* Posts by buzz

5 publicly visible posts • joined 16 May 2010

Daddy, what's 'P2P file sharing'?

buzz

Re: Really?

It's not that simple.

Getting ripped off by the record company would be fine to complain about if was really happening. However, in my experience, that's old news, and to a large extend promulgated by the large performers who actually used it as leverage to get a deservedly larger share of the profits back in the days of vinyl. For a while there. the capital startup, distribution and promoton costs were very high and it took lots of sales before different numbers made sense.

These numbers don't persist now because of performers getting ripped off, they come from the associated residual costs in the system and crappy revenue. (For example, you have to hire lawyers to get folks to pay performance royalties.) There's also the problem of oversupply for the market (more musicians than people wanting to hear music). The majority of people who buy music don't seem to want anything but the SOS. Interestingly, this is in sharp contrast to the diversity of what is available. So the big guys do OK and everyone else starves.

But don't believe me - talk to people in this business and ask them about this. Go to a bar for a touring indie band with some good recordings and ask them about their finances. There's now a phenomenon in Japan rapidly moving the US called pay-to-play. In this route live performers must pay venues to perform and only earn revenue beyond the "investment" payment.

What's this got to do with piracy? It is not responsible for these trends, but as I said above, it makes everything much worse.

buzz

Re: Really?

My response was directed to those people that were blaming the excess of some musician's behavior as a reason to justify their actions.

Yes, there was a huge flaw in the system prior to the advent of digital distribution which continues today. Piracy is not responsible for the current musician's plight but it has made it much. much worse. While smaller musicians can cut out the middle man and distribute to listeners directly, they seldom have the power to collect radio station royalties, other play based royalties, and other unauthorized use (like use in a political advert!) for which they are the rightful recipients; as well as promote over large marketing demographic areas. These little royalties can add up to about $2 - 3K in revenue for a small genre hit. That's what keeps song writers eating. The attitude that it's OK to freely distribute gets extended to these small groups trying to make a go at it on their own and they suffer too, even though they are trying to play outside that ecosystem.

In all but the largest performers, there is so little money to be made in recordings that the pressure is on to make a living through performing live. That's why ticket prices for shows have skyrocketed and now tend to resemble broadway productions. Much of the profit from small shows now comes form selling the associated merchandise it's gotten so bad.

Before recordings, musicians were paid primarily for performance. With the advent of recording, it's always cheaper to play a recording than to hire live musicians. That is what's driving these trends. Piracy is making it happen much faster. There will always be music, there is going just be less of it performed live. Thinking portrait painting and photography.

buzz

Really?

Wow...I find these comments really depressingly uninformed and the ire misdirected. So much so that I need to seriously reply. I don't know how much of the writing is sarcasm, but I reply none the less.

I've had several jobs in my life including musician, hardware engineer, and software engineer. My opinions are based upon my personal experience.

If you think musicians make more money than software engineers, you are seriously misinformed.

The performance royalties for playing on a CD (if you can get them) are about 5% total. Split among all performers. In a typical five piece band you make 1%. That's one of the reasons for a decrease in band size.

The song writing royalties are also about 5%. Split among all the writers.

You do the math. It takes a lot of sales to actually make a living doing this. Most just scrape by.

If you are a studio musician you get no royalties only per session - flat or hourly fees. In the US plumbers, electricians, basically almost anyone else makes more.

Most performers who play for performance royalties do not receive advances. This is like writing software or fixing code and only getting paid if someone uses it.

These royalties are less for digital releases (and of course given the conversation here and everywhere else, easily avoided completely).

Musicians were largely amateur unless supported by a patron, like most artists, until the the middle class started to develop (somewhere around 1700-1800). We are rapidly heading back to that time. To be a decent musician requires hours of practice relative to performance; easily a ratio of >20 to 1. This means that your hourly rate of $20 per hour is more like $1 per hour. If you don't believe me, follow the amount of money in this business. It's decreasing year upon year. Or try to learn to play or sing something and make a living doing it.

There are some very successful musicians just like there are some very successful software engineers. Characterizing an industry based upon these folks to rationalize your own ethical choice is pretty lame imo. Would that all coding that you do be free as well for those that don't want to pay for it (including any hourly fees or salary you might make)?

I don't like the idea of rebuying my releases when the distribution medium changes either, so I don't. But most many companies now issue multiple vinyl/digital releases. CDs don't matter as they're digital anyway. Ripping from You Tube? Sure if that's the only way that a song is available. But to avoid paying someone for their work? Doesn't work for me.

This witch-hunt will hurt Adobe more than Apple

buzz

Why is Apple's business somehow everybody else's all of the time?

II find it very interesting that Apple, who has championed for years the idea of computing devices as appliances, gets flack for wanting to control their own products. This is simply the same types of behavior that Microsoft and Adobe legitimately and regularly engage in, with the difference being that in their cases in specific areas, this actually represents real monopolies, at least under the definitions of US law. I can't see how all of you believe that Apple is a monopoly of anything, except perhaps profitability in this decaying business. Don't call me a fanbois, but I am a fan of profitable business models. Apple spends far less than MS as a percent of sales on their research, but seems to be able to figure out what whole market segments want. And I have to say that recent success by Apple has spurred impressive improvement in MS products through competition - we all win.

Adobe is simply panicking, because they see a future that might not involve them, or require their products in an area that they previously thought was sewn up and in which they are not forced to directly compete in.

When they began, their products were highly innovative. These days, I wouldn't be too surprised if they spend more on their DRM then they do on their products. I recently had a ThinkPad go bad on me. It took me three hours, and many long phone calls to reinstall a copy of Acrobat! And then they had the nerve to tell me that I'm allowed only one hardware failure per year! All this with perfectly good backups - even MS Office reinstalled without any problems whatsoever.

I don't know about you, but this model is very, very wrong.