Posts by 81stcolumn
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
As usual you miss the point - the main thing was to have fun and in the end quite a lot of people got paid off the back of it in the years that followed.
-
FWIW. I take quite seriously the point about the little guys with small turnovers and limited audiences. I’m not sure what the overall effect a sharing free for all will have. I do think there is still some room for adjustment with digital distribution though. There needs to be a really thorough look at the pricing vs. fidelity issue too. In a couple of years time this might come down to a three tier structure cheap/free promo res, high res and then for stupid old farts like me a CD ISO with a PDF of the album art; prices charged accordingly. I have a problem when paying for downloads is as expensive as the cd knowing the cd will sound better but that the artist in NZ makes more from the d/l. I’m not quite dumb enough to buy both yet. Indies should look at either DIY for downloads or collecting around a single low cost centre for distribution. Cutting deals with existing retail groups who usually pay someone else to maintain the online store doesn’t really seem to be the best deal in the long term.
Am I the only motley fool who would find it really cool to put together a playlist online based on the Flying Nun catalogue for example, have it burned on to a CD with a nice piccie and delivered to a friend ? Bearing in mind that’s some people pay $40-50 or more to send a bunch of flowers. FFS. I can get furniture made at pukeno. Oh I forgot - the copyright holders could never agree a pricing structure because they can’t figure out how to share profits……
-
What you mean apart from founding a new musical genre. Supporting and reviving a number of independent labels, reviving the Vinyl format and of course creating new growth in a declining market. What do you think the spotty herberts listened to on the way home ? Get on the list at black market records and they gave the damn things to you they were so keen to get them played.
I don't think the crusties did more than cover costs. No apra didn't get paid but I have a feeling that this man might have paid, I also believe he paid royalties on all the samples he used as well.
-
<sigh> But what moral panic is there to be found in recreational fishing ?
That is of course unless you are being dangled by your feet in order to catch a picture of a shark.....
-
What changed was the law forcing dance back into the clubs that used to be Discotheques and Ballrooms before that; Run I might add by some very familiar entrepreneurs who weren't at all like Tony Wilson. What survives exists in the form of free/squat parties and of course burning man. I confess that you are on pretty slim pickings in NZ though.
-
Simon -
I note that the RIANZ figures deliberately exclude digital formats. I would be very interested to see the churn/uptake for Emusic etc.
Hands up who would pay more for an emusic subscription if the catalogue grew ?
me me me me !
-
Really? who paid for the massive sound systems and lighting rigs or did you all huddle round a ghetto blaster and a 60 watt light bulb back in the day?
Back in the day, the electric gypsy's and the crusties owned the sound systems. They made their money from ....__other commodities__... The lighting was usually a mixture of trad DJ colour switching and the odd colour wheel. On a good night someone would rig up some pretty cool oil work using an OHP and a switching pot. I remember the night one of the guys from trans global turned up with a $40,000 rig but nothing to power it with. The biggest problem was undeniably power generators, which had a habit of carkin it at the wrong moment and the lack of stepped voltage regulation on some had interesting side effects on gear.
Even the legendary Ibiza scene often carried on for days in abandoned villas.
Two lessons that the rest of the music industry could learn from:
i) It is about the punter because its supposed to be entertainment.
ii) Investment sometimes means giving something away and patiently watching what comes back.Yes there were paid gigs but the MO revolved around value for the punter. This meant cutting out a lot of the middle men, doing your own promotion, your own flyers and trying to give a bit more for less. Reputation and word of mouth meant a great deal. Not a shareholder in sight. The original Payback gigs were parties spending the profits of the previous gigs entertaining loyal punters. The growth of rave was fuelled by innovation and very lean production values. Compare that to a mentality that represents its customer base is a bunch of potential thieves and which is prepared to waste profits on punitive and pointless protectionism.
As an aside I seem to remember that the only reason why the fences went up at Galstonbury was because of overcrowding and the council told them to.
You might also want to think about how this guy does his business....<shameless plug> he's touring here next week, sold out except for the BDO. I first saw him performing for free in a small college cafeteria in 1984 as part of Red Wedge supporting the UK miners strike.
-
And how would you have felt if 25 ppl paid to get into one of your raves and 5000 just snuck in?
ROFL (literally)....Dudes, raves started and got popular 'cos lots of people and a handful of speakers snuck into empty warehouses and fields and danced to music all night long.......FOR FREE!
-
So one of the things I would look for in teaching children would be to do everything possible to help them understand that they really have to think about the information that they get, because they're going to get a lot of it and some of it's not going to be very good.
......and some things never change.....
-
I thought it worth exploring the consequences of DRM chipped music technology.
Sooo *TING* the digital fairy grants Robbery’s wish.If we assume that the sort of deal discussed will be like the one that operates for HDMI/Blu-Ray (whatever !) then we would expect the provision and implementation to reflect the needs of the majors, up steps Sony Universal etc. In effect the majors will once more have control over media distribution (sound familiar ?). Should we then expect a format war ? Would we end up with a decent format ? In any case we can also assume that the majors will not share key technology with independents, rather they will charge what they see fit to allow independents to join the party. If we take the Sky approach any attempt by small consortia to compete will be defeated one way or another (Sky vs. Canal+ is a very interesting read btw). In this scenario I don’t see any artist getting a great deal richer and the independents wouldn’t be able to give stuff away if there was a lock out implemented through the use of proprietary media formats. Be careful what you wish for. The great blessing of the compact cassette was that it was an open patent and open format which led to a widely accepted growth in music (sound familiar ?).
Speaking as a minor music fan - Of the 12,000 mp3’s on my media server all but 40 or so were ripped from CD’s I own, transcribed from LP’s I own, or downloaded from e-music. None of which have been fed to torrents, more than half of which reflect the collection that I pirated in the 70’s and 80’s when I couldn’t afford stuff. With no less than 15 possible media players upon which to enjoy my musical delights I would be interested to see if music copyright holders would have the nerve to charge me for tracks that in some cases already appear 5 times in my hard collection.
Speaking as a (particularly catty) psychologist – There is a fair body of evidence which suggests that people who spend large amounts of time blaming their woes on the activities of others, are usually unhappy, and sometimes end up quite mentally ill. I would hate to see anyone on the music industry end up that way.
Speaking as a sarcastic fantasist – Dear digital fairy can you figure out how to fit people with a chip that makes them pay to see me for services that I usually end up providing for free. Despite devoting my life to my particular specialism and being pretty rare in my field, I didn’t get paid once last year for actually doing what I am best qualified to do. I might add I was not short of people asking for my help either.
P.S. can you make another chip that just allows good journo's to write for a living.
Finally - Can anyone explain to me (justify ?) why some NZ artists on independent labels charge nearly $2 per track for MP3 downloads ?