This has nothing to do with the “quality” or style of music.
It’s all about control. Your Costello lyric is spot on. The music industry has gone from taking control of the artists they promote, to losing control via, napster, bit torrent etc...
Artists are looking for ways to get exposure and make some money without the using the current royalty structure. While KRS may be simply expressing his frustration regarding the current system, the solution is nowhere to be found.
They can perform live, and find dozens of really bad reproductions on the Internet within a few hours. All with the hope that fans will buy a high quality version from them directly.
Back in the day. The Grateful Dead had a very similar problem. Illegal recordings of their live shows where everywhere. Folks got together and traded “for free” their tapes. Attempts to get higher quality recordings lead some to “tap into” the audio cables that where laid on the concert floor. The cumulative destruction of these cables lead them to “provide” easy access since they realized they couldn’t stop them.
Pearl Jam engaged in an epic battle with the recording industry as they made virtually all their live shows available dirt cheap.
It seems that the “Studio” artist is screwed since once published, their content will be free within hours.
It may be that the only way for an artist to be fairly compensated is through ticket sales and their ability to both but on a show and fill a venue.
You are on the mark.
Ozric Tentacles bypassed the music machine and actually hit the charts.
It is an interesting concept to fore go the traditional marketing, tell the people that the music may be recorded, Take ALL the money from ticket sales and let them record away.
Every aspiring audio tech will buy a ticket and promote you.
Good points...there have been efforts to get radio stations to be forced to pay “performance royalties”. In addition to BMI/ASCAP rights for songwriters, what about the guy who played bass on a certain song? Stations rebelled (there was even talk of
“we’ll switch to talk radio”), saying “we already pay royalties”. The musicians wanted their fair share though.
I have been at a non-comm. college station since 1981 and am part of a rotation of DJs playing blues (how much do I get paid? Like the cereal name says, “Nut’n Honey”! The occasional concert free pass...). We get albums for free then play them, say what we play, do interviews, concert reports, etc. We offer variety unlike the lowest common denominator, hackneyed pop etc. on the bigger
stations.
Tin-eared
Graph-paper brained accountants
Instead of music fans
Call all the shots at giant record companies now
The lowest common denominator rules
Forget honesty
Forget creativity
The dumbest buy the mostest
That’s the name of the game
But sales are slumping
And no one will say why
Could it be they put out one too many lousy records?!?
—Dead Kennedys, MTV Get Off The Air