Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Pensado  I would like to have a few statements on your vision of the future of our industry and how the internet figures into your vision. I know it has been discussed to nausea, but indulge me. OK, well good night and keep living the dream, I AM! |
posit: filesharing is a pandoras box which has already been opened. it's very very easy to get free music, and lets face it, why would anybody pay for something when they can get it for free? extrapolate this trend and the end result is no more money to spend on studios, engineers, etc - how could you justify it with 0 money for your effort/outlay? everything will be recorded to laptop, by amatures, as freebie promos, if anyone even bothers. i'm not sure how happy i would be with that scenario! is it greedy to want to have potential income from my recordings?
i suggest, there's a bloody simple solution to the problem of unpaid internet music downloads/filesharing:
1) $10/month music/movie tax for anyone with an internet connection. if any current customers don't already download tunes, tough, now they can start, with a clear conscience. no exceptions and stop whining.
2) huge servers can be set up, to be rapidly paid for by these subscription fees. the servers are available to any artist, or corporation, wanting to make their music available for download and receive a cut of the money. current recording contracts, royalty rates etc stand as is, but new ones will probably be rather different. a fairly large but reasonable fee is charged to anyone who wants to upload music - say around $100/album. this reduces clutter by keeping out those who aren't serious, but isn't large enough to prevent anyone who is from accessing this potential income. the fee also helps pay for maintaining/adding to the infrastructure.
3) the money is divided each month according to how many downloads each artist/movie/whatever gets. this can be monitored by a non-profit organization (or preferably 2 or three in concert) to keep things legit.
there. problem solved. artists get paid. producers/engineers/etc get paid. even the majors can continue to get paid for doing what they do, finding and promoting artists they think will have broad popular appeal. talented musicians producers and even a&r agents are once again encouraged to do their thing cause there's revenue to be had. at the same time, barriers that previously kept that talented but socially inept genius musician languishing somewhere in kansas or khazakhstan are all but gone.
i don't even think it would be that hard to sell to the public, i suspect that while many people download music for free for various reasons, most have enough of a conscience about it to agree to this fair, evenhanded scheme.
there, problem solved! next up: i will singlehandedly solve the problem of world hunger
-mw
ps. dave thanks a million times for your sage advice on here! i've been mixing my r&b drums as you suggested and they're noticably tighter - a bigwig label guy here in indonesia heard my new mixes when he was sitting on the fence with regards to our previous demo, and now we're signed. thanks!
