Facinating case; music and copyright.

[Kassen]

Nike "borrows" a album cover for use in advertising. Minor threat isn´t pleased.

Interestingly, Minor Threat´s singer has no problems with p2p network downloads of his work according to this interview.

Which just goes to show it´s a bit more complicated then people being "for" or "against" copyrights.

[Kassen]

update;
nike says "sorry"

[mosc]

[Kassen]

Yeah, Minor Threat is actually quite important and famous in that scene, his additude fairly representative. Interestingly, a lot of undergound electronics labels operate in a way based on that additude; our own way of touring is a traight copy of the way pioneered by Black Flag (except with a lot less fights).

Happy to point it out.

[opg]

That was a fantastic article!

I'm going to have to rethink a lot of stuff now. He really put things into perspective for me.

I just have one question: If I were to adopt his attitude, that you make music because you love it and you want people to hear it, how does this affect nerdy little bedroom musicians like myself? I mean, I have a musical goal - to complete an album. Not to sell, necessarily, but so I have something that I am proud of, that I can listen to at night from beginning to end, and think "Wow! I can't believe I did this!" Since I was eight, I've had this mentality. It wasn't until other people heard my music when I was 18 that someone suggested that I should think about selling it and and sharing it with other people.

One thing I am interested in is the transition people like Ian and Fugazi made from making music together to playing in front of people. Why did they decide to do that? Because someone probably asked them to. And he clearly stated that he didn't care about money when that started happening. That's all well and good, but I can't perform in front of people.

Therefore, it is harder for me to share my music with others, whether I have making money on my mind or not. Thankfully, forums like this and P2Ps are available to me. But that's it. So why am I not satisfied? Deep down, I'm a lazy, money-hungry, capitalist pig?

He's right- being a musician means you would keep working on music whether you made a millions of dollars or not. Musicians don't ever think, "Well, I have everything I need now because of my millions of dollars, so I can stop writing music."

There is something more important than money that every musician wants: to be recognized and appreciated. Oprah (of all people) once said, “The greatest pain in life is to be invisible ... we all just want to be heard … we all are just regular people seeking the same thing … we all just want to know that we matter … we want validation …we want the same things.”

If I am indeed a little nerdy bedroom musician who doesn't perform live and doesn't have any interest in making money, I would still want to be appreciated. The people here at this forum giving me great feedback and compliments is one of the best feelings, but sometimes the only way to show an artist 8,000 miles away that their music is important to me is to give them money. How can I say, "Thom Yorke, you're doing a great job" or "John Mayer, I think you are really good at the guitar but the sound of your voice makes me want to drive a fork into my skull"?

[opg]

That being said, I will soon replace the songs on my website with 128kbps versions instead of 64.

[Kassen]

[opg]

Well, I meant that I put everything together in Fruity Loops and I won't even know where to begin to perform live.

[Kassen]

Can fruity asign keys to trigger paterns and do mutes and so on?

If so; get a "nostromo speedpad n52" (cheap at games stores), set all that stuff to the keys. Take the closest knob box that outputs midi and midi map the living daylight out of interesting parameters.

Dim the lights, jam.

Repeat for a week.

make adjustments to have more fun and interactivity.

Repeat some more.

Play at a birthday party.

Open for a friend.

Start asking money.

use money to get a soundcard with multiple outs and a few guitar pedals to put on everything that´s not the main stereo output. Start thinking about a laptop.

Practice more.

ask more money.

etc.

(or you could do what many people do, meaning faking. In that case I recomend simply using Winamp or a mididisk player over a cracked version of LIve since those cracks tend to fail at inconventient moments)

[opg]

I'm sure I can get Fruity to do all that stuff. It just sounds pretty boring. I'm working on some 8-bit animation, so there's something I could put up on a screen. I'm just not into live shows, and "the spectacle." I am building an electronic drumset, so we'll see what happens with that...

[Kassen]

Sure, but "hold one hand on one side of the strings while strumming the other end with your free hand" sounds pritty boring too. It *can* be quite exciting though.

[opg]

not if I'm butt-ass naked