How are they going to charge people with a crime that wasn’t illegal at the time of offence?

vinnyeh – Member
The vast majority of musicians are getting paid less Jimjam.
I have a hypothesis that their revenue streams have altered slightly- the majority of income for most artists will come from performances. Record companies may be hurting, yes, artists less so. Tthere’s the old argument that giving away the music is more than compensated in ticket sales.

I semi frequently see musicians explaining how this really isn’t the case. In fact I saw this one yesterday, from an American Musician, Jim White:

So I’m about to do this Irish tour, right? And I’m hoping some folks will come to the shows. And some people not in Ireland will ask why I don’t tour more in their area, particularly when I grouse a lot here on Facebook about the plummeting value of my work in the marketplace due to illegal downloading and microscopic fragments of royalty payments via Spotify and Pandora and such. Quite often people—smart people—suggest artists like me should just go out on the road and tour more and make loads of money that way.

Well, guess what? The music business is a business just like any other business, and when one revenue stream dries up, the nearest possible stream is overrun by any and all participants in that business paradigm. So when I go out on the road, particularly here in the US, I am greeted with wall to wall amazing artists who, like me, often play to nearly empty rooms. From current indie darlings to the countless darlings from various alternative music epochs, like Dinosaur Jr., Garbage, Sun Volt, Hayden, Blitzentrapper, Boston etc. etc, everyone is out there on the road touring, trying to make a living, but most are NOT making pile of money on the road.

And because the road is crawling with quality acts, it’s important to put together a good show–right? You can’t half ass it. Last time I toured in the US I took out a modest three piece band and we toured the northeast (typically a strong market for me) and after 3 weeks, despite being incredibly frugal, I was four thousand dollars in the hole. So I was losing a thousand dollars a week to have the privilege of driving 300 miles a day, staying in dive motels with bed bugs and crack heads in the next room, to play a show to a handful of lovely, devoted fans. After one such show I realized I could have just sent each person in attendance $100 and saved myself the trouble.

Which brings me to this tour poster (which someone sent me last year and which I may have posted previously) and looking at the line up for just this short span of time listed there you find amazing band after band playing this venue. And it’s that way all over.

Last time I played in New York Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle were also playing shows that same night. Plus a bunch of lesser luminaries. So who’s gonna come see me? 35 people did, most of whom were old friends who I cajoled into coming.

And it’s not just musicians. I spoke to a promoter last year in Virginia who guaranteed Al Stewart, who was a huge star in the 70’s with his hit record Year of the Cat, a cool four grand to play his large venue there. The promoter only needed 150 people to show up to cover his out of pocket. When show time came his audience numbered not in the hundreds, not even in the tens. There were four people there when Al Stewart hit the stage.

So please friends of music, understand, we aren’t making up this story of vanishing livelihoods, times are real hard for musicians, and until some kind of legislation is put in place that protects the intellectual property of musicians, like the royalty system that was developed pre internet, then we are truly living up to the title of “starving artist”.

So wish me luck in Ireland. I’ve got a good feeling about this particular junket, thanks in great part to solid advance work by the promoter, who is making virtually nothing on the deal and basically doing this as a labor of love. Thanks Willie Meighan!

Suicide Squad – well there’s no accounting for taste!

How do you know?

How are they going to charge people with a crime that wasn’t illegal at the time of offence?

Civil offence innit. Think it has always been?

cba…

ChrisL

I semi frequently see musicians explaining how this really isn’t the case. In fact I saw this one yesterday, from an American Musician, Jim White:

No offence to Jim White (whoever he is) but does the fact that he is a musician mean he is entitled to a wage, or a fan base? Does this entitlement extend to artists in other mediums like painters, sculptors, poets, photographers etc?

Just out of curiousity I checked Jim’s FB page and I see he has almost 5000 followers. For comparison’s sake I looked at Mastodon, a band who are relatively obscure (in terms of mainstream appeal) and they have almost 1 million. So I went way down the list of bands I follow and at the bottom of the pile most still had 20-30,000 followers, we’re talking really obscure instrumental metal…and they still had full touring schedules. A lot of these bands publish their own stuff, and share it for free through mediums like Bandcamp.

I used to pirate music because I refused to pay iTunes the same price as hard copy for just the limited rights to play it. you didn’t own the download and iTunes can remove it from your system if they want.

When spotify came along I joined and I pay – its the only subscription I have to anything – why because its a reasonable cost ( indeed I’d pay more) and it allows the artist to at least get something for their work

the internet and charging for stuff on it is still very much in its early days and I believe things will become more sustainable in the medium to long term. I believe the current situation is unsustainable longterm for all sorts of Media and will change but how is hard to predict.

I also remember when cassettes became popular and that was to be the death of music as we could copy albums. It didn’t happen

Reading the Jim White article: wall to wall amazing artists who, like me, often play to nearly empty rooms.

Must be down to the size of the US. (or these amazing artists are booking themselves into too large venus!) I see loads of new artists/bands and hardly ever are they in “empty rooms” (more’s the pity!)
Jacques Greene on Monday night in Brighton – probably 40-50 people there, nice small venue, perfect sized crowd for the room. No merch on sale, so he must be doing ok.

So the conclusion we’re coming to is that the industry is remaining fine by screwing the artists more?

So the conclusion we’re coming to is that the industry is remaining fine by screwing the artists more?

No, but surely that’s between the parties to figure out the correct deals.

However downloading without permission/payment hardly is the answer.

How do you know?

I’ve seen it. Shoot me. Although the warnings signs were there.

And no you haven’t already paid really. Do you pay twice for different visits to KFC?

I’ve seen it. Shoot me. Although the warnings signs were there.

Baffling. My taste is bad cos I’ve seen the same film as you? Hairy muff.
And no you haven’t already paid really
I have.
Do you pay twice for different visits to KFC?
My taste isn’t that bad.

All it needs is a change in legal precedent to open the flood-gates for lawyers to pursue anyone who has ever downloaded somebody else’s IP. If you’ve ever done it, your IP address is sitting in a lawyers database somewhere.

Except, unless they have access to an NSA or social media database – good luck IP matching customers from a decade ago. ISP’s kicked off about having to retain that data for a year let alone that long.

Meanwhile in the US, They record, collect and sell your browsing data as a matter of principle now…..

As David Lightman famously said, there’s ways around that.

ways around what?

How are they going to charge people with a crime that wasn’t illegal at the time of offence

I’m sure Ian Duncan Smith with fill you in about retrospective legislature, after he managed just that when in charge of the DWP.
Edit he did get bummed by the high courts though

http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/iain-duncan-smiths-retroactive-workfare.html?m=1

Edit he did get bummed by the high courts though

Yup in other words. It didn’t happen.

ways around what?

It was a reply to the comment directly above mine.

http://www.stereogum.com/1678835/steve-albini-thinks-the-internet-solved-the-problem-with-music/news/

This is clearly unsustainable, those who create and produce music and support the structure behind it need to be paid what it’s truly worth, which isn’t happening in the grass-roots area of music.

Good way of weeding out all those that’re in it for the money. Then you’re left with the people who create music because they want to, just like humans have done forever, before money even existed.

I used to pirate music because I refused to pay iTunes the same price as hard copy for just the limited rights to play it. you didn’t own the download and iTunes can remove it from your system if they want

Source? Of course you own the download, you’ve paid for it just as you would a CD.
And I’ve never heard of iTunes removing music deliberately, although I believe Amazon can arbitrarily remove ebooks from the Kindle/app.
Yes, this can happen: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/05/06/apple-music-deletes-users-entire-library—heres-how-to-stop-it/
but it’s not a deliberate and malicious act.

Source? Of course you own the download, you’ve paid for it just as you would a CD.

The argument is/was you have leased it not bought it.

I’ve never heard of iTunes removing music deliberately,

Nor me. I think the point was that they “could.”

I’ve never heard of iTunes removing music deliberately,
Nor me. I think the point was that they “could.”

It has happened for TV shows/movies I think – I’ve seen a few threads on macrumors about it. (link)

People buy a film/tv show then stream rather than download it. Then in a year they want to watch it again, but can’t because the studio/distributor/whatever has a new deal for back-catalog access. It;s even worse if you move between counties.

not an issue for me as I rent from iTunes these days

Good way of weeding out all those that’re in it for the money. Then you’re left with the people who create music because they want to, just like humans have done forever, before money even existed

This is pretty black and white. These people want/need to earn a living, that doesn’t make them ‘in it for the money’.

I also remember when cassettes became popular and that was to be the death of music as we could copy albums. It didn’t happe

Cassettes are not Spotify/illegal streaming. Incomparable. Because, as you say, they didn’t destroy the business model. Digital services do.

Please link to some data that shows the business model has been destroyed. As i previously posted, music industry growth in UK outpaced the average.

Whatever happened to that court case in the US with iTunes? some actor or someone wanted to leave thier iTunes collection to his son in a will, but apple said no, the rights to the downloads die with the original downlader.

Please link to some data that shows the business model has been destroyed.

OK, when you link to evidence of artists being taken on by labels, nurtured and supported through early releases and being paid sensible amounts of money in the process.

music industry growth

What are you counting as ‘growth’?

This is clearly unsustainable, those who create and produce music and support the structure behind it need to be paid what it’s truly worth, which isn’t happening in the grass-roots area of music.

Maybe it isn’t actually worth what they want it to be

Maybe it isn’t actually worth what they want it to be

It was always the case that some artists’ material didn’t become massively profitable, and they would be dropped. But record companies could afford to keep investing in new talent, knowing that the revenue from successful artists would repay that investment. There was a big motivation to keep looking for, finding and nurturing talent, including putting them on a payroll until the big album came along.

Revenue streams now work differently, and no longer seem to support such investment in new talent.

This is pretty black and white. These people want/need to earn a living, that doesn’t make them ‘in it for the money’.

Coming from a family of professional musicians and witnessing how the music industry is mostly a collection of utterly narcissistic cockwombles – I’m not sure I care?

Times change, revenue streams dry up, like they did for the miners – the music industry needs to move on.

What are you counting as ‘growth’?

Probably Adele selling eleventyzillion albums.

Acts don’t make shit from record sales, relatively speaking, but they do make money for playing live, if they can actually play live to a reasonable standard, that is. why do you think the likes of AC/DC etc have all thier own road gear and lighting, busses
and crew etc?

Here you go DK:

Measuring Music Report

“MUSIC’S £4.1 BILLION CONTRIBUTION TO THE UK ECONOMY IN 2015.

OVER THE PAST FOUR YEARS THE UK MUSIC INDUSTRY HAS OUTPERFORMED THE UK ECONOMY IN TERMS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH – WHILE THE UK GDP GREW BY 10% BETWEEN 2012 AND 2015, THE MUSIC INDUSTRY’S CONTRIBUTION TO GDP INCREASED BY 17% OVER THE SAME TIME PERIOD.”

So the industry seems to be doing well in recent years according to that report. The industry doing well is obviously not the same thing as the artist doing well.
If the artists are suffering then surely it’s to do with the industry screwing the artists, not the consumer who is contributing more to music than before.

I’d welcome some earlier data on what industry revenues were like since the late 90’s . Then you might see if internet based distribution had an effect.

I think the industry as a whole has used the shift in distribution model to generate more profit whilst screwing the artist. Obviously that’s a generalisation, as small players like indie labels may not have and bigger artists may have done better.

Yeah, I suppose I was thinking more about the quality of output than the financial bottom line.

All modern music sounds rubbish to me and it doesn’t feel like the industry has the talent, creativity and diversity (or energy) it once did. I don’t have any dodgy stats to back that up. But I think this is the key point:

The industry doing well is obviously not the same thing as the artist doing well.

If the artists are suffering then surely it’s to do with the industry screwing the artists, not the consumer who is contributing more to music than before.

I subscribe to Spotify, so I am part of the problem – but I wonder if we (as consumers and music fans) should really take more responsibility than that, cancel our subscriptions/download habits, and go out and actually buy the music we want to play on CD or vinyl. That way, we are supporting artists, not taking the piss and supporting a model we know doesn’t repay them.

mattyfez – it was Bruce Willis wanting to leave it to his daughters

go out and actually buy the music we want to play on CD or vinyl

I was under the impression that bands don’t make a lot from record sales; all the breakages, etc come from their cut?

I subscribe to Spotify. That’s £15 a month going into the music production/distribution system that would have been previously as I was never a big buyer of CDs.