Ok, my attempt to make my point is heavy handed vis a vis intellectual
property as a whole. My main frustration on this subject is that many tech and
entreprenrial people, like those who hang out here, have an
inconsistent perspective on intellectual property when it comes to
music.
In this perspective the record labels are considered rapacious
and entity like Spotify as being unfairly squeezed. Actually the
labels put in tremendous resources to create the product, what value
added does Spotify bring? As it stands, copyright is the law of the
land. The whole concept of property, including intellectual property,
is what enables business as we know it to exist. Think about just
trademarks and how critical they are to so many types of business.
Would you feel bad for a retail store set up in a market with razor
thin margins because their suppliers are asking for prices that are
too high? I might feel bad but you can hardly say the suppliers are
being greedy.
My other frustration is a lack of acknowledgement of how many
resources go into creating modern music entertainment products. It's
true that there is compelling music made by amateurs, and that has
always been and will continue (essentially folk musics of different flavors).
But most of the recorded music that we love is made by pros. There are other ways to
support it: government funding, patronage. Advertising based business
models as we know them are completely dependent on our current
intellectual property structure.
As a point of common sense I don't think we as a society should be
enforcing copyright against individuals. But to abandon intellectual
property as a whole concept is a very radical proposition.
BTW, the reason most music business projects lose money is inherent to
the endeavour: most people don't like most music. To get a product that
is successful, you have to do a lot of projects knowing that most will
fail hoping for the hit that makes up for all the losses.
In this perspective the record labels are considered rapacious and entity like Spotify as being unfairly squeezed. Actually the labels put in tremendous resources to create the product, what value added does Spotify bring? As it stands, copyright is the law of the land. The whole concept of property, including intellectual property, is what enables business as we know it to exist. Think about just trademarks and how critical they are to so many types of business.
Would you feel bad for a retail store set up in a market with razor thin margins because their suppliers are asking for prices that are too high? I might feel bad but you can hardly say the suppliers are being greedy.
My other frustration is a lack of acknowledgement of how many resources go into creating modern music entertainment products. It's true that there is compelling music made by amateurs, and that has always been and will continue (essentially folk musics of different flavors).
But most of the recorded music that we love is made by pros. There are other ways to support it: government funding, patronage. Advertising based business models as we know them are completely dependent on our current intellectual property structure.
As a point of common sense I don't think we as a society should be enforcing copyright against individuals. But to abandon intellectual property as a whole concept is a very radical proposition.
BTW, the reason most music business projects lose money is inherent to the endeavour: most people don't like most music. To get a product that is successful, you have to do a lot of projects knowing that most will fail hoping for the hit that makes up for all the losses.
Courtney Love's famous article http://sodacity.net/system/files/Courtney-Love_Courtney-Love... is disingenuous because she knows what's up with this business model and conveniently leaves that out of her argument.
I appreciate everyone's thoughts on this subject!