Re: Issa on NPR!

I don't doubt that the Radiohead experience was characterized as a "flop" in
the media; I'm sure that's what many have been saying.B 


As for my saying that the "hard reality" is that people will often take music
for free if given the opportunity, I want to make clear that I'm not saying I
like this, and I'm not saying it's fair. But to me, it's kind of like global
warming-- I don't like it, it doesn't sound like a great idea, but you have to
accept it as a starting point to move forward with awareness and
intelligence.B 




I like your analogy of the sandwich; when you put it that way, of course it
sounds ridiculous. But this may not be the best analogy, because we're dealing
with digital replication, and that pretty much changes everything. A business
giving sandwiches away is literally parting with physical resources that cost
it money. Once something is available as a digital file, it can be replicated
endlessly and effortlessly. Yes, at a certain level there are bandwidth costs
to deal with, but for any one person to replicate and distribute any one file,
the cost is essentially zero.




This is not to deny the cost of producing the music in the first place. This
has always in fact been the bugaboo in the music industry. It costs a lot! And
the industry has always been content to let the few huge acts pretty much
subsidize everyone else when it comes to production costs. This model is in
the process of changing but no one knows exactly what else to do, it seems.




As for MySpace, I think you may be off a bit in that any major web site that
streams music *is* in fact paying for it-- they pay for it indirectly, the
same way radio stations pay, via annual licensing fees. Individual artists
aren't necessarily compensated this way, but that has to do with the
exploitative contracts most have had to sign along the way. (That said, I am
no friend of Murdoch's at all; I dislike MySpace and dislike everything the
man is associated with.)




I disagree about short samples, by the way. I never feel comfortable hearing
music this way, and will never make a buying decision based on snippets. After
all, for all these years, have radio stations been playing truncated samples?
No, they play the whole song. I really want to hear a whole song, and maybe
more than once or twice.B 




The reality of digital distribution of music necessitates a lot of changes in
the music industry, needless to say. Unfortunately, people don't like change,
and will often fight against things that really can't be fought, ultimately. I
would never be suggesting that artists shouldn't be paid for their work. But
music is a tough tough business, and that was true well before the digital
age. Very few people can support themselves this way, and one of the problems
with the digital age is how many many many more people now have access to
recording and distributing music. Neither the number of people who are willing
to spend money on music nor the amount they are willing to spend has gone up
at anything resembling the rate of the number of musicians plying their trade
publicly over the last 10 to 15 years. One of the side effects of that reality
is that many more musicians will not be getting paid very much. That's not a
statement about how "free" or not music "should" be, it's just economic
reality, as far as I can see.




Jeremy