Casio CZ/ VZ/ FZ - Pro Series

well, part of the greyness comes from the fact that not all ethical
concerns are pecuniary. if the music reviewer for the new yorker posts
your track on his blog, he is arguably doing you a great service even
though it's technically an illegal act of data theft.

sometimes people just want their music to reach people and don't care
if they sell cd's. the bleak economic prospects for full-time
musicians (and i don't think they've ever been all that rosy compared
to, say, those facing full-time lawyers) encourage such an attitude,
and i personally feel that if it's a choice between people
experiencing the work for free and nobody experiencing it at all, any
decent artist would choose the former.

if some teenager halfway across the world downloads my record and is
stoked enough on it to share it with 500 of his online friends, many
of whom are also stoked, how could i not be happy? how would that kid
have ever even heard my record, let alone bought it, under
pre-internet distribution models?

in those much-hyped new economic models for digital music, such a
process is called viral marketing, and provides the pecuniary angle to
this ethical greyness. of the many people who download illegally, a
few end up buying legal copies (downloaded or otherwise), either for
higher audio quality or because they feel like the product is good
enough to pay for. hence the phenomenon of deliberate leaks from
artists and record labels as part of their marketing strategy.

compare this to the shareware model of software distribution, and
products like Photoshop whose success (read: ubiquity) is due in part
to (deliberately?) ineffective copy control.

but i still think the bottom line is that potential income from
recordings is lower than it used to be, and certainly is scaled
differently... homemade music has a better shot at being heard, and
superstars can still live large (mostly off licensing and tours, not
record sales), but the "middle class" of independent professionals is
quickly disappearing.

i starting posting about this because i thought mr. 420's comments
were a little distorted and potentially dismissive of the truly harsh
economic realities facing people who want to hope to make a living off
of music (nothing personal, dude... just my own response). there is no
question that illegal downloads are bad for cd sales; this is as
obvious as you can get.

but if the question is whether illegal downloads are bad for the
future of music, well... that's a lot more complicated. if you asked
me a few years ago, i would have said illegal downloads are great for
the future of music. personal experience might not be all that
relevant here (because there are so very many roads you can take as a
musician), but the fact is that i've been in bands that have been
pretty successful by some standard; meaning i've been able to travel
the world doing nothing but play music, and know that a lot of people
are enjoying the stuff i've made. but i haven't made any money off
music, and i don't expect to. (when people in my band start talking
about licensing deals at practice, i know it's my time to quit...)
anyway, whatever success i've had with bands is inarguably due to the
extant ability to share stuff on the internet, and i don't ever want
that ability to go away.

at the same time, i think in recent years i've started seeing some of
the fallout of that ubiquity in the form of shorter and shorter
attention spans, shorter and shorter fad-cycles in "underground"
music, more derivation, less actual originality. i think this has a
lot to do with listening habits (i'm starting to resent the ipod kind
of a lot), and something to do with the increasingly desperate and
shrill clamor of the hype machines... it's a big, big, big subject...

maybe music should never have been integrated into capitalist
economics. folk musicians have traditionally been indigent (the blind
monks of japan, the hobos of america, the troubadors of medieval
europe), and art music has traditionally been patronized by
governments, religious organizations, or powerful individuals...

so maybe we're witnessing the dying frenzy of music economics, and
we'll soon be back to itinerant artists bartering cd's for food (or
maybe flash cards for gasoline), and the court musicians of hollywood
(and MGM) eyeing daggers at the court musicians of new york city (and
the NEA). unless that's already kinda happened...

and then, well, there will always be christian rock of course.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 8:33 PM, synergeezer <synergeezer@...> wrote:
> zebra, I like most of what you have said.
>
> I don't agree that the "ethics are pretty grey these days". I find
> that theft of property is pretty easy to identify. These days, it is
> very easy to steal movies, music, and computer software, with almost
> no chance of being held accountable. The issue as I see it is that
> ethics is just not a consideration for most of the people in the
> U.S.A. (I can't speak for elsewhere.) "Ethics" has been reduced to
> the question of "What can I get away with?"
>
> Also, I think that these discussions are appropriate on every forum!
>
> I think that there are many reasonably good substitutes for the
> Microwave and the Poly-80. I have found no good substitute for a CZ.
>
> -synergeezer
>
> --- In CZsynth@yahoogroups.com, zebra <ezra.buchla@...> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>