Comments on: Series 2 Episode 4, iTunes Live Festival

By: crispin14

crispin14 — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 02:42:57 +0000

There is a twist and turn of the history of music transmission you did not cover in your entertaining iTunes lecture.

I believe that in the early part of the 20th Century, recorded music began to threaten the careers and livelihood of instrumental players, with recorded music being used in place of a live band at plays dances and other venues. As well television for a while threatened to close cinemas. This is a dog eat dog world, but dogs seem still to be extant.

One thing that music downloads may accomplish is to promote artists and probably to inspire people to attend live performances.

I wonder if there could be a way to reinforce this principle. As a fan of classical and operatic music, I spend more money attending live events than may people spend on recordings. I’d love to see some way of linking the promotion of my local opera company to file downloads: what if there was a pool of recordings posted on the internet from many of the smaller companies who do not have recording contracts. Perhaps with each ticket purchased one could get some download points to be able to download a performance from that company or even one from one of the other companies in the pool. Perhaps seeing the best that another city’s opera house has to offer, I might plan a trip and earn yet more download points.

I always feel better about putting cash down that goes more or less directly to the artist (because she or he is performing live), than to the multi-layered corporate maze from which the artists gets only pennies on the dollar. Moreover I’m sure most artists get a greater intrinsic reward from having live eyeballs hovering above live bodies in the audience. And no recording can beat the sound and sight of a live-performance.

By: irisburgess

irisburgess — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:37:35 +0000

Thank you Stephen for that lecture and I do so agree. When I look for things on the net it is only to try them out. If I like what I see, hear or experience my immediate impulse is to buy an original good quality copy. Being gay here in Paris I have bought ‘untried’ various films, hugely overpriced and which turned out to be rubbish. My motto now is, if I can’t try, I won’t buy! Thanks to illegal uploading of people on various sites I have discvovered a great many titles I would not otherwise have known about. Surely the industry is overlooking a very powerful and cheap way of advertizing?
Love and adore your work Stephen.

By: poxymoron

poxymoron — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:01:42 +0000

Half of the problem is that the record/movie companies are so arrogant, that they actually think I am a non-person because I don’t live in the US or EU. iTunes is not availabe. Amazon is not available. I don’t count to them, they don’t supply legit product to my home, so it’s a free for all for me.

By: Harry Lime

Harry Lime — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:27:18 +0000

The case for non-Draconian copyright protection of content creators. (Can I use the phrase non-Draconian? I am only an American reader, so, not sure.) Since the recording of this lecture, there has been the Radiohead release: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/2816893/Radiohead-challenges-labels-with-free-album.html. Strangely, this seems to have *increased* their artistic reach and landed them in the filthy lucre. Hope the ‘labels’ noticed. Me? I don’t think we should violate our own laws in a democracy -better to change them. But, even if that never happens, I expect that RIAA will wind up giving the little people their money back or be cast into Niflheim. Well, time to lift my drawbridge.

By: Robyn Wharton

Robyn Wharton — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:27:53 +0000

Can’t you buy direct from Amazon America?

By: theq

theq — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I am a big fan of Pixar animations. A few months back I remembered the song from the end of Wall-e. It’s called “Down to Earth” by Peter Gabriel. I went on to iTunes Australia to legally download the song but it was not available at the time (it now is). I searched and found the song was available in the US iTunes store.

This all happened months after the movie had come and gone. Like in other countries, it was a big hit in Australia too. We are not taking about an obscure song – it was nominated for a Grammy.

So why was this song not available on the Australian iTunes but available in the US iTunes. It wasn’t because it was obscure or a just released song. I think that is was because of the archaic system of record companies and regions. Back 50 years ago, a record was recorded in the US and it took six months or so to send it by ship to Australia. Record companies were set-up by geographical regions, and there was a different company in the United States to had the rights to release a song in that region and another company to has the rights to release a song in Australia. In fact, there are hundreds of these companies around the world. Fifty years ago, the model of different companies handling song rights from different regions worked fine. But today where people can hear a song released in the US in just minutes.

Imagine some hears this great song and they want it. In todays society, people want it now, so they visit iTunes or their local legal music download store to try and purchase the song. But what happens if there song is not there? The person still wants to download the song and now. This person could then try to download the song for free.

My point to this ramble is the structure of the larger record companies is causing some people who wanted to buy the song legally to source it illegally.

I’m not saying that this would solve the free download problem, but the fact that some record companies have not adapted to the global digital market place means that they and the artists they represent are missing out on revenue from customers who are trying to do the right thing but cannot download that new song because they live in the wrong region.

When record companies see what they are doing and remove these barriers to customers from legally purchasing the songs; the customers, artists and record companies will be better off.

And, yes, I did legally purchase Down to Earth.

By: rienzi

rienzi — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:12:35 +0000

Spotify British? In the Nordic countries we believe it’s Swedish.

By: vendors

vendors — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:57:47 +0000

Right.
Having just seen your inspiring video “Happy birthday to GNU”, and hoping to find more the like here, I admire the irony of finding only iTunes-bound material.
So in essence, once I follow your advice from “Happy birthday to GNU” and check out gNewSense, I will be absolutely unable to hear more inspiring stories/and or hilarious other content (since this is an iTunes free computer, I most assume the content to be hilarious, or at least entertainng).
Sorry, but I couldn’t resist on that one. Nice page though.

By: vextortv

vextortv — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:14:02 +0000

I worte on my blog how Copyright infringement could be made a thing of the past – Read it here @ http://vextortv.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-online-tv-and-movie-copyright.html

Great blog, you truly are a British Treasure! Keep up the good work, and I hope to see Q.I. for many more years – you have got the alphabet to do at the end of the day.

Fondly

Kai

By: Pseudonym

Pseudonym — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:31:52 +0000

What a change of heart 20 years makes.

You heard it here first, folks: If your plane has been hijacked by a gang of terrorists and their leader, a rather desperate character called Miguel, threatens to shoot all the passengers unless someone can perform the `Haircut’ sketch in the Club Class lavatory… Stephen now interprets this to be fair non-commercial use.

My tendons twitch in anticipation.