-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcos Sueiro" <mls2137@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] interesting!
Tom,
I think that the transition of music companies to licencers of
content is already happening, but it is unclear how they will make a
healthy profit if copying of content by the consumer is so easy. (Is
there a hacker-proof DRM? Doubtful. And, how much time and money are
they willing to spend policing content?)
Also, since corporations are in the business of making money, keeping
old masters only makes sense if they are profitable. Therefore we
cannot expect record companies to keep old recordings if they do not
think they will sell, no matter how supposedly historic they are (a
label that is vague at best). And there are quite a few horror
stories as well of record companies being unable to find masters in
their own vaults.
But a key point is this: current copyright restrictions do not allow
other sources (collectors and libraries) to make that content
available (free or not) for society at large. This I find pernicious.
The way I see it, copyright law was designed to protect a large
business model that just does not work any longer. It made sense when
a large investment was needed to create a product that could in turn
generate large revenue. Once record companies are gone, copyright
restrictions will go away.
I see the future music business as far more performance-oriented,
with the recording side as almost a promotional afterthought. It is
still easy to charge a cover to see a performance.
Marcos
Tom Fine wrote:
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.