[pp.int.general] Protest certain musicians?

[Christian Hufgard]

Hi Boris,

Boris Turovskiy wrote:
> Christian Hufgard wrote:
>> Well, I think there is definitivy a difference between a bunch of
>> amateurs playing music two hours a weekend and some professionals doing
>> so 8/5. Take sportsman. A professional soccer player can definitly play
>> better soccer than an amateur.
>>   
> I think we started with the recording technology rather than with the
> musical skills. The time and effort spent on learning how to play an
> instrument is the private expenditure of the musicians, whether in the
> current model or in any free music model (you can't come up to a label
> and say 'hey, i can't play an instrument, so please invest in my
> education so i can record an album for your label 10 years from now').
> And a recording in sufficient quality - at least for a band at the
> beginning of their career - can be done with significantly less
> investment than even the 15000€ named above.

Of course it can. During the Free! Music! Contest I listened to a broad
range of free music. From "no budget" recordings up to those 15k
recordings. And depending on the style of music, there is a huge difference.

And of course you are right. A record company does not pay you for
learning an instrument. But it pays (or paied...) you money, that you
have the spare time to improve your skills.


>> Partially right. But there is a difference in the frequence of the
>> output. Only very few amateur bands manage to release a new album a
>> year. If you want bands to be able to do so, you have to get them the
>> money to be able so.
>>   
> The frequence of album releases is at best unrelated to quality and at
> worst inversely related to it. Take popular fiction where authors
> (exactly because they are "professionals" who live from their writing)
> start churning out three novels a year, with most of these novels being
> pretty much unreadable.

True, but this depends of the artist and his audience.


>> Is that really, what comes out from my mails? Then why do I propagate
>> the use of free arts? I think using them is a pretty easier way than
>> fighting against lobbies that want to keep an outdated business model -
>> and reduces the danger of beeing punished for breaking the law...
>>   
> But fighting the lobbies in order to get laws changed is exactly why the
> Pirate Parties formed themselves as political parties. 

Might have been. But I really hope, that the Pirate Party is more than a
"free downloads for everyone"-party.


> Promotion of free content can be achieved without all that fuss.

Yes.

> To bring an analogy: why do we fight against online surveillance and
> preemptive data storage laws in Germany, when we could just work on and
> promote encryption techniques that allow users to circumvent the
> surveillance?

Because it is much easier to reach Jane and John Doe if we act as a
party and we can build up more pressure on other parties. I would not
invest the same amount of time for free downloads than for freedom.


Christian