Re: [LAU] ASCAP Assails Free-Culture, Digital-Rights Groups

On 07/01/2010 11:09 PM, Louigi Verona wrote:
> Hey guys!
>
> And while I am preparing my answer to some very excellent points made
> here (some of which made me rethink several particular situations), I
> want to give you some food for discussion - do we really want more
> professionals in the field of arts? Is it an unquestionable good that
> musicians make a living out of music?
>
> Or, more obviously, writers? What would a writer have to say if all he
> sees is his writing desk? So many creative people, both musicians and
> writers, changed many professions, received lots and lots of life
> experience before they started to seriously create stuff, reflecting
> on their experiences.
>
> But so far the law assumes that if someone makes a living off of his
> creativity, it will necessarily make him more fruitful. But I've seen
> several cases when the effect was the opposite. And that was actually
> in the field of music, when a musician would loose his originality and
> touch once he got a contract and started to pump out professional cds.
> Something did not work out.
>
> Also, when the professional scene is not so dominating, people tend to
> be more musically educated. And in general more people know how to
> sing and/or play an instrument. It is actually a statistical fact that
> folk music has deteriorated with the rise of professional music and
> that the active involvement of people into music has decreased very
> significantly, since it became uncommon to compete with highly trained
> professionals. A lot of music today is passive entertainment, not
> active. This does have an indirect connection to copyright, since
> songs written yesterday were written for everybody to sing (even if
> they take money for the performance). Nowadays songs are written to be
> listened.
>

I'll go even further than that. In many cases these days music is
designed to act as a form of prozac and distraction from the real issues
that we are constantly being subjected to in our daily lives. In the
past music was a way for people to express ideas and get across often
subversive messages from different lands and peoples to a mass audience.
These days popular music and any music that aims to be popular struggles
to educate people about the bigger picture if not actively avoids the
most important topics. At best a cursory glance is assigned that is
swiftly dealt with by flashy graphics and naked bodies flaunting their
warez. The industrial media and entertainment complex is abused to
deliver trite, sexually provocative and erotically stimulating drivel.
The constant merciless barrage of crap that we are subjected to by the
modern music industry is just another way of keeping us in check by the
few heriditary elite who own the empires and print the cash that funds
the industry. They should be paying us to listen to the majority of the
crap we are served not the other way around.

I personally can't wait for it the industry to collapse under the weight
of it's own greed.

-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user