Posts by Simon Grigg
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Actually, I think it'd actually be nice to see the current thread continue on and get somewhere worthwhile, with the previous 107 pages left as an example of the Bad Old Days.
I've moved the mouse over the link a few times but my finger refuses to click
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But I do feel that a new copyright thread at some stage is in order. It's a pretty important topic for all of us and since we know it likely will no longer be hijacked repeatedly......
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I did actually try and sort it out offline with robbery, but it didn't work.
I'm sure I got thoroughly and endlessly robberyed on after my last post on the Copyright thread but I felt it had to be said and I pledged never to return to said thread after I posted it to spiral into another irrational waste of time.
Completely fucking over it and thank you Russell
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Can we all go home now?
I'll get my hat and coat
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you're missing the reason they did it, which was the whole point of my post. economies of scale buddy, its more economical. I'm not 100% wrong, you 100% missed what I was saying.
No, I'm still right..it was conceived to combine tracks that were often very profitable in their own right, to make more money for the labels, not that there is anything wrong with that. Nothing to do with economy of scale. It was a way to make a lot more money rather easily, which was the whole point. Until the jazz guys and Frank Sinatra came along in the 50s nobody thought of the album as any more than a bunch of tracks combined. And even then it took The Beatles and Dylan to convert it into the thing you are talking about: 'the album', and not a few hits and a bunch of tracks knocked out in a 12 hour session to cash in after the fact.
its got practically nothing to do with what I'm talking about,
It has everything to do with it. It's the core of the argument. You've already admitted you don't listen to new music. What this always seems to come back to is your unwillingness to adapt, to move on. Other people make music, they cover their costs and people seem to like them. There is a truck load of new music released every day..more than at any time in my life time but much of it because of the way delivery has adapted, never makes an album or even a physical format. Other people have adapted.
Your statement is bollocks cos it's so much a matter of perspective and personal opinion. surely the time to see 2009 as a boom year for creativity is in like 10 years?
From a person who's already admitted they've not listened to much new music since 1982 that's rather funny. So, lets talk about 1982. Did you rate Echo & The Bunnymen or Blam Blam Blam or The Clean or Talking Heads or Elvis Costello or New Order or The Message that year? Because lots of people did and they could work out that they were timeless records. It was a good year..we all knew it at the time. 2009 to quite a few is shaping up pretty well to us 'hipsters'. Sorry you can't see it but I assure you it's not industry talk. I sure as hell hope I'm not too cloth eared that I have to wait ten or even two years to work it out.
I've done the math for the examples I've talked about and you've spoken in vague terms. lay out some of those figures for a project you've been involved in.
Uh, no but it's hardly obscure or vague stuff. You've laid out a few examples of how it works if you want to press half a dozen discs in your back shed, not how record labels work..real ones on just about every level who exploit every opportunity to return income from the masters they own. Since a few pages back someone had to explain to you how digital returns to the copyright owner, and in another thread fairly simple marketing and structural economics of the recording industry had to be explained several times to you, I have no desire to go there again. Sorry if that sounds arrogant, but it is what it is.
But it is worth pointing out, since you ask that both the Blams and the Meemees had covered their singles costs on sales but it was their albums that blew them out of the water.
I seem to be always on the defensive over having released records that people actually want to buy. It's a crime of some sort, both repeatedly implied and actually stated by you, to find a market and successfully exploit music unless it's within the parameters you allow. And you refuse to accept that many others have done and are doing so on an ongoing basis in 2009.
For that I apologise too.
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The album concept didn't come about because some evil label thought it would be a good way to cover their cocaine parties,
Actually Rob, apart from the silly bit at the end you are 100% wrong, the album was conceived by RCA in the 1930s and perfected by Columbia in the 1940s as a way to combine tracks released individually. Prior to that it was just 78s..tracks..a bit like where we've ended up now again, whether you like it or not.
Even through to the late 1960s the album was far less important to the recording industry both in market value and in marketing terms than the single. And there are still quite a few genres for which the album has always been less important than a track...electronic music for example.
are we disagreeing on that?
'fraid so..I think the fact that people are making more music than ever rather obviously counters that argument, along with the very substantial increases in returns globally, including NZ, by performing rights organisations (I didn't see that factored into your 5th form economics above, or are you assuming that people won't like your music enough to play it or want to use it elsewhere?).
Lots of other people do seem to have worked their way through it without labouring and arguing every point as you seem to want to do again and again.
The fact is, whether you like it or not, the album is increasingly marginalised as a format and no amount of '5th form economics' is going to bring it back. But despite that artists and indies the world over do seem to be making this work, and more than that, it's given the industry some new vitality, whether you can see it or not.
There is so much music being made at the moment and so much of it is so very fucking exciting (is 2009 shaping up to be a huge year for new sounds or what..lots of people seem to be saying it is, myself included) it makes the endless cries of doom and despair seem hollow and very sad.
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Rob, I'd imagine Scribe and Savage could be added to that list.
But you miss the point, which is that OMC covered all costs out of NZ and Australasian sales....not the out of the ballpark stuff you mention. Lots of other records have made good money just from local income. Off the top of my head I can think of a dozen or more from recent history that have more than covered costs from the various returns from a single. And many more that have blown the single profits by making an album.
Many acts should never have been forced to make an album, but the system required it, because the it needs those returns from album sales to cover the financial structure of record labels, much of which is increasingly redundant in the digital age.
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Itunes one price fits all method hides and straight jackets a very diverse process.
they've had a variable pricing structure for about six months now.
A reasonable one hit wonder can also cover costs pretty quickly...going back a decade we'd recouped 2 videos and an album from sales of How Bizarre as a single in NZ and Australia before we'd even released the album and the return that it was recouped on per unit sale was less than you earn on iTunes if you license via an aggregator
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__we could never have dreamed of in the pre-digital age.
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but if it's just going to be a straight transfer of the fleecing right to another set of corporations in a different industry, then maybe we could reserve our judgment on whether to call it progress.
No argument there, Gio and I think it's something we have to be thoroughly wary of. I've never bought into the Apple as sainted deliverer of all things meme.
I think iTunes is a wee bit of a dog when it comes to delivery but the dust is settling in strange ways and I don't think we've come close to seeing what patterns it will leave yet.