15 Mar
2006
15 Mar
'06
2:51 p.m.
On Wed March 15 2006 13:30, Juhana Sadeharju wrote:
We could have an organized community where volunteer
musicians
make music similar to the top commercial songs. When the idea
works, one may get top pop music for free.
I don't mean to be mean, but this idea makes me throw up a
little. You may have noticed that a lot of free software
designed to copycat popular proprietary software has been paid
for by corporations (the most obvious example being Openoffice,
but also Mozilla during its time as an AOL property, Linspire
nee Lindows, and Xgl at Novell.) I think the same is true of
commercial music; corporations pay for copycat songs, and the
performers and producers do it for a paycheck, not to scratch
their own artistic itch as producers of free music do. The only
function I could see this serving would be "Look how close to X
my music is without infringing upon it.... hire me and I'll do
more of it for you."
That, and I don't think most free musicians have bimbos and
Autotune at their disposal, both necessary for the creation of
generic soundalike pop music. (I would mention hip-hop too, but
that's way too personality-oriented to try to copycat.)
Finally, if your scheme were to succeed, it would only be
competition to unsigned "house musicians", not pop stars or the
recording industry, because companies that needed pop music for
use in their TV shows or commercials would just use the
CC-licensed stuff rather than keep paying the house musicians.
We need this kind of alternative way of making free
music.
For example, the recent free music CD announced here at LAU
simply sucks. I don't know why.
While I haven't heard anything on the free music CD, I don't
really think you'll make a lot of headway by telling people
their music sucks. I'm just saying.
Rob