what happens if SOPA passes?

I mean I know you already know that but

Some of the best music (and television, and cinema, and writing) happens on a shoe-string budget. But, as Hurting said, those involved on shoe-string productions are only making do unless their art is commercially successful.

again...I'm for ensuring living wages for artists so they don't have to worry about commercial viability. and again...I'm not sure why big music companies even need to exist?

SOPA is what happens when they try to remain in existence.

like, avatar was commercially successful and I guess it's cool that movies like that can still earn back their insane investments. would we have more great movies if we gave 20 great directors 1/4 a billion dollars to play with? probably! and on some level it is a shame we cannot give everyone 1/4 billion dollars to make a movie w/. and eventually we prob can't even do that w/ the james camerons.

like, perhaps today's brian wilson wants to make today's good vibrations and cannot afford to do so because of today's music economy, and we're all being deprived of an imaginary piece of genius. that sucks! but there are lots of things that don't suck, like the fact that some 12 year old kid w/ spotify and youtube has more access to the history of music than most of us coulda dreamt of at that age.

please no more attempts to make good vibrations. can we pay people to not make music like brian wilson?

ps I'm not saying avatar was great I didn't see avatar.

perhaps today's brian wilson wants to make today's good vibrations and cannot afford to do so because of today's music economy, and we're all being deprived of an imaginary piece of genius. that sucks!

otoh today's brian wilson probably has garage band and a bandcamp page so

I mean where people in the '60s had to hire a studio and battle expensive and ever-failing equipment, today p much every middle-class kid can do what they like at home and at a fraction of the price.

and that's why today's records sound so wonderful

immaculate production values aren't a basic human right

lol m@tt

instead of one brian wilson we can get 20 mike loves

can we be shown weirdo + mike loves

idk, mike love vs. brian wilson which one of them was pushing the profit motive

the idea that the mid-20th century american capitalist market was and always will be the best way for great art to develop seems weird to me

idea that "great art" depends on any particular system is ridiculous. it doesn't even depend on monetary reward, and as autumn almanac said, it'll always happen. that's a non-issue.

thing is, this doesn't apply only to music. it applies to any form of art or information that can be digitized. if big business and government can't figure out a good way to protect the profits made from the sale music, movies, TV shows and books, then the internet will eventually be taxed in order to compensate for lost revenue and monitored/restricted in order to limit the possibility of piracy. seems inevitable to me.

like, wearing a tinfoil hat, you could view the emergence of digital media as a preemptive strike against internet freedom

I agree w/ the 'this applies to any form of art or information' - like I don't think this overall phenomenon is so far from the fact that encyclopedia britannica is having trouble paying the bills.

but I don't agree that the internet 'needs to be monitored/restricted' - SOPA was taken down by the populist + tech company response. and a more drastic bill woulda attracted even more attention.

Piracy needs to be combated by carrot and stick. Right now it's almost 100% stick, unless you're in America in which case it's maybe 85% stick.

antiques roadshow is the fuckin' bomb imo
― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

TRUTHBOMB

"and that's why today's records sound so wonderful"

ha! although some people get it right. mostly people outside the mainstream.

bye-bye wikipedia!

now how am i gonna know anything?

A: Rolling Regional Thug Thread will take place in Petco parking lot after hours (boom-boxes provided).

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxzdagdiir1qdmmiqo1_500.gif

metal-archives.com is gone for the day! this'll be the first time I go 24 w/o using it in years!

I shld really buy a non US domain for ILX, just in case. Us foreign websites can't take no chances.

No Rateyourmusic today either, which isn't a terrible loss, but I've been using it to track what I listen to.

is the .ilx TLD still available?

French Wikipedia is so quaint

do we need a way to ensure that people can be artists full-time?

Until piratebay starts torrenting booze, inebriated members of the opposite sex, and the atmosphere of a dimly lit bar, perhaps artists can play live shows.

right, but the $ in live music is never gonna make up for the losses from recorded music

It was my understanding that a lot of ppl make the majority of their money touring or at least as much as they make from sales of their work.

that's probably true today but people were playing live music before record sales so the only 'new revenue' is from people who go to live music events today and wouldn't have before.

it's kind of silly to turn back the clock to before people sold any records at all, a MUCH smaller percentage of people were playing music at any kind of professional level back then

also they were largely poor/itinerant and dead before the age of 50

touring is often p horrible and money losing for small bands fyi, esp w/gas prices now

also let's not pretend like live music hasn't changed drastically - the narrowing of venues to bars, large clubs and arenas is totally different from the economic environment of, say, the 20s and 30s where bands could be booked for multi-date engagements at a variety of clubs. If you wanted to dance, you're only option was live music, often provided by a band playing multiple sets a night for several weeks in a row. Nowadays clubs just hire DJs for that shit.

also also also touring is RIDICULOUSLY expensive now with the price of gas, increase in food prices, etc. the odds that a band can survive and make it to the next gig on $200 or whatever are really low.

haha yeah I didn't want to be the one to bring that up, but the costs of transportation are only gonna rise over the years xp

yeah i think you have to hit a certain tipping point where "this many people will show up for you in any major city" before it's anything other than an expensive hobby, and that bar is probably getting higher every year now

it would be pretty interesting to figure out what that exact point is, although maybe it would vary hugely depending on the type of venues, type of band, how good they are with money, etc.

Meantime we might as well update a bit here -- the protests actually seem to be doing some good, both Rubio and Cornyn have pulled their sponsorships in the Senate.

also how big the band is - duos are easier to feed/move than an 8-piece ensemble for ex.

xp

fwiw I totally do not give a shit about SOPA or PIPA and don't care if they pass or not, getting really irritated by all the righteous indignation of the tech people in my social circle

like one dude was complaining about FBI warnings on DVDs. really dude.

maybe we'll get (big) bands doing simulcasts of their shows to theaters like they do with opera now

xps

Listening to Mike Doughty (the ex-Soul Coughing frontman) talk about this stuff is pretty interesting. At one point this guy was a rock star with a record deal and a few hits on MTV, and wound up having to take a day job to get by anyway. Now, much less famous, playing smaller shows, and in the era of filesharing (which he famously said "saved his life"), he's finally able to support himself. I mean the new "no money in record sales" enviroment sucks but it sounds much better than what the majors would do to you

basically this is just economic/political warfare between mega-rich corporations trafficking in free content (Google, etc.) and formerly mega-rich corporations trafficking in paid content. both sides are reprehensible.

xp

I mean the new "no money in record sales" enviroment sucks but it sounds much better than what the majors would do to you

lol the scale is vast these generalizations are meaningless

...and smaller bands will just skype from one shithole basement to another. the future!

xp2myself