Yes it is a rhetorical question because there aren't any absolutes in the Music/DRM question and people that say DRM is ALWAYS bad or good aren't being honest. Sure there are a lot of middle men who didn't help but I'm sure there are a lot who did help artists - maybe artists who wouldn't have gotten a shot by a fickle public but were given enough encouragement by a middle man and a label who saw potential, just as there were middle men who exploited talented musicians who probably would have been great regardless of a label.
The popularity contest comment pertains to those situations in which a crowd isn't always right. What's the old line? "Eat dog sh*t, a thousand flies can't be wrong!"
To me the situation could ultimately become a zero-sum game where the more freedom we have (which is great!) may be offset by an endless sea of mediocrity.
It's not a question if you could make money or not, you probably can, the question is how much money can you make for the effort you have to exert to make it worth it. To make it worth the thousands of hours of practice and bohemian living conditions. Weigh the old paradigm for a musician of making millions with a lot of middle men doing the dirty work versus the new paradigm of lower pay for having to tour constantly with no help in marketing and promotion.
How will the music get better under those circumstances? (As a whole, I'm sure there are and will be prodigies out there)
Is it really better for the control of products to be in the hands of the consumer? Is that how we get our best products by popularity contests? Is that how we got Billy Ray Cyrus, Brittany, or even Presidents?
As an old guy who grew up with all the great bands who paid their dues that everyone is talking about here and who held the mic to the speakers to make tapes and who has downloaded "free" music from Limewire and ripped CD's to remove the Apple DRM, I have seen good and bad from the new music business paradigm. Sure, I love the fact that I can get free music, or easily pay.99 to buy a tune legally, but since it is so easy now for anyone to pick up a guitar or to load a Garageband loop and throw it on a MySpace page, it has made a vast ocean of crap that I never had to wade through before. Why were the "old" bands so much more talented? One answer was that they practiced more - Gee, why did they practice (or have to pay more dues in clubs) more? Because the only route for them to stardom was through the big labels which while they made a lot of money, they also filtered out a lot of the crap. And those bands stuck with it because they knew the reward for their efforts was so huge. Will the rewards in the future be enough to warrant the effort? Will there be one really great band making a million dollars a year or will we have a million bands all making a dollar a year? Sure, every DRM will be hacked and pirates will always pirate, but in the past, the hacks and the pirates were never so prevalent that the whole industry reached the tipping point that we've reached today and I'm afraid, for good or bad we can't go back.
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Yes it is a rhetorical question because there aren't any absolutes in the Music/DRM question and people that say DRM is ALWAYS bad or good aren't being honest. Sure there are a lot of middle men who didn't help but I'm sure there are a lot who did help artists - maybe artists who wouldn't have gotten a shot by a fickle public but were given enough encouragement by a middle man and a label who saw potential, just as there were middle men who exploited talented musicians who probably would have been great regardless of a label.
The popularity contest comment pertains to those situations in which a crowd isn't always right. What's the old line? "Eat dog sh*t, a thousand flies can't be wrong!"
To me the situation could ultimately become a zero-sum game where the more freedom we have (which is great!) may be offset by an endless sea of mediocrity.
I guess only time will tell.
It's not a question if you could make money or not, you probably can, the question is how much money can you make for the effort you have to exert to make it worth it. To make it worth the thousands of hours of practice and bohemian living conditions. Weigh the old paradigm for a musician of making millions with a lot of middle men doing the dirty work versus the new paradigm of lower pay for having to tour constantly with no help in marketing and promotion.
How will the music get better under those circumstances? (As a whole, I'm sure there are and will be prodigies out there)
Is it really better for the control of products to be in the hands of the consumer? Is that how we get our best products by popularity contests? Is that how we got Billy Ray Cyrus, Brittany, or even Presidents?
As an old guy who grew up with all the great bands who paid their dues that everyone is talking about here and who held the mic to the speakers to make tapes and who has downloaded "free" music from Limewire and ripped CD's to remove the Apple DRM, I have seen good and bad from the new music business paradigm. Sure, I love the fact that I can get free music, or easily pay .99 to buy a tune legally, but since it is so easy now for anyone to pick up a guitar or to load a Garageband loop and throw it on a MySpace page, it has made a vast ocean of crap that I never had to wade through before.
Why were the "old" bands so much more talented? One answer was that they practiced more - Gee, why did they practice (or have to pay more dues in clubs) more? Because the only route for them to stardom was through the big labels which while they made a lot of money, they also filtered out a lot of the crap. And those bands stuck with it because they knew the reward for their efforts was so huge. Will the rewards in the future be enough to warrant the effort? Will there be one really great band making a million dollars a year or will we have a million bands all making a dollar a year?
Sure, every DRM will be hacked and pirates will always pirate, but in the past, the hacks and the pirates were never so prevalent that the whole industry reached the tipping point that we've reached today and I'm afraid, for good or bad we can't go back.