Copyright with respect to Music and Academia

[Adios]

No comment.

*sigh*
One success story of self promotion out of how many failed self promotion stories?

I am backing out of this conversation.

[Roaring Biscuit!]

No comment.

*sigh*
One success story of self promotion out of how many failed self promotion stories?

I am backing out of this conversation.

same can be said of major label "success stories", more than 4/5 new acts on a label end up as failed stories.

Secondly, I only used that as an example to show that stuff like that can be done, and I only used words like independent artist/label and self-promotion because (no prizes for guessing this one), I don't like record labels

But i get it if you don't wanna bother with this discussion, not everyone is as into this kinda thinking as me

x

edd

[Adios]

No hard feelings I hope, but I've seen this puppy chase his tail before.

[Roaring Biscuit!]

none at all

x

edd

[Cramulus]

I'm gonna use Dok Howl's (hi there) work as an example, because from previous experience, unless my memory is particularly faulty today, he is in the "GTFO my work biatch" camp (which is fine by the way).

I was pro-copyright.  Then I got offended by Youtube playing three (3) commercials before a video, and changed my mind, simply because they're greedy bastards at the RIAA that don't know when to quit.

I mentioned this, however, and Cramulus brayed laughter and mockery at me (Do never publicly change your mind here) to gloat, so I rethought it, and decided that I was right in the first place, and that a little inconvenience is part & parcel of copyright law.

So, yeah.

what? 

this isn't the first time you've interpreted me joking around with you as mocking and gloating.

This is reminding me of you interpreting my reaction to the safari (a jocular "Beware! When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you") as disapproving of the idea.

it seems like when I'm joking, you often read me as being an asshole to you

I'll remember to keep my mouth shut next time

I was talking about this:  http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=26381.30

Either I'm more paranoid that usual these days, or I'm more paranoid than usual.

yes you're being paranoid

being that my previous post on the matter was--

ARRRRGHHH ALL ABOARD YE LANDLUBBIN' COPYWRITE RESPECTIN' FELCH SWAB

LET'S WATCH GROW GNARLY PIRATE BEARDS AND WATCH SAVED BY THE BELL

--I thought it would be apparent that I was uhhh being flippant and joking around? but I guess calling you an anarchist, even in the context of silly over-the-top capslock hyperbole, is serious business.

"braying and gloating"

give me a break

man, it freaks me out to joke around with you because you tend to read all this venom in my posts - venom which isn't coming from me. Feel like I have to walk on egg shells because shit, who knows what's going to set you off.

[Doktor Howl]

I'm gonna use Dok Howl's (hi there) work as an example, because from previous experience, unless my memory is particularly faulty today, he is in the "GTFO my work biatch" camp (which is fine by the way).

I was pro-copyright.  Then I got offended by Youtube playing three (3) commercials before a video, and changed my mind, simply because they're greedy bastards at the RIAA that don't know when to quit.

I mentioned this, however, and Cramulus brayed laughter and mockery at me (Do never publicly change your mind here) to gloat, so I rethought it, and decided that I was right in the first place, and that a little inconvenience is part & parcel of copyright law.

So, yeah.

what? 

this isn't the first time you've interpreted me joking around with you as mocking and gloating.

This is reminding me of you interpreting my reaction to the safari (a jocular "Beware! When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you") as disapproving of the idea.

it seems like when I'm joking, you often read me as being an asshole to you

I'll remember to keep my mouth shut next time

I was talking about this:  http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=26381.30

Either I'm more paranoid that usual these days, or I'm more paranoid than usual.

yes you're being paranoid

being that my previous post on the matter was--

ARRRRGHHH ALL ABOARD YE LANDLUBBIN' COPYWRITE RESPECTIN' FELCH SWAB

LET'S WATCH GROW GNARLY PIRATE BEARDS AND WATCH SAVED BY THE BELL

--I thought it would be apparent that I was uhhh being flippant and joking around? but I guess calling you an anarchist, even in the context of silly over-the-top capslock hyperbole, is serious business.

"braying and gloating"

give me a break

man, it freaks me out to joke around with you because you tend to read all this venom in my posts - venom which isn't coming from me. Feel like I have to walk on egg shells because shit, who knows what's going to set you off.

Sorry about that.  I'm not sure what sets me off these days, either.

[Requia ☣]

The music industry is like any other industry.  It uses profits and proceeds for future production and business.  Copyright is basically the music industry's loss prevention system.  When you pirate instead of paying, you are cutting into that companies capacity for future production. In other words, recording and publishing new albums. 

One of the biggest problems with these arguments is the trap that this thread fell into almost from the get go.  One must remember there are varying levels of musicians and artists.  So while you mockingly say "Oh no poor Snoop Dogg can't afford x", do not forget the small time rapper who is just getting off the ground.  He needs record sales and paid-downloads so his label will finance a second album or single. 

Believe it or not, it isn't exactly cheap to record music.  I mean, yeah, anyone can buy $40 music editing software, but guess what, it's that whole "you get what you pay for" idea.  In this case, you can hear loud and clear what you pay for.  Compare one of my songs recorded on bargain-basement software compared to a Metallica album that used state-of-the-art Pro Tools software.  (I'm talking sound quality, not song-writing quality).  Not even in the same area code. 

And one other thing I would throw out, is I think it is a big disingenuous to legitimize piracy by commenting on the music industry's supposed lack of willingness to adapt to new technologies.  That's a bullshit argument because there are tons of legal ways people can download music.  Amazon MP3 or ITunes anyone? 

The record labels don't pay for the recording costs, the artists do, its a big part of why artists make so little money off music sales, since in addition to getting the tiniest part of the profit, most of their take goes back to the labels as debt.

The real threats to the music industry come from added competition in the entertainment market, and social changes in what music is acceptable for youngsters to listen to, in older generations it was never acceptable to dig through your parents music collection for your tunes, that changing is a *massive* blow to an industry that was built on teenagers.  Piracy is insignificant compared to video games or kids getting music out of their parents CD collection.

The music industry is also the *least* fucked up of the various copyright dependent industries (though not from lack of trying), cut them some slack on the piracy department, the copyrights of the consumer actually exist there, unlike in movies or software, so we should respect theirs.

[Placid Dingo]

Meh, don't bother. Some people won't want to see any deeper into the issue than "LOL PIRACY IS TEH BAD!!!!"

Unfortunately I'm a hopeless optimist

So anyway, I've been mulling over some ideas for a while, and this one just struck me, half-formed, but not perhaps with promise:

There are a few caveats to begin with:  The first the artist that might try this would require some kind of following to start with, have a good friends with a decent home recording studio, or have saved enough to get recording done well through other means, and have realistic and plausible profit projections, the plan is thus:

Our plucky <independent artist/label> has got their debut album recorded, and a small army of fans hungry to hear it, how do they release it, I hear you cry?  With a kickstarter style donations setup, where the album is released for free, once a certain limit has been reached (donations still welcome though), with bonus extras doled out for people who donated more money.  The limit would probably be somewhere slightly above the production cost, which with a bit of hard-work and nepotism can be pretty low ($3300 anyone?).

Just thoughts,

Edd

p.s.  Amanda Palmer is a fucking hero of artist independence and self-promotion.

I saw on the bottom there that it was funded through Kickstarter, but there's a number of those in place. Indie-Go-Go is an exciting one.

Charlie has points, but there's also a need to recognise that commercial success of any sort is largely luck. Self promotion will become a larger and larger part of commercial music success. As yet though, it's ture that I haven't heard of anyone doing this successfully when they haven't already had a label back them (that said, the choice to say 'no' to a lable and continue self promotion may still be becoming more pragmatic).

Also this link is EXTREMELY relevent;http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html. It discusses FARTS, the term it uses to describe 'Forced Artificial Scarcity', that essentially artistic industries are in the position where one of there main jobs is to create/simulate a scarcity of things that can realistically spread and duplicate instantly.

[LMNO]

I have no idea how to feel about all this.

On one hand, our EP is going to end up costing us about $1,500.  Probably more.  It would really be nice if we could somehow make that money back.  But we won't.  We'll be giving these things away, most likely.

On the other hand, my default behavior when I hear a snippet of music I like is to see if there's a torrent.

Third hands in the ring, at this point I'm more interested in having a lot of people know about my music for free rather than a small amount of people deciding it's worth it to cough up some marginally small amount of cash that won't even begin to cover recording, production, and rehearsal space rent.

[Triple Zero]

Yeah. It's $1500 divided over how many people?

Thing is, it's not your job to record that EP, you're in a band, not in an EP-making company. If you were, you guys wouldn't have started playing music, going along, see where it ends up, and what do you know, an EP comes out. You did that for FUN, not profit. If you had set out with profit as a goal, well, you'd have made a business plan first, see how much you need to invest, or even get investors, and write up a plan on how you're going to get that money back, with profit. There's probably a whole lot of different ways to accomplish that, but it's very likely that the actual music you'd produce would have turned out a whole lot different than it does now. And you might have had have less FUN making it too, keeping an eye on the profit margins.

BTW this is not supposed to be an argument for or against copyrights (I'm a bit done with that discussion, having heard most of the points several times now), rather just some random thoughts on what LMNO just said.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I have no idea how to feel about all this.

On one hand, our EP is going to end up costing us about $1,500.  Probably more.  It would really be nice if we could somehow make that money back.  But we won't.  We'll be giving these things away, most likely.

On the other hand, my default behavior when I hear a snippet of music I like is to see if there's a torrent.

Third hands in the ring, at this point I'm more interested in having a lot of people know about my music for free rather than a small amount of people deciding it's worth it to cough up some marginally small amount of cash that won't even begin to cover recording, production, and rehearsal space rent.

Richard knows what he's doing though, so it's going to come out sounding really good. His prices aren't bad for the quality.

As for making the money back, you probably won't for any first pressing, but you could work out the price of the EP in such away that you make a good portion of it back, and recycle some of that money into a second pressing for further sales. Might take awhile, but it is possible to eventually break even. Maybe if you sell the CD at $5 a piece? I'd buy one.