Posts by Russell Brown
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Actually, to clarify, I think Lanier makes a number of sound points, including with respect to the constricting effect of the machines.
The thing I loved about seeing Holy Fuck play this summer was the way they resist being locked in by machine rhythms -- using a film spooler as a hand-operated, wholly analog instrument for example.
I just don't buy the "it's all fucked" conclusion.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I happily defer on this one.
Oh, I'm not saying I'm right, I just don't agree with him.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to giovanni tiso,
And I give Lanier credit as a musician and music critic, more so than in other areas.
Heh. His views on contemporary pop music are where I think he's really out of touch.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to nzlemming,
It’s about the fact that you can make stuff available for much lower cost than was previously the case, where you had to buy the paper or vinyl and the press and hire the technicians and the truck drivers and persuade shop owners to stock your output yadda yadda yadda.
I've started buying vinyl again. Actually spending extra to buy lovely 180gm vinyl that comes with a redemption code to download the MP3s.
Not that that's perfect, though. I bought the Foster the People album, which advertised its MP3 redemption code on the front -- and then discovered that it could be redeemed only from a US IP address. So yeah: I just pirated it.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Lanier would retort that we are not seeing a lot of innovation in music or literature themselves, let alone in the way that they are packaged for consumers. And we are always being sold innovation as one of the upsides of this technological revolution. So where is it?
In a purely business sense, we’re seeing very substantial changes. According to the IFPI’s 2011 digital music report (3.5MB PDF), the value of the digital music market grew by more than 1000% between 2004 and 2010. It now accounts for 29% of record company revenues worldwide.
More particularly, last year saw some intriguing initiatives in Europe, especially in ISPs offering legitimate access to music as a premium for customers. The Danish ISP TDC offers unlimited music downloads, others free (to the customer) music streaming.
And Apple’s Cloud Music service heads in a fascinating direction – effectively rehabilitating everyone’s dodgy downloads by offering music companies a cut of the fee charged for the cloud service itself. A revenue stream from pirated music? That’s pretty clever.
And innovation on an artistic level? It feels pretty good out there to me. James Blake and Jamie Xx are bringing me sounds I haven’t heard before. For all that the music industry is a perennial whipping boy, I think it’s way ahead of most other creative and media sectors.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I’d hate to use the word bullshit again, but… it’s not up to me. Were it up to me, I would aggressively tax the corporations that are benefitting from the traffic of bits and the new economic models for selling content – the Verizons, the Apples, the Googles of this world – and use the money to fund a system of micropayments and reward media organisations that operate in the public interest.
You'd want to be careful breaking something that works, though. Via the iTunes Store Apple has paid out $16.6 billion to content owners and $14 billion to music companies. Its system actually favours independent artists. A tax that increases the cost of the equipment favoured by the creative community might also produce perverse outcomes.
I would also urge governments to make the delivery of information outside of the commercial arena a top priority, whichever form that might take (ie not just state-owned radio and television). But it takes the political will of governments and international organisations to even make this conversation possible.
I think the public sector is extremely important in the new world.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Whatever the limitations of copyright and the old publishing models, at least there was a pretence that what was rewarded was craft, skill and innovation, not naked self-promotion. The idea that the most successful writers, musicians, journalists and photographers are going to be the ones with the best online reputation is chilling, to put it mildly. (As is indeed most of what Kevin Kelly writes.)
I'm no great fan of Kelly either, but I think what Mark is saying about what you bring to the job is valid. I'm guessing there's a good deal less value in stock photography than there used to be -- there's so much that's legitimately available for free or cheap now. If I want a pic for the feature spot on the site, a "commons" search on Flickr is my friend. A photographer who wants to ply her/his trade may have to do more than that.
But this isn't entirely new either -- a Magnum photograph has long had value not only in its own right, but because it's a Magnum photograph. Anyone can knock up a screen print, but not every screen print is a Warhol. And for centuries, visual artists have marketed themselves and their reputations to patrons.
If we had a foolproof system for recognising and rewarding creative works on their innate merit, all this stuff might be less necessary, but we don't have that.
Authors face a more difficult transition than most; they have fewer alternative revenue options. But it's a little surprising we haven't seen more innovation. Dickens wrote novels as magazine serials -- why don't we see that now? And don't get me started on the availability of ebooks ...
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
(aargh, I did have a post, but this site is pretty iPhone, and, I assume, iPad unfriendly to copy & paste and editing. Had to give up)
Russell, you Micro$oft tool! ;-)
Heh. Yes, editing in comments windows with iDevices is fitful at best. CactusLab (award-winning iOS developers) are a little ahead of what Safari can handle. I'm looking towards a fix.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Talk me through how Marcel Proust makes a living in your brave new world.
The way that talented artists with rich folks always have, I would think. Proust never left home and when his mother died he received a large inheritance that kept him while he did his greatest work.
That business model works in any economy :-)
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to BenWilson,
I’d agree, caveated with “for some people”, and also “at certain times of life”. Living on $5,000 pounds per year might seem admirable to him, but if you’re putting your family through that, it’s a whole lot less noble.
For sure. When you're supporting a family, things change. But I've always been glad I had experiences outside journalism, and outside straight jobs. Editing Planet for Taskforce Green wages (and we actually had Baby No 1 at that point) definitely set me up to earn more money later on in life, when I needed it. I've often advised young journalists to spend some time with an independent publication. But yeah, not everyone wants to do things that way.