Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Not a snappy enough ackronym ("DAAU"). How about "Union Protecting Digital Artists" or "UPDA"? Could have some fun with that one ...
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.
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.
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
Hmm, a musicians union - you'd think someone would have though of that before now.
- 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/
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.
--
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.
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_
--
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?.
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.
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.
"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 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."