Arrington On Copyright: Wrong
whydoeseverythingsuck.com
whydoeseverythingsuck.com
"Third, if the recorded music industry goes down, concert sales will not grow – they will shrink"
Also wrong and with no reasons why he believes this. The record industry and the concert promotion industry are separate yet complementary industries. The loss of the record industry will almost certainly have no huge effect on the concert industry.
I'll be honest I stopped reading at the end of that paragraph.
Also you may not have said the arctic monkeys give away their music, but you were refuting my article, and my point is about giving away music on the internet. So if we are not discussing giving away music, then you are not really being responsive to the subject of the article and your disagreement is seemingly misguided.
specifically, the relevant paragraph is as follows:
"Second, there is no evidence at all that free music on the Internet is an effective (i.e. successful career building) marketing tool. There have been no blockbuster successes that have come from, for example Garageband availability. I don't think you could even count more than a handful – if that – Internet-based artists making a living from music."
The arctic monkeys are not "internet based" and they certainly are not giving away their music.
With a limited number of CDs available, fans began to rip the music back onto their computers and share it amongst themselves. The group did not mind, saying "we never made those demos to make money or anything. We were giving them away free anyway — that was a better way for people to hear them. And it made the gigs better, because people knew the words and came and sang along."
Plenty of bands make a decent wage just by touring lots. To say no one does implies that you think of the music industry as only the top 0.01% of megabands. Unless you're a megaband negotiating an awesome contact odds are you will make most of your money from touring not CDs.
hmmm... good luck with that.
"The loss of the record industry will almost certainly have no huge effect on the concert industry."
Name a successful touring artist that has not had a successful, label based, recording career.
1) What other options you had in the past sharing and selling your music than joining a record company?
2) If you're successful artist, why wouldn't you have a label? Labels would pay millions upfront and help you with everything. It's easy money, like an exit, even it hurts you in the long run. Probably most artists are not interested in building a business.
We usually forget that artists actually get their fame without labels, but labels are pretty good and quick luring these potential artists in. Who knows what would happen if so many artists didn't take their exists.
I would say that many DJ:s are quite successful and touring artists, even they don't usually have labels behind them. Ofc they are not mainstream. You really cannot be the next Rolling Stones, since internet and other options has been around just for few years. You have to remember that copyrights and labels history is aswell relatively short.
In Finland, Poets of the Fall are still independent, and got their fame over internet and/from there playing a title song in Max Payne. I think Jonathan Coulton has build his music over internet and got featured in Portal.
You're looking at it the wrong way, in the current world popular bands get signed to labels so pretty much all major touring bands will be signed to a major label. It doesn't however mean that an absence on labels will kill touring since the labels for the most part aren't into touring. It's another set of companies that handle that.
Labels create band demand. Concert promoters do not. I promise you this is causation and not correlation. People go see shows because they have the record and know the band. I am sure you have never gone (willingly) to see a show from a band whose music you didnt already have and/or or know pretty well. The band marketing (the label) created the market environment for you to know and like their music. People do not go see artists because they saw some add in a local paper advertising an artist. It doesnt happen. Promoters only provide awareness so that if you are a fan you will know that this band you like is in town.
I have actually gone to lots of concerts where I had no clue who the band was as have many people I know. Most cities have a pretty active live music scene with lots of people who will go to just about any show they can, and those people start spreading the news.
Also getting rid of the labels removes nothing at all except for mass commercial cd distribution. Even then I doubt the online music stores would disappear since a lot of people will pay for the convenience.
I am not sure how, other than expressing that, that I can explain this. This is not really a judgment issue but about explaining the dynamics of an existing market. If you would prefer to believe that I don't know what I am talking about that is fine. But at minimum I would suggest, if you are really interested in how artists today become successful that you do a little independent (and therefore not tainted by my bias) investigation from people that are really in the biz. The funny part is that there really is nothing to argue about here. No one in music will tell you that concert promoters create demand for artists. It feels a little surreal to even be arguing the point.
First, what is with the "music goes down"-statement. Arrington just said that "a new era of free recorded music and paid live performances is a very good thing". Lots of things are free and still up and running (eg. this site, tv, radio..).
"Second, there is no evidence at all that free music on the Internet is an effective". Ok, but there is. Next.
"Third, if the recorded music industry goes down, concert sales will not grow – they will shrink." There is no evidence that it would happen like this. First, marketing efforts results are usually hard to measure. Second, cleary marketing isn't the only thing, or even the most important thing on creating demand. It's the music.
If we get back to the original Youtube-Viacom case, what's the harm if you watch some clips of the Office from Youtube? It isn't like you were going to buy the dvdbox, just for watching it at work while sipping your coffee, but you might buy it afterwards, because it got your attention again.
Ok, I understand that Viacom has the copyrights, and Youtube is making money of them. This dispute, as many others, isn't about ethics, morale, downgrading our culture, terrorism or ripping of the artists. It's just about money. You can even watch South Park for free on their own site
He forgot "Ow, My Balls", I think.
Seriously though, I think live music and recorded albums are actually disconnected and septate products. What will happen is that there will be no more soccer moms going to $100 million dollar REO Speedwagon reunion tours and instead there will be a resurgence in small venue, local music scenes."Pop" music as we know it today, when it becomes a free commodity, will be seen by most people as a product for children.
This can be good because although there will be no more "Madonnas", hundreds of smaller acts will take her place and offer much more variety. I can't wait.
The rights afforded artists under copyright laws are not natural rights, but were created for the specific purpose. If that purpose is no longer served by these laws then they should be eliminated.
It is a federal crime now to take a camera into a movie theater. You can receive jail time for this. When will the insanity stop?
There are no such thing as "natural rights" - only rights that we as society agree are beneficial. IP rights are no different than the rights for you to own your shoes or your house. They are just social contracts.
The other platform that can be explored is creative commons. Licensing under creative commons and sharing content freely with the support of some kind of revenue generation is one of the best option (i think).