|
|
Posted by Wilbur Slice on 01/11/06 18:50
On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 10:36:48 -0600, Bob Olhsson <olh@hyperback.com>
wrote:
>Paul Stamler wrote:
>> "Michael J. Anthony" <nondisclosed@no-spam.com> wrote in message
>>>What is it with bluesmen and ailments?
>> In a time with little social safety net, music was one of the few
>> occupations open to a blind person.
>
>It's a little known fact that the modern popular music business was
>invented by none other than P.T. Barnum before he went into the circus
>business. Freaks have always been an entertainment attraction. Pop music
>has only been promoted as being "art" since the folk revival of the
>1950s and the Beatles who were originally publicized through the fashion
>industry rather than the music industry.
What?
The Beatles were publicized through the fashion industry? What does
that mean? They played gigs at fashion shows in Paris and Milan?
>
>Very few real public domain songs have ever been recorded because music
>publishing has always been a major source of income for artists,
>producers and record labels.
What?
Record labels should love to record public domain stuff because that
means they don't have to pay the publisher any royalties (because
there isn't a publisher). It's the same as if the record label owned
the publishing rights, except that they wouldn't get any royalties
when someone else records the song. But they would get to keep all
the money they would otherwise have to pay in royalties.
> During the folk revival there was a great
>deal of one-upsmanship over who had greater "authenticity." This lead to
>many brand new songs being touted by artists and their managers as being
>"traditional."
What?
So people who owned the publishing rights to songs voluntarily gave
it away so they could claim more "authenticity"? While I don't doubt
that that did happen in some instances, I would be surprised if it was
particularly widespread, and it doesn't seem like a smart move to me.
>
>It would probably be a great deal less work to write new music than to
>unearth useful public domain music. A lot of corporate interests seek to
>expand the public domain only as a means of forcing contemporary
>composers to settle for lower levels of payment.
What?
Corporate interests like Disney and Sony are strenuously (and
successfully) fighting to shrink the public domain by extending the
lifetime of copyrights - copyrights they own, of course. The
existence of the public domain doesn't result in contemporary
composers being paid less - the royalty rates are set by statute.
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|