See, you failed straight away. You have to describe musicians as decrepit abusers to make you analogy work.

you're joking, right? so you think a straight-edge gospel musician contributes as much to society as a doctor or scientist. right back at ya

Look I'm just keeping it real.
I'm not arguing who contributes more to society, although have you never heard of 'music therapy'?
Many ordinary musicians are pretty straight. My partner is a nurse and there is a long history of drug abuse in the medical profession. It's a known and quite often reported phenomenon.
Not to mention nurses and doctors can party hard just as well as musicians sometimes do.

In the end, if you can't claim some in society contribute more than others without introducing some wildly inaccurate uber negative stereotype, you probably don't have a very strong claim to begin with.

you know what dude, you're right about that. this is exactly why i started not bein' on GS so much, i dunno, it brings out something aggressive in me. i mean, i know why, this is why https://gearspace.com/board/5241556-post1.html the part about my respect level. just IDing where i'm comin' from, FWIW. i didnt mean to stereotype all musicians, but in my experience that is definitely the run of the mill. i used to work in a pretty classy studio, and except for the ultra-classy clientele brought in by this one world-famous engineer (which was technically a different operation than the rest of us anyway, i mean we saw some pretty high-up hiphop and pop acts but this guy who perma-rented space from us, i'm talkin, like, LEGENDARY clients used to come in to mix with this guy), my experience in the industry was, well, basically everything you hear is true. cant tell you how many times i've seen sessions have to end for the night kuz bands got too drunk, cant tell you how many intern runs were for blunts, cant tell you how many lines i've seen chopped up in the lounges. i withdraw any part of my comment that was a stereotype, but i've seen a LOT of truth in those stereotypes, just sayin'.

in any case, my apologies for the tone of my response; i took what you said as what i've come to interpret as the classic tactic of those who are rabidly anti-pirate (as i know you are), which is to simply pick apart the little details of the other parties' arguments much like a lawyer would. but at least in my personal studio experience (not something i do any more, but i did it for 2 years), the image emblazoned into peoples' minds of musicians being drunk pot-smoking junkies is ALMOST ALWAYS true, at least amongst those with whom i've interacted, which after 2 years was quite a lot. i mean, the stereotype got there somehow, right? regardless, my larger point was that, you got someone on the left who saves lives etc, and then you got someone on the right who ... plays guitar. you gotta admit, society finds more value in the person on the left.

Yeah, ok, point taken.
I've hung out with dozens of studio musicians over the years and the vast majority are as straight as a dye and ultra professional.
Also, I think people in this piracy debate gravitate towards the rock n roll/hip hop stereotypes and forget the world of music, and the group of musicians who are badly affected by piracy is massive and diverse.
Classical musicians, jazz musicians, cruise ship and corporate convention players.
It starts at the top and permeates the whole business, not just the MTV acts.
I'm 'rabidly' anti-pirate for two simple reasons.
1) Pirates are takers. Rarely, most likely never giving back.
2) I can't justify piracy in any other way than it allows you to own a commercial product without ever paying for it.
That is a slap in the face of creative people, but also, the honest customer who pays.

"whiskey-guzzling groupie-screwing musician,"?
"still see certain artists banking pretty hard"??
"no one is going to school for eight - twelve years to become a musician"???

You know something? You don't know a damn thing about what it's like to be a musician or what it takes to be a success in music. Not a damn thing.

Guys like you think you can run down to Banjo Center, buy a guitar, learn 3 chords and be a star. Well,buddy, it ain't like that.

It takes years and years of hard work to become proficient on an instrument and more years of work plus iron determination to get anywhere in the industry. You think the "stars" are "banking pretty hard" but you don't see the years of unpaid work they had to put in or the huge expenses that are required to do a professional quality production. You know nothing about all the employees the star is responsible for supporting in order to record professionally and put on a quality show.

You think Stefani Germanotta (That's Lady Gaga) is a big contrived industry pop star, right? All just glitz and hype, right?

She started playing piano when she was FOUR YEARS OLD. She worked he whole life to get to where she's at. Now you may not care for her music (I don't) BUT YOU HAVE TO RESPECT THE AMOUNT OF SHEER EFFORT AND COMMITMENT REQUIRED TO GET HER WHERE SHE IS.

And she's one of the (very few) lucky ones. Most musicians work their asses off and don't get sh*t for their trouble.

My lead guitar player plays in two bands besides mine. One is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. the other is a seminal west coast punk band. He has also been in a respected psychedelic band and two original "west coast new wave of heavy metal" bands, plus a couple of regional blues bands. He's flat broke, lives with one of his grown kids, and makes about $40/week teaching guitar. He's in his mid '50s and because of people like you he receives no payment for a lifetime in music although people all over the world know his name and the names of bands he's been in.

It takes just as much hard work to become a competent professional musician as it takes to become a doctor or a lawyer - and a damn site more than it takes to become a business executive at a high paying tech company.

When you say "no one is going to school for eight - twelve years to become a musician " it's obvious that you know nothing at all about the requirements of a musical career. Nothing.

And your attitude is insulting and obnoxious.

What is it that YOU do for a living? Do you support yourself? How long did YOU have to study for that job?

that's all so great. really, it is. now tell me how your friend is contributing as much to society as a doctor or scientist. it's wonderful your friend has worked so hard to ... play an instrument. thumbsup

Many musicians contribute a lot more to society than a great number of the money grubbing, Mercedes driving, mansion living, Hawaii vacationing doctors I see. And the majority of "scientists" in this country are hacks working for the big pharm and tech companies for a buck, not heroes trying to cure cancer or develop clean energy.

In fact, scientists are discouraged from working on either of those because there's more money for the companies selling sick people maintenance drugs and propping up our obsolete energy systems that actually solving the problems. Not to mention the fact that once a scientist gets a steady gig in a program he'll do anything to perpetuate his job even if he knows the program is a dead end and that other approaches are viable. (I'm specigically talking about the US fusion program).

I'd say that a musician who brings joy to people's lives contributes a hell of a lot more to humanity that a whole legion of those scientific and medical hacks, charlatans, and sellouts. And I know what I'm talking about, having grown up around universiteies and having had an uncle and a cousin who were top research biochemists.

Note that I'm not against scientists and I don't think science is bad - the problem is that very few people are actually doing real science these days.

And I do know a couple of good doctors - but I know a lot more mediocre and bad ones. a LOT more, including nearly all the ones at the clinic I go to.

john, no one can deny that you are full of passion, and your third paragraph in particular rings true, but our society has not yet become a utopia; perhaps there and then we will have devised a way to mathematically measure every single person's individual worth to the collective.

i almost started to write more, then realized there was no need to do so.

A nice point.

The first claim/sentence of which I find to be absolutely true, time and time again.
The second I find is actual fact in a good... let's say 90% of the cases.


A
F

So you spent 2 whole years in a studio doing hip-hop gigs and you judge all musicians by that?

First, most hip hop artists aren't really musicians (there are exceptions). It doesn't take musical training to rap into a microphone or run a drum box.

Second, who are you to be judgmental about people's lifestyles? Are you god?

You know, an awful lot of doctors are junkies too. Far more than you would suspect. And most doctors I encounter aren't really very good.

I came down with congestive heart failure in 2007. I was having serious trouble catching my breath. First thing they diagnosed was pneumonia, but two weeks on antibiotics didn't help so they decided it was asthma and prescribed an inhaler - which didn't help. I went back, barely able to breathe and they're all standing around shuffling their feet and scratching their heads when one of the nurses notices that my wrists and ankles were visibly and obviously swollen and thought to give me an EKG, after which they freaked out and called an ambulance because my heart function was down to around 20% of normal. In other words, I was dying and they were too STUPID to notice the obvious signs of edema which is a prime indicator of heart failure. I was in the hospital for a week. I could go on - the care didn't get a whole lot better - but I won't bother you with the details except to say that out of a half dozen different medications they tried putting me on after the hospital the only one that has been beneficial over the long term is the diuretic that prevents fluid build up in my lungs due to decreased heart function (It's up to around 50% now - the only reason it had got so bad was their continual misdiagnosis of what the problem was - something any first year med student should have spotted.)

i dont understand how the things i've had to say have resulted now in two people insinuating that i think that doctors are infallible ultra-humans or what-the-F-ever. are you TALKING ANIMALS even bothering to completely read posts before you respond? let me say that again, because obviously some people are not reading long enough: filthy motherfvcking TALKING ANIMALS. like, one of the things i said only ONE page ago? like, one of the links in my sig? for fvcks sake, if you're gonna be so stubborn as to not even educate yourself about what you're arguing against, or if you're just too clouded or at worst too stupid, then
S.T.F.U.

Except..
AFAIK, there's not a device that "materialized" music...
It still takes hard work dedication, yada yada yada. The comparisons you make, make no sense...
Ok, i get it now...
you're just an [deleted]hole

Really.. did your wife leave you for a musician? You've got some serious anger issues.
Look in a mirror...

The Benefits of Music Therapy for Autism
Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Australia - The power of music
Article " Sound and Music in Palliative Care" by Amrita Cottrell - The Healing Music Organization
Elsevier
[Role of the music in the operating theatre] [Orv Hetil. 2006] - PubMed result

it's so cute, how many times you edited your post =D

Well,
artists are releasing songs for free now and in hip hop, mixtapes are another way of getting free music.
But an album should not be free and should be bought. Artists, producers, engineers, ghost writers, management, the lable, EVERYBODY involved in the project deserve to get some kind of pay.
Fans need to stop being so selfish and BUY what entertains them. In my opinion though, your not a fan if you are not supporting/buying the music so why should you get to listen to it?

They need make money somehow as well. If people stop buying music then any chances you YOU getting paid for working hard will be non-existant as well..

I think you've just won the "most incoherent post on Gearslutz" prize.

Congratulations.

I wouldn't even bother responding to that "talking animal"

obviously he has no intention of having anything resembling a coherent, rational conversation...

He's just looking to aggrevate.

Waste of Space.

My goodess, I have no time to read all of the thread, but you are completely wrong. Every music, song, or track has own "quality", I think, personally, that artist should get money not according to effectivity of his manager, marketing team nor ad-guys there, but due to his work, his art quality (even it is subjective)! If you making money thru music, then it is CRAFT, believe or not.

Setup is bad. Great musicians are starving and not that great have $$$ accounts.

My advise to all of people who thinking like You is: "Read a books slutz!" aestetic of music, history of music and basic theory of music should be good start.

No offense, just little disgusted

Your heart's in the right place, but -

There are lots of books and some say some pretty cockamamie things.

My advise (to those people) is this:

Get out of your mama's house or your college dorm. Get out on the street where you have to support yourself and experience real life.

I think music should be free. I also think food should be free, and apartments and homes and paintings and ...if it isn't free, I'll just take it without feeling any guilt. <wink>

My question all along has been why should musicians go first?

Because you're nearest the door? (DFTT)

BUT they should put a tax on masturbation.

I guess I'm due for an audit.



Frank

Internets free..this forum is FREE. Youtube is free..we can watch all kinds of things on the net for FREE..We get entertained by the internet for FREE all the time..We all have kind of gotten used to content as being FREE have we not? Something to think about.

Most people pay for the hardware/software and ISP access, so no the "Internets" aren't actually free...

But aside from the aforementioned, the Internet devalues EVERYTHING it touches, including human labor.

Isn't that great?

Oh, I don't know... I make a pretty good living from it.

In any case, it's not a valid argument. There's a downside to all progress. For example, the Industrial Revolution devalued everything it touched, including (and especially) human labour.

I too have made made an excellent living from the Internet, starting an e-business in 96' as part of a national joint venture that delivers legal documents electronically in real-time, that for your information made dozens of brick & mortar businesses obsolete nationally in the USA....they just couldn't catch our momentum!

So don't tell me it's "not a valid argument", you have to be either joking, vapid or intellectually disingenuous.

I could easily name TONS of businesses where either online sales or integration of information/services has resulted in LARGE scale labor reductions, jobs that will NEVER come back, not to mention how the advent of PCs in general have eliminated the requirement for office help in general and the newer trend of centralizing customer service centers in third-world countries...

Don't believe me, here's an article that will get you up-to-speed:

The Internet devalues everything it touches . . . | ZDNet

Of course, some of the lucky have been able to ride the "Rise of the Internet" wave to success, most notably the IPO fraudsters via the dot.com bubble, but for future generations this trend will be VERY different...unless you're one of the few brilliant, educated folks that continue to find a niche, which most likely will be unfortunately as a drone in some corporate structure in some third-world shithole...

What I see at present time, is that there are swaths of the population that lack the wherewithall mentally and/or educationally to be of value in the workforce, especially given the wage arbitrage reality that the BRIC countries have inserted into the equation...

And I haven't even mentioned blatant IP properties theft that has & is devastating whole industries!

My point, which you appear to have missed, was simply that there's nothing special about the "Internet Revolution". You could substitute "Industrial Revolution" throughout your post and it would still read as true. So given that there are previous examples in history, and we can all see how they turned out, what makes the "Internet Revolution" special?