rachel2w1w: Money Making

Not really. TD has always said that piracy is against the law. What Mike and others often aregue, is that the laws should be changed in favour of the consumers, not faceless megacorps.

I think you're right in that TD often encourages more sane laws in favor of the public vs corporations, but as far as piracy goes, my take on the TD line is that legality is a non-issue now that technology makes it hard NOT to copy something, what's important is finding a way to make money in spite of it. Pragmatism is the name of the game.

Now the *comments* on TD run all over the map. There's a lot of soft endorsement of illegal distribution, along with people who are outright loud about it. There are people who seem to think that artists are lazy chumps who want a free ride, and people who apparently have a problem with anyone exercising any legal muscle. Luckily there are some dissenting voices of reason, who are neither "IP Maximalists" nor "Freetards". (All these phrases and sloganeering are dumb as hell and only serve to trivialize how complicated these issues really are. "Pooperty" anyone? Let's cut out this ad campaign for issues and appeal to people through their reason and intellect)

I do kind of wish they would bring in some writers with more varied opinions. For instance, I agree with the criticism that TD loves to dispense business advice for musicians without any real clear idea of what goes into a musical career. The complicated web of credits and legalities that go into bringing multiple creative people together with their own input to and ownership of a project (We're not all solo artists!), the insane logistics of performing on a consistent basis and taking it on the road, the idea that fans just buy the hell out of merch, the notion that the internet has made distribution *easier* (it's not, it's *cheaper*, but only to get started), and the idea that grass roots projects can "bubble up" to the surface without a professional PR push and management team (Amanda Palmer works with a publicist and several managers, besides the fact she's "married" to Neil Gaiman, one of the most popular writers of the last 20 years. She's not a model for future musicians). But the reality is that even a no name blogger is pitched music by major labels every day, so not having a professional management/publicist team to pitch you, more importantly to give you legitimacy, means your emails most likely will never be opened.

Now, it is true that some artists will in fact bubble up, but it's mostly going to be boring mid-level talent with an interesting story behind them. Meh. I'd trade a thousand Susan Boyles/Ted Williams/Homeless Flavor of the Month for just one Jim Croce or Leonard Cohen.

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Monday, January 10, 2011

Money Making

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