Sounds interesting.
I'm especially happy at the focus on left field, niche music, the music the late John Peel championed.
Doesn't say when it is?
Townshend to deliver Peel lecture - Yahoo!

7pm GMT, tonight.

I hope Townshend doesn't come across as aged or out of touch.

If it's not a fairly centrist lecture I'll be surprised.
If he ends up demonising pirates he'll be derided and labelled as out of touch, but at least it starts a conversation about it, and he has nothing to lose by doing it.

I don 't understand that. I can't really see much positive to say about music pirates.
Anyway, the report card is in:
BBC News - Pete Townshend calls Apple 'a vampire'

and the video link...i missed it, will be checking it all out later
BBC - BBC Radio 6 Music Programmes - The John Peel Lecture, Red Button: Can John Peelism survive the Internet?

Thanks for the heads up!

People are tribal. When Jamie Oliver first brought his healthy eating drive to America, he was told to f-off. About healthy food. About trying not to be so obese that if you don't die by 50 you're virtually a vegetable in a country that hates looking after it's sick. He was scorned for that.
Counter-intuitive as it is, most people pirate and rationalise, and because most people like McDonalds-music, the don't care if the fine-dining music dies.

Sometimes you have to be derided to speak the truth.

Here is a link to the text of the lecture.

Pete Townshend's John Peel lecture - full text | Media | guardian.co.uk

Unfortunately it's a bit rambling. Something of a missed opportunity I would say.

I can't wait to watch or read this.

Not too bad actually.
Funny how all these musicians, from different eras, different backgrounds, different states of wealth..... all say the same sort of things. Funny that.

Anyway, I particularly like his 8 point shopping list.

Interesting article and thanks for the links.

Well, buried in there is the statement he makes about musicians getting paid by radio when their music is played. He meant to say: in Europe and other parts of the world except for the US. (and because rest-of-the-world artists cannot collect in the US, reciprocally US artists many times cannot collect those royalties in Europe, so those losses are compounded)

However vocal so many are about the current dire situation we are all in, I find it quite interesting that nobody in the US ever raises the disturbing issue of US radio broadcasters being exempted from paying the same to the owners of the sound recordings (they only pay statutory rate to publishers and the songwriters they represent); while so many appear to find no shortage of creativity in complaining about their woes, it seems perplexing at best as to why they wouldn't apply a similar amount of energy towards once and for all defeating the NAB lobby that keeps manipulating Congress with FUD so that one-time exemptions from such royalty payments that were granted back in 1933 for the purpose of allowing those radio stations to build out their network infrastructure can finally be repealed...

...wait... I got it. They're still building those networks. That must be why.

Anyway, sarcasm aside maybe this wasn't an issue when radio play was helping to sell records, it made obvious sense, a classic case of one hand washing the other; but if records aren't selling anymore and radio stations still earning large amounts from selling time to advertisers by using all of these recordings for free, I am astonished that rather than complaining bitterly about piracy with no visible results for so many years, many of the sound recordings' copyright owners don't find a way to get this obviously rigged exemption finally repealed in Congress, which would result in an immediate windfall of money that is arguably rightly due to them.

Of course the stakes are considerable, and just as it would appear that there is indeed an artform at big pharma and health providers actually convincing people that it's better for their own sake not to have access to the health insurance market at regulated rates, the same way big radio has found a way to portray such a move as 'killing the music' and getting away with this misconception that paying copyright owners for the use of their music on the radio will lead to ruin. (well, they might have to make a tiny bit less perhaps)

But obviously it won't ruin them, as plain evidence indicates that radio stations around the rest of the world are still in operation today, thriving and making sizable profits, but also justly rewarding those who make their existence possible by sharing the profits of that airplay they get from advertiser revenue. So maybe it could be argued that US radio is also contributing to 'killing new content' by not paying their fair share when they use that content to make money with, but are fighting tooth and nail to ever have to share the profits with the creators?

And why is everyone ignoring this 800-pound gorilla in the room?

Just a thought...

A wise man once said: (or maybe i'm making this up.. does that make me the wise man? heh)
"He who controls the airwaves, controls the message..."

You're in good company. Marshall McLuhan said something very similar.

I was recently reading the wikis on 1960's Pirate radio stations (specifically Radio Caroline in the UK and Radio Hauraki in New Zealand). A very interesting time in musical history - because the governments of the time controlled the airwaves and did not allow rock music. I was intrigued to see that the greatest opposition came from ... the music industry.

The technology has shifted - but I personally do not see a vast difference, and as far as i'm concerned piracy was necessary and unavoidable THEN as it is now.

If anything is killing music, it's computer games. Or a million other distractions that compete for kid's mind share.

People have to consume new music for free, somehow, otherwise they won't know what they like. There is only limited money, time and mind share for an elite few artists to become hugely popular & wealthy. Nothing really changes this, and it's unrealistic to expect it to be any different.

The music colleges taking money off kids and offering them the false hope that they can 'make it' in the music business are preying on their gullibility - and most of the teachers are failed musicians themselves.

Andy Warhol was pretty much correct; and you aren't going to get rich on your 5 minutes of fame.

So if one of the insanely gifted and lucky bastards such as Townsend try to suggest otherwise, then maybe they should have all died before they got too old and greedy.

Ah, memories... I was involved in a plan ("Radio for Both Ears") to set up a pirate FM radio station in Wellington back in the 70s.

I agree, though I will assume you mean free as in "free to listen to", not free as in "no payment to the copyright holder". Historically it has meant getting it on radio playlists, getting it reviewed, running advertisements on radio and TV and in music publications. Nowadays you can add online social networking. The point is that in these cases it is an authorised use of the work. The conundrum is how to effectively promote the work without it being "pirated".

Can you explain how so? I fully, wholeheartedly DISagree.

BS. There's ALWAYS been other 'distractions'. Video games have been around since the 80's. Music doesn't compete with video games...
In fact, if there wasn't piracy, only THEN would there be competition, and at that --only competing for the same dollar. With rampant piracy, there's no competetion for that dollar...
More music is being consumed now than any point in history... just that 90-95% is obtained illegally...

There are PLENTY of LEGAL outlets to check out new music. This is just another justification so you can sleep better at night.

I agree. (to an extent)

Though, there are specialty schools that cater to very gifted students.. but these are more focused towards performance/theory.
I was asked several times several years ago to teach at the Interlochen Center for the Arts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Interlochen's Summer program. It's a very respectible school/program.

Now.. all these "audio engineering" courses being brandied about are another story. No one is going to hire you in a studio when you show them your "music engineering" degree.. (in fact, i've heard more often than not that's the first pile of applicants that go into the trash bin).. the "Career Placements" that these places brag about are mostly Guitar Center doormen..

That's bull.

There have been computer games since the '80s. Most of the gamers I've known have listened to music while playing, which is probably why many games now license music for their soundtracks.

And before computer gamers there were a zillion other things that competed for kids' attention, time and money. Nothing has changed but the minor details and the superficial trappings. We've discussed this before at great length, I'd suggest you read the rest of the forum before attempting to invent the wheel.

Not true, unless the artist lacks a competent lawyer, accountant, and manager.

You appear to have difficulty understanding the difference between "free" and "free".

Just because you as a listener get music on, for example, the radio without paying for it ("for free") does not mean that the music is not being paid for ("free") - it actually is being paid for, just not by you. It's being paid for by companies who want to sell you something ("advertisers"). The reason that radio is not presently very responsive to listeners' tastes is that the listeners aren't paying - the advertisers are and the advertisers are (mis)guided by focus group companies that purport to "know" what the lowest common denominator of listeners will tolerate without switching stations. This is because the majority of stations are no longer owned locally and are not answerable to local advertisers. This is a direct result of the FCC's deregulation of radio ownership over the past 3 or 4 decades.

You also don't appear to understand the difference between pirate radio and music piracy.

Pirate radio was unlicensed broadcasters responding to a public demand for music that was not being filled by legal channels, but nonetheless had a positive promotional effect on the music industry and did not work against the interests of artists (they still had sales.)

Music piracy is the uncompensated distribution of music, without permission of the artists and contrary to their interests (music piracy destroys sales by giving copies of the product away to end users without compensation. It provides unfair competition rather than promotion.)

Two very different things sharing the same superficial label. The former promoted art. The latter destroys it.

You know, that's a pretty insulting comment. It also reveals that you really didn't pay a lot of attention to what he was saying.

Townsend specifically made the point that the ones being hurt aren't the older established artists who made their money before the onslaught of rapacious leeches, it's the young, poor musicians trying to start a career now when there's no money available to support and develop new acts.

As always, Townsend is speaking up for the kids.

Let me be more precise, and sorry if I did not make it clear in my initial post.

Owners of the sound recording (and its copyright) do not get paid for radio play in the US due to an exemption granted to broadcasting networks by Congress around 1933 to help them build out their infrastructure.

The only payment coming from radio play goes to the publishers of the composition as per the statuatory rates legally in effect. None goes to the artist who sang or performed, unless they also happen to have written that particular song.

Which is not the case in most other countries, where the radio station networks are obligated by law to pay both the publisher as well as the owner of the sound recording.

This comes up for review every few years, and NAB's lobbyists do their best to have it buried and forgotten about. One of the key differences with satellite radio and (legal) Internet broadcasters is that they are not able to claim those same exemptions that terrestrial radio has been enjoying for decades. That is: if I recall correctly.