The problem is, to preserve and not lose the vast legacy of commercial
music -- and I'd argue that the stuff previous to this era will have
much more long-term cultural and financial value -- takes some
critical mass. Not that the majors have been all that good at it, but
the alternative is not good and I've heard horror stories about how
smaller record companies kept their archives.
And how many stories do we hear just on this list about vast
quantities of stuff donated to the LOC and smaller collections that is
literally rotting in warehouses, never to see the public again.
I think owners of content work best on a for-profit model. What I
think will eventually happen is that music companies will be just
owners and licensers of content, licensed to whatever format is
distributed in whatever way. Their manufacturing and distribution
businesses will be more and more asset-draining albatrosses. Steve
Jobs' statement bears reading because, although of course it's
designed to bolster Apple's case against the EU nannies, it touches on
a lot of areas where I think his future visions are accurate.
Back to your point, Marcos, my fear would be that if Big Music totally
blew up, a lot of great historic recordings would fall into the pits
of hell, never to be heard again in any format.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcos Sueiro" <mls2137@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2007 8:15 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] interesting!
I'm going to get whipped for this, but I'll say it anyway: I don't
see what is so terrible if large large record companies simply
disappear. Music has been around much longer than the recording
industry, so I do not think that the quality of music itself would
suffer. And certainly there must be other business models for
musicians to make a living without having to feed a huge machine that
often sucked their blood, especially now that the means to record
music are available to so many. Big Music generated lots of money for
over a century, but only a very small proportion of all musicians saw
that money. Perhaps Big Music is just not good for music anymore.
Marcos
Tom Fine wrote:
So, even though I'm no fan of Big Music, they have a point in all of
this. If the owners of the copyright material -- descendants of
those who put up money to record the old stuff and current funders
of new material -- cannot get a return on their investment, they do
not have a business model. So in that case nothing can be made
available because it's a money-losing proposition and companies are
not in business to lose money.