Saturday, September 11, 2010

Subsidies

That asshole from The Vandals:
I get a lot of calls to my radio show asking if someone can use “classical” music in a film or podcast or something without permission since it’s so old. Seasoned listeners to Barely Legal Radio know that you can use the composition because it is in the public domain if it is from the classical period (1550 to 1900?) but you must get permission to use copyrighted recordings of these, or any works, regardless of whether they are in the public domain. Somehow this doesn’t sit well with some people.

According to Richard Esguerra from The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a group is “doing something about this “problem. The organization “Musopen” is raising money from “philanthropists” to create high quality digital recordings of works from masters such as Beethoven and Brahms so that they can “generously” donate these recordings to the public domain so that no one will have to worry about licensing recordings of them ever again.

Does this sound nice to you? If it does, you are forgetting one thing.You are forgetting that if these recordings have some commercial value it creates a market for them which not only employs musicians, it encourages better and better recordings and orchestrations that benefit all of society. Destroy their commercial value, and you destroy a lot more than you realize.
Dear asshole: have you ever been to a record store? Or a performance of anything orchestral? I'd guess not:
Is it that offensive to these people that musicians should get paid for mastering their chosen instruments and making the sacrifices necessary to become a professional? Or is it crazy if someone gets a return on an investment to undertake the enormous task of recording a 100 plus person orchestra? Carried to it’s logical conclusion, someday all classical recordings will be in the public domain so this faction of the recording industry can just shut down. Now you can tell your kids not to waste time learning the cello, because there’s no way to earn anything from the sacrifice, so don’t go to orchestra practice. It’s a waste of time.
Classical music as a return on monetary investment: ho ho ho.

Back to the proposed donation of recordings:
When my late Uncle Frank used to hear stuff like this he used to blurt out, “That’s just plain old fashioned communism!” That may be naive but it’s all I can think of to explain the lunacy. My band played in communist East Germany once. I see a bland world of music coming if those ideas make a comeback. I still have nightmares about the “boiled wheat” they served us to celebrate our musical triumphs there.
One thing about the Eastern Bloc: no classical music.

20 comments:

Smut Clyde said...

Letting people listen to your own recordings of a symphony will destroy all desire to hear other performances.

Also, distributing your own words for free on the Intertuba is destroying the market for other writers. You BASTARD.

Also.

Substance McGravitas said...

I'm not sure why The Vandals tour if people have their records. Mysterious.

mikey said...

This may very well be the perfect example of the collapse of the Republican party in America, and the end product of the result of intellectual debate being replaced by ideological debate.

Ideology without any understanding or recognition of it's place in the real world results in stultifying stupidity like this, the kind of political argument we can all read and think "But that's just wrong!"

The world works on a lot of levels OTHER than political ideology, and anytime someone seeks to apply their partisan political beliefs to describe real world events or tendencies, they end up looking like a fool.

This may well end up being the textbook example...

J— said...

The existence of a free interpretation precludes the future existence of not-free interpretations. I know this to be true because the market says so in my mind.

He is getting some schooling in the comments.

J— said...

But thankfully commenter Makkem swoops in to pull the discussion firmly in the direction of complete ignorance.

J— said...

Let a record producer forgo profits on a recording and whamo! tomorrow we will find ourselves under a command economy.

Hat trick! For free!

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

I wish everyone to know that I've declared jihad against Warner Music Group, the number one cause of most of my favorite youtubes getting deleted.
~

Smut Clyde said...

Now you can tell your kids not to waste time learning the cello, because there’s no way to earn anything from the sacrifice

Oh dear. Kids will lose all desire to learn to play guitar.
On the bright side, accordion-playing is equally doomed.

Substance McGravitas said...

Now you can tell your kids not to waste time learning the cello

One thing the world is oversupplied with is well-paid cello players clogging up the streets in their Humvees and making it impossible to get a good reservation at a decent restaurant.

J— said...

Now you can tell your kids not to waste time learning the cello

I thought the boy kids were already giving up the instrument because of cello scrotum.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Now you can tell your kids not to waste time learning the cello

I have to confess that I have been "weak in the knees" for more than one chelleuse.

"Rosin that bow
Nice and slow."

mikey said...

Which brings us to the single greatest love song ever written, Weezer's "El Scorcho":


Goddamn you half-Japanese girls
Do it to me every time
Oh, the redhead said you shred the cello
And I'm jello, baby
You won't talk, won't look, won't think of me
I'm the epitome of Public Enemy
Why you wanna go and do me like that?
Come on down to the street and dance with me

Smut Clyde said...

Obligatory.

I have to confess that I have been "weak in the knees" for more than one chelleuse.
It is impossible for honest hard-working Penthouse Letters authors to keep up with people like you with your two-cellistes-at-once fantasies.

J— said...

I went back to check the comments. He's still getting schooled. From a long one by QA_NJ, this snippet is for all you fans of the BÖC Lyrics tag:

I have 36 different versions of Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" via iTunes (including the original and demo versions -- slow, fast, instrumental, alternative, dance, bluegrass, lullaby, techno, folk).

Smut Clyde said...

I stopped being concerned about the economic fate of orchestras when I realised that the vast majority of them are merely cover bands, who rarely if ever perform the musicians' own pieces.

tigris said...

It's kind of cute that a guy from a band named "The Vandals" is so outspoken in favor of property rights.

Substance McGravitas said...

Nothing is more punk than litigation.

NutellaonToast said...

I thought getting your PhD in Economics was the most punk you could get.

Substance McGravitas said...

Knobbo has a right-wing radio talk show on legal issues in entertainment, and that is EVEN MORE PUNK.

fish said...

I have 36 different versions of Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" via iTunes

I believe this is indefensible.