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Re: Zoe Keating in NY Times article.@borisfx.com



"Perhaps its time local musicians insist on a living wage to play bars and restaurants who rely on us to make a scene happen (not that I am advocate for musician unions.)"

Seems to me that's *exactly* what you're advocating: collectively bargaining for a fair price for your labour.




--On 30 January 2013 12:24 -0800 Daniel Thomas <danielthomas4@mac.com> wrote:

Good thread.



The recording industry is dead and already stinking.  When can we bury
her and how?  Would any among us begrudge dwindling royalty checks if we
were just paid a comfortable living wage for playing gigs?


Though I am an avid recordist / producer whose phone still rings with
offers to work, the business of mechanical / publishing royalties has
never contributed much to my bottom line.  I have 87 releases behind me
now-- many of them on major labels…  Only one is still generating a
royalty check and this is but a pittance.      Meanwhile, the very same
business model has ensured  that fat cats get fatter on the back of work
I contributed to.


Why do we as independent musicians fight for this business model to
continue?   Barring the smallest sector of our business, the wildly
famous, most of us never really benefit from the intellectual property
side of the business or if we do its such a small contribution as to be
negligible. Add it up over 10-20 years in the business-  what percentage
of your total income is from royalties or publishing agreements.  For me,
its less than 10% and the bulk of my compensated work has been in the
studio!  For most of these royalty generating projects, I actually made
less per hour in production due to the fact that I had points on the back
end.  IOW, I would have earned much more had I just been paid the going
rate for the production work rather than  reducing this rate to negotiate
for publishing or mechanical royalty.


Given this, a big part of me welcomes the  demise of our recording
industry.  Speaking for myself, I would be happy to give away all of my
recorded works for all time were I just paid a living wage to perform my
art.  Or, as a producer/engineer, paid a living wage to make the
recordings that promote other artist's work.


Perhaps its time local musicians insist on a living wage to play bars and
restaurants who rely on us to make a scene happen (not that I am advocate
for musician unions.)


Recently, I was pitching a band to a wedding event.  A great band.  5 Pro
musicians.  The bid was for 3 sets, w/ PA and lights.  We pitched at
1000.00  A total bargain for 5 pro musicians w/ sound man and all the
gear to create the spectacle.  The gig was given instead to another local
band who pitched similar service at $250!  That's about 20 bucks per
person after gas to the gig.  WTF?!   Musician poverty consciousness
bringing down the wages of all musicians in the community!  This kind of
thing hurts us much more directly than greedy fat cats squeezing the
dying breath from their Babylonian industry.  Local musicians cannot do
all that much about fat cat greed. But we can stop playing out for dirt
wages.  No pearls before swine.



Daniel


www.danielshanethomas.com





On Jan 30, 2013, at 10:55 AM, Todd Elliott <toddbert@gmail.com> wrote:




On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 10:23 AM, Dean, Hal <HDean@wcupa.edu> wrote:




Eno is not god despite our occasional stabs at setting him up as one. I
find his analogy not apt.




I don't think he's a god (I mean, have you heard him sing? Yow.). I find
his comparison astute.




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.




They may be interested in hearing the results, but the number of people
interested in paying for them is dwindling, and continues to dwindle.





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.




Correct. If no one is willing to pay for something, and they can get it
for free, the value of it is zero. It's illiquid. I can say my new record
is $100, but if no one buys it at that price, it has no value. Outside of
a select circle of folk, people seem to be throwing their discretionary
income at other things.




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.




There probably will; though the definition of genius may vary. Amanda
Palmer, who I don't consider any sort of genius, made a million bucks by
rattling a tin cup on the internet. Any 'revolution' in the way we
consume music is going to have to come with the understanding that almost
anyone can get a recording of what you make for free, and will probably
listen to it in a manner that will make you shudder (over laptop speakers
from a youtube stream, over earbuds in a poor mp3 rip, etc). The notion
that people will pay for high quality, or some tangible format, or
something like that is wrong-- outside of a small group of nerds, no one
cares. Maybe that small group of nerds can sustain you, but they are
fickle.


'Getting music out there' is very easy to do. Getting people to pay for
it is only going to get harder. You can ask nicely for money for your
recorded music, but that horse got out of the barn years ago, and is
probably married and living in a different state.






On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 7:16 AM, mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com>
wrote:




The record companies before, at least came from a standpoint of loving
music, now the music business is being strangled by the distributors
(Apple, Spotify etc) Its of course ther own fault for not jumping in
quick and building their own online music services, and spent too much
time stamping on Napster instead... Now the CEO of Napster is a Board
member of Spotify and hes considered a legit businessman... Go figure!




Nope. Record companies have always been in the business to make money
(even Dischord, or whatever your favorite punk rock label is; they at
least want to cover their own expenses, which involves selling things for
cash). They got better at it over time (pop music is now largely a series
of formulas, with as many as 8 songwriters working on something). The
basic, original business model of record companies relied on them
controlling distribution. When people figured out how to (re)distribute
it themselves, they decided it wasn't worth as much as the record
companies were charging. When it became easy to get for free, they
decided it was free.


T