As you said, artists are in it for the money, and even though the contracts don't end up producing a significant net gain for the artists, they certainly don't set them back $25K. Plus, paying that kind of money to record a set of 15 tracks and then distributing them for free in the hopes that you'll be able to draw a crowd at concerts is not what most would consider a strong business model.
After some reflection, I would say that the real issue is not that what I proposed is impossible, simply that it is not viable to the majority of artists until a few have already paved the way, and consumers of music become accustomed to pursuing music produced this way.
Back in the day artists needed the record companies because they provided a medium for distribution of the artists product, in the form of LPs, tapes, CDs, etc. The artists don't really make any money from these distributed media, but they do get their music out into the world. Artists income is primarilly from live performance, and it was healthy income so long as their albums were well distributed by a capable record company. Now, a medium for distribution (Free P2P networks) exists, and it isn't the recording industry so they're going nuts about it because they don't want to die off.
What irks me is that they're winning now! Somehow, artists didn't choose to leave record companies, and consumers caved because of the threat of litigation (which I do not mean to make light of, it is a hefty threat). So that leaves us (in the most general sense of the word) working to keep a cumbersome, inefficient and net draining system in place.
As I see it, the Recording Industry is really out of context, but it has lots of money in its paws so it's using it to thrash around.
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To be sure, you've picked apart my rant well ;)
As you said, artists are in it for the money, and even though the contracts don't end up producing a significant net gain for the artists, they certainly don't set them back $25K. Plus, paying that kind of money to record a set of 15 tracks and then distributing them for free in the hopes that you'll be able to draw a crowd at concerts is not what most would consider a strong business model.
After some reflection, I would say that the real issue is not that what I proposed is impossible, simply that it is not viable to the majority of artists until a few have already paved the way, and consumers of music become accustomed to pursuing music produced this way.
Back in the day artists needed the record companies because they provided a medium for distribution of the artists product, in the form of LPs, tapes, CDs, etc. The artists don't really make any money from these distributed media, but they do get their music out into the world. Artists income is primarilly from live performance, and it was healthy income so long as their albums were well distributed by a capable record company. Now, a medium for distribution (Free P2P networks) exists, and it isn't the recording industry so they're going nuts about it because they don't want to die off. What irks me is that they're winning now! Somehow, artists didn't choose to leave record companies, and consumers caved because of the threat of litigation (which I do not mean to make light of, it is a hefty threat). So that leaves us (in the most general sense of the word) working to keep a cumbersome, inefficient and net draining system in place. As I see it, the Recording Industry is really out of context, but it has lots of money in its paws so it's using it to thrash around.