What's a fair price for a CD or download ?
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Topic: What's a fair price for a CD or download ?
Posted By: Davesax1965
Subject: What's a fair price for a CD or download ?
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 10:05
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I see Dream Theater are releasing a 4 CD set for $129. Which is pretty poor. What's a fair price for - a high quality album download - a CD - a concert ticket (small venue) ? You tell me, folks ! ------------- |
Replies:
Posted By: Nightfly
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 10:44
| ^ Isn't that the 4 LP set at that price. The vinyl is 60 quid in the UK and the standard 2 Cd £11:99. I wont be paying £60 for the vinyl version that's for sure but can't complain at £11:99. I wouldn't pay anything for a download and small venue concert ticket - £20 seems fair. |
Posted By: Davesax1965
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 10:45
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Just to clarify, this thread isn't about whether the Dream Theater (can't even spell ;-) ) release is a fair price.... it's asking "What IS a fair price for music in general ?" ------------- |
Posted By: DDPascalDD
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 11:02
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Bandcamp says a fair price for a digital album download is around 7 dollars, but maybe it's only recommended for beginning artists. ------------- |
Posted By: Davesax1965
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 11:07
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Coincidentally what I charge. :-) ------------- |
Posted By: Polymorphia
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 11:10
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I'll talk about CDs first. Because CD's take resources to make, their price will depend on the availability of those resources. What's fair is ultimately determined by the artist. If it's priced too high, fewer people will buy it, thus rendering it still "fair" that they priced it beyond the financial reach of their audience. If it's priced too low, no profit can be made from it and it can also lead to a feeling of lack of value of the product. Downloads are slightly different. I think, unless the artist decides otherwise, they ought to be paid for. However, the pay is mainly for labor and to fund future projects. Because they can be duplicated infinitely and take no resources other than a computer and internet connection, any money made off downloads is a profit. The price is usually considered relative to the physical copy. These days, bands charge $7 or $8 for downloads on bandcamp, when the CD is around $10-$15, and I can't really complain. It's similar to CDs in that their price may determine how many people buy it. Obviously, this is all concerning those who do buy albums. Most of my friends who like music do buy albums, but many of them also stream and sometimes illegally download. I don't believe that the customer is right in some of those cases, but the reality is that many are streaming to discover music and they are exposed to way more choices in the marketplace, so it takes a bit more to convince listeners to buy a single product. Overpricing as Dream Theater has done is just a bad move (under the assumption that these are CDs and not vinyl we're talking about). Then again, perhaps their fans are loyal enough to buy such a thing. But fewer new listeners will be interested and new listeners are the primary target for box sets anyway.
------------- https://dreamwindow.bandcamp.com/releases" rel="nofollow - My Music 
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Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 12:26
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Hi, I think a concert ticket depends on the venue and its size ... however, generally speaking, many folks take a percentage, rather than a set number, because a set number on a hall of 1200 is probably going to make the tickets so spendy that the ability to sell tickets might become prohibitive. The DT thing is a special edition for fans ... I don't remember it stating that it was a regular release. Please ensure that your information is correct on this, because I did read their would be a special edition of the new which was to have a book and other goodies. I might not be totally correct here, but I remember reading something like this. The $7 to $8 dollars seems fair to me. What distorts that is the individual "songs" and their price. I still buy the CD's ... I like the art in it and the information. Music, STILL, is not an "invisible" part of my life where it won't matter the name who does it and you will not remember many of the songs a few years from now, because you only heard one and not the "artist" or the "album". ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: tboyd1802
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 12:34
Thought it would be fun to compare this CD price to what I remember paying for albums back when I was still buying albums. If I recall correctly around 1980 albums were going for about $7 US. Going to one of the standard CPI inflation calculators this converts to about $20 today. So, $10 to $15 is indeed quite a deal compared to what we use to pay. ------------- He neither drank, smoked, nor rode a bicycle. Living frugally, saving his money, he died early, surrounded by greedy relatives. It was a great lesson to me -- John Barrymore |
Polymorphia wrote:Posted By: timbo
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 13:01
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I was thinking along the same lines. When I was a teenager first getting into prog (about 1979) full price albums in the UK were around £5. I didn't pay that, I'd pick them up when my local record shop had them on sale, usually £3. I got my first job in 1981, and my salary now is roughly 20x more than it was then. Apply the same multiplier and I should be paying £60 now ($90). £5 ($7) seems a steal compared to that, yet I rarely pay more than that, with £10 being the most I've ever paid. Something tells me musicians are not getting the same salary increase I've enjoyed. I haven't been to a concert by a well known artist in a few years. Back in the 80s I remember paying between £5 and £10 - not much more than an album price. This Christmas I suggested to my wife I'd like to go see Joe Bonamassa - not exactly a very well known artist in the UK - as he is coming to my home town in March. She got me a ticket for Christmas - £75. That seems a bit over the top to me, I might have expected £30 - £40 for a reasonably large venue. However it's still not the 20x multiple compared to what I paid regularly in the 80s. |
Posted By: Magnum Vaeltaja
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 18:15
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I have no problem paying $15 for a CD (incl. tax). Anything less than $10 feels like a steal. Album downloads should be less than $10. Anywhere between $5 and $10 seems reasonable to me. ------------- when i was a kid a doller was worth ten dollers - now a doller couldnt even buy you fifty cents |
Posted By: infocat
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 18:33
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$12 is my "sweet spot" for CDs, but up to $15 isn't too bad. Beyond that it better be really good. ------------- -- Frank Swarbrick Belief is not Truth. |
Posted By: Horizons
Date Posted: January 09 2016 at 19:00
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I pretty much won't buy a CD over 15 ^ So i agree there. I'm happy with $10. Though im a student and money is tight. ------------- Crushed like a rose in the riverflow. |
Posted By: Man With Hat
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 00:30
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Fair or otherwise I use a $10 scale for what I'd like to/be comfortable paying. So...a single CD for $10, a 2CD set $20...and so forth. Obviously, I lose a bit on most single CDs (which I would guess have about a $14 or $15 average) but generally CD sets over 3 CDs fall below. ------------- Dig me...But don't...Bury me I'm running still, I shall until, one day, I hope that I'll arrive Warning: Listening to jazz excessively can cause a laxative effect. |
Posted By: Catcher10
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 00:53
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I don't buy CDs anymore, maybe 2-3 per year. We do go to concerts both small and large venues. Small venue does not mean small price. Just paid $60 a ticket for Dream Theater in May, same theater we saw Steven Wilson at for $35 a ticket. And paid $70 a ticket for Iron Maiden for April in a dome setting. -------------   
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Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 05:48
Your earnings potential has increased disproportionally because it is likely you are not doing the same job you were back in 1981. Using retail price inflation since 1981 the actual multiplier is around 2.84 from 1981 and 4.13 from 1979 (UK economy was in a high-inflation mess between 1979 and 1981) so your £3 in 1979 is the equivalent of £15.40 today. From 1984:  Using the http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/Historic-inflation-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html" rel="nofollow - Historic Inflation Calculator that discount price of £4.49 is the equivalent of £13.55 in today's money. So basically, despite format changes and several price-war battles that have occurred over the past 30 years, the Recommended Retail Price of albums has tracked inflation and the equivalent price has remained static, however, the actual (discounted) retail price has dropped considerably. The prices we now pay on Amazon or in the few remaining High Street retailers where you can buy CDs are discount prices, not manufacturers' recommended retail prices. ( http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2000/05/record-companies-settle-ftc-charges-restraining-competition-cd" rel="nofollow - RRP on albums was scrapped in 2000 after legal ranglings between the Federal Trade Commission and the major labels). The magic price of £9.99 (or $9.99 in the USA) at first appears to be a consumer set pricing, in that it seems to be maximum price the consumer is willing to pay for an album, however this price was actually set in the 1990s by supermarkets selling top-40 albums at just above cost-price (35% retail mark-up on albums means that an album with an RRP of £12.99 had a cost-price of £9.62, leaving 37p profit for the retailer, which in fine for top-40 albums when you can shift millions of the them each week). Once this price-point had been ingrained in the consumer the record stores had to follow to stay in business ... and as we now know few of them actually did with many of them seeing a marked decline in revenue long before downloading became an issue. Brick'n'mortar record stores couldn't make a living out of selling non-top-40 albums alone, they needed the revenue from the high-selling albums to stay profitable and there they were in direct competition from the supermarkets. I was in HMV Basingstoke yesterday and to be honest, apart from the admittedly impressive rack of vinyl albums (each stickered at £20 or more), it was a depressing sight of block-buster DVDs and non-music tat. Amazon can make money out of selling non-top-40 albums because it is global and does not have chains of costly retail outlets, and as we have seen, the internet can only support one "Amazon" type retailer; even traditional retailers like HMV and Virgin and other online retailers such as CDNow could not compete once Amazon had established itself as the go-to place for music. CDBaby and their like survive because they are niche, but they are also very small by comparison. It could be argued that vinyl sales are a niche market that Amazon thus far has failed to capitalise on because (let's be honest here) it is a tactile product that leads to impulse buying, which is why HMV Basingstoke can stock so much of it. (Having said that, I walked out of HMV with a £9.99 CD of DBowie's Blackstar instead of the £23.99 LP because I couldn't justify to myself the extra £14 spend) CD pricing is now a mix of "damned if you do and damned if you don't" and "monkey see, monkey do" regardless of the quality or desirability of the product being offered. The magic 9.99 price-point is something that even small producers have to live by because the consumer has come to accept (not "dictate") that pricing as the norm. Personally, I don't buy into the "it's what the consumer is willing to spend" argument, if everyone sold albums for £20 then everyone would pay £20 just like any other retail product, if we want it we will pay the price charged (re: LP sales). It is rare to the point of mythical that prices of non-essential items are consumer-driven. In other threads (i.e. http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=64725&PID=5130878#5130878" rel="nofollow - here ) I have detailed how much it cost for a small producer to manufacture a batch of CDs), and to that we have to add in recording and production costs which can be anything from zero to whatever, but this ignores the value of the content, (i.e. what the IP is worth to the consumer). With downloads you are essentially paying for the IP plus the recording costs since there are no manufacturing costs, but even here the pricing is a mess and is based upon what the "industry" expects the consumer will pay rather than on what the content is actually worth.
------------- What? |
Posted By: Logos
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 05:59
| I will never pay for a download. |
Posted By: Davesax1965
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 06:38
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Hi Logos, unfortunately, if you do that... you stop smaller bands getting the money and the fanbase to release a CD. ------------- |
Posted By: Nogbad_The_Bad
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 09:14
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If its an album I'm buying out of interest rather than 'need' (I NEEED this album) then I'll go up to $15. Depending on how desperate I am for the disc I'll go up as far as $25 and anguish over it for a week. On downloads I'll go up to $10 unless its something I can't find on any other format and really want, then I'll go to $15. Looking at my last bandcamp order I paid $12 for a Plaistow album and $11 for GoGo Penguins. Converted from Euros & Sterling respectively. On my last CD order I bought Patrick Gauthier - Bebe Godzilla for $26 but I've been looking for that for about 3 years. ------------- Ian Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on Progrock.com https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-avant-jazzcore-happy-hour/ |
Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 09:49
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"Fair" is relative. Shouldn't in principle rich people pay more, and shouldn't bands that sell a few thousand albums get more per album than bands that sell millions? I mean, it's fine by me that artists earn more money overall if more people listen to them, and that people who have earned more money can buy more stuff, but market economy just gets the relations wrong and magnifies inequalities. I'm actually fine with the fact that bands publish expensive limited fan editions to make the people who can afford them pay more as long as their regular releases are available at OK prices (and be it minus a few cutting room floor versions and remixes that could be sold to fans only). Also I'm personally not too attached to material CDs and it is alright for me to pay as much money for a flac download as offered on Bandcamp, which often comes with a lyrics booklet etc. I'm happy to pay up to £10 but I rarely pay more. If I have to use channels that only offer mp3, I'd still pay £7.99 for something I'd pay £10 in flac or CD form. I compare prices, so I'm not going to pay x for something which I can get for x-1 legally elsewhere; I don't believe that the difference normally goes to the artist (although I am prepared to pay somewhat more on channels like Bandcamp where money goes more directly to them). I could afford paying more but would end up paying less on other music and other stuff the producers of which also deserve some money. I'm actually not a fan geek type of person, so I wouldn't spend a fortune for something "exclusive". At the end of the day, music is for the ears. |
Posted By: Nightfly
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 11:08
I've noticed that music prices seem have increased on Amazon over the last year or so (especially the more obscure stuff) and along with them ditching the free delivery on orders over £10 and increasing it to £20 they're not as cheap as they once were. At one time the Amazon Partners were usually still more expensive than Amazon but these days they're generally considerably cheaper. Obviously Amazon get a cut of their sales (I'd be interested to know how much) and perhaps they now feel that if profit margins are so low on Cd's it's more cost effective to simply take a cut of their partner's sales. Some Amazon Partners also have their own website, Dodax for example who are usually one of the cheapest on Amazon, usually sell Music even cheaper on their own website than on Amazon as they wont have to pay them a cut of the profits. Amazon may find themselves losing out in the long run. Interestingly, the Bowie album you mentioned is also selling for £23.99 on vinyl on Amazon with a number of Partners selling it for £14.50 (plus £1.26 postage).
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Posted By: Davesax1965
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 11:14
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Yeah, I'm seeing a worrying trend in some bands - and retailers - beginning to creep prices up. Fair deal for everyone is the only deal which works. ------------- |
Posted By: Meltdowner
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 11:28
 ). Last month I went to a local festival and two dudes around my age were selling their four track EP on cassette, so I wonder if it's that hard to make a limited run of CD's?  And speaking of small bands, here's a strange case: the Greek band Naxatras, that released their first album last year, were able to sell an "Extremely Limited Edition" of 25 cassettes for 25€ each, in a couple of weeks. That's way over a fair price, in my opinion  I see a lot of obscure Electronic artists that easily sell 10-100 physical copies of their albums (the number depends on how obscure they are ) |
Posted By: Angelo
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 11:51
I assume you also don't pay for the software you install on your PC then? Most of that comes through downloads, so it must be worthless.... What you pay for is not the physical format, but the cost and effort spent on producing the music. Thanks for your part in ruining the world of a lot of people in the long run. ------------- http://www.iskcrocks.com" rel="nofollow - ISKC Rock Radio I stopped blogging and reviewing - so won't be handling requests. Promo's for ariplay can be sent to [email protected] |
Posted By: Barbu
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 11:54
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Cd - 15 Concert - 30 Vinyl - 89.99 Download - 0 ------------- |
Posted By: Angelo
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 11:54
Creating pressed CDs (so not computer burned CD-ROMS, which is likely what these obscure acts revert to) requires batches of 300 or more with most pressing factories. It can be done starting from approx 500 pounds for 500 CDs, but with extra production cost added for more than a simple inlay for a plastic CD box. Add to that the cost and effort spent on designing a proper booklet or digipack to get the complete figure. Here's a nice example of pricing: https://pure-music.co.uk/cd-manufacturing-cost/cd-digipak-printing/" rel="nofollow - https://pure-music.co.uk/cd-manufacturing-cost/cd-digipak-printing/
------------- http://www.iskcrocks.com" rel="nofollow - ISKC Rock Radio I stopped blogging and reviewing - so won't be handling requests. Promo's for ariplay can be sent to [email protected] |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 12:37
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This raises the fundamental question that Dave is alluding to, which is "how much is the content (IP) of an album worth?" - if we (mis?)interpret Logos's comment of never paying for downloads then some would say that is nothing. However, hopefully by now we have all come to recognise that there is no valid justification for illegal downloading and what he means is he'd rather pay for a CD or an LP than a download. Since the costs of manufacturing an album (be that CD, LP or download) are fixed any discounting or variation in selling price is directly proportional to the amount of money an artist can earn from their work. In the old days this was essentially "royalties" - once all the financial unpleasantries associated with the process of making and selling the album had been dealt with what "profit" remained was split between the record label, the artist and the song writers, with the latter two being in the form of royalty payments - the dreaded 10%. This payment was basically the value of the music after all the physical elements such as studio time, production, manufacturing and promotion had been deducted (the cost of distribution is excluded since royalty payments were calculated on the label's selling-price of the album to the distributors, not the retail price at the check-out). In the modern era of self-release the archaic practice of royalties no longer applies but in the main the concept of "profit" also no longer applies since few self-release artists will ever recoup the cost of recording an album, let alone the costs associated with manufacturing a CD or LP. The best most can hope for is a "contribution to costs". If we were making chairs the costings are a doddle to calculate. We add the cost of the raw materials to the cost of the man-hours it took to manufacture each chair and we arrive at the cost-price. Any money we make over that cost is pure profit. On the other hand if we were making cup-cakes that are produced in batches then our raw material costs are the cost per batch, so we could say that the cost-price per cup-cake is the cost of the raw materials divided by the number of cup-cakes per batch, however, that presumes we can sell all the cakes from each batch so we calculate the cost-per-cake on the number we think we can sell rather than the number we have made. Albums should be like cup-cakes with the cost-price based upon the number of albums we think we can sell and not the number we can produce, so if you think you can sell 100 copies then the cost-price would be the cost of recording (say £2,000) plus the cost of fabricating 100 CDs (£618), so would set the cost-price of each one at £26.18 each, which is unrealistic. To save you from all the maths, to recoup £2,000 recording cost you would need to sell 285 albums at £9.99 each. Every CD you sell over 285 yields you £7.04 in pure profit, so if you actually sell 300 copies (i.e., £2,997 in sales) then your earnings would be £105.60. Incidentally, to recoup that £2,000 at Bandcamp's suggested download price of $7 (roughly £4.82) would mean selling 546 downloads (after deducting Bandcamp and PayPal's commission and ignoring anything owed to the Inland Revenue). Now every download over 546 yields you £3.66 (roughly $5) in pure profit, so if you could sell 600 downloads (i.e., £2,892 in sales) then your earnings would be £197.64. It gets more complicated when you sell both CDs and downloads since you will have fixed costs in producing the CDs in addition to the studio costs. For example if you had CDs pressed in batches of 100 and presumed that you can sell 1 CD for every 5 download sales then you would need to sell 147 CDs @ £9.99 and 735 downloads @ £4.85 to recoup the £2,000 studio costs and 2x£618 CD manufacturing costs. If you limited the total number of CD sales to 100 then selling 100 CDs and 500 downloads would leave you with a short-fall of £404.47 which would mean selling a further 111 downloads (i.e., 100 CDs and 611 downloads). However, if you were confident of selling more than 100 CDs you could get them made in batches of 200 which netts you a significant price-break of £695/200, so now you'd only need to sell 125 CDs and 625 downloads. So to summarise:-
Of course if you set your selling price below the £9.99 for CD, £4.85 ($7) for downloads or your production costs are more than £2,000 then these numbers increase significantly, and if your cost of production is less than £2,000 then they decrease (though quite how a band can record an album to professional standard for less than £2,000 is a mystery to me). In the real world artists that think they can sell thousands copies of an album tend to spend more on studio & production costs so that £2,000 would be £20,000 or even £200,000. However, those artists are few and far between. So all this presupposes you can sell more than the average Bandcamp artist, and as sure as eggs are eggs, sales of 200+ per album are way above the Bandcamp average.... http://seriouslyfinance.com/2013/10/19/12/00/51/blockbusters/" rel="nofollow - they are even above the industry averag e. A quick reality check here: £197 profit on 600 downloads is pocket-money - selling 600 downloads is hard work that takes several months to accumulate, to make a living out of this you'd need to continuously sell 600 downloads per month every month, which equates to 7,200 albums per year and puts you in the top 1% of all recording artists. Now if all this scares you then it should because making money out of music is a scary business. If the financial side of it causes your eyes to glaze over then stop dreaming about making money from music and get some proper financial advice. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Meltdowner
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 13:14
 If I would buy digital files, I would burn them on a cr*ppy looking CD |
Posted By: emigre80
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 13:24
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If I want a CD, I buy it regardless of the price unless it's truly outrageous - the definition of outrageous depending on the CD, whether it's an import, etc. I paid $75 for the Progeny Yes concert CD set and I didn't consider it exorbitant. I don't download music because I don't think it's fair to the artist, who after all needs to make a living. On concert tickets, I will get them unless the price is too outrageous if I want to see the band enough. I just checked out the tickets for Bruce Springsteen in Louisville and they were $135 each for crap seats. I don't want to see him that badly, although I do know people that would pay that. I've seen concert tickets advertised where the front rows are $500 for a ticket. If John Lennon and George Harrison rose from the dead and the Beatles re-formed I wouldn't pay $500 for a ticket.
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Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 13:27
Amazon Partners sell because of their close association with Amazon, without that link they would struggle to survive, and they have to under-cut Amazon's pricing to do that. For this to adversely affect Amazon one partner would have to over-take them in terms of direct sales and since Amazon manages all partners on a divide and concur principle (all are in equal competition with each other) this is unlikely. Like in Highlander, "there can only be one" preferred internet service in each market sector, other providers exist but their traffic is considerably less than the market leader, there is only one Amazon, eBay, iTunes, RYM, Facebook, IMDB, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc., (this is even true in niche markets such as Prog Rock review sites where the PA is undoubtedly the market leader). I first noticed this phenomenon at the end of the 20th century once internet retail took hold and nothing has changed since then to alter this observation. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Nogbad_The_Bad
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 13:39
Try bandcamp, its one of the options that gets the most money to the artist. ------------- Ian Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on Progrock.com https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-avant-jazzcore-happy-hour/ |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 13:48
I can't imagine that making 20 glass-pressed CDs could ever be cost-effective because the process of making the glass master is so expensive. Suppliers that have an MOQ of 100 tend to charge similar pricing to those who have MOQs of 500 (compare your 500€ for 100 with Angelo's £500 for 500) since the bulk-cost is for the glass master not the replication. [in the parlance "duplication" means CDR and "replication" means glass-pressed] ------------- What? |
Posted By: Meltdowner
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 14:28
| ^ I have no idea, but these limited editions are normally more expensive. |
Posted By: Angelo
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 15:41
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I was waiting for you to drop in Dean, left the term IP for you to bring in - stuck to 'time and effort' just for you , but that was exactly what I was getting ad. ------------- http://www.iskcrocks.com" rel="nofollow - ISKC Rock Radio I stopped blogging and reviewing - so won't be handling requests. Promo's for ariplay can be sent to [email protected] |
Posted By: Angelo
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 15:44
Sometimes advertising is useful: this discussion brought up an ad for Dutch CD pressing company. They offer batches of 50 CDs, but through what they call "DUPLICATION" - which will likely amount to using a large burning machine resulting in similar results as a CD burner on a PC. Their motivation for offering those: if you want a really pressed CD, it's not cost effective without ordering a batch of at least 300, which you may not need... So, no glass pressing in low quantities for them at least. ------------- http://www.iskcrocks.com" rel="nofollow - ISKC Rock Radio I stopped blogging and reviewing - so won't be handling requests. Promo's for ariplay can be sent to [email protected] |
Posted By: Ozark Soundscape
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 16:23
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For me it depends on what the album is, what condition it's in, and how much money I have to spend. No one rule or principle for me. |
Posted By: Catcher10
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 17:26
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Posted By: Komandant Shamal
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 21:07
 i would agree with this concise answer which comprehed the OP question without needlessly tittle-tattle.
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Posted By: dr wu23
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 21:17
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An interesting question but one can ask the same thing about a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, or even the price of a new car......isn't this all determined by the 'marketplace' ? Perhaps someone with knowledge about economics can address the issue since I think food and cost of heating one's home is overpriced. ------------- One does nothing yet nothing is left undone. Haquin |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 21:19
So you think all downloads should be free. Cute. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Komandant Shamal
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 22:00
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Posted By: Nogbad_The_Bad
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 22:01
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Well that's just nuts. ------------- Ian Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on Progrock.com https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-avant-jazzcore-happy-hour/ |
Posted By: Catcher10
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 22:02
I have not paid 15 for any CD, last one was PT~Octane Twisted but that included a DVD. I have not paid 89.99 for vinyl, most I have paid in the last 10yrs was $75.00 for an original Delirium label release of PT~Signify. I don't even pay have of that.....Oh well, guess I am a good negotiator -------------
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Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 22:19
Name your price is not free, if you pay nothing then it has no price, if you pay something then it is not free. The question that you state to have comprehended is "what is a fair price for a CD or download?" - the answer you agreed with (using a dumb clappie like a performing circus seal) was "0" - therefore the "name your price" that you honestly believe to be a fair one (since you comprehended the damn question) was zero, zilch, nada, nought, nowt, zip, nothing. So now explain why the cost of vinyl, which can be produced in runs of 500 for $7 each, should be sold for 12 times that cost... and why the price must go up. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Rosscoe
Date Posted: January 11 2016 at 05:26
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I'm not sure what is "fair", but I don't like to pay more than £10 for a CD and £7.99 for a download (assuming a single album - obviously I would pay more for double albums, though not twice as much). If there is a difference of around £ or less, I would pay the extra and get the CD - depending on how familiar I am with the artist and how confident I am that I will like it. BUt otherwise I will get wchichever format is cheapest. I don't understand the appeal of vinyl at all.
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Posted By: chopper
Date Posted: January 11 2016 at 06:54
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The sort of prices I pay at the moment? CD - £10 but generally pay less than this unless it's a new release that I really want
Downloads - around £7
(assuming a single CD for both) Vinyl - I don't buy it
Gigs - Well, I paid over £100 for Kate Bush but there is no other artist still working who I would do that for. I consider £10/12 for a small gig (which I prefer) to around £30 for a bigger venue/artist about fair.
And that's not bad considering my first LP cost me £2.45 in 1973 and that would apparently be around £20 now according to the inflation calculator I just tried.
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Posted By: Nogbad_The_Bad
Date Posted: January 11 2016 at 07:05
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Gigs, I typically like to go to small gigs in the $10 to $30 range, I'll occasionally splurge up to $70-$80 if the band is a must see, but their aren't many of those. I'll pay $150-$250 for a three day festival about 3 times a year but they usually come with a bigger bill for flights and accommodation. ------------- Ian Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on Progrock.com https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-avant-jazzcore-happy-hour/ |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 11 2016 at 07:06
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Last year I paid £20 to see Genesis tribute band The Carpet Crawlers perform The Lamb in its entirety @ The Maltings in Farnham, Surrey. What at first seemed to be a lot for a tribute band turned out to be a bloody bargain for a faultless two hour show complete with all the correct back-projections and costumes. [Genesis wrote Watcher of the Skies in the cellar bar of The Maltings all those years ago.] Other than that I have no fixed price for what I would or would not pay to see a band because I probably only manage 2 or 3 gigs a year now so the expense is irrelevant. If I want to see the show I'll go and see it. ------------- What? |
Posted By: altaeria
Date Posted: January 11 2016 at 12:57
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Adele and Taylor Swift make these decisions. |
Posted By: Catcher10
Date Posted: January 11 2016 at 14:51
When both are 40 I doubt anyone goes to their shows like they are now.......Or the make up companies pay them what they are getting now as spoke-models.....I don't know the break down but both Swift and Katy Perry make boat loads from make up contracts, way more than music. -------------
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Posted By: Replayer
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 00:59
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I consider $10 to $16 (£7 to £11) to be a fair price for a CD. Usually, I only pay more than that if the CD is out of print and the album is not for available for purchase as a download. For digital downloads, I usually pay $6 to $10 (£4 to £7) for MP3 albums, though I'm willing to pay an extra dollar or two if it's available in a lossless format. Interestingly, I was able to buy CD's from Amazon that were cheaper than the same albums in MP3 format. I suppose they were trying to free up space in the warehouse. |
Posted By: Barbu
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 01:56
Never use emoticons when big Dean is around! He loathes them immensely and he may become terrible unkind. ------------- |
Posted By: Komandant Shamal
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 05:41
 
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Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 05:51
Correction: Dean loathes badly used emoticons and may become terribly unkind when they are followed by facile remarks.  ------------- What? |
Posted By: chopper
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 07:04
I noticed that when I wanted to download a Motorpsycho album. It was cheaper to buy the CD with a free download than it was to buy the download on its own
 , so I ordered the CD, got the download, saved a few quid and threw the CD away. |
Posted By: emigre80
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 07:43
| I always prefer to buy CDs. More expensive (generally), but if ever all my electronic devices crash, I won't lose the music. Also I listen to things on CD as well. |
Posted By: Blinkyjoh
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 11:00
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new: I think $12-15Cdn is fair for New Regular Length Cd. $20-25 for a double but that is pushing it. Obscure CDs that Amazon probably sells 10 of a year, i can see warranting $5 more. $8 for downloads tops. old: I think old cd's are overpriced, whether they are remastered or not, $10 flat. $5 for DLs. i can just haunt thrift stores and find what i want, upload it for cheaper. so $5 fair. |
Posted By: Barbu
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 13:36
 ------------- |
Posted By: WeepingElf
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 14:09
Building pyramids is fun! ------------- ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf "What does Elvish rock music sound like?" - "Yes." |
Posted By: scruffydragon
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 14:41
Pyramids is confusing if you haven't been around for a few years .Haven't brought a CD for a number of years either until tonight. Still working on old prices. For me and my low income about £7-£10 for a CD. I did look into MP3 albums recently but they were not much different then a CD in price. I tend to buy second hand CD's which are usually more affordable including postage and packing.
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 15:08
I know this thread thread isn't about whether Dream Theatre can't even spell, as clearly they can't. As for a fair price for music in general... Hmm, Hard, it depends heavily on cost of production, distribution, cost of venue etc, their costs generally. I will pay more for a new vinyl than a new CD and I will pay more for a CD than a download. For a downloaded album, I don't mind paying a few bucks. For a vinyl with a nice, high quality cardboard sleeve I will pay 20 plus, mahogany sleeve will pay more, for a CD maybe 8 bucks, and for a leather LP will pay more. I don't like CDs, though (unlike vinyls, CDs are outdated technology haha). For a concert, depends on how good the venue is, how big the band is, and how far they have to travel. For a local act, free, but I buy beer or watch in the park. I would pay more for a platinum record than a vinyl since the material cost is so much more. I buy my records before they go gold or platinum since my work is part-time and I simply cannot afford the more expensive materials. |
Posted By: Komandant Shamal
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 19:42
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Posted By: Replayer
Date Posted: January 12 2016 at 20:55
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For the concert tickets, I think the $40-$100 (£37-£92) range is reasonable, with the caveat that I only attend a couple of concerts per year. |
Posted By: Davesax1965
Date Posted: January 13 2016 at 07:09
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£92 is reasonable ?????????????????? Blimey. ------------- |
Posted By: chopper
Date Posted: January 13 2016 at 08:45
Blimey indeed. There aren't many people I pay £92 to see. |
Posted By: Replayer
Date Posted: January 13 2016 at 09:59
I just realized I converted dollars to euros instead of pounds... The range should have been £28-£70.
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Posted By: Melodie&Rhythmus
Date Posted: January 26 2016 at 13:27
I just paid 99€ for this  Maybe I could have found a cheaper copy, but the condition is great. As u all know, this great album came out in a very fragile and thin cover. I consider music distributed digitally valueless because the supply is endless - u can make an infinite number of exact copies by a simple computer command - this is dificult to do with the album pictured - hence the higher value. I can't see why digital products somehow should escape the supply/demand mechanism? All attempts to do so by the industry have been https://defectivebydesign.org%20" rel="nofollow - pathetic. In general, I oppose "intellectual property" and fantazise of a world where all art products should be free as in freedom and free beer, and where artistic output shouldn't be reduced to consumer goods alongside sausages and and iPhones. 99,9% of the music I buy is second hand vinyl, often I pay huge sums, but the artists and the industry gain nothing from it, and it's not illegal! |
Posted By: Replayer
Date Posted: January 26 2016 at 14:53
May I ask for what you're paying when you buy an album? The materials or the content therein? Without the music and cover art, you've basically paid €100 for a vinyl disc and a cardboard sleeve. It's for effort that goes in recording the music and cover art (band, instruments, studio costs, designer, promotion, manufacturing, transportation) that we are paying when buying an album.
Let me know where you get your free beer from and who actually pays for it. Remember, there's no such thing as a free lunch, i.e. somebody is ultimately responsible for bearing the cost of production.
The difference is that with physical products, only one owner (and maybe a small audience) can experience the music at a time. It seems obvious to say, but when you sell your vinyl, you can't enjoy it anymore. Most people are not willing to pay €100 to own a physical product or to pay thousands to an artist to commission a product, so "intellectual property" comes in the picture to allow many customers to pay a reasonable price for their entertainment. Read these articles (or the entire blog) for a more articulate explanation: http://thecynicalmusician.com/2013/08/copyright-the-inverted-human-pyramid/" rel="nofollow - http://thecynicalmusician.com/2013/08/copyright-the-inverted-human-pyramid/ http://thecynicalmusician.com/2014/06/the-digital-first-sale-zombie/" rel="nofollow - http://thecynicalmusician.com/2014/06/the-digital-first-sale-zombie/ |
Posted By: Melodie&Rhythmus
Date Posted: January 26 2016 at 16:48
Both. Of course!
Obviously that doesn't apply to my music buying habits, only greedy record shop owners and private sellers benefit from what I buy, so I'm not included in 'we' u speak of. In general, I'm not interested in music produced after apx. 1985. Nowadays most people don't buy cd's or any other physical medium but resort to streaming - which is horrible. For most artists, and centainly for the pheriphial ones, the income from streaming services doesn't cover the actual expenses anyway. Also, nowadays, - and I'm speaking as a hobby musician - it's possible to record music at very low cost maintaining a reasonable standard. Free software is available - use a linux machine, build a realtime kernel and install a (somewhat) high end DAW such as Ardour at no cost! Of course hardware cost money, but can be bought second hand at a reasonable price. If I were to publish what I create, I would never ever require that my expenses should be covered. I have a thing for effect pedals from the former Soviet Union, instruments from the former German Democratic Republic and tape recorders form the former Czechoslovakia. All that crap has cost me some money over time, but no way would it be fair to send the bill to people potentially interested in my creative output! I know that's not typical, but that's my standars. Should I then require the same standards for professional full time musicians? Thats a very difficult question. Certainly that would require a complete reorganisation of 'the world as it is today' (great album!) and a thorough rethinking and deconstruction of the concept of copyright and intellectual property. That's not a one man job, so I'll spare u any solutions. In the country I live (not Germany), it's possible for some artists to have their expenses covered by the state. A friend of mine sent in a short letter describing what he would like to work on (some uninteresting and narrow sound art experiments), and the state supplied him with a considerable income over a couple of months. Personally, I would never accept that and would prefer to work, as I do, as a taxi driver, and do my art free of any interests in my spare time. But for the future, for the art and for mankind I hope that we'll see a day without copyrigt and claims of intellectual property! |
Posted By: Replayer
Date Posted: January 27 2016 at 10:57
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My point was that the content is what gives the album its value. The part that required imagination and musical/graphical training and hard work. The part that you can often buy online in digital form separate from the physical vinyl and CD. The part you called valueless in your first post. Given digital music files and cover art image files, a person with basic computer skills can use a CD-R drive and color printer to make themselves a physical, albeit not professional, version of the album. The digital intellectual property is what gave the album its value. Also, the rampant digital piracy of the past twenty years has proven that the majority of people are more interested in the “valueless” digital content than the physical artifact. It is the blank CD and vinyl that are valueless until they have been inscribed with content.
That's not something you initially disclosed. It's true that older and more obscure music is scarcer and I’ll grant that out of print music poses a special problem for the music buyer. Also, while you indicated that you have a preference for vinyl and original pressings, I want to point you that you could have bought the Art Zoyd 3 CD for €25,00 from the http://www.artzoyd.net/prestashop/en/cd/11-symphonie-pour-le-jour-ou-bruleront-les-cites-version-originale-1976.html" rel="nofollow - band’s website and not given your hard-earned money to greedy record shop owners.
It’s true that the market for physical forms of music has decreased, but you forgot to mention digital downloads. There is still a significantly large market for legal music, as evidence by iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, Bandcamp and other smaller vendors. In the past few years, the market for vinyl has also increased significantly, though it remains to be seen whether it was driven by existing vinyl aficionados or new ones. I agree about streaming not being a viable option for the artists and that’s the main reason why I don’t subscribe to any music streaming services, together with the fact that I want to listen to music even when I don’t have access to the Internet.
It’s true that it’s relatively easy to record music nowadays. I even do it myself using Anvil Studio because it also displays sheet music for MIDI. However, this do-it-yourself attitude also leads to a glut of self-recorded albums that do not even have ten buyers. Here is an excerpt from another Cynical Musician article, which can be read in full http://thecynicalmusician.com/2009/08/flat-earth-economics/" rel="nofollow - here : “One thing that bears repeating over and over is that the majority of people couldn’t really care less about obscure independent artists. I’ve probably over-referenced the http://www.prsformusic.com/creators/news/research/Documents/The%20long%20tail%20of%20P2P%20v9.pdf" rel="nofollow - Long Tail of P2P study, but the link’s here, nonetheless, in case you haven’t seen it yet. Chief conclusion: even for free, people will be getting the popular stuff. The Big Business products. Unless independent music suddenly gets major promotional traction (and I can’t see a reason for that, since there’s little or no money to be made there), that’s the way it’s going to stay. The situation in recorded music reflects the live performance situation quite well. Who’s going to pay to see a show by some band they do not know? (If you play for free, that defeats the purpose of touring revenue replacing recording sales.) The best way to build up an audience ahead of costly and time-consuming touring is through recordings, but if those remain obscure, we’re back to square one. Not to mention the fact that quality recordings (ones that match listener expectations in this day and age) will probably cost you. Plus, promoting those recordings so someone actually hears them will probably cost you some more. If you’re giving them away, so more people are inclined to listen, they aren’t making you money. If you aren’t touring (because you haven’t built up an audience yet), ticket sales aren’t making you money. I guess that means going back to your day job…”
I don’t think it’s the government’s responsibility to subsidize every citizen's artistic inclinations, because (1) the taxpayers are ultimately footing the bill without having a say if they are interested in the project (2) the risk of having to produce only government-sanctioned art. You do have to admit that it’s much harder to find time to record music when working full time, so there's something to be said about being a full time working musician.
According to your earlier statements, your main gripe is the price of expensive and rare vinyl. However, in that case, the value of the product is related to the physical artifact, because it’s not obtainable in any other form. Also, removing copyright will do nothing to lower the price of Art Zoyd 3 because it will still be a rare collector’s item. Remember, copyright does have a time limit and works do eventually go into the public domain, where they can be freely replicated. Sure, in most cases it’s not going to happen within our lifetimes, but at least the art will be freely accessible to the future of mankind… Also, don’t take this personally, but I’d appreciate if you’d use the word “you” instead of “u”. |
Posted By: Melodie&Rhythmus
Date Posted: January 27 2016 at 15:37
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Thank you for ur reply. (sry!) I've never stated that the price of rare vinyl in general and the Art Zoyd album in particular is too high. What's attractive about that field is the simplicity and transparency. Only supply and demand dictate the price of an out of print vinyl album, and I can accept that, yet I don't fully endorse the mechanism. In addition, the value is very unlikely to decrease and likely to increase - another aspect I like about old vinyls. If I were to buy hundreds of songs as computer files at 7$ each, I would feel that I washed my money down the drain. The value of any consumer good is dictated by supply and demand, but somehow it's different - or you seem to mean - should be different with regards to creative output. But the problem is, that such output generally is conceived as mere products you buy as you buy any other product. In the old days that was not not a problem, as supply was controlled and naturally limited. The digital age has posed a series of problems for primarily the music industy, and the solutions offered by the industry such as the horrific DRM, streaming services and downloads are all unsatisfactory. If a sausage could easily and readily be reproduced a billionfold, prices would drop rapidly towards zero regardless of the meat industry wanting it to be different by pointing at other factors besides the supply/demand mechanism. Market mechanisms don't care about art and can't prize art in the way you seem to wish - and to these dreadful laws we are all slaves. I think this is complicated, and it's very difficult for me to formulate a coherent point of view on this matter, but I maintain that copyright is a ridiculous construction. I'll give a couple of examples: Sheet music by the declared and condemned communist composer Hanns Eisler is mostly copyrighted, surely that was never his intentions and contrary to everything he believed in. He would surely spin in his grave, if he could read crap like the example quoted below.
Consider also this funny and mind blowing example concerning the computer program "true" - a program that does nothing - successfully! It contains no code, and yet AT&T claimed intellectual property of it - true - they copyrighted three blank lines. http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/ATT_Copyright_true.html" rel="nofollow - Source Finally I would like to draw some general parallels to the software world, where so called copyleft licences (GPL etc.) have proved very effective in rapid creative development of high quality products generally free of charge for users, granting them rights rather than restrictions. Of course music is not software, but it would be very interesting if a movement like the free software movement would spread to the field of music applying copyleftish licences and attitudes.
R u 4 real? I am sensible, but this is managable. But I can't help wonder; what has the innocent little letter "u" done to you? It's arguably the most sensible way to spell 'you'. It's easier to read and write. But I guess - we all have our quirks. For instance, you wrote "digital downloads", fair enough - it's a wide spread phrase. I personally dislike tautological expressions like such, "digital" here is avoidable and doesn't add any meaning. All downloads are necessarily digital. Rot Front! |
Posted By: Replayer
Date Posted: January 27 2016 at 23:22
I'd say that stands at odds with "ur" earlier comment regarding "greedy record shop owners and private sellers".
Firstly, Amazon and iTunes both enforce prices of $0.99 to $1.50 per song and an entire MP3 album can be bought for $5-$15, nowhere near the $7 per file you mentioned (or were you talking about zip files?). In terms of cost per albums, digital music is usually, but not always, cheaper for the music fan. Secondly, the buyers don't need to worry about vinyl or CD degradation with music files. They can transfer them to their laptop, phone, MP3 player, tablet, back-up hard drive or blank CD. I have bought dozens of digital music albums last year and I don't feel I've been shortchanged in any way. I can listen to the music enjoy it and know that I can download it again or restore it from backup if my hard drive crashes. I'd rather do this than amass a bulky collection of expensive vinyl albums that I'll be afraid to play because they might get scratched. Plus, I can take the music files and listen to them on the go, on an airplane for example, which I can't do with vinyl. Do you buy music to listen to or to look at it sitting on your shelf? (it's another rhetorical question, but I have the feeling that the answer will yet again be "Both. Of course!")
Now you're getting it At the risk of sounding like a broken record (get it? ), I'll quote another http://thecynicalmusician.com/2013/01/commodities-monopolies-remixes-and-rights-a-symphony/" rel="nofollow - article by Krzysztof 'Faza' Wiszniewski, the Cynical Musician (no, I'm not the blog's author), where the point is that music is not fungible and thus not a commodity:"Let’s state outright: “commodity” is not a synonym for “product”. It is a sub-class of products. All commodities are products, not all products are commodities. As dictionary definitions go, InvestorWords.com has a pretty good one http://www.investorwords.com/975/commodity.html" rel="nofollow - here (1.) In short: commodities are fungible (“[are] interchangeable with another product of the same type“). In a natural state, anyone with a plot of land can produce grain, anyone with a coal mine can dig for coal; and having produced a quantity, supply it to the market. Notice how that differs from say the Apple iPhone – one of the most successful consumer products of recent years. There’s only one supplier that provides Apple iPhones – Apple. The iPhone is not a commodity, because it isn’t interchangeable with another product of the same type – if you really want an iPhone, then Android or Windows Phone will not be a viable substitute. People are camping out for Apple’s latest shiny-shiny for a reason: that’s the only place they can get it." "Taking a broader perspective, we can see that whenever “who’s the supplier” is an issue, the supplier in question will – and should – have an exclusive status. Imagine a market for your own personal services: clearly you are the only person in the position to dictate the terms of supply. The ability of another person to unilaterally (that is: without your consent) offer the supply of your own time and labour to potential buyers is what we call slavery."http://thecynicalmusician.com/2011/08/property-and-monopoly/" rel="nofollow - Here is another article that discusses copyright in terms of property rights.
I don't agree with DRM software, as I find it too intrusive. Instead I proposed that the illegal torrent indexes be shut down, which will solve the bulk of the problem. Sure, people will still be able to make private copies, but they were able to do that with tape machines anyway.
Music is not sausage. http://thecynicalmusician.com/2010/03/value-creation-v-value-capture/" rel="nofollow - Here you go, again: "The arguments being made about how the marginal cost of digital copies being zero implies the price of recordings being zero are bogus for this very reason: while the copies may be free to make, the recordings are not. The marginal cost of a recording can easily go into four figures. The marginal cost of a movie is usually millions of dollars." Also, music obviously has a non-zero value if people are willing to pay for pirated copies or the torrent index owners can generate advertising revenue by giving away others' work for free.
Art is inherently commercial: if nobody wants it, nobody will pay for it. In the past, artists would be commissioned by wealthy patrons to produce art for their enjoyment. And there is a market demand for music, otherwise nobody would pirate it.
I entirely agree.
I maintain that speed limits are a ridiculous construction and that drivers should be free to ignore them, as their cars are easily capable at driving much faster. I don't think a judge will take kindly to the interpretation that because I can, I should.
Objection, your honor: supposition. For example the USSR did have http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_Soviet_Union" rel="nofollow - copyright law , although it was much shorter than in the West and allowed the government to nationalize works at will (regardless of the author's preference). I would think the German Democratic Republic (which you seem to be a fan of) had something similar.
There is a Jewish proverb: "For example is not proof." That blank file example would probably dismissed from court, as simple concepts like formulas, algorithms or mathematical principles cannot be copyrighted. See http://https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3528663" rel="nofollow - here (where it is also noted that AT&T probably added the copyright statement automatically to all their files, just to be safe): "There are two things that should be note about copyright, which would have prevented AT&T or anyone else from actually enforcing any copyright on such simple files. First, copyright does not protect ideas--it only protects the way an author expressed the idea. The closer the expression is to the minimal way to express the idea, the less likely it is to be copyrightable. In the case of the simple implementations of /bin/true and /bin/false, they are pretty darned close to minimal. Second, if you have author X who produces a copyrightable work, and author Y who later independently produces a work that happens to be identical to X's work, but Y did not copy elements from X, Y is not infringing X's copyright. This second case doesn't happen often. If someone were to decide to write a novel about boy wizards, and produced something identical to the first Harry Potter book, no one would believe that they did this without copying from Rowling. However, if the work is small enough, an identical independent work is believable. In the case of the simple /bin/true and /bin/false, a defense that you didn't copy from AT&T would be believable. Even if you admitted you looked at the AT&T source or had it described to you, it would be believable that you produced your own expression of the idea of "a do nothing shell script" and a "shell script that exits with status 255"
I support the GPL's mission and all the volunteers who have contributed their time and expertise. However, the key word is "volunteers".
Regarding the term "digital downloads", I concede that it's redundant and I stand corrected. I used it because I thought it was the music industry standard term for music downloads. I must have picked it up from the The Cynical Musician blog, but going forth I'll use "download" or "music download" or "digital album" or "digital music", as the case may be. Regarding 1337speak, it's hard for me to take somebody who uses texting abbreviations seriously. I was taught to spell properly, and while language and spelling does change over time, English spelling has become relatively standardized in the 18th and 19th centuries. Typing "u" saves only two characters, and from the lengths of your replies it doesn't seem to save that much time. Maybe we should just update all the classics to make them easier to read. "2B or not 2B: that is the question" "God hath given u 1 face, & u make urself another" "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in ur philosophy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Hamlet" rel="nofollow - Ur-Hamlet , indeed. Edit: Fixed the Ur-Hamlet link |
Posted By: Melodie&Rhythmus
Date Posted: January 29 2016 at 16:14
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Thank you again for your reply. You present good arguments for your case. Though I'm outsmartet various places, I'm not convinced! Nontheless, It's interesting reading. I don't have anything to add about the subject matter. However I would like to object to various suppositions you make about what I mean, who I am a fan of etc. As I read parts of your reply, it seems you argue against some straw man version of myself. A classic dirty trick. No, the examples don't prove anything. I never presented them as or never suggested they should serve as anything but examples of some ridiculous and humerous disadvantages of copyright. Of course the Eisler example is suppositious - it's formed as a hypothetical phrase and I dont' believe anybody is able to spin in their graves. Though I concede - "surely" is a bad choise of words. Actually using "surely" in hypothetical phrases is mostly senseless an contradictious. I admit to have comitted that crime. Certainly I have leftish leanings, but I am not a fan of the GDR, Soviet Union or North Korea! The copyright laws of such contries are irrelevant to me. \edit I can't help commenting on this part as well
Funny. I don't really care about time consumption. I think the letter 'u' should be accepted as an alternative way of spelling 'you' for many reasons, mostly sane and sensible ones. But! I'm not in favour of wiping out existing and historic English spelling standards in favour of 1337speak. A horrible idea! The fact that English spelling became standardized 200 years ago could just as well stress the need for a spelling reform (pedagogical and formal concerns) as well as serve in an argument against such a reform (cultural and historic concerns). For pure formalists (straw dogs!), something like Frege's predicate logic should make up our universal spelling system - internally coherent and logically pure, but with no regards to historic, cultural and linguistic concerns.  |
Posted By: Replayer
Date Posted: February 01 2016 at 00:49
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Thank you for a civil and thought-out post. I so detest when differences of opinion go down in flame wars and diatribe. I think the laws of communist governments are of interest because it shows what happens when communism is put into practice. Unregulated capitalism leads to monopolies and externalities such as environmental damage, but I think that with proper regularization (among others, things such as anti-trust laws, penalties on excessive pollution, work safety standards, maternity leave, minimum wage, national holidays) the free market provides the best motivation for someone to risk on a new undertaking, be it business, mass entertainment or high art. I don't think I treated your points of view on copyright as a strawman, as I simply interpreted your position as someone who is strongly opposed to copyright and replied point by point. I admit that some of my answers were sarcastic and in a few instances my goal was http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum" rel="nofollow - reductio ad absurdum . The Wikipedia page mentions the strawman fallacy at the bottom, so if I veered into that territory and misrepresented your position, I apologize. Regarding the GDR, I admit I extrapolated from the following items in your posts: Eisler, Melodie & Rhythmus, Rot Front. |
Posted By: Melodie&Rhythmus
Date Posted: February 02 2016 at 12:30
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Thank you for your reply. I decided to try to make a more thought through attack on copyrigt and try to explain why I'm not yet convinced. I'll might apply various dirty tricks, and I have a feeling, that flipping the truth value of my utterances infact could yield some absurd consequences. But I don't worry much about that. In fact, I don't think the meaning of a predicate (eg. copyright is such and such) is determined by the binary feature 'truth value' anyway. Word-to-world relations aren't trivial. In addition, what we are dealing with are mostly opinionated and subjective claims, and such often have difficulties being either true or false. For a far out, yet fascinating, take on the philosophy of language, read (parts of) the http://www.indiana.edu/~p374/Daodejing.pdf" rel="nofollow - Dao de jing. Before I get to the issue of copyrigt,
(For the record, I'll state that I in no way think the EU is comparable to eg. the Soviet Union in terms of being a bad thing - the crimes commited by the Stalinist regime in the name of socialism, such as forcing huge portions of the population to starve by enforcing socalled 'collectivization' of farming, the paranoid purges and mass deportations of supposed political enemies and the ruthless killing of retreating own-soldiers etc. etc. are among the most serious crimes of the previous century.) Back on track, I took the time to read one of the http://thecynicalmusician.com/2013/01/commodities-monopolies-remixes-and-rights-a-symphony/" rel="nofollow - blog articles . It's refuting the statement 'Copyright is monopoly', a statement I never have comitted to! It must have been that 'someone who is strongly opposed to copyright' person who claimed such a thing. Anyway..
The category of interest - non-commodities - is left open and undefined, exept in terms of a few examples and in terms of not being commodties. That's unconvincing and non-informative. However, this issue of classification is irrelevant as the supply/demand mechanism apply to commodities (grain and beer) as well as non-commodities (Apple iPhones and copyrighted intellectual property), albeit in different ways. I'm willing to relax my previous claim that music distributed digitally is valueless solely due to the supply/demand mechanism. I'll modify it and argue that the value is near zero or approaching zero mainly because of this mechanism, and that such a mechanism is more powerful than the indutry's and artists' wish to have their expenses covered - an understandable and to some extend fair wish. I fail to see how the market is able to prize expressions of ideas in accordance with the expressors efforts and costs when the digitalized realizations of such are (close to) limitless in supply. The increasing popularity of streaming services seems to to indicate that the market can't. In our brave new world, you can buy access to 30.000.000 songs for 9.99$ a month (spotify). 30.000.000 songs? That's just ridiculous! You can also download the songs (spotify calls downloading "to store/sync offline"). Downloads are restricted in this absurd fashion
I'm not familiar with using spotify, but I have a feeling they disguise various aspects by obscuring language and calling downloading 'to store offline'. Perhaps storarge is done in some absurd fashion and has additional restrictions - I'd not be suprised, if only the spotify client could access and play those files - I don't know. Basically, using one device and presuming 'to store offline' equals 'downloading', you can download 3333 songs at the price of 9.99$. The prize of a song is 0,003$. If you have three devices (the limit), the price of a song becomes 0.001$. Copyright seemingly can't prevent that. Approaching zero? In addition to being laws that are ineffective in securing owners of expressions of ideas a prize remotely related to the expressors efforts, copyright also plays a part in preventing making 'products of the mind' available to people freely on a large scale - the possibility to do so represents a significant technological advance from which people should benefit, even if it conflicts with the interests of owners of intellectual property. I care much more about the availability of 'products of the mind' than I care about protecting and respecting ridiculous rights given to, or bought by, the owners of expressions of ideas.
"Remember You are me I am you All of us together Now go AUM"
|
Posted By: Replayer
Date Posted: February 14 2016 at 18:34
Sorry for the long
delay in replying, but I was busy with work and school and I would my
rather use limited free time for pleasurable activities, which certainly do not include spending several hours on this response.
I'm not sure what you said here. Regarding the '"truth values" of copyright, a person either has the right to makes copies of a work (such as the artist, the publisher, or whomever bought the rights), or they don't as far as the law is concerned.
I have read parts of the text for a college course on ancient Chinese civilization.
Er, I'm not sure I understand your complaint. You professed to have leftist leanings, but are objecting to the European Union because it restricts capitalism? I was talking about national laws (though I didn't specifically mention that) which protect citizens from some of the negative consequences of the free market. There are good laws and bad laws. Just because some laws are bad or illogical does not mean all laws are bad or illogical.
Firstly, I used that statement in a sarcastic manner in my earlier reply, but I can see that it was not clear. Secondly, your example of the AT&T copyrighting an empty script did not even qualify as a valid example, since AT&T would have great difficulty enforcing that copyright, which is probably why they never tried. Just because I type a copyright notice on a self-published version of The Art of War, David Copperfield, the complete works of William Shakespeare, Beethoven's Third Symphony, War and Peace, The Name of the Rose or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, does not mean I actually own the copyright and am able to enforce it. You seem to be a fan of set theory, so you should know that the empty set {} is a subset of any set. If AT&T's empty program would be protected by copyright, then AT&T could accuse any software in the world of infringing on its copyright, since the set of characters that make up any file contain the empty set as a subset. Furthermore, regarding the proverb "For example is not proof": outside of pure mathematics and logic, not many things can be proven absolutely. I actually first encountered the proverb in a textbook on logic and proof-writing. Modern science has its foundation in empiricism and induction (from the specific to the general) rather than the medieval Aristotelian/scholastic approach that focused on deduction (from the general to the specific), which is much more limited it terms of generating new knowledge. Rather, science attempts to find the most general theory that explains observable phenomena. When an exception is found that is not explained by the theory, the theory is either revised or discarded in favor of a new theory that accounts for the exception. Mathematics only allows induction according to the Principle of Mathematical Induction, where a statement is proven for a base case, then proved that if it holds true for any natural number k, then it is also true for k+1. This is generally not achievable in the real world. I guess Mendeleev's predictions about the properties of then-unknown elements from the atomic, period and group numbers could qualify in a limited sense.
I wholeheartedly agree.
I never asserted that you claimed that copyright is monopoly, but it's one of the main arguments used by people who are anti-copyright for “moral/philosophical” reasons. If I quote The Wealth of Nations, that doesn't mean I think you're opposed to the free market. I included a quote that was relevant to one of your statements, namely the assertion that intellectual property's value is tied to the cost of producing copies. I left the link to provide the source for the quote and for you and others to read because it's a well written argument against a popular anti-copyright stance.
You explicitly compared intellectual property with sausages when discussing the cost of production and how it affects the supply and demand, when there is a very important distinction in that sausages are fungible because the price of sausages is governed by the cost of the raw materials and distribution, whereas in music/software/film, the cost of creating additional copies represents a small part of the final price.
You wrote earlier that “The value of any consumer good is dictated by supply and demand, but somehow it's different - or you seem to mean - should be different with regards to creative output.” Yes, intellectual property property is subject to demand. For example, the rights to the complete recordings of the Beatles are always going to be worth much more than the complete recordings of The Shaggs (I'm not trying to pick on the girls, who were made to record music by their father; I'm just stating that they had little musical ability or commercial appeal). As as another example, popular artists can charge a larger price per album than obscure ones because there is a larger demand for their output, though even small niche artists can charge higher prices if they have a dedicated fanbase. That being said, it is an entirely different matter when it comes to supply. The very concept of copyright revolves around the ability of making relatively inexpensive copies of material that is deemed valuable by a subset of the public (this subset could be general music fans, Japanese teenagers, a small number of avid collectors, etc). This is the key difference between intellectual property and physical property. It is easy to conflate a copy of intellectual property with the physical artifact itself. In some cases, the physical artifact does have a substantial intrinsic value (for example: a lavishly produced album with pictures and interviews, a signed copy of the album, a rare first edition pressing).
I beg to differ. The issue of classification is not irrelevant specifically because of the different ways the supply/demand mechanism applies to intellectual property, which hinges on the ability to make additional copies of the product at a marginal cost so as to spread the costs between a large number of buyers.
Whether or not a piece of music has value or not is for the intended market to decide. I couldn't care less about what many leading musical acts are recording, but I'm not part of the market for their products. Arguing that the value of music is (almost) worthless because it can be easily replicated is akin to saying that food doesn't have value because it's easy to shoplift from the grocery store. That is, just because it's easy to steal, does not mean that goods being stolen have no value (otherwise why would anyone steal them?). Also, you might be surprised at the number albums sales needed to sustain at the minimum wage level (in the United States). This is The Cynical Musician's best known article, http://thecynicalmusician.com/2010/01/the-paradise-that-should-have-been/" rel="nofollow - The Paradise That Should Have Been . http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/" rel="nofollow - This other website has an interesting set of charts using Faza's figures.
I will reiterate this point: intellectual property's value is not derived from the cost of replication.
I never used Spotify nor any streaming service. For the record, I think streaming is a poor solution to piracy and a bad business model in general because (1) the artists receive a pittance, (2) it introduces a middle man (the streaming provider) that grows rich by aggregating content produced by thousands of artists and skims profit from the monthly subscribers, (3) streaming companies generally divide money from each subscription fee to artists based on their popularity, and I don't want my money going to Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Nickelback or many other big profile artists as a matter of principle, (4) people can still pirate music because it will be cheaper than paying a monthly subscription. The Cynical Musician criticizes streaming in The Paradise That Should Have Been and many other articles. I recognize that downloading the music file to a temporary directory is necessary to ensure the music doesn't skip due to the internet connection, but taking the entire library offline seems stretching the rules to me. Then again, if you want to keep listening to the songs, you will have to keep on paying $9.99 per month, so if you stop paying for them, you can't listen to them anymore.
Er, that's $9.99 per month ($120 per year) for as long as you want access to the music. This $120 per year figure is more than the $105 that average consumer music is spending per capita in the United States as of August 2014 ( http://www.statista.com/statistics/325994/music-spending-average-consumer/" rel="nofollow - source ). Of course, one important distinction is that a significant percentage of the monthly subscription fee goes to the streaming provider, not the musicians or the labels that invested in them. Furthermore, if you cancel your streaming subscription, you don't have the right to listen to the music anymore. Also, many of your favorite artists may not be present on a particular streaming service (or even any streaming service at all). Also, what does it matter that you can download the music on three devices? You can't listen to all three at the same time (well, you can but there doesn't seem to be a point to it). If you're suggesting that the users give the devices to other people, that it not allowed because the music subscription is for personal use.
Why? I'm talking specifically about the italicized text. The internet already allows people to send e-mail, engage in e-commerce, conduct video conferences, create blogs, play multiplayer games without having to be on the same network, look up obscure information, engage in discussions on forums, buy music that will never be available in their local music shop (if it still exists). Why should people benefit from free entertainment from movies, books, video games or music?
Then how are the owners of expressions of ideas to sustain themselves? They have needs for food, housing, healthcare, entertainment for themselves and their families. Going on tour and playing live music also requires a significant investment, as well.
Funny how that is not mentioned in http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/" rel="nofollow - Universal Declaration of Human Rights .
Furthermore, unlawfully reproducing others' intellectual property adversely impacts their livelihood. Not all musicians are millionaire rock stars, you know. Also, note that copyright is not permanent. In most countries, I think the limit is seventy years after the death of the creator (which I do find a rather high number).
You're certainly free
to play cover version of songs if you contact the copyright holders,
gain their permission, and pay the associated licensing costs.
The writers of the United States Constitution certainly considered copyright to be an important protection for innovation. Below is an excerpt from the http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html" rel="nofollow - United States Constitution . It is called the Copyright Clause and it is part of the enumerated powers of Congress:
Yet you're the one who considers paying 99€ for an limited-release album is somehow preferable to paying 5€-15€ for a digital version that anybody with that disposable income can enjoy.
If other other people want to listen to forty minutes of my musical expression, they are free to pay me $10 plus tax.
That's statement is not a strawman; that is an example of Aristotelian logical implication. Let's say I recorded a song for my own enjoyment and am storing it on my computer. By what possible justification can you lay claim to listening to my song if I am opposed to releasing it? And what law court in the world would rule in your favor if you were to sue me?
Here you are conflating two different types of law: positive law and natural law. Positive law is man-made and determined by the government that has authority in the place in question. For example, slavery was legal in the United States until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. It was even obliquely referenced in the original United States Constitution, as “all other Persons” or “Person held to Service or Labour”. Slavery is immoral according the the prevailing moral codes of our time, and even according to the moral codes of many people of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, which lead to the abolitionist movements and ultimately to the American Civil War. Positive law is sometimes an example of “might makes right” (the Code of Hammurabi), sometimes an example of political pragmatism (as that EU video indicates), sometimes an example of natural law (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights), sometimes an example of corruption, and sometimes a combination of the previous categories. Natural law, on the other hand, is a philosophical concept concerning the inherent rights of man, discussed throughout history by thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Anna Maria van Schurman, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, etc. Natural law is influenced by the concepts of fairness, justice, the Golden Rule (“do unto others what you want them to do to you”). The http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html" rel="nofollow - United States Declaration of Independence offers example of natural law, some of which were not sadly included in the Constitution (such the unalienable right to Liberty):
Under which category does this supposed right to make “'products of the mind' available to people freely on a large scale” fall? Is it part of natural law or positive law? It is certainly not part of positive law, since there are currently only three countries with no copyright laws (I'm not sure how up-to date http://www.ehow.com/list_6780679_countries-copyright-laws.html" rel="nofollow - this article is):
I have never heard of an inherent human right to “'products of the mind' available to people freely on a large scale” before, either. Does it mean that if I'm producing a song in my mind and not sharing it with the rest of humanity that I'm guilty of thoughtcrime? Copyright is not perfect and I dislike it when companies try to repeatedly extend its duration, such as the song “Happy Birthday” or Disney attempting to avoid Mickey Mouse becoming a public domain character (in spite of the fact that the company built its fortune on public domain characters such as Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Mowgli, Peter Pan, Alladin, etc.). However, copyright is the best system that I know of that allows users to enjoy artists' products at a reasonable price, while allowing artists to be sustained by their creations during their lifetime. Speaking of rights, Krzysztof 'Faza' Wiszniewski has a link on the right hand margin of his The Cynical Musician blog to the http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/" rel="nofollow - Artists' Bill of Rights Campaign . I think it would provide for interesting reading to peruse the following pages: http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/guides/guides/bill-of-rights-introduction/" rel="nofollow - Introduction to the Bill of Rights for Artists' Campaign , http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/guides/guides/guide-to-rights-%26-licensing/" rel="nofollow - Introduction to Rights and Licensing , and http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/bill-of-rights/bill-of-rights/bill-of-rights/" rel="nofollow - The Bill of Rights for Artists (read all tabs on the pages as well). The Artists' Bill of Rights is mostly concerned with artists surrendering rights to their creations when entering contests, but it shows some was that businesses take advantage of artists. For an musician's perspective on piracy, read http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=61454" rel="nofollow - this interview with IQ founding member and ex-keyboard player Martin Orford, conducted by Prog Archive's own Jim Garten. Martin Orford left the music industry due to the fact that he refused to produce more music if it was going to be listened to mostly by those who use file-sharing. P.S. Thanks for spelling "you" correctly in the past few posts. |
Posted By: Melodie&Rhythmus
Date Posted: February 21 2016 at 06:36
|
Thank you for your reply. I'd like to stress that I'm not in the business of defining or proposing any universal rights or laws and I concede that my point about free mass availability is kind of cheesy and somewhat off the mark. I'll first elaborate this off-topic issue.
The spotify example was naive, as I suspected. A little research reveals that you have almost no control of the files as they are encrypted, DRM infected, tied to the client and not available for play by the end of subscription. I'm way too used to freedom in computing so these restrictive measures extend my imagination. It can however be handled with some hax, but I realize that would be illegal and not worth the hassle as it would be easier to obtain the files illegally - which would be just as illegal.
Yet, I still hold the view that the digitization and mass distribution of the past twenty years play a part in decreasing the market value of digital music, and that what people are willing to pay is completely unrelated to the costs and efforts by the expressors, and that copyright can't make this the case. I'm not 'strongly opposed to copyright', and my main point is that digitization poses a special problem because the very process of realizing a digital music file includes copying. To listen to a digital song, the machinery makes a copy, which technically infringes copyright. This issue is addressed in length in this http://culturedigitally.org/2014/09/digitalization-and-digitization" rel="nofollow - insightful article
You might argue that the object of interest is the content - the music itself regardless of format - and that the issue of how digital media is realized is just some peculiarity of some format and that the nature of the format is irrelevant because copyright is concerned with the content as content and is disregardful of whatever format. Yet copyright has to assume that the expression it protects has some kind of format, a particular iconic, symbolic or indexical representation needed for the existence of the thing to be protected from copying. I can rationally distinguish format from content of recorded music, and I understand your views that it's the content regardless of format that has value, a value ideally ensured and protected by law. But actually I don't operate by the format/content distinction. They make a unified whole, when mentally carving through this whole, it ceases to exist and remains only as rational abstract entities, and I can't accumulate willingness to pay for the non-existent entity 'content as content' regardless of any law or any moral imperative. Considering the http://culturedigitally.org/2014/05/digital-draftdigitalkeywords/" rel="nofollow - indexical nature of digital media , digital media point to the real while being something else, namely abstracted gestalts of the real. I hold that the real becomes more real when offered by the concrete representations of analogue media. Also, no two copies of a vinyl disc are the same, each copy is an unique item. The uniqueness disappears when a digital music file can be replicated endlessly and all copies still be exactly alike. In general, uniqueness is valuable and sameness not. The content, the music itself, is for me inconceivable as a (kind of) product that has a certain value in some market. With digital media, the format and content constitute a distorted mirror image of the real which is completely unpreferable to the uniqueness and intrinsic value of the analogue counterparts. It seems people interested in both, generally are willing to pay less for streaming, downloads and cd's than for the analogue counterparts. Format matters, and I hope for the future that we'll see further popularity of analogue media and also see a rethinking of notions like intellectual property and copyright so that they cope better with the nature of digitization. If digital music becomes unfashionable, it would be easier for artists to secure an income which I believe they are entitled to in some way or other. You have a choice not to distribute your work digitally (though that won't necessarily prevent piracy). When you choose to distribute digitally, you must be aware that you in some senses devaluate your product due to the nature of the format. |
Posted By: Replayer
Date Posted: February 28 2016 at 23:48
Thank
you for conceding these points. At least we can find some common
ground in this debate. My
point was about truth values of propositions (not! predicates as I
wrote). Fx, the statement 'copyright is monopoly' can be analyzed as
a proposition. Following this line of analysis and terminology,
'monopoly' is the predicate and 'copyright' is the object . In other
words, 'copyright' is the object of which the predicate 'monopoly' is
predicated. It's the whole proposition 'copyright is monopoly' that
is the bearer of a truth value, it's either the case, true, or
not the case, false. Nowhere in between. That’s true in bivalent/classical logic. However, as I suppose you’re aware, there are other logics that allow for other truth values, such as “unknown” value in ternary logic or even an infinite spectrum of truth values in fuzzy logic. But that’s beside the subject at hand.
When
you deny a true statement or accept a false statement you flip (or
alter) the truth value. In order for the reductio ad absurdum
strategy to function effectively both participants in an
argumentative discourse must adhere to a variant of so-called
truth-based semantics, e.g. that the meaning of propositions,
or in more general terms, statements, is determined by the notion of
truth. Fx, the statement 'the world is round' bears the semantic
feature 'true' and is thus meaningful, the statement 'the world is
flat' bears the semantic feature 'false' and is thus meaningless.
Is there another way than truth-based semantics to conduct a logical argument? I mean, if the participants can’t even agree on the truth of some fundamental concepts, what is the point of conducting an argument? And how would each party or observers decide in a relatively objective manner which side makes a better case? Perhaps you want an appeal to authority? Then read The Cynical Musician's blog, because he is qualified as a musician, someone educated in economics and as software developer. Do you prefer an appeal to emotion? Then I feel that making and distributing copies of someone else's hard work is not right and deprives musicians of their livelihood. Do you want an argumentum ad populum? Nearly every single government in existence has copyright laws, so it must be an important right to safeguard. Is it an appeal to fear that will persuade you? Then know that the penalties for piracy can be very severe and there are many cases where the people involved in file sharing had to pay millions of dollars in penalties. How about an appeal to loyalty? You've listened to certain album dozens of times and they were recorded by musicians you like; don't they deserve to be paid a modest fee for providing your entertainment?
I object to that formulation I highlighted, seeing as Gödel's incompleteness theorems showed that any system of axioms that describes something as simple as arithmetic over the set of natural numbers will yield statements that are true, but not provable within the system. However, just because not everything can be proven by a countable set of axioms does not mean that nothing can be proven.
There are so many implicit assumptions within that sentence that I don’t know where to start. First there are the claims from the previous sentence, referenced by the pronoun “it.” These are C1: humans have mental faculty as some godlike truth-maker machine and C2: humans ascribe truth and falseness to anything said of anything existing, which have been disproved by Gödel's incompleteness theorems for the better part of a century. Then, there is the claim that that C1 and C2 “seem” to be a reformulation of claim C3: humans are created in the image of God, without providing any evidence that the statements are logically equivalent. Are you saying that someone can’t be an atheist and still believe the disproved claims C1 and C2? In the nineteenth century there was a significant trend in scientific thought that humans could use reason to explain all the universe. For example, the British logician and philosopher Bertrand Russell was an atheist, but that didn’t prevent him from attempting to formalize mathematics in the Principia Mathematica (this was before Gödel's theorems). Then there is the claim that C3 is a self-boosting myth. C3 is not a statement that can be proved or disproved by logic, despite the efforts of noted atheists such as Bertrand Russell and G.H. Hardy. C3 is something that is either accepted or rejected as an axiom based on personal belief.
The 19th century German Hermann Grassman is the one who started the effort to formalize mathematics using axioms. René Descartes, of cogito ergo sum fame, was French. Mathematician and philosoher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was German. Zermelo-Frankel set theory attempted to formalize set theory and is named after a German mathematician and a German-born Jewish mathematician. The Peano Axioms for natural numbers are named after Italian Giuseppe Peano. What makes truth-based accounts of meaning especially Anglo-Saxon? Do not other cultures use realist metaphysics? If anything, the ancient Greeks were the ones who laid the foundations for proof-writing based on axioms and logic.
On one hand, I feel complimented by what you describe as solid rational argumentation. On the other hand, I feel somewhat disconcerted that my analysis of the pot head pixie's advice was taken seriously. You do realize that my dissection of art was used in a facetious manner because you were attempting to use the quote (humorously perhaps) to support your argument that people should freely share all artistic output? I’m not a robot and I understand the sentiment of the song that human beings should question their beliefs and humanity is formed of individuals who share similarities and depend on each other. If people really cared for other people as they did from themselves, they would not steal the fruit of someone else's labor and then provide other with the means to do so, as well.
What you probably mean is that “contradictions, tautologies and other fallacies shouldn’t just be discarded as mere meaningless falseness” and that a subjective feeling. Just as Euclid's Fifth Postulate can be rejected to create non-Euclidean geometries (spherical, elliptical, hyperbolic, etc.), rules of classical logic can be rejected to form non-bivalent logical systems.
In art, the audience create their own interpretation and meaning of what the artist created. Such interpretations are subjective and represent a basic human right in freedom of thought. Syd Barret used excerpts from the I Ching to good effect on Piper at the Gates of Dawn's Chapter 24. However, I wouldn’t use the Dao De Jing or the I Ching or The Classic of Poetry as a guide for writing a physics textbook, a book of recipes, an architectural blueprint, emergency evacuation instructions, flight-control software or copyright laws. Living in the real world, humans need to communicate with each other and that requires objective definitions. Even as they are written now, laws have enough ambiguities to make a career out of.
I not sure whether that was a sarcastic statement (because it sounds at odds with how you presented your views in the previous posts), but if that’s your real belief, then it’s my turn to say that it’s a truly cynical point of view. As for humans acting irrationally, you've no need to convince me. Why, some of them go as far as enjoying the creative output of artists they like and respect without paying them, helping and encouraging others to do the same and then claiming it is their right to do so.
It's
not natural that replication is theft. Back to the natural law discussion, are we? You seem to hold the belief that replication is not theft (correct me if I’m wrong). By the same token, you could buy a brand new book, transcribe it and then print copies to sell or give away without paying the author or publisher. Or you could take a vinyl LP, buy a record stamper and hydraulic press, scan the album cover and then make album copies to sell or give away without paying the musicians or music label. The only difference between replicating digital artefacts and physical artefacts is that it’s much easier and cheaper to do in the case of the former. Making an exception for digital content is like arguing that robbing a bank vault is theft because it’s difficult to do, but robbing a convenience store is not theft because it’s easy to do. To address your claim that “It's not natural that replication is theft”, I’ll answer with a reductio ad absurdum argument once again. You started out with the assertion P1: It's not natural that replication is theft. I'll reword this as: P2: It's not natural that unauthorized replication is theft. I added the word “unauthorized” because it is an important distinction. This is because if a party gains authorization by coming to an understanding with the copyright holder(s), then the said party does have the right to make additional copies under rules established in the contract with the copyright holder(s), which is clearly not theft as the copyright holder(s) are being remunerated to their satisfaction. There are certain cases where making limited use of copyrighted materials without securing the rights is allowed, known as the http://info.legalzoom.com/copyright-law-making-personal-copies-22200.html" rel="nofollow - Fair Use doctrine in common law jurisdictions, but that doesn't concern us here. There is some ambiguity with your use of the words “it”, “natural” and “theft.” It is not clear what the subject “it” refers to, although it can be interpreted as a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_pronoun#Weather_it" rel="nofollow - dummy pronoun , such as in the sentence “It is raining.” The word “natural” is more problematic. What does it mean for an act to be natural? Who decides what constitutes a natural act? I can simply interpret “natural” as a synonym for “true,” but I don't want to put words in your mouth. Therefore, I will slightly amend your proposition to “P3: The belief that unauthorized replication is theft is not natural,” with the understanding that “natural” refers to natural law as commonly understood. Finally, the issue with the word “theft” is that it is not clear what the exact meaning is. If we are talking about positive law, then “theft” is a legal construct whose definition depends on the legal system in effect. We could substitute “immoral” for “theft,” but that changes the scope of the sentence. To provide more a specific meaning, I propose to use the common parlance meaning of “theft” as “taking something without permission.” I will now focus on the phrase “unauthorized replication is theft.” I think it is same to assume that you don't mean (or you don't think that I mean) that unauthorized replication and theft are synonyms. That is, there are acts of that can be considered theft but do not qualify as unauthorized replication, such as stealing from a grocery store. Thus, in order to make the statement more precise, I'll reword it as “the act of unauthorized replication is an element of the set of acts of theft.” Let T denote the sets of acts that are considered theft by society. Let u be the act of unauthorized replication. Then “unauthorized replication is theft” can be expressed as “u ∈ T ”. Substituting the statement into P2, we now have P4: The belief that u ∈ T is not natural. I hope you agree that P1, P2 , P3 and P4 re equivalent statements. Let D be the set of actions that deprive a person y of an item of y's property or labor without y's permission. I propose the following natural law: N1: The belief that D ⊆ T is natural. That is, the belief that the set of actions that deprive a person y without y's permission is a subset of the set of actions that are considered theft is natural. It is true that the government can deprive a person of their property or liberty according to ways prescribed within the law, because it is in responsible of making the laws. You may disagree with N1 by rejecting the concept of private property, but that would conflict with your willingness to pay 99€ to be the exclusive owner of a rare vinyl album. Now let's consider the act of unauthorized replication denoted by u. By creating an unauthorized copy of an item of intellectual property and giving it to a potential buyer (that is, a person who has not paid for a copy for personal use), the copier deprives the copyright owners of the income they would get if they sold that copy to the potential buyer. In set theory, this can be expressed by u ∈ D. Since D is a subset of T, that means that for every act d ∈ D, we have d ∈ T. Since u ∈ D, this implies that u ∈ T. That is, “the act of unauthorized replication is an element of the set of acts of theft.” N1 stated that “The belief that D ⊆ T is natural,” that is to say that “the belief that for every d ∈ D, we have d ∈ T is natural,” yet we have element u ∈ D ⊆ T I, implying that “The belief that u ∈ T is natural” which contradicts “P4: The belief that u ∈ T is not natural,” which was a restating of the original assumption P1: It's not natural that replication is theft. That means that either P1 or N1 was false. I think that N1 is a reasonable description of the common-sense understanding of the concept of theft, so that means that P1 is false. Q.E.D.
That’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it? You can’t remove music from digital music, otherwise you get a random string of bytes. When people pirate music, they want the specific patterns of bytes, which when decoded using the proper algorithm, can create an audio signal that represents the music they wanted to listen to. Here's The Cynical Musician's take on the matter (as always, I encourage you to read the http://thecynicalmusician.com/2010/03/value-creation-v-value-capture/" rel="nofollow - entire article ):
[.
. ] The
arguments being made about how the marginal cost of digital copies
being zero implies the price of recordings being zero are bogus for
this very reason: while the copies may be free to make, the
recordings are not. The marginal cost of a recording can easily go
into four figures. The marginal cost of a movie is usually millions
of dollars.
[.
. .] The
value to consumer is actually contained in the song, but what the
consumer ends up paying for is the copy. How easy to convince oneself
that the copy is where the value is and that when buying one, one is
paying for the cost of making the copy. If you think digital music doesn’t have value, try erasing a pirate’s 500 GB music library then telling him that it was valueless. He might beg to differ. Do you think torrent leechers would be happy when they find that their freshly downloaded copy of Taylor Swift or Adele's latest album is actually William Shatner's 1968 spoken-word album The Transformed Man? I'd say they would definitely put a higher value on the former set of bytes than on the latter. If you replace the bytes of digital music from your hard drive with random bytes, do you really feel nothing of value was lost? People wouldn’t be spending hundreds of dollars on music players and music streaming services if the digital music on them had no value for them personally. Krzysztof 'Faza' Wiszniewski addresses this particular argument in http://thecynicalmusician.com/2011/06/the-theft-that-keeps-on-taking/" rel="nofollow - this article :
Digital media is as real as analog in the physical sense. The sequences of zeros and ones are a representation of the intellectual property therein. So a pirate could be accused of stealing the sequences of zeroes and ones. On digital media that rely on magnetic storage, the encoding of zeroes and ones is determined by the positioning of electrons, which are "real" and do have mass.
For someone who is not “strongly opposed to copyright,” you sure seem to enjoy engaging in long debates about how “copyright is a ridiculous construction.” Is this an examples of those contradictions that realist metaphysics is too strict to properly appreciate and extract meaning out of? I’m being sarcastic here (as the two statements aren’t necessarily contradictory), but I curious whether you’re not strongly opposed to copyright and just enjoy debating piracy and metaphysics for their own sake. It's true that digital media amplified the issue by making easy to make copies. However, even when data was stored on analog media there were people who made illegal copies and sold them for profit.
No. Copyright means that people are not allowed to make unlicensed copies, except as established under the Fair Use doctrine or other such exceptions. If the copy is licensed, such as a file stored in Temporary Internet Files for a paid Netflix or Spotify subscription, then it does not infringe copyright. Now, if the user were to find the local temporary copy, decode it, make a back-up copy, and cancel his subscription service, then yes, the back-up copy would infringe copyright because he has access to the copy even though he's not paying for it.
(references
removed) Yes, it is the content that is the object of interest. That's why if people publicly perform an artistic work, even if it's for high school theater, they need to pay royalties to the copyright holders. Regarding distinguishing the content when it's present in multiple formats, you do realize that there exists http://evolver.fm/2012/10/10/top-5-apps-for-identifying-songs/" rel="nofollow - software that is capable from recognizing music by recording a short snippet?
Well, that's too bad, because you live in society. Here is http://thecynicalmusician.com/2014/07/freedom/" rel="nofollow - an article on freedom vs responsibilities by Krzysztof 'Faza' Wiszniewski:
And I fail to see how just because I can enjoy Hamlet either by reading a book, viewing a live performance, listening to an audio book, or viewing a recorded performance this somehow means that Shakespeare's text as a recognizable work of art ceases to exist. Is it not theft or some other form of immorality to take advantage of something someone sells “regardless of any law or any moral imperative?” I
am unwilling to pay for rap music, so I don't listen to it. Problem
solved, everybody's happy and it doesn't require a debate on metaphysics.
Firstly, people who pirate don't care about the uniqueness if they can get the music without paying. Secondly,
one can argue that when artists record in a digital format, they can
control all the recording parameters and ensure the final song is
exactly how they intended, rather than introducing slight deviations
due to the idiosyncrasies of the vinyl printing process. If a book
has a few blank pages due to a printing error, does that make the
book more valuable because it's more “unique?” There are a few
cases, like certain stamps, coins or rare books where the manufacturing errors make
them valuable, but that is the exception rather than the
rule. I agree with the sentiment of these statements, although I would restate the first sentence as “It seems people interested in both generally are less willing to pay the same for streaming, downloads and cd's as for the analogue counterparts because they have no resale value.” The reason is that assuming consumers are rational agents (which as you pointed out, is not always the case), they are always willing to pay less for a product, all other things being equal. There is a value to owning physical items produced in relatively small because it can be traded to other people who value physical formats, whereas digital files can't be traded (I've heard of some attempts at selling mp3 out of users' libraries, but it didn't work out because of privacy issues involved in scanning the seller's hard drive to remove all copies of the mp3 and because it was impossible to check whether the seller had back-up copies on external storage media). However, the ongoing digital piracy has proved time and time again that most music consumers do not put a special value on physical goods if they can get the musical content without paying. If this were not true, then music piracy would be insignificant because the music consumers would prefer buying the “valuable” analog recordings to paying for “valueless” digital recordings.
Most musicians and record labels are fine with charging less for digital copies because there are no production, inventory, and shipping costs, there is no risk of overproducing copies, and the digital files can't be traded like a used LP, cassette, or CD. Before the advent of copyright, musicians were paid either as performers, deriving income from playing their instruments in a live setting, or by composing, which meant being independently wealthy, like some noble troubadours, or by being maintained by by a wealthy patron. If that's what you have in mind, then you're literally suggesting to send back the music industry to the Middle Ages. Here's an interesting http://thecynicalmusician.com/2011/08/the-big-dope-industry/" rel="nofollow - article where Krzysztof 'Faza' Wiszniewski discusses mass production and patronage:
I'm way too busy with an upcoming exam, a project and work to reply in length to this thread in the next two weeks and I've wasted enough hours on this reply as it is, but be assured that I'll answer to any of your future replies in due time, lest you think you've had the last word in the matter of copyright. P.S. The links for the Benthamite Utilitarianism and the indexical nature of digital media in your previous post don't work. |