Banana's Beard Emporium - The Off-Topic Chat Thread

i addressed that int he second half of my post. yes, they've lost control of their IP. a lot of people don't recognise IP.

i'm not saying it's right. just less wrong. arguably.

 

Going back to address earlier points though - only in some ways in reality TSS. Yes, bands like One Direction, admittedly they suck up a huge amount of marketing budget (from Syco/Sony) but then they're cash cows for the company too with a limited life-span, so they probably actually in that sense do more good than bad. If you look at the impact of talent show acts in reality on the industry - how many years has the X Factor gone on? Loads? How many acts really made or make an impact - One Direction, Leona Lewis, Will Young......hmm.....that chap that looks like a toe, Olly Murs?

Not really all that much.

Where it does negatively impact things is that it encourages the mindset of "fame at all costs" from young artists - so they'll utterly sacrifice any artistic credibility just to get their name in lights. The problem is that they'll work with the writers in fashion - many, many, many of the popular songs today are written by (Sia being an example, Diane Warren being another) or produced by (Pharrell, David Guetta, Calvin Harris etc etc) the same people. So of course you end up with terribly homogenous sounding music. People will clamour to have them work with them because then you have a 'guaranteed hit'. To have a guaranteed hit, in all honesty you need to be making music that sounds the same as what's out there. Ergo, boring.

 

As you can see just from this discussion, B is tricky to make work because that just doesn't seem to impact people.

As for the second point, you couldn't be further from the truth. The very, very top artists or producers of course are very wealthy (as the very top of any industry are), but the majority of musicians (and producers) work at something below minimum wage. The days where there was spare £ floating around are long, long gone.

 

i'm not saying that at al. The intellectual and marketing side of it is what's left after retail and manufacture have been essentially cut out of the equation.

 

Now you're talking Joe. The fact of the matter is, streaming is available, torrents are available, and as can be seen by the very small cross section here, that's not going to go away sadly. There does seem to be a slightly strange disconnect between what people do and actually examining the consequences of these actions, but that goes back to my gripe about the sense of entitlement that seems so prevalent these days. Another discussion entirely.

So yes, what we need to do is find solutions to make sure that good music is encouraged, and that people are rewarded fairly. Which means pulling the likes of YouTube/Spotify/Soundcloud etc in line. There are moves to make that happen but there's also a lot of legal precedents and issues in the way of that being anything like effective. I can happily provide you with the figures of what an artist makes per million plays on Spotify, then you may see my issues!

In the meantime, the artist/manager/label, need to find other solutions, which include trying to persuade people to buy the physical product - so artwork, added experiences, DVDs (that get immediately pirated) or extra tracks (immediately pirated). Sadly there isn't simple solution.

 

the majority of musicians and producers aren't of interest to the consumer. you're invisible. i don't see how they can get by on anything other than good will or doing it as a hobby.

the humble bundle trend in software/games has been interesting to watch.

 

Anything other than the very very top are struggling at the moment. By very very top I mean Gaga/One Direction/Britney/50 Cent type people. Your middling, indie musicians, that certainly are of interest.......well if you think they're raking it in, you're wrong.

 

I don't mean their product isn't of interest. I mean their predicament.

me, I don't give two ****s about music past the 80s so they are totally irrelevant to me.

 

Ah well yes. It's one of the problems of this industry in that most of the limited resources get pushed onto those that need it least. The up-and-comers are left to struggle and hope for Lady Luck to beamingly smile down at them.

 

Pistorius trial back on...it has been decided that he was aware of the difference between right and wrong after psychological evaluation.

 

Doesn't really mean much, most people know the difference even mentally ill people. They also ruled he hasn't got anxiety which is weird as it is hard to prove you have it.

 

is it relevant? i thought his defence hinged on thinking it was someone else.

is the right/wrong thing to do with the morality of lying about that?

 

I haven't really paid attention to the trial so I'm just going by what I see on here, but I guess if he could demonstrate he was psychologically unwell then it could support his claim that it was down to misjudgment and rash decision-making. Being mentally unwell can help with all sorts of defenses as it mitigates the mens rea of all sorts of crimes. If he's going for a partial defense and a lesser sentence, rather than a complete defense, it could help to disprove malice aforethought and be the difference between murder and manslaughter. But like I say I don't even know what defense he's claiming.

 

That's not just the music industry, it is a world-wide imbalance, in almost every walk of life.

It's why the rich get richer and the poor have children [very old saying]

 

Well, the poor certainly have children where benefits are at stake.

 

The saying is said to have come from the Victorian era, and was brought to the fore again in a 1920's song called Ain't We Got Fun. It was used to illustrate the widening gap between the rich and poor. The lyrics were changed around several times to suit.
They used to have children to help bring in something to live on, and to look after the parents in their old age. That's why poor families were traditionally large. Now, to an extent, benefits have replaced that. Problem is, whereas a large family looked after itself, with nobody objecting from outside the unit, now there simply aren't the jobs out there, and therefore the cultural shift is one of dependence upon the community. Believe you, me, a poor family would much rather work to look after its own than have to depend upon benefits to help them. However, the culture began to shift when full employment could no longer be sustained. And in the 1980's, that growing dependence began to be despised rather than understood. The large family was even parodied in the comedy series Bread.
These days, generations are born and grow up in a culture of non-employment. The cycle is difficult to break. One simply can't fit 10 people into 7 jobs. Somebody has to lose out. People's first reaction shouldn't be to despise them for it though. There may be genuine reason.

 

Plus, of course, poor people in Third World counties don't get benefits anyway, and large families tend to happen for the same reasons that they did here before the Welfare State started helping out.

 

People in poor countries also have large families (apart from not having contraception) because many children die. Once you can be assured your children will live, you start wanting fewer so you can afford them and can do the best by them. Too lavish benefits just unbalances the equation. Decent people still want the number of children they can raise well, whether on benefits or wages. However, there is a minority of people who would be low lives with or without benefits...it's just annoying now that they seem to be the group most benefitting, whilst good people on minimum wage soldier on.

 

Yes, of course. It's just a shame it's so debilitating in terms of bringing through fresh talent. Can't go scaring the old guard now, can we

 

Rolf Harris found guilty of indecent assaults....