Who Are The Commies?

[jdurant <jdurant@alchemyrecords.com>]

Thanks to Kim and Andre and DT for making sense out of this nonsense. 
It's amazing to me how quickly a small dose of economic reality turns 
into the end of the world here on the internet. Here's the thing: 
internet webcasters have not been paying for the music they've played. 
Now they have to. This is bad?

Andre wrote:

>It's a similar principle to what Kim is talking about in his posts:
>getting attention, exposure, listeners, and all the rest is great.  But
>traffic in and of itself doesn't mean you're making money.  Name
>recognition in and of itself doesn't bring you money.  Having people dig
>what you do in and of itself doesn't bring in money.

This is correct. Very. Trust me, I know this from experience, and several 
hundreds of thousands of dollars lost on a label that I started because 
of the possibilities that the internet offered. The problem is that there 
is a persistant mentality on the web that everything oughtta be free. 
Well guess what: it's not. It costs real money to make, market and 
distribute a record. It's not just the buck and a half it costs to 
duplicate them.

Also: in an exchange between Richard and Kim:

>>Many (if not a majority) of us are making music that appeals to one or 
>>another of the many small "mini-markets" that are not served by either 
>the 
>>major record companies or the major broadcasters and Webcasters. The 
>CARP 
>>fee structure was based on an economic model of a major Webcaster 
>(Yahoo, 
>>to be specific) and this doesn't take into account the economics of the 
>>minor Webcasters.
>
>This is the part I really don't get. How doesn't it meet the economics of 
>small webcasters? If you are small, then your costs are lower. Scale 
>revenues to meet them. I'm really not understanding why its a problem or 
>how the CARP thing is so debilitating. I'm coming from a position of 
>being 
>a little guy in a big pool, as far as web publishing goes. I know exactly 
>what the economics of it are like. I did a quick run of the CARP numbers 
>as 
>far as I understand them, and to me it doesn't add up to something that 
>is 
>unattainable, whether you are big or small.

Someone here suggested starting a web radio station that would play 
nothing but independent music, no labels, no bmi/ascap people. Go for it. 
Don't let the laughter from the bank stop you. Do us all a favor, though, 
and tell us how much money you lose every year. 

It's really simple: either you're in business, or you're not. If you 
don't care about making money from your music, that's fine. That's your 
call. But does that mean that DT shouldn't be trying to earn a living and 
put his two kids through college? If you broadcast his music, of course 
you should pay a fee. 

The RIAA are not commies. The commies are the people here who don't think 
making a profit is a good thing. The people who believe that all music 
should be given out for free. 

Internet broadcasting will survive just fine with an additional fee of 
.07 cents per song. If a broadcaster goes down in flames it will be 
because they didn't have a proper business plan to begin with. 

jd