Chill!
Sarcasm, bitterness and anger (you know who you are) directed at like-minded people and members of this community is not helpful. Not to you, not to anyone.
This topic is serious to many in the music community - unless you pay attention, try to understand the points another person is trying to make and give them the respect that you expect, you will continue to miss the point and get no benefit from any of it. And in that case, why bother participating? Its too easy and chickenshit to be insulting, its a little harder to think and learn. If you're not going to try harder, don't bother, and don't waste our time.
Question: What is the relationship between the creator's of music and the necessary evils of the business of its distribution going to be? How its answered here with us and others like us is likely to help shape cultural norm and help inform and establish legal custom in regards to intellectual property and copyright and the way music is made available to an audience. Our attitudes and actions toward the new vehicles of distribution are at the harbinger of what will become the way everyone else does things. This has been true for a while now, but small and beneath the notice of the Mega-haves that run the music and entertainment shows. That has changed. They now realize they are missing a small sliver of pie, and they will outspend every opponent to make sure they get it back and keep it.
A question: Is sharing music on an open source network like Limewire wrong?
How long will it take for the Mega-haves to own all digital distribution networks? Just like their response to all the indy labels of the '80s and early '90s - buy them up, squash the acts that seem to compete with other acts on other labels they own, use the small labels as a farm system to bring up promising more mainstream talent, and squeeze a few pennies out of the niche markets for the other less massmarketable acts. History shows that the dominant force in a market will always try to completely control the market to serve its interest, by any means necessary, (short of physical violence which is bad PR if made public).
Another question: Do we all just want the comfort of a salary that working for the entertainment conglomerates will give us? Is all our work a kind of apprenticeship toward the big leagues of Vivendi, Time/Warner, Sony, etc.? Do we start labels and bands in urban shitted hives in the hope that if we run them right and have a little succes that someday we can sell them to the bigs and retire to the less blighted regions of the planet?
Aside to enaomi18: The sweeter you can make it for the creators the better for them, the more they'll like you. After all, without their music, there wouldn't be anything to sell.
Is making music really all about selling it? Do you make music for other people and you enjoy their enjoyment? Do you make music because its a skill or talent you have and that commodity is saleable? Is there an entity apart from you that commands you to make music as its will? Or is making the music much like sex - an uncontrollable urge you have, that you'll do no matter how much other people don't care or don't want you to - you just can't help it?
Enough drivel. Speak your mind, but do try to follow other's thoughts and don't get insulting - you just make yourself an annoying part of the problems we all face together.
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