“Nothing competes with free”
“If I may quote a real economist, “Nothing competes with free”.”
I'd like this “real” economist to explain the bottled water industry to me. If nothing competes with free (which is a total lie) how is it that the Water Barons are making money hand over fist selling us a commodity that we can get essentially free from any tap or drinking fountain.
Downloading music and songwriters have nothing to do with each other. He even says several times in the article about how the record industry screws songwriters (which I agree with) and how the popularity of uninspiring rock/pop music has made the modern songwriter obsolete (which I also agree with). If the ROI of a professionally written song isn't higher then some hack amateur's version why would a record company retain a large staff of songwriter? Wouldn't this be a waste of money?
Even if you could throw a magic “no music downloading” switch and stop all music downloads, would this return the world to a fairy tale, songwriter's utopia? Would the music industry return to it's pre-P2P levels? Wasn't the record-able cassette tape supposed to be a harbinger of doom for songwriters and the music industry?
It's much easier to blame the nameless, faceless evil of the phantom “music pirate” then to face the reality of changing trends. Whether or not one thinks that downloading music from the Internet is morally wrong / criminal, or progress is really a moot point. The genie is out of bottle. It's done.
What we can do is stop whining about thing we have no control over. My god why doesn't this guy see that fact that the music industry is squandering the single greatest money making opportunity in the history of it's industry? All they would have had to do was package it better then the freetards and they would have made MORE money than the 90's. They would, most likely, have to hire twice as many songwriter. The music industry is the problem not the freetards.
If the bottled water industry can build enough value into their product to compete competitively compete against the free water market, someone should be able to figure out how to sell music (and pay songwriters) on the Internet for profit.
Nathan
P.S. > Artists create for art. If they're not creating for art they're just money-grubbers, slightly more cynical than everyone other money-grubber.
Wow, this guy doesn't get out a lot. I can't figure out if he's a freetard or just slow and angry.
I think you're confused. Let me try to clear this up for you.
An artist, like anyone else, has a right to “want” the maximum profit from his or her creation. Why would this in any way make a artist anymore “money-grubber” then lets say a Systems Admin who wants paid for preforming the art of network maintenance. Both persons may “want” $50 p/h but the market will determine the value of the creation. I really don't see any “money-grubber” in either of these persons.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
