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?

"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