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Looper's Delight
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Eno is not god despite our occasional stabs at setting him up as one. I find his analogy not apt. The guys “making” whale blubber were not going to persist in doing it once the market caved, and no one would continue to be interested in their product. If
the analogy is to the selling of recordings, not records. i.e. not to a physical product necessarily, then one must point out that the workers do continue to be interested in the making (that would be everyone reading this), and there continues to be a pool
of folks interested in the results. I don’t think it is entirely true that the people who purchase decide value. I’m no economist, but surely the economy of music distribution has an element of
the “race to the bottom” about it. Amazon’s bending of the publishing world to its will is a parallel that has received a lot of attention – the real sufferers there are authors. BTW, to the extent that theft is a “purchase”, then the value is zero. Hmm. But Per makes a compelling case for what I’ve seen Chris Cutler call a “post-musical” world… well, maybe that isn’t what Chris means by the term, but it sounds
good… I have not really thought much about that. If that is where we are headed or have arrived, I will hope there remains a market at least sufficient to support the undeniable geniuses of the world. I will never see Robert Wyatt perform, and probably never
see a movie with a soundtrack he did, but I sure would like to hear some new whale blubber from him.
Hal Dean From: Todd Elliott [mailto:toddbert@gmail.com]
I'm thinking Eno had it right : ""I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were
lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly
care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest
man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it." Some suggest live performance, others working on soundtracks, etc; but fundamentally the people who purchase (or don't) something decide its value. I'm thankful
for every small dollar I've made selling tunes (and it is no living at all, nor is it intended to be one), but the reality is that there are thousands of fish like me swimming in what is already a very small pond. Music is incredibly easy to distribute (got
a working internet connection? DONE), and the surfeit of choice means that 'being heard' in any sense of the word is a challenge, let alone getting paid. Blaming the record industry is a fool's game-- they have always been out for themselves-- there was a
*very* narrow window when you could make money off recorded music-- it's coming to an end, and the best that can be done now is to figure out how to make money from one's music in other ways. T On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 7:16 AM, mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com> wrote: @Tyler, its us old folks who used to earn a wage from being moderately successful musicians that are moaning about its is now compared to how it used to be. The big difference between then and now is that the companies selling you music
(im not talking about torrents or pirate mp3s, thats piracy, and has always been there, remember bootleg tapes?) are paying the artists infinitesimal amounts compared to what they used to. It doesnt make any sense to me that now, there are no manufacturing
costs, and all marketing is vis the net, social media etc, there IS no CDs or Vinyl albums to pay for, there are no posters flyers or adverts to design and print, its all online. (I will concede that the big site probably spend millions on site development).
An thats it, As Per says, the shift HAS changed, there no going back to the old days, downloads and streaming are here to stay, you might as well get used to it... BUT, and its a fucking HUGE BUTT... Mark On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com> wrote: My guess is that "the new paradigm" is not happening to digital sales
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