Paladin wrote:photomonkey wrote:The mention of Metallica made me think back to when the RIAA was going ape-shit with the lawsuits against people that were downloading music. There was a very clear line drawn among the artists too.....those that stood with the RIAA and those that didn't. Metallica was one of the RIAA's biggest cheerleaders during that time, up to and including testifying before Congress. In the meantime you have artists like Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins saying "you know what? Download my music. Please. Know why? Because I don't make shit off of record sales. You know where I make money....concerts. And we give our fans EVERYTHING we've got at our shows. So come support us there. But what you do until a show? Couldn't care less."
That to me was pretty telling....you had the corporate bands versus the guys that were still doing it for the fans. My guess is that if you compiled a list of the bands that truly stood with the RIAA during that time you'd have a list of your most conservative artists.
This I disagree with stealing is stealing. You create a product you are allowed to sell it. Sorry record companies suck but that is the nature of the beast.
There is another business model. The tour.
Witness the Grateful Dead's example of giving a healthy hearty middle finger to the greedy plastic record company ceo who doesn't contribute anything to the band's success. And the Dead got paid, even though they set up recording areas where the fans could set up devices to capture the entire concert.
The current record industry has much more in common with wall street brokerages and the boards of directors of the big banks than it does with anything actually focused on music. They exist not to pay artists, nor to feed and water good music into bloom, they exist to move product and take profits, paying themselves first just like all the rest of the gordon gecko idolaters and leaving the people who actually produce the product to take the scraps left over after all the inflated fees and charges and percentage cuts that go elsewhere. Last I looked, the majority of the durable music names managed to wise up and keep the rights to their own songs through use of their own incorporated labels while managing the production and distro to keep the industry from sucking the profits away before they got back to the artist.
