05-05-2003, 11:55 PM
The fair point was that it alllows musicians to dedicate themselve to to music rather than do it as a hobby. Thats a reasonable position although I would argue that the majority of good music is from proffesionals who have realativly low paying contracts.
Good music is entirely subjective. But any of the professionals you are talking about who wish to distribute their music without help from the industry having nothing stopping them from doing so right now. So I'm not at all clear on what you're saying would be better without the industry and copyright protection.
Your absurd arguement was that the industry itself is a useful and needed means of distrobution. I think the whole issue here is that there IS another method of distribution - file swapping. If file swapping becomes more prolific - then all the industry is is an advertisement mechanism. An advertisment mechinism DOES descrease diversity.
Filesharing doesn't make recordings. It doesn't book concert dates. It doesn't own studios. It doesn't give young artists the opportunity to work with people who actually know what they are doing. And of course, it doesn't give the artist financial incentive to record. If what you want to do is to sift through thousands of freely distributed amateur recordings by hobby musicians hoping to find the one song that is truly inspiring, what exactly is the recording industry doing to prevent you from doing that? But believe it or not, some people appreciate listening to polished recordings, and some musicians appreciate having their music sound halfway decent when it is distributed around the world.
BTW when I said "music industry" i was refering to the "recording industry". Radio could easily survive without the record companies. It would change, but it would not go away.
I thought the current connection between radio and the recording industry was obvious enough that it didn't need to be spelled out. I have no doubt that radio would change, but what I can't see is how it would change for the better.
Again, what the world would need would be some mechanism for the good musicians to meet with creative writers, be able to spend months in the studios, to have professional-grade equipment to work with and technicians with some experience in recording, to be able to distribute that music across the world, and to be able to fund all of the steps just mentioned. If we had such a mechanism, we would call it the recording industry. Now maybe there are good artists who aren't getting their break in the industry because they don't have the right style or something. If that's the case, you are more than welcome to start up your own record label to help these people. But how would getting rid of the labels that already exist do anything to help them?
Good music is entirely subjective. But any of the professionals you are talking about who wish to distribute their music without help from the industry having nothing stopping them from doing so right now. So I'm not at all clear on what you're saying would be better without the industry and copyright protection.
Your absurd arguement was that the industry itself is a useful and needed means of distrobution. I think the whole issue here is that there IS another method of distribution - file swapping. If file swapping becomes more prolific - then all the industry is is an advertisement mechanism. An advertisment mechinism DOES descrease diversity.
Filesharing doesn't make recordings. It doesn't book concert dates. It doesn't own studios. It doesn't give young artists the opportunity to work with people who actually know what they are doing. And of course, it doesn't give the artist financial incentive to record. If what you want to do is to sift through thousands of freely distributed amateur recordings by hobby musicians hoping to find the one song that is truly inspiring, what exactly is the recording industry doing to prevent you from doing that? But believe it or not, some people appreciate listening to polished recordings, and some musicians appreciate having their music sound halfway decent when it is distributed around the world.
BTW when I said "music industry" i was refering to the "recording industry". Radio could easily survive without the record companies. It would change, but it would not go away.
I thought the current connection between radio and the recording industry was obvious enough that it didn't need to be spelled out. I have no doubt that radio would change, but what I can't see is how it would change for the better.
Again, what the world would need would be some mechanism for the good musicians to meet with creative writers, be able to spend months in the studios, to have professional-grade equipment to work with and technicians with some experience in recording, to be able to distribute that music across the world, and to be able to fund all of the steps just mentioned. If we had such a mechanism, we would call it the recording industry. Now maybe there are good artists who aren't getting their break in the industry because they don't have the right style or something. If that's the case, you are more than welcome to start up your own record label to help these people. But how would getting rid of the labels that already exist do anything to help them?