been a part of the music model need to be exposed. It's the only way anyone is going to get a handle on how much money is really being spent and/or given to the artists. Nice in principle but hell to actually implement - existing status quo has too much money (or lawyers) behind it to sit idly by and watch their outdated business model die.
loose != lose: My belt is too loose, thus I'll lose my modesty shortly.
Just a bit verbose, eh? Wouldn't Digitally Available Artists' Union function just as well?
What if the hokey-pokey really is what it's all about?
If you are responsible for a product and find out the
people who are selling it for you are crooks, you would find
someone else or do it yourself. The same as if you had
been ripped by a bad accountant or lawyer.
The mafia went straight, maybe there is hope for the RIAA.
And as an aside, I wouldn't pay a dollar for a song with
no physical medium when the artist is only getting a few
pennies of it. No way.
No offense to Eno (whose music I like) and Gabriel (whose music I'm indifferent to) fans, but in order for something like this to be a success, for better or for worse, you need loud participation from musicians who haven't plateaued caereer-wise and are bigger-name "pop" musicians.
The former provides more financial clout and the latter more name recognition and clout. Of course it stands to reason that wildly popular pop musicians are likely to think that the current system works since they're benefitting from it (despite the longer-term consequences) or lack the business savvy or "political" interest to do so.
But I don't think a poorly named initiative by two musicians whose careers, however successful, are largely over and done, is going to do much, since these artists aren't as much of a PR or business influence on the industry. But I do applaud the idea behind it, and think that they'd probably be better off funding a PR campaign hilighting the RIAAs bullshit accounting and police-state tacticts towards old ladies with iMacs.
When performers no longer need the distribution and advertising services they provide, RIAA and the big labels will go away, or at least shrink to manageable size. Until that time, they will continue to prosper and pursue their agenda. As long as they effectively control distribution the situation will continue more or less as it is, a stalemate between producers and consumers of media. Who better to hasten their demise than the artists themselves?
...at camp Grenada.
I'll bet that you're an old fogey, just like me ....
Unions definitely have their costs, but if you think they haven't been good for workers, you don't know what working conditions were like before there were unions. I've talked to my grandfather (who was anti-union) and my mother, his daughter, who was mildly pro-union. And both agreed that unions improved the working conditions and pay for the worker over the long term.
There's a couple of disadvantages to unions:
1) like any center of power, they tend to become controlled by those more interested in power than anything else.
2) maintaining a union isn't a cost-free activity. There is significant overhead.
3) unions get their power by uniting the labor force, so people who don't feel that the union is fairly representing them tend to be abused
OTOH:
1) the center of power that the union represents is generally less than that of the company, so it tends to be less corrupt
2) every action in a system has it's costs. Unions create a focus of power intended to balance against an alternate center of power, but most of the participants aren't interested in balance, they want to win. This creates excess cost above the minimum necessary.
3) the classes of people who are abused by the union were abused more by the company powers before the union existed. (A sour truth to the people the unions doesn't adequately support, but a truth.)
Now my sources are personal, so I can't share them with you. But they are from people who lived through the period that the unions were being formed. And they weren't pro-union groups. My grandfather was an independant contractor, an unsuccessful farmer (he wasn't a good farmer, so he kept earning money as an electrician, returning to his farm, and loosing it, etc.)
If there's a lot of free space, then there are (moderately) good arguments against unions, and against welfare for the non-handicapped. People can homestead and work the land. (You have to grow up with the right skills, but that's part of the environment.) OTOH, when everything is owned by someone else, the only thing you have is power politics, and you are at the low end of the pole. This means you organize legally to ensure a decent life, or you act illegally to do the same thing. You figure the costs, and act on that. Unions are one way of society making it reasonable to choose the legal path.
Actually, there is evidence, though hardly conclusive it's slightly stronger than merely suggestive, that this is well understood by the government. Before the recent decades of "crackdown" on "crime" they took steps to make the slave labor of prisoners profitable to certain manufacturers. (I suppose it's one way to compete against jobs being outsourced overseas.) And in California, at least, the Prison Guards' Union has one of the strongest lobbying groups in the state. Considerably stronger than the Teachers' Union.
Simple pronouncements in this area bespeak ignorance, so I'll avoid one. It sure would be nice to come up with an answer that didn't, by creating a new centralization of power, start the cycle of problems all over again. But merely noticing that there are problems doesn't qualify as a solution. And clearly there isn't a good side, as every group is madly struggling to win on it's own terms. For some it's for survival, for others it's due to greed, but it's the struggle that's most destructive, and to me this appears due to the existence of large centralizations of power. (Lesser centralizations cause lesser problems, and at that point other problems begin to dominate.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This phenomenon strikes at the heart of the issue underlying all of copyright: who controls? Copyright has always been an attempt at striking the balance between artist and consumer. It is artificially constructed because copyrightable works are easily copyable; it is an acknowledgement of the problem that rampant copying will bankrupt the artist.
This MUDDA is an attempt to shift some control back to artists, particularly in the album vs. single arena. I understand the motivation, but I question the implementation. If artists really want that kind of control, let them either produce albums that are good enough induce consumers to purchase and consume them as whole ablums, or let them distribute a whole ablum as a single mp3 file, and let me decide whether or not to purchase it as such.
CDs (and LPs) have track segmentation and track listing to facilitate track-based consumption. A shift away from that consumer empowerment is nothing more than ceding power to artists. I am agnostic on whether this is overall good or bad, as certain albums are much better when consumed as such and not as discrete singles. I am reluctant however, to allow the artist to make that determination ex-ante. I'd rather do it myself.
The thing I think is missing from the whole power-to-the-artists movement is an open source project for a good site. There are now a number of sites offering music online which have a more direct connection between the artist and the fans, but they all work differently, and most of them are terribly unusable. It would be really neat to have a bunch of sites with a solid back-end, matching interfaces, and site-specific skins. From there, you could have cross-site searches and accounts.
The ideal for a music label should be that someone with well-defined taste in music finds artists they like and tells consumers with similar tastes about them. Being a good person to run a label doesn't have anything to do with being good at programming or interface design.
Eno is GOD.
Okay, let me get this straight: iTunes is charging what, something like $ 0.90 per tune, so that the numerical equivalent of a 13-song CD is going to cost you approximately $13, i.e., the same you'd pay for it at my local discount CD store or Wal Mart ? And you get to pay that same amount for a product with no liner notes, no art work, no jewel case, and in an inferior audio format ? Now, I realize that you have the ability to download whatever and whenever, but does that really make up for losing those amenities while continuing to assist the expansion of the industry's already enormous profit margins ? Remember, when you buy this stuff you're still supporting the RIAA and the MPAA, both of which are aggresively anti-privacy and anti-choice. In the RIAA's instance they are also very aggresively anti-music, being primarily interested in the continued careers of their singing cash cows (Rod Stewart, Elton John, Celine Dion, Carlos Santana, Britney, Madonna, and the rest of that crapazola crew).
(rant-on)
I'm reminded of my chain-smoking friend who insists he's a Democrat, yet with every pack he smokes he's contributing to the success of the Republicans he so despises. Say what you will, but in a corporate plutocracy (i.e., the new USA) you vote with your purchases, not your ballot. Organizations such as the RIAA are also behind the continuing assault on the public domain and the further restriction of your rights of ownership. The only way to stop such people from acquiring more power over your life is for you to *stop giving it to them* !
(rant-off)
Btw, I'm obviously not very savvy re: iTunes so I welcome any and all civil corrections to my assumptions.
That's got to be the first Alan Sherman reference on ./
The Practices they use and their Business model will be their own demise. We are starting to see fewer and fewer new "Hit" Artists evey year.. How long will it be before these arists come togther when thier Recording Contracts Expire and Form their own Internet Related Distribution system That doesn't bend them over and Comepletely Circrumvent the RIAA... The RIAA is shouting at the top of their lungs Its not about the music.. Its about money... Which for the most part alot of artists do not see it that way.. Money is secondary to the music.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Roughly translated, MUDDA is ||\/||-||_||-||)-||)-//-\\ in at least one dialect of l337 speak. Coincidence? I think not.
True story.
So Gabriel stops his music from getting on iTunes, with apparently little effect, as I can still find 8 of his albums. Then he launches his own Windows Media-based service. Then he starts a little music mafia- er, I mean, Union to get others to keep their music off iTunes. What a great deal...
Hmm, a musicians union - you'd think someone would have though of that before now.
Who is this "Prince" you refer to? I know no artist by the name of "Prince."
True story.
- Allow people to music music and make a buck.
- Don't tie artists into involuntary servititude contracts
In the end it killed Factory and the Hacienda, but at least they made some very good, and important, music before it died.
Shut yo' mouth!
They just don't want the shaft.
Then we can dig it.
With appologies to everyone. Bye bye Karma.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Good to see that Peter Gabriel isn't just lying down like some lamb on Broadway. He's not just saying "Excuse me" and waiting for the big one. Early on he saw the potential of digital downloading to change the industry and said "here comes the flood." Rather than getting humdrum or doing a slowburn over others controlling the medium, he got some perspective and decided to DIY and get on the air himself. Now he's having a wonderful day in what was a one way world sending out music through the wire. I don't remember any musical artist getting such a start on changing the industry. I'm sure record companies will consider him an intruder, say "you're not one of us" and claim he has no self control. I'm sure they'd prefer he remain a wallflower instead of saying "I have the touch" and bestowing the kiss of life to independent artists. This will shock the monkeys at the RIAA, who have gone gaga over downloading, and would much rather draw the curtains and see artists remain quiet and alone, or under their lock and key. But Gabriel was disturbed, troubled and in doubt about where the industry was going, and with an open mind and a passion for music, he decided to march to a different drum. Now he's telling artists "Don't give up, you can make it big time. Come talk to me," and initiating them into the secret world of rights contracts and digital licensing agreements. He saw that this was the time of the turning, and he's giving artists a sense of home and putting them on the map. He refused to believe there was no way out of the dilemma. He drew back the darkness, cut through the signal to noise ratio, said "there has to be more than this," saw it was high time for artists to start growing up about the business and technical sides of the industry, and then lead the way. So, thanks to his passion, things are on the way up for all of us!
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Is there a decent computer professionals union in Bay Area yet? I know about outsourcing, but it's already happening anyway without any unions and perhaps jobs that have to stay local can be used as a leverage.
An acronym has to be pronounceable (definitionally and functionally); anyone can say "muh-dah" (MUDDA) but who's going to say "dah-oo" (DAAU)?
G
I'd prefer to join their org if it were just the "Union of Digital Distributed Artists". It's more to the point, drops the hype, and is a better pun.
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make install -not war
If the artist so requests, CDBaby will also shop the CD to download services like Rhapsody, BuyMusic, Emusic, the new Napster, AOL's MusicNet, and MusicMatch (no iTunes yet). The cool part is that CDBaby only takes 5% of what the download services pay them, passing on the rest, which is about 60 cents per track, to the artist, and when they do that they forward the detailed accounting report to the artist.
This is great, CDBaby has an impeccable track record of honesty and fair dealing with the artists, and 60 cents is more per track than what the vast majority of signed artists get per entire CD. But the potential for accounting shenanigans perpetrated by the download services themselves is high. They could simply lie, or fail to correct some error in their accounting software, and the artist would be none the wiser. CDBaby already helps independant artists by harnessing the collective bargaining power of all its members, but the additional pressure and oversight of a union like Mudda could help keep the pressure on.
Wouldn't ODD be a simpler acronym?
Boo, no OGG support. We welcome the MUDDA initiative though.
Co-operation beats competition
There needs to be a partner organization, perhaps named:
Fraternity of Artists of Digitally Downloaded Electronic Recordings
aka FADDER. Then in a joing assembly with both groups, the MC could start off by saying:
Hello MUDDER, Hello FADDER
The fact that on an open you-upload-your-music website there's going to be a lot talentless bands and noise tracks is a serious problem.
It is the reason that the music industry and record business exists as it does in its present form. Primarily as a filter for junk music. As long as it costs real money to put commit music to an unalterable disk format and distribute these disks to the world, the music business will be needed as a junk filter.
For U-upload music websites, allow me to suggest a game of 'musical chairs'. This refers to a children's game in the USA (possibly other places also) where there are a row of chairs and a number of children who walk or run around the chairs while a piece of music is being played. There is one less chair than the number of children. When the music stops unexpectedly, the children try to sit on one of the empty chairs as quickly as possible. One child is left with chair and the contest begins again. The last child (the fastest child or biggest child) is the winner.
A website would accept only 100 recordings a day as a set. Each day ten would be removed from the set until only ten tracks remain. Those remaining tracks would be added to the permanent downloadable tracks of the website. People would vote as to which tracks would be allowed to remain listed. The junk and vanity noise tracks would quickly disappear.
People visiting the site could download an MP3 'sampler' of ten-second segments sampled from the middle of the hundred tracks.
It's an idea to deal with the problem of the vast amounts of junk music that would be uploaded to an open MP3 website.
What I keep seeing here and on other sites is a fundamental lack of understanding of what the RIAA and "record labels" do, why they exist and why they will continue to exist. I keep seeing things about how the RIAA has a flawed business model, that it is tied to distributing physical media and since this is no longer necessary, they will eventually disappear.
Well, there are two important things that need to be considered first. The main point - which addresses MUDDA is the idea of "artist management".
For the most part, in this country we have seen examples over and over again of artists "making it big" and either through their own mismanagement or being taken by others end up with nothing. The artists that can both perform and manage their business effectively are few and far between. I believe there are fundamentally different skills required, so a good business manager may not make a very good singer/songwriter/performer/etc.
The primary thing that the "record label" does isn't so much personal finance management for the artist, but manages the "business" of being a performer. This involves promotion, booking venues, sponsors and so on. One of the main reasons the "label" takes so much is that a lot of this activity is done before the first "big hit". If it never comes, then a lot was spent without anything in return.
Eliminating the "label" is certainly possible - you end up with lots of greedy business managers instead of having them all under one roof. Also, the promotional model changes a bit. Instead of signing on a number of artists with the hope that 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 makes it big, a manager basically says to come back when you have some money to pay. Today, this is how a lot of authors end up. Steven King doesn't have a lot of trouble finding a manager, but if you aren't known you aren't going to get someone to take your book to a publisher. You try yourself and maybe it gets published, maybe not.
Of course, this means that artists that have wads of money to start with can promote their stuff. We have all seen this in other areas, where some rich guy buys a magazine and can publish whatever he wants to. Usually goes bust in a while, but not always. It transforms it into an elitist club that only the wealthy can play at. I'm sure you know of at least one magazine like this.
Now MUDDA could provide promotional services for "their" artists. How does this make them any different from a record label? The big different 50 years ago was the ability to produce and ship records. Now, I am not sure I see the difference at all. Both fulfill the same function.
Then there is the second point. Why do artists need promotion at all? Isn't all this advertising just a waste of time because people will eventually find out about new artists on the Internet?
Yeah. Sure. At some point in the future where the words "digital divide" have passed into history. Important clue - not everybody that buys music is online. More importantly, not everyone is able to be online. For one reason or another, lots of folks don't have a full-time broadband connection at home or office. How do you reach these people? Offline promotion.
A lot of music is bought "on impulse", maybe after hearing it on the radio or playing in a mall. How did that happen? Promotion. Radio stations play what they are paid to play.
So, somebody has to continue to do the promotion of music. If an artist doesn't, their market penetration will be that of Gentoo vs. Windows. Will it be the artist doing that promotion directly? I doubt it very much.
Could be worse. Joan Baez is working at a dinner theater in San Francisco. Cher does infomercials.
They've NEVER (in the long run) been beneficial to workers OR employers.
Sweden has something like 90% unionized workers. They also have 5 weeks of paid vacation.
The USA has less than 15% unionization, they have 2 weeks of paid vacation.
I think most workers would prefer the former.
Say whatever you want about employer conditions, but Sweden hasn't exactly degenerated into a third-world nation, has it?
He also talks about artists giving away their product not making any sense and DRM almost in the same breath.
Not a promising start imho.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
One thing to keep in mind before getting too excited about anything replacing the major label system as it stands, is that the labels are capable of providing artists with exposure and press far beyond what any independant union, CDBaby, etc. can do. And it's that marketing and promotion money that the most valuable to an aspiring band, not the money to make the actual music.
If you're talking about being a truly successful act, making the music is the easy part. It's getting people to buy it that's hard. It's great to have alternative methods to get your music out to people, but really, if there are ~54,000 bands on CDBaby, what are your chances of significantly increasing your sales simply by having your music there. It helps, but nothing like signing with a label.
Maybe, with critical mass online distribution will be able to have the exposure and clout the labels currently possess, but be careful, that's just putting the power of king-makers into different hands, that hopefully are more benevolent to the artist, but there is no guarantee they will be.
Check out what Robert Fripp has to say and the DiciplineGlobalMobile label.
Chekc out http://www.disciplineglobalmobile.com/diary/
an excerpt:
Business imposes limitations and restrictions upon music and musicians. This is inevitable. But the mainstream music industry often, even mostly, determines and directs the music which is available to the public. Business may legitimately recognise areas of public interest which are not being addressed, but should not make musical choices for musicians. Neither should business apply pressure to make musicians conform to industry "common practices" and concerns. Industry agencies do this in a number of ways, some of which are honest and some of which involve lying, misrepresentation and threats, even corruption of the musician's better nature. Some are subtle and invidious. Some are blatant. Some are the result of an inexorable and ongoing embrace. They are rarely innocent.
We as a community have many freedoms because we are all willing to fight for them. Love him or not Richard Stallman has done a lot for this community and others like it. Someone needs to champion the music community in the same way
"They say travel broadens the mind, so I went over the falls in a barrel." -Thomas Dolby
[...]
"Gabriel said he could not understand big music stars that advocated free music downloads while accepting big cheques from record companies at the same time.
"After all, most artists depended on record sales for up to 60% of their income, he said.
"Only superstars could afford to give away their music for free, because they had other opportunities for making money."
MUDDA is doing their members a disservice by entrenching them in the 20th Century model. DRM and paid-only downloads just simulate the bottlenecks of distrubtion on physical media, with somewhat lower costs. The artists with "other opportunities for making money" need to be superstars to succeed in that model. But with free ($ & liberty) downloads, artists can achieve that status by aggregating widely distributed niches around the Net, at any time after the release (not just in the first few weeks). And the same infrastructure offers a level playing field for selling into those "other opportunities", to fairly compete with the superstars. The music consumer culture is changing with P2P and Net community/distribution - wearing the same T-shirt as every other metalhead is out, and obscure references to flashes in the video pan are in. MUDDA is better positioned than the old record weasels to ride that zeitgeist - if they squander it, they'll drag down their member artists while they fiddle on the deck with the rest of their Titanic industry, as their fans race for the lifeboats.
"The time I like is the rush hour, cos I like the rush
The pushing of the people - I like it all so much
Such a mass of motion - do not know where it goes
I move with the movement and
- Peter Gabriel: "I Have the Touch", _Security_
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make install -not war
Am I the only one who sees the strong similarity between Britney Spears and Brigitte Bardot, the early 1960's French movie star?
Every year Britney looks more and more like Bardot.
It brings to mind the observation by Camille Paglia that the entertainment and movie industry recycles the same 'personae' every generation. The same faces, bodies, character types keep reappearing in mass media with different names.
He seems to be talking about some "mid-level" artists or something. Most "unknowns" make almost nothing off record sales -- they make far more on live shows. Many of them can give the music away for free because it increases their listening audience, who go to their concerts and/or buy their merchandise (including paying for a better quality CD than downloaded mp3s). There's also the "older artist" category like Janis Ian who also get the same increase in audience & sales by giving music away. So it's not just big stars.
AFAIK CDBaby artists have been in the iTunes Music Store for some months now.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Chuck D was angry over the label telling him he could not post his own music and Polygram even threatened to sue if the tracks were not removed. This was before Mp3s and filesharing were in the press much. Here is a quote from Chuck D on the matter:
From News.com article: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-218807.html?legacy=c net
For a CD sale the label pays the artist about 13% of wholesale, minus various charges like packaging deductions, to recoup against all advances. In a licensing scenario where, for example, a recording is synchronized in a movie or TV show, the labels pays 50% of revenue without any deductions.
The labels licensed some of their catalogs to Apple but want to treat that revenue like a CD sale at 13% and not as licensing revenue at 50%. That is why in large part some of the more popular artists with more leverage have been holding back on granting permission. It is also probably the major obstacle to record labels licensing for P2P sharing.
The whole thing will come to a head later this year when the record labels must issue royalty statements to the artists showing how they treated the iTunes revenue. Gabriel and Eno are organizing artists for that battle.
Music fans should be organzing too .
Most unknowns don't make money playing music at all they make music by having another job, sometimes it is in the music industry, but usually it's doing something like tending bar, or writing software. Playing live makes them almost nothing. Most venues will only pay about $100 for an opening band, which rarely covers expenses if they had to travel at all. However if they wrote their own songs they make at least 10 cents a song sold (for a 12 song album, thats a $1.20 an album). Most unknowns also have very good contracts, because; they don't spend that much on production, they generally pay their own production costs, and their label just does distribution. If you want to know more about the costs of playing live see this article about playing Irving Plaza in NYC and Playing All Ages Shows and the econmics of venues by Man or Astroman?.
rememebr little jimmy? the downloadder?
He got eatten, by a RIAA lawyer...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
hey i love peter gabriel, and have all his works (including xplora1) but he tends to be a little flaky about this kinda stuff, he loves to be on the bleeding edge so much that he often forgets to follow through.
xplora1 is a great example. its basically a montage of quicktime movies (ugh) along with some really cool 360-degree panaoramic photos of his studios, all plastered together in a pretty interesting html frontend, way ahead of its time, but antiquated by todays standards. Hey pete, im dying to see xplora2! this time use a lil bit higher resolution than 320x240 please.
notice no other groups / artists decided to jump on his 1-horse multimedia bandwagon. perhaps the idea needed another push?
anyway, in 10 years will MUDDA be the same as xplora1 is now? an obscure note in the minds of petes loyal fans, but forgotten by everyone else?
i hope not, but ive been watching Pete for a long time, he has a very bad habit of disappearing off the radar for years on end.
and his mother was a MUDDA too?
nt
Absolutely correct. All advances in working conditions and employee benefits are directly and solely the result of warm-hearted and beneficent business owners consistently placing the health and happiness of employees above their own profits.
Who, indeed, can consider for even an instant that modern corporations would consider their own profit more important than employee well-being?
Examples of generous and good-hearted behavior abound both in the past and in current times.
Consider the sad fate of some corporations which have chosen to allow themselves to suffer financial setbacks so that loyal employees might be paid and receive value for their own financial investments in the company.
Do not the sad fates of kindly and gentle-hearted companies such as Enron or Global Crossing or Adelphia fill your heart with remorse for their losses while, at the same time, fill it with praise and thankfulness for their generous and selfless management?
I forsee an explosion on the phrase "how can you compete with free"
23 listings on google right now for that EXACT quoted phrase.. I wager by years end it'll be on t-shirts...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This is going to be the actual salvation of bands from the RIAA. Eventually, all the tools they need will be place so that they wont need the RIAA's "help".....they will be able to write, produce, distribute, (and this is the only part not yet complete: get PAID ) for everything they do. Shit, you dont even need actual musicians anymore for some types of music.
Think of enabling tech like GarageBand to be the beginning of the open source of music movement. Now, if Apple REALLY wanted to control the entire industry, he would invent a way for the indies to get paid going thru iTMS without the RIAA taxes. I'm sure that's going to get threatened in the next round of negotations between Apple and the RIAA as leverage for giving Apple more of a cut.
Cut off all the new bands all over the world from the RIAA's grip, using tools like iTMS and GarageBand like apps in the future - thats the way to kill a beast. Go, Go, Gadget Apple.
Bart desperately rushes home from the Try-N-Save to replace Lt. Brodka's message telling of Bart's shoplifting with an Alan Sherman tape:
Homer: Hmm..that's odd. We didn't have any messages when we left.
(Presses button on answering machine)
Answering machine: "Hello Mutta, Hello Fadder, here I am at, Camp Grenada..."
Homer: Marge! Is Lisa at Camp Grenada?
www.epitonic.com
check it out.
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
I'm following the whole mp3 discussion now for a longer time. I don't think record companies should make money of music. I don't even think artists should make that much money of their music. I don't think musicians should start making music because they want to make money or even get rich. I think being an artist means to be free, and I don't think you're free if you _have_ to produce music which fits to a common standard of music to survive.
P.S.: Sorry for my bad english!
>Fraternity of Artists of Digitally Downloaded Electronic Recordings
>aka FADDER.
If instead it were the Best Loved And Crowned King (of) Artists of Digitally Downloaded Elec. Rec.,
we'd have a great tv show.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Maud is an anagram of MUDA
Duma is another anagram of MUDA.
What does this all mean?
Diddly squat.
Have a nice day!
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
sounds good for the artist, but magnatune.com is still better for end users, allowing as it does listening to complete albums in decent mp3. They 'get it' better than any alternative I've seen. If/when you decide to buy you can download a high quality version suitable for burning a cd with, or converting to better quality oggs.
It really bothers me that we're supposed to have to cross-check the music we like to make sure it's not on some RIAA member list before deciding if we should purchase it and enjoy it.
This runs counter to what music's all about in the first place. It should simply be heard and enjoyed.
There is lots of great "underground" music out there, and always will be - but it takes a certain amount of effort to dig through it to find what you like. Some people really enjoy the digging part itself. (Many people take a certain pride in listening to music that they know most other people won't have heard of yet. Maybe they just like feeling more musically "elite" by listening to something unique? Or maybe they really enjoy finding that awesome, previously unheard of, track - buried amongst a bunch of 2nd. rate garbage?) Whatever the case though, these people are in the minority.
The majority of people are more "casual" music listeners. If it's not presented right in front of them with next to zero effort on their part, they won't go the extra mile to find it. That's why the "major labels" have importance. (Don't forget - there's also a group of people who like knowing they're enjoying the same music that the majority of their peers are listening to. It gives them something in common to discuss.)
Gabriel said he could not understand big music stars that advocated free music downloads while accepting big cheques from record companies at the same time.
After all, most artists depended on record sales for up to 60% of their income, he said.
On the other hand...
Apart from being a successful musician, running his own record studio and the Real World record label, he is also active in the field of digital downloading.
So Gabriel can't understand other musicians doing the same thing he does? Mmmm-okay. I also don't know where he gets the idea that most artists get 60% of their income from record sales. Maybe a business-savvy few like himself and Madonna have recording contracts that don't eat up their royalties with expenses.
My issue is with this statement:
In the age of digital downloads musicians and the music industry have had to find a way of giving consumers what they want while securing revenue streams.
NO THEY DON'T have to secure their revenue streams. It would be perfectly fine if our culture changed so that musicians treated downloads as free advertising, rather than try to perpetuate the record company business model of getting money for each copy. We don't need the copy police and all the technical and legal restrictions being imposed on us for the benefit of a business model, no matter who is making the money.
... it means balls (as in testicles) in a few balkan languages.
i guess they wanted not only a silly name to remind us of that silly League of Boring Gentlemen film but that could have an acronym even more stupid souding in a variety of languages.
C'mon, you cunning lingusts...what other countries are gonna bust a gut reading MUDDA?
zack
... lead hat
The tracks I've bought via iTunes so far have been exclusive tracks, not available at any record store. (For example, I downloaded a live, "unplugged" type performance by the band "Live" not long ago.)
But this aside, as people move to using digital music players more and more, purchasing music on CD becomes more inconvenient than useful. (You have to "rip" it to another format like MP3 before you can even use it.) I'm already to the point whrere my music CD collection exists merely as backup archives. I have a Rio MPEG Car player in my car with everything in MP3 format on its internal hard drive. I own an iPod for music on the go. (I use it to play over an unused FM radio station with the "iTrip" add-on when I'm in my other car that doesn't have an MP3 player in it.) The Rio MPEG car pulls out and attaches to my home stereo's AUX inputs for use at home.
Also, voting with your wallet, as a rule, is overrated. So often, I see calls for a boycott of this or that, and you know what? It almost never works. Even if you convince a full HALF of all consumers not to buy a product or shop at a particular store, that other 50% that disagrees with you will keep doing so, and that's enough to keep the business or product viable.
(As an example, I see billboards up all the time in town, begging people not to patronize WalMart or SAM's, because they're non-union. Know what? Those places don't seem too concerned.)
>Only superstars could afford to give away their >music for free
That of course is HIS opinion which is only slightly better than the RIAA version.
There are thousands of bands that allow live recordings of their shows as well as the trading (for no profit of course)of the shows and who become popular through this form of contact.
The only thing that has changed is the medium is different.
If no one knows you, how you gonna sell an album Peter? If I go on band X's site and Ive never heard them play, they get no airplay, how are they gonna attract me to a show or get me to buy an album without getting me to hear them?
"Oh wow, the singer is really cute, I think Ill plunk 20 bucks for the cd."
Does Peter even remember what it was like starting in the business?
Or does he think that all bands that offer free music on their site are stupid?
I can look in my music bookmarks and find about 300 bands that have MP3s on their site and many whose shows I went to check out (asn bought cd's as well) because what I heard on their site blew me away. Last fall I discovered Robert Randolph and the Family (pedal steel guitar with a gospel/blues touch), Uumphreys McGee (jazz-fusion from the midwest), Addison Groove Project (the same as previous) and Chango Family (gypsy-reggae-latino-ska-funk) and each band offers over 60 minutes of full cuts on their site.
I DLed the tracks, totally freaked out and went to buy or see the shows.
Those I did not plunk a 20 bill for to see in show might have given me a sample but they did NOT lose money on me.
Succesful bands like Dave Matthews, Phish, Blues Traveler and so on were dirt poor went they decided that sharing the music was the best way to get college kids to come out and see them and the same applies to bands that arent in the top 2% at the top.
Problem is 'artists' like Eno and Gabriel arent full time musicians. They've bought in the whole concept that musicians should only play when they have something to shill.
Quick, how many shows have they played in the last 2-3 years (especially if they dont have an album out?)
I compare this to sports, if you havent played a game in 3 years..youre retired.
BB King is pretty well off but whenever he is asked why he still plays so much he says: "Why? Because its my job, its what I do. I play music for people, whether its some chicken coop like when I started or some elegant hall..its the same job, I do: entertain people. I'm a musician, that;s why I play music."
Maybe my whole point really is musicians and 'artistes' aint the same thing but I think that Gabriel is so far removed from the ground floor that he has no idea how small, medium and yes, even large bands function.
His statement only confirms it.
zeke
"There is lots of great "underground" music out there, and always will be - but it takes a certain amount of effort to dig through it to find what you like."
I know! It's so much easier with the RIAA, because you already know it's all going to be absolute crap!
Read jack phelps dot net
The trouble is any business that:
a) Gives away lots of free music
and b) Treats bands fairly
isn't going to be as profitable as the crooks who run the RIAA (subject to the RIAA members controlling distribution like they do now of couse).
America's an all or nothing country. Record sales that would be considered a smashing success in Europe are considered a flop here. I blame the stock market system. Regardless of who gets the blame, it means stuff like mp3.com tends to break down over time. They get big (like mp3.com), they try and get bigger (like mp3.com), they more or less fail (like mp3.com) and eventually allow themselves to be bought out by one of the bad guys (again, like mp3.com).
I think it's ingrained in our culture, and it's a hard impulse to resist. If someone offered me a few hundred million for my faltering company, I know I'd sell out. What'd be really nice is an mp3.com-alike run by someone not interested in getting rich. Like I said, it's ingrained in our culture. People like that are hard to come by. Maybe Europe'll come to the rescue. Or Asia. Until then if you see another big player in the independent music download world, expect to see the mp3.com debacle repeated
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The problem most people get into is putting the firm and worker on opposite sides of the good/evil spectrum. While many people are ideologically opposed to one or the other, it really makes no sense. I mean no one is really opposed to firms, just perhaps they facts that corporations have been given the same rights as humans. And no one really wants the people who make the products to be injured or killed or not feed thier family, but simply want to make sure that total costs of employment do not go too high.
Unions are just one way that workers have found to manage the labor market. Not allowing unions to exist would be like not allowing groups of fims to form marketing organizations. Would anyway say that the meat companies should be forbidden from advertising thier product through a mutually agreed third party?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Just like Fox News... balanced and fair!
*dons flame-proof suit and ducks*
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Well, if it follows the pattern of their other stuff, this project will be merely self-supporting, but it will inspire someone else to come long with almost exactly the same thing and get incredibly rich and popular. (Cf. Eno's playing in Roxy Music and production of Talking Heads' and U2's best albums, and Gabriel's way-ahead-of-the-curve "world" music.)
And how does the salary of the average american compare to the salary of the average swede? Those vacation days are not exactly free ..
How much a venue pays depends greatly on the genre being played. I've played with glorified garage bands for practically nothing, and I've played with some pretty damn good bands, who might get nothing on one night and $100 per musician the next night. The primary difference is that the garage bands were rock bands (and generally NOT cover bands) and the band that's getting paid is a salsa band that pretty much does ONLY covers. We have to give away a show here and there when things start getting slow, so that we get noticed again. And we give away lots and lots of demo CDs (also available for download). We've got original tunes, but we don't have the combination of time and money necessary to take a 12-man band into a studio and lay them down. Sure I can handle mixing chores myself, but that only cuts about 25% off the billable hours for the studio.
In any case, my point here is that we make ALL of our money playing live. We don't sell anything.
You can find us at orquestaguayao.com... and before you ask, no I'm not responsible for the hideously overblown website -- they opted for that over my rather understated version that rendered properly on everything. I think the current rotating flash pic with sound loop is as annoying as the rest of you probably will.
Also the event calendar is broken (another consequence of turning the place over to a "professional"), so here's the upcoming event list:
Feb. 12, Conga Room Los Angeles
Feb. 21, Rumba Room Universal Citywalk
Feb. 28, Conga Room Los Angeles
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Better question, ow do their standards of living compare? I suspect you'll be surprised.
I'm no RIAA apologist, but some of my favorite musical artists of all time are on RIAA-affiliated labels. But then I assume you don't like or listen to the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Led Zep, David Bowie, U2, Television, Sex Pistols, Frank Sinatra, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Nirvana, X, New York Dolls, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, John Mellencamp, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Steely Dan, Al Green, James Brown, The Clash, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Dwight Yoakam, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, etc. BECAUSE IT'S ALL CRAP.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a joke. Most of the bands you listed are rotten sellouts or were never that good in the first place, but I'll give you Cash, Dylan, and Waits. And maybe Lou Reed and Bowie, too.
Read jack phelps dot net
And thank fuck for that, from my POV. Had my employer been unionised (I worked at one of the first all-digital print shops in the UK), I would *not* have been able to be promoted to a senior position on ability alone within six months of starting, but would instead have had to be apprenticed for two or three years simply because I hadn't 'paid my dues'. I would *not* have been able to pick up skills in other areas of publishing, or even just cover for other people (and get experience at new tasks) while they were away, because that would have caused a demarcation dispute. Union rules back them were: you had one job, you stuck to it, and woe betide you if you tried to muscle in on somebody else's turf. In fact, I wouldn't even be in my current job, because union rules would *never* have allowed me to move sideways within a company and stay at the same level. I got into what is to be frank a pretty cool job through hard work, hopefully some degree of talent and the ability to shift streams from one side of the business to another. Unionisation tends not to reward any of those factors.
And there's the fact that back then, the people I knew that *were* in a union were the most sour-faced, whining, moaning, bitter, argumentative, lazy bunch of miserable bastards I've ever met in my life.
On the *other* hand, while I'm personally doing okay now from a non-union company, starting salaries in both my original and current lines of work have actually *dropped* since I started. And I started there over a decade ago. Which to me seems grossly unfair. But me joining a union will make no difference to that, because it's an agressively non-union operation ("If you don't like it, then fuck off"), and won't benefit me in any way I can see either.
Mind you, since I plan leave before the end of the year anyway, I guess it's academic. ;)
You must think in Russian.
Define sellout. And then think hard about your own life in the context of that definition. I'd be interested in your findings.
... when you saw this article, you thought, "What does Richard Gabriel have to do with music?
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Me? I'm a corporate whore. But that doesn't mean I'd want to listen to music by someone like me.
Read jack phelps dot net
Peter Gabriel started a union. Peter Gabriel started a company. Then the company negotiates a contract with the union? So who's side is he on exactly?
Following on the heels of the recently formed MUDDA, is the Fantastic Association of Downloading Digital Artists (FADDA).
In an interesting move, the two associations will be headquartered in Camp Grenada, a small relatively unknown town in western Montana.
A joint press conference was scheduled, but cancelled due to rain, according to Director of Public Relations, Mr. A. Sherman.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
The average saleries of workers in the manufacturing sectors is substantially lower in the South, where unions are weak, compared to the Northwest and Northeast regions, where unions are strong. The connection remains true even when economies of scale are factored in. Methinks there is a correlation.
You would know that using a word like NEVER would make your statement false, right? One exception to your rule and your "rule" becomes bunk. One would think that a Harvard education would have kept you from uttering such blathering, false rhetoric.
Hannity says "yes".
Never once have I been anything but impressed with David Bowie and Peter Gabriel's foresight into issues surrounding the role of technology in people's lives. Their views are outspoken and profound, compared to the corporate slaves that make up so much of the entertainment industry. I am happy to see Gabriel taking the road less travelled for the sake of the common good.
Wow, I was completely with you on the list of good artists until you got to Lucinda Williams.
Honestly, what's the deal with this woman, and how did she get so popular recently?
I got one of her CDs as a free giveaway, years ago, when an alternative rock radio station in town had a tent set up at a free concert. (Basically, they had a box full of CDs that didn't fit their format, so they were happily giving them out to any takers.)
I tried to give it a few listens, and the music pretty much put me to sleep. Just seemed like typical slow, modern country music - and didn't inspire me at all.
I put it on eBay though, and it was sure snapped up quickly. Since then, I see people mention her name all the time in lists of their "favorites" - and I'm at a complete loss. The people listening to her are often not even listing any other folk or country music artists, which is the part I guess I find most puzzling.
I believe 'mudda' ('d' as in 'danke'; stress on 'a') means 'issue' in Hindi/Urdu.
More than mere navel gazing.
(NOT QUOTED IN ORDER)
And no one really wants the people who make the products to be injured or killed or not feed thier family, but simply want to make sure that total costs of employment do not go too high.
Clearly you have no idea how working conditions were prior to the 40's in the Western world. And you have no idea how working conditions are like in the vast majority of the poor and developing countries. Think about what you said in that paragraph: no one wants to abuse others & no one wants costs to go high. I'm paraphrasing of course. Now, what happens when those two conflict (which is actually the majority of the time)? One has to take precedence. That is precisely where the problem is.
You may not realize it, or you may not know it, but there are millions of employers (especially in the poor countries) who just don't care about anyone except themselves. Just like how things were in the late 1800's, 1910's, 20's, etc. It costs money to take care of people. It costs money to improve worker standards. It costs money to ensure that injured workers are taken care of. And so forth.
When there is a conflict, profit takes precedence for the capitalists. There is no if's or but's. One just needs to take a look around. Or read what business books say. You don't need to listen to me. Just read a book, or watch a documentary, or visit a poor or developing country to see how it is.
The problem most people get into is putting the firm and worker on opposite sides of the good/evil spectrum. While many people are ideologically opposed to one or the other, it really makes no sense.
It doesn't make sense to a "naive" person like you. But the fact of the matter is, there IS a conflict. Karl Marx pointed out why and it is true. The "better" your job is, the less you feel it. If you had a high end professional job, for example, you won't even know of the conflict. The further down you go, the more real it is.
Let's look at the basics of it. There must NECESSARILY be a conflict because there are competing interests between the worker and the corporation/employer. For instance, an employer wants to PAY THE LEAST and make the employee WORK THE MOST. In contrast, an employee wants to get PAID THE MOST and WORK THE LEAST. These are just two attributes. You can also consider things like safety conditions, environmental aspects, health liabilities, and so forth. In all these things, there will be a similar conflict. Just take a look around. Whenever there is an argument for shortening the work week, who is arguing against it? Who is arguing for it? The positions are taken precisely as I described. The capitalists (owners) don't want a shorter week while the workers want a shorter work. Don't take my word for it. Go and check out newspapers and see the arguments (there is an argument in France these days but it happens in USA all the time too).
This conflict will ALWAYS* exist as long as you have capitalists and workers. You just cannot get away from it. Even if you pay the worker a million dollars, or even if the worker improves output by one million, it will still exist.
(* I said the conflict will always exist but strictly speaking, that is not true. The conflict will cease to exist if the capitalist and the worker are one and the same. This happens, for example, when you are a shopkeeper. You work in the shop but you own it too. Another example would be a law firm. There is very little conflict in a law firm because everyone owns everthing. In general, if the employees own the business there will be no conflict. Generally this is not true and I posit that this cannot be true under capitalism (because of discrepancy in wealth) )
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
And how does the salary of the average american compare to the salary of the average swede? Those vacation days are not exactly free ..
GDP per capita is fairly similar (at least not what you would expect if you think unions are bad and 90% of the country is unionized (I support unions BTW)). I have no idea what wages are but I imagine USA pays probably a little bit more. It's very hard to get wages, and even if you can get the numbers, they are misleading. You have to look at cost of living. Nordic countries tax heavily so wages aren't exactly comparable.
The vacation days may not be free but you fail to realize something. When leftists like me or worker movements ask for vacation days, they are asking for a free day with the same pay. We are not talking about an extra day/week/whatever with lowered pay. Even US corporations would be willing to give extra days without pay.
So, when people talk about longer holidays, they are talking about more days off with similar pay. If you are talking about more days off with lower pay, then there is no point discussing. I mean, $100 for 100 days is the same as $50 for 50 days. Days off mean nothing in that case.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
.. the bands that you mentioned might not have chosen the route that they did if they were given another option than to sign their songs away to some corporation. As a matter of fact, we (human race) would actually have some interesting songs in the public domain.
The fact that artists now have choice in offering their music around is a good thing. The fact that the RIAA/Clear Channel still controls all radio and traditional distribution is not.
The project you had in mind might very well have been iRate Radio, available for free over on Sourceforge.
The system includes exactly the kind of collaborative rating you mention, designed to figure out what sort of music you like. You train it kinda like you train a spam filter, 'this one's good, that one's bad', such that over time it gets better at predicting what you might like, based also on the ratings of people with similar rating patterns as your own.
HTH
--------
If I can own an idea, does that mean I can legally claim some portion of your soul once I tell you that idea? Or even if you just come up with it on your own? Heck, who needs contracts written in blood...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Actually I just wanted to say "Thanks!" to the people who provided some heads-up info in response to my screed. Obviously I'm not spending money on anything at iTunes (I don't purchase RIAA-supported music anymore) and was off-base in my estimation of its qualities. Bad call on my part, apologies to all happy iTunes customers (but remember $$ == votes), and screw the RIAA.
... not a bad model (IMO) for letting the cream rise to the top.
www.garageband.com
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
Yo yo yo!
Our artists got hits UPDA Wazoo!
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams