My apologies if some or all of this makes no sense. I'm heavily doped up
on cold medication and can barely see straight much less think straight....
Corin wrote:
>Yeah, the problem with that is that the artist doesn't get paid anything for
>that. Why don't you splash out and buy the records you want to hear? Not
that
>I'm not a total hypocrite, because I love making and getting mix tapes. It's
>just, with some of these older artists that we all seem to love so much,
alot
>of them have been getting ripped off for years and I hate to think of
>technology just being another way for them not to get paid.
Well, I'm sure the AOL/Time Warner deal, if it goes through, will change
the face of the MP3 world drastically and quite possibly for the worse.
There's no way to completely prevent bootlegging, obviously. Some of us
will remember the "Home taping is killing music" campaign Warner Brothers
issued in the 70's and 80's. Surprise, it didn't kill music. The internet
may make it easier, but I still believe that those who rely on
taping/downloading music that somebody else bought as their sole resource
are relatively few and far between. But if web sites are moved into a pay
to play type scenario, that won't help the artist either, as it will just
increase traffic on Usenet for mp3 downloads.
A list member taped me the Kinetics EP once upon a time. Had I liked it, I
would have bought it myself instead of being content to have it dubbed on
tape. I think a lot of people won't mind paying for music they really want.
The question is who *really* gets the money when we DO pay. With a lot of
small bands, I won't bother buying their records unless/until I see them
live and can hand over my money to a band member.
But with all of this in mind, there are a lot of 60's bands who get money
from reissues, albiet very small amounts. It's pretty well documented (and
hotly debated last year on the bomp list) that Bomp/AIP, Crypt and Dig the
Fuzz (to name but three) all make reasonable attempts to track down band
members before they put the old bands on compilations. I'd imagine,
however, that no band members recieved any royalty checks for the
Deram/Decca "scene" compilations.
More of those bands, if they're able to, should look to the work that Kenny
Jones put into getting back royalties and rights to the Small Faces
material. Even with that though, I think they only retain rights to the
Immediate catalogue, else I doubt we would have seen the Small Faces show
up on the "Scene" compilations. It sucks that it takes court action to
secure rights to musicians over their record labels, but in all honesty, I
fail to see how downloading MP3's is worse.
Bands always get put between a rock and a hard place it seems. The
alternatives are costly and "the Man" will always have musicians under his
thumb. That's a lot of reason that bootlegging goes on to begin with.
Some label owners won't liscence or re-release their own material, even if
there is a strong demand for it. A good example of this is the well
documented Cameo-Parkway label, who essentially forced ? & the Mysterians
to re-record their entire first album, just to get it reissued.
It's been a real
>revelation since we actually signed a record deal and put a CD out: there
are
>so many opportunities to not get paid. It'd be like if you went to work
>everyday and did your job and the whole time your boss was figuring out ways
>to not pay you for it. I'd love to see one of these radio geeks faces if, at
>the end of the week, they told him that they'd been coming to work "for
>exposure".
Sadly, this has been a valid musician argument for many many years, and
that kind of industry crime/corruption goes all the way to the top (read
"Hit Men" for the gory details). Those in the orchestral realm found a
small work around by forming a union, but not only is this solution less
realistic for musicians like those in The Pills, it still isn't a
guaranteed fix. Orchestras still strike every year over the latest
contract snaggles.
Brian Poust
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