quoted 6 lines >http://www.wired.com/news/news/email/member/culture/story/20247.html
>
>(The RIAA is about to eat it)
>
>David
>
The RIAA's intentions of greed obviously/unfortunatly outshined the
legitimate concerns. My biggest problem with the majority of MP3
arguments is that people somehow think this is a big music liberation
movement. Countless journalist yammer on (not always well informed
either) about how majors are fucking their artist on royalty percentages
so why shouldn't these artist/consumers liberate their music, blah blah
blah. Okay, well and good, but in my opinion if you're stupid enough to
accept some huge recoupable advance (hello...it's called 'an advance')
and settle for something absurd like 6 points on each record sold (and
that's after recoubables...hello T.L.C) than you deserve to be screwed by
your label. My dad who knows nothing about the music industry, after 12
drinks he could probably tell you that's a bad idea. As I read somewhere
recently 'if someone offered you a credit card with 66% interest would
you take it?" No one ever seems to point to the fact that there are
labels that actually treat their artists properly and pay a decent
royalty percentage, and that these labels/artists are getting fucked by
people's ease of bootlegging via MP3. A quick scan of some easily
accessible sites reveals that there is loads of our stuff up there for
download. I'm not sure how to feel. If people are downloading Amon Tobin
MP3's because they're curious about what he sounds like and then go buy
the record than that's good. But I can't help but feel there is loads of
new music consumers who see no problem in just downloading his whole
record and feeling that's sufficiant 'ownership' (ie. the parameters of
what constitutes 'ownership' are changing with new consumers). Well,
that's fucked. Those people better have an extra room at their house for
Amon or me or other Ninja artist to sleep in the first month the rent
cheque bounces, know what I'm saying. Anyway, it's a bit frustrating but
whatever. I'm still convinced that downloadable music will only
compliment traditional forms of music buying, it will never replace. The
internet didn't replace newspapers. VCR's didn't close down the movie
theatres. Plus I still beleive that most people are deluded when they
think the internet represents free enterprise. There is billions of
dollars at stake here, so don't think that the equivilents of major
labels and major chains won't rule it in a few years. That good
underground record will become just as hard to find on the internet as it
is to find in Wichita. Major companies will own the search engines, the
ads, things will be implimented to send you to their site not the other
ones...and I still maintain that the biggest problem with the internet is
that their is no quality filter. Everyone thinks they're a star, so
they're all going to get their 10th rate music up on line making the good
stuff hard to find. Imagine if your record store decided to carry any
piece of music that someone came to them with.
Anyway, I'm rambling. If anything all the music luddites of the world
will lead a massive vinyl revolution and I'm all for that anyway...
Jeff