Re: Free Stuff leading to Hell?

[mech <mech@m3ch.net>]

At 7:20 PM +0100 12/28/06, Per Boysen wrote:
>
>I see no "going to hell" dimension in the fact that people download 
>music for free. Why not? Myself I don't mind sending a money 
>donation to the music creator if I particularly like something. The 
>challenge with the internet is that most of the free stuff is not 
>very good, from an artistic point of view.

Back in the late-80's/early-90's -- just as the Internet was getting 
off its training wheels -- Bruce Sterling wrote an essay that posited 
that the true value of the Internet lay not in the volume of 
information available on it, but rather in the availability of 
filtering and search tools to find the information you need.  Rather, 
a map or tool to find that one needle in the haystack.  I'd argue 
that we're today in a similar situation: there are some real gems 
being composed and published and pushed out into the big world. 
However, we're still lacking in a good filtering mechanism to 
separate the wheat and chaff.

>  With old times record labels it was the other way around; only the 
>fact that a creator was signed to have his/her outlet physically 
>copied and distributed by the label worked as a public quality level 
>assurance.

To a certain extent.  However, that QA function was hopelessly and 
fatally intertwined with the company's profit motive.  How often 
would labels receive excellent quality product that they would not 
publish because it couldn't bring in enough cash.  I'm certain that 
if I had a dollar for every group/album some A&R guy *wished* they 
could put out (but was outside the label's scope of business), I 
would most assuredly be a rich man.

Also, there was a fair amount of shite pushed out by the labels which 
did not meet those same quality standards, but they believed it would 
sell, or it was produced by a friend of the label owner, or some 
other crap reason.

>I'm a big fan of the Creative Commons movement and I'm seriously 
>looking into giving away an entire album, newly recorded, at 
>http://www.jamendo.com or some related player.

Yes!  Do it, Per!  I love the whole Creative Commons movement, and 
(although I understand that its nice for artists to occasionally eat) 
I wholeheartedly support the removal of the profit motive from music 
creation.  Alternately, you might look into some of the different 
alternate copyright systems -- copyleft, for instance, or the GNU 
public license.  I also really dig some of the suggestions that Marc 
Francombe has posted regarding leaving CD's in coffee shops, passing 
along your music to complete strangers, etc., etc., etc.

As long as you can keep control over ownership (just to stop somebody 
else from unfairly making money off your creations) putting your 
stuff out for free sounds like an extremely cool idea.

        --m.
-- 
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"Now Simulcast on Crazy People's Fillings"