Let's Just Give It Away

bapu

Milamber


I am not sure this is the right place for this question/observation/idea if it isn't then so be it. 

I have been very frustrated with the music business and its total inability to protect and distribute an artist’s original work. 

Somehow the movie industry does a reasonable but also an imperfect job of protecting their content and distribution. Perhaps I should say that it seems as if they do a better job of protecting their content than we do in the music industry. 

 To further add to this frustration in many cases the movie media business is also a culprit of ripping off compositions from various independent musicians that do not possess the means to defend themselves and their work in the court of law. 

I don’t believe that the industry that contracts our work have gone to sufficient lengths to protect it and should themselves be held accountable for this travesty. 

I know many musicians that have taken on the perspective of giving away their work in hopes of getting a foothold in a business that doesn’t pay very well to begin with. 

The only reason that comes to mind for new artists to be giving away original work to the general public is because they haven’t created something worth listening too, to begin with. 

In other words if someone isn’t willing to pay for your work then you haven’t developed the skills necessary to sell it yet. 

These companies that have been put together for the sole purpose of becoming distribution points for original music are all taking the musicians to the bank. 

As a musician you are paying them so that you can sell your music and what you should be striving for is to have them pay you for the privilege of distributing your work. 

These are just my thoughts but I think if, as musicians, any of you try to go out and make a living playing and or composing you will run into the same frustrations over and over again. 

If you are successful and do get signed with anyone you will quickly find that no matter how successful your first released work is that you will be in debt up to your eyeballs. 

Yes you may get the privilege of releasing a second album but it had better be just as damned good as the first one or you are through as in either bankrupt or kicked out of the imaginary artist development program that the bigger labels claim exist as a protective shield for their new talent to evolve out of and into the big time…WooHoo. 

So, why the rant, well I was pondering an idea and was wondering if it had any viability and wanted to use a forum as a sounding board to get some feedback. As we all know after creating our work we use codec’s to convert the audio into some sort of playable format for our music loving audiences to listen to. 

 Whether it be mp3, flacc, wav, m4a, etc. In the software industry in order to install a piece of software a license is required to unlock and use the software. 

Yes everything is hack able and for every security feature available there is some sort of a work around to break in and use the software. 

However, the software industry is already aware of this and there only real goal is to make it a pain in the ass to steal software albeit slow down the proliferation of stolen software. 

In addition, upgrades and so on typically require some fairly sophisticated algorithms to crack and add to already hacked software on a user’s desktop. 

So as a software guy I was wondering if it would be at all possible to encode a license key within the codec’s that are being used to create the final editions of distributed music whereby the license could be distributed with the music. 

In addition, perhaps a trial version of the license would allow the end user to play the song(s) a few times before the license expired forcing the user to have to either purchase a legit license or never listen to the music again. 

I believe this would also lend itself well to demo submittals to media companies interested in using original works as part of their derivative work such as movie trailers and so on. 

There are certainly obstacles to overcome and some may prove to be impossible but please keep in mind this is a means whereby we are trying to slow down the meaningless and total demeaning proliferation of original work that musicians have put blood, sweat and tears into creating. 

 I look forward to your thoughts. 

There.... I broke it up for you guys.

bapu


pffffft

Milamber


So as a software guy I was wondering if it would be at all possible to encode a license key within the codec’s that are being used to create the final editions of distributed music whereby the license could be distributed with the music. In addition, perhaps a trial version of the license would allow the end user to play the song(s) a few times before the license expired forcing the user to have to either purchase a legit license or never listen to the music again. I believe this would also lend itself well to demo submittals to media companies interested in using original works as part of their derivative work such as movie trailers and so on. There are certainly obstacles to overcome and some may prove to be impossible but please keep in mind this is a means whereby we are trying to slow down the meaningless and total demeaning proliferation of original work that musicians have put blood, sweat and tears into creating.

I look forward to your thoughts.

spacealf


Who's making good music?? Who has time to listen to it all?? Who cares??