Neil Young sez: "Piracy is the new radio."

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Galen Ulrich Elfert
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Post by Galen Ulrich Elfert » Tue Feb 21, 2012 6:17 pm

A BRIEF HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE -- GO ON AND SKIP IT IF YOU WANT--

For the first half of the 20th century, music was usually a brutal way to make a living, financially speaking (as were a lot of other useful trades -- factory worker, school teacher, etc.). The money was in live performance (including live radio) because records usually didn't sell that much.

Record sales rose (a lot) through the second half of that century. Most of the profit off records went to the labels -- the musicians usually got screwed (no money after the advance). However, there was so much money to be made by 1970 or so that what trickled down fed a lot of people -- engineers, studio musicians, songwriters, etc..

Now sales have fallen exponentially and the pot is tiny. If that doesn't change, we will all have folk-quality rather than pro-quality new music to listen to, just like in 1898. Gather round that MPC in the parlor . . .
In other words, the fortunes of musicians track the rest of the economy. In the first half of the century life was hard. In the post war boom, it got a lot easier. Musicians, recording engineers, etc. are members of the working/middle class, whose incomes have been effectively falling relative to the cost of living for 30 years now. And since your customers are in the same boat...


But actually I wanted to mention this thought I had about radio:

In the early days of radio it was not at all clear how to monetize it, because anyone with a radio could just tune in for free (sound familiar?). Early radio programming was paid for by the companies who made radios, in order to give people a reason to buy them.
Fastforward to today, Apple has made a fortune selling a new widget whose real value lies entirely in content that they paid nothing for.
If you want to get mad, there are lots of people to be legitimately mad at, without having to turn on your own audience. Not to get all Marxist or anything, but the fact is, productivity is up, wealth is being produced, and money is being made. Just not by the people doing the work.

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Post by fossiltooth » Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:57 am

Galen Ulrich Elfert wrote: In the early days of radio it was not at all clear how to monetize it, because anyone with a radio could just tune in for free (sound familiar?). Early radio programming was paid for by the companies who made radios, in order to give people a reason to buy them.

Fastforward to today, Apple has made a fortune selling a new widget whose real value lies entirely in content that they paid nothing for.
If you want to get mad, there are lots of people to be legitimately mad at, without having to turn on your own audience. Not to get all Marxist or anything, but the fact is, productivity is up, wealth is being produced, and money is being made. Just not by the people doing the work.
Yes, that's true about radio. (And about the economy in general.) The same thing happened with recorded music and with book publishing in 19th century America too.

It took musicians banding together and petitioning government to make sure they were paid whenever and wherever their music was broadcast or commercially duplicated.

That bit also sounds familiar. Only this time, the side of the commercial enterprises that profit without paying artists is winning. The tech lobby's propaganda is strong, cunning, pervasive, and (for now) they have consumers (and even some artists) on their side. That will change. On the manufacturing side at least, it's already started to.

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Post by rogersbarton » Wed Mar 28, 2012 7:17 am

Piracy= Theft
Theft= Crime

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Post by roscoenyc » Wed Mar 28, 2012 7:28 am

rogersbarton wrote:Piracy= Theft
Theft= Crime

I'm with you.

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Post by zorf » Wed Mar 28, 2012 8:26 am

i'm with him as well.

However;

jaywalking = crime

the point being that there are many types and levels of actions that could be considered "crime", and they change from country to country, culture to culture, era to era, etc.
dont turn around

Galen Ulrich Elfert
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Post by Galen Ulrich Elfert » Wed Mar 28, 2012 8:34 am

Piracy= Theft
Theft= Crime
Yes, that is the present state of the political and industry discourse.
And this is where we are.

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Brian
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Post by Brian » Thu Mar 29, 2012 4:11 pm

This is what the major labels started and use to destroy the small labels that wouldn't die and their competition, then it kept going and they kept reaping, but to keep reaping they had to lower $$$$ output to stupid levels, like they didn't already do that in he eighties with Polygrams 360 deals.
INFINITELY WORSE is the acts that DID sign with them after the New Music Seminar had their "spokes A & R gal" go to be a panelist touting how great it was to have this deal with Polygram. And they went to CMJ and countless other "recruiting" seminars with the same spiel.

They want people to convince you via boards that the 360 deal is the new model, 360 meaning they take money from all aspects of your income with little or no investment monetarily or intellectually.
They also want people to convince you that this is a fan driven event.
They also want people to convince you that there is nothing you can do about it.
They want to convince you not to have an audit clause.
They want young attractive and desperate narcissists who NEEEEED fame to desperately sign these shit deals so they can get to screwing them.

They do NOT care about talent or quality. I know because I've had to deal with them when all this shit started way back when. The crap I heard come out of people's mouths, you would NOT believe.


ALL of this kind of stuff came into being during the dance act craze in the early 80's, they were easily manipulated, had no savvy, and were thus CHEAP, then came the DJ 's, same thing, then the RAP groups, also recording funds under $10k, then the labels decided they could make records that just really cost more to deliver the quality and ran their budgets down and started taking publishing money for nothing in return, and it was THE LABELS who used piracy as a tool to destroy each other, and now use it to destroy independent musicians instead of seeking and developing talent.
And here we are, with this video, crying in our cheerios, with no one to blame.
STRIKE!

Google /Youtube have a bot that they do deploy on major label material that they think they can still sell so that if you upload it, it will not post.
Indies can't afford Google/Youtube's price to use it so they get stuck with piracy and no sales.
You see how the game is illegally rigged against the independent artists?

You cant afford to have the bot they they should not be charging to use under any circumstance if they are making a nickel off any sight that doesn't have it deployed and thus you are destroyed by the majors, who can afford the bot, the people to torrent link your stuff, & the servers for the pirates,. They basically destroy any safe market to do business in and turn it into a lawless atmosphere so that you can't.
They were the money behind the ANTI SOPA propaganda.
They fooled everyone.
They should now be put in prison.
Harumph!

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Post by ALFweeks » Wed Apr 04, 2012 5:33 am

I visited S.E.Asia recently and whilst in The Philippines I was shocked and dismayed at how easy it is to sell pirated movies and music there. I saw stalls and even shops selling this shit, even next to a police outpost. There was no control of it there. Almost every street corner had some scruffy looking scrote flogging this shit, openly.


rogersbarton
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Post by rogersbarton » Thu Apr 12, 2012 8:49 am

Unfortunately Asia is a hotbed of video (and music) piracy. Local and national governments seem unable or unwilling to stamp down on it.

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Post by jackson park » Sat Apr 14, 2012 10:20 pm

i only skimmed through all this reading and think it's interesting, but i was surprised not to see any mention of the whole VHS copying thing OR the radiohead/louis ck model of paying directly.

technology and convenience and money are bigger than music.

p.s. I don't use spotify because they don't have everything on there (especially older stuff from my limited experience) and it feels like i'm listening to music through a filter. Not fidelity, just the whole idea of being bombarded by recommendations and "check out this" and "this is what your friends like!" and all that is just annoying and has no part being integrated into every music experience.

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Post by lancebug » Sun Apr 15, 2012 9:39 am

Bro Shark wrote::zzz:
+1 :zzz:

ALFweeks
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Post by ALFweeks » Wed Apr 18, 2012 6:05 am

I have seen pirated music and movies being sold openly in MBK, a huge mall in Bangkok, Thailand. I'd hate to see what it is like in China.

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Post by KendricK » Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:53 am

ALFweeks wrote:I have seen pirated music and movies being sold openly in MBK, a huge mall in Bangkok, Thailand. I'd hate to see what it is like in China.
All controlled by the Triads, with a little help from Chinese officials I would wager.

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Post by zorf » Thu Apr 26, 2012 5:23 am

i was told by someone who just got back from hong kong that the prices on pirated dvds
are not that cheap anymore.
you can buy pirated dvds here in the states for the same price.
no direct info on mainland prices.

Also, IIRC radiohead was dissapointed by the small number of people who could be bothered to pay anything at all for their donation experiment.
And they were already well established. that's maybe why no one else has tried it since?

one small difference with vhs copies was generation loss. you had a round trip trough two sets of converters.
Also, you needed two decks, and you had to copy in real time.
Not big hurdles, but nothing like tapping your phone to send music to a million
people instantly.
Maybe instead of tacking on a fee to the media, like they did in the vhs/ cassette/ blank cd days,
they should tack on a small fee to phones/laptops/drives to create a money pool for content creators?
dont turn around

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