You're over-simplifying this stuff massively. You're talking about the sort of toilet paper tax write-off contracts that the majors offer most acts. There are other labels who will offer a better deal, and depending on the deal offered and the people involved it's not always a bad idea to enter into a contract with a record company.
Most people aren't capable of operating a band as a business. Most musicians have no interest in the business of being in a band beyond making music. This is why exploitative labels / managers / promoters / publishers still exist.
Doing what?
If you only ever listen to records once, you are probably quite unique, and I can appreciate that you won't see much value in recorded music. Perhaps unsurprisingly most other people will listen to a recording more than once, which is why musicians record songs and why there's a market for records.
"Free loving nature"? So you're upset that musicians won't smile and say thank-you while you bend them over?
Again, this comes down to third parties exploiting music without paying for it. When someone's song is used on an advert, or as background music in a shop, or a restaurant, or a pub, or anywhere where it's being used to create an atmosphere that encourages punters to spend money, then the rights holder deserves some money.
If I set up a projector screen in the high street and showed films on it, but I didn't charge people to watch them I just used it as a way to create a captive audience that I could sell drinks to, would you think it was OK to broadcast those films to the public and make money from it without compensating the filmmaker for his contribution to my business?
This is the fundamental issue that you don't seem to understand. If people are making money from your work, you should be compensated fairly for it. If the people exploiting your work disagree with that arrangement, then they can simply stop playing music in public places and they don't have to pay anything. Of course they won't do that, because they understand the positive effect the music has on their business. Otherwise they wouldn't have been playing it in the first place.
I don't think this is too difficult to understand, but maybe you've never come at it from the angle of being a musician before. And your dismissive line about musicians who "think they have a divine right to earn thousands through the pure sale of music" is ridiculous. Why shouldn't someone who creates music have an opportunity to commoditise it? If you work in music full time then you will need to make a living from it, and selling recordings, score and performance rights are just as legitimate as selling tickets to a live performance.
What about songwriters who write for other musicians? Who don't work as instrumentalists? If you honestly think the only way a musician should be compensated for their work is by touring, does that mean you think that musicians like John Williams or John Barry or Michael Nyman or Henry Mancini should never have made a penny beyond whatever fixed price they might achieve by selling their completed scores to the studios?
Incidentally, this article might give more of an insight into how artists are compensated for their material on internet services. And bear in mind how much businesses like last.fm sold for and how much they paid the artists for their (99.9%?) part in adding value to the company.
The word 'compensation' is deliberately evocative to manifest certain emotions, and I keep hearing it being used by so-called artists. Let's use the real word here - profit. I know a lot of Guardian readers try to lie on the left of the spectrum so try not to associate themselves with dirty words like 'profit'.
Musicians want to profit from their music. This compensation bollocks is nonsense talk.
Here's the reality - if an artist signs up to a label, and because there is such a thing as intellectual property, they lose the rights to distribute their music, then they are the fools. They are the idiots! They are either idiots, or just lazy. They sign a contract and then complain about it years later, because they aren't being 'compensated'! SHoulda have thought about that before you signed up to the whole joke fest!
Musicians rather than being smart, independent, and able to adapt to the changing market, they cry foul and hope another Guardian campaign can sustain their bank accounts under the guise of some misleading leftist justification.
On Spotify? It is a fantastic service I must say. It has revolutionised the way I listen to music and it allows less wealthy people to access a wide range of music. I guess though, for a musician, the idea less wealthy people can access their music for very little cost is a bad thing.
Upcoming musicians are going to have a problem going independant as it is now, recording and production equipment as well as promotion and all the other important parts of a professional record are obviously far beyond the means of most musicians, surely you should know this seeing as you have 'experience'.
Its not hard see why artists are so keen to sell their soul to a record label, simply because there is no alternative means of releasing music on such a large scale, you have to put yourselves in their desperate shoes to see why they sign such ridiculous contracts. When there is no alternative then you can sort of see why recording artists are whinging too.
As for Spotify, its all very lovely but the whole concept can't work unless somebody gets screwed over somewhere along the line, you can't get something for nothing after all. Don't get too invloved in these streaming schemes, they won't last.
I'm sorry, I will try to find an article the Daily Mail produced on an arts-related topic. Maybe something about what Cheryl Cole's tits looked like while she was sitting behind a desk on X-Factor?
If you want to change the semantics then that's fine. I was referring to compensation for the contributions of artists to the profits of the service providers. But sure let's switch it and talk about artists profiting. Let's consider the semantics specifically, in that "profit" refers to money left over after a product is sold and the costs involved in production have been covered.
Let's remember that musicians pay these costs up-front. Studio time is not free. Studio equipment is not free. Time spent writing and arranging songs (not to mention organising musicians which is like herding cats) is not free. Is it unfair that musicians should recoup these costs by charging people who want to listen to the recordings they've paid to produce? Is it so farcical to suggest that musicians might swallow this risk in anticipation of making a profitable return if the work they did on the songs and the recordings is good enough?
Why are you so opposed to the idea of musicians making a living?
Your argument is fragmenting, it isn't consistent. Are you arguing that consumers should be allowed free music because the artists are not providing any value (despite the fact that there clearly is a market for their work and other people clearly are profiting from it), or are you arguing that there is value in the recordings and musicians are too stupid to profit from it?
You're a ****ing idiot. Recording is expensive, you've clearly never done it. Consumers pay for recordings, that's how it works, that's how all media works. This is fair for both musicians and their audiences. If you don't think a musician's output is worth paying for, you don't have to buy it. But you believe you should receive it for free anyway? Why would you believe that?
Back to your "profit" rant earlier, let's put this in the correct words: "Spotify lets people enjoy a musician's product without giving the musician any money, and Spotify as a company gets away with it without giving the musician any money, and this is a good thing."
So where is the musician's money coming from? This is a financially unsustainable situation. Do you expect to be provided with free entertainment? Do you imagine that it is the responsibility of entertainers to give you whatever you desire and starve to death in the pursuit of this ideal?
I'm sure I've said this before, probably quite recently: You are a ****ing idiot and you don't understand anything.
I probably didn't add this though: Hope I don't bump into you in a dark alley.
Except that ther were no entry for "played on radio" (which pays even less than spotify according to my sources).And that there were deceptive bugs in the data for the graphs (read the comments on the page).
It's slightly deceptive though, as the figures for the streaming services are per listen, not per song purchased.
I've listened to songs on CDs I bought hundreds of times, for which the artist was paid once. When I stream on last.fm, the artist gets paid every time I listen to a song, regardless of whether I've streamed it before.
The streaming sites may be a smaller source of income, but they are a *continuous* source of income, wheras you can only sell so many CDs until everyone who is likely to want one already owns it.
Plus, I have getting on for 100 CDs that I've bought as a direct result of hearing songs streamed on last.fm, which I certainly wouldn't have bought (or indeed, even heard of) if I didn't have access to the streamed version. The streaming works as effective advertising for the more lucrative products.
The internet does look broken nowadays.
Youtube not loading correctly, twitter overloaded.
I even had to refresh Explosm because it didn't work the first time.
Some probably wouldn't have it any other way. Although I'm sure it's a lot of work, many artists seem to genuinely enjoy touring and the intangible rewards it provides.
He believes that because he's either taking the piss to rile you up, or is truly braindead enough to think what he's saying makes any sense.
One thing this generation seems to think is that stealing is just fine as long as it's easy - it's the whole entitlement mindset at work in modern snot gobblers.
I suppose he will photocopy paintings too, as much as he wants... afterall, by observing the masterpiece someone with actual talent slaved over for hours, he's effectively "downloaded it into his brain" and can flawlessly reproduce it anyway, therefore it's no longer the intellectual property of the artist. Especially if it's only a lithograph (mp3) of the original, it's not like he's stealing the actual work (the textured oil painted original "CD")
Kartor is also extremely misguided if he thinks musicians make "insane amounts of money". Sure, a tiny fraction of the musicians out there striving to make an actual living out of it make a fortune. The vast VAST majority certainly do not; you need to be at the absolute top tiny percentage to get rich from it. Someone with "experience" would probably know that much.
There are quite a few who understand whats wrong with wanting something for nothing, but the lure and conveniance of downloading music off the internet is too strong nontheless.
Right because many parents today can't be bothered to instill any sense of self control, respect, or in general just plain decency into their kids... Many try to be their "BFF" instead of being a parent, well that is when they have time to do that... afterall isn't it that daycare's job to raise their kids?
1. Invented the 12 bar blues
2. Invented the 12 note chromatic scale that all modern music uses
3. Invented the various keys of music
4. Invented the pentatonic scale that every guitarist has used to solo with at some point.
5. Came up with the various time signatures
etc...
etc...
etc...
Why should musicians who take a few minutes to write a song within a system that took years to develop? Why aren't the inventors of the modern systems of music compensated?
If we had these laws when music first started we still would be living in caves in silence.
The only people to benefit from intellectual property rights are the major labels who've abused the system for years and have made billions.
i fail to see how this is the fault of spotify
fact of the matter is they pay the rights holder (ie the publishers) the amount of money they asked for and thus the service is entirely legal
the musician has pretty much signed all his rights to his own intellectual property (not that theres anything even remotely intellectual about the music that sells millions of copies these days) over to his publisher and as such given up all control over what happens to his works
