Man, y'all are still dissin' Napster? Even after Limp Bizkit gave it the
official seal of approval? OK, it's history lesson time.
Back in the day, (the Mozart day) how did a musician make money? He wrote a
piece of music and sold it, one time, to a publisher. (Or, in the case of
Beethoven, he'd give the same piece a couple of different names and sell it
to different publishers... tricky bastard.) You could also give concerts and
performances, etc, teach, or work in church or for a court, but that was it.
This is why the musicians of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, for
instance, are so much more prolific than the musicians today. You can fit
everything Lennon and McCartney wrote on a handful of CD's, but you'll be
lugging home two 3'x3' crates of CD's if you want the collected works of
Mozart.
Now, when recordings were invented, the Europeans got the idea that they
hurt musicians, which they do. Back in the day, live music was the only
music, so, recordings put musicians out of work.
Hence, ASCAP was born. 1913, I believe, on a tip from opera composer
Puccini. Soon, composers expected to get paid every time one of their pieces
was played, more or less.
Now, here's a quiz question... We all want musicians to get paid, correct?
Well, how exactly do record companies help? Answer? They DON'T. Record
companies view musicians as a (barely) necessary EVIL in their money making
enterprise.
Record companies opposed radio, (till they found out it helped them.) They
opposed cassette tape. They opposed DAT tape. They oppose recordable CD's,
Napster, and everything that prevents THEM from making money. They don't
CARE about the music, they care about the MONEY. Plain and simple.
Someone says 4 Hero couldn't do what they do without record company support.
But I say without record company INTERFERENCE, it'd be EASY to do what they
do, that is, if you had the chops to do it.
CNN had a thing about Napster yesterday, and they interviewed various
musicians. It can best be summed up as the "Law of the 2 Johns" and says
just about everything we need to know about this subject.
Q: What do you think of Napster?
Jon Bon Jovi: "I think they're theives and they should be prosecuted."
cut to John Scofield... same question.
"I think it is really great for collectors and music lovers."
Ok, there you have it. Jon Bon Jovi is a corporate WHORE who has made WAY
TOO MUCH money, especially when you compare his... talents... relatively
speaking, with those of Sco's.
But Bon Jovi represents the RECORD COMPANY. "There's not enough money."
Scofield represents the MUSIC LOVER. "There's not enough good music."
Hey, check it out musicians.... the war is over, and the record companies
haven't even loaded their guns yet. The internet is the way.
Guys like Dirk are still in a position to get paid, though, because we
cannot be spending all our time listening to everybody's MP3's.
Soon, it'll all be digital; Artists will submit tracks to net "wherehouses"
who will specialize by genre. The distributor will say, "Come to my site,
I've weeded through the crap, and I've got the hot hot music, the hot
music." You'll listen to 2 or 3 minute samples, decide to buy, and whoosh,
download it for a fee.
The musician gets paid... the MP3 "scout" - warehouser gets paid... and the
record company exec? Back to the used car lot where he belongs.... (He
didn't really like all that loud noise anyway...)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Apr 27 2000 - 05:23:19 MET DST