have you guys been following this? for those of you who want to dive into file-sharing/current music industry stuff:

Girl (I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2012/ ... begin-with

David (Letter to Emily White at NPR All Songs Considered)
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/201 ... onsidered/

Travis (Hey Dude From Cracker, I'm Sorry, I Stole Music Like These Damned Kids When I Was A Kid )
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/travis-mo ... 10557.html

I've been following this. It's a good read.
But:

OUCH!

More like that...amirite?

Travis Morrison's response is amusing, but it kind of feels like he didn't even read all of what Lowery wrote, which was actually very thoughtful, fair, and realistic and not just a bunch a personal anecdotes.

ah yes, i remember what it was like as a kid, taping 11,000 songs off the radio

you are right as rain, my friend

The only response in his article that suggests that he read any of it was that he knew Lowery's age and that he is an economics professor now. It seems likely that his response was more to how his friends on facebook intepreted the article than anything Lowery actually wrote, whether he read any of it or not. I agree thought that Lowery's piece was pretty fair and thoughtful. If you want to give Morrison more credit than he deserves, you could say that he's making the point in a round about way that people's morality hasn't changed just they've been given tools to steal more easily on a larger scale. That's all fine and good but it's resulting in a much greater harm to musicians and as Lowery points out, people need to own up to their own role in that and not blame it on the government or the failure of anyone to develop new business models.

and you (like i) enjoyed that he brought up Waxie Maxie's, Q107 and WAVA, right?

Here's the next one! From Ryan Little (Bad Friend Records)

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blog ... for-music/

I actually enjoyed this response (courtesy Elvis Fu on Facebook):

http://www.wesleyverhoeve.com/quixotism/

I mean, Lowery does make some good points, but I'll be damned if he's gonna peg responsibility for Vic Chesnutt's suicide on me because I downloaded a few records. Take it easy, man.

I was hoping there was video of this chick getting fingercuffed

More: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/ ... ry-screed/

Ah, Travis Morrison -- of 1990s Alt-Rockers for the War in Iraq. I take his argumentation with the seriousness it deserves.

Basically, Trav is Kid Rock with a better haircut. But he's the same kind of son of privilege that Robert Ritchie is.

Do you ever just get sick of yourself?

Well, i guess this shit is blowing up. But I can't stop reading about this about this clusterfuck

Our Digital Innocence Just Died. And David Lowery Killed It...

http://digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2 ... uwbEmoSyig

As interesting as this is (I really enjoyed most of Lowery's points, but when he veered into the suicides he over-reached), I feel like it's a non-event. Eyebrows will raise, discussions will flutter, and then everyone goes back to doing what they were already doing.

the part of Kurt's suicide note that Cortney didn't read because it was too personal was actually about file sharing. Kurt was a bit of a tech junkie (no pun intended) and knew where things were going. At the time Cortney thought it was the mad ramblings of heroin withdraw, but it was actually quite prophetic.

so exactly like everything in the public sphere nowadays?

Pretty much. We now have the ability to react bigger, wider, and faster. But I don't think it's had any impact on whether people actually change anything or not. Thus, Lowery is "right" but you're not going to shame millenials into paying for music.

here goes...











i'm gonna hit Submit......











<suck air through teeth! hold nose!>










and.....










toots presents, "In Defense of Dreams:"

regardless of fault, but agreeing with billy g that consumers of "free" music should own up to their complicity as well in this whole shit show, i gotta say as a former musician on the road for ~7 years, it is a bit suicide-inducing to have spent all that time working away from loved ones making jack shit only to wake up one day to the realization that the big payoff (or even the eventually-over-time payoff) ain't ne'er happenin' because your industry/support system is collapsing/eating itself.

it's one thing to put out a turd record that nobody buys, you can always try to write a better one next time and hope it catches on. but if nobody buys anything ever moving forward...show me a passionate artist who doesn't dream of earning enough to do their craft as their job, full-time, and i'll show you someone full of sparkling doo-doo.

i didn't wake up every day wishing to be a software developer like i am now, but i did wake up every day wishing to write, record and play music. even now, 5 years after i put the band behind me and "entered the job market," this still feels like a temp job between tours/studio sessions, where my "real" work commences after i put the kid to bed and turn the mics on.

it is also possible that i cling to my naivete.

brazil was never going to be the next radiohead or whatever, but the days of being the kind of working band that can put out an album every 1-2 years, tour clubs for 6 months and then take another chunk of months "off" to write and record are gone. all i needed was $35K to make a proud living at the time (i had a kid, wife and my $500 mortgage. no couch surfing/van living for me), and believe me i milked every income stream i could. and i still got sent to collections. and divorced. and entered said job market 7 years late playing catch-up.



i'm not saying downloading was the direct cause of any of those woes in our case, but the connection between a hemorrhaging music economy and the subsequent dwindling support (tour support, marketing and promotion, distribution channels, all of which have a residual effect on other income streams such as how many people are buying your tickets and tee shirts and even just giving a fuck, really) directly affecting "working" artists (not mega-stars who won the pop culture lotto) and their state of mind is not nonexistent. being borderline unemployed and at or below the poverty line feels the same for any field.

i'm glad anthem covered therapy back in the day, because i used the fuck out of it...

so yeah, the genie's out of the bottle and everyone should play ball, etc, and not having your band blow up is kind of a first world problem. i'm not really rebutting anybody, just giving my perhaps jisdointed 2c here because i don't have a fancy blog.




also, yail bloor killed vic chesnutt

And I woulda got away with it if it weren't for you nosy kids.

I was willing to give bloor the benefit of the doubt re: chestnutt but he didn't even deny his role in Mark Linkous' death.

I only wish I had killed Vic Chestnut.

Also, Lowery is right, but what needs to be done is to try to figure out how to make things work in today's environment rather than just wishing for a return to days gone by because for good or ill, the clock does not run backwards.

Also, didn't the cassette companies have to hand a cut to the record companies since their shit was used to record copyrighted material?

Could that be a precedent for making tech companies cough up a chunk somehow? I admit the labels no longer really controlling most music makes this a lot more difficult.