I’ve been at two festivals where the ASCAP police have tried to collect fees. One was escorted off of the property by state highway patrol…
Oh, and don’t be too sure about that “traditional” thing - do a search on good old Alfred E. Brumley and see what HE got copyrights to. “I’ll Fly Away” anyone???
I would have loved to see that.
It’s already happened, Marcus. Look at Dick Gaughan’s web site. He’s prepared to share just about everything, the only line being that he might not remember or have the energy and that you may not use his gifts for commercial gain. As in so many respects, Gaughan is decades ahead of the game. Apart from his sensitivity and intelligence, if there is a single reason for this it is that he never stopped being an old-fashioned socialist. But he doesn’t just sit around talking about it; he lives it.
When people extoll the virtues of unfettered free market capitalism, and it does happen around here, they always seem conveniently to forget idiocy like what we are discussing. When you try to turn culture into a commodity in every respect possible, you soon build a nightmare world that nobody wants to live in.
They actually never have understood that, both the musicians unions and the majors.
The recording bans in the 40s are a case in point; they failed to stop structural changes in the way people consumed their music. Obviously, the demise of the big bands must have been a painful time for journeyman musicians and many must have had to go into teaching or adapt in some other way.
The major never do get it. There hasn’t been a single new trend in mass taste that the majors understood from the outset. They didn’t anticipate rock and roll, or whites buying black music, or English beat groups, or fringe styles like modern jazz, folk and blues getting broad audiences, or proig rock, or reggae, or punk, or soul, or hip hop and rap, or metal or grunge, or bar band retro. In each case they had to pay more to aquire their own artists—and often pick from the second tier—than they ever would have developing their own talent. I suppose they are in a situation of having to simultaneously do two things. They want to encourage as many people as possible to buy from as small a range of records as possible that are predictable smashes in advance of their release. OTOH, to be proactive, they would have to be aware of when a whole generation is saying no to the crap they are pushing. If you hired people to monitor changes in taste you could hedge your bets here. Why don’t they? Are they just too lazy? Or do they really think that uniformity of taste can be imposed by establishing a near monopoly on media ownership?
rock with peroggies? 
j/k
OTOH, to be proactive, they would have to be aware of when a whole generation is saying no to the crap they are pushing. If you hired people to monitor changes in taste you could hedge your bets here. Why don’t they? Are they just too lazy? Or do they really think that uniformity of taste can be imposed by establishing a near monopoly on media ownership?
What, you’re kiddin right? just look at the american pop music industry, it’s no bloody wonder that they think that they can just cram whatever they like down our throats and we’ll all buy into it. The reason being is that there really are (sadly) enough dope-ass people out there who will buy and like what they’re told to. They’ll even believe that something’s cool if the’re told it is.
interesting case in point…
when I was in high school my band was on the forefront of the indie metal movement in SLC (we used to open for a band that’s still going today, if you’re ever in town and you can see Jesus Rides A Riksha, do it). Once we were openly criticized for our style of music by some of the more trendy and popular cheer-leader-type kids after playing a charity gig with some other groups. I shook my head and said “Y’know, you’re right, we ought to give up metal and switch to rastabilly skank.” My drummer, who I was with at the time, caught on to the joke and said something like, “Yeah, I guess rock is dead. Rastabilly skank is what’s popular now.”(for those of you unfamiliar with rastabilly skank, it is a fictional style of music beloved by the Red Dwarf character Dave Lister).
Fast forward three or four weeks…a buddy of mine that worked for a record store (who is also a Red Dwarf fan, and incidentally was unfamiliar with the aformentioned incident) came to me and said something to the degree of ,“The damnedest happened at work today; so-and-so from school came in to the store and asked me to recomend a rastabilly skank artist.”
I just about died laughing.
Well I wasn’t kidding, but, then again, I haven’t been following the changes in popular taste for about 20 years, although some of it slips through even to me. Probably what I like of it would be considered alternative rather than popular.
In the mid 80s it looked like the majors’ dream had come through with massive sales of Madonna and Michael Jackson. But I think a closer look would reveal that most buyers were in the preteen/early teen stage and that older teens and adults liked a wide variety of musics just as they always did—and since that audience spread their dollars over thousands of artists, none in particular stand out. For older audiences, for every predictable success like the new Andrew Lloyd Webber, there is something that couldn’t be anticipated like Riverdance and a hundred things with cult audiences of a few thousand—enough to make issuing a record profitable.
Probably more music is available today than ever before. I’ve never known an era in which so much is in print and I’ve been collecting records for decades. Very little of what I buy comes out on the majors, even when it is owned by them. There is a huge market in 60s and 70s rock, presumably because some young people like it but mainly because nostalgic oldies have the disposable income to sustain it.
Wormdiet wrote:
But I think a closer look would reveal that most buyers were in the preteen/early teen stage and that older teens and adults liked a wide variety of musics just as they always did—and since that audience spread their dollars over thousands of artists, none in particular stand out. For older audiences, for every predictable success like the new Andrew Lloyd Webber, there is something that couldn’t be anticipated like Riverdance and a hundred things with cult audiences of a few thousand—enough to make issuing a record profitable.
Probably more music is available today than ever before. I’ve never known an era in which so much is in print and I’ve been collecting records for decades. Very little of what I buy comes out on the majors, even when it is owned by them. There is a huge market in 60s and 70s rock, presumably because some young people like it but mainly because nostalgic oldies have the disposable income to sustain it.
In the last few years classical music has almost if not disappeared completely from the airwaves, except for an aging population nobody seems to care. According to articles published in the last two weeks, Rock radio in the U.S. is also going the way of classical, jazz etc., to be replaced with all talk formats.
The boomer generation (my generation) aren’t buying the pop stuff of today, nor are they buying the oldies. I have noticed that in the last few years our classical/jazz section of recorded music here at the library and system wide is not as widely used as it was even ten years ago. There has been a generational change, from a predomitantly European base of customers to a very diverse base.
The librarian responsible for the Young Adult collection and I had a forum with young adults last week discussing what kind of music would they like to see in the library, outside of some of the popular rap, hi-hop music, they were all over the place in the world. Each seem to have their own niche and a very eclectic taste…that they didn’t buy from a record compay, instead, going to indie labels and sites that their friends told them about and downloading for free. They aren’t into purchasing music, unless they absolutely had to have it, and are aware of the dangers of illegal downloading but it doesn’t bother them much. MTV and such and radio doesn’t get their thumbs up for what they want to listen to and they see the large record producers pushing ho-hum crap at them, that isn’t worth 99 cents.
As a the music librarian for the system, I am struggling to write a collection development / acquisition procedure paper. I’m looking at streaming Naxos music database, a contract with Napster et al and allowing teenagers to download/burn a CD here in the library for a small fee. With the budget I have, I can not meet demand from such a diverse population. And with expectant death of the Compact Disc in the next few years, what do I do??? It is a very big collection and headache.
My thought is that the big record companies will eventually die off much like the North American auto industry, as more musicians great or small move to the internet as the main distribution means. By taking everyone and their dog to court the record industry isn’t going to put out the fire, shuting down websites will only mean that secret and alternative sites will evolve, don’t under estimate a teenage mind for larceny!
No government will make copyright stick as it is being approached now. locking up or burning books, as someone earlier suggested, so they can’t photocopy, only means that they will steal the bookor tear out the page, like they take a tune or so now.
MarkB
No offense to classical music tastes, but I listen to select music that has feeling to it. Most of the stuff NPR plays seems to be for putting people to sleep. Part of the problem with Classical is that Classical has ignored a large part of the population.
Show a kid Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana and I think that things might change. Some techno DJ’s even sample from it. (in fact some of them were forced to stop because of copy right infringement, Orf’s lawyers)
Show many kids the whole Carmina Burana and they’ll likely be snoring. 45 seconds of the Fortuna is not the same as the whole experience (rather operatic, varied, dramatic, but a smidge longer than the latest 50 Cent track).
Other fun / horrid samples have been the Flower Duet (in the wrong time sig), and Summer from Vivaldi’s Seasons. I don’t remember the artist / thief. Always a fine line between plagarism and Plunderphonics.
Stockhausen, however, would have made a totally sick DJ.
Sounds like the Supreme Court interpreting The Constitution the last several decades.
It occured to me that everything everyone posts here may have some kind of intellectual property right associated with it. Does it belong to Dale or does each author have rights within C&F to their own posts. If so then we can’t quote each other legally.
There is no way anything I have posted has anything intellectual connected with it.
So sue me.
That’s for damn sure! 
(jus’ kiddin man!)