Having experienced the music business in the 1980s as a musician, audio engineer, record producer, occasional DJ & concert promoter, record pressing plant sales & marketing rep, and staff worker for a PolyGram label, allow me to paraphrase O. Henry:
...As I said before, I dreamed that I was standing near a crowd of prosperous-looking angels, and a policeman took me by the wing and asked if I belonged with them. "Who are they?" I asked. "Why," said he, "they are the men who hired working-girls, and paid 'em five or six dollars a week to live on. Are you one of the bunch?" "Not on your immortality," said I. "I'm only the fellow that set fire to an orphan asylum, and murdered a blind man for his pennies." To which I would add: ", and pilfered every last nickel I could from young musicians who didn't know a royalty from a penury." Sean. On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 1:07 AM, Robert (Jamie) Munro <rjmu...@arjam.net> wrote: > Dave Crossland wrote: >> 2009/2/23 Robert (Jamie) Munro <rjmu...@arjam.net>: >>>> ""Some of them have no pensions and need this money," he said." >>> Perhaps builders who built buildings in the 1950s should be paid rights >>> on the labour they used to build the building as long as the buildings >>> still stand. Or Doctors whose patients continue to be alive. >> >> Surely the comparison is with doctors who did the best they could but >> now their patients are dead, but they ought to be continually paid for >> the excellent job they did at the time? > > Musicians are only continually paid if the track happened to be a hit > (or perhaps was used in a film or something) lots of music has been > recorded in the last 50 years that was just as good as music that became > a hit but it didn't become a hit due to the vagueness of the music > industry. The performers of this music won't get any benefit from term > extension. > > Similarly Doctors and Builders should only be paid while their patients > are still alive or the buildings are still used, no matter how much > effort it took to treat the patient or build the building at the time. > > :-) > > Robert (Jamie) Munro > > - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
