- Ray Charles died on June 13 but although it's trite to say it, his music will live forever.
Not at all incidentally, so will the hundreds of Ray Charles copyrights and contracts owned by the hundreds of corporate music entities who've already made millions out of him and who confidently expect to make millions more, his death notwithstanding.
For the Big Five record labels, music and musicians exist for one reason only: to be exploited to the max and milked like the cash-cows they are. Copyrights, CDs, DVDs, movies, contracts, performance rights, product/service testimonies, clothing, make-up, toys, promo items, food, drinks, contra-advertising, and et cetera, are where it's at.
Music quality matters only in respect to its relationship to the bottom line.
Now read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Hannah & the Dusty Stars By Jon Newton - p2pnet.net
When I moved to Canada from London, England, in 1979, I briefly held a job on the wire desk of an Ontario daily. They fired me when I wouldn't use their new computer to write headlines. And that'll tell you I was a Luddite.
For years I wouldn't have anything to do with computers or the Net because, frankly, both scared the sh*t out of me. My idea of fun was to pick my 12-string, try to follow complex African rhythms on my hand-drums, blow my harmonicas. And listen to my albums.
That hasn't changed, but now add Feel the tones made on my singing bowl, Spend time with my didgeridoo, Make music with my computer. And Listen to my mp3s. In fact, right now I'm hearing Mose Allison do Parchman Farm.
Musically, my roots are in the 60s and 70s. Back then, I'd drive myself insane trying to simultaneously push 'record' on one tape deck and 'play' on another and then grab my guitar before the track on 'play' started. This called for immaculate timing and unreal dexterity. Had to be done, though, because although I can organize pieces in my head, I can't read or write music. I don't even know the names of the chords. This was the only way I could keep sketches of my stuff.
Then, years later, I discovered sound cards, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), software synthesizers - and email. With them, I could multi-track without risking my life, be an entire band all by myself AND email .mid files to people around the world so we could in effect jam together.
Using the keyboard and my index fingers, I'd tap 'notes' one at a time into a software application and then turn the entries into a drum line and a bass line, say, which I'd save as a .mid file. This I'd send to someone else who'd add guitar, say, and who'd then send it to someone else to add keyboards and we could all tinker with the final take. What a blast : )
So sharing music literally got me online. Or I should say, finding out I could communicate freely with other people who liked to share digital music files, did. Then along came p2p, the current form of file-sharing.
Enter p2p I have a collection of mainly oldies, some of them really hard to find. It's more or less evenly divided between songs I ripped from records, CDs and tapes I already owned, and from tracks I downloaded.
My wife and I have a lot of CDs and tapes of independent artists from around the world. And we paid for them happily. We also have a lot of vinyl recordings of Names from the days when we shelled out not so happily for Big Music 'product' because we had no alternative. Like everyone else, we had to stand still while the labels extorted money from us. But we've always shared, which used to involve tape recorders and people we could reach physically, or by snail-mail.
Hundreds of thousands of people have claimed, and still claim, that downloads from p2p networks got them into a record store where they then bought one or more CDs.
Back when file sharing was new and the real Napster was still around, I came across a Steve Miller track of The Joker which I hadn't heard for ages. I once had all of Miller's LPs but my collection was stolen. Hearing the mp3, however, got me going again and I went out and bought two Steve Miller CDs.
The Big Five record labels sneer at the idea, but not because they don't believe this happens. They know it does. The problem is: these kinds of buys don't really figure in the scheme of things. The labels need the crowds of people who once used to pour lemming-like into the record stores, driven there by relentless marketing.
But they're gone and the Big Five labels say it's all down to file-sharing. Bad product, bad PR, bad press, bad business decisions and really bad attitude had nothing to do with the continuing decline of the music industry.
The labels' RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) blusters continually about the need for public education, but that's exactly what's turning people away from corporate music in ever increasing numbers. Formerly malleable 'consumers' are now thinking buyers who know what's happening, as it happens.
The endless lies and cons which once served the Big Five labels well, serve them no more. For the first time, they're being forced to compete. They don't like it and their current modes of business centred, as they are, on plastic music stores selling plastic music at exhorbitant prices - just like the good old days - are doing badly.
The idea is that the music industry forms a collecting society which then offers file-sharers music downloads for a reasonable regular payment, "say $5 per month". As long as they pay, people can share music using whatever software they like on whatever computer platform they prefer - without fear of lawsuits. The money collected gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of their music.
Considering there are an estimnated 61 million file sharers in the US alone, that there some four million people logged onto p2p file sharing networks at any given moment, and that at a conservative estimate, one BILLION files are downloaded every month, that would amount to a lot of money.
Under this scenario, the more people shared, the more money there would be for rights-holders. Big Music, in other words. The more competition in applications, the more rapid the innovation and improvement. The more freedom to fans to publish what they care about, the deeper the catalog.
It would also make a big reduction in overhead, distribution and manufacturing costs AND would drastically reduce the pirate problem - that's to say the real one involving true criminal counterfeiters and the like, not the fake one involving ordinary people who share online.
But No WAY ! - says Big Music, quaking in its metaphorical boots.
Louie-Louie Played over a full-blown stereo system, mp3s aren't as good as the originals, but over decent computer speakers, while you're working, or on a pair of phones or buds when you're kicking back on the beach, riding your bike, jogging, whatever, they're fine.
Mp3s don't take away from music, they add to it: they represent a new form of music delivery for new kinds of usages, allowing people to catch tunes under new conditions and in new circumstances. P2p isn't robbing Big Music of its rightful dues. It's offering new opportunities - different ways to let the world play 'its' music and the only people with a problem are those who run the entertainment industry.
Thanks to p2p networks and file sharers, I'm almost sure I have (I won't say own : ) every cover of The Kingsmen's Louie-Louie ever recorded. I paid for one version on a tape I bought years ago. I found the others online. But if I'd been able to find a site selling them legitimately, and if the price had been reasonable - say 15 or 20 cents per track - I would happily have paid for them.
The same goes for all the other rare and unusual items I've collected, thanks to the p2p networks.
Killing the music Music is now a commodity and the music business is in crisis but, "Contrary to conventional wisdom, the root problem is not the artists, the fans or even new Internet technology, writes The Eagles' lead singer Don Henley in his Washington Post story, Killing the Music.
The problem is the music industry itself. It's systemic, he says, going on:
"The industry, which was once composed of hundreds of big and small record labels, is now controlled by just a handful of unregulated, multinational corporations determined to continue their mad rush toward further consolidation and merger."
The executives who run Big Music fail to recognize that music is as much a vital art form and social barometer as it is a way to make a profit, he says, continuing that once, artists were able to develop meaningful, if sometimes strained, relationships with their labels "because labels were relatively small and accessible and had an incentive to join with the artists in marketing their music".
Today, says Henley, the fact music is a commodity was underlined recently when a major record label president referred to artists as 'content providers.'
"Labels no longer take risks by signing unique and important new artists, nor do they become partners with artists in the creation and promotion of the music," he says. "After the music is created, the artist's connection with it is minimized and in some instances is nonexistent. In their world, music is generic.
Henley is right most of the way, but not all of it.
Hannah & the Dusty Stars My daughter Emma, almost eight, goes to dance lessons more because she has fun than because she thinks she'll become a dancer. Every year, the teachers put together a two-hour show featuring spots performed by classes in the different age and dance-type groups - ballet, jazz dance, hip-hop, pointe, you name it.
Knowing my interest in music, Emma's teacher asked me if I'd build a piece for her class. I just couldn't get the tempo right. But Emma is fascinated by Henry VIII and his wives so What could be better, I thought, than Greensleeves?
I organized a version and although it still wasn't right for Emma's class, Kim, her teacher, liked it and thought it would be perfect for another group. Thus did Hannah & the Dusty Stars dance to it. And I even had my name on the back of the program : ) There'll be a DVD of the show, and my arrangement of Greensleeves will be on that too.
It's the singers, not the songs Music is alive.
It can't be owned, and it can't be bought or sold.
It can only be shared.
Music is beyond copyrights, beyond lawsuits, beyond file sharing, beyond the Net.
Music will still be here long after the labels have driven themselves into the dirt trying to own it.
