What exactly are you accomplishing...fill us in?

Who's accomplishing more and who's more delusional...the "hobbyists" as you refer to probably 99% of all musicians...

or you, who thinks your posts are going to cure piracy or whatever it is you hope to achieve here...???

wow really? I thought the record industry started in 64 when the Beatles got off the plane at JFK?

Bottom line is the record labels botched this whole thing. The should have resisted the mp3. It's all karma they stole from bands for years and years. Even the drama queen John Lennon wrote a song about it.... Instant Karma's gonna get you Gonna knock you right in the head You better get yourself together Pretty soon your gonna be.......

the rest is history my friends...read it and weep, the first chapter is all about u .... so quit your crying and find another way to pay for your spaghettios and mac and cheeze. No one has any sympathy for you. Be thankful you made anything in this shady business. Need money? work at Burger king or put together a Beegees cover band and play midtown on a Thursday night and be happy you made a $100 for the show.

1 - you've failed to see the distinction between music business as a whole and the record business.

2 - artists don't make money from record sales with major labels. On the rare occasions that they do, it's only a tiny portion of their total income.

The reason artists with more record sales make more money from the other streams is because they are more famous and more popular. The record sales don't cause other income, they are a reflection of fans being willing to spend money.

It's fine to group the total record sales revenue and make generalization about the trends of the sum. But if you're going to do that, you've got to group the other revenue, and those numbers get bigger every year.

At the moment, the industry is suffering from teething problems.

64 ppfft . it all went in a heap after ragtime , it was the devils music . the recording industry began to spread said devil music.

"Ragtime is syncopation gone mad and its victims, in my opinion, can only be treated successfully like a dog with rabies, namely with a dose of lead. Whether it is simply a passing phase of our decadent art culture or an infectious disease which has come to stay, like la grippe and leprosy time alone can show…."
~1918 quote from Etude Magazine

he is the troll king , watching over the troll underworld with his all seeing troll eye

and look his has just discovered another of his troll minions ! aha he shouts thost dost admit you are a troll ! and behold he his dragged back down to his troll lair to slave away in his troll music factory

a troll curse on ye pirates who dare pirate the troll kings indie label releases . though shall be smited with his ancient sword of dcma misery!

is that from gnawing its own leg off?

You can see that in action right now.

I said 'no future' not no 'recording industry'.

You seem to not understand human nature.
Give an artistic person a choice between a decent livelihood blogging about music versus no money playing music ...... and which do you think most will choose?

Do you have a graphic of that? Or even verifiable proof?

Robertshaw, you're an odd one and out of hundreds of responses to my GS posting, yours is one of the most lost and clueless I can remember. You seem to have a very limited one dimensional line of thought. Your main thrust on this thread is "no one has the right to make a dime in the music industry," as you say. The only problem with your big point is that essentially no one on earth disagrees with you, so you're like at dog barking at a ghost.

So, what are you going on about? Lawyers don't have a right to make money, no one has a right to make money and most everyone on earth agrees with your viewpoint I think. Your whole repetitive schtick is a bit bizarre. Why not talk about "milk jugs floating in space" over and over? Nearly as random as your singular focus. Who says anyone has a right to make money at anything? People are talking about the many dimensions of the music business and art but you keep going on about "no one has the right to make a dime in the music industry."

Again, the more experienced people on this thread know that to really excel to the very top at your art in fully developed form, whatever it is, the vast majority of super-talents find it impossible do it as a hobby ten hours a week. Yes, some super-talents can overcome and succeed in their work with only ten ours a week put into it, but usually those are poets, singer songwriters and other areas where in certain cases it is possible to work quickly. Some art forms by nature demand a lot more elbow grease and time. If your art is sonically perfect music that can only be attained with the help of big recording studios, and a large team of super-talents and/or and orchestras, then 10 hours a week will never cut it to match those who are rich and/or paid at their profession. If you're a super-talent and your art form is building gothic cathedrals or making film like Avatar, it would be most interesting to see if you can succeed at those tasks while having to work at Burger King at the same time.

To respond to your main point, yes, you are certainly correct, no one has a right to make a dime in music. To agree further with what I think your gist is, no one has a right to get as much free time as they need to achieve whatever they want in life. That's a privilege that only the right combinations of smarts, riches, talent, hard work and blessings get you. That said, if you release protected work and someone sees value in it and wishes to possess it but steals it instead, you do have a right to seek compensation if you released the protected work solely to be sold and not given away. That is your legal right.

Now, if you respond to this, are you going to get your X-acto razor blade out again to take all of my sentences out of context like you did when you responded to me previously or are you going to deal with the gist of what we are saying and come up with a response outside of "no one has the right to make a dime in the music industry." A response that agrees with or disagrees with my paragraphs 3 and 4?

I feel that way too...the Industry grew bigger and bigger in many cases by back- stabbing bands...The Beatles worked for EMI basically being paid as unknowns from 62 till 65 (beatlemania years, the turnover for EMI must have been miraculous), with no contract at all from 65-67, and then with a small raise from 67-69...And that´s just the biggest band on the planet...stories are legion about how the music business worked. Then there was the CD swindle in the 80s that they managed to pull off until basically the 21st century .
I don´t know if it´s karma, but surely they have not been fair and have been abusive for many, many years. And I don´t think this applies only to the music business...

I didn´t know Lennon had in mind the business when he wrote "Instant karma", but makes sense.

You gotta wonder if he's paid by someone to post all this weird stuff on here every day...

I haven't read through the whole thread but really, have folks here actually LISTENED to what Corgan is saying here?

I think he makes many great points in a very constructive way. The title of this thread is misleading because you expect negativity and that's totally not the case.

Yeah, I listened to it twice. It's the best thing I ever heard come out of his mouth. Interesting listen. I am not a fan of his music though.

As a booby prize to Punkin Headz, I will make you jealous by saying that I saw them at the infamous "Club Baby Head" in Providence, Rhode Island in the early 90's with about 15 people at the show. That was fun. I saw Oasis open up for Verve in Newcastle UK, also with about 15 in the club. Everyone was sitting on the floor indian-style of Oasis and Verve, super mellow. At the Punkins, the setting was different. Skinheads were ripping holes into head flesh, swinging from the pipe latticework at Club Baby Head and slam dancing. Baby Head was an insurance man's worst nightmare come true.

Personally I still don't think that piracy or itunes is the problem.
I think, to paraphrase a song title, video games have killed the music star.

The problem is that disposable incomes have not grown since the '80s yet we got lots of new technology that everybody wants a part of: Home computers, games consoles and the games, smart phones etc.
They all take money from a pot that has not grown in 30 years and music sales are the loser in this because music is not interactive. And unlike in the '80s kids don't get excited about a new record release, today they get excited about the latest game release.
It is simply more fun to virtually race cars, shoot enemies etc than passively sitting down and listening to music.

If you check the sales you'll find that the game industry has increased their global $ sales at a similar rate that music has lost theirs.



But of course if it wouldn't be for the pirates all those extra billions of $ would have magically appeared in the punters pockets so that they would buy everything in ever increasing amounts. Yeah… sure.

really so there is no money playing music now either?



and thats because of mp3 downloads?

what exactly are you referring by no future if not the recording industry which has been decimated by piracy?

You all have to get this idea out of your heads that playing live solves the problem. Certainly less than 20% of people that work in music actually stand up on stage or get a meaningful share of that money. (5% is my guess.) It's a non-factor and needs to be dropped from discussion because of it's irrelevancy.

Live show profits are just yet another excuse the public conjures up in their heads as an excuse to justify taking music (that was release as "only for sale") without paying. What we really have in piracy is the exploitation of a loophole that now allows people to illegally share and steal music. It's a blinding testament to the darkside of human nature. We will steal whenever we get the opportunity sadly.

Let me tell you first hand....
They made a huuuuuuuge amount of money.

Three facepalms but you didn't answer my question.
A decent income blogging about music versus "no right to make a dime in the music industry". Which do you think most people choose?
Come on, there are several of you in this discussion who've apparently made this choice = 'decent lifestyle versus full time music'. It ain't that hard a concept to grasp.

We can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Unauthorized duplication has been going on for decades now, and for the past 15 years or so that process is instant and verbatim.

As a kid I saved $ to buy a record. Once I owned it I treasured it. Who in the world treasures a recording of a song anymore?

I was about to write something along this line, but you have already expressed it very clearly. I completely agree.

Well, while I agree with your comments regarding videogames/tech entertainment and the not increasing pot, as you put things it would seem that people lost interest in music and don't listen to it anymore.

While it's true that videogames and tech gadgets "stole" a considerable slice of the pie, demand for music is still high, people's iPods are full of files, there is music everywhere, youtube views for music videos are sky-high, a huge amount of sites and internet traffic are dedicated to music, etc.

People still want to listen to music, and they do. Only problem is that they often get music for free, most of the times illegally (that is, not paying the due rights to the creators of the art they are enjoying).

Let's put it this way: if it were possible to find BMW's for free round the corner without consequences, everyone would be driving a german car yet BMW would soon go bankrupt.

(BTW, I don't think that playing videogames is "more fun" than listening to music. It's simply a different kind of fun.)

So when you shop for groceries at the small corner store will you steal from the storefront display? Some people would but I'm pretty sure that most of us don't do it even though there are no cameras there or other protection. We have the 'value system' imbedded into our minds that you need to pay for goods and even if you don't do it, i.e if you're stealing then it's with the knowledge that it IS theft.

So I think that 'stealing music' is a mislabel to begin with because most poeple don't even are aware of any illegeal activity which is very important for the reasons mentioned above I think.

Fact is that the music industry and most artists have simply missed the opportunity to adapt to new technologies and now are way behind.

Threatening potential customers ('downloading is illegal' - it's not even true in a lot of cases) while handing out 'goodies' at the same time just doesn't work.

But my main point is another one: The problem isn't even 'stealing' anymore, rather it's the fact that there's no interest in OWNING the music anymore (whether it's in album, CDs or as a download).

And though I still buy CDs myself, I'm doing it less and less with new music. So I bought the new Van Halen and it sounds like ass - on CD that is. It's mixed and mastered for 'maximum web impact' and I haven't listened to the whole thing even once. And I had the same experience with a lot of very different music even outside the mainstream.

Make better music, music that is exciting and matters to people and there will be renewed interest no matter what the 'business model' may be.

It does indeed seem like there is no money to be made anymore.

People have always and will always listen to music but I can't see them buying it again at the levels we've seen from say the '60s to the '90s.
Most kids I know these days just don't care that much anymore (and the kids were the biggest market) when the choice to them is either buy one game or 3 cds. That market is gone and I don't think it will ever come back, piracy or no piracy.

The Nobel Prize for Common Sense.

This is the only post that I found something meaningful in.

Most have un-paid for protected music sitting on their iPods and hard drives that they play most every week. What name do we give this type of song collecting: owning? stealing? borrowing? unimportant so therefore irrelevant? You're "no interest in OWNING" sentence is very interesting, could you explain a bit more?


I know that I am a very latecomer in here. I recognize many of your names and know that you're going at it in here day in day out about piracy and the new economics of the music business. My opinions are common and I have very little new to add.

I have to most strongly disagree with many of the most prominent positions in here:

-2012, most people still love music and listening to their favorite songs. Millions of westerners are still obsessed with their music like the kids in the 70's, just not at many it seems, percentage-wise. (due to the arguable overall drop in pop music song quality and as as many point out in here, certainly the multitudes of competing distractions.)

-therefore, it can be deducted that music is central to millions if not billions of people's lives...the human race suddenly doesn't just become detached from music overnight.

-therefore it you can say that music still has great value to millions if not billions.

-therefore you can say that if you couldn't get music so easily for free in the shadows of your own home and if is was as hard to mass share as it was in '93, you would have NO CHOICE but to BUY music if it wasn't for the internet if you want to play the music "at will."

-the ease of piracy and "sharing" in the privacy of your own home is ABSOLUTELY the central reason the masses don't buy music anymore.

Not me. I was responding to the link the OP provided and found that the title of this thread is misleading because B. Corgan (I'm not a fan either but that's not the point here) says a lot of good and positive things in the clip.

Yes but you'd also had the option of NOT buying music which is something that actually happened in the 80s when quality went really downhill. People basically stopped buying music and IMO it's much the same these days.

So you better find a way to provide an experience that can't be easily shared and 'pirated' in your home. Which is PRECISELY what Billy Corgan is saying! The worst thing you can do is to act as a cop and 'punish' people for at least still being interested in music - downloading or not. And that's another thing that Mr. Corgan is saying in the clip.

NOBODY feels sorry for major labels going down. Of course, it's a fact that most non-major label musicians are affected by the sorry way the music business didn't react to technical and cultural changes. But it's also a fact that many non-bondtrading and non-bonuscollecting workers are affected by the irresponsible actions of a gang of greedy bankers.