Sorry, that is my Trademarked slogan – please deposit 0.50 $US.
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BUT he distributed unlicensed copies of your trademarked slogan to every reader of this thread…shouldn’t you get like $10,000.00 minimum or something for damages and what not? 50 cents seems way to reasonable.
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That was so good that clicking “like” didn’t begin to express my satisfaction!
BTW in regards to note 7, I seem to recall that both SST and Alternative Tentacles had various dramas and perhaps lawsuits regarding their accounting and royalty payments.
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Thanks! I wish I had more time to write for TOM, over all it’s a great blog - everyone who writes there is super-smart and very good writers.
I think you’re correct, but I just had SST on the brain at the time, I think.
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So, you haven’t seen a lot of street performances then.
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mmmm, no, not really.
The argument that clifyt is referring to is, “you don’t pay me for three minutes, you pay me for 25 years of experience”. Which is why good plumbers make said salary, programmers, skilled craftspeople, etc. But the difference between a musician and a carpenter is the musician only gets a handful of hours a week versus other trades.
So it comes down to, " do you want to hear the 1812 overture with or without bells". Playing the bells takes a few minutes, playing second viola takes like a day to perform. But they both take equal investment upfront to learn and prepare for. So in classical music many times monetary compensation is divorced from hours playing, since hours playing at that point is a small part of the package.
To be blunt and crass, indie musicians and lay people tend to value the performance time they attend, while other types of musicians and artists value the investment to reach that level.
–edit–
Even simpler, you didn’t pay me for three hours, you paid me to show up for a max of three hours. This isn’t all that different than any other job I’ve had–if you are a sales person and aren’t salary, are you really selling every hour?
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As I heard it: “I don’t get paid for what I do. I get paid for what I know.”
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Yep, and while I disagree with many (not necessarily clifyt, we just met ;D) that to be a professional you must demand certain things, I am generally an advocate of pay-for-performance. Under the guidelines that a performance takes a village, and striking out on your own and taking risks doesn’t kick you out of the access (I.e. professional or union) club.
My opinions, not gospel.
Their real fundamental precept still seems to be self importance, a good litmus test of which is the single letter word (or a contraction modifying it) that almost always opens any written piece by either of them. It’s not really about not being “owned”, so much as not wanting to be mistaken for being beside the point in any issue.
For further support, start counting the times this word appears at the beginnings of the rest of their following sentences.
Oh, sorry some women aren’t making their entire lives all about others. God forbid a woman talk about herself and her experiences and her views… clearly, these are terrible people who must be stopped.
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Any other straw man arguments?
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I’m still not sure yet what I think about crowd funding, but I do know what I think about a fringe artist declaring herself to be a “rockstar” as if there’s no doubt that’s what she enters on a tax return: asinine.
Thanks for stopping by to let us know your strong feelings about Amanda Palmer.
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A “fringe performer” who can raise a million dollars from her fans to make a record is doing better than many rock stars.
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You might try caring more about what you call yourself, and much much less about what others call themselves.
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Perhaps a good functional definition of a professional musician would be one who makes a majority of their income via musical production/performance?
I suppose being in a union isn’t a pre-requisite per se, but I think I see what you are getting at. A professional attaches terms to their services which will sustain their practice.
There is of course always amateurs who wish to present and label themselves as professionals. Especially with something as emotionally palpable as one’s creative work, there are people who will insist they are pros no matter what.
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Music is a whole heck of a lot older than the current industry. Older than money, writing, and depending on your definitions, older than humanity, too. So yeah, creative will survive. The questions are how much, how well, etc., and on that front the industry is almost completely irrelevant already, and puts out maybe a few dozen good artists a year, because only big hits matter.
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If you want to argue semantics, fine, but one becomes a rockstar…one can’t simply declare it and make it so. David Bowie, Robert Plant, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney…these are rockstars, and earned the appellation. And all kinds of people are raising money via crowd funding, a phenomenon which is largely a fad. In fact, I doubt Palmer would consistently be able to raise so much money. Going to that trough too often would no doubt cause even more blowback anyway. Not to mention that Palmer herself describes herself as “culty” and “fringe”.
