Stealing Shit

Some intern over at NPR wrote an article about being of a generation for which paying for music is completely foreign, and was rewarded with long letter from indie-rock hero/nice guy David Lowery, who tries to explain why she should be open to actually paying for music:

By allowing the artist to treat his/her work as actual property, the artist can decide how to monetize his or her work. This system has worked very well for fans and artists. Now we are being asked to undo this not because we think this is a bad or unfair way to compensate artists but simply because it is technologically possible for corporations or individuals to exploit artists work without their permission on a massive scale and globally. We are being asked to continue to let these companies violate the law without being punished or prosecuted. We are being asked to change our morality and principals to match what I think are immoral and unethical business models.

First of all, the first CVB album will always be an all-time Xmastime super-duper desert island slice. You know this.

Anyway, this argument comes up rather constantly these years; I'm sure I've blathered about it before myself, and while of course I want the musicians to be compensated fairly I can't remember the last time I actually bought a piece of music. To be honest, I'd prolly be outraged at the thought of having to do so by now. And I'm about two decades older than the NPR writer. Also, many of the people I know with the biggest iTunes collections from illegal downloads happen to be musicians themselves. Everybody's guilty, to the point that it's hard to really give a shit about either horse in the race.

 The train has left the station on this issue, and instead of hoping for the integrity of the masses, which will never fail to let you down, the train and station need to be rethought. Do I have any solutions? Hell no, but probably because I put out the single greatest album of the last decade and it was largely ignored. So fuck you.

Meanwhile, for some reason I accidentally saw some of the comments under David Lowery's article and this caught my eye.

If something doesn’t cost you anything you won’t value it. I had a discussion with a neighbor about paying for Final Cut Pro. He thought it was OK for his little brother to “rip” a copy so he could get into editing/directing because he couldn’t afford it. My argument was that if he saved up for it, if it took him a month, two or six months, then when he got it he would value it and actually be more likely to learn it, use it and make his dream a reality. 

I had to cut grass all Summer back in the 70′s to get my first Gibson Les Paul and now I make a living playing guitar. I had friends whose parents bought them nice guitars and amps, whatever they wanted. Those guitars just sat in closets unused because it didn’t cost them anything. When I would buy LP’s I devoured them. Knew every note. 

How many of those 11,000 tunes has Emily listened to? How many does she really know?

Enjoy this shit.