Nobody says this: In the 1980s, you could establish the sort of relationships to get priority at CD plants and resell back catalog that was already universally known. So the people who won did that instead of so much trying to break new acts.
The last gasp of a flood of new acts actually getting on radio was the SubPop ... thing in the 1990s. After that, nothing unless you followed R&B or "indie." That monoculture ended than. But to be fair, it only started in the first place because radio transitioned from being mainstream to being a "youth" market.
Just one point of clarification, when I wrote “the labels,” I meant the big three major labels and their subsidiaries. As both a life long musician and avid music fan, I don't count truly independent labels as part of the "industry."
Why are the Big 3 still in this chokehold position? Is the market failing, or do they actually provide valuable services that can't be obtained elsewhere?
In either case: why is that?
Many of these license fees are done in bulk. The same with countries that automatically collect a tax on USB sticks and optical media. You pay a volume license, but it never filters down to the artists because it's not collected based on which songs are actually stored or played.
This is hardly all of it. There's a huge mass of corruption under the surface. Such as them not actually forwarding over license fees for song collections, or including songs they don't actually have the rights to include.
but anyway, something like that is how they'd get paid for music they don't own.
These arrangements were worked out back when "radio" was "disrupting" the live music and recorded music industries, and people were trying to "monetize" the "eardrums"
This is one big reason why bands/singers/artists need labels. They're not able to turn the lyrics on the back of a napkin into a credible album on their own. They often don't even write the songs - the label has a stable of songwriters to do that for them. The artist is often just a pretty face autotuned in.
Even if a band can produce a CD on their own, they need promotion, manufacturing, and distribution. Who is going to get their CD in front of DJs, etc.? Who is going to set up concerts? Who is going to handle the financing? Who is going to do all the work needed to run a business?
The "just a performer" model is only true for that small percentage of singers who are just performers. That model includes some of the bigger household names. Some of them are essentially fashion models who sing and dance, not musicians. Others are singers who also produce, and have a feel for what sounds good even if they can't play all the parts. (This is harder than it sounds.)
There's literally an entire industry of independent artists who record and produce at home, do their own tour management and logistics, maybe mix in a studio for some final polish, handle distribution, and so on.
And an entire related industry of bloggers, DJs, and other online sites that review and curate the most interesting new music.
The labels keep on keeping on, but their business model is very fragile now. They wait for a producer to manufacture a band, or for a band/artist to bubble up from the indie (artist - not musical style) scene.
When they reach a critical mass they try to buy them. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't.
The bizarre thing about A&R budgets over the last few years is that they're as huge as they've ever been, but concentrated on a relatively small number of artists. Because there's a lot of money involved the labels are ridiculously risk averse. If a signing doesn't turn into a cash cow after the first album they're dropped.
This has always happened, but the cycle is so short now that only acts that have instant mass appeal or a guaranteed existing fan base are successful on labels. Everyone else is indie.
Of course. But not that many are successful at it. Even the Beatles floundered for years before success came only after signing with a label. Note that Ringo was a session musician brought in by the label. George Martin made enormous contributions to their music.
Their original drummer, Pete Best, could not keep time when recording. George Martin raised the issue that he needed to be replaced, that's when they decided to reach out to Ringo.
- Those bowl cuts came years before any success, specifically during the summer of 1960 in Hamburg from a friend of the band.
- The suits were insisted upon by their manager, not the label, in an effort to help get them signed.
- When they first got attention they were doing and playing exactly what they wanted to, mostly because they were singularly focused on being successful. Their set list was mostly comprised of ~500 popular cover songs from the time. You can hear much of this on several of their early albums which were heavily loaded with these - those were the same songs you could find them doing back before they made it, that they played in the Cavern Club and strip clubs in Hamburg. George Martin was the one who pushed them to be bold with the material, get creative with the arrangements, etc, and then the London scene pushed them further forward from there.
Their pre-label original tunes just weren't that good. They played mostly covers. Can you suggest a pre-label Beatles original tune that was worthy?
They never brought in session musicians to play their own pieces. All guitar, drum, bass, piano, etc parts were played by the members of the band and on very few occasions piano pieces by George Martin.
Eric Clapton was not a "session musician", he was doing an uncredited solo for his best friend George Harrison's song.
George Martin did a lot more than just play a few piano bits - he had a lot of creative input. Here's what "The Beatles" by Spitz has to say about it:
"Two weeks later, on his way to the Studio from Sussex, scheduled to give the song another shot, he was explaining to Eric Clapton how something radical was needed to light fire under the Beatles. "We were in George's car, driving in London," Clapton remembered, "and he said, 'Do you want to come and play on this record?'" It was an astonishing invitation. The Beatles had used plenty of Session musicians on other albums, but no one capable of upstaging them, certainly never rock 'n roll virtuoso on the level of Eric Clapton. Clapton hesitated, unsure of what to do. He knew the other Beatles "wouldn't like it," but George brushed aside his reservations. "It's nothing to do with them," he insisted. "It's my song, and I'd like you to play on it." Before anyone had chance to object, Clapton was already in Studio Two, strapping on his Les Paul guitar and listening to the rhythm track mixed down from their work on the sixteenth. The song was pretty much there, creating an effortless, affecting groove, but it lacked dramatic device to liberate the emotional tension that is never far from George's caged expression. Clapton's poignant guitar riff provided everything it needed. The way it weeps and moans, held in check by Eric's incisive phrasing, creates the longing that gives the song its emotional center. George's vocal couldn't have been more enchanting as he squeezes the mournful lyric of all its desperation, until by the end, he seems to be just barely hanging on, just riding atop the surging guitar as it works to strangle his overlapping cries."
Technically, sure. But it's pretty obvious that this situation is not what anyone is talking about here.
Ditto the Monkees. At least Cassidy could sing (and damn, he was good). The Monkees couldn't write, sing, or play without massive help.
They broke up because of a no-holds barred fight with their producer/svengali, declining sales and an awful vanity film (think Spiceworld but much worse), but their albums still sold.
I bought one of their post albums where they wrote their own songs and played their own instruments. Sorry, it's just awful compared with the studio produced albums. Nobody remembers those songs for good reason.
That's part of why Tedesco was much less employed and Hal Blaine was working as a ... security guard(?).
Lumpy on the beginner guitar newsgroup (alt.guitar.beginner) wore out Ovations for a living at some time around then.
You're incredibly mistaken. Yes, the Backstreet Boys/One Direction were exactly what you are describing, as are any major acts. But bands outside "mainstream" music are anything but pretty faces. One can write credible music without production. See: Pixies, The Jesus Lizard, Andrew Bird, ...
Exactly my point. To become a major act (i.e. make money) artists need lots of artistic help. I know this is a brutal thing to say, but if you want to get a band out of obscurity, you're going to need help.
Even Michael Jackson had Quincy Jones help him achieve his breakout album (Off The Wall) and was smart enough to go get the artistic help he needed. And Michael Jackson was one of those incredible artists who could write, sing, dance, and arrange. And he still needed help.
If a band is not interested in making mainstream music, that's fine, but not making money comes with the territory of not appealing to the taste of lots of people.
PS Don't let my oldest daughter know this I HATE Adele Happy Music and Sad Lyrics crap!!!!
Barring circumstances of pure chance, an app needs marketing and promotion to gain any traction, and this costs money. It also usually requires deals with artists of some interest or popularity to get attention, and to ensure the service has enough content.
> Why are the Big 3 still in this chokehold position? Is the market failing, or do they actually provide valuable services that can't be obtained elsewhere?
My theory is that most people actually want to be told what to listen to and don't really care to leave a relatively small comfort zone in terms of music tastes. The current system "works" for consumers so the incentives for anyone to come around to change it are weak. Personally I don't consider this an inherently good or bad thing, just an observed state of affairs.
Disclaimer: Not an expert. Not in the music industry.
I worked at Snocap for a while. Like that Snocap wanted to enable indy artists to self publish. But, the major labels wanted to control the "distribution" of their content. "Their" content. I left.
Now, I'm thinking of getting back into it. Maybe enhance live gigs. This talk is really timely and inspiring!
He goes into depth about the market and business nature of the music industry. It's solid. Whether as an intro or review, it's a quality piece. Thanks for posting this, it's very relevant.
The only problem I see nowadays is there's virtually no vetting process. It used to be the good bands would eventually rise to the top and the shitty garage bands would be relegated to small venues. Today, there's such an over saturation of music. Artists have thousands of avenues to get their music out. As a huge music fan, how do I sort through all the noise to find a truly good band, and not some guy programming the guitars, drums tracks and bass and then does the vocals himself?
Today, I just stick with a small handful of bands that I can support and just keep an eye out for new bands. There's just way too much noise to signal ratio for me to sit and search for hours on end to find one decent band, only to find out they broke up five years ago.
Some highly regarded albums that use that exact process, all are five stars on Allmusic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_Riot_Goin%27_On
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Hate_Machine
Another that legend has it was recording the same way, albeit under different circumstances:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siamese_Dream
Another recent one that the verdict is still out on:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Scholz
Also I grew up playing with his Rockman device and it was sincerely one of the coolest guitar innovations a kid could have access to early on.
I believe the "Beat It" guitar solo was also recorded there. Because there was no legal paperwork with MJ's mgmt., that was a freebie - to the utter dismay of his label.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siamese_Dream
I read the wikipedia entry and it's quite a stretch :].
really? Are you sure? Plenty of big bands did not deserve it but were well marketed and plenty of smaller toilet stop tour bands deserved it and never made it.
The question is a good one. How does one differentiate themselves from the pack. The same goes for just about any art form today. There are so many artists and so many works, many of them good enough to tickle your fancy and yet the majority of them will only get a tiny fraction of the consideration they deserve.
I would love to publish music or books, but I know that given my dysfunctional relationship with social media, that I am just about wasting my time doing any of the above, even if I had a shred of talent.
The arts have to be their own reward. If you're making art for money, and not the love, it's probably not worth doing.
For better or worse, the marketplace is finally realizing this.
I'm saying that if money is the dominant motivating factor in producing art, expect to be disappointed. Technology has reduced many costs of artistic production and has led to an oversupply of "content." To the cold, uncaring marketplace, you're effectively being compensated by those good feelings involved in the process of imagining, producing, and sharing art.
Even so, I draw and record music for my own enjoyment, and to collaborate with friends.
But surely you could organize your own precision-strike book or album release via targeted online ads. I'd be surprised if there weren't lots of companies trying to sell this service.
That's called marketing, and it's something the major labels are exceptionally good at.
The world today is still kind to the western developer, but how do we solve this problem for developers now so that we don't have to figure it out in the future?
I find Podcasts on Music AWESOME for discovery: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510019/all-songs-considered
Last.fm used to be a place where I could check out bands I had never heard of. It was like the website equivalent of the friend who spends all day listening to new music, and will recommend music that is eerily perfect for you.
I feel like the "similar artists" function has changed to prioritize artists that are already extremely popular, even if a much less popular artists is much more similar to the band you are currently listening to. It's plausible I know a lot more bands than I used to, and that new bands are inherently less novel to me. However, I believe this is a trend that can be followed across almost all websites.
As evidence, you only need to look at the changes Facebook made in the same time period. They study the interactions their users make as much as any company, and they've ensured that their users spend the most time on Facebook and provide them with as much data as possible. Facebook used to show every update on the new feed. Now I rarely see posts from anyone I disagree with. I used to get a lot of my information about bands from their Facebook groups. Now the only updates I get are from the major companies I've liked, because they can pay to send a message.
I totally understand why large websites are doing this. These services are most profitable as an advertising platform. In the case of Last.fm, the people listening to John Doe and the Backup Band aren't going to make them money. This 'cultivation' has an extremely chilling effect on the variety and depth of news, viewpoints, etc. that allowed the internet to foster an explosion in creative expression.
The obvious approach is that you look for "people who like this, like that". This is easy to measure and understand. And when you're faced with a person who liked this, it is usually the right answer.
The problem is that you don't know WHY people who like this, like that. Often it is simply, "Heard both at an impressionable age." What you want it to be is, "On the musical criteria that I can recognize, this music is similar." But that's a complex piece of logic, and it is not clear how to do so.
Which makes the tools really good for rediscovering all of the stuff from your childhood, and really bad for discovering new music that is similar to stuff you like.
Eh? Do you mean you don't like it unless you know the band is full of good instrumentalists or that you find too much stuff that's not done well?
Fundamentally I don't disagree; it takes a lot to 'sound pro' and a lot falls short...it's been a multi-year learning process on my end and I'm still nowhere near 'pro' engineer level, though some tracks might fool ears here and there.
I'm not sure if their plan had a broader strategy, but I felt the vision was at least admirable due to its mission beyond just firm profits.
At $0.0001/stream typical, Pandora itself cannot ever add up to meaningful income for a non-hit artist. Most of the income for the non-hit artist will come from that core group of committed fans who buy everything the artist makes, contribute to kickstarters, and shows up at all the concerts.
As a discovery tool Pandora's value is debatable. My anecdotal experience is that of all the various ways that I and other artists I know have made fans, Pandora was never one. YMMV.
(Update: I just found a bit a data that states that Pandora accounts for ~10% of new music discovery which is a lot better than I would have guessed.)
Curation works better than recommenders.
To my great surprise, I continue to discover new acts, music thru the radio. Just like when I was kid.
KBCS.fm and KEXP.org have great speciality shows. They also do a good job of posting their play lists, streaming archives, linking to artists, promoting upcoming shows, etc.
I've rarely discovered new stuff from a recommender (Pandora, last.fm, whatever). Now I don't even bother.
But I do rediscover music (from my youth) via YouTube. Which is a delight.
If mining radio playlists stops working for me, I'd be willing to try something like Apple Beat's notion.
Radio is still the most important music discovery media: https://d28wbuch0jlv7v.cloudfront.net/images/infografik/norm....
Notably, that chart puts Pandora discovery at a meaningful 10%.
Aside: I very much want to use scrobble (or equiv) to consolidate all my faves. It's on my ever growing to do list.
This sounds like a version of Russell and Norvig's Mengitis question. The probability you have a stiff neck if you have meningitis is 70%. But what is the probability that you have meningitis if you have a stiff neck? Keep in mind that Meningitis is 1/50,000 cases but stiff necks are 1/100 cases. Answer: 0.14%, quite small.
Similarly, the probability that you are on Pandora if you are discovered is 1/10. But what is the probability that you are discovered if you're on Pandora? Likely very, very, very small.
I'm not sure that's what the analysis is saying. I think the analysis is saying, "among discoverers, when discovery occurred, the discoverer was using [CHANNEL] with X% probability".
To me this says more about the weakness of the alternatives than about the strength of Pandora. At least it's possible to hear new music on Pandora. It's sad what a lowest common denominator echo chamber terrestrial radio has become.
Consider this typical everyday sort of press release we see in the industry all the time these days: http://www.musicrow.com/2014/03/clear-channel-bbr-music-grou...
Payola: Payola, in the music industry, is the illegal practice of payment or other inducement by record companies for the broadcast of recordings on commercial radio in which the song is presented as being part of the normal day's broadcast. Under U.S. law, 47 U.S.C. § 317, a radio station can play a specific song in exchange for money, but this must be disclosed on the air as being sponsored airtime, and that play of the song should not be counted as a "regular airplay".
Revenue sharing agreements? SMH.
Imagine you're an independent artist. That's the hurdle you have to be able to cross in order to get access to discovery platforms. This includes access to choice Spotify or YouTube playlists, satellite and Internet radio, and other conventional discovery mechanisms.
Bingo. It's not so much that "the music goes over their head", it's that the musicians are entertaining themselves.
Audience feels surplus.
Months passed, and then I got a form letter saying the album was rejected. No explanation, no details on if the other songs were listened to, etc. I've never been sure whether to conclude if my songwriting just sucks more than I thought it did. Anyway, I haven't really had any ideas of where to submit the album since then, other than just giving up and putting it on Spotify.
This all started with file sharing 15 years ago. Everyone thought they were helping out the independent artists, but in reality, it made it so they could no longer compete without a huge corporation backing them. File sharing has only helped big labels by increasing the barrier to entry.
I know so many independent artists that were making a decent living (not rich, but enough to support themselves instead of having to get a job) selling music online. File sharing changed all of this. The value of music (CD/MP3s) slowly approached 0 and now that we have streaming, copyright infringement still hasn't gotten any better, it's worse.
Live shows, the profit model so many people tried to use as justification for sharing, don't really pay much unless you are doing huge venues and have big label connections. A small gig might get you a couple hundred bucks in a night. With gas, time, and splitting it with everyone in the band, there isn't much to be passed around.
This also puts many of these artists in completely desperate situations, where they will sign pretty much any contract. The big labels know this and use it to their full advantage.
The big corporations with tons of cash reserves will always be able to survive the slaughtering of an industry's profits...and we still have all of the major music labels. What we don't have is many of the independent artists and labels.
Speaking about Indie Music
I'm the SMALL Record Label. The money comes in through sales of Merch, Gigs and selling CD/MP3. I think there has never been a time better for Indie Music. There are more people making a "living" in music and not being a big label band or a cover band, but they are all fighting for a very small pot.
Blame
1) Music Fans. The vast majority of people will never give Indie bands a listen and have the listening pallet of a 6 year old.
2) Indie population is high majority college age kids. I would love to see this expand. I am in my 40s and I don't know anyone my age that is into Indie Music. Heck when I was in my late 20s and early 30 I was "Old Man" to everyone.
3) Bands - Don't have enough money sense (Including myself as a studio/label owner). They have a TON of survivor instincts and the tenacity to keep going but they can't figure out how to turn things into money.
4) Streaming - People actively seeking out certain music pays the same as mindless random steams. I think if people search and specifically pick your music it should pay more.
More indie rock bands should play more covers and stop pretending like they're god's gift to songwriting. More people would go to and enjoy their shows.
The country, bluegrass, jam, americana and folk scenes have tons of fans that support a large number of pro and semi-pro pickers and singers. They play a lot of covers because people do like to hear their favorite songs played live. A lot of them get to the point where they're playing like half their own songs, but some will always play songs written by other people.
The pickers that can play lead on an instrument, sing, and write songs are called "triple threats". These guys are few and far between and end up being superstars. Jimi Hendrix, Merle Haggard, Jerry Garcia, Willie Nelson and Brad Paisley, just to name a few. They play lead instruments on other people's recordings, sing other people's songs, and write songs for other people. Notice the emphasis on "other people". That's kind of lacking in indie music, which instead has a philosophy of solipsism. It's built right in to the DIY ethic. Don't sing someone else's songs, sing your own songs. It's ultimately a losing formula.
I make more money, play to more people and have more fun playing covers to people down at corporate gigs or just down at the local bar than I ever did in whatever indie rock band I've played in throughout the years. It seemed like we were trying to reinvent music from a faded memory in every indie band I was in. Covers were uncool, and we had to define "Our sound". "Our sound" ended up being much shittier than traditional forms like country or the blues.
Oh well, indie rock will be dead in 10 years tops. I've got a lot of refugees from the indie rock scene learning to play more traditional music. Either that or they just hang up their guitars for good. The DIY ethos is just too alienated and embittered to for people who feel like making the transition to adulthood.
The crowd was biggest and most engaged for Max Savage. After hearing 10ish songs that I knew back to front, the next act of originals felt very flat, despite being the more well known artist.
It made me very keen to hear Max cover other full albums, even a festival of nothing but interesting covers. Not cheesy covers, but cross-genre tweaks, etc. I'd pay to attend that gig sooner than I would an event of purely originals that I didn't really know.
Then there are covers that reimagine the song, like "White Rabbit" by Sanctuary. Pretty awesome. And who can forget "Tamborine Man" by William Shatner (!)
I primarily am using Pandora and it really depends how much time I spend thumbing music up or down. Once I zero in a station it doesn't seem like I hear new artists or songs very often.
I'll also add that in my personal case, pandora led me to finding and buying more music. Spotify and smartphones over iPods (and buying a house) are why I don't by albums very often anymore.
a) Find some bands you like, go see them live.
b) Get talking to people at the gigs (this helps if they're smaller venues), they'll recommend all sorts.
c) See the support bands, odds on you'll like some of them, then go and see them, see the other bands they're in, it doesn't take long before this gets out of control :).
d) Make friends, go and see bands they like, it might not always be your thing, but if it's a social thing anyway, it doesn't really matter.
e) Go to festivals, listen to all the bands beforehand - i used to generated spotify playlists of glastonbury etc. Ok, listening to stuff on spotify doesn't make the artist much, but if you like them, go see them when they headline, buy merch, recommend them to friends etc.
f) I used to take photos, it's pretty much a dead industry nowadays but it puts you in touch with bands and helps get you kind of noticed which might lead to opportunites you might not get otherwise.
g) Be eclectic, you're spoilt for choice, if you're lucky enough to be in London or SE England or a decent sized city.
h) Follow bands on facebook, soundcloud... often this leads to other similar bands.
i) Personally i don't bother with large venues or bigger bands that much, i might make the odd exception, but there's serious amounts of really great music and musicians well away from the expensive/aircraft hanger venue/popular stuff and there's the bonus it might actually have some meaning because it's not trying to make money :).
Seems harsh to blame people for their personal tastes. Maybe the product is wrong or the genre limited. Surely blaming discoverability and the like is fairer? Beyond discoverability, I think repetition is very important which is where labels and links to radio/etc are useful.
This is the service I'm looking for:
A free service optimized at promoting new music, or just random radio. Medium bit rate MP3 ok if 320kbps can be sold for a low monthly fee instead. Spotify is way too expensive for this, use case.
An added value store for those rare gems I actually want to spend money on. For me, most importantly, high quality recordings in lossless CD-quality. For other it might be fan memberships to get pre releases or other bonus things.
To me the problem is he either or thing. Either I have to buy lots of insanely expensive downloads in iTunes or something, and then listen only to that. Or, I can get the opportunity to discover new things in Spotify or tidal for equally insanely expensive service fee, but have no option to keep discoveries besides keep paying said insane fee.
Bandcamp's Music Feed feature is basically the streaming radio bit you're after, and Bandcamp itself will let you purchase and download lossless copies of the music. I wish Bandcamp was even bigger than it is, because it totally deserves to be.
But I realized I left out the hardest requirement, which probably is the killer for most competition, i want to use the same service to listen to mainstream music (at least the old mainstream music I listen to)
Edit: OTOH it might be possible to get by with covers only. A search for Pink Floyd certainly didn't disappoint.
In November 2012, the Grammy-nominated hit song-writer Ellen Shipley reported that one of her most popular tracks got played 3,112,300 times on Pandora.
For this, she was paid $39.61
(Source: the somewhat depressing "The Internet is Not The Answer", by Andy Keen)
As someone who works in/with the music industry, it really pains me to see bands put out great work despite so much pain (and drama) to themselves, only to get underpaid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1bV0NBeG8E
it is worth restating that this patreon was not connected to the development of 8chan at all, but for the support of a disabled individual in need of assistance. patreon decided that this individual was worthy of complete censure from their funding platform.
in my experience, most crowdfunding/e-busking platforms engage in a degree of censorship of one form or another. if the right people don't like you, they will find any number of reasons in their vague CoC to keep you out.
While I care not for his white supremacist nonsense, no payment platform should be in the business of policing speech. They're jerks.
At first approximation, this sounds like a worse scenario for the artist.
> Why should we do that? Because it works and its a foundational element of a market economy.
Modern finance has already created a model where music artists are beholden to financiers and middlemen. How and why do you expect this to turn out differently?
http://www.amazon.com/Praise-Commercial-Culture-Tyler-Cowen/...
I expect it to turn out differently because the legal and accounting costs for future digital contracts will drop drastically.
That's how things were financed in the middle ages
In the middle ages, can you get thousand of people to essentially send you a small paycheck every month on an ongoing basis?
And what exactly is wrong with that model?
Financial assets and intellectual property are not something I can teach you in a comment box. I recommend reading these two books and then we can start the conversation back up again.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Everywh...
http://www.amazon.com/Praise-Commercial-Culture-Tyler-Cowen/...
Tyler Cowen and Hernando de Soto are two economists that are held in incredibly high regard and have done a wonderful job explaining the core concepts of both what constitutes finance and how it applies to intellectual creativity in a market economy.
Cue the knee-jerk rebuttal in 3... 2... 1...
"But the internet changed everything!"
Uh huh, ok, sure, whatever you say... yawn
First, I totally understand how it can feel to share opinions that frequently are not given the seriousness that you feel they deserve, where it seems people may dismiss what you're saying out of hand or disagree without engaging what you're saying at all. The frustration of "spitting into the wind" in this way is totally valid.
However, I would invite you to leave off ending your comments with language decrying or dismissing those who disagree with you.
As I was reading you comment, up to the end I really was thinking "I get the sense that the internet did change quite a lot, I would like to learn more about the reasons others may disagree or why others think it may not apply." But the moment I reached where you call what I was wondering about a "yawn inducing knee-jerk rebuttal" I completely moved from curious to hurt.
I may very well have questions about what you've shared (and indeed, I do!) but disgruntled dismissal of alternative viewpoints makes me feel as though asking to learn more would yield only contemptuous or belittling comments.
I suspect you'll convince many more people if you leave off the needling language.
This is the exact opposite of preaching to the choir. Most people on these forums have been leading successful lives by toeing the party line in the tech industry. You all already think you know everything worth knowing and that the Internet has made the pre-networked world completely irrelevant. It is such a strongly reinforced ideology paired with addictions to touch screen devices that control your thoughts and actions so completely you can't seem to notice how ignorant and arrogant you've all become.
I'm here to just plain tell you that you're wrong. I don't have the resources to roll back the brainwashing of 100,000 techies. I can't sit here and be your personal psychologists and hold your hands while I explain the fundamentals of intellectual property in a market economy. I'm up against 25 years of raging idiots screaming about the RIAA and the MPAA. I know this ideology well because I used to be a true believer. I figured out this was bullshit on my own, just by leading life, learning about love, and finding myself a real community, not some digital hideout for run-away teenagers like HackerNews and Reddit. Again, I used to be that, I used to be that kid sitting at home in small town American feeling really left out and finding a group of other rejects on IRC and Slashdot and the open source "community".
So you just keep on thinking that "The Internet has changed everything!" and keep on ignorantly disrupting the entire known universe with your hair-brained schemes, and I'll sit here on the sidelines and call you all a bunch of jackasses, how's that?
Also, I'm trying to get dang's attention because I really want to have a serious sit down talk with the dude in person but I've probably scared him away by cursing like a sailor and talking about hanging out with rednecks in a honky tonks bar. If I make a stink he normally shows up. So dang, buddy, let's get coffee in San Francisco sometime soon. I promise to be polite.
Everyone, go listen to some Merle Haggard and actually try and listen instead of just talk talk talk talk talking the fuck all the time on your dumb ass devices.
Stop it, now you're just whining! 'lelandbatey' is offering you excellent feedback. The number of people that voted you down (or up) is a tiny fraction of the membership.
Communication is hard, but you've got good things to say, and people that want to hear you. Probably it's true that no one here agrees with everything you believe, but they certainly don't all agree with each other either. Whether or not the person you are responding to directly understands (American?) intellectual property law, there are others that do, and other perspectives that are important. It's a more diverse community than you give it credit.
So you just keep on thinking that "The Internet has changed everything!"
No, it hasn't changed everything, but it's sure changed a lot of things, and music is one of those. While practically free and instantaneous delivery may not change drastically change the business of music, it certainly changes the process of discovery. While it's not quite as major as the first phonograph, I think it's likely to have comparable impact. For example, without the internet, I don't think I ever would have found this[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtX2HPBMcsQ. And now that I have, certainly my life will never be the same?
[1] Antti Paalanen - Meluta (We Wanna Make Some Noise)
In any case if you'd like an in depth economic analysis of how the Internet actually did change everything that might challenge your view you might appreciate The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Bekler.
http://www.inc.com/john-boitnott/social-media-addiction-the-...
http://ericadhawan.com/social-media-hurts-productivity/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/upshot/silicon-valley-has-...
As well as some economic studies:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/03/the...
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/03/pro...
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/03/how...
Someone had better teach these techies some basic finance, accounting and economics at some point. Right now when someone posts something to Facebook it's basically a dead end for further economic potential. Compare this to how the finances of the book trade worked in the 19th century and it appears as if we're headed backwards. I blame a certain kind of arrogance in Silicon Valley for thinking that "information just has to be free now"... if anyone opened up their history books they'd realize that the printing press made the distribution costs of information comparatively cheaper than the Internet. People used to make copies by hand! Then it took us a few hundred years to fully invent intellectual property as a response to the issues created by cheap copies.
All that's happened as a result of the Internet is that we now have even cheaper copiers, but there's still a cost. Facebook's operation costs are in the billions of dollars a year. That's hardly "free information". Everyone needs to realize that Clay Shirkey and CmdrTaco were full of shit so we can move on with our lives.
It's about time that some adults with some conservative tendencies as well as a functional and practical understanding of the Internet stepped in and showed these techies a thing or to about how the world really works when they're not just spending daddy VC's money.
I guess the intention of the term was more inline with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_production_of_habitat "social production involves people at the community level relying on them collectively to identify, exploit and increase local capital as assets in the development process"
In practice the book is more about what Benkler calls "Commons-based peer production" though.
Which wikipedia takes as a synonym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons-based_peer_production
"Commons-based peer production is a term coined by Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler.[1] It describes a new model of socioeconomic production in which large numbers of people work cooperatively (usually over the Internet). Commons-based projects generally have less rigid hierarchical structures than those under more traditional business models. Often—but not always—commons-based projects are designed without a need for financial compensation for contributors.
The term is often used interchangeably with the term social production."
The book does shows its age in some respects though. At the time it was written p2p, open source, wikipedia and all the other institutions the book focuses on was rather new in the public mind, and perhaps treated a bit too much like magic. A sober follow up would certainly be a valuable addition to the discourse.
I think the biggest take aways from that book in particular is that
- There are other ways to organize human activity than market economies, even when rather large capital assets are involved in the production.
- People are capable of, and actually do, produce many things of enormous value, without any expectation of economic compensation.
- Current legal, cultural, and economic, institutions are somewhat at odds with this mode of production. Thus acting more to suppress (some forms of) valuable economic activity than enabling it.
Framed like this it certainly looks like an argument in a rather old political conflict. But I think that is the wrong way to look at it. It looks more like a synthesis to me, a much more inspiring proposition.
Edit: And Facebook is an interesting thing to study, it embodies both the good and bad parts Benkler talk about. There certainly is a certain amount of social production going on amongst Facebook users. At the same time most of the capital value produced is reaped by Facebook and used to in parts to enable the infrastructure as such, a good thing, but also to cater to Facebooks less amicable interests, essentially destroying the very habitat their users is working to improve.
It is still better than today where there are no advances and really no way to ever recoup the production costs unless you completely ignore digital and go back to selling vinyl... which is what most artists are doing.
In the next few years we're going to see a wholesale abandonment of digital and social media from musicians because everyone is finally going to figure out that what Silicon Valley has been building for the last decade is an economic desert. Who gives a crap if you're reaching an audience that doesn't come to your shows and doesn't buy any of your wares?
Cue the knee-jerk rebuttal in 3... 2... 1...
"But the internet changed everything!"
Uh huh, ok, sure, whatever you say... yawn
From my perspective, there's nothing to argue with or talk about.
I don't think you even remotely understand what the term "intellectual property" means outside of some narrow and lopsided definition of the term from something you read in Wired magazine or on Slashdot.
From my perspective you're too ignorant to have this conversation and you need to go learn a few things before you should try and engage in a discussion about these concepts.
Right now it's like I'm trying to discuss differential equations with someone who hasn't even studied grade school algebra.
I've been optimistic for stuff like etsy.com and artsyo.com. I have some additional notions (use cases) that I probably won't ever have the gumption to tackle, but would love to see happen.
Now I wonder about the marketing magic required for self-promotion and "multi-channel" content. Of her peers is a genius for self-promotion, self-publishing. Another does side gigs teaching art, running events like art parties for children birthdays. And everyone's chasing commissions, of course.
Not so different from being a consultant or small biz entrepreneur , really.
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Big fan of de Soto. Thanks for the Tyler Cowen link.
Vinyl 1x01 - Zak Yankovich "We practically break even on all the flops." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PU3DHiXZ-8
http://www.billboard.com/biz/search/charts?f[0]=tm_imprintla...
I'm also fairly sure that Underoath's Define The Great Line has since outsold any of Zao's albums (I'm guessing either Liberate or Blood and Fire were the top seller that bald_fat mentioned).
The Whole Industry Sucks
I had two bands that ended up on Major Labels and Toured the World. I met a kid on the street wearing one of my Bands shirts and struck up a conversation. They still love the band 10 years later.
These guys per person made at the TOP $7,000 in profit after expenses were paid. One band did a KickStarter and pulled in $40,000. It was their biggest pay day ever. I knwo a band (Zao) who has the a Label's (Solid State) biggest selling album ever and the band never saw a dime. PS That band was drama and the drummer was the biggest jerk ever BUT they still deserved to get paid.