response 32 of 134:

Feb 9 07:05 UTC 2001

Traditional music retailing strikes me as the wrong user interface at this
point.  Since the music is already stored as digital data, and computers are
capable of playing it, it seems pretty logical that when I want a particular
piece of music I should be able find it on line and download it.  That's what
I do with any other digital data I'm looking for.  In contrast to that, having
to go out to a store and buy a CD, or find it online and wait for the CD to
be delivered strikes me as awfully cumbersome.  Still, that tends to be what
I do, both because I have ethical qualms about taking something without paying
for it, and because my computer's sound isn't all that good.

I've played with Napster a little bit, mostly to figure out what a piece of
music was before going out to a store to blindly look for it.  Napster's
interface is pretty nice.  I search for some keywords, find the song in a
list, and click on it to download.  Even with cost not being a consideration,
it's considerably easier than going out to a physical store and buying
something.  However, beyond the interface, Napster in its current form kind
of sucks.  It's got its nice efficient search functionality, but once you
decide to download something you're often pulling it off the "server" through
somebody's 14.4K modem.

I'm interested in seeing what the record companies do with Napster.  If they,
as I've seen implied, keep Napster functioning as is from a technical
standpoint, but restrict the music there to music from participating major
record labels, I expect that to be the end of Napster.  The selection will
be less, it will cost something, and it will still be slow.  I think something
Napsterlike could be made to work well, though.  The server and client
functionalities should be separated, such that the servers, rather than being
end users' PCs, will be well connected servers belonging to the copyright
holders or authorized distributors.  Users would have accounts with the
directory service -- probably direct credit card billing would be the way to
handle it -- from which they could be charged some small amount of money for
each file they downloaded.  The money, post-commission, would be passed on
to the distributor.  Ideally the protocol would be an open standard, and the
setup fees would be sufficiently small, so individual artists and small
distributors could offer their stuff through the service as well.

That's my grand vision for online music distribution.  I don't expect those
actually doing online music distribution to follow my idea for how they should
do it, and I'm not sufficiently motivated, or expecting enough support from
the major record companies, to make it worth doing myself.

response 34 of 134:

Feb 9 14:52 UTC 2001

brighn, I guess I did ask *far* too much of you. I don't know why I 
bothered.

response 36 of 134:

Feb 9 18:58 UTC 2001

The record industry is notorious for playing shell games with profits, 
so as to deprive artists of their royalties. A typical record industry 
contract, particularly for a first album, is carefully contrived to 
allow the record company to "lose money", no matter how many copies are 
sold.

response 38 of 134:

Feb 9 20:55 UTC 2001

Jane Siberry, the wonderfully quirky Canadian artist, who has been running
her own label for several years, now, recently updated her webpages with a
not about her forays into the Napsterverse, and her 'solution' for Napster
Musician Care. It's an interesting viewpoint, and can be found here:
http://www.sheeba.ca/napsterSweet.html

response 40 of 134:

Feb 9 21:59 UTC 2001

#39> Hm. OTOH, if you could just buy, for instance, BNL's "Pinch Me" for
$1.50, and you dislike the rest of the songs you've heard, then what impetuc
would you have to purchase any other BNL stuff? This example is based on an
experiment that's been tried and failed a few times in record stores: Allow
consumers to select "mixed" albums with their 12 favorite tracks. 

What you're saying is basic economics: The price of an object, theoretically,
is that number that will result in the highest profits for the seller. But
that principle has been functioning on the music industry for years. The
result? The prices we have now. I don't see how on-line music sales would
mitigate that at all. The only thing it COULD do is lower the price SLIGHTLY
because of the packaging and the lack of a middleman -- they could charge
"wholesale" prices, because that's what they're getting now anyway. But that
would be balanced by a need to increase per-song prices to justify "filler,"
which would still need to be produced for those people who still choose to
buy full-length CDs. Plus, as many musicians have said (an example is PSB's
liner notes on their B-sides collection), filler and b-sides are the place
where many do all or most of their experimentation. The lead tracks are so
the album will sell, and (at least for some) the filler is where the art is
made. Allowing people to only purchase the singles, in this model, would be
a disservice to music, not a service to it. [Other filler, of course, is pure
crap.]

response 42 of 134:

Feb 10 00:09 UTC 2001

I'm truly confused. Has anyone seen how most musicians -- at least, of the
sort that major music chain stores sell -- live? Granted, most of the
"starving artist" sorts don't make much money, but they also don't have
contracts with BMG or Geffen. At the risk of sounding like "Look at that
faggot, that's they way to do it, get your money for nothing and your chicks
for free": Sting has a ranch in England, last I heard. Trent Reznor wanders
around in high-tailored suits. Rap stars nearly OG on a regular basis [ref:
I'm Gonna Get You, Sucka]. How can someone, with a straight face, say, "The
fact that most musicians will never get a penny of that eighteen bucks -- not
one cent"? Most musicians with Major Recording Contracts and serious airplay
are hardly strapped for cash.

Whose line have you been buying, Ken? The rap star with the gold tooth and
the crystal cane and the Benz telling us how Geffen ripped him off and made
him eat Alpo?

response 44 of 134:

Feb 10 01:21 UTC 2001

News item:  the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has announced that its
decision on the injunction for an immediate Napster shutdown will be
delivered on Monday.
 
Brighn seems to have mistaken polygon for me -- happens more often 
than one might think -- but also seems to have a rather odd idea
that a major label contract means the musicians are well off.
This one's been bashed down so many times I'm not going to bother
arguing with it: look up the Steve Albini and Courtney Love 
essays, for starters.

response 46 of 134:

Feb 10 05:03 UTC 2001

Re 42-45.  There is some theoretical royalty amount per unit sold,
sure.  But all promotion costs are deducted from that, and only a
very few acts net anything at all.  See the essays Ken mentioned.

response 48 of 134:

Feb 10 15:22 UTC 2001

I think it is relatively easy to see why somebody, looking at the U.S.
media and entertainment industry, would believe that every artist with
a major label contract was rich. That's the image that the media wants
to convey. By the time a new superstar is really getting attention, they
are usually on to a big money national tour, or a second record contract,
which can put them squarely into that "rich" category. Nobody points out
that it is the exceptional artist who inspires a bidding war for a first
record, and that most have to sign contracts which will provide little
or nothing even if the album becomes a smash hit.

There are exponentially more bands than the record companies are capable
of promoting, and most of those bands want a record contract. "Take it
or leave it" may not sound that good, but if the artist is savvy enough
to understand the contract, the artist is probably also savvy enough to
know that the odds are strong that a choice to "leave it" will not be
followed by an offer from a different company. (There are rare souls who
have the savvy and ego to say, "Thanks, but I'll make more money selling
my albums out of the trunk of my car than I'll make from this contract,"
and who actually get a better offer. The now-forgotten M.C. Hammer, for
whom that was literally true, being a case in point.)

response 50 of 134:

Feb 10 21:56 UTC 2001

Ah, David has hit on the reason I never tried Napster seriously. Even with
the T1 line I have  at work, it was far too much trouble to find music I
wanted and it never downloaded when I wanted it to. I don't/can't leave my
computer on all the time, and it just was too much of a time/bandwidth hog
to ever seem practical to me.  I, too, prefer buying the actual media rather
than having stuff on electronic ... nothings... For example, at work, I have
a couple of hundred songs stored on my work computer, which just sit there.
Because I can't access them directly without some less than convenient wiring
(being as at work I can't listen out loud) and some less than convenient
messing with files, etc. And I can't just take them home and listen here. It's
more trouble than it's worth.

response 52 of 134:

Feb 11 00:49 UTC 2001

Having read the article to which polygon refers, I see the nit-pickery that
is being made. The implication -- that buying a CD doesn't profit the
performer -- is backed by this statement, for instance:
"Performers rarely see a penny of CD royalties." But other statements in that
article indicate that that's an exageration: Artists DO benefit from CD sales,
they DO make money, it's just that it's usually just the advance the initially
receive that's their payment for the album: "After paying performers an
advance against royalties, ... record labels, unlike publishers, routinely
deduct the costs of production, marketing, and promotion from the performers'
royalties." ... "Unheralded session musicians and orchestra members, who are
paid flat fees, often do better in the end."

But if an artist doesn't sell any CDs at all, then they don't get their
contract renewed. So to say, as Larry says, " The fact that most musicians
will never get a penny of that eighteen bucks
 -- not one cent -- is a small but significant consideration" is a clear
exaggeration. They won't get any additional money from that particular sale
of that particular CD, because they've already gotten whatever they're getting
of that $18, in the form of the advance, and the sale of that album will
contribute to the likelihood that they'll get a future contract.

I'll readily accept that most musicians make very little of the total sales
of a CD. Most artists, in general, do. A portion of that is not entirely the
RIAA/Big Label's faults, though: More people want to be artists (of all sorts)
than the society (ergo the market) will bear... this is an accepted reality
in writing, where most authors realize the likelihood of getting rich -- or
even of eking out a decent wage -- on writing alone is very slim. Perhaps it's
because writers, in the main, tend to be older and more mature than musicians
that we hear fewer complaints coming from those quarters of unfair treatment
(for several reasons: There's less complaining going on, we care less because
the people are more likely to know the risks going on, careers tend to be
longer -- at least for pop writers -- so the odds that they'll break through
"eventually" persist longer, because the publishing houses are less capricious
in their inequities, because writing overall is less cutthroat as an industry
because it's not as sensitive to cultural whims). Ditto actors, although they
have strong unions that I don't believe other artists have.

And yes, as I've never denied, the Big Labels are bastards who want to make
a buck. Shocking that they care more about profits than quality or fairness...
stop the presses! Corporate America Worships the Dollar!

[Atlantic Monthly quotes from
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/09/mann3.htm]

response 54 of 134:

Feb 11 18:44 UTC 2001

My thread is not based on "fair compensation." I have acknowledged several
times that, as far as the evidence that's presented to me indicates, record
companies don't compensate artists fairly. This thread is based on the
implication that record companies don't compensate most artists they sign AT
ALL. I don't understand why I need to acknowledge that yet again, Aaron.

I also don't feel that the record companies are as unfair as they're depicted
in this and other places. When asked, only one person was able to produce a
source by someone other than a musician about inequities. While it's not fair
that a group mght receive, say, $20K for a platinum album, record companies
also have to recoup losses from gambles that failed somehow. How about if the
Famous Ass-Mouths have to not only pay back every cent for production cost,
etc., when their album fails to sell, but they also have to compensate their
record company for every bit of lost revenue and potential revenue? That's
not fair, either... and they probably don't have that kind of money, anyway.

I'm not about to pretend that record execs are minimum-wage grunts scrounging
for money, and all these sales are being absorbed by losses elsewhere. But
I think that this item is, for the most part, presenting a one-sided view.
Major label record execs take a larger portion of the profits than they
probably should be, but enough musicians are still getting paid enough money
to attract more people to be musicians for the money.

... which brings us back to the independents, anyway. IF the major labels bilk
artists for so much that most musicians would be better off selling CDs out
of the trunk of their car (CDs which they don't have, because they didn't have
a major labels funding the CD in the process of"bilking" them, but that's
beside the point </sarcasm>), then how is it that the major labels are hurting
the independents by not signing them (a claim that's been made in this same
item). The Majors are bastards for signing people to contracts that, in part,
are designed to minimize the company's losses for long-shots, they're bastards
for not signing true, market-established long shots... they're bastards for
only signing people when the contracts are likely to go gold or platinum, but
they're bastards for signing people to contracts that protect the company when
the album doesn't sell... [contracts>albums, two lines up]

When did the Major Record Labels become a charity organization geared to the
preservation of aesthetically sound music? This is a consumer economy, and
we can blame the Big Bad BMG for the quality of the air waves all we want,
but when Biffy and Buffy are going out and buying Britney Spears and N*Sync,
and Lawrence Kestenbaum refuses to buy music because of the economic
inequities, well, who do you think is going to have more of an effect on what
BMG et alia produce? Non-consumers have significantly less of an effect on
the sort of product available in the marketplace. 

Going back to another thread, whose fault is it, in the end, that Ann Arbor
doesn't have a classical radio station anymore? When did radio -- like the
major labels -- become a charity for the cultural elite?

And if you're all so unhappy about the status quo, go do something legal about
it... go start a radio station or a record company of your own, go support
your local arts (which I'm sure some of you already do), go write letters to
your politicians bemoaning the RIAA's influence on copyright and other
intellectual property law (which I wouldn't be surprised if some of you may
already have done). *shrug* Corporate AMerica is full of bastards. So is Grex.
I'm one of them. Life goes on. *shrug*

[And no, I'm not saying Corporations should be allowed to run roughshod over
anyone and everyone. I'm saying that I think I'm becoming more Libertarian
in my old age.]

response 56 of 134:

Feb 11 22:31 UTC 2001

Oh. I should clarify that the only musicians I have personally met have been
in the folk music field, so may not be of the same mindset and/or motivation
of any other types of musicians. Yes, some of them *are* full-time musicians,
but I don't think even the ones who are well-known are exactly making money
hand over fist -- a lot of the motivation for being folkies tends to be for
political/philosophical reasons, as well as the fact that they like being
musicians. It is often said that folk music is a community, and this is part
of why musicians stay in this field.