Posts by Simon Grigg
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My point really is that if this did happen there would still be music played through radio and other media. I'd assume that the record companies would not die but would move to a more viable business model (just as they did when the industry switched from publishing to recorded music around 1960).
eh????
The recording industry goes back to the 1890s when Emile Berliner and Thomas Edison set up companies to sell the new fangled discs. All the majors aside from Warners derive from those companies in one way or another. The music publishers go much further back, some to the 18th century, when they used to hawk sheet music from signed writers (and plug the same with music hall etc). After 1890 they spent much of their time trying to get their songs recorded by artists signed to labels...they still do that.
When radio arrived on the scene, post WW1, both record companies and publishers employed pluggers to tout their products and used all sorts of methods to entice radio to play their songs. Gradually over the years the publishers have been bought by the labels but tend to operate semi-independently (and make much more money these days).
Recorded and performed (as in radio / TV) music embodies both copyrights and both labels and publishers are involved in the plugging of it quite independently of each other.
Nobody switched from anything at anytime.
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Which would be fine in theory, but they'd have to find the music, get a decent copy of it, negotiate with each band to ensure they had permission, and compensate directly?
Agreed. However, to be fair, much of this is already covered via various blanket agreements and rights organisations, but to think a network like, say the major networks in the US, are going to send out folks to search for cool new music to play on their top 40 stations is just silly. Or MTV ploughs through thousands of new videos on YouTube or sent every week to find the groovy ones to add (which have no budget because there is no-one to fund them) is senseless.
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@ Rich,
with all respect that's just a bit naive.Firstly if record companies stopped servicing radio and the multitude of other outlets (how do you think a track gets featured on the front page of Beatport or gets a review in The Guardian), then other marketing organisations would step into the breach, or the others that exist would expand.
Most of those bands you see posters for do want their music to be heard. Hence they will sign the sort of punitive contracts that labels have long offered. Without that they sink into the swamp. People make music and they do it for a variety of reasons but one of the primary reasons is to let as many people hear it as possible (and the success that may or may not follow).
I'm having trouble following the logic in your last paragraph. I agree that the industry must change and I'm not happy with draconian powers but I don't think the failure to allocate those draconian powers necessarily implies the death of all record labels..it does imply a drastic need to re-invent which I don't think the majors have quite come to terms with yet.
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my experience is that people who discover music via these more conventional means tend to purchase CDs or use itunes.
If only marginal music ( the sort of odd stuff I tend to listen to) was being d/loaded I don't think the majors would be quite so worried, but it's not, it's the chart stuff, the stuff they've spent loads of cash promoting and marketing. It's kids taking top 40, fans taking Linkin Park and so on (and of course everything else). Why this stuff is desirable? Because it's been marketing to make it so. And who has done that?
I have a 13 year old daughter and her mates are fairly typical in their 13 year old tastes but those tastes didn't come to them in a vacuum. But they never buy discs (Bella is different and takes pride in her legit CDs, as I encourage her to buy but she still sits up half the night looking for stuff to download...I think she's the only one in her peer group who has anything legit though).
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meh... cheap electronics and advances in computing these days makes big recording outfits all but obsolete these days anyhow.
well, yes and no. Somebody needs to tell people what to buy..98% of people don't find their music via Creative Commons sites, or Genius or scouring the net. They find as a result of marketing, hearing it on the radio, recommendations on Pitchfork, front page placing on iTunes, post on blogs and so on. All of which comes from record companies or other marketing organizations.
The record companies only cease to matter when this changes. The death of the labels is overstated. There are many artists, especially American, who can't live outside a label system, be it indie or major.
Real Groovy is sad, if only for the number of good people that have worked there much of their adult life, and it's history. It's the last of the second hand stores (anyone remember how many there used to be..at least half a dozen in Auckland at one time). It's the end of an era, but it's only been a shadow of what it was in recent times. Once upon a time it was known for it's killer service and truly was one of the good guys.
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It's worth mentioning as an aside that today 33% of the NZ album chart is local and the number 1, 8 & 10 singles are also local. It's a day I doubted I'd ever see.
70% of those NZ albums are indie too. Quite something!
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On this I think you are wrong, as they've marched in lockstep till now, and will continue to do so. Those, too, will be locked away.
The recording and publishing copyrights on recordings have been treated rather differently for decades...a little like patents and things created from those patents. Myself, I hope the idea / publishing / songwriting terms continue to expire, and I agree society will be the poorer if they do not. I think there is a fundamental difference between the two things and they should have different standards of protection and terms applied.
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You only have a right to control based on the requirement that it's a limited right, and that the expression of the idea will pass into the public domain at a future time. That's the situation as it stands. I don't have to prove anything.
On the other hand, YOU have yet to demonstrate why that part of the law should be changed.
I don't have to prove it because it clearly is changing..which is the core point that I'm making. It is not the situation as it stands. Copyright is evolving and the fundamental change in the EU towards recordings is a fairly clear pointer. There is an evolution of the concept that recordings and the owners of such have some sort of tangible property rights.
I'd be wiling to bet that within 50 years unlimited rights to these sorts of end result type properties (as compared to the ideas that were used to create them) in the recording industry will be law. That's the very slow but steady direction, and it's inevitable. The earlier law was written at a time when recordings only had a limited earning lifespan...technology and other factors have changed that and there is a recognition of such.
The ideas will eventually go into the public domain, but the things created with those ideas will not.
With regards to the house thing. No-one can legally take my house, just as no-one can legally take your physical recording. If they like the house design, however, they can copy it. 99% of English suburbs follow that path.
Not if it's copyrighted..ask the estate of Frank Llloyd Wright, who make a small killing protecting and exploiting their designs.
However the owners of those buildings are perfectly entitled to charge rent for the building, even conduct tours, to exploit the physical property they own.
One for recordings, one for written works (which did last "forever" when Copyright was envisaged BTW), one for digital media, one for performance and so on. Fine of you can sort all that out.
It's already there, at least in the recording industry. There are differing rights and limitations, by statue, to the various copyrights in a recorded work. There is no requirement to or desire to unify those but they exist in harmony most of the time, and evolve separately.
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The master tape is physical property, I agree. It's yours forever. You can lock it away and never take a copy from it again. But, to use your own example, don't confuse the recording with the song. It's the song I'd like to see subject to time limitation, not your tape.
But you are still confusing two completely different and independent copyrights that have different uses and different implied and statutory rights. The song is just the idea that is used to create the master. The owner of the master, which is a physical result of the implementation of the idea has the right to exploit and derive income from that result, just like the owner of a house has from the thing built from a blueprint or idea. You've yet to successfully argue why that's not the case and why that right should expire unlike a house. Why should that owner have to lock it away?
As I said earlier in the thread, the song / idea is effectively in the a form of public domain the moment it's released..anyone can then use it without restriction to make another physical property. The only time limitation on the song is the obligation to pay a fee to a performing rights organisation who then distribute it to the owner.
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But they do have a proven track record of being big-business shills. Content is the new primary industry.
True, but RIANZ is probably less pure big-business now than it's been at any time in it's history. Sure the majors are all in there and pull many of the strings but the independent copyright owners also have an increasing voice, with IMNZ being on the board and the artist managment body also having a foot in. In the bad old days Eldred Stebbing (whose been 101 years old in many eyes for decades) provided the supposed indie voice..it was bizarre. And the NZ recording industry (as in the industry that records music in NZ) is dominated by locally owned, often by artists, independent entities.
And in that way Peter is right...IMNZ and the managers do represent many of the music makers and the folks who could call themselves the music industry (rather than the tradition recording industry...EMI / WMG / Sony and Universal who are better described as Recorded Music Distribution Industry)