Graycap23 said:

Javi said:

Nothing is wrong with the recording industry. Many things are wrong with people who steal and download.

Did u type this with a straight face?

Actually, there are things wrong in the music industry, but, in my opinion, that doesn't justify what is happening and the behaviour of many people.

BlaqueKnight said:

Javi said:

Nothing is wrong with the recording industry. Many things are wrong with people who steal and download.

See the pattern there?

Technology will always change.

The industry will always blame its loss of profits on the "boogey men"/public and never accept responsibility for their own actions.

What company do you work for?

Funny that. That's like when you say you like pressed boots and they tell you that you're making propaganda for Eye Records or something.

By the way, to which gang of thieves do you belong?

Graycap23 said:

How did someone like Clive and Lovine get in CONTROL of Black music? I'm really puzzled by this.

When Shitney Houston weakened things and changed the formula of how it should be made.

badujunkie said:

vainandy said:

erykah and whitney are both the bomb.com and sold a fuck load of albums and won an armload of grammys it's not genre based it's the same principle as selling crackers. If people found out how to get cheez its and saltines for free grocery stores and nabisco would be out of business.

[Edited 11/7/11 15:10pm]

I shouldn't be laughing but I can't help it. I've thought the same thing for years but have been too nice to say it. It's not nice to generalize and use words like that because some of us are cool.

Javi said:

BlaqueKnight said:

See the pattern there?

Technology will always change.

The industry will always blame its loss of profits on the "boogey men"/public and never accept responsibility for their own actions.

What company do you work for?

Funny that. That's like when you say you like pressed boots and they tell you that you're making propaganda for Eye Records or something.

By the way, to which gang of thieves do you belong?

We are Legion, and we...are...MANY.

The record companies/industry are like slave masters and we, the artists, are the slaves, but voluntarily in most cases.

You want to support a major label artist these days? Steal the album and then go buy a ticket to their show when they come to your town.

[Edited 11/10/11 23:13pm]

guitarslinger44 said:

The record companies/industry are like slave masters and we, the artists, are the slaves, but voluntarily in most cases.

You want to support a major label artist these days? Steal the album and then go buy a ticket to their show when they come to your town.

[Edited 11/10/11 23:13pm]

Really? Do the artists get a fair share of the performance revenue? Just asking.

This has been an interesting thread. Thanks.

artist76 said:

guitarslinger44 said:

The record companies/industry are like slave masters and we, the artists, are the slaves, but voluntarily in most cases.

You want to support a major label artist these days? Steal the album and then go buy a ticket to their show when they come to your town.

[Edited 11/10/11 23:13pm]

Really? Do the artists get a fair share of the performance revenue? Just asking.

Not with new acts-A lot of them have to share revenue from concert tickets, merchandise, and even publishing with the label. Of course established acts do not have to share in this revenue stream.

The art's newspaper, the "Chicago Reader" wrote an article years ago about the culture and the people who made, exchanged, and traded music tapes / mix tapes in the greater metropolitan area. My brothers tapes have been found as far away as North Caroline and Colorado. The thing was, those tapes were never for sale... with the exception of sometimes the listener paying for cost of the blank tape. I said that to make this point.

Copyright infringement just didn't start with digital music. If you made tapes for friends, family or whomever than you were stealing. If you went to the library and copied the record /Cd to tape /Cd , then you were stealing. If you ever accepted a tape/Cd of music you didn't pay for, than you were stealing. If you came over to my home and said, "Trina, I want to get into Sarah Vaughan burn me a Cd or put some of her music on a flashdrive." I be damn if I'm pulling a law book off my shelves and quote you copyright infringement law." Less get real and stop pretending or lying that you've never infringed on copyright.

People have been copying music since the technology afforded us the ability to do so, this mess didn't happen in the last decade. NOW, because the record companies are no longer in control of their distribution, can no longer fix prices (which is illegal by the way) and digital stores made them bring back the single, and they no longer make money hand over fist, they wanna blame illegal downloading for their woes. Cry me a fuckin' river. That's not the problem.

Decades ago Timmy, BK, Tremolina, Tony, Andy, HotGritz or whomever would've been the same people in our tape mail-ring'; we would've been exchanging music and making tapes. The fact that many of use live miles away from each other doesn't matter once again, the technology affords us a way to share exchange music as always. I'm sorry but its too damn late and a bit hypocritical to backtrack and say, "Well this is different"? Really? How?

How stuck on stupid are these record companies? People have petitions up for artist/singers/musicians, begging these fools to make their music avaible for sale. In most instances these artist/singers/ musicians music can be found for free on the net, if you search. Duh, I think most people know this but they want to purchase the music. These dumbass can't count and realize artist who've had hundred of thousands of views on Youtube could possibly bring them in some revenue. Yet the music isn't available, sitting in a vault. Tho' its for free on the web.

Please.

--------------------------------------------------

[Edited 11/14/11 1:07am]

RodeoSchro said:

Kewlschool makes a very good point; several, in fact.

Another problem I see with the recording industry is the level of musical knowledge among our youth. Look at what each year's new crop of teens and young adults created from the 50's through the 80's. It's plain to see that everyone grew up on good, sophisticated songs and learned how to play them. Then they built from that.

But along came rap and Kurt Cobain. Suddenly, you didn't need to know a single thing about song construction. Heck, if you were a rapper, you didn't even need to know a single scale.

Unfortunately, grunge and rap hit big, and stayed big for years. So, a whole set of youngsters - today known as "Generation X" - grew up listening to incredibly simple music. It's no coincidence that a sophisticated musician like Prince could barely get on the radio in the '90's.

Nowadays, there is a little hope but it's all in country music. If you want to hear good melodies and rocking guitars, the only place for you is country music.

Rock is dead, and rap was...well, you can figure it out.

Very true, the artist is always the last to get paid and under pain at that

ayaya said:

RodeoSchro said:

Kewlschool makes a very good point; several, in fact.

Another problem I see with the recording industry is the level of musical knowledge among our youth. Look at what each year's new crop of teens and young adults created from the 50's through the 80's. It's plain to see that everyone grew up on good, sophisticated songs and learned how to play them. Then they built from that.

But along came rap and Kurt Cobain. Suddenly, you didn't need to know a single thing about song construction. Heck, if you were a rapper, you didn't even need to know a single scale.

Unfortunately, grunge and rap hit big, and stayed big for years. So, a whole set of youngsters - today known as "Generation X" - grew up listening to incredibly simple music. It's no coincidence that a sophisticated musician like Prince could barely get on the radio in the '90's.

Nowadays, there is a little hope but it's all in country music. If you want to hear good melodies and rocking guitars, the only place for you is country music.

Rock is dead, and rap was...well, you can figure it out.

Very true, the artist is always the last to get paid and under pain at that

Not true. Many artists, especially the established ones, are paid in advances. Plenty of them handsomely. So in fact, they are paid the first and without any pain.

TD3 said:

People have been copying music since the technology afforded us the ability to do so, this mess didn't happen in the last decade. NOW, because the record companies are no longer in control of their distribution, can no longer fix prices (which is illegal by the way) and digital stores made them bring back the single, and they no longer make money hand over fist, they wanna blame illegal downloading for their woes. Cry me a fuckin' river. That's not the problem.

Decades ago Timmy, BK, Tremolina, Tony, Andy, HotGritz or whomever would've been the same people in our tape mail-ring'; we would've been exchanging music and making tapes. The fact that many of use live miles away from each other doesn't matter once again, the technology affords us a way to share exchange music as always. I'm sorry but its too damn late and a bit hypocritical to backtrack and say, "Well this is different"? Really? How?

This is different because the scale and speed of the copying and public distribution is much, much greater. The need to go out and buy a legit CD has become practically extinct.

Also, in many countries record companies and music publishers are paid royalties for the sale of blank cassettes and CDr's. That's why they settled for that; they are being PAID for it.

Some countries now even grant them a royalty for the sale of computers. That could be a solution for the loss of revenue due to file sharing, but legally it's a very ugly duck.

The main problem, that still exists today, is that the industry hasn't released its music on the internet for music lovers to buy and download legally.

The only legal and popular alternatives today are owned by other companies (Apple and Amazon).

The industry failed.

[Edited 11/14/11 7:24am]

ManlyMoose said:

RodeoSchro said:

Kewlschool makes a very good point; several, in fact.

Another problem I see with the recording industry is the level of musical knowledge among our youth. Look at what each year's new crop of teens and young adults created from the 50's through the 80's. It's plain to see that everyone grew up on good, sophisticated songs and learned how to play them. Then they built from that.

But along came rap and Kurt Cobain. Suddenly, you didn't need to know a single thing about song construction. Heck, if you were a rapper, you didn't even need to know a single scale.

Unfortunately, grunge and rap hit big, and stayed big for years. So, a whole set of youngsters - today known as "Generation X" - grew up listening to incredibly simple music. It's no coincidence that a sophisticated musician like Prince could barely get on the radio in the '90's.

Nowadays, there is a little hope but it's all in country music. If you want to hear good melodies and rocking guitars, the only place for you is country music.

Rock is dead, and rap was...well, you can figure it out.

I agree with most of this. But rappers have a whole different skill from musicians to learn, they don't create songs in the conventional sense, its pretty much an entirely different artform. Also, Prince didnt get much airplay in the 90's because even though hes a sophisticated musician he pushed out some very mediocre songs.

This is just my opinion on Prince. I believe that his former band 'The Revolution' made him to the big successful star that he is. Without them, he would of had mediocre success. I noticed when he was having big issues with members of their band, and they disbanded, his music has become so mediocre, despite being a sophisticated musician. It's like Helen Fosade Adu without her band 'Sade'.

[Edited 11/14/11 8:46am]

Tremolina said:

TD3 said:

People have been copying music since the technology afforded us the ability to do so, this mess didn't happen in the last decade. NOW, because the record companies are no longer in control of their distribution, can no longer fix prices (which is illegal by the way) and digital stores made them bring back the single, and they no longer make money hand over fist, they wanna blame illegal downloading for their woes. Cry me a fuckin' river. That's not the problem.

Decades ago Timmy, BK, Tremolina, Tony, Andy, HotGritz or whomever would've been the same people in our tape mail-ring'; we would've been exchanging music and making tapes. The fact that many of use live miles away from each other doesn't matter once again, the technology affords us a way to share exchange music as always. I'm sorry but its too damn late and a bit hypocritical to backtrack and say, "Well this is different"? Really? How?

This is different because the scale and speed of the copying and public distribution is much, much greater. The need to go out and buy a legit CD has become practically extinct.

Also, in many countries record companies and music publishers are paid royalties for the sale of blank cassettes and CDr's. That's why they settled for that; they are being PAID for it.

Some countries now even grant them a royalty for the sale of computers. That could be a solution for the loss of revenue due to file sharing, but legally it's a very ugly duck.

The main problem, that still exists today, is that the industry hasn't released its music on the internet for music lovers to buy and download legally.

The only legal and popular alternatives today are owned by other companies (Apple and Amazon).

The industry failed.

[Edited 11/14/11 7:24am]

I know they made royalties off of blank tapes and Cd's but that revenue was and is nominal at best. That's why record companies for a minute tried installing software in their Cd's to prevent "burning", didn't work did it? In the US our Supreme Court ruled record companies could not gain royalites from computers or the hard drives with fixed music on it.... for computers aren't considered audio digital recording devices.

My point, record companies have turned a blind eye to music being copied because the made huge profits from their ability to fix the market. Besides they could do anything to stop then, just as the can't stop digital file sharing now. It's a tad late to start educating the public of the ends and out of copyright law or what is legal or illegal... depending on the laws of your respective country. So my questions were kinda rhetorical in nature because that's how so many see downloading from the net for free or sharing music with whomever. Or ripping video and/or music from Youtube.

I agree, the industry had failed on so many levels.

TD3 said:

Tremolina said:

This is different because the scale and speed of the copying and public distribution is much, much greater. The need to go out and buy a legit CD has become practically extinct.

Also, in many countries record companies and music publishers are paid royalties for the sale of blank cassettes and CDr's. That's why they settled for that; they are being PAID for it.

Some countries now even grant them a royalty for the sale of computers. That could be a solution for the loss of revenue due to file sharing, but legally it's a very ugly duck.

The main problem, that still exists today, is that the industry hasn't released its music on the internet for music lovers to buy and download legally.

The only legal and popular alternatives today are owned by other companies (Apple and Amazon).

The industry failed.

[Edited 11/14/11 7:24am]

I know they made royalties off of blank tapes and Cd's but that revenue was and is nominal at best.

Actually, they make a lot of money with those royalties, while they don't have to do a thing for it. Moreover, it has never been proven that "hometaping is killing music" (remember that one?) In fact, since the introduction of copying devices like cassettes and CDR's, music revenues have only risen.

However, filesharing is a different issue. There is no compensation for that sort of copying whatsoever and the scale and speed of it, is much, much greater, leading to greater loss of revenues.

That's why record companies for a minute tried installing software in their Cd's to prevent "burning", didn't work did it? In the US our Supreme Court ruled record companies could not gain royalites from computers or the hard drives with fixed music on it.... for computers aren't considered audio digital recording devices.

Most definitly copy protection measures did not work and WILL not work. However, computers CAN be used as "digital audio recording devices" and in most cases are in fact used as such, so that ruling doesn't seem so 'sound' (got a link btw?). In any case tho', it's not the way to go, because as soon as you start charging royalties over such materials, you do not just charge money from people and companies who do not infringe on your rights at all, you also undermine the exclusiveness of copyright itself.

My point, record companies have turned a blind eye to music being copied because the made huge profits from their ability to fix the market. Besides they could do anything to stop then, just as the can't stop digital file sharing now. It's a tad late to start educating the public of the ends and out of copyright law or what is legal or illegal... depending on the laws of your respective country. So my questions were kinda rhetorical in nature because that's how so many see downloading from the net for free or sharing music with whomever. Or ripping video and/or music from Youtube.

I agree, the industry had failed on so many levels.

Where do you see the solutions?

[Edited 11/14/11 11:18am]

dalsh327 said:

I don't think anyone should sign a contract where they don't get the master tape rights after 8 years and publishing ownership immediately.

Why do you think this? Not saying I disagree perse, but curious about your reasoning behind this. What about bands with multiple songwriters/perfomers entitled to a share in the copyright?

I think the record companies are going back to being artist advocates. Warners seems to have gone back to being artist advocates.

"Going back"? As if they ever truly were "artist advocates"?

Prince in 2011 would be able to do things on a laptop from his bedroom that Prince in 1977 needed studio time to do.

Ergo: thanks to technology, the costs of recording and releasing music have gone down substantially. Why then still charge the same (fixed) price?

[Edited 11/14/11 11:10am]

Tremolina said:

Ergo: thanks to technology, the costs of recording and releasing music have gone down substantially.

Not necessarily. Michael Jackson spent more on his later albums like History, than on earlier ones. Most acts don't make records in their bedroom. The same thing could be done in the past with cassettes or reel to reel tapes. It was technology that made studio time more expensive with multitracking and other later techniques. When albums were made with 2 or 4 track machines, everything had to be recorded live with all of the musicians and/or singers at the same time. The Beatles 1st album was recorded in 12 hours. Sgt. Pepper took months.

MickyDolenz said:

Tremolina said:

Ergo: thanks to technology, the costs of recording and releasing music have gone down substantially.

Not necessarily. Michael Jackson spent more on his later albums like History, than on earlier ones. Most acts don't make records in their bedroom. The same thing could be done in the past with cassettes or reel to reel tapes. It was technology that made studio time more expensive with multitracking and other later techniques. When albums were made with 2 or 4 track machines, everything had to be recorded live with all of the musicians and/or singers at the same time. The Beatles 1st album was recorded in 12 hours. Sgt. Pepper took months.

We are not talking about the Michael Jacksons and Beatles of this world.

guitarslinger44 said:

The record companies/industry are like slave masters and we, the artists, are the slaves, but voluntarily in most cases.

You want to support a major label artist these days? Steal the album and then go buy a ticket to their show when they come to your town.

[Edited 11/10/11 23:13pm]

I said this one day on some thread, and a legion of orgers cursed me out for it . Remember when Prince wrote 'slave' on the side of his face?

MickyDolenz said:

Tremolina said:

Ergo: thanks to technology, the costs of recording and releasing music have gone down substantially.

Not necessarily. Michael Jackson spent more on his later albums like History, than on earlier ones. Most acts don't make records in their bedroom. The same thing could be done in the past with cassettes or reel to reel tapes. It was technology that made studio time more expensive with multitracking and other later techniques. When albums were made with 2 or 4 track machines, everything had to be recorded live with all of the musicians and/or singers at the same time. The Beatles 1st album was recorded in 12 hours. Sgt. Pepper took months.

Wasn't it because of his beef with Sony, he had to pay a lot of out of pocket expenses, including promotion?

angel345 said:

guitarslinger44 said:

The record companies/industry are like slave masters and we, the artists, are the slaves, but voluntarily in most cases.

You want to support a major label artist these days? Steal the album and then go buy a ticket to their show when they come to your town.

[Edited 11/10/11 23:13pm]

I said this one day on some thread, and a legion of orgers cursed me out for it . Remember when Prince wrote 'slave' on the side of his face?

Yeah and it hadn't anything to do with style'. It's downright self absorbed and offensive to claim you are a 'slave' when you are paid millions a year. That said, Prince had good reasons to battle WB and many OTHER artists ARE in fact comparable to contemporary slaves. But they are so voluntarily, so it doesn't matter what kind of creative nonsense you can come up with.

Artists need to grow up first before they complain. Plain an simple.

angel345 said:

MickyDolenz said:

Not necessarily. Michael Jackson spent more on his later albums like History, than on earlier ones. Most acts don't make records in their bedroom. The same thing could be done in the past with cassettes or reel to reel tapes. It was technology that made studio time more expensive with multitracking and other later techniques. When albums were made with 2 or 4 track machines, everything had to be recorded live with all of the musicians and/or singers at the same time. The Beatles 1st album was recorded in 12 hours. Sgt. Pepper took months.

Wasn't it because of his beef with Sony, he had to pay a lot of out of pocket expenses, including promotion?

All suggestions, lies and manipulation. MJ overspent in an OUTRAGEOUS way. It was not for nothing that he had to ask help from some arab prince. Deal with the facts.

Tremolina said:

angel345 said:

I said this one day on some thread, and a legion of orgers cursed me out for it . Remember when Prince wrote 'slave' on the side of his face?

Yeah and it hadn't anything to do with style'. It's downright self absorbed and offensive to claim you are a 'slave' when you are paid millions a year. That said, Prince had good reasons to battle WB and many OTHER artists ARE in fact comparable to contemporary slaves. But they are so voluntarily, so it doesn't matter what kind of creative nonsense you can come up with.

Artists need to grow up first before they complain. Plain an simple.

I knew that was a stretch, but I understood the concept. Once you sign the contract, you are bonded to it. Be careful for what you sign, I'll say.

Tremolina said:

angel345 said:

Wasn't it because of his beef with Sony, he had to pay a lot of out of pocket expenses, including promotion?

All suggestions, lies and manipulation. MJ overspent in an OUTRAGEOUS way. It was not for nothing that he had to ask help from some arab prince. Deal with the facts.

I will not deny that he had a habit of overspending. That has been said for years. However, Sony financed and promoted hugely almost every album that he made. Why the change on the last two albums. I saw a video that he did in 2001, and he said the reason Sony was giving him hell was because he was about to become a free agent, and they didn't want to see him go. He made billions of dollars for Sony.

angel345 said:

Tremolina said:

Yeah and it hadn't anything to do with style'. It's downright self absorbed and offensive to claim you are a 'slave' when you are paid millions a year. That said, Prince had good reasons to battle WB and many OTHER artists ARE in fact comparable to contemporary slaves. But they are so voluntarily, so it doesn't matter what kind of creative nonsense you can come up with.

Artists need to grow up first before they complain. Plain an simple.

I knew that was a stretch, but I understood the concept. Once you sign the contract, you are bonded to it. Be careful for what you sign, I'll say.

You could be better say that it's time songwriters and recording artists band together to collectively bargain some decent and fair standard contracts.

angel345 said:

Tremolina said:

All suggestions, lies and manipulation. MJ overspent in an OUTRAGEOUS way. It was not for nothing that he had to ask help from some arab prince. Deal with the facts.

I will not deny that he had a habit of overspending. That has been said for years. However, Sony financed and promoted hugely almost every album that he made. Why the change on the last two albums. I saw a video that he did in 2001, and he said the reason Sony was giving him hell was because he was about to become a free agent, and they didn't want to see him go. He made billions of dollars for Sony.

There you go. He was the best selling artist in the world, under an extremely well paid, exclusive agreement with Sony. He tried to break it, they punished him for it. Both were wrong and stupid.

For the fun of it, a piece of the supreme court transcript of the hearing in the infamous Universal studios et al vs. Sony Betamax case.

MR. DUNLAVEY: Justice Marshall, when Mr. Kroft says that he wants the manufacturer of Betamax to be enjoined, he could not be more serious. When we were down in the district court, the court was asking him at the time he had finished his case and before the defense started — and I’m reading now. It says:

“You are not asking that Sony be enjoined from further manufacture of the Betamax, or are you?

And Mr. Kroft says: “Yes, I am.”

To be sure there was no misunderstanding, a little bit later the Judge said: “Let’s get back to the relief you are actually seeking. You say, one, you want an order prohibiting Sony from manufacturing Betamax?”

And Mr. Kroft says: “That is where we start.” Then he went on and he said: “We want to get all the Betamaxes that have been out on the market and we want to recall them and disembowel them so that they can no longer record off the air.”

And he’s not kidding. He wants that relief, which I suppose is within the injunctive power of the Court, and/or he wants $250 per infringement every time a homeowner copies one of his programs [i.e., Universal’s and Disney’s programs]. There’s no manufacturer in the world that can stand up to that kind of relief.

Now, it would be nice if there were a way of distinguishing in free off-the-air television what programs are free for copying without objection and what programs are not. But for the moment there isn’t. The VTR is inanimate. It can’t tell.

“If there are millions of owners of VTR’s who make copies of televised sports events, religious broadcasts, and educational programs such as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and if the proprietors of those programs welcome the practice, the business of supplying the equipment that makes such copying feasible should not be stifled simply because the equipment is used by some individuals to make unauthorized reproductions of respondents’ works.”

That was 1984.

And they still haven't learned a thing.