Somewhere Over the Rainbow is a Dunkin Donuts
 

Need money-grubbing pathetic professional hangers-on really be told that it is unwise and ungentlemanly at best to describe your meal ticket in such unflattering terms on a TV show?

Really, community-property laws or not, he ought to have his share stripped for sheer stupidity. Not to mention that youngish men who nonetheless appear to have had a Joan Rivers-esque amount of face-stretching plastic surgery are hardly in a position to criticize.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow is a Dunkin Donuts
 

Very out-of-school comment, to be sure, but I thought it was she who was the money-grubber in the relationship. Isn't it that she doesn't have much dough, so married this guy to continue to lead her spendy lifestyle? Why else would she marry this guy? (Not that she's such a catch herself, but she's famous -- I suppose there's his incentive, but what's hers?)

I'm probably confusing them with another couple -- who can keep track?

And One Last Shocking News Item
 

This is ridiculous. Independent radio promoters are not the problem with the industry. The problem with your radio is corporate radio programmers and the sweetheart deals they have with majors.

In the industry, you need people other than the artists to ensure the artists' music does not suck. You need producers, you need A&R, you need people to broker the deals with other artists and producers to improve the product. Or else no one would want to hear it.

You also need distributors so that the music can get into stores. I know independent distributors who service mom-and-pops with indie product -- they spend days on the road, putting the right product in the right stores at the right time so it can be there when you want it.

We have an artist to consumer model -- it's called buying cds at a show. It's incredibly inefficient, but the artist has the ability to get paid for their work. Unlike peer-to-peer, when the artist gets screwed.

Wilco is a pretty awful example, and there are others like the Yellow Jackets, who have released their own product on the web and have done great. They have three essential things most of your marginally commercially viable bands don't have: (1) name recognition; (2) existing fans -- so a market already exists for the product and so that independent, college, and public radio djs will program it upon release; and (3) most importantly, money to make and release their own product.

(As for money, if they can do absolutely everything themselves, and can independently support themselves, it will cost between $5,000 and $25,000 to record and manufacture a cd. If they need producers and musicians and want to press 10k units and get it on local radio, you are looking at up to $250,000. For most struggling musicians, the $5,000 is as hard to come up with as the $250,000.)

Without those three elements, you would never know the music exists if you didn't stumble into one of the MCVBs shows (as we did with Charlie Hunter a few years ago, and Bavu Blakes last year).

Your model ensures a healthy regional market with very little national coverage. It works well in hip hop, but then some of those artists have other ways of supporting themselves.

House Hunting
 

Yeah. I'm prejudiced against handsome, coiffed men. What are you talking about? My standards apply equally to Eurotrash metrosexuals and overgrown idiots whose beady little eyes are too close together. In fact, I'm more critical of athletes and their 32 button suits in colors like purple and red than I am about most other people. So, fly, it's not, on anyone.

Thurgreed(although I will note that Lebron had a white suit on at the draft and it didn't look that bad on him -- the shirt was nowhere near as bad as the one in the picture finch never wants to see again)Marshall

House Hunting
 

My point was that white suits are just fucking rediculous no matter the material or the shirt underneath it. I dont think Shaq would be any more fly in that outfit than Slave or Jack from Will and Grace would be.

House Hunting
 

You should try having your posts reflect the points you're attempting to get across.

TM

And One Last Shocking News Item
 

Every other industry has laid off tons of middle managers. The music industry can't do the same? I don't think the potential artist-to-consumer music model is really caring about some middle manager's college tuition bills.

RIAA's New Chief
 

The RIAA has hired Bill Frist's former Chief of Staff as its new chief lobbyist.

The RIAA is the lobbying group for the major labels, so I foresee very bad things coming for consumers and indies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jul28.html

Even(rock on)Odds

And One Last Shocking News Item
 

All of those middle managers perform the same function for the music biz that Westlaw performs for us. When some court in Buttcrack, Idaho issues a ruling on liability for speeding dogs, Westlaw takes it in, indexes it, catalogs it, and makes it findable to people like me in Buttcrack, Minnesota. Without Westlaw, I'm forced to keep current in all of the various jurisdictions if I want the ability to know about that particular treatment of speeding dog damages.

Similarly, when some sitar player in Buttcrack, Idaho makes a new song, the music bureaucracy takes that song in, indexes it, catalogs it, and distributes it over the music version of the Westlaw site (i.e., the radio/CD/promo circuit) in a way that makes it findable by me in Buttcrack, Minnesota. Without that service, I need to be looking at every indie musician's website, in every genre, if I want the ability to catch that sitar act.

So, I would disagree that the system is worthless. I have seen little or no info that suggests that it overprices the merch, and the artists don't seem to be fighting to leave that system. I think that the development of p-to-p simply made theft of IP so easy that it's worthwhile to come up with some justifications and rationale that assuage consciences.

The A&R man said "I don't hear a single"
 

Actually, we gave up all the people named "Chico" in the Louisiana Purchase, two hundred years ago.*

As for how you can recognize a Frenchman, look for the Coq Gaulois and a certain supersillyusness. Plus those Mickey Mouse ears that they sell at EuroDisney.

CDF

* for the history Timmies, yes, I know that some of the territory (specifically, a portion of present-day Louisiana), was transferred by the Spanish to the French, and then immediately to the U.S., in a three-way transaction. This year is actually the bicentennial of those transfers.

And One Last Shocking News Item
 

Why would anyone want an artist-to-consumer model as the norm? Artists often are not good judges of the quality of their own work, and music in particular needs refining in production and post-production. And musicians, I would think, would typically prefer to be making music (or taking drugs or nailing groupies) rather than dealing with the nuts and bolts of music production and distribution.

RIAA's New Chief
 

I must have more faith in the free-market system than do you. If things are this bad, I have to believe that they won't JUST go after downloaders - they'll also work on their own business model to make it more palatable to consumers. There's no percentage, for them, in stopping downloading only to piss off their buyers by leaving them with the same system that disillusioned them to begin with.

Watch for very user-friendly single-song download services by membership, and a lower barrier to entry for the smaller music people. I think the new technology is only going to make life easier and more fun for the indies, as they sign up to be part of bigger online distribution groups.

RIAA's New Chief
 

I have very little faith in the music industry to do that. I think they hired this guy to help them get penalties increased for anyone who does stuff they don't like. Ideally, they will want stiff trade sanctions (e.g., no food for them!!! and prohibitively high tariffs on anything they export!!!) against any country in which any person has illegally duplicated any CD and sold the copies on the black market.

RIAA's New Chief
 

The RIAA has been leading the crackdown against independent manufacturers and underground music. Any enhanced lobby power will only serve UMG and hurt artists and indie labels.

And One Last Shocking News Item
 

This can't be your argument going forward, though. I'm sure a much more cost effective version of the music's version of Westlaw (hell, maybe Westlaw itself will do it) will evolve once file sharing and song releases from indie musicians mesh. I bet that however it evolves (legally or illegally), the new internet middle man will be cheaper and more efficient than what we have now.

As far as the larger stealing/not stealing argument goes, I think I'm the only one on this site that doesn't do it.

TM