£5,000 is “hobby money”?

Sorry, but that’s more than a little patronising, 5 grand is more than 35% of my gross annual income.

If, of course, you’ve got that kind of cash just lying around spare, please feel free to spread some of it around a little…

Try telling that to the shareholders of IBM, Intel, AMD, 3M, Hitachi, Sony, Samsung, LG, Mitsubishi Heavy, Shell, BP, Boeing, Qinetiq, BNFL and every other company that performs basic research. If everything that is worth discovering is found by publicly funded research, those shareholders are being royally ripped off by hobbyist scientists.

(of course, if you want a job in a pro studio you probably need to know Logic or protools, so none of that helps much, but we’re not talking amateur any more either.)

@64, one assumes you are not advocating pirate copies of software?

In the case of creating a piece of music at home, you need to purchase a reasonably powerful computer. You need to purchase the software used to record the sounds and either spend time teaching yourself how to use it properly or pay to go on a course. For vocals you need a microphone (the best you can afford). You need to buy instruments, spend the time (years) learning how to play them to a high enough calibre. You need to buy an audio interface to get the sound into the said computer. You need a recording space treated to make the audio record correctly. If you only play one instrument, guitar say, you need other musicians, drummers, pianists, singers etc. to play on your track. These might be friends who do it for free or session musicians who will charge you.

What I am attempting to show is that it is not a zero sum game. It costs in terms of time (hours and hours and hours) and money (see below) to create a track. The distribution is just the final stage.

The figures, if anyone is interested may look something like this though it could be much more or less:

£1,900 – Mac G5 Pro
£ 399 – Logic Studio software
£ 249 – Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 firewire audio interface
£ 250 – mid range vocal microphone
£ 259 – M-Audio ProKeys Sono 88 Digital Piano with USB Interface (assuming you
don’t want fully weighted keys then you are into thousands)
£ 321 – Decent piano samples (eg Stienberg The Grand)
£ 600 – mid range Acoustic guitar
£ 500 – assorted preamps, cables, synths, desks, stands, acoustic treatment
£ 250 – Monitor Speakers
£ 250 – 2 x 19″ widescreen displays
£4,978 Total

These are just some typical pices of kit in a home studio able to produce near release level tracks. Please do not argue with choices I have made for examples as there are almost infinite combinations. You may also wish to buy drum machines, bass guitar, amplifiers etc. etc. etc.

“The only cost is people’s time”

ermm…nope. sorry, that’s not quite right. For some forms of on-line music, all you need is a computer (plus appropriate soundcard & software).

For others, well, as I mentioned above, my bass strings (5-string double-ball-end fretless, or 6-string fretted, since you didn’t ask, nor was anyone interested) are £25 or so per set. If I don’t change them (when they start to rust, practically), it affects the performance of the instrument, and the quality of my playing/recordings, thus diminishes the enjoyment of the listener.

I’ve slowly assembled my gear over the last 20 years or so (with many mistakes along the way) for as little as possible, but I think you’ll find that instruments, amps, mics, etc still require money Fixed costs, dude!

Of course, I don’t regard myself as having a right to any great return on this personal investment, but if anyone likes my stuff, it would only be decent of them to make a small contribution (of which c.90% goes straight to *me*, no record company involved – Paypal eats a bit, but that’s fair enough) which would help me offset these costs.

Now, it could be argued that the best way of rewarding an artist you like would be to download their albums for free, but then send them cash/paypal direct…I’d be happy to receive any donations via Paypal, by the way, andyhgilmour@hotmail.com

Oh, and I offer my stuff under a creative commons license, so please feel free to share it/publicise me, that’s great – but I think you’ll find that ultimately, it’s still *my* stuff… )

Cheers,

ANDYGILMOUR.COM

Where do you get that idea from?

Individuals have a 50 year copyright on the songs thery write. Coprorations have copyright in perpetuity.

That copyright is infringable and is actionable.

And the law of theft doesn’t apply to songwriting, that’s the whole bleedin’ point. There is no difference, philosophically or morally, between an idea for a drug, an idea for a song, and an idea for a means of political organisation – it’s just that currently, governments seek to incentivise the creators of the first two and have no particular interest in incentivising the creators of the third…

36.The move industry would not exist otherwise. The publishing industry would not exist otherwise, the recorded music industry would not exist otherwise. All of these invlove massive costs not related to the distribution process.

All of these have non zero distribution costs as well. (The electronic file distribution is not the only part of the process.)

None of these have ever existed outside earning income from someone. The Church, the State, private commerce have all funded the creative industries over the centuries. They do not exist in a vacumn (economically speaking)

Quoting utiliarianism and libertarianism as excuses to steal the work of others is a fig leaf to conceal the theft.

This has nothing to do with the control of ideas. That is a red herring. The law simply realises that not all things that are created are physical, and that the works of labours is credited to those labours. The law of theft does not apply to democracy because it can not be stolen (except by Nu Lab Home Secretarys that is). The law of theft (or coyright infringment) does apply to song writing because their right to a living via the fruits of their labour can be stolen

I’m not sure what philosophy you’re basing that on on – but utilitarian philosophy would suggest the opposite, that anything which can be distributed at no marginal cost should be made available to everyone, because that makes everyone better off. And libertarian philosophy would also suggest the opposite, that the government has no business dictating who can and who can’t use particular ideas.

The exception, from a utilitarian point of view if not a libertarian one, comes if the resulting lack of money flowing into the industry means that people don’t actually create the work. Which would be the case in drug development without patents, and in software development and mainstream film-making without some kind of copyright protection – but which emphatically would not be the case in pursuits like writing and songwriting, which can easily be carried out in one’s spare room in one’s spare time (even if one works full time).

So in response to “What aspect of the video games industry make it entitled to earn money from its products that is different from the movie makers, song writers, music performers, or book, screenply, or play writers”

…the answer is “because otherwise it couldn’t exist”.

(as it happens, my personal view is that a version of copyright, albeit with radically reduced term limits, should exist for writing and music, because that’ll mean that we get better researched books and more polished albums, which leave us better off than otherwise would be the case – but that’s a purely utilitarian trade-off on the basis of outcomes. The case I’ve outlined above is at the very least defensible).

You do a lot of this, dmm, and you shouldn’t.

Further, of course I am not saying artists are entitled to a living. Quite the opposite. What i am saying is that if you want to enjoy thier work, then they are entitled to expect you to pay for it one way or another.

If you dont want to pay for a particular bit of work, then fine. dont watch/listen/play it. No one forices you to buy it if you do not want to wach/listen/play it.

Also Song, poem , script work is not cost free. it may have few materials required to create them, but it does require time and devotion of effort. and that is not free.