Downloading, Streaming and the absolute monetary void of recorded music is ticking off musicians. Why buy albums when you dont have too? Why pay anything when you can ‘leak’? I buy music from small bands that travel in a van. Otherwise I dont pay a cent. I Spotify, I Pandora and that’s fine with me.
I stand firm in supporting the little guy. I couldn’t see not paying for their work when they literally mortgage their parents home for a dream. But there will never be a day when I pay for The Stones or The Beatles.
Musicians are feeling it and speaking out. Under the fancy title of ‘Ethical and Sustainable’ they rant their beef with the industry. Simple fact is nothing is going to change. Gone are the days of mega record sales. The horror reality is musicians need to earn their cash in a new way, through endorsement or placement cuz God knows it wont be touring and merch. Here’s what some of the artists have to say.
Trent Reznor, “I know that what we’re doing flies in the face of the Kickstarter Amanda-Palmer-Start-a-Revolution thing, which is fine for her, but I’m not super-comfortable with the idea of Ziggy Stardust shaking his cup for scraps. I’m not saying offering things for free or pay-what-you-can is wrong. I’m saying my personal feeling is that my album’s not a dime. It’s not a buck. I made it as well as I could, and it costs 10 bucks, or go fuck yourself.”
Quincy Jones, What’s sad is that there is 98 percent music piracy everywhere on the planet. It’s just terrible. What if these kids (who download music illegally) worked for me for two months and then I said, “I’m not going to pay you.” That’s just not right.
East Bay Ray,“There’s opportunists on the Internet that have taken advantage of the artists, [they’re] giving a free ride on a carnival horse, but they’re starving the horse.”
Pink Floyd, It’s a matter of principle for us. We hope that many online and mobile music services can give fans and artists the music they want, when they want it, at price points that work. But those same services should fairly pay the artists and creators who make the music at the core of their businesses.
Martha Ray, Musicians should be paid a fair value for their work and all digital services should play by the same rules. These are just common sense ideas, and once Congress adopts them as law, future generations will wonder why we ever struggled over them. But that’s why we must keep struggling – until justice is done.
And the winner of the biggest nob on the net comment is comes from Alice and Chains drummer Jerry Cantrell on how they wont play new material live until the album is released, “Well, in the old days – if you start out with ‘in the old days,’ you’re totally an old f–k – you were able to play a lot more stuff live,” Cantrell tells Spin magazine. “But with the advent of the Internet and sharing and shit going everywhere, you can’t do that anymore. We really haven’t been playing anything off the new record that’s not out yet. We’ve been playing ‘Hollow‘ and ‘Stone,’ and now that it’s going to be released, we’re thinking about whipping out ‘Phantom Limb‘ and maybe a few more.”
As if anyone cares about Alice in Chains anymore anyway…
I dont have a problem with streaming and downloading. It is hilarious to watch the artists try to articulate their concerns.