Posts by nzlemming
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to Clint Fern,
A part of the internet where you're not mocked for mistakes - good to see stereotypes being challenged
If it's mocking you want, we can do that too /PAS points and laughs
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to Andre Alessi,
I think anyone who wants to talk about the evils of drugs in public should be forced to watch Brass Eye ’s special on “the new superdrug, Cake
That's a fooking disgrace by some sick bastids.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to Clint Fern,
I reckon you could get a NZ politician to 'do an Amess' and raise the issue of a made-up drug in parliament. Katrina Shanks / Paul Quinn would be pretty likely to do it.
Sounds like it's time for a dihydrogen monoxide campaign!
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Hard News: A Century Since, in reply to Cromie,
I was privileged to work on ‘Early Days Yet,’ Shirley Horrocks’ 2001 documentary and what Allen said that day will always remain with me: “A poet can work very hard all day to put in a comma…then spend all of the next day taking it out"
Obviously, poets are doing nothing to close the productivity gap with Australia. The government will therefore introduce legislation (under urgency) to require a quota of verse (including commas) per day that will soon see us rise up the OECD rankings.
"They toil not, neither do they spin..."
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Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to Hebe,
heheh For the young among us, I was, of course, referring to this.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to Kumara Republic,
We'll send Dave Dobbyn down there - that'll rark them up proper!
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to giovanni tiso,
And we are always being sold innovation as one of the upsides of this technological revolution. So where is it?
You're posting on it. You host your blog on it. Innovation is what you do with the technology, not what is done for you.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Copyright law is not a naturally occuring phenomenon, it’s a legal framework. The people who came up with it could have said well, unregulated print media is what there is, and it’s not going away.
Actually, they did:
Copyright has changed over time to include other creative works but the industrial milieu it has operated in has been largely the same, where the costs of becoming a publisher of material for the mass market have ensured that there are only relatively few of them. Now, everyone can be a publisher and make their work available to a mass audience. Whether the audience wants it is an entirely different matter.
And so too in our time if we decided to create an international framework for taxing the proceeds of the likes of Google, or changing the way that the traffic of bits is paid for, we could – there is nothing in the technology that prevents it.
Never said there was. You're making men from straw again.
It seems to me that you are fundamentally misunderstanding me here. You are arguing, I think, about people not paying artists for their work. I am talking about the artist taking responsibility for their career and finding new ways to get paid for their work.
And there are new ways. If you can put aside your distaste for Kevin Kelly and scroll through the comments on that article I linked to before, you'll find a number of artists referenced who are going it alone and being successful, on their terms and on society's, if money is the measure of success.
It also seems to me that you are misunderstanding the nature of the technological change that has occurred. It's not about getting stuff for free, as the anti-piracy brigade portray it, though that can be a part of it and even a successful part of your business model (cf Cory Doctorow). 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. The computer that you use to consume content is the same tool that you can use to create your own content and market it and sell it. The how that you do all that is what becomes your business model and I believe we've barely scratched the surface of what will be possible.
Frankly, it seems to me that the means of production are finally in the hands of the workers, which should be something to celebrate.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to Lilith __,
you can put your brilliant work out there and no one will ever find it.
I missed this. My point is that you need to become responsible for getting it found. Which is where/how social media can enable you.
Jonathan Coulton comes to mind as someone who has completely done this without a label:
In May 2011, Coulton was interviewed on NPR’s popular economics-related program Planet Money. He disclosed that he makes about $500,000 a year from his music despite lacking a record label contact. He expressed gratitude towards his fans for his surprise success, the degree of which he called “absurd”. In a broader discussion of whether or not the internet is good for musicians, Coulton answered in the affirmative, while journalist Frannie Kelley described him as a “fluke” such as the Snuggie. Coulton posted a tongue-in-cheek response on his blog about the comparison, saying “to which I say: snarkity snark snark!
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to Lilith __,
The Amanda Palmer phenomenon way eclipses the Dresden Dolls. In fact, I heard of the Dolls through learning about Palmer.
Yes, she did have a record contract with Roadrunner records which she finally got out of in April 2010 after much arguing and even released a single called "Please Drop Me":
When the Dresden Dolls got signed we were able to take advantage of what a major label was able to do for a weird band like us: We got radio play and they did a really good job promoting us overseas. Nowadays the game has changed so much that I would never advise a band like us to sign up with a company like that.
It's been so disappointing since my solo record came out in September-- they decided to do the absolute minimum to promote it. I think they looked at it as an investment just in case something amazing happened by accident. But what has remained true in my career for the last 10 years is that fucking nothing happens by accident. You tour and you work hard and you take care of your fans and very real things lead to other real things. There's never been some fantastic fluke or break in my career, it has all been very slow and steady.
Now the party is over and Roadrunner don't have the infrastructure to help me with what I actually need to do as an artist. I feel an extraordinary amount of sympathy for anybody working at a major label right now because their lives are over. It can't feel very good to have had your job for 15 years-- with a mortgage to pay and kids to put through college-- knowing your company is destined to go down.
Giovanni called it "your brave new world" but it's not mine - it's here and it's not going away. Gatekeepers can turn away as many talented artists as they promote, for all sorts of reasons. Decca and the Beatles is just one example - "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein". For every musician/writer/artist/photographer who makes it big, there are always going to be hundreds who don't and not necessarily because they lack talent or ability. Maybe they're brunette and the label wants a blond to front the band, or they're a children's writer but the publisher already has its quota. How else do you explain Britney Spears and Westlife?
As Martin alluded to above, success can be variable and is down to how you define it. "Paying the mortgage and feeding the family" is one level of success. Non-monetary recognition by one's peers may be another. You may be satisfied with that, or you may be driven to go for more. That's a subjective thing. Being the "best in the world" or the "best you can be" may be different things to you.
What stands out to me is the difference between managing your own path or having it managed for you. There is no one true business model that will fit everyone, and there will still be music labels and publishers and managers and artists who choose to use them, but I think they'll have to operate very differently to their current practice simply because they are no longer the only gatekeepers to their fields. As an individual, you can compete - if you choose to and have the goods and drive to do so.