If an artist is A) not super rich, B) on an indie or self-owned label, and C) his records are available where you live, is there any excuse for downloading them instead of buying them?

Because I can't think of any.

What I meant is illegally downloading them, of course, not downloading them from a pay site.

I'm broke. :/

But it's not like you're life depends on getting a particular record. And there's plenty of free and legal music available on the net.

if you're broke and not spending your income elsewhere, what does it matter if you listen to legal music or illegal music?

"One Good Song"

The first line of the first post in this thread is still OTM.

try b4 u buy

If you're broke but want to get some cool prints from a local painter, do you wait until you have enough cash or just go ahead and steal them?

I mostly just worry about food and the rent

try b4 u buy

This I can understand, but I was talking about a situation where you only download stuff but don't buy it afterwards.

If you did that then the painter would be broke and therefore unable to make any more prints, cool or otherwise (xxp).

What year is it? Who is the president?

Also SB

As for the "one good song" thing, in most cases you can legally download an individual song cheaply, if that's all you want.

2009

and

http://oofta.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/tarja20halonen.jpg

i d/l momus illegally and delete the files without listening.

I also hide his CDs in record shops when I see them, so that no one can find them. I have never done this, though, because I've never seen his CDs in record shops. This is either because a; no one wants them so record shops don't stock them, or b; someone else already did what I was intending to do.

When I want to get some local Finnish rap albums, I always buy them because I know most of Finnish rappers aren't that wealthy, and many of them have said (in interviews and on the records themselves) that they don't like people downloading that stuff because they're trying to make a living with their music, and filesharing hurts that. I don't really see why this isn't a valid argument.

It's an entirely valid argument. I don't think anyone could reasonably say it wasn't. I think the reaction to this thread is precisely because of the fact that it's so reasonable.

isn't there some government rap program that supports them?

No.

I believe anyone caught downloading music illegally should be made to kick a ball in the street for a minimum of 72 hours, just to learn about dignity and optimal social interaction.

would finnish voters be opposed to one?

I've been trying to be ethical about stealing music for the last year or so, which (to me) means something like Tuomas's premise: no stealing of music from an artist I actually care about (the vast majority of which are nowhere near 'super rich'). Unfortunately, this has meant that I have attained virtually no new music in the past year, as I am broke as a joke.

I've gotten into tons of (new to me) old music though!

Actually, some Finnish musicians do get state grants so they don't have to have a day job and can focus on making music. But rap in here is quite marginal, so I don't think any rapper might get such a grant in the near future.

How about downloading it first to see if it's worth buying? If it's bad, erase. If it's good, buy it at their next gig...

I'm fine with that, but that wasn't the question I asked.

what do finnish rappers rap about if they're not wealthy?

fish?

I think in an ideal situation musicians would be supported by the state and records would be free. But since the state can't afford to support every garage band, there'd have have to be some system of deciding which bands are good enough to deserve the state money, and that's where it gets tricky. I believe the former Soviet Union had a system like this, but there where only a handful of pop/rock bands on the government payroll.

If their music is available to buy in the format you want then you should pay. Or, download it for free but then go to one of their gigs and throw some money at them.

im more willing to "donate" to the artist (i.e. buy a cd that i already downloaded even tho i know i'm not going to do anything with the physical cd except but it on a shelf) if the artist is on a major label. especially for r&b/hip-hop, it's very likely that a label is going to look at the artist's album sales and say "well, you only sold 120,000 copies in the first month, so we didn't make any money off this record, and you probably won't be putting one out for another 2-3 years" whereas fatcat didn't look at the sales of animal collective's 'feels' and go "well, you guys only sold 6,000 copies of this record this month, so we probably won't be putting out any more animal collective albums for a few years"

what do finnish rappers rap about if they're not wealthy?

About being poor. It's actually a common subject in Finnish rap, plus most of the rappers are left-leaning.

well then you would hope they would understand my situation and the whole 'not having any money to give them' thing

which i guess i mean to say that i know that the neither a large or mid-sized indie band nor a major artist is going to make money off of my singular purchase, but that my "vote" so to speak matters much more frequently when it comes to artists on major labels than ones on indie labels

and likewise i probably won't go see the-dream for $45 bucks but i'll go see the thermals for $15

I don't buy music any more. I don't want CDs, and I didn't want downloads with DRM, which was the only way to legally get them until recently. I used to download illegally, now I mostly listen to Spotify, which is free and legal. Copyright, and today's forms of distribution, are utterly untenable in the digital age. There's probably a pretty direct correlation between the amount I spent on CDs in the pre-Internet age and the amount I spend on broadband, which enables the downloading. In other words it's the ISPs who are now making money out of music. There have been various suggestions in various countries to bundle in some kind of charge for music with ISP subscription, which I think makes some sense. As for illegal downloading, I think I'm right in saying that in Germany the high court decided it wasn't actually illegal to download, so the issue is not necessarily so legally or morally clearcut.

You let the German high court decide your morality?

(Don't worry, I SB'd myself for that)

well when have they ever let us down?

What was the German high court's reason for making downloading legal? Was it pragmatic (because it can't be stopped) or was there some actual legal / moral substance behind the decision? Because as I see it, a pragmatic decision doesn't affect the morality of the issue at all.

I may have this German business wrong, I'll google and see...

I let the Zimbabwean high court decide for me on most things.

On a related subject - http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1479-spotify-demos-mobile-music-streaming-with-offline-option-for-android.html

From some paper on copyright law:

If a user in Germany downloads a song from a file-sharing network, it is seen as a duplication – a copy of the song. If this copy is for private use, it is perfectly legal – like copying a CD or a videotape. This permission is granted by an exception to copyright ("Schrankenregelung"), resembling – not equalling – the fair use provision in US copyright law. Of course it is not allowed to sell or lend this copy, because then it would be a commercial use, which is prohibited.

It's apparently legal in the Netherlands as well.

if there a justification you can give for including (A) here Tuomas, I'd like to hear it. short of 'charity'

The justification comes from the fact that I'd like to see my favourite artists continue making music, and that's much easier if they actually can make some sort of living out of it. It's not really an issue with artists who are already super rich.

yeah I'm down with that too

In the long term, subscribing to an already collapsing system of remuneration (that never much helped smaller artists anyway) will not necessarily help your favourite artists continue to make music.

Agreed; neither will invisibly downloading their music.

The thing is that if the choice is between you illegally downloading the music and you not buying it and thus not listening to it, what would the artist prefer?

At least there is the intangible benefit of being heard and appreciated, but also the fact that you might spread the word about the music, play it to friends, blog it or whatever, and then some of those people might buy it.

Also, filesharing is NOT stealing (theft) in UK law at least. It's copyright infringement*. Morally it's completely different to stealing the artist's print, as he then has one less to sell to more scrupulous art lovers. There is no unit cost to the musician of each mp3 illegally downloaded.

* And so all the court cases to date have been for uploading, not downloading.

So I think it is morally right to buy stuff. But it's morally neutral to download it. You are doing neither harm nor good.

"There have been various suggestions in various countries to bundle in some kind of charge for music with ISP subscription, which I think makes some sense."

god i'd love to see this happen, i think it's the only really practical way of dealing with this problem. there's already legal precident inasmuch as this is exactly what ascap does for radio. if anything by joining forces with companies/sites/software like pirate bay, soulseek, etc, you could probably get a fairly accurate way of measuring who's getting downloaded and so on... tie it in with myspace and you could even get some checks in the hands of unsigned artists and everything.

obviously theres no excuse for downloading in the above mentioned scenario, but this concern stops about .005% of potential pirates, the rest of us just do it anyway. who doesn't like a free lunch?

The way we view copyright where I work, which is a large academic institution that has to have all sorts of licenses in place and so on, is often the simple question of whether or not a sale was prevented by the copy being made.

how do you answer that question?

Including a charge with ISP subscriptions would be a great idea, and I see it as the most likely outcome in a few years. But expect a lot of principal libertarian ideological arguments against it from people with very strong principles in that direction.

The thing is that if the choice is between you illegally downloading the music and you not buying it and thus not listening to it, what would the artist prefer?

accepting all your other points, jamie, the argument that there is a fairly significant margin between these two poles where smaller artists inhabit is fairly significant.

whether or not a sale was prevented by the copy being made

This is the fallacy that the recording industry make, when they say there were x illegal downloads, so we have lost x CD sales/legal downloads.

Obviously only a tiny fraction of those illegal downloads are actually replacing purchases, and most illegal downloaders DO still purchase music (I know I do), although obviously the "free" option must have a depressing effect on the legal market.

I'm sure there's some demographic who don't, and what happens to their attitudes as they get older and have more money is interesting.

darraghmac - yeah, but still - you can buy one tiny self-released 7" or hand-painted cassette or whatever, and then download ten more releases of the same artist. That in itself doesn't harm the artist.

i'm not getting you there- you wouldn't have been willing to pay for any of the further ten items you downloaded were that option (d/l) not available?

Thread premise is that if an artist is super rich then it's morally unobjectionable to rob them like crazy.

I suppose all I'm saying is that it's the "not buying" that harms the artist, not the downloading. You have to ask yourself if you would have wanted, or been able to afford, to buy the other releases.

I think we all just have access to loads more music than we would have been able to otherwise, which is a good thing. There's no way I would be able to have afforded all the music I have access to, but I still spend too much of my money on records anyway.

how do you answer that question?

― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Thursday, May 28, 2009 11:50 AM (13 minutes ago)

That's the tricky part! There are guidelines, but the copyright laws for time-based media in this country are so vague and wooly that it is very difficult. We have old VHS copies of films that have never been released on DVD, and we can / do copy those to DVDR and keep the original in storage as "fair use format migration". Likewise old jazz LPs, where we might transcode one track to MP3 and put it behind a password-protected part of the website for students on certain courses to access. If we can buy a copy legitimately, we can't / don't make a copy. (Except under the ERA licence, for TV recordings.) Then there's streaming on/off campus issues with that...

Tuomas has always had a lot in common with Robin Hood.

Wearing tights and living in a forest, presumably.

If you're broke but want to get some cool prints from a local painter, do you wait until you have enough cash or just go ahead and steal them?

I'd take digital photographs of 'em. Stealing the prints themselves would be comparable to stealing irreplaceable master tapes.

Except that in the case of music the "photograph" is virtually indistiguishable from the original print. And if everyone just took those photographs the artist couldn't sell any of the prints.

one answer i have is that i always check for anything first on emusic. there are lots of things i know won't be there -- big-label releases in particular -- but i look anyway. if something's available on emusic, i will always get it there, even if it means waiting a few weeks for my quota to re-up.

my thinking on that runs along the lines of, artists and labels who have made their stuff available on emusic are essentially meeting the consumer halfway by recognizing and accepting (however grudgingly) the extent to which their work has been devalued by the digital marketplace. they are not clinging to the fiction that an album is still "worth" $10 or $15 or whatever. in the early wild-west days of filesharing i always said that if anyone sold songs for 25 cents, i'd buy them. so when emusic did that, i signed on happily. (it helps that they've got so much stuff i want, obviously.) otoh, people who are still selling things for a dollar a song or whatever are essentially price gouging, as far as i'm concerned, which significantly lowers my guilt level about not paying their asking price.

i know the argument is that something like emusic makes it hard for musicians to make much money. i understand that. but that's the nature of the current marketplace.

but a dollar a song is not an unreasonable price anyway. i think the ownership culture and people wanting to own more music than anything else that can be quantified (inc. books) has led to music being under-priced if anything. but of course if you want to own copies of 15,000 songs on a PC you probably wouldn't want to spend $15,000 doing so.

xpost - But that's just it though: there is no historical precedent for being able to make an exact copy without any cost whatsoever while leaving the original intact. Even bootleg CDs require an investment in some physical media. If it was possible to do this with food, farmers would go out of business and 50,000 years of agrarian culture would be snuffed out, but starvation would end. I wish Shawn Fanning had worked on this problem instead.

this is my pledge that if you fuckin guys turn me into one of those super-rich artists, I will start releasing it all for free, both digitally and on vinyl

or stop releasing it entirely, your call, I don't give a shit, just get me rich and we'll figure out the rest of the terms of the agreement when we get there

Tuomas, is there ever a moment when you're not wondering what the right thing to do, say, or think is? Live a little bro.

i know the argument is that something like emusic makes it hard for musicians to make much money. i understand that. but that's the nature of the current marketplace.

conspiracy to provide finnish rappers with more material about bein' broke

Pages in category "Finnish rappers"
The following 10 pages are in this category, out of 10 total.

a dollar a song is not an unreasonable price anyway.

sort of depends. i've bought individual tracks for that -- singles, basically. but if i want a whole album, a dollar a song works out to about the same as plain old physical-media record-store pricing, which was too high to start with.

anyway, everyone sets their own levels. i'm basically willing to pay 25 cents a song. people who charge more are pricing themselves out of my market.

a dollar to own a song you like is pretty cheap in my book.

you can buy my book for only €25.00, or d/l it for free. your choice.

plain old physical-media record-store pricing, which was too high to start with.

high compared to what? books, games or films? why should music cost less than those? just because people tend to want to own more music than other media?

i would accept 'yes' to that last question tbh

AFAIC, music that's so easily transferable and downloadable etc is worth more to me as an end user than it was on a cassette or a CD (ie just on a CD).

Yes, the cost of transferring the medium has gone down, but i don't think that that's necessarily an argument that the price of a song/album should automatically go through the floor.

why should music cost less than those?

are you suggesting that the only basis for price is cost relative to an arbitrary basket of similar items?

just because people tend to want to own more music than other media?

rofl

Yes, the cost of transferring the medium has gone down, but i don't think that that's necessarily an argument that the price of a song/album should automatically go through the floor.

take it up with adam smith

Tuomas what did you vote on that poll Should Filesharers Be Disconnected By Their ISP's? (and discussion about future laws) ?

just because people tend to want to own more music than other media?

A visit to any major "record shop" would dispel this notion

high compared to what? books, games or films?

compared to actual cost of production and distribution, for one thing. everybody knows the story of the massive price jumps that came in with the introduction of cds. they got away with it for a lot of years, and made a gazillion-zillion dollars by rereleasing all their back catalogs. (and then repackaging and rerereleasing them in bonus/remastered editions, etc.) then that changed, too bad for them.

are you suggesting that the only basis for price is cost relative to an arbitrary basket of similar items?

not exactly. all of these media share characteristics in terms of how they're produced, levels of personnel involved, means of distribution. what else would you base it on?

rofl

is that funny? as far as art/entertainment media goes don't people in general own (legitimately or not) more music than other?

A visit to any major "record shop" would dispel this notion

No it wouldn't

Give me the stats on that

Games sell more than music these days, don't they? I'm sure that was on the new a while back.

Maybe people own more music in terms of physical items, but perhaps you should be measuring how much people own in terms of how long it takes them to consume? And even then not just "an album is 50 mins, a film is 120 mins, a book takes 260 mins to read" etc, but in terms of... "I'll listen to this album x times, watch film y times, and read book z times, adding up to...." etc.

I bet more people by dvds than cd, i bet more would download films than music if it was as easy as it is for getting music. I bet more people go to cinemas than gigs.

*buy

oh and i would bet more buy/play videogames than buy/listen to music they bought

good job you're not a betting man then

If you walk into any major record shop, the first thing you'll see is racks of DVDs

cinemas != to gigs, unless bands can distribute themselves in new and alarming ways.

take it up with adam smith

killfiled that mf months ago.

Games are typically more expensive than albums so the idea that your average person owns more games then albums seems weird and unlikely to me - regardless of free downloading (which increased ownership of both). Same goes for DVDs/films.

If you walk into any major record shop, the first thing you'll see is racks of DVDs

or peoples homes

Not mine... oh you mean normal people

steve my point is people are more likely to buy a game than a cd. Even pre-filesharing days that happened. At my high school (1984-1990) almost everyone had the latest big game that was out, and about 1 person had the latest big cd(which then got taped for everyone who wanted it)

haha yeah, normal people.

actually most people didnt have a cd player at school, when my folks got one i always had to tape people any cds i got bought for me

Here's what I was looking for, and that's despite this

higher overall sales doesn't prove much, considering games generally cost more and are generally more hassle to copy/pirate

at school you don't own much of anything so it's not a great comparison! still we Amiga owners copied games as much as music if not more so

I just downloaded the Early Plates comps of both Manix and Rufige Cru, and I did it legally (i.e. I payed for it), so fuck all y'all...gifts aside, free music kinda sucks...there's no investment on your (the listener's) part, nothing at stake, no leap of faith, no "you" in it...

Games and dvd's made the last couple of years, here at the store.
Exactly for the reasons pointed out by Tom and Pfunkboy.

Nick actually makes a good point re valuation being based on how long it takes to experience something once. Is this a fair method? Still not sure.

Note that games are outselling music AND video

live a little, bro

Are games actually outselling or is it just that they generate more revenue due to general higher prices? Bear in mind they tend to come out at two-three times the price of a new music CD (even if many drop to average album cost months down the line).

The cost of developing a new video game is astronomical and seems to get higher as technology progresses. Albums are fucking cheap to make compared to either video games or films.

chinesedemocracy.jpg

whoa what if chinese democracy was a VIDEO GAME

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/thumb/9/99/Kevin_Costner

Haha yeah I kind of meant except Chinese Democracy.

Chinese Democracy as a video game = Duke Nukem II

If their music is available to buy in the format you want then you should pay. Or, download it for free but then go to one of their gigs and throw some money at them.

― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Thursday, May 28, 2009 9:28 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i would seriously punch someone in the face for throwing money at me at a gig for fronting on some shit like that.

Nick actually makes a good point re valuation being based on how long it takes to experience something once. Is this a fair method? Still not sure.

― Hard House SugBanton (blueski), Thursday, May 28, 2009 3:45 PM (1 hour ago)

It's not just the value of "time it takes to experience once", though - it's about how often you go back to something to repeat the experience. I must've played THOUSANDS of hours of ISS and never touched another computer game in the last 5 years. Total cost, if I've played 3,000 hours, is £0.0083 per hour. Can we do the same with a DVD? An album? A book? I've watched The Dark Knight maybe five times on DVD, it cost me about £15, and it's 3 hours long, so that's £1 an hour (so far). I've listened to MPP maybe ten times since I bought the CD, the CD cost £8, it's an hour long near enough, so 80p an hour (so far).

well indeed. the market kinda sucks because all works of the same format have to cost roughly the same, regardless of both wildy varying production costs and single/multiple experience duration.

lol are you guys talking about the ethics of filesharing again

http://www.richthofen.com/france_at_war/dead_horses.jpg

if we could download dead horses we would

Pretty sure I downloaded the Junior Boys' Dead Horse EP.

all of these media share characteristics in terms of how they're produced, levels of personnel involved, means of distribution. what else would you base it on?

A) no they don't. i mean, they really, really don't

2. you're positing a version of competitor indexing as the only determinant of pricing. Other commonly accepted models: cost-plus, demand-based, value-based pricing, rate of return

goddammit tuomas

im more willing to "donate" to the artist (i.e. buy a cd that i already downloaded even tho i know i'm not going to do anything with the physical cd except but it on a shelf) if the artist is on a major label. especially for r&b/hip-hop, it's very likely that a label is going to look at the artist's album sales and say "well, you only sold 120,000 copies in the first month, so we didn't make any money off this record, and you probably won't be putting one out for another 2-3 years" whereas fatcat didn't look at the sales of animal collective's 'feels' and go "well, you guys only sold 6,000 copies of this record this month, so we probably won't be putting out any more animal collective albums for a few years"

― hazmat yayo (J0rdan S.), Thursday, May 28, 2009 9:28 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

which i guess i mean to say that i know that the neither a large or mid-sized indie band nor a major artist is going to make money off of my singular purchase, but that my "vote" so to speak matters much more frequently when it comes to artists on major labels than ones on indie labels

― hazmat yayo (J0rdan S.), Thursday, May 28, 2009 9:32 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

umm j0rdan.. this is kind of nuts. if you think sales don't affect what indie labels release, you are very very wrong. and since you are most likely in a smaller pool of "voters," your "vote" will count way more!

what Jordan's describing is a little backwards, but he does have a point. major label artists can get their next album shelved for 4 years if they don't sell enough, indie artists are generally going to release stuff regardless fo how it sells.

plus there's the even more twisted logic that word of mouth matters more in indie, so just downloading but also reviewing/blogging/raving about an album but not buying it has more positive impact w/ an indie artist than a major label artist

I've actually bought major-label albums because they weren't as easy to find download links for as Pitchfork-approved indie releases generally are.

hey kids, stop all the downloadin'!

it's kind of an underlying assumption to tuomas's argument, and a lot of the corollaries, that music (& other cultural products) are directly comparable with other life-improving luxury goods like, say, cadbury creme eggs

i mean, sure, maybe a new single is worth more than two cadbury creme eggs, just saying it's kind of wack that you can make the comparison

barff

i would also like to point out that the number of people in anglophone countries who actually have enough money to keep buying records in significant quantities continues to fall year-on-year

this is why sales keep falling guys

ur welcome

puke

also, hands up who in this thread refuses to buy second hand records

ps. if u raise ur hand ur gay and a liar

I download like a sonofabitch but, being that probably 85% of *actual* record purchases are/have always been from the used market (just cause I'm a cheap bastard and all), I don't think my role in the game has changed much. Plus, I hype music I like on Facebook & in the blogosphere, attend concerts & occasionally buy merch. So I like to think I'm erring on the right side of wrong, or thereabouts.

we get it, you don't like cadbury creme eggs

xpost

no you don't

jokes bruv

i'm a computer

can you YSI me some candy?

i would also like to point out that the number of people in anglophone countries who actually have enough money to keep buying records in significant quantities continues to fall year-on-year

what.....the......fuck

This thread has gotten me curious about Finnish rap. What's the best examples right now?

re: "they don't like people downloading that stuff because they're trying to make a living with their music, and filesharing hurts that"
How do Finns (or Finnish rappers in particular) feel about the sale of virtual items in general?
I kind of had this idea that there would be a perception of virtual sales as being in the same category of "American consumerism spawning degraded versions of regular things" like wonderbread and lite beer or something equally tacky.

the second-hand records question is kind of interesting. not that it validates downloading in some backwards way but is it "bad" in the same way?

re: 2nd hand records, I know of no society on Earth that believes that once you buy a physical thing, you have any obligation never to resell that thing.
If buying 2nd hand records is "bad" that would tend to imply an obligation that no one thinks anyone has.

Surely second-hand record sales are collectively *tiny* compared to downloading?

haha did Tuomas really want to frame this thread so that we'd all just say "I guess not" and then lock the thing?

NB all these analogies about making prints of visual art are kind of off -- illegal downloading would really be the equivalent of if some other person had a print and you made a very high-quality copy of it

illegal downloading is wrong, etc., but for the record my suspicion is that the main thing that makes people feel okay about it isn't grand moral justifications or ethical gymnastics, it's sitting in front of your computer and not being able to see how it makes any difference to anyone in the universe whether or not your computer plays some record you want to hear at that moment -- I think this is why there's such a workable market for legal pay downloads, because the issue for (many) people isn't really free downloading versus paying eMusic $20 a month or whatever, it's being able to decide you want something and grab it right there in the moment

haha that said I probably do have moral queasiness about all the money I've spent in 99-cent increments on iTunes because I suddenly want to hear, like, "In a Big Country" while walking to work -- I should be filesharing that shit

Note that games are outselling music AND video

― Dante ... Bruno . Vico .. Passantino (Tom D.), Thursday, May 28, 2009 2:48 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i find this really sad for some reason?

also just realised that i don't actually know what computer games look like in uh...physical form.

or even if they have a physical form, maybe they are like programmes that you install on the computer?

Buying an used album isn't the same as downloading, because it takes a physical copy of the music out of the marketplace. So the next time someone comes to the store asking for the same record, and they don't have any copies anymore, they might order a new one, or the person who asked about it might order one himself. There's a limited pool of physical records in the marketplace, whereas with filesharing the pool is unlimited.

(xxx-post)

here is a picture of one, lex:

http://www.volunteer.blogs.com/winewaves/images/starfruit.jpg

illegal downloading is wrong, etc., but for the record my suspicion is that the main thing that makes people feel okay about it isn't grand moral justifications or ethical gymnastics, it's sitting in front of your computer and not being able to see how it makes any difference to anyone in the universe whether or not your computer plays some record you want to hear at that moment

my suspicion is most people do it because it's free music!

and i do it most often to hear stuff that i might wanna buy, then i buy it and delete the old files--just like i used to tape stuff off the radio (or at the station when I worked at a radio station) and then buy the stuff that i really liked

but for the record my suspicion is that the main thing that makes people feel okay about it isn't grand moral justifications or ethical gymnastics, it's sitting in front of your computer and not being able to see how it makes any difference to anyone in the universe whether or not your computer plays some record you want to hear at that moment

I definitely agree with this. That's why hearing those Finnish rappers actually saying in their songs that people shouldn't fileshare their music, it hurts their chances of making a living out of music and continuing to release records. Because I like Finnish rap and I want to support the people doing it, I'm not downloading that stuff.

"That's why hearing those Finnish rappers actually saying in their songs that people shouldn't fileshare their music, it hurts their chances of making a living out of music and continuing to release records, was a sobering experience."

Do these rappers rap in English -- do you think their appeal could go beyond their local record-buying public?
(You might not want to disclose who they are because chances are, I may in fact download them)

lately when i've mentioned how it feels a little weird to be releasing a cd (because who buys cds anymore), i've had multiple people say things like "maybe you guys can give it away for free or use it as promotion to get people to the shows?" this frustrating because i thought that was the justification for not making any money playing club shows, to promote the album.

pretty sure the only way to make money in music these days is to play a lot of weddings and corporate picnics, so if you guys download something you like maybe you could just tell your fiancee or your boss about it?

"play a lot of weddings and corporate picnics"
Don't most weddings hire DJs now? And all the corp. picnics I've been to were at a venues that provided their own entertainment.

probably, but i'm playing a wedding and a corporate party (at a baseball game!) in the next week, so.

Do these rappers rap in English -- do you think their appeal could go beyond their local record-buying public?

No, 95% percent of them rap in Finnish, hence their potential marketplace is quite limited to begin with.

Anyway, if you're really interested in Finnish rap, here's a few of my favourite tunes and artists:

before I view any of those, I would like to be assured that they are on YouTube legally

Haha, I guess that's kinda hypocritical. Some of them are official music videos, but there's a few unofficially uploaded tunes too. Well, at least you can't download them from Youtube, so if you like the music you have to buy it.

before I view any of those, what's Finnish for "Yah Trick Yah"?

or just listen to it on youtube a lot.

xp

huge L

The L stands for Lapp.

Oh man now I want to change my name to Huge Lapp Dogg.

"Huge" is a Helsinki slang word for "Mark", the currency we used to have before the Euro.

Is the gun imagery from the first vid inspired by US gangstaism or is there already a heavy Finn gun culture from I guess military service?

I think it's supposed to be a bit of a satire. There's not a big gun culture here, nor do Finnish rappers rap about guns. The song is about the Armageddon though.

russia invading?????

No, about the environmental destruction of Earth.

mine seems scarier

aren't all rap songs about Armageddon

asher roth's are about carmageddon

"probably, but i'm playing a wedding and a corporate party (at a baseball game!) in the next week, so."
This is pretty amazing. The only entertainment they showed at the game I attended was a bunch of grainy youtube clips of Carlton from Fresh Prince dancing.

Did I hear them do a shoutout to flava flav in 'koputa puuta'?

Kinda, but what the dude actually says is,

I'll soon be 30. ("Is it easy?") Not really,
My back goes "crack!", like Flavor Flav.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8073068.stm

Around seven million people in the UK are involved in illegal downloads, costing the economy tens of billions of pounds, government advisors say.

Researchers found 1.3m people using one file-sharing network on one weekday and estimated that over a year they had free access to material worth £120bn.

The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP) warned it may be hard to change attitudes.

The government says work must be done internationally to tackle the problem.

Intellectual property minister David Lammy said the report put into context the impact illegal downloads had on copyright industries and the UK economy as a whole.

But he added: "This is not an issue confined by national boundaries and I am sure that other (EU) member states and their copyright industries will find this report of use in the development of policy."

An alliance of nine UK bodies representing the creative industries recently joined trades unions in calling on the government to force internet service providers to cut off persistent illegal file-sharers.

They said more than half of net traffic in the UK was illegal content.

Copyright confusion

Internet service providers say it is not their job to police the web.

The latest report for the SABIP, said the new generation of broadband access at 50Mbps could deliver 200 MP3 files in five minutes, a DVD in three and the complete digitised works of Charles Dickens in less than 10.

It said the seven million people who access files illegally could not all be students and that many of them were uncertain about what was illegal.

The fact that so much on the internet is free only added to the confusion, it said.

Dame Lynne Brindley, SABIP Board member, said: "This report gives us some baseline evidence from which we can develop a clear research strategy to support policy development in this fast moving area."

You convinced me: I will stop downloading all Finnish rap.

Bootleggers get they legs broke.

Why are the complete digitized works of Charles Dickens so large?

I'm waiting for a punchline involving Little Dorritt

Oh, you'd just adore it if that happened, wouldn't you?

i always wonder if eventually there will be some kinda crazy big brother web sheriff technology that finally makes free filesharing impossible.

like i always assume "well there's no way they could ever stop it" but i dunno, i guess i would have never imagined that someday you could get anything on the internet for free...there's probably like crazy scientist dudes working on it now.

I think the answer to the question that is the thread title is: "no." Not any excuses that I think holdup, anyway. Best one is 'try before you buy' (which I quit actually buying albums, except 2 or 3 a year, years ago), but there's still plenty of ways to do that w/out d/ling!

I still do it, tho, of course. Like the other thread said (paraphrase): stealing music from the internet and everyone does it, esp. me! OTOH, my brother, when he returned from his mission, vowed not to download things illegally and he's stuck to it! God, that is the mindblowingest goal to achieve IMO. Actually PAYING for all your software & digital media! He's the only one I know who does that! I've been doing this over 10 years and it wld take some serious reconfiguration of my life not to.

stealing music from the internet (is lots of fun) and everyone does it

I think it's supposed to be a bit of a satire. There's not a big gun culture here, nor do Finnish rappers rap about guns. The song is about the Armageddon though.

isn't it because of the Finnish school shooter who had videos of himself in essentially the same pose

xp Yeah who needs a fucking excuse.

i always wonder if eventually there will be some kinda crazy big brother web sheriff technology that finally makes free filesharing impossible.

I dare you to find a Star Trek website and ask about copyright and licensing issues w/r/t the ship's music library on Next Generation

nabisco if ppl take you up on that I think that makes you an accessory to the eventual crime

If an artist is A) not super rich, B) on an indie or self-owned label, and C) his records are available where you live, is there any excuse for buying their records on the internet instead?

If an artist is A) not super rich, B) on an indie or self-owned label, and C) his records are available new where you live, is there any excuse for buying them used instead?

If an artist is A) not super rich, B) on an indie or self-owned label, and C) his records are available where you live, is there any excuse for buying mp3s (which artist see barely a fucking thin dime from) from the iTunes store instead?

If a tree falls on someone's head and I make a recording of the sound of air escaping from the aformentioned crushed skull would anyone download it from me on slsk?

no i prefer your earlier tuomas-related soundscapes. you fell off after the first three.

What faith is this that makes your brother pay for software? I have a sense that within certain religious contexts, it could be seen as forbidden to pay for non-physical goods, like the realm of the ethereal is reserved for The Creator, and His Word will not be prostituted by sale @ 99cents per Black Eyed Peas mp3.

Also there could be some precedents in anti-usury commandments:

"St. Thomas Aquinas, the leading theologian of the Catholic Church, argued charging of interest is wrong because it amounts to "double charging", charging for both the thing and the use of the thing. Aquinas said this would be morally wrong in the same way as if one sold a bottle of wine, charged for the bottle of wine, and then charged for the person using the wine to actually drink it. Similarly, one cannot charge for a piece of cake and for the eating of the piece of cake. Yet this, said Aquinas, is what usury does."

For mp3s, there is no thing to be charged, only the use of it. From a biblical POV, it seems reasonable to charge for the download service itself, but attaching prohibitions on an mp3's use afterwards would be same as 'double charging'

He's Mormon, and he's going by the basic 'don't steal' commandment without, uh, getting all Phariseed out abt the specifics thereof?

"Excuses are the tools of the weak and incompetent they are the skins of liars stuffed with irrelevance, therefore I will not use excuses."

with you know some addendum from me like 'p.s. I am an ass'

I totally got a pirated copy Kings Quest from a Mormon. It was sweet. (The corruption of the Mormon, the game wasn't that fun)

King's Quest is incredible!

He's really in the minority tbh.

I pay for music more now, than I did before mp3s existed because back then I just made everyone else make me tapes of their albums so I didnt have to buy them. I have a box full of 100s of taped copies of albums, but since mp3 times, I subscribe to emusic, or I'll buy cds - sure, I do have a bit of stuff I havent paid for but its other ppls CDs ive ripped directly; I dont use BT at all.

If all the channels to distrubute mp3s were stopped, ppl would just go back to making copies and sending them to people like we used to, shurely.

Music is doomed. Once it became possible to make a copy of a song for free in 10 seconds without leaving your chair and store tens of thousands of them in your computer, the game was over. Film is eventually doomed as computer storage capacity increases, and if the Kindle ever catches on, books are doomed too.

I doubt that we will ever convince the majority of people who illegally download to stop doing it, but I can think of two things which might curb it a bit:

1. $0.99 may not sound like a lot of money when you're talking about buying a song or two, but in quantity it adds up; lower prices could only help. Rather than giving iTunes around 30% (is that correct?) of the profits merely for providing a storefront (yes, I know it's a little more complicated than that), why can't there be a similar website which only takes maybe 5% of the profits? In a business with instant distribution and no need for physical stock, artists shouldn't have to give away that much of their profit to a label or store anymore. If the storefront were more Ebay-like, with the artist doing all the work of posting their songs and setting their own prices, they could lower prices to $0.75 or less and still make as much money as before.

2. There should be a website that allows you to stream ANY song or album of your choosing on demand, charged to your account as micropayments of some number of cents per minute (considerably less than the $0.99 per song purchase price), with a monthly price cap so you would never pay more than, say, $19.99 per month. The price has to seem reasonable to the listener if you want to ween them away from illegal downloading. As a benefit for the artists, royalties would be much easier to determine than they are for radio--it will be known exactly how many plays each song received and at what price.

Keep in mind that I know nothing about economics or downloading and am talking out my ass.

"Music is doomed"
I dunno, I'm pretty amazed that Finnish rap exists in the first place, though I'm wondering how it could possibly have proliferated outside of some kind of file trading (either tapes or mp3s)
Is there a protectionist Finnish music rule like 50% of radio/music TV must be devoted to Finnish artists?

Yeah I'm all for subscription sites or paying for downloads - esp if I know the artist gets a hefty cut, or even the full cut if they're offering it themselves.

I'd much prefer that to some kind of arbitrary fee added to my monthly ISP access costs. That can't work. What would it apply to? Music? Games? Movies/TV? Software? What if I dont use the internet to get any of those things, do I get to not pay it?

But people have always and will always be able to make a copy of something and give it to a friend. They can shut the internet down all together and that isn't going to change.

why can't there be a similar website which only takes maybe 5% of the profits?

Kristin Hersh has been involved with something like what you're talking about, CASH Music: http://cashmusic.org/

You're not, like, ridiculously talking out of your ass, Hideous, but there are loads of complications to take into account with some of those -- for instance, the secure transactions that'd be needed to track and bill every single access-transaction in some big click/play music library can actually cost more than whatever fraction-of-a-cent rate you'd want to charge for the click itself

(^^ from what I hear that is actually a big issue for that stuff, technologically and legally)

I spent decades going from town to town spending $10 here, $25 there on 45s by X Ray Spex, the Weirdos, Chain Gang, etc and for what? Not just to hear their cruddy masterpieces. I find I spend much more time listening to music - rather than amassing rarities - than ever before in life, now that it comes in mp3 form rather than in a Malcolm Garrett designed picture sleeve. Furthermore, the 'not super rich' parameter is a red herring - what's right or wrong with being super rich? I will enjoy purchasing the new remaster of 'Goats Head Soup' tomorrow - I can't tell you how many times and in how many forms I've paid for Rolling Stones, David Bowie, etc. music and will continue to do so gladly - because it tickles me to think I can contribute to keeping Mick Jagger very, very wealthy in all his preening pompous assitude like I have been doing for the past forty years. Finally, I'm pretty old-fashioning in thinking you will create music if you must and if you don't, you must not. There are many examples. Judee Sill, for one. Or Madonna, for another.

PS Hooray for:

stealing music from the internet (is lots of fun) and everyone does it

― cant go with u too many alfbrees (Abbott), Thursday, May 28, 2009 11:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

If you're broke but want to get some cool prints from a local painter, do you wait until you have enough cash or just go ahead and steal them?

I read that as "cool points" and thought you had a crush on a local painter.

I'd much prefer that to some kind of arbitrary fee added to my monthly ISP access costs. That can't work.

Yeah, the idea of that fee is like when they tried to add a tax onto blank cassettes.

But people have always and will always be able to make a copy of something and give it to a friend. They can shut the internet down all together and that isn't going to change.

True, there will always be people who won't want to pay for music--if you're going to be in the music business, you probably have to accept that as a baseline reality. But compared to the good ol' home taping '70s and '80s (copy an album in real time? How quaint!), there must be exponentially more people stealing music nowadays. Home taping wasn't exactly "killing" music like the record companies claimed, but I think illegal downloading is at least "seriously injuring" music unless and until some new business models are found.

...for instance, the secure transactions that'd be needed to track and bill every single access-transaction in some big click/play music library can actually cost more than whatever fraction-of-a-cent rate you'd want to charge for the click itself

― nabisco, Friday, May 29, 2009 1:09 AM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark

As we continue moving into online banking, automatic payments and the like, I think we're slowly creating the infrastructure needed for a micropayment system. Eventually, the credit system may turn into a sort of public utility and everyone will have an account and a monthly bill--your electronic credit life would be hooked up to a meter just like your electricity.

Setting up this whole computer credit infrastructure would be prohibitively expensive (as I imagine setting up the power grid back in the early 20th century was), but once it's up and has recouped some of that original cost, single-access transaction prices could go down. (Of course, they won't--this is business after all.)

Again, I'm talking in very broad strokes here, and I just may be an idiot. Not a complete idiot. But an idiot nonetheless.

Eventually, the credit system may turn into a sort of public utility and everyone will have an account and a monthly bill--your electronic credit life would be hooked up to a meter just like your electricity.

this is one of the main indicators and fears of the end times. We will have bar codes in our necks and then the rapture.

There was an interview with Trent Reznor that digg.com did recently where he goes over the new business models NIN and similar bands have been trying. It was quite illuminating - on one hand, he pointed out that Saul Williams made more money selling his album direct downloads online (as it cut out the middlemen) than he might have in an oldschool model, even though I think he sold less units than he might have otherwise.

But on the otherhand, Reznor admitted that NIN (and I guess Radiohead, dont recall wether he mentioned them) mainly worked with this model as they have a massive established and computer-savvy fanbase. I think he conceded to an extent that new bands would struggle this way. I guess because marketing and distrubtion have gone out the window?

My bf has his works up on Bandcamp, where you can choose to give away or set a price for your music. He's made a little pin money, but only on one "name your price" ep he's offering. Another where he said "set price for high quality or free for low quality" everyone just downloaded the low qual, so he gave up on the idea.

my friends' have had a coupla tapes and cdrs out on labels like n0tnotfun and digitalis and they usually just give me a copy of their stuff and I'm able to find rars of their tapes on teh blogs or on slsk for ipod listeningz, I'm pretty sure they like that that stuff's out there.

but having said that they do all have jobs and aren't poor.

now ok i can respect somebody (somebodies?) like grizzly bear for putting their new album up on amazon for $3.99. that's a smart move, even if it's just for the first week or something. boost the sales, maybe get on the charts (how are the charts dealing with massive discounting? i wouldn't want to be billboard right now). based on the songs i got for free off the MUSIC BLOGZ, i'm afraid i'm not actually into grizzly bear enough to pay $3.99. but i definitely wouldn't have paid more, so it's not like they're losing anything.

Grizzly Bear just got a really good write-up in SPIN, so if there is a market that buys downloads but ignores the blog culture, they have a window of good sales potential.

The charts at one point were penalizing acts for selling cd singles really cheap, back in the cd single days. I remember buying an Outkast radio edit cd single for 10 cents or something dumb. who knows what happens to charts these days. I hope nobody cut and pastes that information.

"Furthermore, the 'not super rich' parameter is a red herring - what's right or wrong with being super rich? I will enjoy purchasing the new remaster of 'Goats Head Soup' tomorrow - I can't tell you how many times and in how many forms I've paid for Rolling Stones, David Bowie, etc"

i've been thinking about this lately, as i'm in the process of releasing a pop album in indonesia, and the financial rewards for having a smash hit record are noticeably smaller than they are in the states. and i was thinking that one of the driving forces behind america and england's excellent music scenes is the notion that if you have a hit record you can make gazillions of dollars and live like a king/queen. it's not the only consideration obviously, but i think i hightens the mystique of being a rock star and attracts talented people to the field in higher numbers than if all you had to look forward to by being famous was a life on the road and a lower-middle class lifestyle (which of course is what 99.999% of all artists have to look forward to as a best case scenario)

ergo, if you start begrudging our biggest stars their ludicrous salaries, you might see a corresponding decline in the quality of western pop music.

ergo, if you start begrudging our biggest stars their ludicrous salaries, you might see a corresponding decline in the quality of western pop music.

You might actually see an increase in quality, as the field would probably be crowded with less mediocrity and garbage.

http://hemasunder.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/censorship.jpg

yeah you guys this shit is real, the government came into this thread and denied people their right to free speech, we have to take this v. v. seriously

ergo, if you start begrudging our biggest stars their ludicrous salaries, you might see a corresponding decline in the quality of western pop music.

oh you mean like giving bankers ridiculously huge salaries made our banking system so great?

Or our healthcare system so awesome or our sports so fantastic. . .

Still, the quality of our MPs are set to nosedive soon.

sports are pretty rad IMO

Sure, but it's hard to argue that the quality has been improved by outlandish salaries.

well, i would argue that i think the current system is better than the old system when the owners basically paid and treated the players like shit and held them to unfair contracts.

I think illegal downloading is at least "seriously injuring" music unless and until some new business models are found.

i have way too much to say about this topic to even start typing about it in any orderly fashion (i would like to draw a flow chart), and am totally pro-downloading in a couple of different ways, but the thing above seems kinda selective, like a lot of the arguments do - i think the idea that it's injuring music, rather than possibly financially impairing a specific strata of musicians, is wrong. is there any way to gauge the effect of sales dropping against the whole marshall mcluhan wiring of the world opportunity for people to hear music now, to hear groups who never would have left their neighbourhood or shores before? the internet has kindled a love of music and an idea of its breadth in people. new models probably are needed but it's still like the radio being invented or something monumental.

I don't think downloading is injuring music.

I do think downloading is injuring musicians.

The biggest change I can see coming out of this is the majority of future musicians whose music will be consumed by the mainstream will come from people who are not 100% dedicated to being in the entertainment industry; you will see more "hobbyists" (for lack of a better term) with day jobs who take the time and energy to do the things they want to do but still need to follow other professions in order to make a living. Hell, I see it already with pretty much every single person I know who is actively pursuing a career as a professional musician except for the people playing with major symphonies, and even there they are also deeply into music education. The whole concept of "making it" is going to be radically different because the payoff that lets you focus exclusively on being a musician is going to be even rarer than it is now.

It's a bit like the number of foreigners in the Premiership, it's only compressing the middle, not the top surely? I mean, if you're Coldplay/Duffy/Kings of Leon you're probably still doing pretty fucking well for yourselves I'd imagine?

"well, i would argue that i think the current system is better than the old system when the owners basically paid and treated the players like shit and held them to unfair contracts."

Totally agree.

But I still don't think it's improved the quality of the games (any of them.)

i mean, to be honest i can't even say wrt to sports because i think that even the relatively lower paid era when i was a kid was still pretty glossy compared to the "old days", like it's not like the showtime lakers were slaving away in obscurity and poverty...

i just wanted to say that because people get so bent out of shape about sports contracts and stuff and it's like, well, this much money is generated, and i'd always rather it go to the players than the owners. not like it's gonna go to the salvation army or something if lebron takes a paycut

I'd rather games be marginally affordable frankly to most people, frankly.

Not blaming the fact that the aren't on the players though.

no doubt, i mourned having to finally give up my season tix to the vikings but it had just grown from like $580 a year to like nearly $900 i think

Also frankly.

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=6518&edition=1&ttl=20090529172832

i buy stuff by people I care about. this amounts to about seven different artists. I don't really download anything new now either.

if you ask anyone who runs an independent label if downloading is hurting their sales, in my experience, they will say yes. they sell fewer items now than they used to. it's not because, across the board, their roster has gotten worse or less worthy. they physically move fewer items. the degrees of bitterness about this are kind of across the spectrum. Our label (Silber Records) spends a fair amount of time hitting rapidshare and stuff and getting items removed. But he's said the worst thing are the russian mp3 sites which charge for music and never pay the labels (though it's doubtful anyone is actually buying that stuff from there, it is annoying to see it).

"ergo, if you start begrudging our biggest stars their ludicrous salaries, you might see a corresponding decline in the quality of western pop music."

"oh you mean like giving bankers ridiculously huge salaries made our banking system so great?"

no, the bankers in the case are the managers/label owners/a&r jerks who make loads but dont really contribute much... and their loss has always tempered my moral indignation at the concept of free downloads (well that and the free lunch) but the truth is the economy hurting record sales just means the scumback manager types are moving into live shows and starting to take a bigger cut of THAT. and wheras before pretty much all the cash from the live shows went to the musician and his team, now, like, live nation or whatever wants a cut...

but yes, i do think the vast rewards available really does attract a certain amount of actual artistic talent. probably a fair number of musicians/groups/producers etc that you love were suckered into the life by the dream of being a rich rock star, doncha think?

The biggest change I can see coming out of this is the majority of future musicians whose music will be consumed by the mainstream will come from people who are not 100% dedicated to being in the entertainment industry; you will see more "hobbyists" (for lack of a better term) with day jobs who take the time and energy to do the things they want to do but still need to follow other professions in order to make a living.

It'll be like writers, except people will actually know who you are!

It's not as though bands that have "made it" are relying solely on the poor saps who still shell out for CDs. A good portion of their income also comes from touring. People still want to see live music.

"probably a fair number of musicians/groups/producers etc that you love were suckered into the life by the dream of being a rich rock star, doncha think?"

Maybe, but really who cares? I don't see any evidence that they quality of music declines when ridiculous amounts of money aren't involved.

I can't keep up with all the good music coming out right now. I seriously doubt "piracy" is harming music. It's probably not making moderately talented people hyper-wealthy but that's not a bad thing. If you're making music for money, you're in the wrong business. Art should be made for the love of it, not for the financial gain. If you want money, tour and be very good at what you do. If you're talented and release quality products, you'll make your money. Saying file sharing is killing music is just stupid though. I download a handful of albums and single tracks everyday but I still spend 300 bucks a month at the record shop. Mostly on used product. If the artist isn't making money on the used promos i'm buying, why aren't they complaining about that or shutting down the used shops for selling promos?

Also, this is pretty rich coming from a forum overrun by critics and people who receive loads of promos. I'd bet a majority of leaks are coming from this same demographic. How many people who receive promos sell them back to record shops when the label clearly says not to?

Now on the other hand if downloads were hurting the amount of pussy that musicians get well woo boy I'll bet a lot of people would start finding new professions quick.

I know someone who did (buy from russian sites) and did it thinking it was the righteous non-theivy thing to do. Then he started using yahoo music, which as far as I can tell, didn't do much better in terms of compensation.

w/r/t Finnish rappers, I think switching to rapping in English would grow their potential audience far more than unendorsed downloads could hurt them, if financial viability is truly the name of the game (but is rapping in English seen as fronting?) Also, it's mind-boggling to think that Finnish rap could exist in the first place without an active trading culture (like for stateside rap/metal/etc...) Is the way the Finnish rap scene came into being fundamentally different from other places?

the whole "people only join bands to get laid thing" is so dumb...

Also, this is pretty rich coming from a forum overrun by critics and people who receive loads of promos. I'd bet a majority of leaks are coming from this same demographic. How many people who receive promos sell them back to record shops when the label clearly says not to?

ilm threads are full of journos saying they sold promos at second hand shops/ebay

xp it was a joke, M@tt.

It's just as wrong to sell a promo as it is to download an album without paying.

What's the best thing to do with a promo you don't want, then?

^^^^ shd be a list thread

The best thing to do is to sell it and also stop bitching about people downloading.

send it to a kid in bangladesh who has to try to survive on 2 promos a year.

use it as building material for your promo fort

Art should be made for the love of it, not for the financial gain.

Interestingly this is also true of whatever it is you do to pay the bills.

If you want money, tour and be very good at what you do. If you're talented and release quality products, you'll make your money.

This came up in one of the other recent downloading threads - the idea that touring is always profitable. The thing is, that's not true. Part of what made touring profitable in the past is that musicians would have new audiences that would buy recordings. For a lot of bands, merch sales made touring profitable as opposed to, at best, a break even proposition. So, now that they're selling fewer CDs/records, do you think the venues are going to give bands higher guarantees or percentages? Don't think so.

One could argue that the music fan is going to use the money they would have spent on buying music (that they instead download for free) to see more shows, and that live audiences would grow. But, from everything I've heard, that's not the case.

^^^^^^^^

since I make my living in the industry & have no complaints, I try not to mouth off too much about this question, but "art should be made for the love of it, not financial gain" line must always be called out as the nonsense it is: tell that to Mozart or the Beatles for Christ's sake. then go back in time and kill all the romantic poets so we don't have to suffer this "only art that's made for love of art and without thought of profit is any good" nonsense for even a second longer.

Loving what you do for work doesn't mean it isn't still work, which is something a lot of people seem loathe to acknowledge when it comes to artistic pursuits.

I can't think of anything in their history that suggests that The Beatles wouldn't have made music if it didn't lead to them being billionaires

xpost

I can't imagine anybody actually thinking they'd have bothered making even their earliest records if it didn't beat getting a day job

but people w/ day jobs are still making records today!

Yeah, but now their dreams of being millionaires are shot to hell.

So sad, feel bad.

xpost to myself

and some of them are probably poor british people!

let me know when some of them produce a body of work over 8 years that compares favorably to the Beatles

btw give me a million dollars

all british people should stop making music not just the poor ones

if I ever get 2 million dollars, I will give you 1 of them

dude you just bought yourself beers for life on me when I'm in yr town, just in case

I've said this on previous threads, but rather than getting all pissy about people downloading, musicians, record companies, whomever, should be working their asses off trying to find a system which allows them make a living making music (I mean assuming that's what they want--I get that being pissy has its own rewards.)

k I live in sf

beers here cost half a million dollars btw

truth fucking bomb on alex in SF - I enjoy just yammering about shit but I don't bitch about downloading, I talk a lot about how it's changed the nature of the listening experience but there is, permanently, NO point in whining about the way things are. you play the cards as they lie & STFU; if you have a job in the business, you won at life and should avoid looking like you're not grateful to the people who put you there.

"let me know when some of them produce a body of work over 8 years that compares favorably to the Beatles"

Question: do you think anyone has produced a comparative body of work to the Beatles? Cuz what's music's excuse for not producing a Beatles all the time back before filesharing was killing it and money was free and easy?

Alex I think the decrease of the profit motive has thinned the talent pool & that people who might have made excellent albums are spending their creative energies in other fields where they might be better compensated.

I think they didn't want to make the beatles look bad so they only allowed one beatles at a time

Okay so basically your argument is that music has gotten worse in the post-Napster world? Cuz frankly I don't see much evidence that's the case.

also, prior to the Beatles: Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Schubert, and about 20 other artists who hoped to make their living at music & produced bodies of work I'll put up against the Beatles any time

I would say yeah I don't think the age of everything-available-for-free has been real generous with the masterpieces

one can't prove causation obv and there are several dozen other possible explanations (genre stagnation, other entertainment options for starters) but my feeling is - as in boxing, one of my other favorite areas of entertainment - that when the money started to dry up, the talent went elsewhere

So there are just a lot more (a LOT more) hacks making music now in your opinion? Cuz there is certainly still a lot of music out there?

also beethoven etc. didn't actually make enough money (directly) off their music to live.

are you just talking about being prolific? lots of musicians with day jobs are making great albums, but sure it's hard to make 2 or 3 of them a year if you have to do it in your spare time.

xp

I mean the problem with the Beatles argument is that J0hn not one of the acts you named was post-Beatles. If the old Beatles system was great at producing works of musical genius, why didn't it produce more acts that were comparable to the Beatles (or more Coltranes, Ellingtons, Basies, etc)?

The other factor there is "records" as the end goal of artistic output rather than as some kind of 'record' of it

system didn't really change - the system was "you can make a lot of money at it." I am arguing (this is a hella conservative argt I know, which I don't like making, but I cannot front) that once the profit motive is gone, you're left with some inspired hobbyists & a bunch of uninspired second-stringers

It's much easier to make the "there are more hacks now than then" argument because you aren't really going to know who the non-hacks are really going to be until history weighs in; there's a shifting perspective component to this that makes this argument difficult to pursue.

Having said that, one can certainly make the argument that technology has greatly diminished the talent pool of popular music; when you live in a world where you don't have to sing remotely in tune to be successful, it really cheapens the whole craft of singing (to name a personal bugbear; I am certain that the whole ProTools/fix all mistakes mentality behind modern sound engineering also plays into this on the instrumental side).

None of this is directly related to downloading, so I think on balance I agree with Alex's point that you can't blame downloading for this; one could argue that if music wasn't being processed into aural Cheez Whiz in the first place, people would be more willing to pay for it. (I don't know if I buy that argument, but you could make it.)

which, y'know, it's easy to ping-pong this discussion into "so you're saying there are no good records?" - no, of course not; but there's little that's ambitious, and I think the possibility of the sweet life, not having to work, etc, is a good carrot-on-a-stick for artists, and the lack of said carrot means plenty of creative people will go where the money is (which: I don't think there's anything wrong with that AT ALL)

I'm vaguely in favor of the increased quantity and variety of interesting semi-amateur music in the world, but I like punk and indiepop and 1980s one-hit wonders, so at this point maybe I'm just trained to think of that as a good idea.

xpost - I have no real opinion on this matter but it occurs to me that you could totally make any number of devil's-advocate proposition about the Beatles and the 60s and such, mostly relating to the fact that the mid-to-late 60s were surely the first moment that a rock'n'roll musician could seriously have started expecting to have any level of career control or bring home any of the wealth the music created, right? But we're talking about a whole different world with a lot of musicians from that era, because if your sole alternative was to go get a job on a dock or in a factory, pretty much anything that combined music + renown + eating would seem like a step up; I think the "renown" part of that was probably more of a draw than any notion that anyone was going to get rich playing rock'n'roll.

btw I pitch-corrected a harmony vocal on an EP earlier this year and thought "I should just kill myself right now"

in my own defense though I was stacking four-part harmonies and studio time ain't free

I feel like a million inspired hobbyists putting their stuff on the internet is gonna produce more great music than 10,000 career musicians might

xposttt

another great artist who I don't think would have ever sang outside of church if there hadn't been crazy money in it: sinatra

xpost:

I feel like a million inspired hobbyists putting their stuff on the internet is gonna produce more great music than 10,000 career musicians might

got anything to back this up or is it just a hunch? like, examples?

Do you also think that a million hobbyist violinists are likely, on balance, to sound better than 10,000 symphony violinists?

I mean, you are treating both talent and training (formal and on-the-job) as negligible when you play this type of number game.

if a million monkeys with a million leather jackets go to germany and take a bunch of speed and play music for american GI's. . .

I dunno, iatee, I think J0hn's right to think about the type of great music -- a million inspired "hobbyists" will make a ton of great music in a lot of ways that I enjoy, but not some of the expensive big-audience grand-ambition ways that are also nice, and also (maybe inevitably) slipping a bit away. If that milk has already spilled I won't cry over it too much, but it'd be nice to have all types, you know?

xxxp I think a sample of a symphony violinist probably sounds better than all of them.

I don't the great artists you've mentioned were motivated by the possibility of not having to work. It would be more like: by the possibility of artistic freedom, I'd think.

I bought a pirate copy of Tallahass33 in Hanoi once. I'm sorry.

to john and dan:

I've gotten more pleasure outta this guy than anything else this year

I feel like a million inspired hobbyists putting their stuff on the internet is gonna produce more great music than 10,000 career musicians might

I mean, like, people have been saying shit like this for ten years now. Do we have one example of a guy who the whole world hears and goes "holy fuck, the new system is bringing crazy talent out that might not have risen to the surface before"? barring that, do we have one example of a guy whose stuff is crazy good but just hasn't gotten the attention it deserves, but whose eventual embrace by history seems assured, given how audibly awesome it is?

The problem with the grand ambition is dead because of file-sharing argument is that grand ambition hasn't produced a lot of great records in the past 40 years.

So maybe grand ambition needs a shake up anyway and maybe our current era is going to provide it.

yeah I can feel that argt

It's much easier to make the "there are more hacks now than then" argument because you aren't really going to know who the non-hacks are really going to be until history weighs in; there's a shifting perspective component to this that makes this argument difficult to pursue.

That's a good point, but I'd argue that there are more musicians putting their music in front of the public (even it's just myspace pages and stuff on blogs) than there were before the internet made that possible. I think there are more hacks because there are more musicians.

barring that, do we have one example of a guy whose stuff is crazy good but just hasn't gotten the attention it deserves, but whose eventual embrace by history seems assured, given how audibly awesome it is?

i think we all know people like this, or at least i know i do. actually it's more likely it'll never be heard by very many people, in the case of certain friends who don't know how to market themselves or aren't interested in doing it, but still make awesome records.

I think there are more hacks because there are more musicians.

haha I am never going to disagree with this statement

xp Jordan: It's kind of sad to think that the eventual embrace by history is the best these folks can hope for, and that said embrace would happen before they die as opposed to after.

Jordan we're talking here about stuff about which you'd say "this is every bit as vital as Rubber Soul"

I say this as a guy who doesn't listen to the Beatles or anything but I really thing the argument that removing the profit motive from art makes for better art is hopelessly naive

haha I am never going to disagree with this statemen

also STFU singerman, I will play bass licks on your grave

well this doesn't go anywhere if we keep talking about what's "great," since we presumably have different ideas of that

NB I don't think file-sharing is cutting into ambition, but I do feel, in terms of the music I know, that there's a whole combination of stuff about fracturing audiences, lower bars for "hobbyist" entry, ease of dissemination, etc. etc. etc. that probably leads just naturally to a world where very few people get to make really grand/ambitious art where they're imagining and trying to communicate with a really large audience. This isn't the worst thing in the world, it's not the fault of anything in particular, and there's nothing about the internet or mp3s that keeps a grandly ambitious musician from trying to talk to the whole universe, but there you have it, that's kinda where things are these days.

"I miss the monoculture"

lower bars for "hobbyist" entry

well, but when the bar for professionalism got lowered by punk, we got: joy division, the cure, etc

I've gotten more pleasure outta this guy than anything else this year

That's great! Is he trying to make money off of this? If so, have you given him any? How is he going to continue to make things like this without financial support from the people consuming it?

also STFU singerman, I will play bass licks on your grave

you may add a post-punk bass line to Martin's "Agnus Dei", which is what I want performed at my funeral

as a guy who doesn't listen to the beatles or anything, i agree with that.

xxxp to j0hn

couple xposts

I cannot type and think at the speed of other people. Where would you date the interval of "people getting to make really grand/ambitious art where they're imagining and trying to communicate with a really large audience" from and to? — obviously Aristophanes wrote for a tiny fraction of the number of people who are watching the Britain's Got Talent finale I can hear in the next room (although as a proportion of the the population of the civilised world as he saw it I think he probably wins there)

I kind of wonder how low the bar for professionalism really was if you were in a metal band or a soul band in Britain in the 70s and mainly played working men's clubs

like I said, I am way in favor of low bars for entry -- you are talking to a guy who likes those early Beat Happening songs that are just like a pot, a pencil, and a boombox

^ NB for all I know maybe that'll change drastically in five or ten years, like suddenly everyone who misses grand statements or grew up with productive attachments to MCR records starts plotting out world-changing 40-year careers; who knows ... mostly all I'm saying is that envisioning an all-hobbyist culture seems great at providing certain things and maybe not as likely to provide others, and it'd be nice to see cultures that accommodate both

okay stupid thought experiment:

let's say we took the artists who are gonna be on ilm's top 100 of 00s lists and we gave them all a million dollars and said "make an album, go crazy!"

I feel like there would be at least a handful of expensive loveless/pet sounds-type masterpieces that otherwise wouldn't exist. but it's not nec. *wrong* that these artists don't have the opportunity - it's just the financial reality that they're dealing with. yeah?

"I say this as a guy who doesn't listen to the Beatles or anything but I really thing the argument that removing the profit motive from art makes for better art is hopelessly naive"

I'm not sure the profit motive is being removed though, just the exorbinant profit motive. I mean none of the rest of the folks you mention had expectations of being multi-millionaires.

Even the Beatles.

yeah but Aristophanes was writing for the annual festival which was a HUGE deal, like the hugest of the huge. was able to live off it, which I think is the point. if you can live better off doing something else, you're likely to do so - which, again, I have no issue with; people should try to live as well as they can & there's no shame in it.

as to my funeral, I'm hoping they sing "gothic anus"

xpost kind of agreeing with xpost

They had expectations of day jobs though. I think that's getting tangled up, a bit, the difference between getting rich and just getting paid.

this is too abstract for this thread but fwiw I also see the lack of grand / ambitious statements in philosophy, where I make my dough...well, except for amateur crackpots who aren't worth bothering with (but if you want I can hook you up). So I think this has something to do with our post 60s culture, not just the profit motive, though fuck if I can say precisely what.

that tends to be the confusion in the post-napster age - "these artists want to be rich!" - no, they just want to make rent xpost

also "living better off" ≠ maximizing profit, though I say this on so many threads I oughta can it

okay stupid thought experiment:

let's say we took the artists who are gonna be on ilm's top 100 of 00s lists and we gave them all a million dollars and said "make an album, go crazy!"

I feel like there would be at least a handful of expensive loveless/pet sounds-type masterpieces that otherwise wouldn't exist. but it's not nec. *wrong* that these artists don't have the opportunity - it's just the financial reality that they're dealing with. yeah?

^^ I agree with this. This is completely separate from the downloading issue, though, where people are taking music that has been released for-profit and not paying for it, directly impacting the distribution channels (which honestly I don't care about) and the people making the music (which I do care about, seeing as that's the commodity under contention and cutting off some of the funding towards creating more of it seems to not be a good thing for long-term success of people in the business now or future success for people wanting to make their passion into their vocation).

xp: J0hn says it best, unsurprisingly

If you sub in 'news' for art, there is a definite argument for socializing it (i.e., both removing profit motive, but also subsidizing it so people who are interested in pursuing a career there can hope to not starve in the process) I don't know if art is as important as news in the pecking order of things to subsidize, though.

Would you guys say state-subsidized BBC news is of generally higher caliber than say the profit-motivated US/Murdoch news machine?

john I feel like you've been pushing 'get rich = motivation' more than anyone in this thread!

having health insurance is the new millions of dollars

Would you guys say state-subsidized BBC news is of generally higher caliber than say the profit-motivated US/Murdoch news machine?

I would, but I generally assume everything from the UK that isn't funk- or food-based is better than what you'd find in the UK.

UK infinite loop

well this doesn't go anywhere if we keep talking about what's "great," since we presumably have different ideas of that

It goes to make for a very long thread.

This isn't the worst thing in the world, it's not the fault of anything in particular, and there's nothing about the internet or mp3s that keeps a grandly ambitious musician from trying to talk to the whole universe, but there you have it, that's kinda where things are these days.

There's nothing except the serious reduction in expected income, places to play, and attention of audiences, which have a significant impact. The musicians I know that are contending with this don't necessarily expect to or desire to talk to the whole universe or have huge audiences. Making a lower-middle class income playing the music they want to make, which requires significant composing and rehearsal time, and having sales in the thousands would be a-ok.

I think the long-tail view of this is probably that the current situation is the result of the shift to 90% of the population listening to records as their baseline mode of engagement with music (I know this may not be true of two or three of you on this thread)

I suspect opportunities to make rent may have dwindled greatly as a result of there being less and less need ('need') for there to be local bands who were good enough

Which I think is the other other side of the grand ambition/mass audience vs hobbyism/day job argument. Probably.

you know, i don't think a lack of profit motive is going to cut into ambition/artistry but into longevity. we're still going to get great records, but it seems like artists are way more likely to get frustrated with the work & expenses of recording and touring if there isn't any reasonable expectation of making a living.

xp

(I mean I kind of feel like what we're heading towards is a variation on communities of people being aware of local musical options to go see-hear: but instead of being communities of geography they're communities of interest and entirely dispersed)

(I'm pretty sure I don't feel this is a good thing, but oh well)

NB this is off-topic but my favorite thing about the lower bar of entry: every time I'm recording something at home I think about how in a few years there'll be young people who grew up with whatever I consider today's awesomely low bar of entry -- like kids who've been learning to mix in DAWs since they were 12* -- and that will be a whole different thing ... not a low bar of entry for "hobbyists" but people who kinda grew up "professional"

* hell, you can already see teenagers on YouTube who are already masterful at the technical tools of music-making -- when I was that age my version of multi-tracking was doing series of overdubs on a broken karaoke machine

xp Jordan - I think you're right. The appeal of sleeping on floors while on tour definitely decreases with age and experience.

xp nabisco: but can they play instruments and sing and actually compose? What you're arguing is limited to particular types of music.

"(I mean I kind of feel like what we're heading towards is a variation on communities of people being aware of local musical options to go see-hear: but instead of being communities of geography they're communities of interest and entirely dispersed)"

I think this would be especially great for Finnish rappers who now can hope for some kind of audience if they want to have a trip abroad or something. Or maybe meet a hip hop hero, like when James Hetfield gave that Iraqi metal band his guitar.

frankly, if you have to be sleeping on a floor, *should* you even be touring? I mean the breaking even point exists for some bands - and clearly doesn't for the majority of them. we can all agree that not *every* band in the world should be touring the country, right?

"but it seems like artists are way more likely to get frustrated with the work & expenses of recording and touring if there isn't any reasonable expectation of making a living"

Yeah, but I'm not sure this is the worst thing in the world. I mean seriously for every Bob Dylan/Neil Young there's like six Bruce Hornsbys.

john I feel like you've been pushing 'get rich = motivation' more than anyone in this thread!

― iatee, Friday, May 29, 2009 5:12 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

having health insurance is the new millions of dollars

― Ømår Littel (Jordan), Friday, May 29, 2009 5:12 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

iatee I think you conflate getting rich with turning a profit

(btw, I realize that my perspective as a dude who performs classical music is going to skew heavily away from the DIY-aesthetic, even if that's kind of how I went about it, just because there are so few ppl doing the things I do who have similar backgrounds; in the opera chorus, I am literally the ONLY person who does not have a master's degree in music)

I think this would be especially great for Finnish rappers who now can hope for some kind of audience if they want to have a trip abroad or something.

You're assuming they're going to be able to afford to go abroad! Who's paying for that?

frankly, if you have to be sleeping on a floor, *should* you even be touring?

oh man

Yeah, but I'm not sure this is the worst thing in the world. I mean seriously for every Bob Dylan/Neil Young there's like six Bruce Hornsbys.

haha again I cannot argue with this, but I would point out that there are evidently enough ppl out there who like Bruce Hornsby to justify his career, ergo there's no fair reason why he shouldn't have it

frankly, if you have to be sleeping on a floor, *should* you even be touring? I mean the breaking even point exists for some bands - and clearly doesn't for the majority of them. we can all agree that not *every* band in the world should be touring the country, right?

the thing here - again using the Beatles - is that touring makes you better. guaranteed. bands come home from tour better than they were before; the experience is nearly universal. if you can't tour, your room for improvement is limited. once you've toured enough, you can stop and probably keep growing (again, the Beatles, though they're a unique case). but lots of bands tour for several years before they find their voice, and it's how they find their voice; and this was true before "bands," in the age of the troubadour.

frankly, if you have to be sleeping on a floor, *should* you even be touring?

gotta start somewhere.

yeah I think I misinterpreted you - tho you did use the only billionaire rock band as an example...

xpost

"we can all agree that not *every* band in the world should be touring the country, right?"

I'm kinda pulling for Kemmuru to actually come meet Flava Flav.

"You're assuming they're going to be able to afford to go abroad! Who's paying for that?"

How do Finns normally go abroad? Maybe there's some year-abroad programs they can exploit?

"haha again I cannot argue with this, but I would point out that there are evidently enough ppl out there who like Bruce Hornsby to justify his career, ergo there's no fair reason why he shouldn't have it"

He can have it. He just has to figure out a better way to make money off it.

the thing here - again using the Beatles - is that touring makes you better. guaranteed. bands come home from tour better than they were before; the experience is nearly universal. if you can't tour, your room for improvement is limited. once you've toured enough, you can stop and probably keep growing (again, the Beatles, though they're a unique case). but lots of bands tour for several years before they find their voice, and it's how they find their voice; and this was true before "bands," in the age of the troubadour.

this may very well be true, but by this logic *every* band in the world should tour.

In Bruce Hornsby's case I will guess this involves licensing that damn baseball song a couple hundred more times.

my point, again, is that, in a given field, once the profit motive is gone, there is less likely to be good work, and what there is will be harder to find, because the #1 motivator for human excellence is the desire to get paid. I know that sounds cynical to some people; I'm one of them, often! but it seems to be true. you don't have hobbyist manufacturers of turntables, even though I'm sure there's much pleasure to be had in constructing a working turntable.

"How do Finns normally go abroad? Maybe there's some year-abroad programs they can exploit?"

Given how many young Europeans I meet abroad say things to me like "oh you're only vacation for a couple of weeks? how sad." I am guessing there is something they can explout.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERASMUS_programme

we can all agree that not *every* band in the world should be touring the country, right?

Sure, I agree with that. Ideally the mediocre crappy bands should throw in the towel or at least have as few people endure their music as possible. However, in the age of myspace and such, it is a lot easier to book tours, so you have more bands touring or attempting to tour.

J0hn I just plain don't think that's true and the history of music is pretty much not the history of let's get rich. Really the let's get rich part of music history is a tiny blip.

rich has nothing to do with getting paid. that is the constant (intentional?) confusion in this discussion. most of the great composers worked on commission.

where's Shakey Mo to tell us all about how musicians were slaves in Ancient Rome?

can you point me at industries where people routinely produce masterpieces without hope of some small profit?

on ilx thought I gotta remember, making any money at all or mentioning money = wealth

making babies

I get mad paid for every baby I make

xxxp I don't think that ability to make a SMALL profit is being removed from music.

but can they play instruments and sing and actually compose? What you're arguing is limited to particular types of music

Wasn't really "arguing" anything, just pointing out that the tools of recording might be way more familiar to way more people. I don't assume they'll be able to play/sing/write any better or worse than kids before them, but those who do may have a better knowledge of how to turn their playing/singing/writing into recorded music without anyone's help.

baby make on commission

And yes I think there are plenty of musicians/writers/filmmakers who have made masterpieces with no expectation of even breaking even.

Downloading has led to J0hn D having to resort to being a sperm donor in order to make ends meet!

xp nabisco: I'm just saying that technology and recording are only part of what makes a great record.

can you point me at industries where people routinely produce masterpieces without hope of some small profit?

the music business in 2009!

J0hn before: "I think the possibility of the sweet life, not having to work, etc, is a good carrot-on-a-stick for artists"
J0hn now: "can you point me at industries where people routinely produce masterpieces without hope of some small profit?"

You're the one moving the goalposts!

how is proffit formed?

This picture on Yahoo!'s homepage is so darn cute.
http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/sch/cn/vid/img/hedgehog1_pulse.jpg

xpost - yes, sure, but unless you think knowing how to use a compressor is making people worse at playing/writing/singing,* I don't know that that's relevant

* hell, maybe it is, we'll see

xxxp I don't think that ability to make a SMALL profit is being removed from music.

it more or less is, is the thing - it's very difficult to turn anything like a profit on making an album. lots of the cheerleader talk about being able to do everything yourself on a laptop at home for free has turned out to be nonsense: qualified engineers & good rooms & talented collaborators are always going to cost more than pirated software & self-education & recording in rooms that haven't been constructed with a specific view to having music recorded in them (which isn't to say there won't be the occasional genius who takes advantage of all the tools being freely available). 8 days in a studio & an engineer & food & travel = money, and while there are plenty of acts that manage to buck this barrier (and you could argue, from a Darwinian standpoint, that what this'll do is weed out the less driven, but the evidence is against you - there's a surfeit of music, so much of it completely unmemorable that one hardly knows where to begin), the presence of ambition (which I'd describe as a very positive quality, artistically) seems on the wane.

I say this as a guy with no complaints, because I believe there are many things one can do to make a good living in music - cultivate a real relationship with one's listeners; be transparent; don't be a primadonna who thinks it's asking a lot of an artist to write ten or fifteen songs a year. be good & interesting live. all that stuff. but as to evidence that the new age will provide us with greater artists making greater works: I don't see it in any genre. I see more stuff, interesting niche work, but very little that I expect to be listening to even next year.

I have to go make dinner this was an interesting discussion!

going back to alex's post from like an hour ago, even though the profit motive is WAY down from say, 10-20 years ago, is anyone really gonna argue that music itself is worse?

and if not, how can you argue that the two are correlated?

can you point me at industries where people routinely produce masterpieces

Potential pedant alert, but are they really masterpieces if you are routinely producing them?

you don't have hobbyist manufacturers of turntables, even though I'm sure there's much pleasure to be had in constructing a working turntable.

http://www.altmann.haan.de/turntable/

where's Shakey Mo to tell us all about how musicians were slaves in Ancient Rome?

lolz sorry I've been sitting this thread out

xp nabisco: I'm not saying it's making anyone's music worse. There are certain styles of music where technology plays a larger role in the music than others, and presumably having access and experience with it would lead to better music made in those styles. However, it doesn't really have a whole lot of relevance to violinists or drummers, for example. And it doesn't do much for improving the way musicians play together in a band or write or perform music together in a live setting with non-computer instruments.

i don't know, i think playing with and being influenced by machines has had a pretty big impact on drummers.

a million inspired "hobbyists" will make a ton of great music in a lot of ways that I enjoy, but not some of the expensive big-audience grand-ambition ways that are also nice, and also (maybe inevitably) slipping a bit away.

Essay: Connect this statement to the post-Miseducation career of Lauryn Hill.

can you point me at industries where people routinely produce masterpieces without hope of some small profit?

the music business in 2009!

― iatee,

iatee waaaaay otm here.

i don't know, i think playing with and being influenced by machines has had a pretty big impact on drummers.

^^^definitely

I think way back, Tuomas mentioned Finns rapping about being poor. What does it mean to be poor exactly in Finland? I'm not sure if I have the right Nordic country, but isn't it sort of held as a matter of national pride that no one there is too rich or too poor, and that someone like Master P would be actively shunned there for living a craven bling-centric lifestyle?

xp I was talking about compressors and pro tools ... certainly metronomes have greatly improved drummers.

I will say that for most of history the promise of "getting rich" did not really exist for musicians (at least, not for ones who were not already rich) so to argue that that goal produces masterpieces is a bit suspect.

sarahel I was talking about the basics of being able to record music -- this is 100% relevant to any musician of any type who would like to have his/her music available in a recorded form

xp nabisco: fair enough. But as I said above, recording is only part of what makes great music.

umm

no, but I think the goal of being able to make a living at it does - as I originally said, the possibility of not having to work a day job. "getting rich" is a good way of avoiding the question as it was originally put (i.e., will the [stipulated] removal of profit motive produce better music, since better music is always/only made by people doing it for love not money)

xpost to Mo!

http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/sch/cn/vid/img/hedgehog1_pulse.jpg

xp nabisco: However, it doesn't really have a whole lot of relevance to violinists or drummers, Happy now?

I can't keep up with all the good music coming out right now. I seriously doubt "piracy" is harming music. It's probably not making moderately talented people hyper-wealthy but that's not a bad thing. If you're making music for money, you're in the wrong business. Art should be made for the love of it, not for the financial gain.

...this is the stuff with which I took issue; it still strikes me as wrong, most especially the "art should be made for the love of it" - sez who?

john, if the gov't is willing to sponsor musicians finnish-style - is this still removing the 'profit motive' and thus their drive? (shouldn't you be eatin?)

the great social-interest story underpinning this whole discussion is our commendable and relatively new belief that "musician" should not in fact be a distinct and non-privileged class category in itself, something like carnies if we thought certain specific carnies were geniuses

j0hn can't afford to have supper cuz of you iatee >:(

wait why is that commendable again?

you missed it, upthread I told him I am giving him a million dollars

also I want to meet the beatles / beethoven of carnies

xp M@tt: He can afford supper, but only because of the babies he makes as sperm donor.

tho I hope john doesn't blow the whole million on one dinner

i'm illegally downloading john's recipe right now

whadayagonnado, the market has pretty clearly dictated that making music is not worth subsistence level wages - as supply is far outstripping demand. More people want to make music then pay other people to make music, ergo, music is worth less (worthless?)

an interesting comparison to the music industry is the sports industry - where the performers (ie, athletes) have a similar relationship to the audience, in that lots of people in the audience enjoy playing sports (in a similar way that music hobbyists enjoy making music). And yet the sports industry - by sheer power of spectacle and completely vomitrocious advertising subsidies - still manages to pay people bajillions of dollars to do something most "regular" people consider "fun", something they might do in their spare time. If musicians are interested in maintaining the economic promise of their industry, I recommend they model their business/professional practices on pro-sports as much as possible.

many x-posts

I am stealing J0hn's sperm tonight (from the sperm bank.)

will Ramones of carnies do?
http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x9/blackcanary2000/14093667_114618721007.jpg

I recommend they model their business/professional practices on pro-sports as much as possible.

by which I mean, get really comfortable with the American Idol model.

http://www.astronerdboy.com/comic-strips/images/toons/ZippyStillLife.jpg

^^^the John Cage of Carnies

xp Shakey: your sports model is a more dire reality than the current one, in that there are even fewer people above the top level making money.

More people want to make music then pay other people to make music, ergo, music is worth less (worthless?)

you're saying there are more musicians than music consumers in the world?

I don't think we're interested in everyone having their own musician slave.

but there's certainly more new music to be consumed than number of hours any human being wants to consume music?

xp iatee: certainly more than they're willing to pay for.

Matt - I haven't done any detailed demographic studies but it certainly seems to me that WAY more music is being produced than there used to be, but by

all industry indications fewer people are buying physical products.

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there are more pro-level musicians (in terms of skill) than pro-level athletes, surely?

okay that was worded weirdly, but generally I agree w/ shakey about the supply thing. at the moment, there's more music available than total hours a human being is going to live.

xp Shakey: your sports model is a more dire reality than the current one, in that there are even fewer people above the top level making money.

hey, I didn't say it was a GOOD model (certainly not in terms of aesthetics or masterpieces or whatever), but obviously one musical product people WILL pay to see, one that goes hand-in-hand with direct corporate sponsorship, is the mass media spectacle of competition.

it's sort of a weird thing, i mean it's not strictly a commodity. like all the old music made still exists the same as it did.

it's not like i can eat a pork chop from 1928.

there are more pro-level musicians (in terms of skill) than pro-level athletes, surely?

depends! baseball and basketball you can make $ outside of the highest leagues. but if you're a 'almost good enough to be on the raiders but not quite' football player...

I would love to see WIlliam Hung take Pete Rose's place in the Hall of Fame.

John, in my opinion, art is something you choose to do, work is something you have to do. Making art is a privilege, making money from your art is a bonus. That's just my opinion.

(what I'm trying to say is 'pro-level' depends on the league systems, rather than any set level of skill)

pro sports uses academic institutions to recruit from and train their talent. Those academic institutions also make big money from sports teams - that structure isn't present in the same way in music, except perhaps in classical.

yeah I was just about to say - if you paid college football and basketball players - who are essentially 'pro' in every sense except they don't keep the money the make - the numbers would sure be different...

my larger conclusion with the sports analogy has to do with what people will pay for (and particularly pay ridiculously over-inflated salaries for). Audiences will pay to see an overpaid athlete do something normal people do as a pasttime if involves a) an aggressive level of competition, b) a massive spectacle, and c) a token degree of regional prejudices.

To me, making music in this context sounds utterly nightmarish, but it seems like a really solid economic model.

xp iatee: they get scholarships for four years, that's about it.

also both sports and music: depend largely on beer sales

(all I mean by "carnies" is that for lots of recent history, and historically in plenty of cultures, a big part of the social and class category of "musicians" meant sort of hard-living, road-traveling people who were considered sort of disreputable in the aggregate, along with loads of other types of entertainers. obviously this doesn't count the ones who became popular or a lot of high-art and classical music, but by and large "musician" wasn't an auteur category, it was sort of a weird job/lifestyle upstanding people wouldn't necessarily want their kids to marry into.) (NB I don't know how to form a classical model of this re: Beethoven, but consider the composer versus the working musicians who played the compositions.)

sorry, massive xpost

xp nabisco - thanks for clarifying. I was kinda confused by your original post.

^^^totally agree w/nabisco - which is basically what my previous posts on other threads about musicians "being slaves in Rome", etc. were getting at. For most of human history and in most human cultures, being a musician has not been a stable, well-respected career path. Its been the province of poor itinerants for the most part.

John, in my opinion, art is something you choose to do, work is something you have to do. Making art is a privilege, making money from your art is a bonus. T

I can't really understand this at all. Making decent art is hard work; the idea that, since the results are awesome, it shouldn't be considered in the same category as work is disrespectful to both art & work

well Shakey I do think it's a commendable development that we no longer have that class of "musician" -- I would absolutely not say that since it was a marginal position in the past nobody should complain about anything now!

(I know you're not necessarily saying that either, just being clear)

it is interesting how, in Rome, actors & musicians were like the scum of the earth (actors especially) & until recently musicians had it made & actors still do, film actors anyway

we can change that

but of course the #1 most desirable station in life remains indie rock singer-songwriter

being a musician has not been a stable, well-respected career path. Its been the province of poor itinerants for the most part.

partly playing devil's advocate here, but there are other occupations you can say that about as well. Lending money and finance used to be illegal for people of the Christian faith ... that's why Jews ended up in the business. While not poor itinerants, the business was not very well-respected and it wasn't stable, as society would go through waves of needing their services and then kicking them out.

all cards on the table here, I don't expect J0hn and I to ever agree because we're on opposite sides of the professional barrier. I made a conscious decision when I was younger not to pursue music as a profession because it looked horrifyingly brutal and the odds against ever achieving any level of comfort and stability looked unacceptably long - so I found something else that I can do that society deems worthwhile enough to pay me a wage for, and I use the money I make off that to pursue my various artistic interests.

But J0hn's on the other end, as someone who did decide to pursue music as a profession and sees his livelihood endangered by social and economic pressures beyond his control - I don't really expect him to accept that lying down.

x-posts

I agree that it isn't easy to make great art (decent art could be easy to do if you're inspired or talented), but I have no idea where you're coming from with the part of your statement after the semicolon. I said nothing about that.

believe me, if i believed I could somehow obliterate MIchael Bay's profit motive through incessant downloading, I'd do it.

we can change that

lol yes by doing it ourselves, the many excellent films available on youtube demonstrate that the tide is turning against crusty old hollywood

But J0hn's on the other end, as someone who did decide to pursue music as a profession and sees his livelihood endangered by social and economic pressures beyond his control - I don't really expect him to accept that lying down.

I want to stress again that I argue this question only out of interest in the question & enjoyment in the process. When I say "I have no complaints," I am 100% dead serious - I make a living at my job & am grateful. I am just really itchy when somebody suggests that it's anything other than real work for which the worker deserves compensation.

I get way more of my entertainment from youtube than from hollywood these days!

what are your top ten feature-length youtube movies of all time

1. the breakdancing guy who kicks the baby

I totally understand J0hn, I'm not trying to needle you or anything.

And yes, all work deserves compensation, in an ethical sense. But we all know that the economic realities of compensation are often vastly unethical, and that the market that determines the rate of compensation can often be quite callous and stingy.

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This thread title supposes that you have already heard the artist and like them enough to want to invest time/money into their music. I think the question should first read

If an artist is A) not super rich, B) you don't download music cos that is wrong, then how will you ever hear them in the first place?

until youtube can give hugh jackmam adamantium claws, it can suck it as far as i'm concerned

xp Adam the thread title was written by Tuomas.

I am just really itchy when somebody suggests that it's anything other than real work for which the worker deserves compensation.

(altho tbh I am similarly just really itchy when somebody suggests that work done without compensation cannot produce masterpieces - lol)

xp Adam: uh, there's college radio, internet radio, bands' websites and myspace pages?

1. the breakdancing guy who kicks the baby

yeah I'll take the "evil" outdated system thx

(altho tbh I am similarly just really itchy when somebody suggests that work done without compensation cannot produce masterpieces - lol)

you know that politically I feel you! but practically/historically...who can you name? Shakespeare wrote for money, wouldn't have bothered otherwise, and the same's true of most great artists I fear.

also, srsly tho, the hollywood model of spending 100 million dollars on a movie and then crossing your fingers - this is actually worse than the music biz's dysfunction.

xp Henry Darger haha

Exhibit A for the prosecution:
http://themixtapemonster.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/big-green.jpg

that may be iatee but are you stoked to see only movies that ppl paid for out of pocket?

(in re: Darger...I think actually that's OTM - the new art economy will be all "outsider" stuff. super-stoked for that.)

about as much as I am to see the latest $100 million dollar movie

you know that politically I feel you! but practically/historically...who can you name? Shakespeare wrote for money, wouldn't have bothered otherwise, and the same's true of most great artists I fear.

aha! See this is a trick question, because most of the people who created masterpieces without any compensation come from that most hallowed of anonymous traditions - the FOLK tradition. Exhibit A - any number of songs that AP Carter scrounged off of neighbors, acquaintances, itinerant musicians, etc. - many of which have gone on to become "standards", American classics, etc. ("Will the Circle Be Unbroken", anybody?)

but practically/historically...who can you name? Shakespeare wrote for money, wouldn't have bothered otherwise, and the same's true of most great artists I fear.

this isn't really fair...lots of masterpiece-producing artists started out having a day job until, you know, they became well-known enough to live off their art. they didn't all start out as professionals and then create great works (although some did of course).

which is why my hope is that the future of the music industry will be more towards one of the folk tradition and less of the American Idol/pro-sports variety - that music-making will become so commonplace it'll get down to something that people just DO, and the best stuff will circulate and rise to the top via its appeal as something that other people can play and participate in and enjoy.

i don't care what morbz says, star trek was way better than some dude getting kicked in the balls

john you keep bringing up examples of ppl who made a living w/ their art (shakespeare, the beatles) but that doesn't *prove* anything more than me bringing up examples of ppl who didn't make a living w/ their art (uh...dickinson, kafka, any of the thousands of artists who started out rich)

about as much as I am to see the latest $100 million dollar movie

oh you're being disingenuous, you know very well you're not even remotely interested in a zero-budget cinema.

Shakey Mo your deep lefty roots are showin'! :)

goin to a hootenanny in the holler tonight, should be good

this isn't really fair...lots of masterpiece-producing artists started out having a day job until, you know, they became well-known enough to live off their art. they didn't all start out as professionals and then create great works (although some did of course).

yep. one of the best sci-fi writers of the last couple decades - Gene Wolfe - had a day-job as an engineer and editor of trade magazine for the better part of his career.

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oh you're being disingenuous, you know very well you're not even remotely interested in a zero-budget cinema.

I admit I am kinda interested in this $40 zombie movie that's making the rounds

this isn't really fair...lots of masterpiece-producing artists started out having a day job until, you know, they became well-known enough to live off their art. they didn't all start out as professionals and then create great works (although some did of course).

no that is my point though - while some artists (Shakespeare mentions this a lot, in his sonnets) are happy to think of posterity, to argue that profit motive has somehow been bad for art (at any level) seems really silly to me. Pay people and they tend to work harder than when you don't. A good artist working hard is better than a good artist with no time to work. The exceptions are usually outsiders - Kafka, Dickinson, Darger if you're into it. If you really think the Beatles get to Sgt Pepper without a comfortable living to support their experimentation, then I'm open to hearing that argument, but I'm extremely suspicious.

I agree on that point, commerce and art are not naturally adversarial. However, I don't think anyone here is really saying the profit motive has been BAD, just that it hasn't been, strictly speaking, essential.

A profit motive that directly ties money coming in to the work that is being produced is definitely bad for art, as surely as paying journalists directly by how much their articles contribute to circulation would be bad for journalism. Fucking sudoku guy would drive solid gold Benz! (sorry will shortz, you still my homie)

shakey: the initial post with which I took exception was the argument that you "should" work for love, not money. I think a great deal of fantastic art has been made by people whose motivation was largely "holy shit, I can get paid to do this: fucking awesome"

If you really think the Beatles get to Sgt Pepper without a comfortable living to support their experimentation, then I'm open to hearing that argument, but I'm extremely suspicious.

this goes back to my theoretical situation earlier w/ the giving a million $ to our 100 favorite artists and them creating masterpieces. it sucks that this isn't gonna happen! but it isn't!

yes, sgt pepper wouldn't have been created. and there are works of genius that are currently not being created due to lack of infinite money.

shakey: side point, but i know you like hip hop and i don't know how you reconcile that with your point.

wait, which point?

also maybe poor-beatles would have spent their creative energy making some lo-fi sgt-the-white-album

that music will be better if you take away the profit motive

this isn't really fair...lots of masterpiece-producing artists started out having a day job until, you know, they became well-known enough to live off their art. they didn't all start out as professionals and then create great works (although some did of course).

but this doesn't contradict the idea that profit's a motive -- lots of people are motivated to work on the art between day shifts out of the hope that they can become a full-time artist, or get some other monetary benefit. (for instance, there is one artistic pursuit I would probably be working on much less quickly if I weren't interesting in trying to sell it and pay off some student loans.)

oh wait, that's actually in the quote --

started out having a day job until, you know, they became well-known enough to live off their art

the motivation to get from the beginning of that sentence to the end of it is definitely something

that music will be better if you take away the profit motive

umm I didn't say this and I don't agree with it.

I will say that in terms of hip hop its perhaps relevant to note that its roots aren't in making money - they're in entertaining your friends and family at a party when you have little to no money or resources. Now granted the genre didn't really start turning out masterpiece-level recorded material until big-time label financing started happening in the late 80s and that that in turn became a "get out the ghetto" strategy for a ton of artists who went on to make great stuff... but again, I'm not knocking artists getting paid or making the best possible work they can in the hopes of getting paid or whatever. That motivator exists and for some people it works. For other people they don't need that motivator, and they can produce great stuff too.

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there is one artistic pursuit I would probably be working on much less quickly if I weren't interesting in trying to sell it and pay off some student loans.

xp nabisco: Have you been reduced to sperm donor along with J0hn?

and of course for some people money's the sole motivator and they're ideas are shitty and those people make shitty music.

The way the profit motive impacts art is a spectrum, its not a dualistic, good/bad, either/or thing.

x-post

otm

If you're not inspired and you don't have anything to say, i'm not going to feel bad that you are rushing to put out something to make a buck.

xp Shakey: but some people are motivated by the "love of the thing" and their ideas are shitty and those people make shitty music.

haha yeah that's true too.

the moral of the story is: some music is shitty and some music is great and sometimes that music makes money

The way the profit motive impacts art is a spectrum, its not a dualistic, good/bad, either/or thing.

exactly what I started out trying to say - that to argue that people working for profit is somehow a bad this is moronic

bad thing

I don't think anyone is arguing that it's inherently bad! it's maybe bad for those particular musicians...

(when they're faced w/ the 21st century)

If you're not inspired and you don't have anything to say, i'm not going to feel bad that you are rushing to put out something to make a buck.

That's a massive and mean-spirited "if" -- there are plenty of people in the world who are inspired and have something to say but have to do some serious back-breaking and ass-kicking in order to find the time and energy to do it around whatever it is they do to pay the bills. And if there's an added reward at the end of all that work -- say, the opportunity to pay the bills easier, so you can spend more time on your inspiration and your things-to-say -- that is a good motivator to keep breaking backs and kicking asses to get it done.

imo ^^^^^^^^^ this is canceled out w/ the internet's democratization of creating and exhibiting your work

spending your time hawking and marketing the things that are threatened by downloads and chasing after 'lost profits' rather than concentrating on your art seems as good a demotivator as any. what do you think of the idea of music labels having artists on salary rather than some silly sales-based profit scheme?

spending your time hawking and marketing the things that are threatened by downloads and chasing after 'lost profits' rather than concentrating on your art seems as good a demotivator as any.

(20th century version)

I'm not sure that's some kind of plus or minus to be "canceled out," just a statement that talented/creative people may really, really struggle to have the time, space, and energy to get things done -- and the thought that, if people like what you come up with, you might be allowed a bit more time/space/energy to do more is an important motivator. I suspect we all agree/acknowledge that this is a goal the bulk of creative people have in common, to be able to survive off working on their art full time.

(I'm also assuming we all agree -- and maybe some don't! -- that making art is genuine hard work that requires serious commitments and investments of your time, energy, focus, etc., all things that are in shorter supply when they're dedicated to another job.)

also Phil I have no idea if that's in response to what I said, and I get the feeling we are talking about different things entirely here

imo ^^^^^^^^^ this is canceled out w/ the internet's democratization of creating and exhibiting your work

i think this is a often-heard fallacy these days. sure, you put some music online and it's possible for tons of people to hear it, but to actually get people to care you've got to put some serious time and effort into promotion. and unless you hit the blog hype lottery, most bands are still making their name through relatively old-fashioned methods, i think.

payola?

"sure, you put some music online and it's possible for tons of people to hear it, but to actually get people to care you've got to put some serious time and effort into promotion"

Dude, did you not check out the Finnish rap at the top of the thread?

which is why my hope is that the future of the music industry will be more towards one of the folk tradition and less of the American Idol/pro-sports variety - that music-making will become so commonplace it'll get down to something that people just DO, and the best stuff will circulate and rise to the top via its appeal as something that other people can play and participate in and enjoy.

um wut abt every1 that hates shitty folk music and wants 2 listen to gleaming and crisp r&b???? like i think its generally true that even w/o financial incentive ppl will still be making music but there's a professionalism and a, i guess, structure that happens when something is an industry that wld be lost with this and with it i think certain types of music. like its not just a drive to make "art" that makes something like a dream album possible but what about trained, skilled sound engineers and other tech jobs - those ppl need money too.

i remember talking w/ i think s1ocki about this w/r/t to movies its dope to make your own low-budget films but the difference even a trained lighting tech can makes is huge and w/o ppl buying tickets and DVDs who's going to train for that? and who's going to pay these ppl once they're trained?