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[Sowelu]

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-old-boss-full-post/

Summary:
- Guy has serious trustworthy cred
- Has lots of numbers to demonstrate the decline of artist income over the last ten years
- Solid refutations of numbers to the contrary
- Tons of interviewed small artists never recoup their recording costs
- Actively fighting file sharing during a new release is proven to increase sales
- Streaming stations are shady and barely pay out
- Social media has made it harder, not easier, to sell merch
- Under the old model, massively successful bands lost a big cut of profits, but tons of perfectly-good but less popular bands were initially funded by the recording industry
- Now, anyone trying to get into the game is stuck with nearly the same recording expenses as the old days but having to pay out of their own pocket at extreme risk
- Digital sales take a stupidly large cut
- "a la carte" song purchases means that, if a band spends time and money to produce a song that turns out less popular than others on the album, that investment is lost (instead of subsidizing the rest of the album when they are sold together)

Aside from a few one-off success stories, which are often one-man sensations with low production quality, the new digital distribution model has trashed the scene for new bands that are trying to move up from "amateur".  Weren't these the people that new media was supposed to help?

[ChairmanPoo]

I've seen data to the contrary as well, with the higher-up bands selling less but a good chunk of the lower ones selling more.

[Levi]

I believe it.

I don't think music (and comic books) has quite found its place in the digital world yet.  Its usually too pricey and inconvenient/restricted for a lot of people(like me) to buy digitally.

[ChairmanPoo]

Some related posts by Charles Stross

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/understanding-amazons-strategy.html

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/more-on-drm-and-ebooks.html

[GlyphGryph]

He says some stuff thats outright wrong, he says some stuff thats no more than unsupported conjecture, and he sounds kind of like a dick. But his point about recording artists having to front their own money to get into the game is the worst bullshit of all - thats ALWAYS been the case for the vast majority of bands - it's just that the reward for all that investment used to be seen primarily as an opportunity for a signing deal. One could argue they now have to invest each and every time, but they've always had to invest for the first go in order to convince a label to sign them.

Anyways, I'll have to go over it more in depth later, but I haven't actually spotted any good arguments for the current model being worse overall, yet. (Though worse for specific people will probably be likely)

For one: His rants that complete and unlimited control over copyright is a "constitutional and human right" made me laugh and laugh.

[Eagleon]

I believe it, but find it difficult to care. The music industry is just like the movie industry - massively bloated by unnecessary hangers-on, promotional efforts, temperamental popularity contests between fans and bands, and slowly shriveling distribution methods. More, they expect something I care about (the internet) to bend to their needs because they can't hire and pay everyone they used to at the same rate. QQ more Sony, basically. It may be an unpopular opinion because it puts a crunch on the bands, but the alternative disgusts me far more.

[ChairmanPoo]

He says some stuff thats outright wrong, he says some stuff thats no more than unsupported conjecture, and he sounds kind of like a dick. But his point about recording artists having to front their own money to get into the game is the worst bullshit of all - thats ALWAYS been the case for the vast majority of bands - it's just that the reward for all that investment used to be seen primarily as an opportunity for a signing deal. One could argue they now have to invest each and every time, but they've always had to invest for the first go in order to convince a label to sign them.
S
Anyways, I'll have to go over it more in depth later, but I haven't actually spotted any good arguments for the current model being worse overall, yet. (Though worse for specific people will probably be likely)

For one: His rants that complete and unlimited control over copyright is a "constitutional and human right" made me laugh and laugh.

Yeah, the agendaness was quite evident.

[GlyphGryph]

The numbers on decline in music revenues are bogus, I can give you that. The numbers are real, but what he says they MEAN is not. The study was only tracking the sale of physical albums, for one. And it was only tracking the sale of physical albums by the main music sellers, for two. And it has jack to do with revenues, as is claimed, which have actually risen consistently for the industry as a whole from every source I've seen.

And I think we can all see how using "physical album sales" as a stand in for "money people have made from music" might fall a bit flat in the 2000-2010 time span. -__-

Unfortunately, most of the studies you find are sponsored by the industry and fall apart as soon as you look at them hard enough. I haven't actually found ANY reliable numbers recently, so it could even BE bad, but we've got no way to know.

I mean, if we're going by random numbers as signifiers, lets go by vinyls!



Lookitdat, the music industry is doing AMAZING!

[Leafsnail]

- "a la carte" song purchases means that, if a band spends time and money to produce a song that turns out less popular than others on the album, that investment is lost (instead of subsidizing the rest of the album when they are sold together)

You know what?  This is a good thing.  If you make 1 good song and 11 bad ones that noone likes then you should receive the money for the 1 song rather than the 11 noone listens to.  That might encourage bands to make sure all of their songs are good and worth buying rather than trying to pad out their album.

IT IS MY CHOICE to decide which websites get to exploit my songs.   Like it or not, the right to control one’s intellectual property (like songs) is a constitutional right.  It is also part of every international human rights agreement.

Any ideas?  Reading over the UDHR (which would go under the subset of "every international human rights agreement") all I can find is:

Article 17.

    (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
    (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

It doesn't really define intellectual property though.  And article 19 is very interesting.

Article 19.

    Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

This would seem to directly contradict his "right to stop other people sharing information".

Anyone who knows more about the US constitution than me got any idea what his "constitutional rights" on this are?

[nenjin]

I like how this guy sourced fuck-all of the stats he provided.

[Gantolandon]

I especially like this fragment:

Like it or not, the right to control one’s intellectual property (like songs) is a constitutional right.  It is also part of every international human rights agreement. Technology company funded blogs that think there should be no song copyrights are actually advocating violating my constitutional and human rights!

Yeah, it appears now that copyright is not only ingrained in US Constitution, but is also a human right. Violating it makes you as bad as China!

[GlyphGryph]

Just in case someone wants to contrast the new way with the old way

Oh wow, I think that's actually where the numbers came from for the chart he disses (while bleeding his own bias, since it doesn't even claim to be 'record sales' - seriously, does this guy not realize that record sales are not the only metric of worth here? And then he says it must suck because it was made by a BASSIST. Hah.) And then he moves on to a bunch of hard numbers that he "heard" were true.

Hahah, the "poor victim indie movie maker" is a fucking dick. I can only imagine what sort of DMCAs they sent out, and wouldn't be surprised if they got posted to chilling effect. I'd post some quotes from his website, but he's used javascript to disable highlightly, right clicking and copy pasting to protect his "valuable words". Heh. Well, back to the original dude... Oh hey, he goes on to thank the... I guess it could be a girl, anyway, Ellen Seidler, for the help on the next section. I can't wait to see what it says.

[SirAaronIII]

The music industry was ever working?

[Duuvian]

If the industry succeeds in changing copyright law so that my songs are not protected from use by other musicians or their affiliated corporate masters none of you will ever hear my music until after I'm in my grave because I'll never share them after that with people who aren't in the same room as myself. I don't care if people listen to my songs for free but if they profit from selling or using them for their own productions without compensating me I swear once I find out I'm through being generous despite my poverty by sharing my beats for free which will of course destroy any chance of gaining recognition short of large advertising expenditures. Thus, the only route to compensation for my effort after this possible outcome is being servile to one of the institutions that manufactured the loss of my current rights as a musician and artist while claiming to be a champion for me.

[Agdune]

I should care (probably), but in total honesty I'm with Eagleon; the music industry doesn't have an implicit right to exist any more than any other industry. Did the world really suffer when blacksmithing stopped being the primary manufacturing industry? Did it become better when professional musicians started being able to afford rediculous luxuries and had an entire industry of media-manipulators spring up around them, as opposed to being glorified buskers who did it 'cause they enjoyed it? Don't really think so.

Furthermore, if you're going to be a private enterprise operating in a capitalist society, it reeks of hypocricy when you start demanding legislative change because you're finding yourself unable to turn a profit anymore. "a bloo bloo bloo, why money no come to me no more? Make new law for me everyone! ".

Imagine if other industries had the legal privileges that the music industry enjoys worldwide. 'Cinemas demand that manufacturing of "home theatres" cease in the face of continued declining revenues since the introduction of home-entertainment. Claim consumers no longer spend anywhere near as much of their income in cinemas as they did in the 30ies due to "public television" and excessive ability to lend each other videos to watch at home. Successfully lobbies government, resulting in the proposal of act 256346: that pictures longer than 15 minutes are prohibited by law from being shown within 500m of a residence.'

(I swear, I'll think up an analogy one day that doesn't muddy the water by walking directly into movie/music territory... thought I had one to do with rights to production of some hardware widget, but hell, I've been awake for 24 hours. Given my normal dependance on lots of sleep, I'm amazed I can even spell the word "music")