Choruss isn’t half-assed. It’s half vast. Ask Jim.

Cheers!

How so?
I really doubt http://www.southparkstudios.com would even have been considered if people hadn’t done stuff like http://www.sp-zone.com, or allsp, or the plethora of other similar sites. Even if the above-ground “content industry” continues to “me-too” it’s way along, there will ALWAYS be people doing the DIY thing (whether it’s explicitly “legal” or not — hell, if it’s illegal, it’ll become a bigger draw, because as we all know “Forbidden fruit is sweetest”, and all that). The corporatards know they are totally dependent on the scruffy, outsider-fringe for good ideas (or do you think “Green Day” would have happened without the underground Hardcore-punk scene?)

Sorry, I’m rambling, but you get what I’m going for here…..

@Steelwolf:

No worries there, as far as I can figure:
Why?

1. “Mainstream customers” already know the “industry’s” tactics are shit — hence the numerous studies that indicate that p2p users are also some of the RIAA’s best customers. (Which is odd, because I thought people were boycotting, so as to starve the beast, but that’s another topic.)
Put bluntly, REAL artists and fans have always seen the corporate “music industry” as, at best, a necessary evil. The “evil” aspects of it (shitty contracts, payola, etc.) could be overlooked as an unfortunate byproduct. The truly evil stuff went on behind the scenes — Valenti lobbying congress to ban the VCR, the propaganda campaign against “home taping”, the copyright extensions — all of that was, up until relatively recently, “under the radar” in most cases.
Then Napster happened, because the Net happened, and corporate spin no longer worked. Same for politics: look at Trent Lott — one little instance of sucking up to Strom Thurmond at a birthday party and his political career is, if not destroyed, then at leasr seriously compromised.

Same with the “Music Industry” — or at least the portions of it dominated by the RIAA and it’s various sockpuppets like the BPI, etc.
No matter how they attempt to “spin” things, somebody’s always out there, somewhere, un-spinning it.

2. Another issue is, what do you mean by their “customers?”
If you mean your run-of-the-mill CD buyer, that’s not the demographic they’ve ever really had to deal with, because those people aren’t really “fans” or music-lovers in the sense we’re talking about. The RIAA has always depended on two buyer-bases: trendy teenagers following the latest “fad” (which the RIAA mostly created), and the “real fan” types — die-hard music nuts with vast collections, weird tastes, or both — whether they were “scenesters” who followed a particular genre, or crazed eclectics, the fact remains that those two demographics were — and are — the biggest buyers.

Very few other people give enough of a shit to buy music recordings (even digitally) on a regular basis.

The great thing about the Internet world since Napster, is that p2p, music-blogs, and social-networking have really turned a lot of people on to music and art in general, rather than having it just be a “background” noise. That’s also why the Advertising scumbags are relentlessly recycling dumbed-down abominations based on classic songs. (Probably the worst version of this that I’ve seen recently is a commercial for poly-grip. They took “Bye Bye Love” (the Everly brothers), and turned it into a denture cream jingle. Damn.)

But there’s a lot of people who are “conscious” about music (and the music “industry”, and they are also the ones least likely to buy into the RIAA’s shit. Trendy teens following the latest “fad” represent short-term profits — just so long as their particular “trend” holds out. REAL music-fans are the big-money, and always have been.

The other “customers” the RIAA member-companies have to worry about, are the artists themselves, and trust me — they know they’re getting screwed. Steve Albini, Courtney Love, Radiohead, Trent Reznor, have all come out against at least SOME aspects of “The Industry”.
Hell, Moby’s openly advocated the RIAA be disbanded.
So the only ones actually still looking to get “signed” are people too dumb, or too desperate, to actually think it through — and/or trendy, manufactured, corporate-cutouts like the Jonas Brothers, but I digress.)

Trendy teens will do anything to be trendy — make a fad where they wear a bag of dogshit around their necks, and somebody’ll end up making a killing in the “Dogshit-in-a-bag” business. As to the other major “customers” of the RIAA member companies — REAL music fans, and musicians themselves — let’s just say it doesn’t look promisining.

Why else do you think they’re scrabbling so desperately for all these new laws?
No matter what they tell you, that’s not a position of “strength”, but of soul-deep terror and desperation: before, they could just “ease” their stuff through by incriments, and nobody much gave a shit. Now, we’ve hit the point with a sizable — and growing — segment of the world’s population (many of whom are also tech-savvy AND at least somewhat anti-Authoritarian), have begun to openly question why copy”right” and patents are “neccesary”, or at least, if they do more harm than good.

And that’s the really important part: when musicians and groups stop signing, a huge, grassroots opposition to the current state of IP law emerges, complete with it’s own political party and symbolism, and millions of p2p users simply do not give a shit anymore, the RIAA member-companies know they’re in deep, deep trouble.

So yeah, if you’re worried that they’ll keep manufacturing fads, and the trendy sheep will keep guzzling those fads down, then you’re probably right. If you’re concerned that they might actually manage to clean up their act and start offering musicians and fans what they want, then that’d actually be pretty cool.

Besides, look what happens to the “fads” they manufacture:
1. People guzzle them down uncritially, because it’s the “in” thing to do.
2. Eventually, it gets to the point where pretty much all you can find is the latest fad (the “disco craze”, boybands, milli vanilli, etc.)
3. People get bored/pissed off, and start destroying stuff related to the fad, and hating it (”Disco sucks”, the later careers of N’Sync, Milli Vanilli, etc.)

Eventually the “fad” created by the “industry” either gets to be appreciated because it actually has some esthetic merit (and, in so doing, develops a real fan-base), or it vanishes into a mix of obscurity/contempt. (The Macarena, for example.)

So I don’t really think you have much to worry about.

Yeah, sort of like how they cleared the dance floor for Tony Manero (Saturday Night Fever).
: )

I actually left him alone to allow Henry the professional courtesy…

To quote a famous line from Captain Kirk:
“We’re better off WITH you than without you!”

Given the choice between the most “heated” entry you’ve made, and the “least incomprehensible” entry made by another here (who shall remain nameless, and who’s handle begins with a “C”, ends with an “SS” and has “HRoNo” in the middle 8 P ), I think it’s safe to say yours would still be the last one I’d want to see deleted.

But, I’m glad to see you’re getting out for some air, though!
: )

On second thought, though, when people’s parents are using bitTorrent sapping the momentum is like trying to stop a truck with your foot.

Say that in a few weeks, when I’ve managed to piss everybody off again (smirk)

Actually, the primary reason I was “gone” was/were these:

1. Personal life stuff which I’m not going to get into, except to say that it sucks.
2. Very busy with the music and suchlike. (Out of town quite a lot, actually.)
3. Backups and computer-related crap.

Anyway, long story short is, I’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes (quite often?) I can be a complete asshole, if I’m in the wrong mood and reply to discussions. (Admit it: you’ve all felt the whip-end of my “moody” side at least once!), so sometimes it’s just better for me not to even try and discuss things, because I’m even more of an asshole than usual

But anyway, I’m back.

Well, I for one, am glad you are!

Yeah I knew it had to be one or the other.
“psychopathology” definitely makes more sense.
: )

Ummm….actually I was thinking “psychopathology”. I can’t type lately for some reason.

But yeah — I’m BAAAAAACK!

Not to sound hypercritical or anything, Henry, but I need to ask… When you said, “Corporate malfeasance and psychothapology” were you thinking perhaps of saying “…psychotheology”?
: )

2. I love the amount of psychological projection going on with the RIAA and suchlike:

“These companies take and exploit what musicians and artists create, without being honest enough to reward them. ”

Yup — sounds like the RIAA business-model to me

1. Nobody in their right mind is actually going to pay money to “license” a DRM-crippled file that could — and most likely, will — go dead at the whim of whatever RIAA corporate shit-fest they “bought” it from. We know that the RIAA/MPAA’s fondest wet-dream is to abolish the notion of “selling” content at all, and have everything “licensed” or semi-”rented” from them, and vast amounts of folks just aren’t going to play along with that scenario, even if — or especially if — it ends up killing an entire “industry” in the process.

The fact that companies have had to explicitly instruct their customers on how to BREAK the DRM (by transcoding or suchlike) indicates that DRM is just a horribly bad idea.

2. People aren’t particularly interested in paying middlement — whether it’s “retailers”, or talentless, waitress-killing douchebags like Phil Spector. (Read the Wikipedia article on the guy — he was way ahead of his time, in that he was vehemently opposed to stereo releases because it supposedly “took control away from the producer, in favor of the listener.” Standard-issue RIAA douchebaggery.)
But I digress:

People are even LESS willing to pay “middlement” (such as “label” guys) now that they know the REAL talent — musicians and songwriters — are getting shit on by the labels. They’re ESPECIALLY displeased by the incessant whimpering, lawsuits, and generalized monopoly-mongering involved in copy”right” term extension, or classifying signed artists’ output as “works for hire” owned by the label, or cookie-cutter fakes like Milli Vanilli passed of as real “talent”. In short, they’re really annoyed by everything the major-label “industry” as such — and for good reason.

3. EVEN IF the rise of p2p technology and the file-sharing scene DOES harm “the industry” by depriving them of billions upon billions, a significant number of folks would greet that with a resounding “good, about goddamn time!”
The RIAA/MPAA member companies have become the modern equivalent of the Tobacco industry — lying, unscrupulous corporate weasels anxious to collude with cronies in government, so as to keep screwing their own customer-base.

So it’s pretty doubtful that p2p represents “lost sales”, but even if it does, there’s a lot of folks who — justifiably — would figure that was pretty damn cool.

4. The REAL “talent” upon which the major-label “music industry” depends — artists — are defecting in droves. They understand that they’ll just get shit on if they sign, and recognize p2p “piracy” as a great alternative to corporate Payola bullshit, as a way to build the fan-base which any artist or group wants and needs.

The only ones bitching about the “threat” posed by p2p are big-label whores, and a few disgruntled quasi-Indie whackjobs like Indiana Gregg, who are probably doing it to drum up public visibility. (I mean, come on — was “gr8pop” or Indiana Gregg even on anybody’s radar before her TPB-related tantrum? I’d never heard of the woman, and it’s exceedingly unlikely that her stuff was actually available in your local record-store, anywhere — thanks, not coindicentally, to the very same RIAA corporate lobbyists she was so intent on sucking up to — or, one might say, sucking OFF.)

What sticks out for me, in regard to Napster, is the fact that Metallica — prior to their status as RIAA trophy-bitches who helped destroy Napster — were actually a “taper-friendly” band: in particular, they explicitly encouraged people to MAKE COPIES of their stuff and give it to friends, so as to create a fanbase.
(Pretty similar to the “Arctic Monkeys” — “bootleg”-friendly, UNTIL their corporate pay-masters say otherwise.)

That’s also why nobody takes Metallica particularly seriously anymore — it is simply impossible to look anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian and badass, while sitting in Congress, explicitly acting as corporate shills.

The only new “business model” that stands any chance of actually working out is leveraging the Internet’s potential to connect with a potential fan-base: Susan Boyle became the biggest thing since sliced bread, NOT because she was on “Brittain’s got talent”, but because the clip (and her tracks from that “charity” CD back in the 1990s) spread all over the Net like a prairie-fire.

The RIAA’s “business-model” was never about finding, recruiting, recording and marketing “talent”.

It IS all about monopoly: being the ONLY way to make good recordings (hence their routine attempts to lobby government to prevent decent-quality “consumer” equipment — “VCR = Boston Strangler”, “Home taping is killing music!”.

It’s about having the ONLY distribution-channels (Payola, media-consolidation, their periodic attempts to close the “first-sale” loophole, so they have TOTAL control over prices.) Remember kids, “first sale” is your friend.

It’s about totally destroying “fair use” and similar legal exemptions, so the corporate shit-in-suits can “monetize” any and all uses of the content for which they own the “rights”.

Above all, it’s about destroying the “Public Domain” by a process of starvation, coupled with vigorous, unrelenting propaganda. They want to transform monopolies such as copy”right” and patents — which are, at the absolutely most charitable assessment, mere “necessary evils” — privileges granted for a limited time, and for a specific purpose — into the “Sacred right of Property”. (Judging by people Like “Sam I Am”, sometimes their bullshit-campaign works.)

Behind all of it, is standard Corporate malfeasance and psychothapology — the relentless lust for maximum profits, with issues like customer choice, a vibrant public domain, artistic freedom, technological innovation, and even whether artists actually get paid or not, treates as mere “externalities” — somebody else’s concern.

Quite simply, no matter WHAT concessions they manage to buy from sympathetic cronies in various governments, the “major labels” — and the misbegotten “business-model” upon which they depend — are irretrievably fucked: at this point, even if they caved in completely –stopped begging ever-longer copy”right” terms, maybe even settled for a reduction back to something more reasonable, started selling non-DRM’ed tracks at a reasonable price, AND paying the artists’ the sign better than your average Walmart greeter, they’d STILL be trapped in the same — unstoppable — downward spiral, because at this point, it’s simply impossible for them to ever live down the bullshit they’ve done up to this point. (This is also why Bush II is exceedingly unlikely to be remembered by history as anything but a barely-verbal sockpuppet for the military-industrial-petrochemical complex, but that’s another issue.)

Honestly, I don’t think people don’t want to “pay for” music: it’s just that they don’t want to pay THE RIAA or any of it’s pampered sockpuppets.