Raise the Hammer

A couple of things jumped out at me in reading some of the commentary here.


Kat, I thought your comment about respecting the artists and their hard work was very nice... and then you disappointed me. You refer to the salaries of the artists (I will let the record companies speak for themselves) and seem to indicate that you have a problem with them making so much money. First, artists really don't make salaries, they are paid royalties and fees in a free-market system that is simplicity in itself. If you write or perform something that has no emotional connection with your potential audience, you earn absolutely nothing even though you might spent years creating your work during which time you also earned nothing. Bummer! If in the rare case - and believe me in the whole scheme of things the cases are rare - you create something that moves millions of people and really impacts their lives, you become rich. It's an amazing system. It's the one we all live under in Canada. Ask the conservative government. If you are telling me that you believe that there should be a limit on what everyone in our society is allowed to earn, that's cool too. I just don't think you'd get very many people agreeing with you. Most people get up every morning and go to their job convinced that they are worth more than they are being paid and dream of one day moving up the pay scale ladder as high a their talents can take them. The inference that creators are in some other weird category is silly.

My favourite though was the suggestion by UrbanRenaissance that music should be simply used as a promotional tool. Where do I start? Music has never been so highly valued by all of humanity than it is today. This is the reason that suddenly copyright has become sexy. I mean copyright for god's sake, the simple premise that your ideas and songs and compositions are worth something and, for a limited period of time, you should be able to make a living for yourself, your family and your heirs just like any other person. Okay, so you want to use music as a promotional tool. Okay, we live in a society where everyone is to be treated equally. Talk to the lawyers, who are getting rich off of this copyright debate - lawyers don't get this passionate about things for the most part unless there's some sort of vested interest involved for themselves or their clients. Let's make the suggestion to their sorority/fraternity that instead of paying the $400 to $1000 an hour for their legal opinions, they will have to go out and do speaking engagements, put their name on T-shirts, coffee mugs and the like to make their money. How silly that sounds. Well that's what you are suggesting for music creators.

As in any free market system, if the music is too expensive for everyone, then it will go away. If you want to start an online radio station and your complaint is it's going to cost too much for you to be in business. Then don't be in business. That's the way it works in the rest of society, why is music held to another standard? I actually heard someone from radio, who pay next to nothing for the content that has made them trillions of dollars over the years, say they don't need music. Fine, get it off the station. Boy, when asked to pay, there are so many people who suddenly don't think music has any value and you wonder what the debate is about in the first place. Simply don't bother with music. If it has no value, what do you care? Watch sports on television or a movie... oh, that's right, they want you to pay for that too. Well, then go down to your favourite restaurant... oops, that's not going to be free. Forget the restaurant then. I hear sitting at home in silence and meditating makes the time go by... but it's time so much better spent with your favourite songs on in the background.

And for those who continue to make the inference that music creators are greedy and think of nothing but the money, you need to look at some of the contracts these idiots have signed over the years. Most of them are into the art and not the money man and, as is their nature, also into lending their talents to more charity works than to their own careers in many cases. While this copyright debate goes on, there is a Canadian artist by the name of Liam Titcomb, who is busking from coast-to-coast across Canada this summer for Warchild. He is but one example.