Injury to Insult? SOS gaffs DP. New monthly REAPER column?

[toodamnhip]

Stickwolf,

I am curious as to your understanding and viewpoint to this question:


WHY IS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IN TROUBLE? (Do you think it is because people are as honest as you say?)

I too believe that man is basically good. But there is a group hysteria that the internet has created in which people feel entitled to take anything on the internet. It seems that mankind has not learned to equate the "invisable"intellectual property on the internet with "REAL" property. Add to that the fact that there is no security guard at the frnt fdoor to catch you when you walk out the store with something, and you have our current society.

So again my long winded friend,

In regards to your inane arguments about people being more ethical when left alone in the candy store and in general...

WHY IS THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IN TROUBLE?

ANSWER!!!!!

I am ready to laugh

[stickwolf]

Nice way to prompt a respectable discussion there

The music industry isn't in trouble, it's in transition. Transitions cause tons of upheaval and lots of it is uncomfortable. It's hurt me and I have lots of complaints. But, c'mon, there's more music being made today than ever before, more tools than ever before, and the most creative people are still being creative.
I'll tell you what's in trouble: a fair system that we can all agree on. People who pay for software or recordings are taking an unfair portion of the cost thanks to the rampant unauthorized copying going on. There's no clear system with any guarantee about getting paid for your work as a musician these days. Things are watered down because of bulk of so much random mediocre stuff being put out there. All of this is problematic.
But the music industry isn't going to go extinct or anything. There were tons of concerns about the industry when recorded audio came out and threatened live music and sheet music sales... time goes on and things change. Was it good? Recorded music actually did do serious damage to certain professions and if you've been to a wedding with a DJ you know how bad that is compared to live music. But now it is the case and we have to deal with it, we can't make recordings go away. We have to just work with it. Which means that less people will pay as much for live music and that sucks for live musicians. But it's just how the free market works.

In some countries in history musicians were basically just beggars. We've got it better than that now. The Beatles were talented but also in the right place at the right time. There will never be another Beatles no matter how talented because the field is too overloaded with every random person being able to put their stuff out there, and the global world, and the larger total human population. The fact that we have all of recorded music history to go back and listen to also means that lots of consumers don't pay attention to anything new. That's just how it goes.

Oh, and mankind will never learn to equate intellectual property with physical property just as we will never learn to equate freedom with food. They aren't equatable. They aren't the same. Give it up. If you want to argue for intellectual property type stuff you have to argue about it for what it is on its own merit because it isn't something else.

Oh, and piracy? Yeah, that's part of the problem with the music industry now. I don't have any answer. And you're just stupid or not putting any effort into understanding what I've been saying if you think I was suggesting that everyone in the world is already being most honest and not pirating. I'm saying that the culture of piracy, the culture of cheating is to blame and that trying to just demonize everyone isn't going to change it. Instead, setting up a new framework that encourages honorable behavior is at least a better way to try to do something, though we'll just have to wait and see how it all plays out...

But the REAPER vs DP thing is a lot like the recorded music stuff too... just like DP annoyingly has to now compete with lower-priced software, despite DP being superior in many ways... well, artists who are trying to live off of record sales have to compete with all the amateurs who are giving their music away for free. 50 years ago it wasn't possible to give away records for free, they were too expensive to make. And if you were going to pay for a record, you'd buy a Beatles record before some crap from some mediocre amateur. But today the crap is FREE, and actually a lot of it is not so crappy (though we have to wade through tons of crap to find the not crappy examples). That's just how it goes. Technology allows everyone to enter the industry, competition rises, field gets glutted and nobody can be as easily successful as before. That's reality now. Live with it.

[FMiguelez]

The music industry isn't in trouble, it's in transition. Transitions cause tons of upheaval and lots of it is uncomfortable. It's hurt me and I have lots of complaints. But, c'mon, there's more music being made today than ever before, more tools than ever before, and the most creative people are still being creative.

I didn't think you could top your past "by guilt" statement, but to my astonishment, you just did!

ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!?!?!?!?!

A TRANSITION TO WHAT, exactly???

It will get to a point that nobody will have to or want to buy music any more, and we all will starve. I don't know about you guys, but there aren't too many other things I could do for a living besides music....

Man, I'm almost giving up on you

I'm really curious about your next statement. So far you've managed to be more absurd by-the-post...

[stickwolf]

I don't know WHAT the industry will look like in the next few decades. I'm no prophet.

Sorry, FMiguelz, but if things in this "transition" go the worst way, then you'll have to just survive by playing live music, teaching amateurs, or stuff like that. But you mentioned "jingles"... there's probably going to always be demand for that, you just have much more competition from everyone else out there.
It's simple: when costs of production go down and competition for work goes up, wages go down.
The transition I talk about may mean that far fewer people are able to be fully employed in the industry. Sucks for us. But the industry will still be there. We don't inherently deserve our jobs any more than some guy who shuffles paper in an office where there's some way to do it easier and lay him off. Layoffs suck for the guy laid off, and this music industry transition sucks for music industry people. But the industry is not going to go away. Jobs will change, income will shift, the total number of jobs may change. But the industry isn't going away unless the whole economy collapses to the point of everyone scrambling for just bare necessities.

And, I guess if you can't find a place in the industry as it shifts and you can't do anything else... yeah, you'll starve. I'm not extremely optimistic about my own prospects either, and I'm concerned about my personal place in the industry as much as you folks. Currently I'm invested in teaching because that just seemed like a better long-term career than record production, but I have mixed feelings about that and I'm not even so confident about teaching as a career even if I work to be the very best music teacher around. I'm just accepting that I can't make people pay me and I don't have some scapegoat of "piracy" to blame because if people just listen to amateur crap put out there for free then I still won't get paid even if there's no piracy... it sucks to be in the music industry right now. And I don't know if it'll work out in a way that's good for me.

[stickwolf]

The music industry isn't in trouble, it's in transition. Transitions cause tons of upheaval and lots of it is uncomfortable. It's hurt me and I have lots of complaints. But, c'mon, there's more music being made today than ever before, more tools than ever before, and the most creative people are still being creative.

I didn't think you could top your past "by guilt" statement, but to my astonishment, you just did!

ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!?!?!?!?!

By the way, I just wrote that first sentence to give you a chance to put it in bold and ignore the rest of my points because you seem to find it so amusing to do that. It was pretty damn obvious how extreme that sentence sounded. Some people like to respond to entire ideas, some people like to play with words. I appreciate both, so I can accept your enjoyment in picking words out of context and laughing, so I'll try to continue to oblige and entertain.

But to clarify on the later part of the paragraph: I don't mean to say that the most creative people still making music are getting PAID for it! That might be not happening so much now. But I was just saying that good creative music is still and will still continue to be made. In other words, we don't need to worry about good music ending anyway, even if we worry about the finances... so how's that, I bet you can find something new here to be amusing too.

[FMiguelez]

Sorry, FMiguelz, but if things in this "transition" go the worst way, then you'll have to just survive by playing live music, teaching amateurs, or stuff like that.

Un-Freaking-believable! YOU DID TOP your last 2 statements with this one!!!!

This comment is KING among all the asinine things you've been saying here. By far.
And I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but really man, this is just too much.

Are you actually serious, or are you just having some fun?

So you are telling me that I will have to stop doing what I love and start doing things I do not like just because some parasites decided not to pay for what they got?!?!?!?!

Ok. I will shape my life to accommodate for pirates. I will start "teaching amateurs" thanks to pirates.
There's nothing wrong with teaching. I like it, actually, but not if I am forced to do it...

If you top your last comment I swear I'll give you a medal. Really. You are writing outrageous stuff

[FMiguelez]

The music industry isn't in trouble, it's in transition. Transitions cause tons of upheaval and lots of it is uncomfortable. It's hurt me and I have lots of complaints. But, c'mon, there's more music being made today than ever before, more tools than ever before, and the most creative people are still being creative.

I didn't think you could top your past "by guilt" statement, but to my astonishment, you just did!

ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!?!?!?!?!

By the way, I just wrote that first sentence to give you a chance to put it in bold and ignore the rest of my points because you seem to find it so amusing to do that. It was pretty damn obvious how extreme that sentence sounded. Some people like to respond to entire ideas, some people like to play with words. I appreciate both, so I can accept your enjoyment in picking words out of context and laughing, so I'll try to continue to oblige and entertain.

Oh, I see. You are kidding, then...

What other points did I ignore, exactly?
I have not distorted ANYTHING you've said. If I bold things in a paragraph is to refer you to something you actually said in the context of the paragraph. What's wrong with that?

And I know we are not prophets to know what the future of music will be, but the tendency is pretty clear, don't you think? And it's not looking good at all.

[stickwolf]

Well, I said it earlier: if pirates just stopped pirating music they might instead just listen only to free music put out their by folks who undervalue themselves, just like DP is threatened by REAPER being $60 and Audacity being FREE.

Maybe you will struggle to sell your music even if nobody is pirating it. Maybe your loss of sales could be / will be (conjecture to future tense) blamed only on other musicians putting out their music for free.

Oh and as for bolding... no you haven't misrepresented my statements except in implying that some single sentence speaks for itself, which it doesn't.

[toodamnhip]

Nice way to prompt a respectable discussion there

Instead, setting up a new framework that encourages honorable behavior is at least a better way to try to do something, though we'll just have to wait and see how it all plays out...

.

There IS a framework, it's called MONEY. It's called copy protection.

The music industry is in trouble because people steel if given a chance, if NOT policed.

The music industry isn;t in troubled due to our NOT trusting people. People have shown they cannot be trusted FIRST!

Your argument, followed through to it's "logical" conclusion, would state that had the music industry long ago just offered all music on an honor system, people would never have stolen music.. Or would have stolen much less music...BS BS BS

Yes, in some future Nirvana of mankind's evolution, it may be possible to envision a world where people police themselves....

But what world are you living in buddy?...lol..

Just because the optimum state of mankind would be a world without need of police doesn't mean you get rid of the police today.

Such a police-free, copy protection-free policy has to be earned. According to your arguments, crime is here because of the police, because of the threat of prosecution etc. Because of a "bad" system that does not promote a crime free world.

Yes, the police can make things worse, and yes, they can add to the problem, but are you willing to live on your street or walk down the block in your city if I were to aspire to your ideals and rid you of the flawed police system that surrounds you?

You want to rid us of our flawed copy protection schemes? No way brotha, such an out come must be earned. And until people show they have the ethics and morals necessary for a police free, copy-protection free world, those measures must stay.

Your ideals are beautiful. Your strategy and understanding of the current state of our society is ridiculous.

If you don;t believe me, I'll ask you this?
How many friends have you made on this forum?

Are we ALL wrong?..Or could it be YOU are wrong?

[stickwolf]

If you don;t believe me, I'll ask you this?
How many friends have you made on this forum?

Are we ALL wrong?..Or could it be YOU are wrong?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[FMiguelez]

If you don;t believe me, I'll ask you this?
How many friends have you made on this forum?

Are we ALL wrong?..Or could it be YOU are wrong?

Actually, TDH, it looks like he has made one friend. From Argentina

Stickwolf I agree with all your words.

And those guys from the picture I posted up-thread can't wait to "feel the guilt" StickWolf would make them have for pirating and stealing stuff

[FMiguelez]

If you don;t believe me, I'll ask you this?
How many friends have you made on this forum?

Are we ALL wrong?..Or could it be YOU are wrong?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And this would be an Argumentum ridiculis stupiditum non sensicum::

Sorry, FMiguelz, but if things in this "transition" go the worst way, then you'll have to just survive by playing live music, teaching amateurs, or stuff like that.

[James Steele]

...the guilt of crossing the line to stealing (if an individual in question has not pirated yet at all) is a stronger deterrent than some copy-protection or legal threat.

Sorry, but that's just absurd on its face. And the reason is that people who would never dream of smashing a window and stealing a TV, or shoplifting, don't view pirating software as "real" stealing. You vastly over-estimate any guilt they would feel about this.

[James Steele]

Well, I said it earlier: if pirates just stopped pirating music they might instead just listen only to free music put out their by folks who undervalue themselves, just like DP is threatened by REAPER being $60 and Audacity being FREE.

Ummm... point of order: DP is an app. IT is not threatened by Reaper. I do not speak for MOTU. This is not a MOTU forum. In all likelihood, given the exciting advancements that have occurred with DP 7 in recent months, including the DP Control app, MOTU probably regards Reaper much the same way an elephant regards a buzzing, annoying fly. I was speaking for MYSELF ALONE, when I expressed MY opinion that Reaper's market share has to some degree been built by price-slashing and the absence of any copy protection.

As for the use of the word "transition." Well it may be that the music industry is transitioning to a place where most music will be released by those who can afford to lose money doing so, until the most intelligent of those folks will decide they might like to eat better and have some sort of material quality of life and simply quit. Put another way, do you suppose the pool of talent in any industry becomes stronger or weaker as the likelihood of financial reward in that industry decreases? To use an extreme example, cut the pay for doctors to $20,000 per year and then tell me the quality of doctors isn't going to plummet.

If pursuing a particular career no longer poses just the possibility of poverty but a virtual guarantee of it, that "transition" isn't going to be good for anybody. What I've tended to find is that "free" music is generally worth what you pay for it.

[billf]

just like DP is threatened by REAPER ... and Audacity

So according to your logic, Photoshop is threatened by iPhoto and Gimp? Come on stickwolf, that statement is just another backhanded slap at DP, which is not justified.