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

[Brad DerManouelian]

On Mar 5, 2008, at 9:50 AM, Greg Woods wrote:

> Probably the first large-scale use of free music was begun in the  
> 1970's
> by the Grateful Dead. They explicitly permitted taping of their  
> concerts
> and distribution of those tapes. In their case, it made business  
> sense;
> the people who would be interested in Grateful Dead concert bootleg
> tapes probably already had all their albums anyway, and the Dead  
> clearly
> have made most of their money from concert ticket sales, not album
> sales. I have no doubt that their friendliness toward tapers had a lot
> to do with why they achieved great commercial success, whereas many of
> their San Francisco psychedelic-rock brethren, such as Quicksilver
> Messenger Service, did not.
>
> Personally, I have some sympathy for the artist, but as a sysadmin, I
> write code, but I do not get paid over and over again for the same  
> code.
> If I want to make a living, I have to keep writing code. Similarly  
> it is
> not unfair to expect that if someone wants to make a living making
> music, they have to keep making music.

That's because you're writing code for someone else. If you were  
writing code for your own business, you would get paid for that code  
over and over again - every time you sold that code. People who write  
greeting cards don't get paid over and over again whenever someone  
buys a greeting card, but someone who writes a book does get paid a  
portion of every book sale. I'm sorry to compare you to someone who  
writes greeting cards, but the concept is the same. You're both hired  
by a company to produce work so any work you produce while being paid  
by that company owns whatever work you produce.

> 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.

Musicians make money on tour - ticket sales and merchandising. Labels  
make money on record sales. My partner was in a relatively successful  
band in the early 90's on Atlantic Records. His band made close to  
zero on record sales and literally made zero on their first 2 records  
before getting picked up by Atlantic. The only money he made for being  
a full-time musician for several years was on what they sold at  
concerts in terms of t-shirts and other merchandise, the money paid by  
the venue for the gig and royalties (radio play, MTV, MusicPlus in  
Canada, foreign radio and a couple of movies their songs were in). The  
bottom line is that if someone is making money off work you've  
produced that didn't initially pay you to produce that work, you get  
compensated. If you've already been paid, you don't.