I leave for one day and three pages pop up! It's been an excellent discussion so far.
Joe, I get the impression we disagree less than you think. I agree that intellectual copyright becomes a slippery slope argument and I wasn't (and probably wouldn't) fight to defend the current laws. I was addressing our actions inside the system from a pragmatic viewpoint. If you jump on your sled and head to the bottom of the slope you exacerbate a problem affectionately known as 'starving artist syndrome'. I have known many extremely (and I mean extremely) talented artists; painters, musicians, 3d artists, etc, who spend 50 hours/week working a low paying IT job because while thousands of people enjoy their art none are willing to pay. It seems to me that you might be implying that we would be better off adding our musicians to this group.
How much might these artists be otherwise contributing to our society culturally. They are offering something of value, great value. Pragmatically, we would be making a poor decision to force them to waste 90% of their free time on remedial, rather than creative, endeavors. Morally, if they are offering us something of value why do we offer them nothing in return for it. So I do have to disagree with your implication that it would be just as good a solution to dissolve intellectual copyright and force the artists to give their music away for free. Sure, you could say they can still make money off concerts, CDs, promotional material, etc, but now you are shifting their focus from creativity to marketing.
(If you weren't implying that and I misread you I apologize)
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Does it really make a difference to the listener whether their album was recorded in New York or Vancouver, BC? I doubt it.
I have to back Joe here. I have spent a lot of years working in a lot of the industries that are referenced, and a lot of what drives the high pricing for services is little more than marketing. For instance, I have a friend who does 3D art that he displays in a paid gallery on his website. He gave a band rights to use one of his images in return for a credit line on the back of the CD. I know several other artists that would be happy to supply similarly high quality work for as little as $100, if for no better reason than that the image is already created so it's free money, not to mention free promotion. How does that pricing compare to what record labels are currently paying exclusive graphic arts firms?
This is true across most industries. I would be happy to offer bands a high quality professional photo shoot for a small fraction of what the 'label approved' photographers might charge. I may be able to offer the same quality. I may offer a slightly lesser but still comparable quality. But in the end how many customers will actually look at those pictures and how much will they really affect sales. Further, how are they relevant to the music or distribution of the music?
This inefficiency is a result of the interactions between an uninformed and apathetic public and an oligopoly of incompetence.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I think that albums should sell on the merit of the music they contain, and not because people feel compelled to listen to anything that the Top 40 tells them to.
Ultimately, my point is that music piracy only hurts when artists stop concentrating on their music and try to make money selling their image. And it doesn't even seem to hurt the artists much - it's the labels themselves that are really threatened by the possibility. Music piracy seems to benefit small bands more than it hurts; the internet basically becomes free advertising for them.
I agree, but at the same time this can introduce a problem that is all too familiar to me: how do you let people know you exist. The only way most people even know what to pirate is because the record industry has done their job of scouting and marketing. Just a quick anecdote to explain what I mean...
I have a friend named Jeff who is one of the most amazing 3D artists I have ever encountered. His images are both beautiful and full of emotion and meaning. He decided to try to get out of his day job by making his gallery a paid gallery, much like DigitalBlasphemy.com does. After several years he has given up. His images, his core product, was better that DB's, and he attempted the very same business plan, so why didn't it work? While I understand art is subjective I showed Jeff's work to enough people to understand that popular opinion would at least put him on par with DB.
Digital Blasphemy got started many years ago when desktop wallpapers were just becoming common. Through monopoly of the industry and, later, word of mouth his images became the de-facto standard. While he is now enjoying 30,000 visitors daily, Jeff's site sees maybe 100. He and I spent years attempting to work out a way to increase traffic with every standard (and enough hair-brained) schemes you can imagine, but without success. In this case, having 'labels' in the industry that could pick out the better artist and promote him actually does provide a valuable service: The better artist is able to compete and make a living doing what he is best at, and society gains by having better access to the better product.
Simply eliminating the record labels is not going to immediately make the marketplace completely merit-based. If anything, it's going to force musicians to spend more time filling a marketing role to compete against each other. Likely one will hire a professional firm to advertise for them, forcing others to respond in kind. Now you have the seed for labels to spring right back into existence. What you really need is an all encompassing system that will allow artists to concentrate on their music while it's quality allows it to sell. Something setup similar to iTunes, but allowing anyone to submit their own music, set their own pricing, and showing 'featured artists' on their home page or elsewhere on a completely random basis.
Until that exists, the music marketplace will never be merit based. In fact, that holds true for most industries.