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25 new of 183 responses total.
brighn
response 87 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 18 21:56 UTC 2000

#85> *shrug* This is how I post. Other people have said I seem to be
tantrumming, or incindiery, or confrontational, or whatever. The only thing
that's accurate there is the confrontational bit. I don't like it when idiots
open their mouths around me.

I find it ironic and vindicating thta, in the end, it turns out that other's
restatement of his stance sounds almost exactly like what I explicitly said,
even though you, Aaron, insisted I was the one who was confused. The only
thing I was confused about was the level to which other's original plan agreed
with mine.
aaron
response 88 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 03:47 UTC 2000

Did that make you feel better?
brighn
response 89 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 13:53 UTC 2000

oh shut up
mcnally
response 90 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 17:53 UTC 2000

  Thank you both, *so much* for playing..  Can you perhaps take all
  of the "I know you are, but what am I" and "am not, are too" to e-mail?
brighn
response 91 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 18:17 UTC 2000

View hidden response.

other
response 92 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 19:36 UTC 2000

"The last word..."

Personally, I find these spats mildly entertaining.  Of course, if people
wanted to stop providing me such entertainments, they could simply *ignore*
provocative comments which detract from the discussion at hand.  Why anyone
would deny me thusly, though, I'll never know...  ;)
scott
response 93 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 19:40 UTC 2000

I find it annoying to have a decent discussion goobered up with people who
get a little too steamed.
brighn
response 94 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 20:09 UTC 2000

#91 expurgated.
I apologize for allowing Aaron's behavior to affect my posts.
I'm really not in the emotional state that's been attributed to me.
*shrug*
Anybody who wishes to go back to the original thread, please do so.
Anybody who wishes to address the issue of whose behavior is juvenile,
irritating, or whatnot, please don't.
For my part, I'm done with the personal comments and commentary in this item.
aaron
response 95 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 21:11 UTC 2000

Um, Paul -- I hate to break it to you, but you were the leader, and I
chose not to follow in *your* footsteps. Mind you, you can delude yourself
as to what really happened... if it makes you feel better. :*
mcnally
response 96 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 21:43 UTC 2000

  Aaron:  the "he started it" defense (valid or not) only protects those
  who are twelve years old or younger (physical age, not maturity.)
  I realize your specialty is criminal law, but I'm surprised that that
  wasn't covered as part of your education.
brighn
response 97 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 21:45 UTC 2000

View hidden response.

aaron
response 98 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 22:14 UTC 2000

re #96: As delightful as it would be to answer you in kind, I will
        instead remind you that we are supposed to be discussing MP3's.
mcnally
response 99 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 22:42 UTC 2000

  We are supposed to be discussing MP3s and yet, for some strange reason,
  we are not..  Hmmmm..

  Anyway, back on track -- Wired News had an amusing article this week
  about a diatribe Courtney Love apparently indulged in when asked to
  address a recording-industry group of some sort (the mind boggles..)
  Those who read the article will find that Love's position is apparently
  akin to some of those espoused here..

  (in the interests of fairness, former proponents of such views will
  be allowed to revise and/or "clarify" their positions as necessary
  to avoid being in agreement with Love..   ;-)
aaron
response 100 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 19 23:03 UTC 2000

I am perfectly happy to agree with Courtney. She's my heroin. Er, heroine.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36410,00.html
other
response 101 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 20 16:34 UTC 2000

"Maybe they'll give tips."  Heh.

To be fair, I kind of expect that the system would work much like the 
shareware system works.  MP3's could be be encoded with a shareware 
reminder at the beginning or end, and for a small fee, access can be made 
available to a notice-free replacement file, along with additional 
tracks.

Lot of people will share the tracks that one person has paid for, and 
lots of people will pay the small fee.  But the artists will get the fees 
directly.
scott
response 102 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 20 16:58 UTC 2000

Chuck D's article says that other forms of money making will be "discovered
or rediscovered".  I'll agree that it's pretty hard to make money with the
current download model, but there's an incredible market for whoever can
figure it out first.  And no, some form of copy protection is *not* an option
that makes any sense.  
aaron
response 103 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 21 17:34 UTC 2000

I don't think that voluntary payment systems are likely to work.

Microsoft's proposal is in some ways the most viable -- create a
proprietary format, and sue anybody who utilizes that format without
paying royalties.
raven
response 104 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 21 18:29 UTC 2000

The real question is who's getting payed here?  Remeber the artist is making
5% of the purchuse price of a cd in Royalties.  If the artist produced their
own mp3 and sold them direct they would making damn near 100% of royaliaties
(100%- transaction charge and promotion fees) thus even if their sales were
lower and there was some piracy of the mp3s it seems likely that they could
still make a living due to the higher profit margin.

The record industry will argue that artisits need the hype machine to make
money but I don't think it's true, Ani Difranco, Phish, and the Grateful
Dead make money without hype, I think is true of some eltronica artists like
the Orb as well, REM was not heavily hyped in their early days when they were
on IRS records, neither were the Dead Kennedies, nor the Indigo Girls.
If an artist is good they can make good money by word of mouth.  I think
direct sales on the internet only increses this potential.
orinoco
response 105 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 21 20:18 UTC 2000

Another interesting twist that occurred to me yesterday is that there are
people who could turn a profit selling mp3s -- the smaller-name artists, who
don't have a wide enough following for mp3 trading to build up momentum.  I'm
not gonna pay for a Dave Mathews Band mp3 when I can turn dozens of them up
for free with a few minutes on the web, and not many other people are going
to either, so Dave Mathews stands to lose a lot of money on the mp3 thing.
But I heard recently that Rickie Lee Jones is going to be selling mp3s of an
obscure side project of hers called Austin Chain, and hell yeah, I'd buy
those, because I've checked, and _nobody_ has them on the web.  Austin Chain,
by virtue of their obscurity, actually stands to make a little money through
mp3 sales.

More support for the idea that we're gonna see a return to lots of small local
bands?
raven
response 106 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 21 22:37 UTC 2000

re #105 Nods  Kristen Hersh made some obscure tracks available as mp3s
on her web site that I may purchuse if I can save the money.  More badwidth
wouls help too, it's a pain waiting almost an hour for each track to download
at 33.6.
scott
response 107 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 21 23:44 UTC 2000

Personally, I really hope that we'll see the smaller bands get a lot more
circulation.
aaron
response 108 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 22 04:54 UTC 2000

The hype machine sells records. They hype machine turns crap like Silver
Chair into a multi-million dollar return.

Remember MC Hammer? He negogiated himself a wonderful first record
contract, because he knew how much money he could make selling his own
CD's from the trunk of his car. But he knew he would make a *lot* more
money if he could take advantage of the hype machine. And boy, did he.

Some band you have never heard of can try to sell its MP3's on its own
website. Odds are, you'll never hear of the band or visit its website.
Maybe, one day, somebody will send you an MP3 file from the band, and
you'll be enticed to go and visit the 404 error that used to be its
website. Or maybe it will go into your collection of "MP3 files I got
for free" to be listened to at a later date, or to be forgotten. Ask
that band if they would like to team up with the "hype machine" for a
record or two.
krj
response 109 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 22 05:43 UTC 2000

Some would, some wouldn't.  Ani DiFranco has basically told the major
labels to go play with themselves.  She self-releases 2 or more albums 
a year and is estimated to have earned about $4 million.
 
The Grateful Dead were the most successful touring rock band through 
most of the 1980s, and for much of that period they didn't have a 
record contract.  They encouraged their fans to trade live recordings.
The Dead's major-label recordings never sold very much.
 
The hype machine can sell records in the short term. Maybe.
But there are too many stories of musicians who were ground up and 
spit out when the label accountants decided that sales had been 
inadequate; or when the label was acquired in a merger.  
(The Universal Music Group merger was supposed to result in about
200 pop/rock performers being dumped, though I never saw a comprehensive
list.)
And the contracts are routinely written so that the musician has 
a maximum amount of difficulty in restarting the career.  
There are signs that musicians who aren't likely to become pop
megastars are catching on; the New York Times recently ran a story
about a guy signed by a major label who was keeping his UPS job.

This is a serious digression, alas.

other
response 110 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 22 06:22 UTC 2000

Example:  Prince, who has just reclaimed that name -- because the contract he
had been under gave the record company the rights to his own damn name --
since said contract has now expired.

Pardon the gobblywangered sentence structure.
aaron
response 111 of 183: Mark Unseen   May 22 18:15 UTC 2000

re #109: Exceptions really don't prove the rule. Nobody is questioning
         that it is possible to hit it big without the help of a major
         (or perhaps even a minor) label. It is a rarity, but it happens.

         I think the problem with short-lived bands is first that the
         hype machine propels a lot of mediocrity into stardom -- that's
         hard to sustain without talent -- and second that the type of
         money a lot of these bands makes has a corrosive effect on their
         unity. Yes, record labels will dump bands if their bean counters
         tell them to, and it may be possible for those bands to eke out
         an existence afterward, without the help of a record label. But
         bands which have passed their prime, or were never any good in
         the first place, will have a hard time making it on their own.

re #110: How big was that record deal, again?
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