|
  |
|
|
Halfbaked idea: A CSA for songs
Songs have changed my life repeatedly; I wouldn't be who I am or even alive, if I hadn't heard and sung certain songs; I need songs as much as food. People who choose music as a career generally have low and uneven incomes, but they are serving human needs to an extent that few of us wage-slaves ever do. People like Utah Phillips, who faces enormous medical bills for his heart condition, are completely dependent on the producers and consumers of music for their survival. It takes full attention and intense commitment to keep a band going, to keep pulling songs out of the ether and crafting them, to keep honing sounds into tunes. I know Bob Dylan and Carly Simon don't need more money, but bands and musicians on the road now are desperate for reliable cash flow; there's nothing fair about the current methods of distributing "music industry" profits. For this reason, I oppose posting work by living, working musicians who depend on CD and MP3 sales for a living, unless they give their permission or place the songs online for free. There are a couple of aspects to the problem. One is that musicians die or cease to be productive. Their heirs hand rights over to corporations. Most of the revenue from copyrighted material is not going to the creators and is not stimulating new creativity, as far as I can tell. In theory any recording made after 1922 is potentially copyrighted under the Sonny Bono DMCA (a.k.a the Mickey Mouse Protection Act), and RIAA and other "agents" of publishers, etc. are on the prowl for potential copyright violators. I have a visceral difficulty associating my identity with postings that might get me fined more money than I'll make in 500 lifetimes. Still, I think this copyright extension is an unjust law that must be openly defied when the preservation and continued public access to important music is involved. Each posting on the internet of post-1922 recordings (without the artist's permission) is an act of civil disobedience, and I need to conceptualize it that way rather than as an act of casual lawbreaking. I confess, I haven't always lived up to this standard, either in terms of speed-limits, jaywalking, or copyright. Nevertheless, just cheating and rationalizing feels bad to me. The second issue is the support of living, productive musicians and retired or distressed musicians. Manufacturing and distributing CDs, cassettes and LPs is costly and ecologically unsound; digital distribution is much less costly and easier on the planet. In an era when much of the music I choose to listen to is made by musicians who will never perform locally, I probably won't be able to buy a CD from the artist (say Martha Tilston, Amelie-les-Crayons, Swill Odgers, Fragile Fawn) at a concert. Mail order adds to cost, and at this point in history, currency exchange rates make international purchases prohibitively expensive, at least for US residents. If all the music we love could be made available online at 15 or 50 cents per song (with all proceeds going to the artist), music piracy would be unnecessary; we could all afford to pay our fair share of the artists' income. WovenWheatWhispers, cdbaby, TexAmericana Pond Life Studios and other similar sites make artist-friendly purchases easy. Online merchants' terms of $15 (or 15 pounds!) plus shipping per CD sets high price, gives little to artist (maybe fifty cents per CD). Pirates like mp3sale.ru are legal, but don't pass on a dime to the artists. I think music is more like farming than like a manufacturing industry: as I mentioned earlier, music is a daily necessity like food, rather than an optional trinket or a capital investment. One solution to the low returns in local small-scale farming is the CSA or Community-supported Agriculture farm. A group of people get together and each pay an annual fee sufficient to provide a decent income for a farm family, and the family contracts to supply each subscriber with a family-sized share of the resulting crops. Ideally, the subscriptions provide enough money so the farmer can pay into a pension and buy health insurance as well as maintain and improve the farm. Maybe a similar arrangement could be made to support, not only local, but niche music. Listeners and fans could sign up on a MySpace-like site to sample the music being produced by the musicians who are signed up to the site. When a musician or band "qualifies for membership" i.e. has attracted a sufficient number of Friends (fans) and issued a big enough selection of songs, he/she/it could offer a subscription that allowed unlimited downloads of those songs for a year at a fixed price. Part of the fee would go into a retirement/emergency fund for all the "qualified" musicians on the site, part of it would go to the individual musician, and part would go to provide a base of support for all the "qualified" musicians on the site, regardless of how many fans they had. A user who subscribed to 5 or more bands would get a discount rate. Just an idea. How about it? |
|
 |
|
No reactions yet.
Please login or sign up to rate this intel.
Please login or sign up to add a comment.
The copyright for this content entitled "Halfbaked idea: A CSA for songs" has been specified by the contributor as:
All Rights Reserved
This content may not be copied, distributed or adapted by anyone under any circumstances.
|
|
May, 2012
2008
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2009
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2010
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2011
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2012
January, February, March, April, May
|
|
Not a member yet?
Qondio is a powerful network for making it online. If you have a website to
promote, we can help.
Sign up and get in on the action.
|
|
Welcome to Qondio! Discover the awesome power this network can deliver by going to our About page. Or you could skip straight to the Sign Up form.
|
|
