Songwriterâs chart of the music galaxy: II
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- We should be called The Invisible.
Without us, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music would be dead.
But we’re never mentioned, not even in passing, when the Big 4 are trying to find new ways to screw us, coming up with new ‘monetising’ formulas, licensing schemes and scams, and so on.
“Wow! And I thought the RIAA was bad … ”
That was my friend blues singer and guitar player Maggie DiPietra down in Florida when we were talking about the first post of the day, the Songwriter`s chart of the music galaxy.
It`s a huge PRS (Performing Rights Society) diagram, “chock-full of linkages, many of them connecting symbols representing Britain`s monetary system, the pound, and including stuff like artist, songwriter, record company, accountant, mechanical copyright protection system, how to walk the dog, so on and etc,” we said.
“It`s so huge we couldn`t reproduce the whole thing here, so if you`re interested in checking it out, you`ll have to go to the page where it rests. But there`s something missing, and it`s terribly important.
“See if you can spot what it is.”
Maggie did. “This is amazing,” she said in a Reader’s Write. “No music consumers in their universe at all!”
“What else is new?” – asked Jazz.
And, “Does the PRS even *realize* they’re diagramming a closed system?” – wondered Maggie a little later
Crosbie Fitch told me about the graph in an email in which he said, “Doc Searls linked to the picture in a post of his about VRM/Emancipay on a VRM mailing list I subscribe to.
“He linked to a couple of others too: http://www.bemuso.com/musicbiz/bigfiles/worldroyalties.jpg and http://www.bemuso.com/musicbiz/collectionsocieties.html#collectingmusicroya.”
The graph, “represents the ‘music universe’ (in the brain damaged minds of the music industry),” said Crosbie, continuing »»»
There’s something fundamentally and disturbingly wrong with it.
The thing that’s missing is the thing the industry is blind to, the vermin the industry would prefer remained out of sight, and will stamp on if it gets in its way or starts nibbling holes in its banknotes.
It’s the audience, the artist’s true customers — something the labels would rather the artists didn’t get any crazy notions of actually getting in touch with.
A proper picture would show the artists on one side, the musicians, composers, singers and songwriters, and their audiences on the other.
And in between, would be all the ways in which artist and audience exchange their art and money.
Ideally, the audience and artist would be recognised as interchangeable, for wre all artists, all audiences to each other, all enjoying, sharing and building upon each others’ art.
“It’s time to put the people back in the picture,” he adds
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
August, 2009
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August 15th, 2009 at 8:14 am
The chart only illustrates how complex is the music business. Then if you add the fully confusing copyright laws in hundreds of countries where the music is eventually hear, we can only conclude one thing. The business if for the crooked lawyers that really run the music business.
Sure, there are a few model artists and songwriters that make some money…. but it is mostly for the lawyers and “managers” that surround them.