I'll do whatever I can to support content creators.
Does that make it OK for artists to get 2.34% of what listeners pay for the music they make? Or does it make TechDirt's figures wrong? If so, how?
> Or were you not paying for anything already, and then came across that info which now justified your position?
I am not striking, but I agree with everything s/he wrote. And, as it happens, I do pay for all the music and video and software I acquire. So it is simply not true that holding the opinions s/he expressed is always a rationalization for not liking to pay for things.
(And: do you actually have any evidence that striking pirates things rather than paying for them? Or do you just assume that anyone who takes a position opposing yours must be a pirate?)
TPP/TTIP/RECP leaks suggest the criminalization of non-commercial copyright infringement, where prosecution will be possible even if the copyright holder does not want to prosecute, e.g. fanzines.
Can we develop a payment mechanism which moves funds from audience to artist for virtual goods, with no exchange of music (which can be obtained on any channel), but which provides a non-forgeable "protection from being prosecuted"? This would return control to the artist.
Unbundle the music license payment from music delivery payment.
The reason labels have such high overheads is the same as for movie studios . They subsidise a lot of non-Taylor Swifts music that don't end up being profitable. The costs of the failures end up impacting the profits of the successes. The flip side is - lots of artists get studio time and songwriting time even if they haven't already proven themselves.