Casio CZ/ VZ/ FZ - Pro Series

I think it's not a matter of the "plot" shifting downwards, but more flattening out.  Taken to an extreme, everyone's freely trading and no one's making any money, like 80's cassette culture only with (presumably) far more connections between individuals.  I think most people could handle small-budget home recording, but it makes certain things more difficult (but string sections, etc. have always been out of reach for most people anyway).

There will always be professionals, I guess, at least where performance and touring are concerned.  It's generally presumed that an industry has to exist for some intellectual property type things to be possible- big budget movies, for example.  But I'm finding evidence to the contrary in, for example, the open source software arena.  I'm not sure what that might imply for music.

The ethical element gets more and more muddled if you scratch the surface.  About a year ago I bought something like 12 CDs from an artist that I never would have heard of had it not been for multiple copyright infringements (youtube, soulseek, etc.).  That's how I've been operating lately- "exploring" via downloading and buying the most amazing segments out of that.  That leads to some weird territory, obviously, that goes beyond any simplistic black and white thinking.

To: CZsynth@yahoogroups.com
From: ezra.buchla@...
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:00:25 -0700
Subject: Re: [CZsynth] Re: music economics



















    
            well, i haven't seen too many real numbers, but my guess is that

spending on recorded music, as a percentage of income, is way down

from what it was ten or fifteen or twenty years ago. i do know that

it's been vastly overtaken by spending on other forms of recorded

digital entertainment, particularly videogames.



there's a technological gap which makes music really easy to copy for

free, and videogames comparatively difficult, and it's hard to ignore

the influence of this fact while considering the numbers for spending.



a lot of musicians in the bottom of the income plot (whatever it looks

like) are going to cross a threshold where they can't make a full-time

living, because the whole plot will shift straight down. i haven't

seen the plot, but maybe that threshold will actually pretty damn

high...



i happen to think every art needs professional practitioners to

survive. that doesn't, of course, mean that i think better selling

music is higher in quality; if anything, my bias skews the other way.

but people need resources in order to devote their lives to something.



so only point is that i do think people should pay for the music they

listen to, one way or another, and a lot of people don't, particularly

those who are technologically equipped to copy it (hence, you would

think, able to afford it), and that does suck. so there is an ethical

issue buried in these phenomena. how is that deniable?



i don't really have any right to relate that stuff to any aesthetic

value judgements.  but i suspect that many recordings i love would not

have been made in a society whose economy values videogame music much,

much higher kinds of music.



On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 8:41 PM, Scott Nordlund <gsn10@...> wrote:

>

> Home recording is cheap, online distribution is easy. File sharing is its

> own little ethical oddity with its own nebulous pros and cons, and is

> increasingly prevalent. "Making it" has always been difficult, and it's

> becoming more so. Fuck it, I've got an electrical engineering degree, why

> put so much effort into the business/promotion side of things when the most

> I can expect is a meager and temporary subsistence (if I'm lucky)? I'll keep

> my day job, do my thing in my spare time, and give away the fruits of my

> creative labor. It's becoming a pretty obvious mindset, and I can't see it

> as a bad thing.

>

> I can guess where this will lead. Yes, the indie "middle class" will dry up,

> as will most of the recording industry. Once again, I can't really see this

> as a bad thing (though it will be painful for a while). It might even loosen

> the corporate strangle-hold on mainstream (or at least "indie") culture

> (though this might be overly optimistic).

>

> Still, I can see a few issues with this. First, popularity doesn't correlate

> with quality. This has always been the case, but "democratization" isn't a

> solution for this (and I can't really suggest what would be). There will

> continue to be a small population of relative successes standing out in a

> vast sea of total obscurity. And this will continue to have almost no

> relation to any measure of quality. I don't think it will be any worse than

> it's always been, though it's still not what it probably should be.

>

> Second, giving things away sort of erodes the construction of value that

> this sort of thing depends on. Scarcity really hasn't been a factor for a

> while, but there's still the perception that if you're not asking anything

> for it, it's not worth bothering with. Again, I can't really suggest any

> solution, but I don't think it will help to play along and charge some

> nominal fee just to spur up enough interest that people fire up their P2P

> program of choice. Maybe groups like Nine Inch Nails will draw some

> attention to free music, maybe MySpace will help as well.

>

> I've been pondering the idea of an ad-supported website as a way to generate

> income from free music/art/whatever. Of course it's not something that most

> people will be able to achieve, but it works for some (popular bloggers,

> etc.). At least any commerce will be centered around tangible goods.

>

> On the whole, I don't see any reason to fight the changes. Life will get

> harder for some people, but I think it will get easier for more as people

> look at the "dream" a little more realistically. Yes, there's more music out

> there than I can choke on, but I'm happy with that. As far as I'm concerned

> it just puts the lunatic fringe in closer reach.

>

> But I'm not sure if you can say that this shift is responsible for the

> shorter lifespan of increasingly derivative fads. Most of the fads I'm aware

> of had corporate backing of some sort and weren't so much MySpace phenomena.

> Perhaps it's just because an online fad propagates extremely rapidly, to the

> extent that it tends to hit everywhere all at once. Warhol's fifteen minutes

> aren't what they used to be. This hurts when applied to genres as a whole,

> especially if something isn't allowed to reach a state of maturity or depth

> of expression beyond "this shit all sounds the same" before it's instantly

> over. Not sure quite how I feel about this.

>

> ________________________________

>> To: CZsynth@yahoogroups.com

>> From: ezra.buchla@...

>> Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:42:52 -0700

>> Subject: Re: [CZsynth] Re: music economics

>

>>

>> it happens that i personally have never thought that my records could

>> make money on their own, and i'm just not interested in pursuing a

>> full-time music career since it would mean having to think bout a lot

>> of weird stuff that has nothing to do with making records. i'm much

>> happier as a part time musician with a well-paying day job. i think a

>> lot of people are reaching that conclusion, for better or worse.

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