Re: [LAU] ASCAP Assails Free-Culture, Digital-Rights Groups

When it comes to making money from our art, just because we as artists can create something doesn't mean people have any obligation to listen to it (regardless of if anyone pays us for it). If you don't produce what people want to listen to, they won't steal your music or pay for it. They won't listen to it. I think a lot of musicians make little or no money in music because they've chosen to pursue music that pleases only them or their chosen "in" / "cool" crowd. (I blame it all on the Romantic movement and its idea that creative people are somehow specially touched by the gods, therefore worthy of greater honor than other people.) When I was playing professionally many decades ago, there was a local band in my home town that was making about $200K a year without selling a single record. What they sold was their live performance, which was entertaining and people wanted to listen to. A bigger example of that in action was the Grateful Dead. They officially allowed bootlegging - IOW, copying of their concerts. They still sold out concerts, sold recordings, didn't do it with big commercial "hit" songs. They seemed to be more commercially successful at it than that well-known English singer/songwriter who blogged about how every time she performed live, she lost money and was seriously talking about no longer touring. An old example of musicians making a living at it were the bards. They wrote and shared music and news. The more successful they were at pleasing their audience, the better they were paid. They also shared songs among themselves, I think because they knew that improving each bard's ability to survive and prosper made it easier for the whole group of bards. If your village had a great time when one bard had been there, you're more likely to think better of the next bard that comes through town. (And lest you think people back then didn't have the means to readily copy a bard's song - they did. People back then were much much better at memorizing and singing than people in our present "passive consumer" culture.) Anyway, I support copyright with reasonable limitations. What I think the recording industries are trying to do under the guise of copyright protection is force it to become a "pay per play" thing: If you want to listen to a particular song 20 times, you pay for it 20 times. -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community