True, but I think it's important to remember that the creative arts are a different kind of business than many others. In most cases, you get no pension, no retirement, no health care, no sick days...it's a freelance gig (most of the time) and with it come those hazards...hazards the artist hopes can be made up for over the life of their works.
The artist is being paid for work they did, but if they stop promoting it, it is likely to stop producing money for them, so they are also, effectively, being paid for work they are doing. Very few can actually "rest on their laurels" and watch the mailbox money roll in. Promoting often involves performance, the creation of new material, etc... Except for some major corporations, the arts are not as lucrative for most people as some are led to believe...even with copyrights that extend to the life of the copyright holder.
The problem is when the creator is no longer the copyright holder, which is frequently the case in exchange for the opportunity to promote and distribute their work.
But the goal of so many isn't to make money to fund development but rather to hit it big with their one hit wonder and ride on its laurels for the rest of their lives. That may be the goal, but it is the exception rather than the rule.
It's a crap shoot, granted, but a major label has the power to move a lot of units. They can get them in stores and on the internet, sure...that's the easy part. More importantly, however, they have the resources to market that material. They can get it into commercials, episodes of Scrubs, and this summer's big blockbuster movie. They can get posters up in every major downtown, and signage on the bus and on billboards, can set up national and international promotions on radio, television and the internet, can afford to fund music videos, and can tag the band on to a major festival with many of the labels already successful (read: profitable) acts.
It's all about exposure, and exposure means volume. That can translate to a lot of money. 4% of a million units at $.99 a piece is $40,000 (It can be difficult to spread a million units for free, even if they're MP3s on the internet, without good marketing and of course desired material). That doesn't include other means of income, and of course that such a song can continue bringing in the money by supporting future or past songs and albums by the artist.
Of course, like I said, it's a gamble. You could just as soon do all the hard work and artist or writer does, and even get the record made, to have it not get promoted, or maybe not even released; sitting in a vault for the next 30 years, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. The success stories really are the exception when it comes to signing with a major label. That doesn't stop bands and artists from trying, though.
I think the poster was referring to the endless buying up of subsidiary labels and subsidiaries to the subsidiaries. Great way to accumulate catalog and a talent pool, but in the end the pond just gets bigger and the fish just get smaller.
As an addendum, I am a member of the SGA (Songwriters Guild of America), and I can most certainly state they are not a union in any traditional sense of the word. An organization that is thrilled to help and tout it's most successful artists, yes, but not a union.
1) New writer/publisher/artists
2) writer/publisher/artists whose contracts are up and have control over their new material (or have won back control of their former material.)
I think a lot of this argument, however, is about current catalogs. Contractually, the writers/artists don't have full control of this material. Until or unless they gain control over that material, they are limited as to how they can exploit it.
Except (at least in the U.S.) songwriters aren't organized. They don't really have any collective bargaining power.
Consequently, there's a whole slew of non-professional writers who could be drafted up to write. This is complicated by the fact that, outside of country, pop and R&B, so many bands write their own material. Would they also strike? If not, then the RIAA has something even better than reality television. They've still got the real deal.
As a songwriter, I really do wish there were a union, but much as club owners can just decline to pay you (because there are so many bands and artists have so little bargaining power), so can record companies just move on to the next desperate writer or publisher.
Bingo. It's actually a great opportunity for one kind of middle man to rise up...that of the small, do-it-all label. Not necessarily the "traditional" way (where labels are banks that front money for the artists), but behaving more in the capacity of publisher-label-administrators. The artist can work on their end, and these people can take a cut for handling the business end of it (because that end can eat up a lot of time and money.)
It's going to take every avenue a writer can use to make money and be successful in the future, and the poster is exactly right. It's a business people. Artists, writers and publishers have to look out for their own interests.
What I do not understand is how they cannot see that making it LESS valuable for content creators to sign with their labels is going to result in LESS ARTISTS bothering to sign with their labels. There already has to be a certain breaking point that is leading the current boom in independent artists releasing their own content or finding alternate distribution methods. Further reducing the incentive will surely cause >0 others to do the same. You're absolutely right (even in terms of songwriters and publishers, as well as artists), except I think that threshold is a long way off. To make a living as a songwriter or as a publisher is a lot of work, and the good money is still in getting a solid artist not only to record your material, but to get it into film, commercials, etc... Until the indies and self-produced bunch get their negotiating and marketings wits about them, Sony-Warner-BMG-etc are going to be where the money is at.
It's possible, and I haven't been to a "church event" in some time, but somehow I have trouble believing that a church event is going to kill the commercials at half-time to pray. Somehow this seems more like a church "community" event than a services event. Otherwise, I'd think they'd give the whole superbowl amiss anyway in favor of just holding services.
But then again, I didn't RTFA, so maybe I'm wrong.
I'm not sure about this, but the NFL probably does lose revenue from public showings. If a theater wanted to show the superbowl, they would most likely have to pay licensing fees to the NFL. This church wants to skip that step and show it publicly to an unknown number of people. Possibly, but I just keep thinking, don't they make their money on advertising? And isn't a big public gathering a great place to be squeezing ads every few plays? Since it will likely be loud and on a big screen, it will be difficult to avoid, and more than likely plenty will just hang out during the commercials and talk to one another anyway...like we do in our living rooms...while we're watching the games.
Isn't that what you want, NFL? People planted firmly in their seats? Subliminally absorbing the ads?
Or have I completely misunderstood how this works.
Frankly, there's not enough information in the article to know whether it was a good test of Vista's compatibility or not.
Look, let's put three identical machines side by side. We'll install Vista on one, XP on two, and Linux on three. Now let's try installing those games on all three machines and see what happens.
Then we have some kind of benchmark to work off of. Otherwise, we have no idea what different circumstances, variables and other criteria are affecting this "test."
I think it's called "science." Geeks are supposed to be into it.
For every anecdote, it seems someone else has a different anecdote. Maybe attempting to do things methodically and showing the work is just too much work for a little bit of truth.
I dunno...I smelled a firefight the minute I read Scuttlemonkey's lead line.
Several readers have written to tell us about one users rant... Really? Several readers? Took time out of their day to write you to tell you about this one readers rant? OK, I'll check out the article. This must be good. What? Only four games tested, and by someone who is a self-professed non-gamer? Let's see what he had to say...
Game 1: Basically didn't work. Oh sure, he got Soldat running in WINE eventually, after tweaking, and gives the impression that it was unplayable. Vista 0 - Linux 0.
Game 2: Darwinia, patched to the latest version (a reasonable suggestion for any game, really, in this day and age) ran with a horrible frame rate in Vista, but "runs fine under Wine (even at a tolerable speed)" Not at "a normal" or "expected" framerate, but at "a tolerable speed." I have no idea what that means. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, but someone might want to share the fact that Darwinia is available in a native Linux version. Vista 0 - Linux 1.
Game 3: DOSBox under Vista hangs, and he says it's basically a DOSBox problem. Okay, fine...so he tries it in Linux and it also fails, though in a different way. In Vista he tries to shut off the sound in the config, and nothing, but in Linux he changes the config from SBPro to SB. I'd like to know, did he try that in Vista? (First rule of troubleshooting...assume nothing.) I don't think I can give Linux a point on this because there's just not enough information. Vista 0 - Linux 1.
Game 4: Civ 4. The author of the article says he's a big Civ fan, and frankly so am I. Great game series. He gets a message that indicates known compatibility issues, so tries to run it anyway (why not...might as well see what happens.) It hangs on him. Now, anecdotes are anecdotes, but my buddy and I have been playing the Civ games together for sometime, and he recently (within the last year) put Vista on his machine. Afterward we both purchased Civ 4 (I'm running it on XP.) He installed it, loaded it, and (drum roll)...it worked. No window claiming "known compatibility issues", it didn't hang his machine. It's not even a state of the art machine. We've been playing for several months now, and neither of us has had any issues with Windows "hanging", which suggests to me that there is more going on here than just a windows issue (even though windows could be involved.) He does say that after patching the game (there it is again), well, I'm not sure what he says.
Update: With the 1.61 patch, Civ4 no longer freezes, but it like in WineX, it does not recognize the cd labled "Play / Disc 2 when in the drive. An improvement, but still not good enough. I think he said it didn't work. Oh, and he could install in under Cedega and it wouldn't run. It wouldn't even install for him with Wine, "but at least it doesn't hang my machine."
Using highly refined comparitive techniques similar to those in the "rant", and given that my friend's experience running Civ under Vista has been completely smooth, I'm gonna give Vista a point on this one. Vista 1 - Linux 1.
Margin of error: 1000 games, either way. I don't care if one "handles application failures more gracefully than" the other. If I'm the average user who wants to game as is implied in the article, I will be as confused by nothing happening as I would be by the computer hanging and restarting. Looks like a tie to me.
Look, folks, I have no love for Vista (tried it, tested it, didn't like it), but this was about as scientific a test of Vista's compatibility as reading tea leaves.
And just to add 2 cents, I don't think any of those games were sold on the assumption that they would run in Vista, just because it's supposed to be backwards compatible.
There is a fundamental problem with this argument.
CD's use materials which have to be acquired by using tools and labor which have a cost. The material on the CD also requires tools and labor which have a cost. If someone steals the CD, then we say someone has been wronged because physical property, that they can no longer use to profit on, is no longer theirs to sell. But if someone takes intellectual property (non-physical media), then it's fair game because duplication of the media costs virtually nothing.
Two points here.
1) Clearly this means the physical CD itself has more value to the consumer than the media on that CD.
2) The creator of the media, who required tools and expended labor to produce the material, has no rights and deserves no protections for the distribution of his/her efforts, whereas all the people who mined the materials, pressed the CDs, and (yes by this logic) even the record companies who have backed the creation of these materials to begin with, deserve more protections than the original content creator.
Again, we're in ambiguous territory. I'm glad the original poster was able to benefit from the "piracy" of the material for his computer under his economic circumstances at the time. It is a net benefit for society. However, let's not make the mistake of saying that scarcity of materials alone is the measure of "value." Clearly the poster valued the content.
I wish we could stop using these (are these straw man?) arguments that because the duplication of the material has little cost then the material itself has little value. Clearly that's not the case, though many Slashdotters would have us believe it's so to justify their ends and means. (I know, I know...I must be new here.)
If you're going to "steal" the content, then at least acknowledge the creators of said content instead of railing against the distributors. If you can't (or won't) pay them, regardless of the legality, I suggest doing everything you can do to support the content creators who have provided you with such a benefit, whether it's promotion, future purchases, or even an anonymous thanks might be welcome.
I don't know if Intellivision could be considered the best game console of all time, but I do miss mine. It's not quite the same playing the collection on a PlayStation.
Defender of the Crown, Might and Magic II, Alcon, Arkanoid, Times of Lore, Pirates, SimCity and you could write your own!!!
Look, I know many of those were available on other systems, but (and maybe this is just my own personal zeitgeist) they never looked as good or were as much fun as they were on my C64. Though I must admit, I did learn to program on the C64. But the poster is right. Most of those units sold what they did because they were "cheap" and had lots of great games.
Best Console? Well the Atari and the Nintendo both changed the nature of gaming for years to come (and I must admit, I *still* enjoy SMB, no matter how many ways I've beat it.) But best gaming platform? C64, without a doubt.
On one hand, I agree and approve of certain sentiments listed above. It does take money to afford much of that equipment, and it is fine equipment for digital recording.
But you couldn't make a decent rock/pop track with that? "It's not the gear, it's the engineer." On that front I can understand why a studio would be the better bet, but given the time (and in fairness time could be what you're spending to keep life and limb together in a day job) you ought to be able to cook up a pretty decent sounding track just with what you have in the first sentence or two there. I've heard plenty o' pop track and seen much hiphop assembled with very similar rigs.
Believe me, I love the studio environment, but it's a changing world and that means the sound is changing too. Sure there will be a lot of crap, but studios have been putting out turds for as long as home recording setups have. On the other hand, both environments have produced some gems over the years. Let's use the studios when absolutely necessary, or when it's the only way to get the sound we want, but when we can't or when it's not, let's all try to make some shiny rocks.
To be fair, there are plenty of plenty of member labels that put out some great music. Rhino and Decca,for instance, are both RIAA members and there are plenty more that shed light on undiscovered artists that deserve a wider audience. It's unfortunate that everyone thinks RIAA==Britney Spears. The music industry is as varied as the computer industry. Sure you've got your Dell and Apple, but there are plenty of smaller players (and some big ones)that make moves and money. Yes, but blanket statements are just so much more effective than truth or reality.
And now, I am going to level with you. Food is cheap. One-thousand farmers, ranchers, packagers, distributors, and supermarket clerks can supply 1,000,000 people with a years worth of adequate food to live. Shelter is cheap. The only reason real estate costs so much is because of an irrational market. Power? It is cheap, too. I assume your area hasn't have issues with black/brownouts, which indicates that there is more than enough power to go around. And security... well... I assume you mean a local police force - and if you that you pay for through taxes, which everybody shares. That is actually pretty cheap. The much larger burden is paying for public education which is needed to teach the children. Though you are fundamentally correct, I am assuming "The Greater Los Angeles Area" is of an incorrect type for this function. Food costs more, rent is high and real estate is impossible, power is expensive and though (thankfully) not of Baghdad quality, less regular than other cities I've been in, and as for the police...well, there are good cops and there are bad cops in any city, I suppose, but do you think maybe we could just pay enough taxes for the good cops?
In any case, I guess my point is that we have accustomed ourselves to living standards that place a high burden on affordability compared to what the "inputs" to the system are. Values are out of whack and (sadly) your pragmatic argument holds true because most artists need to earn a living doing something else and they are denied the time to do what they truly enjoy. Yeah, and...uh...well I guess that was your point. Right. Nevermind. =)
Hopefully I'm not drifting too far off topic here, and forgive me if this comes off like a big advertisement. Maybe not what the poster was asking for, but maybe it's helpful for somebody.
I think the first rule of recording outside of a studio (speaking as an audio engineer who works in a studio) is to accept that your recordings will not sound like they were made in a studio. I think the second rule is there's nothing wrong with that. Though the majority of great recordings thus far have been made in a studio environment, I am periodically surprised by recordings made in less than stellar conditions that sound fantastic. This is a subjective art. You probably won't be making Steely Dan or Alan Parsons records, but Jason Falkner, Jack White and even Bruce Springsteen have made some great sounding stuff under less than ideal recording conditions and environments.
Here's some starter ideas.
Software:REAPER = $50 (Free until you can afford to pay for it, basically) Interface:M-Audio FastTrack USB = about $100 Microphone:Shure SM58 = about $100. If you don't have any room treatment (loosely "soundproofing") then this mic will be your friend. It sounds pretty good on most things from voice to instruments, too. Subscription:TapeOp - Free one year subscription (trust me...you'll want this)
Don't forget a couple cables for your mic and instrument if necessary. Plug in your instrument of choice and have fun. Experiment with where you put the mic until you like the sound of it (and DON'T LET YOUR METERS GO INTO THE RED!) Pay close attention to how your choice affects the sound of the overall mix as you add tracks. Don't be afraid to experiment with software, sound or equipment. Remember, though there are good techniques, the only right techniques are the ones that sound good to you.
Also get onboard a good site like Gearslutz and read, ask and engage.
Most importantly, use your ears, pay attention, try to mimic things you like from other people's recordings and LEARN from doing it. We're all geeks, damnit. Isn't that how we learn to do everything?
All of this is predicated on an artificial construct, though. That of adoption of new software. If business can't afford to adopt new software, they may not. And if enough businesses don't, what motivation is there to develop new software?
Slashdot Mirror
+1 Good Idea.
True, but I think it's important to remember that the creative arts are a different kind of business than many others. In most cases, you get no pension, no retirement, no health care, no sick days...it's a freelance gig (most of the time) and with it come those hazards...hazards the artist hopes can be made up for over the life of their works.
The artist is being paid for work they did, but if they stop promoting it, it is likely to stop producing money for them, so they are also, effectively, being paid for work they are doing. Very few can actually "rest on their laurels" and watch the mailbox money roll in. Promoting often involves performance, the creation of new material, etc... Except for some major corporations, the arts are not as lucrative for most people as some are led to believe...even with copyrights that extend to the life of the copyright holder.
The problem is when the creator is no longer the copyright holder, which is frequently the case in exchange for the opportunity to promote and distribute their work.
I wouldn't let my kids on MySpace just because I wouldn't want them to learn poor web design.
If I had kids.
Easy answer. Volume.
It's a crap shoot, granted, but a major label has the power to move a lot of units. They can get them in stores and on the internet, sure...that's the easy part. More importantly, however, they have the resources to market that material. They can get it into commercials, episodes of Scrubs, and this summer's big blockbuster movie. They can get posters up in every major downtown, and signage on the bus and on billboards, can set up national and international promotions on radio, television and the internet, can afford to fund music videos, and can tag the band on to a major festival with many of the labels already successful (read: profitable) acts.
It's all about exposure, and exposure means volume. That can translate to a lot of money. 4% of a million units at $.99 a piece is $40,000 (It can be difficult to spread a million units for free, even if they're MP3s on the internet, without good marketing and of course desired material). That doesn't include other means of income, and of course that such a song can continue bringing in the money by supporting future or past songs and albums by the artist.
Of course, like I said, it's a gamble. You could just as soon do all the hard work and artist or writer does, and even get the record made, to have it not get promoted, or maybe not even released; sitting in a vault for the next 30 years, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. The success stories really are the exception when it comes to signing with a major label. That doesn't stop bands and artists from trying, though.
/me checks his bank account for the millions of dollars that he purportedly has earned from the high cost of music.
Nope. No overpayment here. They must be talking about Metallica.
I think the poster was referring to the endless buying up of subsidiary labels and subsidiaries to the subsidiaries. Great way to accumulate catalog and a talent pool, but in the end the pond just gets bigger and the fish just get smaller.
As an addendum, I am a member of the SGA (Songwriters Guild of America), and I can most certainly state they are not a union in any traditional sense of the word. An organization that is thrilled to help and tout it's most successful artists, yes, but not a union.
Which is great under two circumstances.
1) New writer/publisher/artists
2) writer/publisher/artists whose contracts are up and have control over their new material (or have won back control of their former material.)
I think a lot of this argument, however, is about current catalogs. Contractually, the writers/artists don't have full control of this material. Until or unless they gain control over that material, they are limited as to how they can exploit it.
Except (at least in the U.S.) songwriters aren't organized. They don't really have any collective bargaining power.
Consequently, there's a whole slew of non-professional writers who could be drafted up to write. This is complicated by the fact that, outside of country, pop and R&B, so many bands write their own material. Would they also strike? If not, then the RIAA has something even better than reality television. They've still got the real deal.
As a songwriter, I really do wish there were a union, but much as club owners can just decline to pay you (because there are so many bands and artists have so little bargaining power), so can record companies just move on to the next desperate writer or publisher.
Bingo. It's actually a great opportunity for one kind of middle man to rise up...that of the small, do-it-all label. Not necessarily the "traditional" way (where labels are banks that front money for the artists), but behaving more in the capacity of publisher-label-administrators. The artist can work on their end, and these people can take a cut for handling the business end of it (because that end can eat up a lot of time and money.)
It's going to take every avenue a writer can use to make money and be successful in the future, and the poster is exactly right. It's a business people. Artists, writers and publishers have to look out for their own interests.
It's possible, and I haven't been to a "church event" in some time, but somehow I have trouble believing that a church event is going to kill the commercials at half-time to pray. Somehow this seems more like a church "community" event than a services event. Otherwise, I'd think they'd give the whole superbowl amiss anyway in favor of just holding services.
But then again, I didn't RTFA, so maybe I'm wrong.
Isn't that what you want, NFL? People planted firmly in their seats? Subliminally absorbing the ads?
Or have I completely misunderstood how this works.
Frankly, there's not enough information in the article to know whether it was a good test of Vista's compatibility or not.
Look, let's put three identical machines side by side. We'll install Vista on one, XP on two, and Linux on three. Now let's try installing those games on all three machines and see what happens.
Then we have some kind of benchmark to work off of. Otherwise, we have no idea what different circumstances, variables and other criteria are affecting this "test."
I think it's called "science." Geeks are supposed to be into it.
For every anecdote, it seems someone else has a different anecdote. Maybe attempting to do things methodically and showing the work is just too much work for a little bit of truth.
Several readers have written to tell us about one users rant... Really? Several readers? Took time out of their day to write you to tell you about this one readers rant? OK, I'll check out the article. This must be good. What? Only four games tested, and by someone who is a self-professed non-gamer? Let's see what he had to say...
Game 1: Basically didn't work. Oh sure, he got Soldat running in WINE eventually, after tweaking, and gives the impression that it was unplayable. Vista 0 - Linux 0.
Game 2: Darwinia, patched to the latest version (a reasonable suggestion for any game, really, in this day and age) ran with a horrible frame rate in Vista, but "runs fine under Wine (even at a tolerable speed)" Not at "a normal" or "expected" framerate, but at "a tolerable speed." I have no idea what that means. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, but someone might want to share the fact that Darwinia is available in a native Linux version. Vista 0 - Linux 1.
Game 3: DOSBox under Vista hangs, and he says it's basically a DOSBox problem. Okay, fine...so he tries it in Linux and it also fails, though in a different way. In Vista he tries to shut off the sound in the config, and nothing, but in Linux he changes the config from SBPro to SB. I'd like to know, did he try that in Vista? (First rule of troubleshooting...assume nothing.) I don't think I can give Linux a point on this because there's just not enough information. Vista 0 - Linux 1.
Game 4: Civ 4. The author of the article says he's a big Civ fan, and frankly so am I. Great game series. He gets a message that indicates known compatibility issues, so tries to run it anyway (why not...might as well see what happens.) It hangs on him. Now, anecdotes are anecdotes, but my buddy and I have been playing the Civ games together for sometime, and he recently (within the last year) put Vista on his machine. Afterward we both purchased Civ 4 (I'm running it on XP.) He installed it, loaded it, and (drum roll)...it worked. No window claiming "known compatibility issues", it didn't hang his machine. It's not even a state of the art machine. We've been playing for several months now, and neither of us has had any issues with Windows "hanging", which suggests to me that there is more going on here than just a windows issue (even though windows could be involved.) He does say that after patching the game (there it is again), well, I'm not sure what he says.
Update: With the 1.61 patch, Civ4 no longer freezes, but it like in WineX, it does not recognize the cd labled "Play / Disc 2 when in the drive. An improvement, but still not good enough. I think he said it didn't work. Oh, and he could install in under Cedega and it wouldn't run. It wouldn't even install for him with Wine, "but at least it doesn't hang my machine."
Using highly refined comparitive techniques similar to those in the "rant", and given that my friend's experience running Civ under Vista has been completely smooth, I'm gonna give Vista a point on this one. Vista 1 - Linux 1.
Margin of error: 1000 games, either way. I don't care if one "handles application failures more gracefully than" the other. If I'm the average user who wants to game as is implied in the article, I will be as confused by nothing happening as I would be by the computer hanging and restarting. Looks like a tie to me.
Look, folks, I have no love for Vista (tried it, tested it, didn't like it), but this was about as scientific a test of Vista's compatibility as reading tea leaves.
And just to add 2 cents, I don't think any of those games were sold on the assumption that they would run in Vista, just because it's supposed to be backwards compatible.
I'm gonna go with flamebait on this one.
There is a fundamental problem with this argument.
CD's use materials which have to be acquired by using tools and labor which have a cost. The material on the CD also requires tools and labor which have a cost. If someone steals the CD, then we say someone has been wronged because physical property, that they can no longer use to profit on, is no longer theirs to sell. But if someone takes intellectual property (non-physical media), then it's fair game because duplication of the media costs virtually nothing.
Two points here.
1) Clearly this means the physical CD itself has more value to the consumer than the media on that CD.
2) The creator of the media, who required tools and expended labor to produce the material, has no rights and deserves no protections for the distribution of his/her efforts, whereas all the people who mined the materials, pressed the CDs, and (yes by this logic) even the record companies who have backed the creation of these materials to begin with, deserve more protections than the original content creator.
Again, we're in ambiguous territory. I'm glad the original poster was able to benefit from the "piracy" of the material for his computer under his economic circumstances at the time. It is a net benefit for society. However, let's not make the mistake of saying that scarcity of materials alone is the measure of "value." Clearly the poster valued the content.
I wish we could stop using these (are these straw man?) arguments that because the duplication of the material has little cost then the material itself has little value. Clearly that's not the case, though many Slashdotters would have us believe it's so to justify their ends and means. (I know, I know...I must be new here.)
If you're going to "steal" the content, then at least acknowledge the creators of said content instead of railing against the distributors. If you can't (or won't) pay them, regardless of the legality, I suggest doing everything you can do to support the content creators who have provided you with such a benefit, whether it's promotion, future purchases, or even an anonymous thanks might be welcome.
I don't know if Intellivision could be considered the best game console of all time, but I do miss mine. It's not quite the same playing the collection on a PlayStation.
GIVE ME MOD POINTS FOR THIS POSTER!!!
Defender of the Crown, Might and Magic II, Alcon, Arkanoid, Times of Lore, Pirates, SimCity and you could write your own!!!
Look, I know many of those were available on other systems, but (and maybe this is just my own personal zeitgeist) they never looked as good or were as much fun as they were on my C64. Though I must admit, I did learn to program on the C64. But the poster is right. Most of those units sold what they did because they were "cheap" and had lots of great games.
Best Console? Well the Atari and the Nintendo both changed the nature of gaming for years to come (and I must admit, I *still* enjoy SMB, no matter how many ways I've beat it.) But best gaming platform? C64, without a doubt.
On one hand, I agree and approve of certain sentiments listed above. It does take money to afford much of that equipment, and it is fine equipment for digital recording.
But you couldn't make a decent rock/pop track with that? "It's not the gear, it's the engineer." On that front I can understand why a studio would be the better bet, but given the time (and in fairness time could be what you're spending to keep life and limb together in a day job) you ought to be able to cook up a pretty decent sounding track just with what you have in the first sentence or two there. I've heard plenty o' pop track and seen much hiphop assembled with very similar rigs.
Believe me, I love the studio environment, but it's a changing world and that means the sound is changing too. Sure there will be a lot of crap, but studios have been putting out turds for as long as home recording setups have. On the other hand, both environments have produced some gems over the years. Let's use the studios when absolutely necessary, or when it's the only way to get the sound we want, but when we can't or when it's not, let's all try to make some shiny rocks.
Wait...what do you mean -1 Troll???
In any case, I guess my point is that we have accustomed ourselves to living standards that place a high burden on affordability compared to what the "inputs" to the system are. Values are out of whack and (sadly) your pragmatic argument holds true because most artists need to earn a living doing something else and they are denied the time to do what they truly enjoy. Yeah, and...uh...well I guess that was your point. Right. Nevermind. =)
Hopefully I'm not drifting too far off topic here, and forgive me if this comes off like a big advertisement. Maybe not what the poster was asking for, but maybe it's helpful for somebody.
I think the first rule of recording outside of a studio (speaking as an audio engineer who works in a studio) is to accept that your recordings will not sound like they were made in a studio. I think the second rule is there's nothing wrong with that. Though the majority of great recordings thus far have been made in a studio environment, I am periodically surprised by recordings made in less than stellar conditions that sound fantastic. This is a subjective art. You probably won't be making Steely Dan or Alan Parsons records, but Jason Falkner, Jack White and even Bruce Springsteen have made some great sounding stuff under less than ideal recording conditions and environments.
Here's some starter ideas.
Software: REAPER = $50 (Free until you can afford to pay for it, basically)
Interface: M-Audio FastTrack USB = about $100
Microphone: Shure SM58 = about $100. If you don't have any room treatment (loosely "soundproofing") then this mic will be your friend. It sounds pretty good on most things from voice to instruments, too.
Subscription: TapeOp - Free one year subscription (trust me...you'll want this)
Don't forget a couple cables for your mic and instrument if necessary. Plug in your instrument of choice and have fun. Experiment with where you put the mic until you like the sound of it (and DON'T LET YOUR METERS GO INTO THE RED!) Pay close attention to how your choice affects the sound of the overall mix as you add tracks. Don't be afraid to experiment with software, sound or equipment. Remember, though there are good techniques, the only right techniques are the ones that sound good to you.
Also get onboard a good site like Gearslutz and read, ask and engage.
Most importantly, use your ears, pay attention, try to mimic things you like from other people's recordings and LEARN from doing it. We're all geeks, damnit. Isn't that how we learn to do everything?
That'll be 5 cents, please.
All of this is predicated on an artificial construct, though. That of adoption of new software. If business can't afford to adopt new software, they may not. And if enough businesses don't, what motivation is there to develop new software?