| Author | Message | ||
     Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 2586 Registered: 03-2005 |
"You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script. This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money? In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties." --Francis Ford Coppola, in online magazine 99%. I've been saying that digitization has broken the back of the record companies and demolished the pop star music model. Personally, I've cheered this because it's opened the music world to any person who feels like sitting down and creating music. There will be some great music as a result; music that was previously filtered out of existence. I'm thrilled that somebody as "establishment" as Coppola has figured it out and is saying so. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 3794 Registered: 05-2005 |
Thanks for posting this Randy. But I'm not sure I agree with any of it. I despise people who refuse point blank to pay for music and have this "art should be free" attitude. These people are very often the ones who do not have a creative bone in their body and who are never going to create any type of art themselves. My daughter often asks me about songs she has heard and asks if I have them. Most of the time I don't. She says "you can get it from the computer". I tell her yes I can, but I have to pay for it. I don't know anything about downloading films. I don't know if it is as prevalent or easy to do as downloading music. Given that the files must be vastly bigger, I'm assuming it is not as prevalent, but maybe it is. It's nice that Coppola makes money from his winery, but he made the money to set it up in the first place from the movie business. It's easy for a multi-millionaire to say art should be free. I always think of The Waterboys' Fisherman's Blues album when I think of the great decline in record company finances. It took two-and-a-half years to make in various studios and a country house in the west of Ireland. It must have been massively expensive to make. It was a huge indulgence for a band that had only one modest hit single (The Whole Of The Moon) under their belt. They recorded 110 songs in the Fisherman's Blues sessions, most of which have never been released (presumably, hopefully, there will be a box set one day). But 25 years on, what record company would now countenance funding this kind of recording budget for even the most successful artist, never mind one with a very modest track record? There will never be another record like Fisherman's Blues because nobody will ever again be given that kind of leeway. And that makes me sad at what the downloading culture has wrought. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 2587 Registered: 03-2005 |
Padraig, as a person working in an industry that's still trying to figure out how to function in the digital world, I'm not surprised that this idea does not fill you with joy. For every Fisherman's Blues album that isn't made--and in fact Fisherman's Blues WOULD be made, just in the band's own residence minus the pretentious and sonically useless country house and other pointless and creatively irrelevant frippery--at least a dozen records WILL be made by people who were locked out by the old cartel. There is no longer the distorted situation of vast sums going to a relative handful of people who have been anointed by the record companies/radio programmers/music magazines at the same time that others whose only offense is geographical location in the wrong place or perhaps a more idiosyncratic vision can't even scratch enough together to get into a studio. The fan bases are being built the old-fashioned way and yes, fans do pay for their favorite artists' work, both shows and the recorded music. The freebie downloads simply further disseminate the music so that occasionally it finds yet another honest-to-God fan who will attend shows and pay for recorded music. Best of all, artists can make the music they feel moved to make instead of curbing their impulses to try to get a hit. We haven't quite reached the technological level for downloading films on a broad scale but we're very close and we'll certainly be there by the end of this decade. Today I drove into Burbank as I usually do on weekends, passing by Warner Bros., and I wondered for the umpteenth time how Los Angeles will change when digitization has totally taken over. Some lovely people will lose jobs, I'm sure. But some other people will finally see their way into what has been a very narrow and restricted field. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 3796 Registered: 05-2005 |
Randy, when Fisherman's Blues was made Mike Scott was living in Dublin. Do you think the cream of the west of Ireland's traditional musicians would have gone to his house or flat at their own expense to record on a four-track over a long period of time? Who has that kind of money and time to spare without record company backing? I don't think a record of the scope of Fisherman's Blues, or Pet Sounds, or 16 Lover's Lane will ever be made in someone's bedroom. Recording in a country house might well be "pretentious and sonically useless", but I'm sure it leads to a more creative process than recording in a two bedroomed flat. The dreaded word "vibe" springs to mind! Technology is definitely helping to bring more talented musicians to our notice; I just don't think the next Brian Wilson is going to make his masterpiece on a four-track. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 416 Registered: 10-2006 |
I keep thinking of Mozart buried in an unmarked pauper's grave, or Mahler flogging his guts out conducting with little time and energy left for composing: a system of salaried composition back then and we'd have a lot more from both of them! I think FFC was blethering, as he so often does. I'm happy to pay for art, of any kind, and have never downloaded anything for free. But of course the money, as in so many areas, could always be spread around in a healthier way. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 2590 Registered: 03-2005 |
Padraig: digital. The next Brian Wilson will undoubtedly make his masterpiece at home or in some other cheap environment, probably on a 48 track unit. They're very cheap and portable. If you do it at home you have time to get it right. We'll have to agree to disagree on this. I have no taste for the bloated gigantism that the free-flowing money of the 70s record biz created and that's a personal thing. Concerning the country house, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgcxd9wtX UE | ||
| Michael Bachman Member Username: Michael_bachman Post Number: 2086 Registered: 01-2005 |
Stuart, I haven't read much about Mozart. Do you think the movie Amadeus was correct regrading Mozart's poverty due to his lack of students and their cash paying parents? | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 418 Registered: 10-2006 |
I have no idea Michael! As far as I remember, about 90% of the film and the play it was based on is pure fantasy, so I wouldn't take anything in it as potentially truthful. I haven't read much about Mozart either, music doesn't really kick off for me until about the 1860s! | ||
| Michael Bachman Member Username: Michael_bachman Post Number: 2089 Registered: 01-2005 |
Stuart, I would add that centuries old rumors were also involved in the play and movie regarding the relationship and rivalry between Mozart and Salieri. Apparantly there were Salieri conspiracy theories regarding his part in Mozart's death going back to the 1790's and well into the 1800's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Mo zart The movie did bring about a Salieri revival though, as his works were forgotten and never played prior to it's release and now they are widely available and played frequently. | ||
| Guy Ewald Member Username: Guy_ewald Post Number: 255 Registered: 02-2005 |
This subject can be endlessly dissected, but I still buy music and will continue to buy physical product for as long as it’s available. The music industry was a decadent thing and it’s hard to bemoan its comeuppance. I saw a chart that showed the salaries of major label employees; they’d remained more or less static for 20-odd years, except at the highest executive levels where they’d increased by a factor of 10! What kinds of insight, leadership and business acumen are these people providing to merit such compensation? None that I can see. The whole downloading business model has proven to be a bust… CD sales still outstrip paid downloading revenues. A lot of money was made adapting a 19th Century business model to 20th Century business. Music publishing was once the act of printing notes and words on stanzas and selling the sheet music, which would then be played in parlors nationwide. The publishing company got about 90% and the writer got 10% or 12%. When music publishing law was transposed to recorded works it opened the doors to all sorts of fraud, but getting a piece of music that you own in the right film, television show or advert could be like winning the lottery. A modest hit record was great for the songwriter, but the band often saw very little money from recording royalties. Nick Lowe famously got a check for $1,000,000 for having a fragment of “What’s So Funny About Peace Love & Understanding” in the film The Bodyguard. When he saw the movie he couldn’t even spot his own song. But comparing the world to what it was 200 or 300 years ago is silly. The same people who cry that music should be free also want a civilized society with a national health care system (as do I). Everybody needs a toehold in the mainstream economy. You can’t just go out into the woods and build a cabin. Musicians deserve to get paid. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 3805 Registered: 05-2005 |
Guy, I think Nick Lowe's million dollar pay day came from Curtis Stigers covering What’s So Funny About Peace Love & Understanding. Maybe it's that which was used in The Bodyguard? |