{"id":513,"date":"2005-05-12T08:47:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-12T13:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=513"},"modified":"2005-05-12T12:53:25","modified_gmt":"2005-05-12T17:53:25","slug":"bidnez-of-music-still-great-for-musicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/bidnez-of-music-still-great-for-musicians\/","title":{"rendered":"Bidnez of Music still great for Musicians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.randomhouse.com\/features\/wisdomofcrowds\/author.html\">James Surowiecki <\/a>essays in this week&#8217;s New Yorker that touring not only pays musicians better and more reliably, but it&#8217;s booming. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/talk\/content\/articles\/050516ta_talk_surowiecki\">&#8220;Hello, Cleveland&#8221;<\/a> has good numbers and good writing. <\/p>\n<p>The most concise observation comes from <a href=\"http:\/\/barlow.typepad.com\/\">John Perry Barlow<\/a> (via Surowiecki):<br \/>\nWe are seeing the Music Business being replaced by the <em>Musician Business<\/em>.<br \/>\nThe <em>Music Business<\/em> (labels etc) used to control the most valuable and expensive assets &#8212; production, distribution, costly studios, access to shelf space, promotion &#8212; but now the Musicians control the scarcest assets, therefore the most valuable, their performances live, their presence.<br \/>\nAll goes to show that ole Walter Benjamin was wrong in his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marxists.org\/reference\/subject\/philosophy\/works\/ge\/benjamin.htm\">&#8220;Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.&#8221;<\/a> As a work becomes more available the desire to experience the original increases, not decreases. The &#8220;aura&#8221; is stronger mysteriously to me &#8212; and to ole Walt &#8212; as the reproduced materials become better and more accessible. Our fetishism of the creator, the original, is growing as we become familiar with the works even in an indirect way.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funny that, in an era of file-sharing and iPod-stealing, the old troubadour may have the most lucrative gig of all.&#8221; (Surowiecki)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcguinn.com\">Roger McGuinn<\/a> removes the &#8220;may&#8221; from Surowiecki&#8217;s sentence as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/industries\/technology\/maney\/2005-05-03-music-piracy-china_x.htm\">he talks to USA Today&#8217;s Kevin Manley (in the context of music piracy in China and elsewhere):<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>While visiting USA TODAY last week, Roger McGuinn, who led the Byrds in the 1960s, said he earned just 0.0007 cents on each early <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lyon.edu\/webdata\/users\/kadler\/public_html\/rmcguinn\/\">Byrds<\/a> album sold. He adds that although Arista Records sold 500,000 of his solo album, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/B000002VHO\/\">Back From Rio<\/a>, McGuinn never got a penny. In other words, thanks to the machinations of the recording industry, McGuinn has never made any real money on even his most popular recorded music.<\/p>\n<p>Yet he&#8217;s done OK and now has a forward-thinking business model. He has a Web site, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcguinn.com\">www.mcguinn.com<\/a>, where he posts free songs. McGuinn made <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artistdirect.com\/nad\/store\/artist\/album\/0,,2889981,00.html\">his most recent solo CD [Limited Edition]<\/a> by recording it on his laptop and paying to have copies produced and packaged. He sells the CDs online and at concerts and says it&#8217;s the first time he&#8217;s ever made a profit on an album.<\/p>\n<p>The online music, the CD and a stalwart Byrds fan base all fuel interest in his live performances, which often sell out small venues. That&#8217;s where he makes his money. McGuinn is apparently not lavishly rich, but he seems comfortable and is still making music.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Surowiecki essays in this week&#8217;s New Yorker that touring not only pays musicians better and more reliably, but it&#8217;s booming. &#8220;Hello, Cleveland&#8221; has good numbers and good writing. The most concise observation comes from John Perry Barlow (via Surowiecki): We are seeing the Music Business being replaced by the Musician Business. The Music Business [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-information-commons","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}