"You can abuse artists on touring contracts as badly as you do on recording. You graduated from Harvard, they dropped out junior year of high school in Detroit. You can do this."
What an asshole!
Nearly all talented musicians are WICKEDLY INTELLECTUAL. Music ain't easy, jack.
Within the last couple of years, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! has proven that the internet is a viable marketing environment without involving the radio juggernaut. Within the first two years of their existence, they had sold 90,000 copies of their debut album by dealing with distribution companies directly. However, CYHSY! is still an extreme phenomenon. I think the key to the future of music is making it more efficient for bands to follow this path. Myspace is cool for bands who don't have the time to make their own website and want to stream some free stuff to fans, but it really sucks for finding new music. Last.fm is a step in the right direction, but for whatever reason I don't enjoy using it for anything but the charts.
Its not really true that people will not pay for what they can get for free.
If it is a lot more convenient to pay a small amount of money than to find something for free, I think most people will choose to pay.
That's true. I used allofmp3 for my music before Oink came around. $1-2 was perfectly reasonable to pay for an album in my preferred non-DRM format. However, in the post Oink era, it is much easier and more convienient to not pay for music. I don't think the RIAA will ever come up with a solution more convenient than Oink and its successors.
My startup is focussed on this industry. I have a profit model, and the system is compatible with copyright law but does not leverage copyright. I've taken much longer to get it off the ground than it should have because I work far more effectively in a team and haven't located the right partner yet. If anyone wants to talk and has residency in London or Australia then get in touch.
Also, this will get you NOWHERE:
"You can abuse artists on touring contracts as badly as you do on recording. You graduated from Harvard, they dropped out junior year of high school in Detroit. You can do this."
What an asshole!
Nearly all talented musicians are WICKEDLY INTELLECTUAL. Music ain't easy, jack.
Also:
Lefsetz.com/wordpress
particularly: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2007/11/11/3...
and
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2007/11/12/g...
Mike Masnick at Techdirt has been saying all this for nearly a decade.
Blah blah.