Hi, let's change perspective a bit. Musicians _already_ do not live from making music. Let's check out a few facts from the US Department of Labor:
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos095.htm "Part-time schedules and intermittent unemployment are common; many musicians supplement their income with earnings from other source." "Although musicians employed by some symphony orchestras work under master wage agreements, which guarantee a season's work up to 52 weeks, many other musicians face relatively long periods of unemployment between jobs. Even when employed, many musicians and singers work part time in unrelated occupations. Thus, their earnings usually are lower than earnings in many other occupations. Moreover, because they may not work steadily for one employer, some performers cannot qualify for unemployment compensation, and few have typical benefits such as sick leave or paid vacations. For these reasons, many musicians give private lessons or take jobs unrelated to music to supplement their earnings as performers." What about royalties? The statistic page by the US Department of Labor doesn't even contain that term. The closest I can find is recording fees. The web site mentions them exactly once: "The most successful musicians earn performance or recording fees that far exceed the median earnings." I interpret this in the following way: Recording fees do not provide a significant source of income to any musician but the most successful. The above paragraph indicates that the major source of income are teaching or jobs unrelated to music. There is only one conclusion we can draw from this: The current system fails utterly to reimburse musicians for making music. So, whatever the answer is, it is not recording fees. It remains to answer the question why people in arts put themselves through such horrible conditions as described above. We find the answer in human nature. To paraphrase Eben Moglen, to ask how to make people on earth produce art is like asking how to make a coil with a magnet induce a current: Let the earth spin, and remove the resistance to creativity, and humans will be creative without requiring further encouragement. Lawrence Lessig analyzed in his book Free Culture how "big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity" (this is the subtitle). Never before in history of mankind did so few control so much of our culture as today. This, not the lack of monetary compensation, is what inhibits creativity. This is the obstacle that has to be removed to allow people to be more creative, to produce more content that is more relevant to people. The claim that reproduction fees are good for artists is a sham. Thanks, Marcus _______________________________________________ L4-hurd mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/l4-hurd
