This is a ridiculous argument. It's nice that you provided your personal financial information, but that gives you exactly zero rights to anyone else's personal information. We're not in a court of law here, nor evaluating one another for public office, we're just having an internet discussion.

Any one person's info is just anecdotal, although anecdotes can be instructive and useful. They don't prove anything about the argument as it relates to our whole society. So one person's refusal to provide info that you ask for does not invalidate their argument, it just rejects your debating tactics.

How much do YOU spend on entertainment?

Within two standard deviations of the national average. Same as how much entertainment I get without paying.

I wanted to address Bungee's "I spend X so I should be entitled to X+Y" ventriloquism act a little more.

What that misconception fails to recognize is that without Y, X wouldn't be as big. I am willing to spend more money because I am aware of more options. Neither TV nor radio offer the breadth and depth of choice that I require (plus their commercial format is often annoying). YouTube — a mostly legal option — has been extremely helpful and I find myself using it more and more. Yet for some things, PirateBay is just so much more convenient and easier to navigate.

Thanks for that link, Ceci, there's a ton of interesting data and discussion on that Artist Revenue Streams site. Amazing how much work goes into just establishing baseline numbers, and how much uncertainty there is even then.

I basically agree with this in principle, but it's still interesting to examine questions like those raised in the article from Mike's initial post, and to study data like the various studies that Ceci has linked to. There's always room for improvement in any system, and finding those improvements needs good data.

Great to see an actual working artist speak about this for a change.

"Artists Deserve to be Compensated For Their Work" by Mark Isham
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012...-by-mark-isham/

This was pretty interesting too...

"Band Embraces New Technology and Business model." by Bob Regan
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012...business-model/

"Does anyone reading this remember or realize that the Beatles gave up touring in 1966 to be a ‘studio band’? With their time freed up, they went on to create Revolver, Sgt Pepper, The White Album, Abbey Road, etc.? Would that happen in a model where it’s all about tickets and T-shirts?"

Lots of facts and figures in this one...

"If the Internet is working for Musicians, Why aren’t more Musicians Working Professionally?"
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/why-arent-more-musicians-working-professionally/

Very narrow-sighted and unsubstantiated article there. Hard to decide where to start.


"Ask any teenager how they access their music — most will tell you they download it illegally."

I actually watched a few of the "ask kids" videos around the time Osama bin Laden was killed, and the question of where they access music came up. Every one of them said "YouTube." A couple of them said that's the only place they can even find new music. MTV doesn't play music any more, and the Clear Channel dominated radio franchises only play a very slim selection of songs. YouTube has a policy of removing clips that are questionably legal.


"Employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show a drop of 45.3 percent between August 2002 and August of 2011 'musical groups and artists'."

The Salon article Isham links to in no way connects that number with illegal filesharing. It does, however, note the drop in jobs numbers across the board in many fields, as well as make a mention of how successful Kickstarter promotions tend to be (about a one-in-four chance). Isham also fails to mention the musical acts that initially became successful through a free distribution model — Karmin, Justin Bieber, Ingrid Michaelson, Metallica, etc.

Something else Isham fails to even mention is the rising value of the performer versus the declining value of the publisher. Publishing (that is to say, who is credited with writing a song) used to be the thing that paid the most. Every time that Mott the Hoople song got played, David Bowie got paid. Dave Mustaine has said that he has often taken a longer song and cut it into two parts so he could get paid twice. Ian Anderson gave half of the publishing to his biggest hit, Aqualung, to his ex-wife in their divorce settlement. The band Genesis actually started under the notion of just writing songs for other people to perform.

...



Gah. I don't know why I'm bothering. You don't want to be educated about anything. You just want to trot out the same defeated arguments again. I guess I fell for your troll again.