Big article on ASCAP newsletters, it has articles related to this all the time... it's a no win situation. Here's another good article. http://diffuser.fm/15-years-ago-napster-ordered-to-stop-trading-copyrighted-music/

Wow, fascinating story!

Ok... just so I have this right - Brandenberg, Morris and Glover.... so those are the three guys I wanna beat the snot out of. ;)

Great great insight. None of those major artists emimem, 50c, ect became poor. I think this piracy saved the music industry. It brought art to the world, and let the world decide what they wanted, regardless of money. It shattered an old exploitation based industry. Maybe record company's should offer health benefits? Chuck shuldnier (misspelled last name I, sure) frontman for the band 'death', who is the godfather of death metal, was allowed to die of cancer under the eyes of the label, who is still selling 're mastered bonus' versions of his cd.

Art is free to make and experience, Imo. Look at crowd funding, look how many local people, got 10k tax free, loyalty free. This money goes directly to the people making the art, engineers replactors ect.

It also allowed unprecedented, worldwide distribution. The fact that I can't say the F word on TV , is an insult to my personal freedoms.

Privacy was a problem for the big time, any sort of roots music, from metal to punk to folk to jazz, still running on the same mantra, and have arguably grown worldwide.

Also, excellent point brought right at the end, about Apple and Google essentially controlling what we can acces with their devices. I experience this frustration all the time, trying to rely on Apple phone/tablets for professional uses. They often have unannounced updates, it's scary to send somone a picture or important document, and get a 'can't acces your files' message. I'm on to setting up my own network via a massive NAS drive. People have no idea that the day will come, where the mass networking systems fails, and significant data loss happens.

It happened in the U.S. In the 1930s(?) when banks burned down and lost all the peoples money and records. Then came the privatized FDIC.

kmetal, post: 431317, member: 37533 wrote: It happened in the U.S. In the 1930s(?) when banks burned down and lost all the peoples money and records. Then came the privatized FDIC.

Historical reference source please? I don't know where to even start with that, other than at the end to say that the F-word in FDIC = Federal.

[deep breaths] I will not derail this thread…. I will not derail this thread…. I will not derail this thread….

Corporation

kmetal, post: 431317, member: 37533 wrote: Art is free to make and experience, Imo. Look at crowd funding, look how many local people, got 10k tax free, loyalty free. This money goes directly to the people making the art, engineers replactors ect.

While this is great in theory, you have another side, that I personally have experienced. Here I am with a very sad 2000 odd listens on soundcloud over a period of 3 years, because I don't go around prostituting myself liking some others etc just for the sake of getting more hits... well and other reasons obviously. Anyway, I am googling myself and my songs and what do I find, some of my songs on other sites, which they shouldn't be. Here's the kicker at the time I had as many as 700k likes on one of my songs and... the added bonus.. someone selling my songs as ringtones. And of course the end of this, I don't get a penny of it!!. Now at this point in my less than financially successful music career spanning 45 years and a oodles of money etc.. that kind of is flattering, but frankly pisses me off.

And the main offenders, spain, chile and brazil. Reality is, it's a free for all, and you have to be lucky more than ever to make anything out of this business anymore. I still stick to my guns that playing live is the only solution to it, and getting to do that with original material is harder than ever still.

Just my .02 at the moment :)

Tony

Makzimia, post: 431335, member: 48344 wrote: I still stick to my guns that playing live is the only solution to it, and getting to do that with original material is harder than ever still.

Just my .02 at the moment

(y)

Makzimia, post: 431335, member: 48344 wrote: Here I am with a very sad 2000 odd listens on soundcloud over a period of 3 years, because I don't go around prostituting myself liking some others etc just for the sake of getting more hits... well and other reasons obviously. Anyway, I am googling myself and my songs and what do I find, some of my songs on other sites, which they shouldn't be. Here's the kicker at the time I had as many as 700k likes on one of my songs and... the added bonus.. someone selling my songs as ringtones. And of course the end of this, I don't get a penny of it!!. Now at this point in my less than financially successful music career spanning 45 years and a oodles of money etc.. that kind of is flattering, but frankly pisses me off.

Well, first of all, I'd be happy to have 200 listens, let alone 2000, LOL, and second, I think you have every right to be frustrated, and it has nothing to do with how financially secure you are - or not. These are your compositions. You've wrote them, you worked on them, you recorded them. The gear you used to do that with didn't come cheap, and neither does your commitment to your art and your craft. Every pro musician/engineer I know, including the members here, have all worked their asses off over the years to become better at what they do. There are some people who might be born with a sort of "inherent" kind of "bend" towards a particular skill - for some it might be sports, others math and science, still for others, it might be mechanics. For us, it's music and listening skills. But, that doesn't mean that we didn't have to work really hard and discipline ourselves to refine our skills, to hone the talent. I'm still working at it, 48 years after first sitting behind a kit of drums, 37 years after I first ever sat down at a recording console and rolled tape.

This sense of "entitlement" that people have when it comes to music is skewed ... and it's wrong. These same people wouldn't ever expect to be able to walk into some guy's furniture shop and walk out with a custom-made cabinet or table for free.
They wouldn't think twice about having to pay a plumber or an electrician for work done in their homes, or to pump gas into their cars. But with music, it's different. They feel that they should be able to own it and use it for whatever they want for nothing....the numbers of people who expect it to be free are staggering.

And yet, someone is making money off of your music. So, okay, maybe it is only a buck or so per download, but if a company has collected that one dollar for two thousand downloads, and you haven't received any of it, then that's criminal, IMO.
Let's assume that you were paid even just half of that revenue... you know as well as I do that $1000 buys a pretty nice preamp these days, or a converter, or a mic... for me, that amount pays my mortgage for two months.

I know we've all become accustomed to this, and I'm not even saying I know the answer to the problem... but I don't think there's anything wrong with being frustrated and angry about it... anger and frustration can often lead to solutions, whereas complacency generally doesn't.

IMHO of course.

yup, Some days I feel like it was all for nothing

Makzimia, post: 431335, member: 48344 wrote: While this is great in theory, you have another side, that I personally have experienced. Here I am with a very sad 2000 odd listens on soundcloud over a period of 3 years, because I don't go around prostituting myself liking some others etc just for the sake of getting more hits... well and other reasons obviously. Anyway, I am googling myself and my songs and what do I find, some of my songs on other sites, which they shouldn't be. Here's the kicker at the time I had as many as 700k likes on one of my songs and... the added bonus.. someone selling my songs as ringtones. And of course the end of this, I don't get a penny of it!!. Now at this point in my less than financially successful music career spanning 45 years and a oodles of money etc.. that kind of is flattering, but frankly pisses me off.

And the main offenders, spain, chile and brazil. Reality is, it's a free for all, and you have to be lucky more than ever to make anything out of this business anymore. I still stick to my guns that playing live is the only solution to it, and getting to do that with original material is harder than ever still.

Just my .02 at the moment :)

Tony

Tony you pointed out a lot of things wrong. Not the least of which was people profiting off of intellectual property, that they did not create, or have usage rights for.

This is never right, and the part in the OP about the guy duplicating DVDs and selling them is a similar thing. This is a little different than making a dubbed cassette of Metallica in 1984, and giving it to a buddy. Also different from say Picasso who's work was rather worthless monetarily while he was around, yet becoming priceless.

It's never possible to completely enforce laws, and intellectual copyright laws are weak at best. This doesn't make it any more right, or less true. The idea is to use this as your prostitutin, by making easy for the people to get more. That's what people want right, more of what they want, not necessarily what they need? We as entertainers, and service workers for musicians and clubs ect, are in the business of want.

How easy is it for people to buy your product? iTunes? A link straight from your soundcloud? Is the same stuff on YouTube? Do you have an album? Performance schedule? Did you copywriting your material? You see where I'm going?

It's totally not cool someone ripped your music off and sold it, but that's not going away, and nobodys gonna be running out to go get your cut, which hopefully you have well defined in your paperwork, for when someone does want to pay. It's nothing new, I know a guy who's still owed 50k from a major label from the 90s, for royalties. Still doesn't make it any better.

The artist in me is happy if someone actually likes something I do, and frankly we are sitting here talking, using our tech toys like computers and smart phones. The $ value of which could probably feed multiple families in chile, for many many years. I'm okay if someone in chile makes a couple bucks off my tune.

I think man, people are digging your tunes somewhat, and maybe you should take it as a sign to make it easier for people to pay for it. At least to defray the cost of the gear if nothing else. Something of a tip jar, or open music case, ala street performer, is necessary for the current world, of non stop internet passers by.

I was just venting, I do that on various occasions. I was really pleased, as well as pissed about the attention the songs got. Biggest gripe honestly that I had was Sound Cloud obviously makes it difficult for people to just listen to the songs. I don't have any of them up for sale, or download, but they are free to listen to. I approached both ASCAP and SoundCloud about the sales because they can rip my songs off the backend of SoundCloud, no joy. Like I said, no win situation. Perhaps a tour of Spain Chile and Brazil since a lot of people have heard of me LOL.

historically, it's difficult at best for an individual to exert any kind of pressure on a larger group.

the record companies like them or not, are a large entity who had the ability to put a lot of pressure on the market in the interest of themselves and the artists, as long as it appeared there was more profits in the pipeline. in other words, as long as there were more hits coming from a record company, they got paid. like them or not, at least it was some sort of mechanism to collect.

i can download anything free on the internet. programs like download helper provide a path for these downloads, regardless if permissions are enabled or not. as file sizes shrink and computers get faster and get more memory, this issue will become more prevalent. it's going to get worse, not better. if you want to be paid for your music, don't post it on the internet.

ASCAP /BMI /SESAC or any other group has never paid royalties to anyone unless they reached a pre defined threshold. they are not going to take the effort to count your 1759 internet plays and then cut a check for .07 per play. they pay the big fish and it's usually done on an average. that's how it works.

so complain all you like, this is the brave new world of self publishing and marketing. i have to admit, i am amused. we have gotten what we (or some of us) asked for. perhaps those big old bad record companies weren't so bad after all?

Kurt Foster, post: 431358, member: 7836 wrote: ASCAP /BMI /SESAC or any other group has never paid royalties to anyone unless they reached a pre defined threshold. they are not going to take the effort to count your 1759 internet plays and then cut a check for .07 per play

Yup Kurt, that is exactly the conclusion we came to. I for one have no intention of paying ASCAP for membership anytime soon again, at renewal.

It just needs restructure. Art or not, how good is your track record if multiple 'top earners' kept dying in front of everybody, and allowed to. Musicians with healthcare plans, does that even exist?