On Wed, 14 Feb 2001 George@Orwellian.Org wrote:
May Man wrote: # # Practically, did the "tax" on blank tapes ever "work"? Of course not. # Metallica and Eminem did not see meaningful revenues. The tax # vanished into the maw of the government, the RIAA and ASCAP # bureaucracy, and the pockets of the shake down artists.
I once asked a musician here in NYC what became of the money.
Yeah, the local unions got it. ("shake down artists"?)
That's as close as it got to the musicians.
Yet another thing that should be put online for integrity: its distribution.
Of course, the actual "starving musicians", the ones who can really use the money, will never see it either way. The bigger groups will argue that since they are more popular, they deserve more of it. By the time they get done feeding at the trough there will be nothing left. The things I find most interesting in the way of the non-traditional music distribution channels are the things I *cannot* buy. -- Bands from countries that do not speak english. (I have found some great stuff from China, Sweeden and Finland, for example.) -- radio shows not being distributed for various reasons. (Copyright vagueness, lack of interest by the owners, or general lack of interest by the record companies.) Try finding copies of "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again" for example. -- Things being censored by way of copyright. (The owner is preventing it from seeing the light of day for some reason or another.) This does not happen as much in music, but does happen alot in movies. (A local theatre shows a number of movies withdrawn due to copyright or other legal threats on a regular basis.) -- Bands you will hear no other way. (Bands not to the taste of some corporate middle manager.) Of course none of these things even gets mentioned in the rush to squeeze even more money out of the music-buying public. Of course, later this sort of tax will be extended to the software industry with Microsoft getting the lion's share of the money. alan@ctrl-alt-del.com | Note to AOL users: for a quick shortcut to reply Alan Olsen | to my mail, just hit the ctrl, alt and del keys. "In the future, everything will have its 15 minutes of blame."