Music Business and Trend Mongering

This was very thought provoking. I agree someone needs to come up with a new model for the way things are done in music. How money is made from making it and so forth. The question is: how do you assign a price to something that cost a significant amount of money to produce but zero dollars to reproduce and distribute? The disconnect between her fashion example and music is that people still have to buy clothes. Whereas a digital file isn’t a physical item.

I actually disagree with dismissing intellectual property as bullshit. Intellectual property is real. Musicians won’t be as inclined to innovate if someone is allowed to literally take their ideas right in front of them and go off with other people to make money with it. Ask any musician, and they will say that would make them sick. I understand what she is saying about the fashion industry and how it helps, but there are no gucci’s in music. They don’t have to worry about the cheap knock off stores because their clients are people with millions of dollars in the bank. I’m kinda just letting this fall out of my brain, so anyone feel free to counter.

I guess (one of) the argument(s) from anti-copyright people is that digital music is inherently free, get over it. Maybe that is to be the case — that is fine. But to say that you can innovate in music, but anyone can literally copy your songs just doesn’t sit well with me. That would rip the heart out of any serious musician. It doesn’t make sense.

Imagine a musician writing a great song, a personal piece of art with a unique viewpoint, and innovative/powerful music to match. That artist is then approached by Morgan Stanley to use the song in their commercials because it is catchy and popular. The artist says, “No, that doesn’t feel right. This is a personal song, and I am not interested in supporting your company. I fundamentally disagree with your business practices.” That company says, “Ok, but we want to use it, so what we are going to do is find another singer to record the song for us and we will use it in our commercial. We don’t really care how you feel about your song, we are using it. It is public property. You know what? Even if you said yes, we would not have compensate you for it. You can’t own a song”