re: Why is it ok to steal media?

I also think there's an issue here:

Creating value usually involves leveraging something: Time, Physical Objects, etc.

But music, in essence, is a simple short experience. It's often just background to something else. Now anything that you may think, creating multimedia live shows, takes more time, money, of you and your own fans. But that's not necessarily how people already do or want to experience the product. Basically, the most profitable way to create revenue is not to change the product value, or the dedication the product takes.



Time to get philosophical.

<Puts on Greek forum robes>

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Why is it ok to steal media?

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Bc frick you I don't have a DVR

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Or maybe the past 70-80 years are an anomaly and we as a society have overvalued music, probably due to some form of marketing or other propagandizing.

And maybe, due to technology and market forces, we're going to see a return to a place where music is valued appropriately and where people can make a decent living off of it, but won't necessarily be living high on the hog.



Truth of the matter, Baloo, is that maybe your indie heroes aren't worth that much.

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If our society doesn't value music, sad we are.

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I didn't argue that we don't value music, just that perhaps we have overvalued it for the past 70-80 years.

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A hard point to argue for sure.

But I would argue that we also don't live in a society that can support the traveling bard well. I can see Baloo's points about the difficulty for the artist. He has to make a living somehow or we won't have art.

Are we going to return to a time when the only music you here is in a tavern (read: bar or club)? That would suck.

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good thing we dont overvalue people who run up and down a grass field for our amusement.

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Because that's what this is about

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good thing we dont overvalue people who run up and down a grass field for our amusement.

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Oh the imbalance in athletics is far more apparent for sure.

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o not only can you not record the rolling stones in concert on a shitty phone camera, but you can't even take pictures of your friends at the show.

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I do support anything that makes it impossible for people to record shows with their cellphones. Not for copyright reasons, but because those people are douchebags with no concern for the rest of the audience. Put your phone down. I don't want to watch the show through your tiny screen.

I'd make it a criminal offense to take out your cameraphone during a show with a penalty of a severe public beating.

sorry, major pet peeve.

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And maybe, due to technology and market forces, we're going to see a return to a place where music is valued appropriately and where people can make a decent living off of it, but won't necessarily be living high on the hog.

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but they can't make a living off of it. That's the point. Their product is getting used essentially for free.

LINK /

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Consider Pandora and Spotify, the streaming music services that are becoming ever more integrated into our daily listening habits. My BMI royalty check arrived recently, reporting songwriting earnings from the first quarter of 2012, and I was glad to see that our music is being listened to via these services. Galaxie 500's "Tugboat", for example, was played 7,800 times on Pandora that quarter, for which its three songwriters were paid a collective total of 21 cents, or seven cents each. Spotify pays better: For the 5,960 times "Tugboat" was played there, Galaxie 500's songwriters went collectively into triple digits: $1.05 (35 cents each).

To put this into perspective: Since we own our own recordings, by my calculation it would take songwriting royalties for roughly 312,000 plays on Pandora to earn us the profit of one-- one-- LP sale. (On Spotify, one LP is equivalent to 47,680 plays.)

Or to put it in historical perspective: The "Tugboat" 7" single, Galaxie 500's very first release, cost us $980.22 for 1,000 copies-- including shipping! (Naomi kept the receipts)-- or 98 cents each. I no longer remember what we sold them for, but obviously it was easy to turn at least a couple bucks' profit on each. Which means we earned more from every one of those 7"s we sold than from the song's recent 13,760 plays on Pandora and Spotify. Here's yet another way to look at it: Pressing 1,000 singles in 1988 gave us the earning potential of more than 13 million streams in 2012. (bolding is mine)

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That is simply unsustainable. As more artists go public with their finances, more artists will start conjuring ways to deny their rights to those services and come up with alternate means. No one is talking about Lady Gaga making millions of dollars here. this is entirely about "middle class" acts or indie artists. I don't have anything invested in whether AC/DC gets more rich. This is entirely about people being able to make "a decent living".

The current system essentially robs artists blind. they should completely opt out. And I wouldn't like that to happen.

Hey, if you don't want content, that's fine. But if you do want content, eventually you should have to pay for it.

Oh, and wiki, act like a child, and I'll treat you like a child. Act like an adult, I will do the same. But responses like "waaaaaaaaaaaaah" without any substance and posts that are nothing but personal attacks without any content are beneath me. I'd like to think they are beneath you too, but maybe your horse is lower to the ground.

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But that's how you defend a copyright. If they don't do that, they lose copyright protections. I think it's ridiculous as well, and I could write pages on why I think IP law subverts its actual purpose, but that is the law

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Clearly the spirit of copyright law has been perverted The worst imo is the Men at Work case in Austrailia) but shouldn't there be a happy medium somewhere? If an artist doesn't want their song used in a commercial, shouldn't they have some say so?

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What's wrong with living high on the hog? No one forces any body to buy an AC/DC CD or go to their concerts. Unless they are getting money directly from the government, what's the problem with them getting rich? If you find their prices to high, then simply don't buy their stuff.

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Nothing is wrong with that at all.

I'm just arguing that it's probably unrealistic going into the future.

There's this great comic that I saw that illustrates my point quite well (pay attention to the "Profitability", "Competition", and "Social Impact" sections):