What value does the music industry add to artist's work...?

[dogknob]

17. Um, little if anything

Once upon a time, there was a major record label called EMI. They owned a very swanky recording studio in London called Abbey Road. In this magical place, EMI merged the talents of musicians and studio engineers to create visionary works of sonic yummyness with bouncy titles like "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "The Dark Side of the Moon," enduring sonic masterpieces that went on to outlive their creators.

In fact, "Dark Side of the Moon" remained in Billboard's top 200 for, like, a bzillion weeks, circumventing the "free market" standard of obsolescence and competing against music made decades later (just imagine the internal memos on that subject). Upon hearing one of its songs, the great anti-war piece "Us and Them," members of an alien culture, sifting through the ashes of our extinct civilization, concluded that the human race must have been very depressed for continuing to engage in behavior that at least some of them knew was suicidal.

Producing something like "Dark Side" involves a great deal of investment and risk; in the years preceding it, EMI patiently allowed Pink Floyd to record and release 7 other albums, none of which sold at ANYWHERE NEAR the level of "Dark Side." They even kept the band after its founder and leader, Syd Barrett, suffered a complete mental breakdown and left both the band and reality. EMI made use of an ancient, lost technique known to historians as "long-term thinking;" they invested the time, money and nurturing these artists needed to develop their sound in the hope that the investment would eventually pay off. Fortunately for EMI, it did.

Today's music industry revolves around just about everything except the music itself. An artist is given one shot (and almost no artistic control) to make a huge payoff, then discarded when that payoff doesn't happen. With today's music industry philosophy, there would be no Bruce Springsteen (who hit with his THIRD album) fer jumpin' bejeezopotumus!

Artistic decisions in today's music industry are made by people who don't make music. Try sitting through an entire Beyonce song WITHOUT the accompanying video and you'll see what I mean.

Access to affordable recording software and the Internet enables musicians to get their music out to an audience far beyond the local bar. Artists can now create music without the interference of some hack with a communications degree telling them what they aren't going to do. The entire process of creation, recording, production and promotion NO LONGER REQUIRES THE PARTICIPATION OF MAJOR RECORD LABELS OR THE RIAA, entities which repeatedly demonstrate their unwillingness to provide artists with the kind of support they need to create something that might one day prove to be as enduring as "Dark Side."

Technology and The Internet have created a world where the lazy, cynical, talentless likes of the RIAA and the major labels are rapidly becoming irrelevant. Rather than adapt their obsolete business models (which would require actual VISION and WORK), they have decided to attempt to trash the First Amendment with legislation like SOPA and PIPA, hoping to return us to a time when they were the only place to go if you wanted to make a record.

Crap legislation like this is all gussied up to look like some swashbuckling pirate-stopper, but anyone who doesn't live under a rock knows that these laws aren't aimed at saving the lost profit-booty of "Caddyshack 2" These laws won't deter the pirates; they will be used to shut down the websites of small independents who lack giant legal staff... as well as other groups of people who coordinate online and do things like occupy Wall Street and elect brown presidents.