The Internet: All the music in the world that nobody's buying…

[Klemperer]

I think the title of this thread is nice. It is not everything about "selling", and of course a whole lot of music is never sold. If you don't like techno and all variations around it, you would find nearly every techno music released 1989-2004 utterly boring, and would not think of buying it.
Music is like everything else - 90% fashion and style, and following what others tell you would be "ca craze". There's even a whole philosophy built around this - postmodernism is mainly swallowed by people who need an excuse for not having an own opinion and wanting to be seen as "da craze" still.

There was a revolution, in that we nearly all can make and share music. That's a great thing . Who knows how many folks are on the search for some music besides the subcultural- or mainstream-mainstream right now, and are happy to find some music they didn't even think it existed? Sure, finding what you love that way is a bit like being a vessel in the bis sea, but well...better than just being bombed with only music that some officials thought was "da bomb". So in parts it's freedom, and it still is possible for human beings to really find what each and every one of us would find "soulful" or whatever music.

I still buy CDs, by the way. And second hand long players. And I'm happy music in the internet exists.

[zircon]

I think music without money would be a good thing.

The Beatles spent years upon years in Hamburg, where they honed their craft. It is estimated that they spent close to ten-thousand hours playing gigs there before they came to the United States. They were only able to do this because they got paid. If they had to worry about earning money through a full time day job, they would have only been able to practice for a fraction of that time.

Even if you don't like the Beatles, you get the picture. Look at ANY great artist in any genre throughout history.

I hate the fame and fortune seekers.
They are just prostituting music.

So, Mozart, Brahms, Handel, Beethoven... all of them were just prostituting music, huh? If you've studied music history for even five minutes you'll know that even in the baroque era, composers wrote music for money and many of them became wealthy superstars. Yet THEIR music is what we are still studying, performing, and holding lectures about hundreds of years later. Maybe you should rethink your position.

There is nothing wrong with earning money from music. Who cares what the motivation is of the artist or composer? As long as they produce great music, we should be happy with the result. Again, some of the most beautiful classical pieces ever to be written were done on commission, not out of some love for the art itself. By paying artists for music, it enables them to spend MORE TIME honing their craft, thus producing more and better music.

[Hitch]

The difficulty lies in the matchmaking.

Your sig just provided me with a matchmaking feed to subscribe to Thanks!

Oh... had not seen that Stephen Fry clip before. Thanks for that too!

Many thanks. I'm under pressure now.

@zircon

I agree, there is nothing wrong with earning money from music. I want musicians to be paid for their work, if that's what they want. Mozart might have lived longer had he been better paid.

[Vectorman]

This kind of reminds me of an editorial that appeared in Keyboard Magazine back in the '80s called something along the lines of, "I Am Become Market Saturation, Destroyer of Worlds." I remember a sentence in there that read, "When today's toys [i.e. musical equipment] already make you sound like God but nobody's listening, buying new toys starts to lose its appeal." The whole issue of how to help artists who buy up all this recording equipment find a listener base for what they record with it was being grappled over two decades ago, long before the internet revolution.

I keep seeing this idea expressed that music (or art in general) should just be a hobby and given away free. What exactly is it about music that makes people think the hard work that goes into it is undeserving of financial compensation like any other skilled trade? Sorry, I guess I just don't follow this kind of neo-hippie line of thinking. Making music costs the person who creates it. It costs a lot of money for good equipment, it costs to have a project mastered and manufactured and promoted. And then there's the non-financial toll it takes, like the emotional angst and turmoil and insecurity many artists go through in the process of creating (at least, those who take it at all seriously), or the time it takes away from other things in one's life, like spending more time with your spouse or your kids. A lot of artists put the equivalent of months of hard work at a day job into making an album and thousands of dollars, and at the end of the process they should just give it away?

Let's not forget the fact that artists being paid for their work also frees them to devote themselves to it more fully, get better at what they do, and produce better work. Do you really think Kate Bush, Trent Reznor, or whomever would have been better off tied up working day jobs 40 hours a week and puttering around in what snatches of spare time they could find to try and create?

This kind of thing is partly why I lately find myself more and more drawn back to the progressive rock arena where I started out and away from caring all that much about sounding current and hip and trendy. Prog-rock fans may be a bit snobbish at times, but at least they still genuinely care about music and are still into buying full albums (not just a track here and a track there) that are meant to be heard in their entirety and supporting artists they deem good with their wallets. By and large, the ones downloading the hip, trendy tracks a la carte are the ones who view music like it's a fashion accessory to be discarded every time the wind changes. I don't find the prospect of trying to anticipate the tastes of such a shallow and fickle audience all that satisfying.

[deaf dunderkwac]

uhm, I, on the other hand, spent less then 1k on musical stuff so I can make noise for my enjoyment
When I'm so inspired I can make music that rivals the best in *cough* commercial quality using my crap off-the-shelf computer.
I'm rarely... well pretty close to never inspired to do so.

Instead I make stuff for me. It's my only hobby/art I can always fall back on for complete mental distraction.
I post stuff on the intertunes just because I can and to state "I still exist!" if only for my own selfish endeavors.

Surprisingly to some folks, there are many, many humans with similar interests.


that's what hobbies are for.
You almost have to force the average person to listen to 'just' music without visual trappings of some sort.

the personal computer is why.... these days you don't need spend exorbitant amounts of cash to get tools to create the most amazing art.... the personal computer is why... when not inspired to create one can travel the intertubes and see what others have done... the personal computer is why...

please don't take my pc away

[bmanic]

There is nothing wrong with earning money from music. Who cares what the motivation is of the artist or composer? As long as they produce great music, we should be happy with the result. Again, some of the most beautiful classical pieces ever to be written were done on commission, not out of some love for the art itself. By paying artists for music, it enables them to spend MORE TIME honing their craft, thus producing more and better music.

Amen! Couldn't agree more. It boggles my mind that there are so many of these "music should always be free and if there is money involved it is evil..blah blah blah" guys. It's an incredibly selfish and a very silly position in my opinion and it's usually there because of pure greed (oh the irony).

It's like all those "Bill Gates is evil because he has so much money!" types.. even though Mr. Gates has probably given much more in charity, relatively speaking, than most people who say this.

Cheers!
bManic

[deaf dunderkwac]

conversely is there anything wrong about freely sharing *non-commercial* music?

[brambos]

conversely is there anything wrong about freely sharing *non-commercial* music?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

It's the little punks demanding everything to be free these days that really irk me. Especially when it's being used as a lame excuse for pirating content ("This artist makes so much more money than he deserves... it justifies me downloading his shit for free!").

[dbrane]

It's the little punks demanding everything to be free these days that really irk me. Especially when it's being used as a lame excuse for pirating content ("This artist makes so much more money than he deserves... it justifies me downloading his shit for free!").

Where do you meet these people?

[waveriderarts]

Remember when all this music was supposed to be a good thing, and how the mp3 was forever going to revolutionize and democratize music?

yeah.


fools we were


now I have a sucky day job

people in general are interested in big brands, not indys

in the early 80's, there was a lot of curious people, in those days few enjoyed the radio, big corporate stuff

now they are all perfectly happy with that

no need to look elsewhere than the mainstream for most yougsters, so they don't care at all for us independents on the net

I grew up in a world where we were thirsty for DIY stuff out of the mainstream

it's not that world anymore

[brambos]

It's the little punks demanding everything to be free these days that really irk me. Especially when it's being used as a lame excuse for pirating content ("This artist makes so much more money than he deserves... it justifies me downloading his shit for free!").

Where do you meet these people?

Bittorrent sites are typically a good place find them.

[loomchild]

Ah..those naughty and greedy major record companies from way back whose quality control brought us incredibly bad artists such as T.Monk, John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Nina simone, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, De La Soul...

Not to mention that the days of successful artists living in opulance are finally over. Let's rejoice! According to the sycophants of the Creative Commons, the future is in the "Tecno Brega" model[1].



__________

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecno_brega

If you feel adventurous and do not mind terrible music and quite a lot of f**ked up generalization and nonsense, browse towards the end of : http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/

[dbrane]

It's the little punks demanding everything to be free these days that really irk me. Especially when it's being used as a lame excuse for pirating content ("This artist makes so much more money than he deserves... it justifies me downloading his shit for free!").

Where do you meet these people?

Bittorrent sites are typically a good place find them.

Sure, Trent Reznor has been mentioned before and he was a member of oink!

What I mean is; Out of the people I know, most have pirated content once in a while, but none of them justify it with these type of statements.

[Hitch]

Ah..those naughty and greedy major record companies from way back whose quality control brought us incredibly bad artists such as T.Monk, John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Nina simone, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, De La Soul...

Not to mention that the days of successful artists living in opulance are finally over. Let's rejoice! According to the sycophants of the Creative Commons, the future is in the "Tecno Brega" model[1].
_________

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecno_brega

If you feel adventurous and do not mind terrible music and quite a lot of f**ked up generalization and nonsense, browse towards the end of : http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/

CC music is not meant to replace copyrighted, commercial music or the copyrighted, commercial music business. It has nothing to do with legitimising piracy. It provides an alternative for people who want to share culture freely and legally. However, it's not the be all and end all. I'm not pretending that it's a perfect solution to everyone's netmusic ills.

And I happily bought Thelonius Monk and Pink Floyd CDs.

[loomchild]

Ah..those naughty and greedy major record companies from way back whose quality control brought us incredibly bad artists such as T.Monk, John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Nina simone, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, De La Soul...

Not to mention that the days of successful artists living in opulance are finally over. Let's rejoice! According to the sycophants of the Creative Commons, the future is in the "Tecno Brega" model[1].
_________

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecno_brega

If you feel adventurous and do not mind terrible music and quite a lot of f**ked up generalization and nonsense, browse towards the end of : http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/

CC music is not meant to replace copyrighted, commercial music or the copyrighted, commercial music business. It has nothing to do with legitimising piracy. It provides an alternative for people who want to share culture freely and legally. However, it's not the be all and end all. I'm not pretending that it's a perfect solution to everyone's netmusic ills.

And I happily bought Thelonius Monk and Pink Floyd CDs.

As the very civil tone of your post suggests, you must have realized that I was being deliberately outrageous for satirical purposes:)

However, if I know for a fact that CC has nothing to do with legitimising piracy, I must disagree with your opening statement: " CC music is not meant to replace coyprighted, commercial music or the copyright, commercial music business". Lessig makes it pretty clear, and his followers even more, that CC are an alternative to what they call the "Big C" and its ludicrous licensing schemes.

What's the point of creating a "commons" of works of art that can be freely "remixed"[tm] or criticising very harshly (and sometimes rightly so) the consequences of the Sonny Bono act if it is only to secure the outlet of amateurish works, which, by definition aren't actually raising any serious copyright licensing questions?

It is clear from most of the advocacy material from CC that the vocation of their licenses is way broader than that.