Casio CZ/ VZ/ FZ - Pro Series

dunno even how necessary it is to add to such a bloated topic...
particularly on a synth forum... oh well, here's some more thoughts:

i sympathize with yr position and i do agree that the ethics are
pretty grey these days.

but i think you're deploying some highly selective logic.

it's common sense that when buying a cd from a touring band becomes an
act of charity (guilt drives you to "support the musicians"), rather
than an act of self-interest ("i want to listen to this at home"), a
big part of the economic mechanism is broken.

it was scary when i started noticing that our band was selling more
vinyl than cd's on our tours. vinyl is coveted by nerds (i'm a nerd),
and partially for its scarcity, not by people who are casually
attracted to the music but would like to have it in their car. the
profit margin is much lower for vinyl and not every artist can manage
to produce it in the first place.

if you think cdbaby (which has paid out $14million TOTAL to artists
over its ENTIRE existence) is an adequate substitute for being able to
sell enough (audible) merchandise to support a tour, you've never
tried to make a living as an independent musician. this was never an
easy thing to do, and it is now accepted as basically impossible.
everyone is a weekend warrior these days, or at the very least they're
spending more time on their t-shirts and less time on their albums...

of course, nine inch nails can afford to give away their music and
rake in millions from touring. that's nice enough, but these
high-profile "new economic structures" are only possible because the
twentieth century already happened. we are spending our accumulated
cultural capital, and despite the many many flimsy justifications i
hear (like, i'm sorry, yours), the fact is everyone listens to music
all the time now, and few people pay for it.

that's not the worst thing in the world, maybe. art without commercial
interest is certainly liberated in some way.

for example, myspace lets everyone be heard, including a lot of great
werid stuff and a tremendous amount of utterly lame and derivate
stuff, and some stuff that's just weird and bad (eye of the beholder
applies). one could argue that this is a needed injection of democracy
to the system, and non-professional music is cool. i agree, but i hate
spending time on myspace, and i hate the sound of their
mega-compressed flash player, and i miss hearing albums that are
produced with some care and craft because the band had time to
practice and some cash to put into recording sessions, even though
they're making quirky music that's never going to be licensed for car
commericals or clearchannel radio.

and this is because talented underground artists used to be able to
make money touring, without sponsorships or movie tie-ins.

now we have to go to europe where tradition demands we at least will
be well fed and given a place to sleep. usually pays pretty good too,
so you can go home with some money in your pocket despite the fact
that you sold about 35 cd's to 35 enthusiastic crowds over the last
month and a half. america? not even so kind.

besides all that, most mp3's just sound bad... (oops...) i can't
imagine hearing all my music on an iPod, with terrible cheap little
earbuds, in 192kbit mp3's, "sound enhancer" -ed... on a train...
what's the point? and yet this mode of listening appears to be
tremendously popular. gah...

call me a snob but i can't help thinking that these two forms of
devaluation are related, somehow.

maybe ubiquity isn't really the greatest goal for music. maybe you got
more enjoyment from those CD's you paid for in the 90's than from any
track that you'll download and trash after 30 seconds, because you can
and because there's a billion more tracks to try and not enough time
left in all your remaining days to hear them all.

maybe a piece of music that could make the rest of your life more
pleasurable is worth more than 99 cents... or nothing...

sorry, i'm done

/eb

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 1:29 PM, zoinky420 <zoinky420@...> wrote:
> --- In CZsynth@yahoogroups.com, "synergeezer" <synergeezer@...> wrote:
>>
>> Ain't it great live in a post-ethical society! I wish I could join
>> you there. Where can I go to steal your products?
>>
>
> Pretty much any of the sites CDbaby allows to exploit my recorded
> output. It's weird, they encode your CD and send mp3s to dozens of
> different mp3 vendors, some of which turn around and give the mp3s
> away, and some of which sell them for a dollar or so. For some
> reason, even though they're available for free on some sites, people
> still buy them for a dollar from others.
>
> Incidentally, I've never had an ethical problem downloading mp3s, and
> I was a very early adopter. I was a little concerned about the
> artists livelihood at first, but I've been downloading mp3s for over
> 10 years now and recording artists seem to be making more money than
> ever, including myself (though a 100% increase in almost nothing
> still isn't much). Those mp3 sites CDBaby seeds have provided me
> with the bulk of my CDBaby earnings, rather than the CDs that CDBaby
> sells for me. Although, almost all of that revenue has come from a
> single song I titled 'StunnaShades' because I've been wearing big
> chunky ridiculous sunglasses since long before the Oakland 'hyphy'
> movement popularized them. Anyway, now I get over 1000% more
> downloads for that song than any other, probably because people are
> expecting a rap song, which they don't get, but by then it's too late!
>
> Anyway, like I said I have no qualms about downloading mp3s, and
> never have. I think the main reason for that is because any mp3 I
> want will be from some artist who is fairly Big, and is already
> making scads of money as a hot new trend. Any sad-sack act that
> isn't a hot new trend can't give their mp3s or 'demos' away fast
> enough. The CD shelves of those thrift stores I mentioned are filled
> with CDs put out by local nobodies that nobody buys, and I suspect
> every thrift store in North America is filled with similar local
> fodder. Anyone who really 'cares about supporting music' would be
> buying those up, or better yet, buying them before they wind up in
> the thrift store. But they suck, and that's why nobody cares.
>
> Now, here's a case in point about a band that is currently considered
> hot and trendy: A few days ago I was watching Tom Green's talk show
> and his musical guest was Leslie and the Lys. I liked their
> performance so I searched Google for their product. Turns out they
> had released a few albums through CDBaby. But the CDBaby pages
> representing those albums only had the mp3s for sale, not the
> original CDs. You see, the band had become so hot and trendy, the
> early birds got all the worms. Those CDs are now collectors items,
> and worth a lot more than those people paid for them. So, you want
> to support music? Scour CDBaby for new stuff that totally rocks,
> that you're sure will be the next big thing, and buy their CD. Not
> only will you be injecting cash into the bank accounts of artists who
> not only need it the most, and also deserve it the most, you'll be
> investing in an item that you may be able to resell at a later date
> for several times what you paid for it. How many people do you think
> actually do that? Not many, and even fewer who bother maintaining an
> obsolete notion of morality regarding mp3 files.
>
> I would've bought one of those Leslie and the Lys CDs from CDbaby,
> but I was too late. And that's not the only out-of-print album from
> CDbaby I've wanted to buy. I wanted Spookey Rueben's CDbaby albums
> too, but they're all sold out, too. See the pattern developing
> here? If you're some cool underground artist people actually like,
> you will have no problem selling your product, and those smart and
> savvy enough to buy it (even if they only plan on flipping it on Ebay
> next year) will have no problem shelling out for it, either.
>
> Fact is, if my music were good enough, I'd be selling out my CDs on
> CDBaby. So rather than whine about nobody giving me a 'big break', I
> decided to keep working on making my music better, so that someday it
> will be worth buying.
>
>