Music should be free. If you don't want it 'stolen' then don't record it.

[chrisso]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

And of course Youtube plays the game well, so that every thread where someone uploaded illegal content becomes a rant against the **** labels

If you read up on some of Googles practices it soon becomes clear they are a much more sinister outfit than any major label ever was.
They're amassing huge amounts of data on anyone and everyone who uses any of their services.
Even if they don't.
They photographed my rural home in detail for Google Maps - without my permission!
They claim it's easy to have the images removed, but in over a year I've been unsuccessful in doing so.
Wealthy investors have retreated from traditional entertainment companies and piled their money into web shares (like those of Google). Look at the share price.
As someone said a few pages ago, the downloaders think they are techno warriors breaking up the conservative elite's hold on the arts, but in fact they are playing directly into their hands.
Watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfV6RzE30

[rhizomeman]

I am not apologizing for anyone's behavior. I am merely proposing that older hierarchical music business models are quickly evaporating and alternative ones will emerge. Today, distribution is rhizomatic... (sorry couldn't resist - I am rhizomeman)...I am not making any value judgments and certainly not saying what is fair or unfair for working musicians.

[adpz]

Originally Posted by wwittman

Wall Street and the tech guys are not "patrons" of the arts.
they are the leeches upon it.

profiting by telling others they should work for free

To wit: As the available investments have gone into the toilet, the New York Mercantile Exchange just approved the trading of futures in movie grosses. Yes, that's right. Just like pork bellies and orange juice, traders can now buy/sell and short/long whether a particular Hollywood movie is going to make a certain amount of money. Matt Damon's GREEN ZONE was the first trade listed.

So, to anyone who still thinks that what Wall Street does is some very deep, serious, or important - there you go: value judgments aside, 90% of these bankers are just gamblers - and they use other people's money to do it.

A real business community cares about growing businesses, not just profiting from them, so I agree with WW whole-heartedly.

[chrisso]

Originally Posted by rhizomeman

I am not making any value judgments and certainly not saying what is fair or unfair for working musicians.

And I think the root of the debate here on Gearslutz is this....

Some of you seem have a fait accompli attitude to the business of music.
Whatever will be, will be.
Worse IMO, seeding power to the illegal individuals and the internet hierarchy of corporate telcos, isp's and tech heavyweights like Google and Apple.
History has in fact taught creators you'll never get anywhere without fighting for your rights. You'll be walked all over and treated as slaves (as you earlier reminded us).
So what do we do? Say 'whatever' as you and Psalad and others are saying here..... or fight for every penny we can reclaim, especially as the legal framework is currently fully behind us at present.
On the pro copyright, pro revenue-from-recordings side of the argument we aren't saying "screw Generation x, y and z", ignoring or looking away from the future. We're saying it's time to engage, wake up to what's happening, get off your couch and fight for every form of income we currently enjoy, because it can all easily slip away.

[adpz]

Originally Posted by chrisso

And I think the root of the debate here on Gearslutz is this....

Some of you seem have a fait accompli attitude to the business of music.
Whatever will be, will be.
Worse IMO, seeding power to the illegal individuals and the internet hierarchy of corporate telcos, isp's and tech heavyweights like Google and Apple.
History has in fact taught creators you'll never get anywhere without fighting for your rights. You'll be walked all over and treated as slaves (as you earlier reminded us).
So what do we do? Say 'whatever' as you and Psalad and others are saying here..... or fight for every penny we can reclaim, especially as the legal framework is currently fully behind us at present.
On the pro copyright, pro revenue-from-recordings side of the argument we aren't saying "screw Generation x, y and z", ignoring or looking away from the future. We're saying it's time to engage, wake up to what's happening, get off your couch and fight for every form of income we currently enjoy, because it can all easily slip away.

See an interesting article from EMI that I posted about today; Richard Paxson is taking EMI in what may prove to be a very correct and fruitful direction.

Let me try to find the link . . .

[adpz]

Here: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/...o-evolve/all/1

[Muser]

Originally Posted by chrisso

If you read up on some of Googles practices it soon becomes clear they are a much more sinister outfit than any major label ever was.
They're amassing huge amounts of data on anyone and everyone who uses any of their services.
Even if they don't.
They photographed my rural home in detail for Google Maps - without my permission!
They claim it's easy to have the images removed, but in over a year I've been unsuccessful in doing so.
Wealthy investors have retreated from traditional entertainment companies and piled their money into web shares (like those of Google). Look at the share price.
As someone said a few pages ago, the downloaders think they are techno warriors breaking up the conservative elite's hold on the arts, but in fact they are playing directly into their hands.
Watch:
YouTube - The Beast File: Google ('HUNGRY BEAST', ABC TV)

I totally agree. in fact what ever we may think, viacom do too.. because the new advertising model is what they call total transparency.. which means knowing every last thing about you..
even were you are right now and where you were when you took a photo. GPS in your phones.
your uploaded gear pics often have a GPS locater in them btw. NOT a good idea...

[Muser]

Originally Posted by adpz

So, to anyone who still thinks that what Wall Street does is some very deep, serious, or important - there you go:

I think it's Madison Avenue who are making the running.. Wall street then just show the data and the rest pays their money and makes their bets.

[adpz]

Originally Posted by psalad

Wow. Very interesting... Worth a shot. At least he is living in the real world.

It's doubly interesting because Paxon is coming from the publishing side of the music business.

[subby33]

Music may become "free", but entertainment is never free.

People have been making money off of live shows for centuries. I dont see that changing. The days of making money from music "albums" may be over . . . but being a good entertainer still has the potential to bring in cash.

The music industry is reeling, and needs some very inventive people to get it back on track.

[doug hazelrigg]

Originally Posted by rhizomeman

This is not true and depends on other factors.

Total bullshit.

Up is down and down is up

#7: "Thou shalt not steal"

Basic

[Mike Caffrey]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

They are not a good analogy, for the incredibly obvious reasons I indicated. You can't steal it, whether you want to call it a service or a product. I say it's more like a product, but either way. You can't steal it. You have to come to them to get it. So they are NOT anything like the music business, where no one has to come to you (the artist) to get your product therefore you cannot use the same strategies as someone like Google does. As I said, if Google's databases could be freely copied, and anyone could set themselves up as a competitor for Google with none of the costs involved in creating the data, then Google would be similar to the music industry, and their product (data) would be similarly as degraded in value in terms of their ability to generate revenues from it.

I don't remember the name of the company, but they were claiming that they were better than Google and they were.

What they did was have a large staff who did Google searches for the top 25,000 search terms and then sorted them by hand making for far more accurate results.

I'm not sure if they're still around, but I assume they used and advertising model as well.

The think is no analogy will ever be perfect and stealing is an analogy, so any time you use that, you take a sold argument and put a whole in it. Just say copyright violation and skip the analogies altogether.

[Mike Caffrey]

Originally Posted by chrisso

The thousands of projects that were viable as recordings, but not as live touring acts.
Just off the top of my head, a ton of electronic music projects, very old/infirm artists, collaborations between huge ensembles from different parts of the world.
In short, it's a simple fact that a large number of amazing and significant recordings have been produced by artists who never had any thought of reproducing the work live, or having to reproduce the work live in order to make the project doable.
That's a real negative on the so called new model of touring to support future recording.

Thousands is an enormous exaggeration. Probably even if you're just talking about albums that recoup.

Albums that recoup are exceptions.

[chrisso]

Originally Posted by Mike Caffrey

Thousands is an enormous exaggeration.

I'm just talking about the projects that haven't been stepping off points for tours. If you look at those recordings from the 1960's to now, yes it's easily thousands.
I spent most of the 80's in a couple of indie rock bands.
The emphasis was most definitely on the recordings.
Touring was done, but it was often a very quick four weeker around The States.
I'm pretty sure every tour was a loser financially.
Maybe the albums lost money too, but I got paid, and as I say, the culture then was focused on making great records with no thought of a tour.
I did an ABC album that wasn't toured, I did a Was Not Was album that wasn't toured. I made a couple of albums with a friend who was very successful in Germany, but he never toured.
Same again with McCartney.
We spent 18 months on an album and he didn't even decide he would tour until the album had been finished, and he hadn't toured for several previous releases, which amounted to something like 10 years off the road.
I'm not saying 'thousands' of album projects made money without the tour. I AM saying, in the previous business model, it wasn't unusual at all to embark on an album project just for the sake of the recording - like The Buena Vista Social Club (although they eventually played a few gigs).
If you agree to a business model that guarantees absolutely NO money from recordings, you potentially (based on historic precedent) kill thousands of projects that might have been possible with the current (or recent past) model.

[author]

Originally Posted by elginchris

all music should be free in cost.

Lol, wake up dude, the free party is over.

[Muser]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

But of course if that happens, then Google's business plan for profitting from pirate culture may bite the dust as well. They know perfectly well how much they are benefitting from illegal content. And of course Youtube plays the game well, so that every thread where someone uploaded illegal content becomes a rant against the **** labels, not a discussion of why it was there to begin with. So Youtube doesn't even have to do anything, because they are the drug dealer and the drug addict is never going to side with anyone else.

I think Viacom or Warners had a deal with Google / youtube but it recently ran out. they couldn't agree on a new deal, so then viacom took them to court. what the outcome will be, I don't know.. I get the feeling youtube will start cutting deals. in fact I spoke to a friend of mine tonight in the UK and he said that earlier this year, payments from youtube started to appear on his royalty statements.

so something is clearly starting to happen. I think they must be distributing a percentage of those advert clicks to artists in some fashion.. His statements are general though, they don't specify how the figure was arrived at.

[rack gear]

Originally Posted by Muser

I think Viacom or Warners had a deal with Google / youtube but it recently ran out. they couldn't agree on a new deal, so then viacom took them to court. what the outcome will be, I don't know.. I get the feeling youtube will start cutting deals. in fact I spoke to a friend of mine tonight in the UK and he said that earlier this year, payments from youtube started to appear on his royalty statements.

so something is clearly starting to happen. I think they must be distributing a percentage of those advert clicks to artists in some fashion.. His statements are general though, they don't specify how the figure was arrived at.

what happened is Vevo...
Vevo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
YouTube - 2010FIFAWorldCupVEVO's Channel

as for the how the revenue is calculated it's the same as all of these "black box" rev share models, it's based on how much ad money comes in and divided up amongst the amount of traffic generating content on a prorata basis... that's what they say anyway... youtube partners earn about $1,500 - $2,000 per million views or about $2k on Average per 1m views... I'm sure the Vevo labels are doing considerably better than that...

another way to look at it is that itunes songs earn about 91 cents to the label on each 1.29 song download so the same $2k from Itunes equals 2,200 song downloads in revenue.

it'll be interesting to look at some videos on vevo, tally their views and itunes song sales and figure out the math...

[rack gear]

Originally Posted by adpz

It's doubly interesting because Paxon is coming from the publishing side of the music business.

in many of my old posts I predicted that labels would end up in fact look like publishing companies... I mean publishing companies are rights management companies, they don't sell any product.

I think it's a mistake to lower the bar this early in the game and their not doing anything that the other labels are not doing. Licensing and rights management has always been a part of the game.

As a film/music person I can tell you all the labels have beefed up their licensing departments in recent years.

[rhizomeman]

File-sharing has weakened copyright—and helped society

[rack gear]

rhizomeman

that's already being discussed here on GS (as being highly subjective and inconclusive):
File-sharing has weakened copyright—and helped society

you might however find this interesting:

respected computer scientist, inventor and thinker, Jaron Lanier offers his alternate views to "open culture" and the dangers of it in his new book "You Are Not A Gadget".

This is probably the single most in depth and lucid analysis of everything that's gone wrong with the internet and "digital moaist" culture.

Book (Great Q&A wit the author at this link as well)
Amazon.com: You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (9780307269645): Jaron Lanier: Books

Book On Tape/Audible:
iTunes Store

FREE Links to Podcast Interviews/Lectures:
London School of Economics: Public lectures and events - Download free podcast episodes by London School of Economics on iTunes.
RSA Events: Audio - Download free podcast episodes by RSA on iTunes.
RSA Events: Vision videos - Download free podcast episodes by RSA on iTunes.

[rack gear]

Amazon.com: You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (9780307269645): Jaron Lanier: Books

A Q&A with Author Jaron Lanier

Question: As one of the first visionaries in Silicon Valley, you saw the initial promise the internet held. Two decades later, how has the internet transformed our lives for the better?

Jaron Lanier: The answer is different in different parts of the world. In the industrialized world, the rise of the Web has happily demonstrated that vast numbers of people are interested in being expressive to each other and the world at large. This is something that I and my colleagues used to boldly predict, but we were often shouted down, as the mainstream opinion during the age of television’s dominance was that people were mostly passive consumers who could not be expected to express themselves. In the developing world, the Internet, along with mobile phones, has had an even more dramatic effect, empowering vast classes of people in new ways by allowing them to coordinate with each other. That has been a very good thing for the most part, though it has also enabled militants and other bad actors.

Question: You argue the web isn’t living up to its initial promise. How has the internet transformed our lives for the worse?

Jaron Lanier: The problem is not inherent in the Internet or the Web. Deterioration only began around the turn of the century with the rise of so-called "Web 2.0" designs. These designs valued the information content of the web over individuals. It became fashionable to aggregate the expressions of people into dehumanized data. There are so many things wrong with this that it takes a whole book to summarize them. Here’s just one problem: It screws the middle class. Only the aggregator (like Google, for instance) gets rich, while the actual producers of content get poor. This is why newspapers are dying. It might sound like it is only a problem for creative people, like musicians or writers, but eventually it will be a problem for everyone. When robots can repair roads someday, will people have jobs programming those robots, or will the human programmers be so aggregated that they essentially work for free, like today’s recording musicians? Web 2.0 is a formula to kill the middle class and undo centuries of social progress.

Question: You say that we’ve devalued intellectual achievement. How?

Jaron Lanier: On one level, the Internet has become anti-intellectual because Web 2.0 collectivism has killed the individual voice. It is increasingly disheartening to write about any topic in depth these days, because people will only read what the first link from a search engine directs them to, and that will typically be the collective expression of the Wikipedia. Or, if the issue is contentious, people will congregate into partisan online bubbles in which their views are reinforced. I don’t think a collective voice can be effective for many topics, such as history--and neither can a partisan mob. Collectives have a power to distort history in a way that damages minority viewpoints and calcifies the art of interpretation. Only the quirkiness of considered individual expression can cut through the nonsense of mob--and that is the reason intellectual activity is important.

On another level, when someone does try to be expressive in a collective, Web 2.0 context, she must prioritize standing out from the crowd. To do anything else is to be invisible. Therefore, people become artificially caustic, flattering, or otherwise manipulative.

Web 2.0 adherents might respond to these objections by claiming that I have confused individual expression with intellectual achievement. This is where we find our greatest point of disagreement. I am amazed by the power of the collective to enthrall people to the point of blindness. Collectivists adore a computer operating system called LINUX, for instance, but it is really only one example of a descendant of a 1970s technology called UNIX. If it weren’t produced by a collective, there would be nothing remarkable about it at all.

Meanwhile, the truly remarkable designs that couldn’t have existed 30 years ago, like the iPhone, all come out of "closed" shops where individuals create something and polish it before it is released to the public. Collectivists confuse ideology with achievement.

Question: Why has the idea that "the content wants to be free" (and the unrelenting embrace of the concept) been such a setback? What dangers do you see this leading to?

Jaron Lanier: The original turn of phrase was "Information wants to be free." And the problem with that is that it anthropomorphizes information. Information doesn’t deserve to be free. It is an abstract tool; a useful fantasy, a nothing. It is nonexistent until and unless a person experiences it in a useful way. What we have done in the last decade is give information more rights than are given to people. If you express yourself on the internet, what you say will be copied, mashed up, anonymized, analyzed, and turned into bricks in someone else’s fortress to support an advertising scheme. However, the information, the abstraction, that represents you is protected within that fortress and is absolutely sacrosanct, the new holy of holies. You never see it and are not allowed to touch it. This is exactly the wrong set of values.

The idea that information is alive in its own right is a metaphysical claim made by people who hope to become immortal by being uploaded into a computer someday. It is part of what should be understood as a new religion. That might sound like an extreme claim, but go visit any computer science lab and you’ll find books about "the Singularity," which is the supposed future event when the blessed uploading is to take place. A weird cult in the world of technology has done damage to culture at large.

Question: In You Are Not a Gadget, you argue that idea that the collective is smarter than the individual is wrong. Why is this?

Jaron Lanier: There are some cases where a group of people can do a better job of solving certain kinds of problems than individuals. One example is setting a price in a marketplace. Another example is an election process to choose a politician. All such examples involve what can be called optimization, where the concerns of many individuals are reconciled. There are other cases that involve creativity and imagination. A crowd process generally fails in these cases. The phrase "Design by Committee" is treated as derogatory for good reason. That is why a collective of programmers can copy UNIX but cannot invent the iPhone.
In the book, I go into considerably more detail about the differences between the two types of problem solving. Creativity requires periodic, temporary "encapsulation" as opposed to the kind of constant global openness suggested by the slogan "information wants to be free." Biological cells have walls, academics employ temporary secrecy before they publish, and real authors with real voices might want to polish a text before releasing it. In all these cases, encapsulation is what allows for the possibility of testing and feedback that enables a quest for excellence. To be constantly diffused in a global mush is to embrace mundanity.

[rack gear]

more food for thought on why "open/free culture" doesn't work:

Jaron Lanier: 'Web 2.0 is utterly pathetic' - Features, Gadgets & Tech - The Independent

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/opinion/20lanier.html

Toward a Human-Centric Internet: Jessamyn West Interviews Jaron Lanier

Findings - Jaron Lanier Is Rethinking the Open Nature of the Internet - NYTimes.com

[rhizomeman]

Hmm...the iphone was not a collective invention???? really????...I have never read a more ingenuous interview by someone trying to sell their new book.

[rack gear]

maybe you should keep these comments on the GS thread that was created for this topic - instead of dragging it in here:
File-sharing has weakened copyright—and helped society

Originally Posted by rhizomeman

Hmm...the iphone was not a collective invention???? really????...I have never read a more ingenuous interview by someone trying to sell their new book.

really, I've never heard a more ingenuous comment by someone arguing against copyrights and compensation.

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally Posted by chrisso

...it's time to engage, wake up to what's happening, get off your couch and fight for every form of income we currently enjoy, because it can all easily slip away.

This fight is over a century old. A little known fact is that Motown was one of the very first labels to ever pay producers' royalties. People who work in our industry have not done their homework are often taking an amazing amount for granted.

A whole lot of our problem is that the major labels refused to fight at the very beginning and in many ways managed to sell the rest of us out in bone-headed deals with the consumer electronics, personal computer and internet industries.

Let me add, there is no such thing as "free." It's all about WHO pays.

[rhizomeman]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

Let me add, there is no such thing as "free." It's all about WHO pays.

That is a statement I can agree with!

[Arlo]

Originally Posted by psalad

I don't either, and I agree with him. Does that negate my opinion too?

Yep.

I guess we could just enjoy what little music gets created as the writers and performers gradually starve to death. Then we'll have a whole new problem of what to do with the big piles of creative carcasses.

What DO you do for a living....build cars? Can I have one please?

[rack gear]

Originally Posted by Arlo

Yep.

I guess we could just enjoy what little music gets created as the writers and performers gradually starve to death. Then we'll have a whole new problem of what to do with the big piles of creative carcasses.

What DO you do for a living....build cars? Can I have one please?

to wit, all the music you want, legally and for free made without profit motive:
SoundClick - Free MP3 music download and much, much more.

hmmmm... the future...

[Mark Kaufman]

Music should be free. If you don't want it 'stolen' then don't record it.

"Should", eh?

It should be free?

Then why not write your own?

I think you mean you don't wish to pay for it because it's so easy to steal. Just accept the fact that you want to feel good about stealing....but you don't, do you?

[Robert Randolph]

Originally Posted by Mark Kaufman

"Should", eh?

It should be free?

Then why not write your own?

I think you mean you don't wish to pay for it because it's so easy to steal. Just accept the fact that you want to feel good about stealing....but you don't, do you?

...

Or maybe there isn't some sinister implication hidden deep inside his words.

Fancy that. Read enough of these threads and you begin to think that's not even possible. tutt