Re: Lee's opinion of the Artists' World (ws)Napster: thoughts and comments?

From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Tue Jul 11 2000 - 21:26:28 MDT


> No, suits are enslaved, artists are free.
> You have it so backwards it's funny!
> We're doing what we want and getting paid.

Go read Courtney Love's article in Salon sometime. Most artists
are getting toally screwed. Yes, they're doing work and getting
paid, but they're getting a very small percentage of the value
they actually produce, and making a lot of other people rich who
don't deserve it. They also have next to no input into the process
of how their work is sold and marketed. In my dictionary, when
you're producing millions of dollars of economic value to line the
pockets of someone who's doing you no service, that's slavery, and
I stand by that as a description of the music industry today.

> An artist "taking it laying down" when we pay our manager or agent?
> Not if we're getting a very good service in return.

I agree. And some agents and managers earn their money--notably
those of professional athletes. I'm not arguing from the mistaken
labor theory of value that /all/ the value of an artwork comes
from the artist--quite the opposite. Information has /no/ inherent
value at all, just as labor has no inherent value. Marketers who
create demand and execs who manage distribution and agents who
negotiate deals create value just as the artist does. But those
words are meaningless without real numbers attached to them, and
the numbers I've seen look to me like the record industry has in
the past and is continuing to screw most artists.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC



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