http://www.airportcargatwick.com/

Great news! I’ll spread the word through my networks too.

If anyone is reading this and wondering why I’m not up to speed on where we are with our joint project, it’s because I’m on tour in Spain at the moment. Just done the first show in Madrid, back at the hotel watching Uruguay vs Argentina on tv and having a night cap.

a2f2a.com will be up and running by the 21st.

Cheers!

I don’t have any friends in the RIAA, their writ does not run in the UK. Our industry organisation is called the BPI – the British Phonographic Industry – which kinda illustrates how dated their outlook is. With regard to my FAC colleagues, to be honest I’ve not yet told them that I’ve taken this initiative. Partly because I wasn’t sure if it would go this far and secondly because I don’t want them to be scared off by some of posts here. We have a board meeting on 21st October, by which time a2f2a.com will hopefully be up and running. I will then spread the word through our mailing list and contacts.

If we build it, they will come.

And, as if to prove the point………

John Barron,

Good to hear from the Pirate Party, and that our two organisations share common goals. I hope you will take active part in the discussions on a2f2a, not least because your initiative needs explaining to artists if it is to make headway against the propaganda of the record industry.

They’ll bother. Count on it.

Cheers!

catflap,

Yes sharing my work is allowed so long as it’s not for profit. It ties in with one of FAC’s principles: Where money is made, artists must be paid.
<<<<<<<<<<

Very interesting to read that, Billy. Are you aware, may I ask, that this is exactly Pirate Party official policy?

We aim to reform, not abolish copyright, and we would legalise all non-commercial sharing by private individuals. Where money is being made, however, and a price is being charged for copies, then we expect that some part of the revenue must be remitted to the copyright holder (assuming the work is still in copyright – we don't accept that anyone's great-grandchildren need to be still paid, as can happen with life+70 year durations). And that is, and I'm sure it will remain, Pirate policy not just in the UK but in the wider international movement.

The Pirate Party would be very interested to talk to you, or to other representatives of the Featured Artists Coalition, about what we can or should do in a world of changing technology, where digital information is sharable and will be sharable, but where we also want to encourage creativity and innovation, and ensure that there is an opportunity (maybe not a guarantee; but a substantial opportunity) to make money and earn a living from creative work.

youre the only one who comes here regularly to have real talks, and we have no idea if any of your fac and riaa friends are reading any of this and if they’ll ever bother to go to a2f2a because until we know theyre listening to us and interested in what we have to say and want to be in the discussion, youre our only link to them. so wouldn’t you like to be able to tell them *hey guys look we can make money with p2p and heres how it works*. you can at least talk to the people who run those websites with free p2p that Catflap wrote on to have some informations to pass on to your fac and riaa friends.

Heh. If I had my druthers, I’d druther be making music. But even if I was, I’d still be singing the same tunes when it comes to Big Music.

Cheers!

Have you any idea how much “you are the one” would make an awesome techno/dance song today? Clubs would love this stuff man!

Damn dude!

Cuban Traffic is also a very cool tune. You have a lot of jazz influence, like a techno-jazz thing going on. Wicked!

Henry 9th has a nice classical-techno mix with a hint of darkness associated with the medieval era.

Thank you for sharing!

Good stuff.

I, too, have a home recording studio which cost me altogether about $250 for a software synthesiser, and $99 for a keyboard with a MIDI interface. I already had an old laptop which now functions as my music system. I don’t get a lot of time to use it, but it’s there and ready to go.

If you want to hear a new, not-so-new and old Jon composition, try

http://www.p2pnet.net/jonmusic/youare theone.mp3

http://www.p2pnet.net/jonmusic/cuban traffic.mp3

http://www.p2pnet.net/jonmusic/henry 9th.mp3

You’ll have to cut and paste the urls.

Cheers!

So you spend ~$4200 CDN for a pretty kick ass setup, all you need is to find space to record, but this setup is quite portable which means you can move it for jamming or even live recording (use the Duet connected to the mixing console) and record other bands/performers live and give them the DVD of their performance, all tracks, charging whatever you see fit.

That helps recoup your costs.

Go with a Macbook Pro and you have even greater portability.

As a home studio, you can build your own “silent” areas for recording if you’re willing to DIY and there’s LOADs of DIY info on the net for building sound booths, sure some are less than perfect and others are more of a “with our product…” salespitch, but there’s lots of useful info too.

Anyhow, $4200 for recording your albums on your own, it’s just you anyhow and many bands are doing the single-track-at-a-time recording as the musicians are all over or working.

That’s a one-time fee, equivalent to 8.4hrs in a $500/hr studio (which was used by Eminem, as I learned by watching MTV’s wanna-bee thingy for some braindead reason).

So you still can record decent sounding items if you’re willing to do the work yourself and you’ll save money and you’ll have full creative control. I think you, as Billy Bragg, should have no problem generating $4200 towards your next album?

Just an idea, if you feel I am out in left field or right field, just let me know. I’m just thinking here and I’ve done some of the above work already.

I don’t have the Duet yet or Avastar or decent mic or Express. I use GarageBand and just focus on writing right now, well when I’m not working or cycling/racing.

I just don’t have the time to check all this variety out. I rely on my nieces and nephews to keep me up to date on whats happening.

I’m more interested in connecting with people like yourself who are avid p2p users and recognise that the principle ‘where money is made, artists must be paid’ is a reasonable expectation, not a provocative declaration of war.

Robert,

Without the music whats the point?

There will still be music, just no recordings if they are seen to have no intrinsic economic value to the people who make them.

I don’t disagree with any of the models that you outlined – I do accept invitations to speak to political science students – but I just wonder if those things will become the core activity with making recordings a thing of the past viz the Rolling Stones model. Why make records when you can make money doing all this other stuff. Cake without icing is still very nice, if it has the right ingredients.

Do you mean to say, that not even out of curiosity a few years ago did you even try Napster? At least to find out what it was all about and what you might have been fighting for or against?

I think it would be a very good idea for you to try it (free p2p) out – not Napster or any other paid service that claims to use BitTorrent technology, and/or only rents you files as long as you keep paying them.

The most popular technology is BitTorrent and the easiest program to use is uttorent.

If a main tenet of FAC is “Where money’s made, artists must be paid”, I don’t think you’ll find many people here disagreeing with that.

I’ve mentioned before (I don’t know if you saw it because you didn’t comment on it) that it’s possible for even the free p2p websites to help artists earn money directly from the customer. Several already help them distribute their works (audio, video, text) for free.

You might be wondering how indie artists can get their works online for free immediately without first setting up a website.

Since you seem to be “new” to the p2p scene, you should check out some torrent listing sites that do help indies and creators share their works for free.

One good site to begin with is mininova.org that has a very good and useful policy of allowing content creators access to share their works at no cost to you. It gets highlighted and noticed by millions of people every day.

Another site is demonoid.com which also – I think – does something like that. well, i think they have some way of promoting content creators. but at the moment, demonoid has been offline for technical reasons, but hopefully will be back soon.

And of course, there’s the piratebay.org which is always happy to help indies distribute their work.

I believe you mentioned you’d not be against including a way for p2pers to donate to an artist directly through free p2p and I think that could be easily implemented through those – and other – websites.

So you see, the tools are there. p2pers help each other. The Kartels help no one, except themselves, to YOUR money and work.

I urge you to at least look into these possibilities and try out free p2p for yourself. There are several easy tutorials on those websites, or just google “bittorent tutorial” – but it’s really very simple.

The recordings are the icing on the cake and the filling at the same time. Without the music, what’s the point? People WILL pay for you to write and record and release, and sure some people will just copy instead of supporting you, but most will actually support you. I truly believe that without going through a label (like Reznor did for Ghosts) you’d make a hell of a lot more money.

Fans will buy your media, even if it is available for free, because deep down the fans want to support you. Right now, people are super pissed at the labels and they know next to nothing goes to the artists, so they don’t really feel anything from downloading. But those artists they really enjoy, they still buy their music/recordings even though they know the artist doesn’t collect any money or well below the basic personal limit for income tax.

But they also pay to see the artist perform live.

We also need to figure out what to do with a recording artist, one that doesn’t do live performances. What else can they do? I have ideas, such as non-music related things as cooking/picnics/videos of recording process/remixing etc…

Don’t forget, while many things can be converted into ‘free’ digital media, it doesn’t mean that fans will not pay anything, they will. They will still support you as long as the items or reasons to buy are reasonably priced. $10 or less for a CD of 10 songs where the artist gets the $10 is ideal. $20 where the label gets the cash and screws the artist more, bad deal and not worth it.

$5 for download + bonus (yes the bonus will eventually be online, but they will support you so they will still buy it) or $10 for download + bonus + backing tracks or $20 for remix-ability or whatever. Those are totally reasonable. You only pick a few songs for the remix and it is $20 per two or three songs, but they get the individual tracks, they can take just the drums and bass and guitar or just bass and guitar or just keyboards and your voice, whatever, it is up to the fans.

That’s the secret, give them options, not “pay $20 or FOAD” but “here’s a nice list, not 35 different items, but 8 items or so, for you to choose” and you can also ask the fans, what would they like?

Maybe you’ll find a group of political science students at UOttawa love your music and are willing to give you $500 when you next pass through to come and talk at a conference? You never know. It’s a great way to open your music to others and get your political activism thing going on.

What do you think? I am just thinking here.

For myself, once I manage to balance time better so I can actually do more with music, I will offer “I’ll NOT release anything on myspace or bittorrent for $1 per song per avenue per month(as in $1 for myspace and $1 for bittorrent and $1 for Limewire etc…. per song), and for $100 I’ll not release anything for the next month, for $500 I’ll not release anything for the next year, for $1000 I’ll not post any more comments on p2pnet or release any music for the next year or post any more pro-p2p stuff on my myspace blog.”

You get the idea.

Yes sharing my work is allowed so long as it’s not for profit. It ties in with one of FAC’s principles: Where money is made, artists must be paid.

No, I’ve never tried free p2p before – might be to do with my technophobia as much as anything else. I heard a beautiful song on the radio a couple of weeks ago 24-25 by Kings of Convenience. I tried to buy it on Amazon only to find that it is not yet released (comes out next week). Now at this point, I guess I should have looked on the p2p pages to find a recording, but instead I went to YouTube which has a beautiful clip of the boys singing the song on a Scandanavian tv show. I watch this clip about once a day. It gives me a tingly feeling. I have the album on order at Amazon.

I guess you could say that my RtB is that I’m an old guy who doesn’t understand how to find free downloads. However, just as Robert points out that there will always be people who never pay – and I accept that fact – there are also people who will always pay.

I like their formula and I recognise that it is viable for all those additional things you spoke about. But, if I correctly understand the ’sell music, not copies’ argument, fans have no reason to buy anything that can be made into a digital media file, so RtB does not apply to recordings.

I’m not worried about protecting my work or stopping people sharing it – I think that p2p is a beneficial medium for promotion. I don’t worry about copies for free. I just sent a recording of a new unreleased song to a political activism site to give away as a free download. I accept that I stand to lose more than I gain by attempting to lock down my work.

I’m just following the logic of the idea expressed above. Why would artists bother to make new recordings if they have no intrinsic value in themselves?

Explanation of idea:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090719/2246525598.shtml

Here are a few articles, they are not really long:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090113/2232443399.shtml
which links to:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070919/230654.shtml
http://techdirt.com/articles/20081118/1647262872.shtml

These articles link to other articles that are good background reading.

There’s always Trent Reznor’s comments:
http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,767183,page=1

I think you’re falling into a slippery slope though with the whole backing tracks/video thing. Sure, people can and will copy it, but you know that isn’t the point. You seem to be thinking like a label or something because you’re worried about protecting and blocking people from copying. That isn’t what you’re supposed to be worried about because you know that people will always copy.

So what can you do? For one, try to not worry about the copies for free. People WILL pay for those backing tracks and videos. People will pay when given the different payment options. When you force them into payment with price fixing (like the labels did and were punished for) or when you try to lock it down, you will actually be counter productive and lose more than if you left it open.

Remember there will always be some people who never pay. But be honest, would they ever pay? Probably not, so that’s not a “lost sale.”

Have a read of the articles and let me know if it helps clarify what I am trying to say. It is a different way of thinking and techdirt is trying their own method. I wonder if the RIAA will spend the $100 million to shut down techdirt for a year

Cheers!

~Robert

I don’t know if you’ve ever mentioned this, or if anyone has asked you this – but I’m not going to trawl the past couple of hundred messages to try to find out.

On your message board you have a place for people to post links to share their bootlegs of your concerts. Presumably, many of the people are sharing them through free p2p programs or websites/trackers. I haven’t taken a good look around, but I did notice the posting and sharing rules are very liberal. Sharing is allowed as long as it’s not for profit.

Have you ever used free p2p yourself – before or after FAC was formed – either to share your own stuff, or to sample/try out other peoples’ stuff before you decide if you want to buy it?

And without naming names, do you know of any professional musicians who have ever used/do use free p2p to share or download?

Also, what about films, tv shows and concert videos?

Thanks.

No I don’t think recordings are the only means of generating income. I’ve always earned my living as a live performer. Lots of artists do. I often wonder why bands like the Rolling Stones continue to make new records. No one wants to hear them, they just want the classics. The Stones make a new record whenever they tour because they believe that it gives them something to promote. Does the new product make any difference to their ticket sales? Of course not. If they never made another album they’d still continue to gross millions of dollars from their gigs.

Please understand that this is not a plea to be paid for downloads. I recognise that digitisation has completely changed the business. I totally accept that artists can and will make a living from doing live dates and the additional stuff that you outlined. But those things are manifestations of the ’sell music’ part of the deal. The way I understand it, if all copies are now free, then anything that can be converted into a digital media file – and that must include backing tracks, video and live footage – is of no economic value.

If that is the case – and it certainly looks like it – then artists have to make a choice. If every recording that I make is going to simply disappear into the freenet, then why bother making them? It might even make sound economic sense to stop recording. No more Billy Bragg records will drive up the scarcity value of my live performances.

The Stones are old school, they never need to do any of that additional stuff that you refer to. That’s a much more recent phenomena, which young artists seem more and more willing to exploit. Are we at an evolutionary watershed which we will see artists doing more and more additional stuff and less and less recording until one supplants the other as the main source of income?

Maybe the new paradigm for artists is ’sell yourself, not your recordings’

Haven’t read the techdirt stuff. Could you post me a link?

The point that the model tries to make is that making copies via the net is free, so why try to compete with free? You can’t. True fans will buy your CD’s but they and you know you won’t make any money that way either. Buying copies isn’t how you will make money.

Have you taken the time to read the Techdirt articles on connecting with fans and providing them with finite goods to purchase? I know you are busy gigging and if so I can re-read them and make notes for you, it would save you time.

There’s a lot you can do to earn a living that doesn’t involve selling copies of the recordings.

Let’s say we have the fanbase fund the recording and the fans get copies and share them. As you said, you choose a good studio (versus home stuff) and you go for nice mics and sound engineers who know their way around so you can focus on the art, rather than mic placement and amp choice (or even battery choice if you are Eric Johnson).

So the recording money from the fans pays for the recording. Now how do you pay for the bills? You offer additional items. No tshirt, but those can be cool too, but limited edition vinyl, home-made CD/DVD’s with interactive media, “for an extra $5 you can get the backing tracks so you can jam along”, “for an extra $20 you can get the separate tracks and create your own remix and share it”, and as I said before, you can arrange performances in the park or whatever (see techdirt for more ideas).

There are so many ways that indie artists have made money doing impulse little things that cost them next to nothing, connect with the fans and the fans go nuts over it, and the artist wins. The only problem is what does your contract say? Does your label collect 90% of any and all income to you and give you the 10% and that’s it? Or is all the impulsive ideas all yours?

At which point you now have how you can live! Fans fund the recording by pre-pay or you fund it yourself with profits/savings from previous recordings and/or job income, you release the digital version for free, bonus material costs $5 more, home-made CD or autographed CD or DVD with recording images and video clips of you in the studio, for $10, vinyl for $50 including free digital copies, autographed stuff,e tc… you get the picture.

It seems like recordings are what you believe as the only means of generating income, you know of many other times right? Or are these not valid in your mind? If not valid, please explain why.

And if you’d like a point-form summary, say so. I am here to help!