Out of Pod Experience

How much did it cost to see Beethoven or Bach back in the day?

edit: I meant 'hear'.

[Great Wall of Text... sorry, couldn't say it shorter]

OK, consider this example:
Four art school college guys form a band. They call it "The Pink Floyd Sound." Two can actually play instruments, two are just learning. They're all usually stoned or tripping on the current varieties of experimental drugs. They put together some pretty conventional songs, by current tastes and standards. Pretty good, but nothing especially unique or groundbreaking. They get some gigs at college art school parties, little low-rent underground clubs, and other places where freaks hang out. During some of these performances, in addition to their regular set, they play free-form tripping freak-out jams that go on for half an hour at a time. Eventually the word gets out locally, among the trip-out artsy crowd, that The Pink Floyd Sound is an "experience" to do.

There's a bottom-rung operator/entrepreneur that works for a record company on commission. His girlfriend takes him to a Floyd event. He sees that these guys represent a certain niche "scene." He figures they might buy some records. He sells the record company on bringing Floyd into the studio to record some tracks with a professional producer. The record company sends records to radio stations. The operator/entrepreneur guy calls up all of his contacts at the stations and sells them on giving the songs some airplay. The songs get some modest attention and sell some records. The company brings the band back to the studio to make record a full album ("The Piper at the Gates of Dawn"). They also give the band members some cash up front to pay their rent and bills.

The album sells some copies, and one song from it gets some fairly significant airplay on local stations. It's enough that record company decides keep the band as in its stable and give them some management support. The band now has an album under its belt and it can now go semi-pro and start playing bigger venues. In a few months it goes to the studio again and does a second album. The band are now pretty seasoned musicians, and the second album more pro. The songs are still pretty conventional according to current tastes and standards, but the band's music has a unique sound and feel. It goes on like this for four more albums, over a period of five years.

By the sixth album, the band members are master musicians and a big product for the record company. They have a big budget and entirely free hand at producing their next album. They make "The Dark Side of the Moon" at Abbey Road studios, using cutting-edge technology and a producer and an engineer (Alan Parsons) who previously worked with George Martin and the Beatles.

Now consider the same four art school freaks starting a band in 2012. They play some standard stuff and some weirdly experimental tripped out stuff. They play art club parties and little low-rent underground clubs. They get a following among the local freak/artsy crowd. A record company guy's girlfriend takes him to see them. He thinks they're an interesting amateur band. He never considers trying to sell anything to this local "scene," because it's such a small demographic, and there's really not much to sell to them. He goes home. Encouraged by their fans, the band members self-fund and self-produce a studio album. They sell mp3s from it on their Myspace page. They sell some to local fans and some friends of friends and relatives. They have to work at Guitar Center or Home Depot during the day to pay their bills. They find a tiny record company to pick up their album and gets it distributed on eMusic and iTunes. It gets briefly mentioned in the "New in Indy/Alternative" section. It doesn't get any radio airplay. The only way for anyone to know about is maybe some customer put it on a shared list of favorites. A few mp3 sell, but not enough to let the band go pro. They keep on working during the day and gigging at night for a year or so. Band members drop out to go back to school or just do whatever. Five more albums aren't produced, and the "Dark Side of the Moon" never happens.

Sure, record companies are soulless, profit-driven entities, just like all other corporations. But record sales let them earn profits, which in turn let them experiment on no-name, niche industry products like Pink Floyd. That's gone now, and it was file sharing and piracy that killed it. The arts need money to thrive, and the money's just not there anymore.

I might swallow these piece of propaganda, if I weren't introduced to new and interesting bands every 2-3 weeks. New and interesting bands getting airplay on the radio, at a time when apparently the music industry is totally dead and no artists or record companies are making any money at all (well, according to the self-professed experts on this subject)


It's like you guys don't have an indy station in your countries or smth?
Or you've reached that special age where all new music is crap to your ears, if this is the case I regret to inform you the 'music industry died' when Elvis started producing records, just ask your great-granddaddy. Hell if you asked HIS great-grandaddy he'd probably tell you music died when Mozart came on the scene

I just want to point out that calling your opponent's logic 'stupid' isn't a very good way to make your point ;).

'Your honor, I object'.
'What's your objection?'
'Defense council is stupid'

Your argument is based on 'people go to concerts, so the impact of piracy is minimal'. I again disagree -- concerts are not 'always available', nor can everyone who likes a given band go to a concert (or afford the tickets).

For every song that's pirated, less money goes to the people that produce the music. They aren't getting royalties for the song (since it wasn't paid for), and they aren't getting paid for the CD itself (since a pirate is unlikely to buy a whole CD just for that one song).

Regardless of whether you can go to a concert or not, money is not changing hands for the stolen CD or song, and to make the balance and come out even on production costs, the artists have to raise the prices (just where do you think the money for those concerts comes from, anyway? Album sales, grasshopper...album sales).

I'm sorry, but I can't see the justification in your argument. You sound (with all due respect) like you're trying to justify piracy for its own sake.

That is a blatantly false statement, you are talking about songs as if they are some sort of finite resource, or that a pirated song actually counts as some sort of negative income for the artist.
What would be correct to say is

For every song that's pirated, where the pirate would have otherwise bought the album, less money goes to the people that produce the music

OR

For every song that's pirated, the artist makes no money

OR

For every song that's pirated, the artist is recompensated in word of mouth advertising,


Also, you aren't a pirate, you're anti-piracy, you clearly DON'T empathize with the thinking of pirates, so what on earth makes you think you can make a statement on the purchasing habits of pirates? You know nothing about us or what motivates us.


btw the progression goes like this
Guy who never heard of your stuff -> pirate -> fan -> die-hard fan


Piracy is an excellent way to turn joe blow into your next insane groupie

That's plain old scaremongering and makes for a pretty weak counter point.

They're trying to curb people distributing pirated material and that is quite true but you'll have to show some good evidence that they are trying to push for laws that force independant groups to distribute through them and that they would be capable of doing so.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the people in charge of these companies would love the idea of being able to force people to go through them etc etc but that's not the reality of what's going on.




What the hell is this? People who pirate are not some sort of hive collective that think and act the same way and while he may not pirate he's in as much a position to make a statement about what pirates do and don't do as you are.

You'll get a mix of outcomes from piracy from gaining fans willing to pay for more to people who will continue to pirate what they can and pay for nothing.

I think it's funny that this just devolved into essentially an argument about the evils of the music industry.

Piracy includes other things, and several of the most reasonable arguments in here were completely overlooked.

Yes, the music industry sucks. We all know it. Address the piracy issue, not the evils of an overwhelmingly bloated production scene.

People pirate for different reasons. The range scales from me understanding why to me being severely pissed. So I will not bunch them all together in judgment with some broad paint brush. So please do not paint all of us with the same broad brush stoke too.

To address the earlier ad hominem about my not knowing what drives piracy: for a long, long time, I was one of you. I downloaded music from places like Napster, never thought twice about it.

And then I thought what would happen if I actually supported the artists by buying a CD. Not only do I get superior quality in terms of the audio, I'm not risking my computer with files of dubious origin, I'm not violating copyright by comitting a blatant act of theft, and I'm alos allowing the artist to continue making the CDs that help his chosen career instead of taking money out of his pocket and forcing him to churn out sub-standard songs simply because I'm greedy.

Anyway, back to Astenion's post:

No, you won't live solely on your efforts -- I know a number of musicians that have been working two (or even three) jobs for almost six years to make ends meet. What little income they do recieve is quickly eroded, however, because the cost of CD printing and duplication is outstripped by the sheer number of people that download music from a filesharing service (and don't try and pretend it's 'just one song', because when I was still downloading, I found entire albums -- and in more than one case, a band's entire discography -- available).

[Edit: Messed the post all up, not fixable, never mind, carry on]