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"What would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations? The same as if you couldn’t charge for lines of computer code: there’d be less of it." This
by babarock 15y ago
"What would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations? The same as if you couldn’t charge for lines of computer code: there’d be less of it."
This sums up why I disagree with the author. People have been playing and composing music way before "selling records" was the way to make money. Just like people don't contribute to open source "for the joy of it".
Very serious business is being done around open source, and the same could happen around the music industry. I personally wouldn't mind settling for an industry where artists get paid for their performances (getting paid for the "actual" hours put in, not just a one-off recording session decades ago that's making them fat millionaires), using their records as promotional tools. Parallel business would develop, they would charge for packaging, interviews, talks, God-knows-what. Let the next generations be creative.
The industry may not seem as lucrative as it may sound today, but frankly I could do without the MBA consultant in a suit. Cut off his salary and most of the middle men and you're good to go. Despite what the article says, the cost of producing and publishing new material isn't that high. My closest friend took a couple months off to record a home made 6 song album. With an iMac and some amateur equipment. The result is simply bluffing. Even a small team on a low budget can definitely invest this money as part of their promotion campaign.
- VMG 15y agoThe difference is that nobody stops you from making "Open-Source" films and music, and many people do. The masses however seem to prefer commercial films, music and software.
- angersock 15y agoEr, the number of views we get on places like Youtube and 4chan and YTMND seem to present a convincing counterargument.
- VMG 15y agoThen why do we need The Pirate Bay?
- beambot 15y agoDistribution, feature set, and lack of DRM? We recently gave up casual TV and movies cold-turkey. Frankly, the studios and networks just couldn't figure out how to target us properly. I'm not going to pay $120 / mo. to get my favorite channels (eg. Science and NatGeo) just because ESPN has Comcast by the balls. Similar arguments for movies. FWIW, I don't use TPB either. But I can imagine the appeal of choice, freedom, and having archival copies of the bits locally.
- scelerat 15y agoJust to supplement another response to this point... commercial entertainment does compete directly with free/amateur/semipro/fansourced material all the time. I would argue that this is more of a danger to Big Content's bottom line. There are only 24 hours in a day. Youtube and reddit compete directly with Universal, Sony, and the New York Times for people's attention. The fact is that entertaining videos and music are not only easier to distribute than ever, but also easier to produce. You don't need a degree or the backing of a large corporation to be funny, insightful or clever. IMO there is a lot of noise about piracy which masks this even larger "problem" for traditional media.
- angersock 15y agoThank you for your excellent expansion of my point. I wager that they either haven't identified the boulder rushing down at them... ...or are trying to win the piracy/IP battle enough that it gives them a credible position from which to attack the populist works that remix what they perceive to be their IP. Especially if, for example, they've succeeded in making faceless/nameless/processless takedowns possible--a pretty solid weapon against populist entertainment.