Downloading Flying Music?

nafod40 wrote in
:

DBlumel wrote:
Actually, its more like; you are a brilliant inventor and you just
invented the hammer, nothing else like it exists. You have a patent
on it and you would like to make a living from this new invention.
You don't have the financial resources to market or manufacture large
quantities of hammers so you sell your patent or provide a license to
a large corporation who will pay you a royalty for every hammer they
sell on your and now also their behalf.

Would it be so simple. The music industry screws the artists as much
as they screw their customers. They are not in the business of
exposing you to as much new and interesting music as possible, or
helping as many new bands as possible get a chance to make it. They
are in the business of predictably selling their product. They only
sell songs we know from bands we like, or new songs from bands we
like, or new bands that sound like bands we like. It is all about
control and predictability.

Do you travel around the country? Ever notice how you can hear a
Doobie Brothers song you haven't heard in a while (hey, they played
china Grove...cool) and them fly to CA and here the same song on the
Classic Rock station there, ditto in Denver. How'd that happen?

Playlists. Control. Money. They control what you hear with the radio
stations, see their videos, so you will buy predictably what they
want.

I used Napster when it came out. I could give you a list 4 pages long
of bands I'd never heard of before, much less heard their music, that
are now on my A-list to listen to. It was awesome. All of the sudden,
I had access to any and all music out there. The barrier was down.
Seeya, record company.

Yep, it was stealing. I wonder of the members of Six Mile Bridge, a
celtic band I got turned onto through Napster, cared. What I want to
happen, is bands create web sites and sell their music directly to me,
with no music industry middle man. They are not needed. We need the
music industry giants like the Model T needed stables with fresh hay.
I can deal directly with the artist now, thank you very much.

Necessary reading if you have kids, and want to understand what the
music business is all about.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/

And here's one from Courtney Love, of all people. Based on her tone,
she'd make a fine RAH participant. Testimony to congress.
http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/20...ove/index.html



I like your explaination, and I belive the current Napster environment is
perhaps an equitable answer. I base that statement on a quick read of
their website, nothing else, so I could be wrong. 99cents a song sounds
pretty good to have license for it, then you also don't have to buy a
whole album to get 3 good songs and 6+ lousy ones...

I don't believe they have "every" artist/lable on board though.

I would like to see perhaps an "association" of artists get a Napster-
like website going with a reasonable cost-per-song, and cut out the
middle-man.... New artists would, of course, give a few songs away and/or
make them very cheap until they became in higher demand. Older artists
could use the 99cents modal and keep a much more significant portion of
the profits!! A higher percentage of the US market will have to get
internet savy before this can work on a large scale though.


I too used Napster when it was first out and free. MANY (most?) of the
songs I downloaded were from album/cassetes I had purchased 2 or 3 times.
(why was it Styx cassete tape would only last a year or 2??).

If you truely got a "license" to the songs on an album or tape for
personal use, they should have replaced those tape for just a
"materials" charge of a buck or two.... but there is no such vehicle.
Another example is the time I had over $500 of cassete tapes stollen out
of my vehicle. Some of those were replaced with my money. The rest I
ended up replacing from Napster.... I had ZERO guilt replacing those
songs with downloaded songs.....

--
ET


"A common mistake people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete
fools."---- Douglas Adams