I love Billy Bragg, his attitude, his on the sleeves politics, his music, everything about him. So I read his op-ed in today's Times with interest.
In it he argues that Bebo, which may or may not have built it's audience on the backs of artists who uploaded their music for free consumption, should have shared some of their $850mm payday with those artists.
I think that specific suggestion is not workable for a host of reasons, but his basic point - that creative artists (whether they be musicians, filmmakers, screenwriters, painters, poets, etc, etc) need a way to make money online and they don't have one - is directionally correct.
Some of my favorite bloggers have already weighed in on the discussion. Arrington in his classic in your face fashion feels no sympathy and argues that online is the best promotion that an artist can find in today's world. Mike is right, but the problem is "promoting what?" Merch and touring hardly cuts it and the loss of music sales hurts everyone, including the artist.
Nick Carr, predictably, takes the opposing view and says:
"... arguments to the contrary are ultimately specious and self-serving. Exploitation is exploitation, no matter how lovingly it's wrapped in neo-hippie technobabble about virtual communities, social production, and the gift economy."
I am tired of the arguments, no matter who is making them. It's time to help these artists get paid. There is a royalty structure in place for streaming music. It's a penny per listen for on demand and about a tenth of that for something less than "on demand".
These rates aren't right and need some tweaking, but I am firmly in the camp that royalties can and should be paid to artists for the streaming of their music on the Internet. I'd pay them if it were easy to do so. I stream artist's music all the time on this blog and my tumblog. But I don't know how many streams are played, I don't know how much I owe, there's no easy way for me to pay it, there's no easy way for me to share my ad revenue with them, etc, etc. As far as I know, if I wanted to pay $1000 right now to the artists, there isn't even anyone to take my money and send it to the artists.
Comments
Hello from China,
the US economic downturn has spread to every corner of the globe, China has seen the great slides from the highest almost near 6,000 to 3,700 calculated on this day in the capital market. which gives the investors a more pale prospect for further financing and raising capitals.
yet the consumption environment has not been completely or as seen in the stock market damped, crowds of people still in great demand for goods purchase.
personally I have heard of starting a company purposed for future strategy, however, the fields that you picked is of crucial entry for profitability, and China has already gone through the bubble that seen the boosting-up of internet and techonology-based industry, and China is now balancing the economy and cooling down which is originated from the purposed mind, get the max consumption from the inside and cuf back on the export are the main leverage tools the China government is doing.
Email: bianchinni@163. com
hope to hear more from who seen this post and love to reply back on more China economy.
Post new comment