The following is a short letter to my friend, Elijah; a part of a discussion we were having about the up-cropping of services like PMP Worldwide [pnpworldwide.com]* that allow producers to sell/license beats online. The beats go for as little as $25 US! In my opinion, the popular notion of rockstardom; that a very fortunate [very]* few can ‘make it’ and become wealthy by slapping together some samples and synths and/or by buying said beats and vocalizing along with them; is threatened by this commodification of music production. And whether I’m correct or not, it is an interesting topic for discussion.
Elijah,
My opinion is that [much of the time,]* music, ultimately, is [and in many cases should be]* a commodity**, and that very successful musicians are [usually]* overpaid***… And people should be able to, more or less, make a living doing what they enjoy, even if it’s making beats that aren’t that remarkable… And when the dream of becoming a superstar is dead, many people who are making art for the “wrong reasons”**** will stop making it. So ultimately it will be a good thing because there will be less crap and a higher proportion of creators who are actually driven to do it by inspiration, rather than doing it solely for fame and fortune.
Wedding/Cover Bands and DJ’s are evidence of how regional and/or less substantial talent is adequate for many of the purposes that music is used for (the popularity of Karaoke is interesting in this respect too). [In most cases,]* these are musicians***** who make a blue-collar salary or less doing what they do, so it’s likely that many of them do it because they enjoy it.
And I’m in the camp that music belongs to everyone, and isn’t something that should be only ‘left to the professionals…’ In the old days (pre-record-industry), music was something people did together in their homes with their families, at social events, and at church Etc… And this has largely gone away… We need it back because making music, especially as a group, fulfills some sort of deep-seeded human need. I suspect that singing, chanting, harmonizing and/or making rhythm with others has always been a spiritual experience for humans.
Actually, some research suggests that music originates as long as 60,000 years ago, along with visual art and religion.
I feel like the disappearance of participatory music from our culture, largely because of the existence of capitalist industry, is probably a very bad thing for us. And I also feel like, in general, creating art, as an individual or as a group, whether it’s journal-keeping***** or wood-carving*****, graphic design*****, or a church choir*****, is a basic human need. I believe it makes us healthier people in many ways: Execution and mastery, introspection, meditation, as well as social benefits and [probably many more benefits that I'm not able to pull out of my ass at the moment]*.
-Andrew
*The brackets [ ... ] are just where I made some basic edits to my original letter. Don’t let it get to you. It’s not a sign from Yahweh or anything.
**By ‘commodity,’ I mean that in most cases, music serves a utilitarian purpose. People that want to dance, will dance to just about any dance music that fits into their idea of what is “danceable.” Music is often used to set a mood in a room, and in this way, it could be compared to lighting (the particular lamp doesn’t matter, as long as the desired effect is achieved). I realize that this a slightly controversial idea, especially to people who make music and consider themselves artists. But I’d argue that in most cases, artistic merit is not required for music to serve its purpose. Churches don’t usually kick out the bad singers from their fellowship. I can think of a lot of music that I’d consider highly creative or artistic that I don’t want to listen to while driving. And I can think of a lot of music I consider very artistic that I don’t want to listen to at all, ever. Also, there’s a lot of ‘dumb’ music that’s enjoyable or fun. And besides, what is considered artistically significant to a listener is subjective and probably largely the result of the listener’s cultural influences. For instance, I don’t suppose many white, english-speaking people who’ve grown up in the USA are able to discern the relative artistic merit of various mariachi bands. So let’s not let ‘artistic merit’ get in the way. Most of the time, music is a commodity.
***Overpaid? Says who? OK, well let’s just get it out of the way that I’m probably a Socialist. Whether or not someone can be overpaid is something that we can argue about later. If you find that idea completely offensive, then I probably don’t want to be your friend, and I think you should give all your money to the poor.
****The ‘Wrong Reasons’ for making music or other art is something we can argue about later. ’Wrong’ is probably the wrong word to use. Most people, I think, will understand what I mean by this and agree that there are ‘wrong reasons’ even if it sounds silly to suggest that people shouldn’t just make music, or paint, or write, or whatever, for whatever reasons they have. It might be easier to think about this in terms of food. Is there a wrong reason to make food? Maybe it’d be better to say ‘for reasons that doom the outcome to failure.’ Imagine cooking, only for the sake of using up a gallon-sized can of Nutmeg. Is that a horrible analogy? I don’t know. I’m sorry for saying ‘wrong reasons.’ I was in a hurry and I was having a hard time thinking of a more elegant, less naive-sounding way of wording what it is I’m getting at by using the phrase. Help?
***** I’m really not in the mood to argue with anyone about whether or not DJs are musicians. And I’m also not in the mood to argue about the difference between art and craft, or ‘fine art’ vs. folk art. For the sake of moving on with our lives, let’s just lump it all in together, at least for today. OK?
I just got a newsletter update explaining that they support a three-strikes policy for file-sharing.
Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer’s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional.
How backward-ass!!
As an artist, I am going to have to revoke my membership if they don’t do some serious back-peddling in the next few days.
I thought the FAC was a forward-thinking organization. Maybe not.
OK so I have to admit that I’ve overestimated the popularity of Last.FM. At least, I am realizing how different LastFM is for a user like me that mostly has mp3s on my hard drive, and users who stream music from lastfm.
PowerPlay isn’t going to do a lot of good for me very quickly since I’ve chosen to buy impressions on radio streams for artists that are pretty obscure. I did this because conversion rates (see web marketing 101) are higher in a narrower target, so if I try to compete for impressions/plays on Bjork’s radio stream, the chances that the users will actually like my music are considerably smaller than if I target people who like more obscure music like the constellation acts or something. Going for Bjork is more like going for Britney Spears in that there’s a fairly diverse audience and the users are more likely to be fairly mainstream (Bjork being one of the strangest things they like). Going after a band like Excepter or HRSTA is a better bet for me because these are people looking for fairly unconventional soundtrack-y experimental music.
In ten hours since I launched my first $20 Powerplay campaign (100 plays on radio streams of ten artists I chose), I’ve gotten ZERO plays.
On the upside, twenty bucks is going to provide my with at least 3 months of entertainment since I’ll have one more site to check in with a few times a day when I’m being neurotic.
The music industry is a mess. The best discovery tools suck because the content owners are afraid of change, while the best music delivery systems are either incomplete (legal or illegal but private) or unreliable (illegal but public).
And legal or not, there’s no real integration between the streaming services and the OS environment.
Maybe the Chrome OS or the Smartphone market will change that. I’m sick of storing tons of MP3s.
OH! If these other music acts are so obscure, maybe I should buy their Keywords from Google. Hmmm…
The Open Rights Group is out there. I have no idea what they aim to do. There are a bunch of new projects that have sprouted up online for various goals having to do with Intellectual Property in the digital realm, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, and more recently, the Featured Artist’s Coalition…
My question is, is the O.R.G. a friend or a foe?
I’m a child of digital media, and I’m also an artist. I’m also a creator of other forms of content like this blog.
The Open Rights Group’s site is so confusing and not-clear in its mission at first glance. For all I can tell it’s a front for a major publisher effort.
Really, the site is terribly unclear. Maybe I was supposed to spend a bunch of time digging for the agenda there.
Please, you guys, make it clear!
I can help if you want, but damn. I can’t even tell what you stand for.
It needs to be completely clear to anyone visiting the site, as soon as they get there, me thinks.
The FAC is a new organisation for advocacy of music artists’ rights in the digital distribution space. Among the Artists already onboard are Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead and Billy Bragg. One interesting thing about their “charter” is that they are advocating for artists to retain ultimate rights to their work, which in case you didn’t know, isn’t how it normally works in the major-label system.
“…We speak with one voice to help artists strike a new bargain with record companies, digital distributors and others…”
As long as this organisation doesn’t become a new RIAA, by suing the pants off music lovers, or advocating network filtering by ISP’s, I’m all for this. Labels get too much for too little while screwing over the fans and artists at almost every turn.
If you’re listening, FAC, please don’t become another RIAA. OK?
Some quotes from the Press Release (pdf HERE):
ARTISTS LAUNCH CAMPAIGN FOR NEW DIGITAL RIGHTSThe Verve, Radiohead, Jools Holland, Kaiser Chiefs, Kate Nash, Robbie Williams and Billy Bragg are among dozens of musicians and performers calling for changes to the law and record industry
[...]
The new organisation will campaign for specific changes to the laws governing the music industry and how business is conducted, so that:
[...]
The new organisation will campaign for specific changes to the laws governing the music industry and how business is conducted, so that:
- artists always retain ultimate ownership of their music
- all agreements between artists and others are conducted in a fair and transparent manner
- rights’ holders have a duty of care to the originator of those rights, and must always explain how any agreement may affect how their work is exploited.
[...]
The Coalition will begin by focusing on six areas where it is seeking change:
- An agreement by the music industry that artists should receive fair compensation whenever their business partners receive an economic return from the exploitation of the artists’ work.
- All transfers of copyright should be by license rather than by assignment, and limited to 35 years.
- The making available right should be monetized on behalf of featured artistes and all other performers.
- Copyright owners to be obliged to follow a ‘use it or lose it’ approach to the copyrights they control.
- The rights for performers should be the same as those for authors (songwriters, lyricists and composers).
- A change to UK copyright law which will end the commercial exploitation of unlicensed music purporting to be used in conjunction with ‘critical reviews’.
(just an idea I had in the middle of the night… maybe it’s a good one?)
It just occurred to me that what artists like me, who are non-label, totally independent, need is a tracker/directory site for us to upload out torrents to. A tracker that’s 100% legal music.
I’m thinking since when you launch a .torrent file, depending on the client, you can select what files you want to download, artists can include in one torrent, a few different versions of their releases. For instance, I could include a flac version, and two different mp3 bitrates, all album artwork bundled with each compression scheme separately, and each version in it’s own folder.
The user selects the one torrent, launches it, selects the folder for the version they want, and they get what they want.
*Artist is distributing without needing a central server…
*Fans of indie/niche music are getting what they want the way they want it. And there’s a central place for hard-to-find and/or totally legally-distributed-via-P2P music.
There may also be advantages to creating a recommendation engine that excludes major-label music: Maybe major label music obscures the analysis of music taste in some cases? Just a thought.
I wrote a letter to the peeps at The Pirate Bay. Maybe they’ll read it and write me back.
I’m not going to try to be an expert on comparing trackers and/or sites, especially when the folks at File Share Freak already compiled a pretty awesome list of Music Trackers.
Oh damn, it hurts! I’m still mourning the death of Oink! Please, please, please, if you’re reading this and you can hook me up with the latest thing… [waffles?] …I’m dying over here!
Anyhow, back to the blogging.
I usually start off with a ScrapeTorrent search. It’s a meta-search that searches several of the top trackers like The Pirate Bay etc… There’s also YouTorrent.com, which is also a meta-search, but I have found that ScrapeTorrent.com has the better results… At least that’s how it seems to me.
Oink, I loved you!
“Just as citizens of a nation must be educated about their rights to ensure that they are protected and upheld, so too must those who compose words and music know the rights that support their own acts of creation. Without these rights, which directly emanate from the U.S. Constitution, many who dream of focusing their talents and energies on music creation would be economically unable to do so – an outcome that would diminish artistic expression today and for future generations.At this time, when so many forces are seeking to diminish copyright protections and devalue artistic expression, this Bill of Rights for Songwriters and Composers looks to clarify the entitlements that every music creator enjoys.
- We have the right to be compensated for the use of our creative works, and share in the revenues that they generate.
- We have the right to license our works and control the ways in which they are used.
- We have the right to withhold permission for uses of our works on artistic, economic or philosophical grounds.
- We have the right to protect our creative works to the fullest extent of the law from all forms of piracy, theft and unauthorized use, which deprive us of our right to earn a living based on our creativity.
- We have the right to choose when and where our creative works may be used for free.
- We have the right to develop, document and distribute our works through new media channels – while retaining the right to a share in all associated profits.
- We have the right to choose the organizations we want to represent us and to join our voices together to protect our rights and negotiate for the value of our music.
- We have the right to earn compensation from all types of “performances,” including direct, live renditions as well as indirect recordings, broadcasts, digital streams and more.
- We have the right to decline participation in business models that require us to relinquish all or part of our creative rights – or which do not respect our right to be compensated for our work.
- We have the right to advocate for strong laws protecting our creative works, and demand that our government vigorously uphold and protect our rights.”
I’m worried that new innovations in music discovery might not be able to play ASCAP music because of the cost. I heard that this might be the case for small internet radio stations… I’m still trying to get to the bottom of this.
Then, I did come across these ASCAP contracts for new media channels… it’s about $1000/year minimum. This sounds high to me at first for a totally underground, out-of-my-bedroom type of channel, but then I got to thinking… A fast, enterprise-speed server, which is what I think you’d want if you were going to do something like an internet radio station, will probably cost you $100/month… So basically, if you were doing that and you wanted to play ASCAP music (and not get your pants sued off) you’d be doubling that amount… say $200-$300/month…
Then
I found a cool internet radio station called erika.net (that does play ASCAP and BMI music) and it turns out I wasn’t too far off. They say on their site that it costs about $400/month to keep their service going.
to be continued…
They have three different subscription plans, the more you pay, the cheaper the tracks get per-track. In addition, you can buy individual tracks for $0.99…
What I don’t get is, if it’s a monthly subscription, does that mean you don’t get to keep the tracks? And if it’s a subscription plan where you don’t get to keep the music, why not make it unlimited songs as long as you have a current subscription activated?
They boast DRM-Free MP3′s so I can only assume that what this really means is this: You have one month per active subscription period to download your quota of tracks. Hmmm. So, unlike an iTunes gift card, you pay in advance but lose your money if you don’t use the funds in time.
I’m glad to see LimeWire launching a store, because at the very least, it’s good to have competition in this new market.
I don’t have the disposable income right now to sign up with every new online music store and buy tracks to see what the scoop is.
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