Without copyright, someone could take the GPL software and change some stuff, and not release the source code. Isn't GPL fanatics up in arms on the BSD license because that license makes this possible.
Let's be a little forward-thinking.
Try to imagine a world that doesn't even *need* copyright, in which it's all there, out in the open, for copying. Then, we don't need the GPL, or any other hack of traditional copyright law. It'll be just as obsolete as the traditional stuff. The GPL is a *transitional* thing. It's not intended to be the perfect solution. When the original poster says "without copyright," he means "all they way without copyright, strong-style."
Now, let's assume infinite copying of ideas and art and knowledge is *good*, OK? That's not too much of a stretch, it seems to me. I think that infinite copying will happen, sooner or later, and especially once we figure out how to include proper attribution of authorship in the copy. Reliable attribution is critical. That, to me, is the perfect solution to the IP dilemma.
Don't fear the change - it's coming. Fame will be what society rewards true artists with. This fame might actually position an artist to make a buck or two. Don't worry, though, you won't have to pay - all of their output will be freely copyable. The rest of us need only lie back and freely absorb all of the "IP" they produce, and maybe occasionally put in our two bits of creative effort...
Yep, it *is* too good, but not too good to be true, eventually.
They would probably still withhold source code, for no other reason than to get the money made off on support.
OK, in the meantime, back in the present, you're absolutely correct about the withholding of source code by its authors. Obscurity is their friend, if they have to earn money in a world of scarcity. If source is scarce, support is costly. I think that if proper attribution could be guaranteed, however, authors would gain by releasing the source, if it's any good at all. They'll be justly rewarded with fame, and possibly even patronage to work on future projects...
Doesn't that seem like the direction that things are going?
> Then The Cost To make The Song(2-3$) Per CD(For Studio Time Coverage).
Jeezis, you're paying $3,000 to record a single hip-hop song? It should take *a day* to record and mix - and that's if you've got live instruments, less if you're using canned sounds. That's 8 hours at $50 (max), for a total of $400. Most people can look around and get it done for $35 an hour. You don't stutter, do you?
Recording isn't hard, people. Don't let your managers/producers/engineers convince you that you need to spend a week in the studio, fucking with the cowbell EQ, or that you need to "fix it in the mix" for days and days. Use a good mic', sing your ass off, and get out of there.
Save that $3,000, buy a cheap Mac, a decent beat box, and download sounds off the 'Net. Mix it all on your hard drive. Post at Chuck-D's site. Become star, open for him in New York, catch panties thrown at you.
The record companies make *more* than $5 on a $16 sale. There's a whole slew of people in the food chain between you, the sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hpurchaser, and the innocent, slightly naive artist, dreaming of his own tour bus, cowboy hat, and personal "Joe-C" midget sidekick...
There's an interesting breakdown by Steve Albini, and of course I don't have the URL which you're so impatiently demanding, but do a Google search for the title - "Some Of Your Friends Are Already This Fucked."
There's also my personal experience that might help slake your thirst for knowledge. My band's CD's cost us, at most, and in small, expensive lots, about $2.50 to press, including a crappy little lyric sheet insert in four colors. The majors press millions for about $0.80 a copy, tops.
I, too, wonder what those "competitively-paid" record company execs do to earn their millions, but I don't begrudge 'em a penny. (However, I am a little jealous that one of them, Mottola from Sony, I think, got to screw Mariah Carey every night for a couple of years). They'd better enjoy feeding at the trough while it lasts, though. The world is catching on to them, and we've got tools to force change. I'm comin' for ya, Mariah, daddy's comin'....
Here's a weird-sounding paraphrase of your post: "I'd love play you a song, but my shareholders are afraid that I give a shit about music - even more than them."
I wish that we were talking about "JOY" instead of "JOB"...
Those kinds of musicians - the kind who don't like music anymore - produce a product which actually *harms the environment*, and they should pay *us* for vibrating the air with it.
In that vein, I'm waiting to be paid my fair share of reparations from the record companies. You know, kinda like the pollution permits that utilites have to buy from the Feds? Sorry, but Epitaph has to pay a little, too...
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot - copyright is dying. It's too bad that we're being caught up in its death-throes, and that silliness like the DCMA (and even the GPL!) have to be written and forced upon society. Don't you think so?
Hey, I stole "Mary Had A Little Lamb" out of my piano today - here it is (you'll have to reverse-engineer the rhythm, and Lordy, watch out for the Feds): EDCDEEE,DDD,EGG,EDCDEEEEDDEDC
You're both right. None of us musician-types makes *any* fucking money doing either of those things, unless we're incredibly lucky.
The aforementioned _Everything You Need..._ book is great, but it takes a "big-time record exec" viewpoint - which is to be expected, as that's the viewpoint that the author understands.
Steve Albini, God bless him, is also right, and has extensive first-hand experience with the "non-big-time indie rocker" type.
It's been my experience (and yes, I know about two dozen moderately-skilled musicians who have been signed at one point or another) that both gentlemen are right. You make no money when you're small-time, then you sign all of your rights away to the man, who turns you into a big-time artist, and takes all of your money...
Well, how are you supposed to be a musician, then? Good question. Here is the process. The first thing to do is *IGNORE MONEY*. You're never going to make any. You're never going to make any. You're never going to make any. The next thing to do is (as Albini advises), quit immediately -- you'll do yourself and all of your listeners a favor. The last thing to do, if you're still interested in music, is to practice hard, find cool, expressive, daring bandmates, buy good-sounding instruments, write challenging drum parts, and write interesting lyrics. Then play them in your practice spot. If you feel the urge to show off, call your nightclub, and play a Wednesday night for 25 people. Do this for the rest of your life, and die fulfilled. Oh, and don't quit you're day job.
While you're at it, throw in a few ZZ Top and Frank Zappa covers for me - I'll buy you a beer.
Ass a matter of fact, record companies *do* determine what you listen to, if you spend most of your moments of musical appreciation listening to the radio. Payola and other less-illegal forms of bribery are real-life occurances. My advice is to turn off the radio, and head down to your local jazz club, or take the missus to a night at the opera. Shit, turn off the TV occasionally, too. You'll hear new stuff. If you're still in high school or college, take a music or art appreciation class. What? They don't offer that in your school? Then learn to play the basoon. Do *something* - the world needs more expressive people. And don't do it just because some A&R rep promises you millions - the world needs *less* of that kind of expression.
You will find that as you hear the truly fine music, you will become frustrated with the lesser stuff. I believe that most people have a little music critic in them, just aching to hear something new. They don't want rubbish - they want richness. They want the bar set high, to match their tastes.
The micropayment idea *is* being used today, by the vast majority of real-life musicians. It's called playing for tips, and it's all that most musicians can expect. It's certainly all that most of the big-name "talents" deserve, if the truth be told. Most of these MF'ers can't sing or play for shit. Oops, my bitterness is showing:). Now, I don't want to kill the big bands, or take all of their money - I just want them to shut up for a moment, so I can hear some new stuff. The silicone-enhanced DAT-tape singalongs that the big record companies create and send out on the road can only produce thousands and thousands of dollars through "artificial excitement" - "There's nothing else to do, the TV says to take the kids to Britney Spears, this must be music at its finest, she's sold tens upon tens of albums, thank God for Sony's promotional machine and its lowering of the bar to where even *we* can be herded into hipness. Let's buy things!" Everyone settles for expensive mediocrity when the alternative has been aggressively chased away (cf. Microsoft innovation). The success of many of the record companies' creations is due to the artificial installment of monopolistic business practices and laws where business and law hadn't previously existed. Art has nothing to do with business and law. Other posts talk about patronage and the support of fine arts, so I won't rehash them here, but if you feel that you must reward an artist for doing his or her thing, try patronage or tipping. These are the original "business models" (yechh) of public performance or display of art.
The Internet might actually break the stranglehold on pop culture by big business, introducing people just like you to new entertainment. Assuming the existance of a micropayment system, it might even let millions of people tip the artist up to a point where they could quit their legitimate job, and actually goof off on stage for a living. Maybe not. But there are people out there, thinking about how this could work. People, like you, who aren't afraid of a rules change. Especially if the "rules" that are being changed are arbitrary and harmful in the first place.
Whatever we're lucky enough to receive from our fan(s). All the artists who feel that they must be paid must do is put out the technological equivalent of an open guitar case next to the drum kit, so the dancers can throw a buck or two in once they're done.
We could also kick so much ass culturally (that is to say, "create good art") that collectors/connoisseurs are compelled by their love of what they've just heard/read/seen to become our patrons.
No middlemen needed. Automatic, worldwide, grassroots art criticism -- vote with your dollars! Thanks, Internet.
Being a musician is a state that existed half a million years ago, before jobs, or copyright, or even charcoal cave painting. Being a musician is a natural state that exists in everything that utters, or can discern patterns in sound. That's pretty much everything with a heartbeat.
Being a laywer is an unnatural state, forced upon a few hapless, yet heroic, individuals, who decided that they would accept the grim task of sorting through the tangled series of hacks and accidents which is the legal system, which itself is based upon a tangled series of hacks and accidents which is Western morality and religion, and in return, accept some form of payment for assuming their oppressive, huge, unnatural, and stinky burden. Some exceptionally unnatural laywerly examples seem eager to force conformance with this tangled series of hacks upon the unsuspecting musicians (you and me) who refuse to see everything in terms of "job," "earn," "mine," "not fat enough," "power," and "commodity." Other quintessentially Western nouns and verbs will occur to me after I post, but you get the message...
Just because laywers, and for that matter, cops and administrators, wouldn't do their thing without monetary reward doesn't mean that *everything* shouldn't be done without monetary reward.
Permit me to ask an obvious (almost laywerly) question, with your pardon: Did the government pay your mom to have you? Do you expect to be paid for whistling? Where is the contract that must be signed before these activities can legally occur? These activities *aren't jobs* -- yet. Unless, of course, the RIAA has something to say about it.
I'm a "struggling musician" myself. I agree with you about how shady the music business is. That's because it should never have gotten to the point of being a business in the first place. By deciding to become musicians, you and I have made foolish career choices, but excellent choices for living a fulfilled life.
Fulfilled, that is, as long as we don't expect to get paid for noodling on a guitar. Apparently, some of the posters think that Metallica deserves to get paid for noodling on guitars. I'm not sure why they think that way. Metallica, too, had made a dumb career choice -- they just got lucky. A look around any local music scene will show how badly the other Metallicas are faring in their "careers". Many of these other musicians are talented, but are making a realistic amount of money through playing -- that is, they're poor.
Some other people have mortgaged their homes on Metallica's unrealistic ability to convince people to buy CD's. These folks have constructed and actively maintained a huge apparatus designed to funnel America's lunch money and allowances into their pockets. Well, good luck -- trend-mongering is tricky, and the kids are fickle. If the apparatus cannot sustain its weight, and the trend-mongers were forced to switch careers, I would hope that they'd try something more productive, or at least, less dumb. Like teaching, or nursing, or farming, or research, for instance. You know, building things. Maybe that's the industry change that you'll see -- a bunch of ex-A&R reps getting paid to build houses, or a bunch of entertainment lawyers working in a soup kitchen, all for realistic wages. And maybe, playing at nightclubs for kicks on weekends.
I hope that you can do other things, once the business goes south, and the Internet routes musicians and listeners around the recording industry. But if you have no other skills that benefit society, and earn a wage for yourself, you can still play music! Write and produce the best music you can. Ignore the industry -- put it out on the 'Net. Improve your artistic skills while growing as an artist. And as far as your current career in the "music business" is concerned, please don't screw over an artist stupid enough to trust that the music industry will be a good career for him (even if everyone else in the imaginary business of music is "getting dirty"). Try to ignore the dollar signs. It'll make your songs, and your career choices, better.
I agree with you, and I also agree with posters such as Wah and Tom Swiss. I've been thinking about what the impending obsolecsence of copyright will mean for a while now, and I can't reach any conclusions that don't include a *radical* shift in attitudes towards entertainment, play, art, and leisure.
No artist should be paid because they produce art. Artists should be paid when they enter into a binding contract with someone, to perform labor that one doesn't need to be an artist to do. That is, when they "get a real job."
Music production and appreciation is something that musicians do, just as birds do (and I really mean just as naturally as birds). Do we charge people for listening to birds? Do the birds expect to get seeds from us, for being sung at?
Sometimes, we throw crumbs to birds, to get them to stick around the house and do bird stuff, like singing. Sometimes, when we're really moved by a subway musician, we tip him.
Whether an artist labors for years to write a novel, or goofs around on a timbale in the subway for an afternoon, he doesn't deserve anything but attention, and sometimes awe. Philanthropists, such as the emperor, or that dude sitting on the bench next to you, might donate money to ensure that the artist can produce works instead of stopping to work. Artists shouldn't expect that donation to occur. This is because a donation isn't the fulfillment of a debt incurred by one party to another, it's a donation...
This is of course how human society used to treat performance, until the mechanical processes of *recording* a performance (whether through black dots on paper, or bumpy grooves in a vinyl disc) were devised, and with them, the copyright. Now that the mechanical act of saving a work for posterity is trivial, let's remove the middlemen that sprang up when copying was hard. Why support the record companies, the publishing companies, the film industry? We can do it ourselves. And let's not kid ourselves -- those of us that produce the work were "doing it ourselves" even when somebody else was constructing an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine to convince others to pay them (the middlemen) for it. The artists shouldn't feel "ripped off" when the middlemen do this -- they should look up from their performance, blink their eyes in confusion, and ask the people dumping money into these middlemen machines, "Why?"
Re:Stallman is just plain wrong here
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No, no, nobody *forced* these "creative labors," so the creator dosen't *deserve* any payment. That is, there's no inalienable right to payment for doing art. Any more than we should both be paid for posting to Slashdot. We might deserve recognition, but not money. Being an artist is different from being a cop. Police risk their lives, but artists don't. Police ought to get paid for their doing their horrible jobs - most don't get paid enough, in my opinion. But where is the risk to the author, for instance, if someone reads his book?
Re:Stallman is just plain wrong here
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You'd be a scholar whether it made you rich or not, right? I mean, do you do it for love?
I'd love to be able to actually write a piece of scholarship, which increased the total of human knowledge, even if in a tiny niche of a science. I'd love the opportunity for that knowledge to be disseminated far and wide. Even on a porn site! Some of my pearls of wisdom might actually be recognized, and pondered, and learned from, by the swine frequenting such sites...
Seriously. Ideas happen. Even when the thinker is supported by a guild, or university, and maybe even when he works for Pespi. They're kinda hard to come up with, but people have 'em all the time, anyway. Some of those people are compelled by a creative impulse (common to most children) to translate them into words, or notes, or colors, or algorithms. The ideas then go into other minds, and some cause other ideas to form, for less effort than would've otherwise taken. Having ideas form easily is really livin'. And the more ideas there are, the less work to have ideas of your own... Love produces more love, after all.
Thinkers, authors, artists: these people don't deserve money for doing what comes naturally to all humans - they deserve recognition, if the ideas are good. You should hope that your scholary writings should be broadcast as widely as possible! Be the giant whose shoulders everyone else in your field stands upon when they peer into the distance...
Perhaps you would be satisfied with some sort of "attribution machinery," which attempts to limit plagarism by somehow "labelling" the idea. Maybe that's the GPL... Although, I suppose that, for the public, *who* came up with the idea isn't as important as whether or not the idea was expressed in the first place. The last sentence of the previous paragraph was Newton's, for instance. But it sure made my point, so I used it.
Authorship serves as a claim on monies extorted by middlemen during the dissemination of ideas, and should actually become less relevant as we progress towards that less-buggy society of tomorrow. Hopefully, the need for GPL-like machinery will fade. The GPL will autocorrect the need for itself! And the world will be full of unfettered ideas.
Re:Will RMS shut up for once??
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Authors and musicians and other artists don't deserve to get paid. That is, they don't deserve to get paid for performing their art. Since they're artists, they perform their art because it would kill them not to. Getting paid has nothing to do with it.
No one forces you, a presumably fat 'n' happy member of a lawful, rich, and prosperous society, to do anything you don't want to do for recreation. You may have to obey policemen and soldiers, or die, and you may have to work at something that you find distasteful, in order to *earn* money to live fat 'n' happy. But you have no right to perform an art, or other recreation, and demand compensation. You also don't work in a coal mine. You're probably a software engineer, or a bus driver, or a waitress, which aren't excruciating day jobs. Although, D. H. Lawrence came from a coal mining family...
Copying isn't plagarism, and it's not removing the incentive for true art. People will always tell stories and play music, and the best stories and songs might actually bring fame or fortune of some type on the author. It is probably true that the best works of art are performed without worrying about how the art can become product. So let's remove the notion of "intellectual property", and replace it with the notion of "recognition of greatness". Which means just what it says -- recognition, not payment.
Doesn't work. Too many sellers, not enough buyers. Unless you're *really lucky* and *really good*, not enough important people ever hear your music to consider signing you. Hell, not enough "just plain folks" pay admission to watch you play...
The shareware model of recorded music performances suffers from the same problem. Too many sellers.
Don't say that "I support music! I download and pay-per-listen! I even support *local* music!" because you can't. Not enough, anyway. Any given Saturday night in a small town, there will be 10 live performances in places ranging from your daughter's school play to the umpteenth Creedence cover band at The Corner Pocket. You can't attend 'em all. You can't afford to spend the time *buying* their homebrew tapes & CD's. You sure as hell can't waste time goofing around with Napster, guessing whether or not a song is worth the download, after you pluck it out of the vast sea of contenders. The best way to support music is to open a great nightclub. At least then you'll be giving a "donation" of another place to play.
As musicians, hoping to get the big break is a waste of time. Instead, play music for your friends, and laugh about your near-brushes with stardom. That's the only way to have fun making music for the vast majority of musicians (even the good ones). It's probably also the only way that music was meant to be exchanged in the first place...
Assumptions: You can actually sell 1000 by yourself, and that the same CD can actually be sold in the listed quantities (10,000, 100,000) by the small or major labels.
By the way, T-shirts cost too much to produce to be cost-effective to sell. Unless you do it in major-label quantities. CD's are better.
As a side-effect, no one else except the CD production people make money in the first case. The CD production people make less in the second case, and the small label makes a bit. In the third case, the major label (which includes the CD production people, the business creeps, the tour support/tour management, the merchandise folks, the radio payola/promotion/ad folks, etc.) makes most of the money. But you still get more as an artist than you would otherwise.
Why do you think the dream of all artists capable of using major labels to their fullest (that is, being hot/slutty/dumbed-down enough, or wearing cool enough shoes, to sell 100,000 copies if given the chance) is to get signed to a major as soon as possible? Being a rock star takes, and creates, more money from/for the artist. There's a bigger surplus from the larger pie, even when the slice is smaller proportionately.
If you make classical music, cool. You'll never sell more than 10,000 albums, but you'll be part of a long and rich heritage. Stay with a small label. If you, like me and my friends (one of whom used to *play* for LTJ), have a small little band, try to become cool as soon as possible, or else you'll end up sitting on those 1000 CD's you pressed, 'cause tours can suck all your money away. Congratulations, you've kept %100 of no earnings. We love our music (probably more than all the rest of you ever will:) ), but we're not deluded enough to think that a life as the head of your own little personality cult (think Fugazi, or Richard Stallman) is enough of a reward for eating ramen noodles. You should be able to play your guitar *in comfort* -- not underfed. Most of the time, that means quitting playing "professionally".
Good points, especially the last sentence -- the RIAA are middlemen and dinosaurs, and the Internet kills off middlemen. The only thing left is the consumer and the musician.
I have a few questions, though, about what happens to the artist. Specifically, the kind of artist that is signed, marketed, and tours to support an overpriced CD, the income of which dribbles through the clutches of the middlemen to drip admittedly-tiny-but-still-significant droplets into the artist's bank account. I'm not worried about garage bands, indie rockers, accoustic duos in Barnes 'n' Noble, and other poor musicians -- we'll never make real money anyway, unless we're supremely talented.
That leaves "big rock stars", or "people who can live off of playing music". I worry that when the record companies are made moot, there won't be the ridiculous amount of money hoarded from consumers and turned into a subsidy for a few big bands to promote tours and support CD sales. Hell, there won't be CD's left to sell. Since I like the circus atmosphere of "big USA rock 'n' roll shows", I wonder how this atmosphere can be produced from the income of a few hundred clicks on the band's website.
As much as record companies are the devil, once they go, the fake-ass music industry goes, and rock stars go, too.
I don't *want* everything to be DIY. I don't *want* an inclusive musical scene. If I wanted an inclusive musical scene, I'd have invited you to join the band. Shit, if there's no pot 'o stardom at the end of the rainbow for the struggling, hopeful, ego-driven musician to shoot for, we should all just go back to working at the mills.
I guess the question I have is this -- assuming RIAA dies, the record companies fold, the oligarchical business model of price-fixing, hype-building, and payola dies, and the entire "rock way of life" suffers the entropy death of too many consumers cheapening too much product by too much copying and linking and downloading, how is a rock band supposed to ROCK?Banner Ads???
The only problem with this is that it costs money to make a good recording, whether you're gonna press CD's or upload MP3's for the "new audience". Where does this money come from?
Let's assume that a "good recording" by a modern rock band takes one month and $30,000. YMMV, but most of the indie bands in the Chicago scene would be able to put out a great record for that.
Let's also assume that you play 4 gigs a month in a big city's nightclub district, and 4 more out in regional clubs, whether in surburbia, or on mini-tours, or colleges, whatever.
Let's also assume that each gig takes 10 hours, from load-in to load out. Multiply by 5 band members, two of whom (let's assume) are supported by their girlfriends/mommy/daddy.
You've just spent 400 man-hours away from three good money-earning jobs, plus you've bought equipment, a van, and beer. You've pulled in an average of $150 per show, if you're playing originals at Metro - $500 per show, if you're willing to play Third Eye Blind covers for the chicks in Delta Delta Delta.
Guess what? You're broke.
I don't care if the new distribution system exists or not - you need to prime the pump with money before you can use that system. The best way to do that is to not suck, get played on radio, get signed to a label, take advantage of the economies of scale involved with major label marketing, hope that you've got enough points on your deal, and put out your record. Once you've got your record, you'll want to be on MTV anyway, so the new distribution system is (currently) just gravy...
The same problems facing all other web sites (seperating oneself from the chaff) face indie-rock and/or MP3 distribution sites. On MP3, you're lumped in with everyone else. Actually, going it alone might be better than signing up with MP3.com or CDbaby.com or whatever - as long as your site is cool...
The question for all wannabe creative types is still "How can I be famous tomorrow, so that everything else becomes easy?"
Before I leave, here are my tips: 1) Get cool shoes. 2) Get a cool haircut. 3) Date international sex symbols. 4) Or just quit.
Moderate the above post up, dammit! He gets it all right. This is a great explanation of the part the GPL plays in this whole farce...
As an aside, it seems to me that GPL has the perfect amount of "non-proscription" built into it, and that clever "viral" mode of transmit forces a certain amount of "non-proscription" onto other license writers... I assume that BP is worried about Corel trying to proscribe on top of the GPL, not about the particulars of whether or not a minor can agree to a license, or copy, or whatever...
I saw it, too, during the northward leg of my evening jog, and instinctively looked left for the kids shooting off fireworks. It was *that big*. Smaller than the moon - about the size and color of a motorcycle headlight a couple of hundred yards away. Moved about as fast, too, with a nice orangey tail a couple of degrees long, which flickered occasionaly as debris broke off... It took about 8 seconds to cruise from left to right. I honestly waited for a bang, thinking that it might have been a plane on fire and crashing:)... I looked around that night and this morning, but I couldn't find any news about it - until now! Thank God for Slashdot!
Slashdot Mirror
Let's be a little forward-thinking.
Try to imagine a world that doesn't even *need* copyright, in which it's all there, out in the open, for copying. Then, we don't need the GPL, or any other hack of traditional copyright law. It'll be just as obsolete as the traditional stuff. The GPL is a *transitional* thing. It's not intended to be the perfect solution. When the original poster says "without copyright," he means "all they way without copyright, strong-style."
Now, let's assume infinite copying of ideas and art and knowledge is *good*, OK? That's not too much of a stretch, it seems to me. I think that infinite copying will happen, sooner or later, and especially once we figure out how to include proper attribution of authorship in the copy. Reliable attribution is critical. That, to me, is the perfect solution to the IP dilemma.
Don't fear the change - it's coming. Fame will be what society rewards true artists with. This fame might actually position an artist to make a buck or two. Don't worry, though, you won't have to pay - all of their output will be freely copyable. The rest of us need only lie back and freely absorb all of the "IP" they produce, and maybe occasionally put in our two bits of creative effort...
Yep, it *is* too good, but not too good to be true, eventually.
OK, in the meantime, back in the present, you're absolutely correct about the withholding of source code by its authors. Obscurity is their friend, if they have to earn money in a world of scarcity. If source is scarce, support is costly. I think that if proper attribution could be guaranteed, however, authors would gain by releasing the source, if it's any good at all. They'll be justly rewarded with fame, and possibly even patronage to work on future projects...
Doesn't that seem like the direction that things are going?
> Then The Cost To make The Song(2-3$) Per CD(For Studio Time Coverage).
Jeezis, you're paying $3,000 to record a single hip-hop song? It should take *a day* to record and mix - and that's if you've got live instruments, less if you're using canned sounds. That's 8 hours at $50 (max), for a total of $400. Most people can look around and get it done for $35 an hour. You don't stutter, do you?
Recording isn't hard, people. Don't let your managers/producers/engineers convince you that you need to spend a week in the studio, fucking with the cowbell EQ, or that you need to "fix it in the mix" for days and days. Use a good mic', sing your ass off, and get out of there.
Save that $3,000, buy a cheap Mac, a decent beat box, and download sounds off the 'Net. Mix it all on your hard drive. Post at Chuck-D's site. Become star, open for him in New York, catch panties thrown at you.
Donovan-
The record companies make *more* than $5 on a $16 sale. There's a whole slew of people in the food chain between you, the sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hpurchaser, and the innocent, slightly naive artist, dreaming of his own tour bus, cowboy hat, and personal "Joe-C" midget sidekick...
There's an interesting breakdown by Steve Albini, and of course I don't have the URL which you're so impatiently demanding, but do a Google search for the title - "Some Of Your Friends Are Already This Fucked."
There's also my personal experience that might help slake your thirst for knowledge. My band's CD's cost us, at most, and in small, expensive lots, about $2.50 to press, including a crappy little lyric sheet insert in four colors. The majors press millions for about $0.80 a copy, tops.
I, too, wonder what those "competitively-paid" record company execs do to earn their millions, but I don't begrudge 'em a penny. (However, I am a little jealous that one of them, Mottola from Sony, I think, got to screw Mariah Carey every night for a couple of years). They'd better enjoy feeding at the trough while it lasts, though. The world is catching on to them, and we've got tools to force change. I'm comin' for ya, Mariah, daddy's comin'....
Here's a weird-sounding paraphrase of your post: "I'd love play you a song, but my shareholders are afraid that I give a shit about music - even more than them."
I wish that we were talking about "JOY" instead of "JOB"...
Those kinds of musicians - the kind who don't like music anymore - produce a product which actually *harms the environment*, and they should pay *us* for vibrating the air with it.
In that vein, I'm waiting to be paid my fair share of reparations from the record companies. You know, kinda like the pollution permits that utilites have to buy from the Feds? Sorry, but Epitaph has to pay a little, too...
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot - copyright is dying. It's too bad that we're being caught up in its death-throes, and that silliness like the DCMA (and even the GPL!) have to be written and forced upon society. Don't you think so?
Hey, I stole "Mary Had A Little Lamb" out of my piano today - here it is (you'll have to reverse-engineer the rhythm, and Lordy, watch out for the Feds):
EDCDEEE,DDD,EGG,EDCDEEEEDDEDC
That'll be $16, please - I'm signed to a label!
Guys-
You're both right. None of us musician-types makes *any* fucking money doing either of those things, unless we're incredibly lucky.
The aforementioned _Everything You Need..._ book is great, but it takes a "big-time record exec" viewpoint - which is to be expected, as that's the viewpoint that the author understands.
Steve Albini, God bless him, is also right, and has extensive first-hand experience with the "non-big-time indie rocker" type.
It's been my experience (and yes, I know about two dozen moderately-skilled musicians who have been signed at one point or another) that both gentlemen are right. You make no money when you're small-time, then you sign all of your rights away to the man, who turns you into a big-time artist, and takes all of your money...
Well, how are you supposed to be a musician, then? Good question. Here is the process. The first thing to do is *IGNORE MONEY*. You're never going to make any. You're never going to make any. You're never going to make any. The next thing to do is (as Albini advises), quit immediately -- you'll do yourself and all of your listeners a favor. The last thing to do, if you're still interested in music, is to practice hard, find cool, expressive, daring bandmates, buy good-sounding instruments, write challenging drum parts, and write interesting lyrics. Then play them in your practice spot. If you feel the urge to show off, call your nightclub, and play a Wednesday night for 25 people. Do this for the rest of your life, and die fulfilled. Oh, and don't quit you're day job.
While you're at it, throw in a few ZZ Top and Frank Zappa covers for me - I'll buy you a beer.
Donovan-
:). Now, I don't want to kill the big bands, or take all of their money - I just want them to shut up for a moment, so I can hear some new stuff. The silicone-enhanced DAT-tape singalongs that the big record companies create and send out on the road can only produce thousands and thousands of dollars through "artificial excitement" - "There's nothing else to do, the TV says to take the kids to Britney Spears, this must be music at its finest, she's sold tens upon tens of albums, thank God for Sony's promotional machine and its lowering of the bar to where even *we* can be herded into hipness. Let's buy things!" Everyone settles for expensive mediocrity when the alternative has been aggressively chased away (cf. Microsoft innovation). The success of many of the record companies' creations is due to the artificial installment of monopolistic business practices and laws where business and law hadn't previously existed. Art has nothing to do with business and law. Other posts talk about patronage and the support of fine arts, so I won't rehash them here, but if you feel that you must reward an artist for doing his or her thing, try patronage or tipping. These are the original "business models" (yechh) of public performance or display of art.
Ass a matter of fact, record companies *do* determine what you listen to, if you spend most of your moments of musical appreciation listening to the radio. Payola and other less-illegal forms of bribery are real-life occurances. My advice is to turn off the radio, and head down to your local jazz club, or take the missus to a night at the opera. Shit, turn off the TV occasionally, too. You'll hear new stuff. If you're still in high school or college, take a music or art appreciation class. What? They don't offer that in your school? Then learn to play the basoon. Do *something* - the world needs more expressive people. And don't do it just because some A&R rep promises you millions - the world needs *less* of that kind of expression.
You will find that as you hear the truly fine music, you will become frustrated with the lesser stuff. I believe that most people have a little music critic in them, just aching to hear something new. They don't want rubbish - they want richness. They want the bar set high, to match their tastes.
The micropayment idea *is* being used today, by the vast majority of real-life musicians. It's called playing for tips, and it's all that most musicians can expect. It's certainly all that most of the big-name "talents" deserve, if the truth be told. Most of these MF'ers can't sing or play for shit. Oops, my bitterness is showing
The Internet might actually break the stranglehold on pop culture by big business, introducing people just like you to new entertainment. Assuming the existance of a micropayment system, it might even let millions of people tip the artist up to a point where they could quit their legitimate job, and actually goof off on stage for a living. Maybe not. But there are people out there, thinking about how this could work. People, like you, who aren't afraid of a rules change. Especially if the "rules" that are being changed are arbitrary and harmful in the first place.
Whatever we're lucky enough to receive from our fan(s). All the artists who feel that they must be paid must do is put out the technological equivalent of an open guitar case next to the drum kit, so the dancers can throw a buck or two in once they're done.
We could also kick so much ass culturally (that is to say, "create good art") that collectors/connoisseurs are compelled by their love of what they've just heard/read/seen to become our patrons.
No middlemen needed. Automatic, worldwide, grassroots art criticism -- vote with your dollars! Thanks, Internet.
Nope. Being a musician is not a job.
Being a musician is a state that existed half a million years ago, before jobs, or copyright, or even charcoal cave painting. Being a musician is a natural state that exists in everything that utters, or can discern patterns in sound. That's pretty much everything with a heartbeat.
Being a laywer is an unnatural state, forced upon a few hapless, yet heroic, individuals, who decided that they would accept the grim task of sorting through the tangled series of hacks and accidents which is the legal system, which itself is based upon a tangled series of hacks and accidents which is Western morality and religion, and in return, accept some form of payment for assuming their oppressive, huge, unnatural, and stinky burden. Some exceptionally unnatural laywerly examples seem eager to force conformance with this tangled series of hacks upon the unsuspecting musicians (you and me) who refuse to see everything in terms of "job," "earn," "mine," "not fat enough," "power," and "commodity." Other quintessentially Western nouns and verbs will occur to me after I post, but you get the message...
Just because laywers, and for that matter, cops and administrators, wouldn't do their thing without monetary reward doesn't mean that *everything* shouldn't be done without monetary reward.
Permit me to ask an obvious (almost laywerly) question, with your pardon: Did the government pay your mom to have you? Do you expect to be paid for whistling? Where is the contract that must be signed before these activities can legally occur? These activities *aren't jobs* -- yet. Unless, of course, the RIAA has something to say about it.
I'm a "struggling musician" myself. I agree with you about how shady the music business is. That's because it should never have gotten to the point of being a business in the first place. By deciding to become musicians, you and I have made foolish career choices, but excellent choices for living a fulfilled life.
Fulfilled, that is, as long as we don't expect to get paid for noodling on a guitar. Apparently, some of the posters think that Metallica deserves to get paid for noodling on guitars. I'm not sure why they think that way. Metallica, too, had made a dumb career choice -- they just got lucky. A look around any local music scene will show how badly the other Metallicas are faring in their "careers". Many of these other musicians are talented, but are making a realistic amount of money through playing -- that is, they're poor.
Some other people have mortgaged their homes on Metallica's unrealistic ability to convince people to buy CD's. These folks have constructed and actively maintained a huge apparatus designed to funnel America's lunch money and allowances into their pockets. Well, good luck -- trend-mongering is tricky, and the kids are fickle. If the apparatus cannot sustain its weight, and the trend-mongers were forced to switch careers, I would hope that they'd try something more productive, or at least, less dumb. Like teaching, or nursing, or farming, or research, for instance. You know, building things. Maybe that's the industry change that you'll see -- a bunch of ex-A&R reps getting paid to build houses, or a bunch of entertainment lawyers working in a soup kitchen, all for realistic wages. And maybe, playing at nightclubs for kicks on weekends.
I hope that you can do other things, once the business goes south, and the Internet routes musicians and listeners around the recording industry. But if you have no other skills that benefit society, and earn a wage for yourself, you can still play music! Write and produce the best music you can. Ignore the industry -- put it out on the 'Net. Improve your artistic skills while growing as an artist. And as far as your current career in the "music business" is concerned, please don't screw over an artist stupid enough to trust that the music industry will be a good career for him (even if everyone else in the imaginary business of music is "getting dirty"). Try to ignore the dollar signs. It'll make your songs, and your career choices, better.
I agree with you, and I also agree with posters such as Wah and Tom Swiss. I've been thinking about what the impending obsolecsence of copyright will mean for a while now, and I can't reach any conclusions that don't include a *radical* shift in attitudes towards entertainment, play, art, and leisure.
No artist should be paid because they produce art. Artists should be paid when they enter into a binding contract with someone, to perform labor that one doesn't need to be an artist to do. That is, when they "get a real job."
Music production and appreciation is something that musicians do, just as birds do (and I really mean just as naturally as birds). Do we charge people for listening to birds? Do the birds expect to get seeds from us, for being sung at?
Sometimes, we throw crumbs to birds, to get them to stick around the house and do bird stuff, like singing. Sometimes, when we're really moved by a subway musician, we tip him.
Whether an artist labors for years to write a novel, or goofs around on a timbale in the subway for an afternoon, he doesn't deserve anything but attention, and sometimes awe. Philanthropists, such as the emperor, or that dude sitting on the bench next to you, might donate money to ensure that the artist can produce works instead of stopping to work. Artists shouldn't expect that donation to occur. This is because a donation isn't the fulfillment of a debt incurred by one party to another, it's a donation...
This is of course how human society used to treat performance, until the mechanical processes of *recording* a performance (whether through black dots on paper, or bumpy grooves in a vinyl disc) were devised, and with them, the copyright. Now that the mechanical act of saving a work for posterity is trivial, let's remove the middlemen that sprang up when copying was hard. Why support the record companies, the publishing companies, the film industry? We can do it ourselves. And let's not kid ourselves -- those of us that produce the work were "doing it ourselves" even when somebody else was constructing an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine to convince others to pay them (the middlemen) for it. The artists shouldn't feel "ripped off" when the middlemen do this -- they should look up from their performance, blink their eyes in confusion, and ask the people dumping money into these middlemen machines, "Why?"
No, no, nobody *forced* these "creative labors," so the creator dosen't *deserve* any payment. That is, there's no inalienable right to payment for doing art. Any more than we should both be paid for posting to Slashdot. We might deserve recognition, but not money. Being an artist is different from being a cop. Police risk their lives, but artists don't. Police ought to get paid for their doing their horrible jobs - most don't get paid enough, in my opinion. But where is the risk to the author, for instance, if someone reads his book?
You'd be a scholar whether it made you rich or not, right? I mean, do you do it for love?
I'd love to be able to actually write a piece of scholarship, which increased the total of human knowledge, even if in a tiny niche of a science. I'd love the opportunity for that knowledge to be disseminated far and wide. Even on a porn site! Some of my pearls of wisdom might actually be recognized, and pondered, and learned from, by the swine frequenting such sites...
Seriously. Ideas happen. Even when the thinker is supported by a guild, or university, and maybe even when he works for Pespi. They're kinda hard to come up with, but people have 'em all the time, anyway. Some of those people are compelled by a creative impulse (common to most children) to translate them into words, or notes, or colors, or algorithms. The ideas then go into other minds, and some cause other ideas to form, for less effort than would've otherwise taken. Having ideas form easily is really livin'. And the more ideas there are, the less work to have ideas of your own... Love produces more love, after all.
Thinkers, authors, artists: these people don't deserve money for doing what comes naturally to all humans - they deserve recognition, if the ideas are good. You should hope that your scholary writings should be broadcast as widely as possible! Be the giant whose shoulders everyone else in your field stands upon when they peer into the distance...
Perhaps you would be satisfied with some sort of "attribution machinery," which attempts to limit plagarism by somehow "labelling" the idea. Maybe that's the GPL... Although, I suppose that, for the public, *who* came up with the idea isn't as important as whether or not the idea was expressed in the first place. The last sentence of the previous paragraph was Newton's, for instance. But it sure made my point, so I used it.
Authorship serves as a claim on monies extorted by middlemen during the dissemination of ideas, and should actually become less relevant as we progress towards that less-buggy society of tomorrow. Hopefully, the need for GPL-like machinery will fade. The GPL will autocorrect the need for itself! And the world will be full of unfettered ideas.
Authors and musicians and other artists don't deserve to get paid. That is, they don't deserve to get paid for performing their art. Since they're artists, they perform their art because it would kill them not to. Getting paid has nothing to do with it.
No one forces you, a presumably fat 'n' happy member of a lawful, rich, and prosperous society, to do anything you don't want to do for recreation. You may have to obey policemen and soldiers, or die, and you may have to work at something that you find distasteful, in order to *earn* money to live fat 'n' happy. But you have no right to perform an art, or other recreation, and demand compensation. You also don't work in a coal mine. You're probably a software engineer, or a bus driver, or a waitress, which aren't excruciating day jobs. Although, D. H. Lawrence came from a coal mining family...
Copying isn't plagarism, and it's not removing the incentive for true art. People will always tell stories and play music, and the best stories and songs might actually bring fame or fortune of some type on the author. It is probably true that the best works of art are performed without worrying about how the art can become product. So let's remove the notion of "intellectual property", and replace it with the notion of "recognition of greatness". Which means just what it says -- recognition, not payment.
I'm glad I'm not the only grumpy old-timer.
Doesn't work. Too many sellers, not enough buyers. Unless you're *really lucky* and *really good*, not enough important people ever hear your music to consider signing you. Hell, not enough "just plain folks" pay admission to watch you play...
The shareware model of recorded music performances suffers from the same problem. Too many sellers.
Don't say that "I support music! I download and pay-per-listen! I even support *local* music!" because you can't. Not enough, anyway. Any given Saturday night in a small town, there will be 10 live performances in places ranging from your daughter's school play to the umpteenth Creedence cover band at The Corner Pocket. You can't attend 'em all. You can't afford to spend the time *buying* their homebrew tapes & CD's. You sure as hell can't waste time goofing around with Napster, guessing whether or not a song is worth the download, after you pluck it out of the vast sea of contenders. The best way to support music is to open a great nightclub. At least then you'll be giving a "donation" of another place to play.
As musicians, hoping to get the big break is a waste of time. Instead, play music for your friends, and laugh about your near-brushes with stardom. That's the only way to have fun making music for the vast majority of musicians (even the good ones). It's probably also the only way that music was meant to be exchanged in the first place...
The Math, using your numbers:
:) ), but we're not deluded enough to think that a life as the head of your own little personality cult (think Fugazi, or Richard Stallman) is enough of a reward for eating ramen noodles. You should be able to play your guitar *in comfort* -- not underfed. Most of the time, that means quitting playing "professionally".
1000 CD's @ $6 = $6,000
10000 CD's @ $4 = $40,000
100000 CD's @ $0.50 = $50,000
Conclusion: major label signing is best.
Assumptions: You can actually sell 1000 by yourself, and that the same CD can actually be sold in the listed quantities (10,000, 100,000) by the small or major labels.
By the way, T-shirts cost too much to produce to be cost-effective to sell. Unless you do it in major-label quantities. CD's are better.
As a side-effect, no one else except the CD production people make money in the first case. The CD production people make less in the second case, and the small label makes a bit. In the third case, the major label (which includes the CD production people, the business creeps, the tour support/tour management, the merchandise folks, the radio payola/promotion/ad folks, etc.) makes most of the money. But you still get more as an artist than you would otherwise.
Why do you think the dream of all artists capable of using major labels to their fullest (that is, being hot/slutty/dumbed-down enough, or wearing cool enough shoes, to sell 100,000 copies if given the chance) is to get signed to a major as soon as possible? Being a rock star takes, and creates, more money from/for the artist. There's a bigger surplus from the larger pie, even when the slice is smaller proportionately.
If you make classical music, cool. You'll never sell more than 10,000 albums, but you'll be part of a long and rich heritage. Stay with a small label. If you, like me and my friends (one of whom used to *play* for LTJ), have a small little band, try to become cool as soon as possible, or else you'll end up sitting on those 1000 CD's you pressed, 'cause tours can suck all your money away. Congratulations, you've kept %100 of no earnings. We love our music (probably more than all the rest of you ever will
Good points, especially the last sentence -- the RIAA are middlemen and dinosaurs, and the Internet kills off middlemen. The only thing left is the consumer and the musician.
I have a few questions, though, about what happens to the artist. Specifically, the kind of artist that is signed, marketed, and tours to support an overpriced CD, the income of which dribbles through the clutches of the middlemen to drip admittedly-tiny-but-still-significant droplets into the artist's bank account. I'm not worried about garage bands, indie rockers, accoustic duos in Barnes 'n' Noble, and other poor musicians -- we'll never make real money anyway, unless we're supremely talented.
That leaves "big rock stars", or "people who can live off of playing music". I worry that when the record companies are made moot, there won't be the ridiculous amount of money hoarded from consumers and turned into a subsidy for a few big bands to promote tours and support CD sales. Hell, there won't be CD's left to sell. Since I like the circus atmosphere of "big USA rock 'n' roll shows", I wonder how this atmosphere can be produced from the income of a few hundred clicks on the band's website.
As much as record companies are the devil, once they go, the fake-ass music industry goes, and rock stars go, too.
I don't *want* everything to be DIY. I don't *want* an inclusive musical scene. If I wanted an inclusive musical scene, I'd have invited you to join the band. Shit, if there's no pot 'o stardom at the end of the rainbow for the struggling, hopeful, ego-driven musician to shoot for, we should all just go back to working at the mills.
I guess the question I have is this -- assuming RIAA dies, the record companies fold, the oligarchical business model of price-fixing, hype-building, and payola dies, and the entire "rock way of life" suffers the entropy death of too many consumers cheapening too much product by too much copying and linking and downloading, how is a rock band supposed to ROCK? Banner Ads???
The only problem with this is that it costs money to make a good recording, whether you're gonna press CD's or upload MP3's for the "new audience". Where does this money come from?
Let's assume that a "good recording" by a modern rock band takes one month and $30,000. YMMV, but most of the indie bands in the Chicago scene would be able to put out a great record for that.
Let's also assume that you play 4 gigs a month in a big city's nightclub district, and 4 more out in regional clubs, whether in surburbia, or on mini-tours, or colleges, whatever.
Let's also assume that each gig takes 10 hours, from load-in to load out. Multiply by 5 band members, two of whom (let's assume) are supported by their girlfriends/mommy/daddy.
You've just spent 400 man-hours away from three good money-earning jobs, plus you've bought equipment, a van, and beer. You've pulled in an average of $150 per show, if you're playing originals at Metro - $500 per show, if you're willing to play Third Eye Blind covers for the chicks in Delta Delta Delta.
Guess what? You're broke.
I don't care if the new distribution system exists or not - you need to prime the pump with money before you can use that system. The best way to do that is to not suck, get played on radio, get signed to a label, take advantage of the economies of scale involved with major label marketing, hope that you've got enough points on your deal, and put out your record. Once you've got your record, you'll want to be on MTV anyway, so the new distribution system is (currently) just gravy...
The same problems facing all other web sites (seperating oneself from the chaff) face indie-rock and/or MP3 distribution sites. On MP3, you're lumped in with everyone else. Actually, going it alone might be better than signing up with MP3.com or CDbaby.com or whatever - as long as your site is cool...
The question for all wannabe creative types is still "How can I be famous tomorrow, so that everything else becomes easy?"
Before I leave, here are my tips: 1) Get cool shoes. 2) Get a cool haircut. 3) Date international sex symbols. 4) Or just quit.
Moderate the above post up, dammit! He gets it all right. This is a great explanation of the part the GPL plays in this whole farce...
As an aside, it seems to me that GPL has the perfect amount of "non-proscription" built into it, and that clever "viral" mode of transmit forces a certain amount of "non-proscription" onto other license writers... I assume that BP is worried about Corel trying to proscribe on top of the GPL, not about the particulars of whether or not a minor can agree to a license, or copy, or whatever...
See this link.
I saw it, too, during the northward leg of my evening jog, and instinctively looked left for the kids shooting off fireworks. It was *that big*. Smaller than the moon - about the size and color of a motorcycle headlight a couple of hundred yards away. Moved about as fast, too, with a nice orangey tail a couple of degrees long, which flickered occasionaly as debris broke off... It took about 8 seconds to cruise from left to right. I honestly waited for a bang, thinking that it might have been a plane on fire and crashing :)... I looked around that night and this morning, but I couldn't find any news about it - until now! Thank God for Slashdot!
Using a higher-level function makes it easy to reconfigure the two compose()'ed functions at *run-time*, instead of at compile time.
Is "shepard" the trackable word?