Firstly, the image builder is only half the problem. You also need the resulting images to integrate with the mechanism Dell are using to roll them out - and Dell aren't going to change that just because the images generated can only be applied using a particular program.
That's right It's a little known fact that the bits in Microsoft operating systems are 20% larger than the ones in *nix based systems. That means that Dell would have to retrain the army of cyborg hamsters it currently uses to package the bits into bytes and glue them onto the HD platter, and they'd have to repeat the exercise for each machine they shipped because hamsters have poor long-term recall.
It's a disk image for Grud's sake. You write it onto a disk. Job done. What's the problem?
That's funny, I'm currently embroiled in an argument with Acer over refunding my Windows tax
I must admit, I didn't bother trying to claim that back at all. I just didn't feel like rewarding Dell for withdrawing the only O/S option which interested me.
I suspect that, while the enthusiasm on ideastorm is real, it isn't wildly representative.
It isn't representative of Dell UK, I can tell you much. End of last year, I bought the wife a new laptop. She's a fan of Ubuntu, so I got her a Dell Inspiron with Ubuntu preloaed. She loves it - never been the least bit bother.
A month ago, my old laptop finally gave up the ghost, and I thought (seeing as how the Missus' machine was so reliable) that a Dell machine might be the way to go.
So I go to Dell's UK website, only to find that the only Ubuntu option they now offer is a minimum spec netbook - and that I suspect only because Michael Dell threatened to remove their testicles if they didn't offer something.
I suppose... if I'd wanted to phone them up, and if I'd been willing to spend the time arguing, I could probably have got my preloaded Ubuntu system.
Instead, I thought "sod it" and order an Acer instead.
I do wonder if Dell are aware of they shenanigans going on at their UK subsidiary sometimes. Operating system evangelism is all very well, but this is costing them sales, you know?
The point I'm trying to establish is that "Sorry, but I fucked up; I guess I'm just a fool" is almost never valid as
a defence: not legally; not socially; and not ethically. And yet whenever a specific corporate misdemeanour crops up on Slashdot, there's invariably some PR type pops up out of nowhere to invoke Hanlon's Razor as if things could be made all better, just by saying "it wasn't malicious, it was just people being stupid." That would not be accepted as an excuse
in any other arena of human discourse, and I think it's high time we stopped blindly accepting it on Slashdot as well.
As for ACORN: As I've said elsewhere, I don't know the first thing about this ACORN business, and since it doesn't directly
affect me, just this once I'm going to afford myself the luxury of not giving a toss.
Except to the extent that I don't think Hanlon's Razor really applies, obviously.
First off, the paraphrase was an intentional "misquote."
Which is ironic really, because for years I kept the precise wording of Hanlon's Razor taped to the side of my monitor, just so I could check the wording the event that someone used some deliberate subtle variation of the wording to imply something utterly obscure.
And then, just the other day, I took the damn thing down because I decided that if someone did post a variation of
the words, it would most likely be because they'd just sloppily quoted from memory and couldn't be bothered to check
the exact wording. I mean which do you think the most likely? Hanlon's Razor itself would seem to support the second
interpretation.
I think that, perhaps, you are attacking either a straw man, or other people that have posted in the past, and are failing to actually read and understand what I said.
My point is that I'm fed up with people reeling off Halon's Razor (or words to the same general effect) as if it could magically dissipate bad PR for some corporation or other. I'm not seeking to imply anything beyond that. If you tell me that you meant your post in a way other than the common practice I
describe, then fair enough: I accept your clarification.
However, before you go accusing people of straw man arguments, perhaps you might consider framing your points with greater clarity in future?
I don't really think it's my responsibility to check your posts for subtle miswordings of well known saying, concealed ciphers, invisible ink, or acrostics.
Your mileage may, of course, vary.
That sort of thing is typically the difference between murder and manslaughter. Manslaughter is when you're too irresponsible to realize that what you're doing is likely to get someone killed.
True. But manslaughter doesn't mean I evade the consequences of my action; it just means they are not so severe as they would have been had I been convicted of murder. That's pretty much my point, really.
To be perfectly honest, I don't know the first thing about ACORN and the matter in question, nor do I care to do so.
I'm just a bit fed up with the way that every time a corporation attracts some negative publicity for whatever reason, someone promptly pops up on Slashdot smoothly quoting (or indeed misquoting) Hanlon's Razor as if it was some magical incantation that made everything better again.
If it's not relevant, then don't raise it in the first place. By all means let's understand the root cause of
an issue, but all Hanlon's Razor really adds to our understanding in these cases is "gee, we didn't mean for that to happen". On the whole, I think we can take that for granted, even if the only thing they didn't intend was
getting caught.
Never attribute to malice that which can more reasonably be attributed to laziness, incompetence, or stupidity.
Hanlon's Razor is a good rule of thumb for human motivation, but it's really, really crap when it comes to evaluating liability or responsibility. I mean, suppose I shoot you through the heart with a revolver. Should I evade the consequences of my actions if I tell the judge "I'm sorry your honour. I didn't think it would go off". It may well prove to be a case of stupidity rather than malice, but we can't turn around and say "well, that's all right then" without granting a licence to commit murder to liars everywhere.
Similarly, if a corporation takes responsibility for something, cocks it up, and then says "aww, shucks, what can I say? Some of our guys are just really, really stupid", I don't think we should absolve them of responsibility. Otherwise we give the corporations a licence to cheat and deceive.
The show of hands is not self-enforcing precisely because a non-secret ballot is subject to coercion. People vote their peers instead of their conscience.
Right. But if there is a true self enforcing protocol we can use, then we'd be fools not to use it. That's the interesting thing here. Can't
comment further than that because TFA is ever so slightly slashdotted at the moment.
Still, at the risk of covering the same ground as in TFA, maybe it's time to consider the secret ballot in terms of a security trade off. What good is voter anonymity if it's impossible to demonstrate that the electoral process is fair? You just swap one means of disenfranchising the public with another one. Moreover, with method that's way harder to catch and punish.
Maybe we need to look past "secret ballots are good" and focus on why we consider them to be good, and on whether that good is being preserved under current systems.
"Why is Windows so Expensive?"
"It's not. You're thinking of Macs. Macs are expensive. Here's some reasons why."
And in a few more:
"Q: What is the accleration due to gravity?"
"A: Gravity is a myth - the Earth sucks! But you needn't suck with it when you buy Microsoft Flight (TM)"
Can you see how this might limit the engine's usefulness for some purposes? Can you see how user confidence may be
adversely affected? Can you see why they might go elsewhere?
99% of the time, the user is, in fact, a moron.
That seems to encapsulate the attitude, certainly. I'm not convinced its a good way to build a userbase in the Internet Age, however. YMMV, obviously.
This is no different than Google correcting my spelling, grammar, etc.
On the day that Google corrects my spelling of "Debian" to "Windows Vista", II'll probably agree with you. Until that happens, I can't help but feel you're missing the point.
Keep in mind that any loss of profit from Bing can go directly against the company's profit as a whole, as well as the entire cost of Bing being applied to Microsoft's advertising budget. For Microsoft, it's a win-win scenario. It's just The Next Step in its advertising campaign to maintain its market dominance.
Oh, I'm sure a win-win on one level. On the other hand, if they end up with an engine that no-one uses because they find more satisfying answers to their questions elsewhere... well, it seems a little short-termist to me.
See, as I see it, this is how search engines die: the adulterated their service for short term gain. Alta Vista choked on sponsored results, and on sponsored results that pretended to be geniune. Ask Jeeves was the same. It doesn't take long before people move to (or back to) an engine that
actually tries to stay on topic, rather than setting its own agenda.
Or, more likely, given the present 'economic climate', that the economic viability and survival is more important than giving the consumers EVERYTHING they want. Keep in mind that Google is based on selling advertising
You know, I think this is where people go wrong. The reasoning seems to be as follows:
Google's revenue comes from advertising.
Google do Internet search
Therefore... Internet search is the same thing as advertising
I don't think the logic holds.
I think they forget that Google built a brand and their market dominance on providing good search results - results that closely matched what the
user was looking for. They forget that while it may be adverts that bring the revenue into Google, it was the quality of Google's search results
that first put those adverts in front of eyeballs.
If anyone seriously wants to unseat Google as the search king, they're going to have to offer a service that more nearly does what the users want than Google does at the moment. I'm not at all convinced that it's possible to do that while still distorting the search indices for sort term gain. I guess time will tell.
Microsoft always do this with search engines. They seem to start from the assumption that any query represents a user problem, for which there exists a Microsoft based solution. Looked at that way, a search engine becomes an exercise in derailing the users interest, and redirecting into more profitable channels.
It never seems to occur to them that people might be genuinely interested in results that reflect what they actually want.
And then they wonder why all their search engines fail.
Even if you did need MS Office, who buys that at retail price? Either you're working somewhere and you get a company-discount, or you're studying and have access to the student version/s
... or you're my father, who's a retired teacher and had to upgrade his PC a few years back only to find out that the only legal options for purchasing MS Office cost more than
the price of the hardware.
It is this attitude that can make it a little hard to take the geek seriously.
That's a coincidence. It's westlake's attitude of referring to the entire Slashdot readership as if they were a single person that makes it hard for the "the geek" to take westlake seriously.
Its a tad hard to boycott Sony Entertainment if you own a PS3.
True. On the other hand, I've not knowingly bought a Sony product since the CD rootkit fiasco, PS3 included. I figured that if they were willing to boobytrap audio CDs, god knows what they'd do if they had an entire console under their control.
I have occasionally wavered in my resolve, I'll admit. I've bought three laptops since then, and Vaio's always look very cool to me. But then something like this happens
and I find myself very glad I stuck to my decision.
As much as I know this is heated topic in slashdot -- and i probably get modded down for it -- the big label records AREN'T there to fuck everyone over
Correct! They are there to make money for their shareholders. Fucking people over is just an side effect. As is producing music, for that matter.
But I think record labels are needed to support the artists.
Difficult to really justify that one in this day and age, I can't help thinking. I it's difficult to justify it as an isolated proposition. It gets even harder when you look at the wider picture. Does the labels' patchy, self-interested and outmoded support of
their artists justify the ludicrous profit margins that result from the cartel's carefully manipulated artificial shortage? I think not.
Does it justify the war of terror they've waged against random people with internet connections? Most people would not say so. Does it justify restricting the flow of music back to pre-Internet levels just to preserve those over-inflated profit margins?
i can see where this might actually be needed, there are lots of people out there who make an absolute fuck up of their lives and drag EVERYONE... down with them
I believe the term you're searching for is "Member of Parlianment".
Actually I think the shares are calculated more on the investment. Record labels sponsor more, they get more from sales
You might be right, but it still doesn't scale linearly. There are only so many opportunities each year to flash your boobs during the superbowl, y'know? There has to sweet spot from the viewpoint of the record labels, and I'd be surprised if they hadn't run their minimax spreadsheets on the numbers. I expect they're operating reasonably close to the maximum ROI. I mean you may be right to suggest they'd make a ton more money if took on more staff and promoted ten or a hundred times more acts, but you'll not persuade me that what gets on the playlists today is all that's out there that's worth a listen.
That comes to adding value to consumers, it comes in some kind of quality. Quality and "good" music is obviously easy for everyone to argue, but if you're ever listened to the bands demo tapes you know they're horrible to professionally made studio albums.
I think that's got more to do with startup bands who haven't yet learned their trade than it has with the lack of a record label.
Look at Jamendo. Loads of professional quality music on there, without anyone needing a record label to make it happen.
What you say may have been true in 1975, but it's not the case today.
Part of culture is a shared music tradition. By definition if thousands of bands are being listened too and no one is a big star then music doesn't make it into culture as much (as in if you quote lyrics from a song few people will know what your talking about). Not saying other bands shouldn't exist, just that their is a huge need for very popular music and as a bonus it is very profitable.
Hmmm. I suppose it depends on how you think of big stars. If you mean wildly popular, then I'd agree. I was thinking of megastars more in terms of income and lavish lifestyle. I don't think that's a
necessary part of our culture, and I don't think it's going to survive the current upheavals in the music industry.
I think that is the way that the music industry is going, most poeople will end up purchasing the music online and most of the money will be spent on concerts. For example last year the music industry made record profits even though the record sales were down. People are just spending the money on concerts instead of the albums.
Yeah. And I think the big labels are going to be increasingly marginalised as more and more new acts decide to exploit online distribution channels directly. Interesting times, eh?
Not really, I work in software development and nothing near music industry
Ah, my bad. I didn't mean you personally, right now. I mean it in a this-is-how-people-think-when-they're-that-age sort of way. Sorry for any confusion there.
You're underestimating the power of lots of less-selling bands compared to megastars. When you have lots of them, you have more fans, more income and more sales
And far more overheads. It takes a lot less staff to actively promote twenty artists, than it does to promote twenty thousand. And of course, there are some aspects that just don't scale at all: there's a limit to how many artists for whom you can arrange "saturation play" at any given time.
You also have more stability -- You're not depending your business on a few megastars that usually lose their status in a few years.
Meh. Keep - let's say - twenty A-Listers on the go at any one time, with maybe another 40 in development. That's enough to even things out. The rest of them, let them get on with it. Maybe one of them will surprise you and have a hit. I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure I believe that's the way it is.
The managers are there to handle contracts with record labels, gigs and possible other stuff. But record labels still do many of the things.
Oh probably they do. But do they need to be done by the labels? Wouldn't any number of small management agencies handle things just as well?
And more to the point, does this function justify the hideously over-inflated prices charged by the record labels? Getting back to the original point,
if they're adding value, then they have to be adding from the consumer#'s viewpoint, and I'm far from convinced that's the case here.
However, their distribution network doesn't just consist of delivering those cd's to retailers or making them
True, but it's debatable how many of the other functions you list add value from a consumer point of view. In some cases you could argue the reverse was true.
This is why I think the record labels will continue to exist and will be used by artists
Ah, now. From an artist's viewpoint, it's a little different.
Its not necessary for artists to use them, noone force's them to.
Indeed it's not. On the other hand, suppose you're seventeen years old. On the one hand, you have extravagant lifestyles of the rock-and-roll megastars. On the
other you have the prospect of a career scraping by as an independent, self publishing musician. It's not much of a contest. In terms of common sense, it's
a lot like spending all your cash on lottery tickets in the conviction that you're going to win big someday, but when you're that age, you know it's going to be
different for you because you're special.
In effect, it's a long con. The message is "if you work hard and have talent, then one day you too will be rich and famous". I think the reality of the matter is that
there's higher profits for be made from a small number of megastars, than there is from lots and lots of stars, and there are more talented, hard working bands than
the big labels can ever hope to use under their marketing strategy.
So yeah, I think artists are going to continue to chase after contracts with the big labels. I'm just not entirely convinced that this is a good thing.
all that usually needs lots of money and time and work. Not a single person can usually do so much, but go work with record labels so they can handle all the other stuff and artists can spend the time on their core thing -- making music.
I thought that was why bands had managers, myself. Don't need a record company for that.
Slashdot Mirror
It's still a software only operation, and a one time cost to set up.
It's hardly going to be a significant technical challenge for a company like Dell.
That's right It's a little known fact that the bits in Microsoft operating systems are 20% larger than the ones in *nix based systems. That means that Dell would have to retrain the army of cyborg hamsters it currently uses to package the bits into bytes and glue them onto the HD platter, and they'd have to repeat the exercise for each machine they shipped because hamsters have poor long-term recall.
It's a disk image for Grud's sake. You write it onto a disk. Job done. What's the problem?
I must admit, I didn't bother trying to claim that back at all. I just didn't feel like rewarding Dell for withdrawing the only O/S option which interested me.
It isn't representative of Dell UK, I can tell you much. End of last year, I bought the wife a new laptop. She's a fan of Ubuntu, so I got her a Dell Inspiron with Ubuntu preloaed. She loves it - never been the least bit bother.
A month ago, my old laptop finally gave up the ghost, and I thought (seeing as how the Missus' machine was so reliable) that a Dell machine might be the way to go.
So I go to Dell's UK website, only to find that the only Ubuntu option they now offer is a minimum spec netbook - and that I suspect only because Michael Dell threatened to remove their testicles if they didn't offer something.
I suppose ... if I'd wanted to phone them up, and if I'd been willing to spend the time arguing, I could probably have got my preloaded Ubuntu system.
Instead, I thought "sod it" and order an Acer instead.
I do wonder if Dell are aware of they shenanigans going on at their UK subsidiary sometimes. Operating system evangelism is all very well, but this is costing them sales, you know?
The point I'm trying to establish is that "Sorry, but I fucked up; I guess I'm just a fool" is almost never valid as a defence: not legally; not socially; and not ethically. And yet whenever a specific corporate misdemeanour crops up on Slashdot, there's invariably some PR type pops up out of nowhere to invoke Hanlon's Razor as if things could be made all better, just by saying "it wasn't malicious, it was just people being stupid." That would not be accepted as an excuse in any other arena of human discourse, and I think it's high time we stopped blindly accepting it on Slashdot as well.
As for ACORN: As I've said elsewhere, I don't know the first thing about this ACORN business, and since it doesn't directly affect me, just this once I'm going to afford myself the luxury of not giving a toss.
Except to the extent that I don't think Hanlon's Razor really applies, obviously.
Which is ironic really, because for years I kept the precise wording of Hanlon's Razor taped to the side of my monitor, just so I could check the wording the event that someone used some deliberate subtle variation of the wording to imply something utterly obscure.
And then, just the other day, I took the damn thing down because I decided that if someone did post a variation of the words, it would most likely be because they'd just sloppily quoted from memory and couldn't be bothered to check the exact wording. I mean which do you think the most likely? Hanlon's Razor itself would seem to support the second interpretation.
My point is that I'm fed up with people reeling off Halon's Razor (or words to the same general effect) as if it could magically dissipate bad PR for some corporation or other. I'm not seeking to imply anything beyond that. If you tell me that you meant your post in a way other than the common practice I describe, then fair enough: I accept your clarification.
However, before you go accusing people of straw man arguments, perhaps you might consider framing your points with greater clarity in future? I don't really think it's my responsibility to check your posts for subtle miswordings of well known saying, concealed ciphers, invisible ink, or acrostics. Your mileage may, of course, vary.
True. But manslaughter doesn't mean I evade the consequences of my action; it just means they are not so severe as they would have been had I been convicted of murder. That's pretty much my point, really.
To be perfectly honest, I don't know the first thing about ACORN and the matter in question, nor do I care to do so.
I'm just a bit fed up with the way that every time a corporation attracts some negative publicity for whatever reason, someone promptly pops up on Slashdot smoothly quoting (or indeed misquoting) Hanlon's Razor as if it was some magical incantation that made everything better again.
If it's not relevant, then don't raise it in the first place. By all means let's understand the root cause of an issue, but all Hanlon's Razor really adds to our understanding in these cases is "gee, we didn't mean for that to happen". On the whole, I think we can take that for granted, even if the only thing they didn't intend was getting caught.
Hanlon's Razor is a good rule of thumb for human motivation, but it's really, really crap when it comes to evaluating liability or responsibility. I mean, suppose I shoot you through the heart with a revolver. Should I evade the consequences of my actions if I tell the judge "I'm sorry your honour. I didn't think it would go off". It may well prove to be a case of stupidity rather than malice, but we can't turn around and say "well, that's all right then" without granting a licence to commit murder to liars everywhere.
Similarly, if a corporation takes responsibility for something, cocks it up, and then says "aww, shucks, what can I say? Some of our guys are just really, really stupid", I don't think we should absolve them of responsibility. Otherwise we give the corporations a licence to cheat and deceive.
Right. But if there is a true self enforcing protocol we can use, then we'd be fools not to use it. That's the interesting thing here. Can't comment further than that because TFA is ever so slightly slashdotted at the moment.
Still, at the risk of covering the same ground as in TFA, maybe it's time to consider the secret ballot in terms of a security trade off. What good is voter anonymity if it's impossible to demonstrate that the electoral process is fair? You just swap one means of disenfranchising the public with another one. Moreover, with method that's way harder to catch and punish.
Maybe we need to look past "secret ballots are good" and focus on why we consider them to be good, and on whether that good is being preserved under current systems.
And in a few more:
"Q: What is the accleration due to gravity?"
"A: Gravity is a myth - the Earth sucks! But you needn't suck with it when you buy Microsoft Flight (TM)"
Can you see how this might limit the engine's usefulness for some purposes? Can you see how user confidence may be adversely affected? Can you see why they might go elsewhere?
That seems to encapsulate the attitude, certainly. I'm not convinced its a good way to build a userbase in the Internet Age, however. YMMV, obviously.
On the day that Google corrects my spelling of "Debian" to "Windows Vista", II'll probably agree with you. Until that happens, I can't help but feel you're missing the point.
Oh, I'm sure a win-win on one level. On the other hand, if they end up with an engine that no-one uses because they find more satisfying answers to their questions elsewhere ... well, it seems a little short-termist to me.
See, as I see it, this is how search engines die: the adulterated their service for short term gain. Alta Vista choked on sponsored results, and on sponsored results that pretended to be geniune. Ask Jeeves was the same. It doesn't take long before people move to (or back to) an engine that actually tries to stay on topic, rather than setting its own agenda.
You know, I think this is where people go wrong. The reasoning seems to be as follows:
I don't think the logic holds.
I think they forget that Google built a brand and their market dominance on providing good search results - results that closely matched what the user was looking for. They forget that while it may be adverts that bring the revenue into Google, it was the quality of Google's search results that first put those adverts in front of eyeballs.
If anyone seriously wants to unseat Google as the search king, they're going to have to offer a service that more nearly does what the users want than Google does at the moment. I'm not at all convinced that it's possible to do that while still distorting the search indices for sort term gain. I guess time will tell.
Who else? How about almost anyone in marketing? "The public wants what the public gets" and all that jazz?
That, I hadn't picked up on. Perhaps we should have asked on whose behalf the engine was making those decisions.
Surprised it took them this long, perhaps.
Microsoft always do this with search engines. They seem to start from the assumption that any query represents a user problem, for which there exists a Microsoft based solution. Looked at that way, a search engine becomes an exercise in derailing the users interest, and redirecting into more profitable channels.
It never seems to occur to them that people might be genuinely interested in results that reflect what they actually want.
And then they wonder why all their search engines fail.
True. On the other hand, I've not knowingly bought a Sony product since the CD rootkit fiasco, PS3 included. I figured that if they were willing to boobytrap audio CDs, god knows what they'd do if they had an entire console under their control.
I have occasionally wavered in my resolve, I'll admit. I've bought three laptops since then, and Vaio's always look very cool to me. But then something like this happens and I find myself very glad I stuck to my decision.
Correct! They are there to make money for their shareholders. Fucking people over is just an side effect. As is producing music, for that matter.
Difficult to really justify that one in this day and age, I can't help thinking. I it's difficult to justify it as an isolated proposition. It gets even harder when you look at the wider picture. Does the labels' patchy, self-interested and outmoded support of their artists justify the ludicrous profit margins that result from the cartel's carefully manipulated artificial shortage? I think not. Does it justify the war of terror they've waged against random people with internet connections? Most people would not say so. Does it justify restricting the flow of music back to pre-Internet levels just to preserve those over-inflated profit margins?
You said in your first post
Allow me to extend to you that same invitation.
I believe the term you're searching for is "Member of Parlianment".
You might be right, but it still doesn't scale linearly. There are only so many opportunities each year to flash your boobs during the superbowl, y'know? There has to sweet spot from the viewpoint of the record labels, and I'd be surprised if they hadn't run their minimax spreadsheets on the numbers. I expect they're operating reasonably close to the maximum ROI. I mean you may be right to suggest they'd make a ton more money if took on more staff and promoted ten or a hundred times more acts, but you'll not persuade me that what gets on the playlists today is all that's out there that's worth a listen.
I think that's got more to do with startup bands who haven't yet learned their trade than it has with the lack of a record label. Look at Jamendo. Loads of professional quality music on there, without anyone needing a record label to make it happen. What you say may have been true in 1975, but it's not the case today.
Hmmm. I suppose it depends on how you think of big stars. If you mean wildly popular, then I'd agree. I was thinking of megastars more in terms of income and lavish lifestyle. I don't think that's a necessary part of our culture, and I don't think it's going to survive the current upheavals in the music industry.
Yeah. And I think the big labels are going to be increasingly marginalised as more and more new acts decide to exploit online distribution channels directly. Interesting times, eh?
Ah, my bad. I didn't mean you personally, right now. I mean it in a this-is-how-people-think-when-they're-that-age sort of way. Sorry for any confusion there.
And far more overheads. It takes a lot less staff to actively promote twenty artists, than it does to promote twenty thousand. And of course, there are some aspects that just don't scale at all: there's a limit to how many artists for whom you can arrange "saturation play" at any given time.
Meh. Keep - let's say - twenty A-Listers on the go at any one time, with maybe another 40 in development. That's enough to even things out. The rest of them, let them get on with it. Maybe one of them will surprise you and have a hit. I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure I believe that's the way it is.
Oh probably they do. But do they need to be done by the labels? Wouldn't any number of small management agencies handle things just as well? And more to the point, does this function justify the hideously over-inflated prices charged by the record labels? Getting back to the original point, if they're adding value, then they have to be adding from the consumer#'s viewpoint, and I'm far from convinced that's the case here.
True, but it's debatable how many of the other functions you list add value from a consumer point of view. In some cases you could argue the reverse was true.
Ah, now. From an artist's viewpoint, it's a little different.
Indeed it's not. On the other hand, suppose you're seventeen years old. On the one hand, you have extravagant lifestyles of the rock-and-roll megastars. On the other you have the prospect of a career scraping by as an independent, self publishing musician. It's not much of a contest. In terms of common sense, it's a lot like spending all your cash on lottery tickets in the conviction that you're going to win big someday, but when you're that age, you know it's going to be different for you because you're special.
In effect, it's a long con. The message is "if you work hard and have talent, then one day you too will be rich and famous". I think the reality of the matter is that there's higher profits for be made from a small number of megastars, than there is from lots and lots of stars, and there are more talented, hard working bands than the big labels can ever hope to use under their marketing strategy.
So yeah, I think artists are going to continue to chase after contracts with the big labels. I'm just not entirely convinced that this is a good thing.
I thought that was why bands had managers, myself. Don't need a record company for that.