p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- One of the most persistent objections to the rise of p2p and other forms of file-sharing usually takes the form of asking how musicians will get paid if their music is out there ‘for free’.

Sorry to tell everybody, but I don’t think this is a ‘legitimate’ concern, at all, and we need to stop treating it like it is.

1. First, we all know the corporate media oligarchy (exemplified by the RIAA member corporations) have spent decades fucking their talent-base over, as consistently as they could.  Shitty contracts aren’t the worst of it, although they’re the most visible aspect.

No, the unsong victims of the RIAA member corporations are ’session musicians’ — those hardworking, extremely skilled, but poorly paid folks whose work you hear just about every day, but whose names you’ll hardly ever see mentioned.

For a REAL taste of how the corporate media oligarchs feel about session-players, consider that Frank Farian felt the need to recruit two models, simply because he didn’t think the session musicians — the people whose work he was selling — didn’t have the right ‘look’.

(Hint: Rob and Fab — the two talentless drones he tried to pass of as “Milli Vanilli” became extremely wealthy.  The session-guys were probably paid by the hour, and — since what they did was considered ‘work for hire’, they weren’t entitled to any of those all-precious royalties the RIAA is always bitching about.)

2. According to THEIR OWN rhetoric, 99% of the RIAA’s albums are flops.

In any other business-model, a 1%  ’success-rate’ would be acknowledged as the dismal failure it is, and those responsible would have been fired or bankrupted long ago.

The RIAA member corporations have the advantage that they can keep buying themselves a term-extension every few years, so 1% of ‘hits’ never enter the public domain — where they were SUPPOSED to end up, in case anybody forgets that fact.

So, we all know the corporate media oligarchy doesn’t give a damn about ‘how musicians get paid’ and, in fact, has spent decades perfecting a system where they DON’T — barring, of course, a rotating stable of ‘hit makers’ who usually exist in an apathetic haze of sex, drugs, and the archtypal ‘celebrity lifestyle’.

These folks are the ones who the RIAA can trot out every few years, to whine about the ‘plight’ of musicians.

3. Most of the recordings I’ve bought for the past 20 years or more have been reasonably-priced, thanks to something called the ‘first-sale doctrine’.

Basically, that means that the government permits people to re-sell their copies at whatever price they choose, in so doing, creating the illusion of ‘market competition’, in that overpriced ‘new’ copies are available as well as reasonably-priced ‘used’ fare.

(The corporate media oligarchy hates ‘first sale’, however, and keeps trying to destroy it, because it’s one of the few obstacles to complete control over media distribution, and thus, the unlimited opportunities for gouging that they so desperately crave.)

But Y’know what?  First-sale means only the person selling the copy gets paid — not the ignorant RIAA-victim whose name is on the cover, and certainly not the largely anonymous pool of session-musicians, who wouldn’t get paid anyway, because their efforts are considered ‘works for hire’, as I explained earlier.

See why the entire question is bullshit?

The REAL question isn’t how musicians will get paid if p2p and file-sharing continues.  The REAL question is ‘how much are they getting screwed NOW, and by WHOM?”

Personally, I’m smart enough to realize a distribution method with virtually no barriers to entry and access to a global audience — where people pay IF THEY WANT TO, but at least my stuff gets heard — absolutely kicks the shit out of the RIAA-enforced Status Quo: a racket where, to even THINK of getting even halfway decent distribution I’d have to sign over all of those precious monopoly ‘rights’ the RIAA claims to be defending, in exchange for a ONE PERCENT CHANCE of becoming just another well-kept corporate whore.

We need to stop giving the RIAA (or their mind-scrambled victims) the benefit of the doubt on this one. There IS only one choice: sign over those precious monopoly privileges to the RIAA in the (vain) hope of ‘cashing in’, or have AT LEAST as good of a chance to develop a fan-base — and maybe make some money — while retaining much more artistic control, via p2p and file-sharing.

And another thing: what do people REALLY MEAN when they talk about “making a living” via music?

Do they mean the standard of living of the average citizen, or are they talking about the opulence of a Michael Jackson or Nickelback?

Because, if you’re JUST in it to be the next Chad Kroeger, Amy Winehouse, Keith Richards, or Michael Jackson, then you probably suck anyway.

Henry Emrich – p2pnet
[Emrich says he's, "just some guy," sometime musician, wannabe writer, sporadic blogger, and (hopefully) good-natured person.  He and his wife live in Pennsylvania with two cats, and, "entirely too many record albums".]

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

August, 2009

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 10:17 am and is filed under Music, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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