EMI to sue Ireland over Piracy

^^^ Not sure how the "$10 speech" thing is relevant.  If the family owns the copyright, they can do what they wish.  Dumb decision on their part to charge, but its their right to do so.  It has nothing to do with the "twisted state of US copyright law".  That's almost negligent journalism right there. 
 

but I'm also not the one yapping about how justified it is.

 
That for me?

Stadler

If the family owns the copyright, they can do what they wish.  Dumb decision on their part to charge, but its their right to do so.

 
I'd argue that, given the historical significance of the speech (i.e. impossible-to-measure-huge), that charging anyone to see it is sheer extortion and an insult to what the man stood for.

Haha, Spunky, no.  Not actually for anyone specifically.  Just trying to be entertaining. 

Bails, I wouldn't argue with you even for sport.  It is borderline unconscionable, and if nothing else, is inhibiting the spread of his ideas.

But it isn't illegal, and wouldn't be fixed by a copyright law overhaul without removing the protections on thousands of works that arguably aren't so crucial to the public collective knowledge.

Oh, yeah.  I understand that it's not illegal.  It's just despicable.

always a good read, if not dated by now:
 

MP3s Are Not the Devil
Since every penny I earn depends on copyright protection, I'm all in favor of reasonable laws to do the job.
But there's something kind of sad about the recording industry's indecent passion to punish the "criminals" who are violating their rights.
Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government -- it creates the legal fiction that a piece of writing or composing (or, as technologies were created, a recorded performance) is property and can only be sold by those who have been licensed to do so by the copyright holder.
Without copyright, once a work was performed or printed, other people who saw or heard or read it could simply do their own performance or print their own editions, and keep all the money without paying a dime to the creator of the work.
At the same time, a book or song isn't land or even corporate stock. In exchange for the private monopoly of copyright, when it expires the work is then free for anyone to perform or print or record.
Until 1978, copyright only lasted 52 years in the U.S. -- and then only if you remembered to renew it. There were other technical lapses that could result in the inadvertent loss of copyright -- it wasn't really user-friendly.
And the most obnoxious feature of the law was that some authors outlived their copyright. Their most popular works would go into public domain while they were still alive and counting on the income. It's like revoking someone's Social Security at age 72, just because they had the temerity not to die when demographics predicted they would.
Since 1978, the law was changed so that copyright lasted until a certain number of years after the author's death. So not only did the author never outlive the copyright, but the author's dependents could continue to derive income from it for some time.
Also, copyright began, not when the work was listed with the Library of Congress, but rather from the moment of creation.
But there were loopholes. If you wrote something as an employee of a company that paid you a salary for creating it, then your writing was a "work made for hire" and the copyright belonged to the company. You had no rights.
Here's where the ugly stuff begins. A lot of publishers began routinely requiring writers to sign contracts that declared that what they wrote was a "work for hire," so that the authors wouldn't own any part of their own work. Of course the companies didn't actually hire the writers and give them benefits, like real employees. It was basically highway robbery -- the companies demanded that either the writers sign their names to a lie and give up all their rights, or the company wouldn't publish it.
Only a few of us were stubborn enough to refuse to sign work for hire contracts. It was an expensive moral quibble, but I have real objections to perjuring myself and pretending that I was hired by a company when in fact I never was. If I took all the risks and wrote something on spec, then the copyright should belong to me. I'd license them to do whatever was needed, but I wouldn't, in effect, declare them to be the author of my work.
Who Are the Thieves in This House?
So it's pretty hilarious to hear record company executives and movie studio executives get all righteous about copyright. They've been manipulating copyright laws for years, and all the manipulations were designed to steal everything they could from the actual creators of the work.
Do you think these companies care about the money that the actual creators of the work are being deprived of when people copy CDs and DVDs?
Here's a clue: Movie studios have, for decades, used "creative accounting" to make it so that even hit movies never manage to break even, thus depriving the creative people of their "percentage of profits." A few have dared to sue, but most figure that it isn't worth the ill will. (The sentence "You'll never work in this town again" runs through their minds. They remember what happened to Cliff Robertson after he blew the whistle on an executive who was flat-out embezzling!)
And record companies manage to skim enormous amounts of money from ever CD sold. As you can easily calculate by going to the computer store and figuring out the price of an individual recordable blank CD. Figure that the record companies have been paying a fraction of that price for years. Then subtract that from the price of a CD. Figure the songwriters and performers are getting some ludicrously small percentage -- less than twenty percent, I'd bet -- and all the rest flows to the record company.
In other words, the people complaining about all the internet "thieves" are, by any reasonable measure, rapacious profiteers who have been parasitically sucking the blood out of copyrights on other people's work.
And I say this with the best will in the world. In fact, these companies have expenses. There are salaries to pay. Some of the salaries are earned.
But remember that huge fortunes like, say, David Geffen's were made by getting ownership of record publishing companies. Count on it -- Geffen got a lot richer than any but a handful of the actual performers. And when their careers are over, the record company owner keeps right on earning.
Not only that, but the digital technologies that allow perfect-quality copying came as a huge windfall to the studios and record companies.
I basically replaced all my vinyl records and cassette tapes with CDs, and then replaced all our VHS tapes and laserdiscs with DVDs. The record companies and studios would have laughed if somebody said, "This is just an upgrade. I should be able to turn in my vinyl and cassettes for CDs and my videotapes for DVDs, for no more than the actual cost of production." Ha ha ha ha ha.
In all the ridiculously overblown "estimates" of how much the studios and record companies are "losing" from "piracy," nobody bothers to calculate just how much extra money they made from consumers paying full price for music and movies they had already paid full price for only a few years before.
That's all right, you see, because that helps the companies' bottom line, whereas piracy hurts it.
But how much?
The Hit-Making Machine
The real pirates -- people who make knock-off copies of CDs and DVDs and sell them in direct competition (or in foreign markets) -- make a lot of money in some markets, but most of those are overseas. It's a problem, but some reasonable combination of private investigation and police work and international treaties should deal with that.
Internet "pirates," though, usually are more like a long-distance group that trades CDs around.
If you got together with a few of your neighbors and each of you bought different CDs and then lent them to each other, that wouldn't even violate copyright.
In fact, the entire music business absolutely depends on the social interaction of kids to make hits. You stop kids from sharing music, and you've shut down the hit-making machine.
Copyright violation comes from the fact that digital copies -- even the compressed MP3 format -- are nearly perfect. And when you "lend" your copy to someone over the internet, you still have your original. And he can lend to ten more or a hundred more or a thousand more, and the record company is only paid for that first copy.
Well, that's not a good thing -- if that became the primary way music was published.
The record companies swear that it's making a serious inroad on sales, and they can prove it. How? By showing that their sales are way down in the past few years.
It couldn't possibly be because (a) most of us have already replaced all our old vinyl and cassettes, so all that windfall money is no longer flowing in, or (b) because the record companies have made some really lousy decisions as they tried to guess what we consumers would want to buy.
It couldn't possibly be that they've targeted all their marketing at precisely the market segment -- high school and college students -- who are most likely to be sharing MP3s over the internet.
Maybe if they started marketing more music that people my age would enjoy, they'd find that, lo and behold, there are customers who prefer to buy music the legal way!
It's All Happened Before
The irony is that we've played out this whole scenario before, more than once. When radio first started broadcasting records instead of live performances, the music publishing industry became livid. This was going to hurt sales! A compromise was reached whereby radio stations paid small fees to the publishers for each playing of a record.
But the truth is that it's a lot of bother for nothing. Radio didn't hurt record sales. Radio made record sales, because people wanted to own the records they heard on the radio. Radio let people hear musicians they might never have found otherwise.
Same thing with TV and movies. Yes, TV wiped out the B-movie market segment and it killed newsreels -- but it opened up a lucrative aftermarket that kept movies alive long after they would have stopped earning money. That's how Wizard of Oz and It's a Wonderful Life and many other movies became American icons.
And again, with the VCR, studios were terrified that people would tape things off the air and stop paying money for movies. (And the TV networks were terrified that people would tape shows and skip over the ads; they didn't realize that most of us are too lazy to skip over commercials.)
And rental videotapes! That was the end of the world!
When the studios finally stopped charging ninety bucks for a videotape, they discovered that the videotape (and now DVD) aftermarket was often bigger than the original theatrical release.
The internet is similar, but not identical, to these situations.
First, most of the people who are getting those free MP3s would not be buying the CDs anyway. They're doing this in order to get far more music than they can actually afford. That means that if they weren't sharing MP3s online, they would simply have less music -- or share CDs hand to hand. It does not mean that they would have bought CDs to get the tunes they're downloading from Napster-like sharing schemes.
That's why I laugh at their estimates of "lost sales."
How to Teach Your Customers to Hate You
It only gets stupider the more you think about it. The kids they're trying to prosecute and punish are in exactly the demographic that advertisers are most eager to target, not because they have the most money -- far from it, people my age have all the money -- but because they're "brandable." They haven't yet committed themselves to brand loyalty. They're open to all kinds of possibilities. And advertisers want to get to them and imprint their brands so that they'll own these consumers as the get older and start earning money.
So just how smart is it to indelibly imprint on their young minds a link between your corporate brand and outrageous punishments for music sharing?
Let's keep this in perspective. We're not talking about murder here, or child molestation, or even speeding on the highway. No one's life is put at risk. In all likelihood, nobody is really losing any money they would have had anyway. So just what kind of punishment is really deserved?
There is such a thing as defeating your own purpose. Like Queen Mary I of England, who tried to restore Catholic fidelity by burning a couple of hundred Protestants whose sins were as trivial as buying a Bible and having people read it to you. Every burning made it more certain that Catholicism would become loathsome to more and more of the population.
I was especially amused at Utah Senator Orrin Hatch's support for seeding the MP3-sharing sites with computer-destroying viruses.
I mean, this is one of the leading figures on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he actually wanted to punish people without any kind of due process -- and all for an offense against copyright.
Open sharing of music files doesn't actually hurt the creators of music. It helps them. When friends can say, "Have you heard Eva Cassidy's music? Here, I'll send you a couple of songs, you won't believe how good she is," that's called "word of mouth," and what you'll get is more and more people who attend her live performances and buy her CDs.
More sales for musicians that might otherwise never have been heard of.
You should hear singers like Janis Ian go on about how much good file-sharing does for the careers of musicians who aren't the pets of the record companies. The record companies pretend they're protecting the rights of the musicians, but you have to be deeply dumb to believe that. What they mean is that they want to protect the rights of the musicians they have under contract -- even if their "protection" hurts everybody else.
The real gripe for the record companies is not these fictional "lost sales." What's keeping them up at night is the realization that musicians don't need record companies any more.
Musicians can go into a studio, record their own music exactly as they want it, and not as some executive says they have to record it because "that's what the kids want."
Then they can sell CDs at their live performances and set up online, with a bunch of MP3s that people can share around. They also can sell CDs, and without a lot of expensive record company overhead.
Of course, fulfilment and website management can be an expensive pain, so what will emerge is a new kind of recording company -- full-service online stores that make only as many copies of a CD as are ordered, so there's no inventory to maintain. They'll take a much smaller share of the money than the existing companies do, so the CDs can sell for much less -- while the artist still makes more money per sale than the big record companies ever allowed.
Change the Law to Help the Artists
Meanwhile, let's remember that the studios and record companies have recently been manipulating the copyright laws to their own -- not the artists' -- advantage.
When a corporation is listed as the "author" of a copyrighted work, then what does lifetime-plus-twenty or lifetime-plus-fifty really mean? Whose lifetime?
And extending copyright to ludicrous lengths of time is against the public interest. Twenty years after the author's death or the author's hundredth birthday, whichever comes last -- that's a workable standard to provide for the author and his or her immediate heirs. It comes to an end, and the work enters the public domain as it should.
And let's eliminate this nonsense about corporate authorship. If a corporation claims to be the "author" for copyright purposes, then the whole life of the copyright should be twenty years, period. Corporations aren't authors of anything, ever, and they don't deserve the protections actual human beings have. They make most of their money in twenty years, except on a handful of works that enter the public consciousness. But just like trademarks that become ordinary words, like aspirin, it is precisely in these cases that corporately-authored works should enter the public domain quickly.
If you changed the law that way, suddenly "work for hire" contracts would disappear, and the real creators would be treated with more respect by the big companies -- because they'd much rather have a fair contract with an author whose copyright will last many decades than to have outright "authorship" of a twenty-year copyright.
The companies would even have a vested interest in helping creative people live longer. Instead of trying to give them ulcers, heart attacks, strokes, fatal depressions, and reasons to drink.
How to Stop the File-Sharing
Truth to tell, I don't have much patience with the websites and systems that allow indiscriminate sharing of MP3s among strangers. I'd like to see them shut down. But they can't be, not without changing international agreements, because how can the U.S. government stop a file-sharing scheme that works on a server in Singapore? And Orrin Hatch's killer-virus scheme would be a form of international terrorism.
The same thing that keeps us from blocking the scourge of internet porn also keeps us from being able to take any practical measures to block MP3-sharing websites. And frankly, I think the porn sites cause far more harm to Americans than MP3-sharing. If the government goes after teenagers sharing songs but does nothing about family-wrecking, soul-numbing porn, then something is deeply, deeply wrong.
Do you know how to stop file-sharing on anything other than a friend-to-friend, word-of-mouth basis?
Instead of turning the file-sharers into martyred heroes, the way the short-sighted executives want to do, just educate people that it's OK to let people hear a sample, but don't give away whole albums of work you didn't create. This is not a hard concept; people would get it.
Scorn works far better than lawsuits and punitive damages at changing society. I already react that way when somebody says, "Let me copy the CD for you." I affix them with a steely glare and say, "Do you own the copyright for that?" They usually say something face-saving, and I let them, because I'm not a puritan about it. But they not only never offer to copy songs for me, most of them also get more nervous to offer it to other people.
That will stamp out the "sharing" of whole CDs pretty quickly, if it catches on.
The same technique is the only effective one against the social spread of hard drugs. Most people only try self-destructive drugs because they think their peers will think they're cool for doing it. If their peers treated it with the same scorn they now offer those who, say, attend Sunday school, how many people would use drugs?
Do you think the use of cocaine would have become so widespread if it hadn't been treated as "cool" by the very studio and record company executives who are now in favor of rigid copyright law enforcement?
Fair is fair. I think any company that ever had an employee provide illegal drugs for musicians, or for anyone else at a company function, should be declared to have no standing to bring suit against anybody for copyright law infringement. The drugs they knowingly passed around (and, I would guess, still continue to pass around, if more discreetly) have killed far more people than Napster ever would have. There ought to be a hypocrisy penalty.
Strip away all the pretension, and what you really have is this: Rapacious companies that have become bloated on windfall profits and ruthless exploitation of other people's talents are now terrified that the gravy train will go away.
Because in the brave new world of online distribution of cheap CDs, do you know who the only losers would be? Big-salary executives and owners of big record companies.
The movie studio executives are safer -- it takes big money to make big movies, and nobody can distribute on the net the experience of going into a theater to see a first-run movie.
Clean Up Your Own Act First
Americans are generally good people. If you explain to them why a rule is necessary, they'll generally go along with it.
But you have to get rid of the hypocrisy first. File-sharing is not the end of the world, and the existence of music and movies are not being threatened, any more than they were with the advent of radio, television, and VCRs.
And let's just laugh at the self-righteousness of the "injured" studios and record companies. We can't take them seriously until they've tried the obvious market responses:
Drop those CD prices to a reasonable level -- even if it means firing some of those big-salary execs and cutting out some of the percs. (It won't take the record companies long to figure out how to take a percentage of concert performances to make up for lost income, anyway -- or are they already doing it?)
Start treating the artists better, and let copyright be awarded to the creators, not the backers. When the audience sees that copyright law is protecting the musicians from the corporate exploiters, then they'll be more likely to obey the copyright law. The emotional connection is between musician and audience.
Which is why the companies should stop threatening us and our children with ludicrous prosecution, or with software designed to sabotage our right to make backup copies and transfer files from one player to another for our legitimate personal use.
The more visible you make yourselves, all you executives, the more everybody will hate you. Disappear from the public eye and revise your business model to fit the current technology.
Meanwhile, any copy-protection scheme you come up with that would make it harder for me to copy songs onto the player I use when I'm running, and I'll simply stop buying any music from your company. I already have a lot of music. I can listen to it for years before I need to buy another CD, if you've made it so I can't use it in the lawful ways that I want to.
Then let's get back to the real world, instead of wasting any more time on the petty and mostly self-inflicted problems of rich but badly-managed corporations.
 
Copyright © 2003 by Orson Scott Card.

I've read that before, and well, it is one point of view.  The problem, of course, is that like with virtually anything else on the planet, not everyone shares his view, and not everyone should be bound by his view, reasonable though many of them sound.
 
If I want to market my music by giving away the song, I should be able to do so.  If don't, I shouldn't have to. 
 
One thing that does bug me about most of these discussions, though, is the part about "work for hire".  And whenever that topic comes up, you get these words like "moral" and "highway robbery" and "perjury".  Okay, Drama Mama.  It's a contract.  You sign a contract with terms you don't understand at your own peril.  If you don't like the terms (if it would result in you "perjuring" yourself) don't sign it.  No one is forcing you to.  And yeah, I get it.  You've got a band, you've been playing clubs for years and finally - finally!! - get that break, and a label guy sticks a 10 page document in front of you in a typeface that is smaller than anything you have on YOUR computer, and a lot of this stuff goes out the window.  But it's still YOUR CHOICE to not read that, YOUR CHOICE to be in effect bullied into signing the agreement.  Any reputable company would have no problem in you getting that reviewed, and if they did, you didn't want to sign it anyway, trust me.

But in eras prior there were no alternatives. You either sign a fked up contract or you find a different career. That was the only avenue for which a musician could make a living out of being a recording artist. The industry as a whole was a crooked business.

^kinda like Robert Johnson sellin' his soul to the Devil down at the cross roads!

^Yep. Bad record deals being signed was not caused by dumb kids just signing anything put in front of them. It was the only way they could pursue a musical career. 
 
Giving away music is an absolutely brilliant business model. The Grateful Dead essentially had this business model long before the internet was even invented. By encouraging and setting aside space at their shows for tapers, they created one of the most loyal and fanatical fan-base in history. Their fan-base was built through free bootleg distribution amongst fans, which they fully endorsed. They were making $30-50 M a year once the ball started rolling. It's even easier today with the internet. Artists have so much more access to potential fans. I know most people on here don't follow the electronic scene. But it is basically common place now for an artist to put his music out there for free and in a matter of MONTHS, they are selling out 5,000+ seat venues. The only losers from this? The record companies. Why do you think they are fighting so hard against that law about artists becoming the owners of their music after it's been released for 35 years? It's their last cash cow, that's why.
 
 

Damnit... Can't quote. About MLK's speech....
 
Virtually all media used to deliver a speech, money is being made off of. If I owned the rights to his speech and wanted it to spread, these days sure I could put it on youtube, or in the newspaper, or even in a book. Every one of those mediums are making money for the companies that own them. Well... if they are going to make money in some way if the speech is printed in them, why shouldn't they have to pay money to use it?
 
A man's legacy is and rightfully so to benefit the family and lineage he leaves behind. If I did something that my family for generations could charge ten bucks a print for, while also being inexpensive ( that really isn't much ) and happens also to get a word out that needs to be spread, i'd call that a bargain. Bottom line, everyone would be making money off of the speech if it was delivered except the family, if the family gave it away for free. Between ads and other things. So I call that only fair that they can charge...
 
All that being said, I am fairly certain I can go to my library and take a gander at that speech in it's entirety from several sources.

Just a quick note on something discussed earlier in this  thread, websites are officially going on strike against SOPA today.
 
I hope nobody needed to use Wikipedia for a paper today...
 

I understand what many of you are saying about "the only way to pursue a music career", but I stand by my statement.  No one forced anyone to sign anything.  I'm not saying (and didn't before) that it was a great deal, but then again, not everything in life is.  It's not like I don't have sympathy, and I'm not saying it should still be that way.

I'm not sure the Dead is the best example, since I'm not sure there has ever been a band that has established such a singular culture as the Dead.  And they didn't make a ton of money on their legitimate album releases.  Just the opposite; they were in the red on the album side since the release of Anthem of the Sun, up until, I think it was as recent as Terrapin Station that they got out of that hole. 
 
They made their money on touring and memorabilia (and now, on archive releases).  Most fans of bands are not likely going to repeatedly shell out in excess of $200 for box sets of multiple nights playing at a particular venue.

That's the point- you don't need to rely/focus on record sales to make money as a musician anymore. The Dead are the extreme example. But, there are a ton of bands who give their music away for free and make ridiculous amounts of money from merchandise/ticket sales. I think this is a much better model, for the artist, than the traditional signing a record deal and being owned by the label. Money from record sales have almost always benefitted the label far more than the artist.

LiquidDreams, I really don't think that "there are a ton of bands who give their music away for free and make ridiculous amounts of money from merchandise/ticket sales." I guess it depends on what your definition of ridiculous is, as well as your definition of a ton. I think yours is different than mine.

Yeah, BrickGlass, I see that argument all over the place and it's quite lacking in, well, documentation.  Who are these "ton of bands?" And what is this "ridiculous" amount of money?  And more importantly, why haven't anyone heard of them?
 

Yeah, I'm with Brickglass, and besides, with ALL entertainment dollars thinning, it's not like anyone can afford to give up a whole revenue stream.
 
I'd love for the Big Guy to weigh in on this, because we are talking about artists like him (well respected, known and with a good rep in the industry, able to work globally, able to get the benefit of the doubt with labels/managers/promoters, but, let's be honest, not U2-stadium big), but there are ALWAYS going to be someone in that middle spot.  Whether its a promoter, distributor, or sales channel, there is going to be SOMEONE in the chain.  It has always been my view that in five years iTunes will be the next "Atlantic Records" in the sense that as they migrate upstream that is the logical next step.
 
But the Dead model is very one-dimensional.  The Dead model wouldn't work for The Beatles.  It wouldn't work for The Beach Boys.  It likely wouldn't work for The Stones or Springsteen.  That is to say, bands that don't tour, or tour in big gulps every few years.  Not to even get to those artists whose music isn't really "live music" in that sense (Beyonce, Eminem, Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion, etc.)  The Dead model is also not one that works right out of the gate.  Dave Matthews is approaching that level now, and he has been a touring/recording artist for 20-25 years.
 
I think what is being missed here a little (I say that respectfully) is that the REAL issue - only hinted at - is that the money is not going to the artists.  That has always been the problem and always will.  Because I honestly believe that if you went to a Mike Portnoy or a Steve Morse or a Neal Morse and laid out the copyright system for them, and not in Orson Scott Card's melodramatic way, but in a more accurate way that reflects not that they have a "limited monopoly" but rather that they now have the power to make decisions about their art - give it away if you want, charge if you want, give some away charge for others - I think every one of them would say "sign me the f up".  Chnaging copyright law isn't going to change that necessarily and if it does it won't be instant.  "Reverter" just rights past wrongs, and in one sense will only continue to encourage current wrongs. 

Actually I keep saying "Ask Mike", but really, Marillion is a better example.  And contrast Marillion with Fish, who is struggling with more of a hybrid model (because, as I noted above, he needs the middle guy, because he doesn't have the horses to do it all himself).  Marillion is not giving away their music and making "tons of money" elsewhere. They have their crash course CDs, but those are limited, and are but a fraction of their released catalogue.  Ask Marillion what they think about giving music away for free.  I think you'll be surprised at the answer (it's actually on their website, or used to be).

I think what is being missed here a little (I say that respectfully) is that the REAL issue - only hinted at - is that the money is not going to the artists.  That has always been the problem and always will.

 
It's not being missed.  It's just pointless to even bring it up in the context of this thread because the standard response is that this is not justification for piracy.  There isn't much to discuss about it either.  Artists get screwed. 
 
Although, in light of your contract discussion above, I find the point interesting. I assume artists simply don't have to sign a contract that gives a suit more money than they get.  Seems like there is a simple solution, no?

Well, I get it isn't being "missed"; I'm more trying to steer the conversation away from the "us vs. them".  It's tired, it's overblown and it doesn't get to solutions.  I know I sound like an ass when I talk like this but I've always said:  "If the national language of the United States changed to Portugese tomorrow, people like Warren Buffett and Jack Welch would be fluent by Friday." 
 
As much as we are guests on an artist's site, I'm not a big fan of romanticizing the artist as constantly getting screwed by their contracts.  Don Henley is a good one for that; we're just humble artists who are being bullied by the big bad record companies (as he, his big bag of blow, and Stevie Nicks hop on his Learjet...).  I'm actually amazed that we haven't seen a transformation in music like we have in sports, though I think it is happening, particularly with people like Jay-Z and P-Diddy and that lot. 

I keep thinking about the arguments and discussions over piracy and such that people seem to think ( not all but a lot ) that they are entitled to money and music. At one point being in a band was a good idea, you could make money somewhat easily... these days not so much. But that's capitalism... some decades certain industries prosper and in others they don't. Capitalism being what it is, if you don't like it don't participate. No one is entitled to money for their music. You are entitled for what you negotiated. On a somewhat side not people seem to think that just cause they make music it's sellable ( I have no idea how anyone ever got that idea... but a lot of people seem to ).
 
People also think they are entitled to "have" music. Just because the industry is in a certain state doesn't mean you have a right to protest it by downloading stuff. No matter how bad you think that industry is screwing you, it really isn't because they aren't FORCING you to buy anything. If the music industry is screwing anyone it MIGHT be the artists. But since it's capitalism, don't buy it and you won't be being screwed. The ultimate form of protest in this society is to just not spend the money. But it doesn't help your "protest" when people are downloading it illegally. If you truly think the industry is screwing you, then you validate their arguments by piracy.
 
I don't spend my money where I feel like it's being misused or I feel I am being screwed. Everyone I know thinks the industry is ripping people off.. so don't spend your money there. 

BrickGlass
 

LiquidDreams, I really don't think that "there are a ton of bands who give their music away for free and make ridiculous amounts of money from merchandise/ticket sales." I guess it depends on what your definition of ridiculous is, as well as your definition of a ton. I think yours is different than mine. 

 

I consider artists that average 5,000+ ticket sales per city and make over $500 K  a year ridiculous. I obviously don't have a complete list of bands that have adopted this model. Most of the bands that I am familiar with who have adopted this model are jambands or electronic artists. But, that is more a function of where my tastes lie and what genres I pay very close attention to. I don't see a reason why other genres couldn't adopt this model and be successful with it. 
 
Admittedly, I am completely biased towards this model. I used it to develop a business model for a friend (Pretty Lights) and he went from playing in club basements to routinely selling out huge venues in less than a year. All his music is free to download and he's reached a million + downloads already. Now, he's living his dream and filthy rich. 
 
I am not naive enough to think this model works for everyone or that anyone who adopts it will be successful. There can only be so many "successful" artists. Disposable income is finite and people have to pick where they spend their money. In today's world, I think this model is better and certainly no worse than the traditional route of signing a record deal.

 
Another thing is that the music itself is the ultimate determining factor for an artist's success. It is certainly not the only factor, but it is by far the most important IMO. It is extremely hard (maybe impossible) to figure out what people are going to like and what they are going to hate. There are thousands of TALENTED artists, who sound similar to successful artists, that go broke and never make it in the industry. "Picking winners" is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. 
 

Stadler
 
But the Dead model is very one-dimensional.  The Dead model wouldn't work for The Beatles.  It wouldn't work for The Beach Boys.  It likely wouldn't work for The Stones or Springsteen.  That is to say, bands that don't tour, or tour in big gulps every few years.  Not to even get to those artists whose music isn't really "live music" in that sense (Beyonce, Eminem, Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion, etc.)  The Dead model is also not one that works right out of the gate.  Dave Matthews is approaching that level now, and he has been a touring/recording artist for 20-25 years.

 

I don't think it's fair to use The Dead as the measuring stick- it's like comparing investors to Warren Buffett. No one will probably reach that level again. But, that doesn't mean people can't be successful without reaching those heights. You're right, though, this isn't "a one size fits all" solution. I do think it's much more viable than you're making it seem, though. I also think the bands you mentioned could make it work. 
 
I would also argue Beyonce, Eminem, Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion, etc. make (or could make) more money from touring and merchandise than they do off their record sales. These people sell out arenas in the matter of minutes. Touring has always been where artists make the real money. If they wanted to tour more, they could make stupid amounts of money. Many of them just choose not to tour much because they don't like it or they feel like they don't need the money.
 
 

LiquidDreams

Admittedly, I am completely biased towards this model. I used it to develop a business model for a friend (Pretty Lights) and he went from playing in club basements to routinely selling out huge venues in less than a year. All his music is free to download and he's reached a million + downloads already. Now, he's living his dream and filthy rich. 
 
I am not naive enough to think this model works for everyone or that anyone who adopts it will be successful. There can only be so many "successful" artists. Disposable income is finite and people have to pick where they spend their money. In today's world, I think this model is better and certainly no worse than the traditional route of signing a record deal.

 
Thanks for the clarification

So LiquidDreams you think there are a ton of bands that sell 5,000 tickets in each city they go to that give away their music for free, and that they are making ridiculous amounts of money? If a band is selling out 5,000 seat arenas (or even playing multiple shows in a city that equal 5,000 tickets sold, which let's be honest most bands only play one show in a city unless they are a huuuuuuuge band) they probably are making some pretty damn good money, and I don't think "a ton" of those bands exist that fit all of your criteria. To be honest I don't even know what the hell you are talking about.

BrickGlass
 

So LiquidDreams you think there are a ton of bands that sell 5,000 tickets in each city they go to that give away their music for free, and that they are making ridiculous amounts of money?

 
 
Yeah, I am familiar with quite a few bands that fit the above criteria, or something close to it.

BrickGlass
 
To be honest I don't even know what the hell you are talking about.

 
In short, I am talking about a business model for bands/artists that is centered around giving their music away for free. This allows them to reach a much wider potential listening audience and build/establish a fan-base. By giving the music away, it removes one of the largest barriers to getting people to hear your music. It is centered on the idea that if people hear your music and like it, they will purchase tickets to see you live and buy merchandise. 
 
So, my point isn't exactly related to the topic of the post. But, people were getting into the record label model and bemoaning it. The point I am making is strictly from a business perspective. I am not saying people are entitled to free music or that all music should be free. I am saying artists can (and have) benefit from giving their music away for free.
 
Sorry for the derail. 

LiquidDreams


Admittedly, I am completely biased towards this model. I used it to develop a business model for a friend (Pretty Lights) and he went from playing in club basements to routinely selling out huge venues in less than a year. All his music is free to download and he's reached a million + downloads already. Now, he's living his dream and filthy rich. 

 
I would respectfully question the cause-effect of this as well.  The model doesn't make you filthy rich and living your dream.  The model facilitates maximizing the return you get from a marketable product.  Blues Traveler tried the Dead model and it didn't stick.  And as a result, they had trouble, because they couldn't get to a size that would sustain it.  I don't question the validity of the model (I like it too, FWIW) but it is a tool, not a direct path. 

Another thing is that the music itself is the ultimate determining factor for an artist's success. It is certainly not the only factor, but it is by far the most important IMO. It is extremely hard (maybe impossible) to figure out what people are going to like and what they are going to hate. There are thousands of TALENTED artists, who sound similar to successful artists, that go broke and never make it in the industry. "Picking winners" is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. 

 
But this is a good topic, because it is fraught with peril.  The nonsensical notion that somehow selling more than some arbitrary number of albums makes you a sellout makes this a dilemma as well.  We just talked about Empire on another thread, as well as The Black Album.  Better or worse, those albums allowed those artists to achieve everything they've achieved since (which is its own argument...)  So you've got this f-ed up system, whereby if you don't sell enough, you don't get to keep doing what you love (at least not without considerable sacrifice), if you sell just the right amount, you get to keep making albums (as long as you sustain) and you keep your cred, but if you sell too many, you lose your cred, but you get to keep more of what you make.

I don't think it's fair to use The Dead as the measuring stick- it's like comparing investors to Warren Buffett. No one will probably reach that level again. But, that doesn't mean people can't be successful without reaching those heights. You're right, though, this isn't "a one size fits all" solution. I do think it's much more viable than you're making it seem, though. I also think the bands you mentioned could make it work. 

I would also argue Beyonce, Eminem, Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion, etc. make (or could make) more money from touring and merchandise than they do off their record sales. These people sell out arenas in the matter of minutes. Touring has always been where artists make the real money. If they wanted to tour more, they could make stupid amounts of money. Many of them just choose not to tour much because they don't like it or they feel like they don't need the money.

 
That's a myth, and it is just as subjective as the Dead model.  I can name three bands that themselves barely broke even on massive, well-attended, sold out tours.  U2 comes to mind.  But you realize that all you are saying to Celine is "become the Dead and you can make money".  Jimmy Buffett and Kiss are starting to morph into this as well.  Albums are a whim at this point for that band (mores the pity on that) as they were for the Dead (at least up until Built to Last).  It's just not the same.  I know a guy who booked Buffett on the tour he did right after the big baseball stadium tour.  Buffett said "I'll play whereever you want me to, but I have three rules:  got to be able to set up shop for three days, minimum, so the Parrotheads can come (they make it a weekend, like the Deadheads did), got to be adjacent to another stop on the tour, so I'm not flying all over hell's half acre, and I need $x,xxx,xxx (and you counted the digits correctly) net after the expenses of the show. I do not believe you are going to get Celine Dion fans to accomodate that request.  Or Britney Spears fans.  Having said that, Celine can set up at Las Vegas for two months and do revues, because that's her clientele. 
 
Look, not arguing with you.  But it's just not that easy, and bands should be able to take advantage of the revenue streams that suit them best.   

Lambo_Diablo_Svtt


Just a quick note on something discussed earlier in this  thread, websites are officially going on strike against SOPA today.

I hope nobody needed to use Wikipedia for a paper today...

SOPA

 
on the surface, this sopa thing doesn't sound very terrible. However I see a lot of hoopla against it. Anyone have a cliffs notes version of what practically bothers them about sopa? Cause I am reading through the bill, but it's a lot to read through. Anyone got an opinnion?

LiquidDreams

BrickGlass
 

So LiquidDreams you think there are a ton of bands that sell 5,000 tickets in each city they go to that give away their music for free, and that they are making ridiculous amounts of money?

 

Yeah, I am familiar with quite a few bands that fit the above criteria, or something close to it.

BrickGlass
 
To be honest I don't even know what the hell you are talking about.

In short, I am talking about a business model for bands/artists that is centered around giving their music away for free. This allows them to reach a much wider potential listening audience and build/establish a fan-base. By giving the music away, it removes one of the largest barriers to getting people to hear your music. It is centered on the idea that if people hear your music and like it, they will purchase tickets to see you live and buy merchandise. 

So, my point isn't exactly related to the topic of the post. But, people were getting into the record label model and bemoaning it. The point I am making is strictly from a business perspective. I am not saying people are entitled to free music or that all music should be free. I am saying artists can (and have) benefit from giving their music away for free.

Sorry for the derail. 

I guess the thing that throws me off the most in what you are saying is the 5,000 tickets. That is twice as big of a venue as Dream Theater plays at in many places. I've seen DT 11 or 12 times now and half of those shows have been in a place that held no more than 3,000 people. The times I've seen them in a bigger venue was when they were opening for Maiden, Yes, or on Gigantour.  Now DT has two albums in a row that hit the Billboard top 10 so if a band is selling out 5,000 seat venues they must be pretty damn successful, more so than DT. I'm not familiar with any bands that sell out that big of a venue that give away their music. I remember Radiohead gave away their album, or said pay whatever you want for it or something, but that is about it that I'm familiar with.

Stadler

LiquidDreams


Admittedly, I am completely biased towards this model. I used it to develop a business model for a friend (Pretty Lights) and he went from playing in club basements to routinely selling out huge venues in less than a year. All his music is free to download and he's reached a million + downloads already. Now, he's living his dream and filthy rich. 

I would respectfully question the cause-effect of this as well.  The model doesn't make you filthy rich and living your dream.  The model facilitates maximizing the return you get from a marketable product.  Blues Traveler tried the Dead model and it didn't stick.  And as a result, they had trouble, because they couldn't get to a size that would sustain it.  I don't question the validity of the model (I like it too, FWIW) but it is a tool, not a direct path. 

 
 
Oh, trust me, I do not think I am some mastermind who crafted this guy's career. Which is why I followed this up by saying that I think the actual music is what ultimately determines an artists' success. I do still believe offering free music is the best way to get your foot in the door and have the most ears hear your music. Like you (and I) said, there really is no way to determine what the "masses" are going to eat up and what they are going to reject.  This is why I think any discussion of an artist "selling out" is damn near pointless. Unless you can get inside of the head of the artist at the time the music is created, I don't think there is anyway to determine this.

Stadler
 

Look, not arguing with you.  But it's just not that easy, and bands should be able to take advantage of the revenue streams that suit them best.   

 
 
I totally agree. Anyone, especially a musician, who thinks they are going to be successful without extremely hard work is in for a very rude awakening. The whole point I am trying to make, perhaps unsuccessfully, is that I think offering free music is an extremely valuable tool for artists just starting off. I would also argue that I think it is in the best interest of the artist to charge for their material once they have an established career/fan-base.
 
@Brickglass
 
Off the top of my head, Pretty Lights, STS9, Umphrey's McGee and Skrillex come to mind as artists who give (or gave when they were starting out) their music away and sell those kind of tickets.

Shameless plug, if you aren't familiar with Pretty Lights, check out this Led Zeppelin remix vid @ Red Rocks. It is officially licensed, don't worry Mods.
 

LiquidDreams

Stadler


Off the top of my head, Pretty Lights, STS9, Umphrey's McGee and Skrillex come to mind as artists who give (or gave when they were starting out) their music away and sell those kind of tickets.

Look, I'm not arguing with you at all, and in fact, there isn't one thing in your last post that I don't agree with pretty much 100%, so we're on the same page and it's all good.
 
But... (Steven Tyler says "but" is an acronym for "basic unwavering truth" hahaha).
 
Umphreys' McGee is playing Philly at the Electric Factory, capacity 2,500, and I think not long ago they played the TLA, capacity less than 1,000.  Skrillex is playing (among other places) the Roseland Ballroom, capacity 1,800.  So we're not talking 5,000 seaters for these artists.  "5,000 seats" is roughly large theater/shed portion of an smaller ampitheater. 
 
I don't disagree on the notion of getting your music out there, but it has to be controlled and it has to be at the discretion of the artist.  And it is a slippery slope to offer something for free, THEN try to turn around and ask people to pay for it.  You've already set the value, even if consumers don't literally think in terms of "value".