Here in the US, you can join the AFM. They will back you on this sort of stuff. My recent ex is in a leadership role with our local…but that’s because her being a principle with the symphony and representing a group of musicians requires it. Sadly, it is almost always symphony and broadway people I hear of being in the union these days…
It takes months or years to shift a law and laws are not necessarily consistent across nations, and that includes copyright. Show me any piece of legislation that’s easy to pass in Congress that doesn’t involve funding some bullshit fighter jet or tank we don’t need.
As someone who has worked in tech for 20+ years, I’ve seen technology shift and change within months, both in individual companies and markets. I’ve never seen legislation work at the same pace.
So I do not accept that technology, which can be deployed in days, is as efficient as changing copyright laws to meet those changes.
Good luck with that.
…Isn’t that most bands? I mean, if it wasn’t, why would we go to shows?
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The cult of personality? Socialization? To prove you were out? The sense of danger from something performed live because there is more of a chance to screw up than to improve?
Honestly, I find MOST music to be inferior to the recorded piece. There are elements of the live show that can’t happen on a recording…again, the sense of danger isn’t there because if you have a bad take, you just do another recording. There are elements I love like that aren’t there on recording – dynamics. However, you trade dynamics for the fact that almost all concerts are played over mono speakers unless it is a small intimate setting where folks are playing acoustic or through their own reinforcement.
Most of what makes live music desirable really isn’t actually the music, but the performance. Two different things in the end. And two different skill sets. I’m not a performer, but I’m a damn fine musician. I know great performers that suck as musicians! Folks that are both? Well they are assholes because no one deserves to be good at both.
But no, there are so many compromises in live audio that it is rarely better live. And yet, we love live because of everything else that comes into play.
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You just summed up the Gospel of BoingBoing
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Live music is a fundamentally different experience than an album, I think. I have to agree with Evan Eisenberg that the ability to record music created something new historically/artistically. There are plenty of forms of music not even possible without pre-recorded sound, including some musical forms that are experienced live (going to see a DJ, a hip-hop artist, or band that uses electronic elements).
This. the consumption of music used to be solely a communal event - unless you were playing it for yourself or to practice. It used to be you had to find someone who made music to listen to music. Now it’s literally EVERYWHERE in our daily lives. Right this second, I’m listening to a radio station online that’s playing music. Live shows are a way to reinforce the communal nature of music.
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One of my favorite bands is Brave Combo but it was their live show that really hooked me. Their live shows are quite fun and especially if it is a club show where they will have a lot of fun as they can play a lot more styles than a festival show. Not that the CDs are bad just that the live show is a whole much more wonderful experience than just listening to the recorded songs. Sadly they don’t make it out to Seattle often.
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Not every band made the transition to the tour-based (as opposed to sales-based) world this created, but for the ones who did, it was a golden age
I don’t like how articles like this gloss over the people who don’t benefit from copyfighting. I do think that reducing the power of copyright is is a net good, but I’d like to at least recognize that it’s destroyed some legit careers as well, particularly among artists whose health or responsibilities keep them from the grueling grind of the tour circuit.
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Exactly. I got out of the industry because of my health. I have a genetic autoimmune – the same thing that took my father out of the industry at 30 and ended up killing him – and to perform my label actually found a physician that would inject my wrists every night and give me meds to keep me awake. It worked, but it certainly wasn’t healthy for me.
Beyond that, what is wrong with folks that are arrangers, or writers, or otherwise. I fucking hate the idea that in the copyfighters world, those of us that spent enough time to be intimately knowledgeable about a subject are the ones that are left behind for idiots that have superior muscle memory. Great writer? Good give your book away. Maybe Michael Bay will make a movie about it and make millions…for himself. Fucking awesome programmer? Give it away. And let extroverts that have no real understanding of the science behind what you created become consultants. Great studio musician / composer? Let the jocks reinterpret your work live and take the money and credit.
Anyone that doesn’t fit the niche of the copyfighter is left behind.
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They can hang out with the lantern lighters and buggy whip makers (or people that joined teaching as a career that would allow you to own a home, like my in-laws did 40 years ago).
Things change.
All right, but you kind of lose the moral high ground in the debate if your response to people losing their livelihoods is “oh well, tough shit.”
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Sorry, reality check: not all livelihoods are going to make it. I don’t give a shit about a mythical moral high ground.
There was, what, a 50 - 70 year period where some people (mostly fat cats running the show) made money off of recorded music. That historical anomaly has ended. Sorry. Move on.
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I don’t really care about the profiteers, but I do think we should care about the authors, writers, etc.
There are people who make important contributions, with significant personal effort, who get screwed over because its hard to monetize those contributions, with or without copymight.
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Ouch, buddy! That hurts!! Jeez, it’s true though. Sob.
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But these changes don’t “just happen”… they are based on decisions made about our economy, by congress, by large-scale capitalists, by consumers. It has also had real life consequences. As @MarjaE indicates, it’s just not the profiteers who are effected. We (as a country, society, as consumers, whatever) can decide to support artists who were not all that well served by the recording industry anyhow.
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This reminds me of getting properly employed at the bomb factory supporting the soon to go away email system. Both of my parents are teachers (well one retired). When I told my mom how much I was getting she said it was better than her salary, after 10+ years in the same school and a masters degree. That’s just some effed up priority for teachers pay there.
So what is your proposal?
People have been wracking their brains for the last 15 or so years on how to return to the “good times” of the 70s and 80s for musicians, when they were only robbed by corporations employing their bands. I’ve yet to hear of a solution to go back to then. This applies to other content creators too.
Cory’s solution with his books has been pretty consistent (for example) during his tenure as an author.
Oh, and I already do this. I buy their albums. Others can choose to do so or not do so. I don’t think sending the FBI after pirates affects this positively though. It turns out that people will pay for content if you give them an easy and relatively friction free way to pay a “reasonable” fee. That was the lesson of the success of iTunes.
I don’t buy albums by artists I like or books by authors I like because I’m unable to find pirated copies. Hell, I work in security. I usually see stuff the day before release without even trying to find it. I buy their stuff because I choose to support them. Beyond convincing millions of other people to do so, I’m not sure what people expect others to do.
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Kay. So if all you care about is “fuck it, got mine,” why are you aligning yourself with the “eliminating copyright will make everything better for all of us” crowd? If you don’t give two shits about making things better for everyone, why are you even reading this article?
