[mythtv-users] It's over, the RIAA is toast

[Greg Woods]

On Wed, 2008-03-05 at 11:14 -0800, David Brodbeck wrote:
> On Mar 5, 2008, at 9:50 AM, Greg Woods wrote:
> > Experiments such as the Grateful Dead and Nine Inch Nails show us that
> > it is possible to make money from making music other than in the
> > traditional, album-royalty way.
> 
> If you're as famous as those guys just about anything you do will make  
> money.  

Sure, but the point I'm making was that their friendly attitude toward
tapers helped make them famous in the first place. The Grateful Dead
were always primarily a concert band, and allowing the Deadheads to have
access to concert tapes helped them turn other people onto the band in a
way that the albums just would not have done. 

There seems to be an attitude from business-type people that allowing
free access to concert tapes would reduce sales. My point is that, in
the case of the Grateful Dead, it actually had the opposite effect on
their concert sales, and I don't think it harmed their album sales much,
if at all.

> It doesn't mean that model will work for everyone.

I didn't mean to suggest that it would. I'm only questioning the
pervasive assumption that making music available for free will
necessarily lead to reduced revenue.

--Greg