What I mean is that the distribution of benefits has been for long slightly balanced to the music industry but on the culture industries as well. It means in my opinion that consumers have a general idea of what they are going to listen more or less, for instance, the sound of electric guitars, the tessitura of some voices and many more general features known for long in the collective unconscious. To get that big picture, many of those implements have been a gift of the nature as it gets to us by the senses, and music is somehow a communication phenomena since it’s been made of culture as a part of a complex of social processes in a big machinery working in pure categories (Time and space) 24 hours a day for hundreds of centuries now.

I suggest respect for the fine work of creative people but none of us can deny the tons of knowledge that is an absolute most for educational basis of human being as no one of us is strange to communication, mass media and cultural contexts so money making is just a part of the social process itself and I recall the need of making adjustments to the changes done.

It’s not new that the internet society is a risk society and not for many things other of the changes experienced in the way that traditional life took over the decades previous to the internet itself. That’s what James Tully calls a more “democrative communicative action”. (See Communication and Imperialism on http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=508 ).

One of the characteristics of the internet is the relaxing of the international legal action and we, as networkers are part of paradoxical developments between freedom, knowledge and ethics and new social organization.

I think that downloading P2P music files is not a big problem if it’s used as a demo concept for personal educational purposes and if that does NOT provides you the only source of getting music. I agree that by listening and enjoying an mp3 file may let me know for the first time of the artist that lead me to buy his original album but, otherwise, I had get very rare music that I could never have get in a music store. Maybe the piracy would be the hypothetic case that someone who has downloaded an mp3 song from P2P computers tries to make his own business from illegal material not made for sale.

Roger Leos

Professional musicians have always “cribbed” music. I bought my first Fake Book at age 17 for $15 under the counter at a music store. Musicians simply could never afford to BE musicians if they had to pay for all that music.

The puritanical, right-wing “morality” promoted by the record companies and publishers is laughable to professional musicians, who are regularly ripped off by companies that hardly seemed headed for the poorhouse.

Airplay and exposure are worth more to musicians than a few more pennies from other musicians. Dump your misplaced moral outrage, and leave the kid alone.

Agustín, one thing your explanation doesn’t mention is the artists’ advance paid by the record labels after signing a contract.

The advance is exactly what it sounds like, an upfront payment of royalties. The artist won’t make any royalties, regardless of the rate, until after the record label has recouped the cost of recording the album, manufacturing the CDs, marketing the album, and the advance. I think it’s fair to say that most artists who sign record deals try to get as large of an advance as possible because they never expect to make any royalties.

So it’s not like artists signed to a record label aren’t getting paid at all, it’s just not for each individual sale. If a record does not sell well, for whatever reason, it’s unlikely the label will make another album with that artist.

I’m not defending the current (or old school) record label business model, rather I just feel like over-generalizations lead to ignorant excuses. Naturally, we want to feel better about not paying for something so we ignore some of the facts. I look forward to reading everybody’s responses because I think it will show many different perspectives of the facts and help fans make better educated choices that really help support their favorite artists.

The artist also signs a second contract giving away up to 50% of the performance royalties -paid by BMI, ASCAP, etc.- to the record label. So, in the end the artist receives little of each CD sale, and any legal mechanism created to provide the artist with royalties by means of Copyright Collectives are intercepted by record labels to allow a percentage of these royalties (actually a right of the artist, performer or composer) to stay with the record company.

In my country, Argentina, because of the CD record sales failing to music downloads and piracy, music downloads record companies are now also signing concert managing contracts with their signed artists. These concert managing stay that the record label will arrange for concerts and gigs for the artist -usually festivals or shared gigs with other artists of the same label, thus cutting costs in security, venue contracting, concert publicity, sound systems- and the artist will give away up to 50% of their concerts income. This means the record labels are now also taking part of what the artists gets from their concerts. So, in the end, even when the artists are gigging more thanks to the gig managing they are making very little money for each record or each concert.

Regards