Real music fans will always be happy to pay a good price for real music when it is offered to them directly from the artist. Recorded or otherwise. Nothing will change that.

Musicians (if we can even agree to incorporate this whole group – including all the bit-sampling fools and rappers – in that description) have a vested interest in selling their music – not all musicians – but it would be nice, no?

Attorneys (like Arrington) who understand something that most musicians lack (business models) might be worth listening to. Unless you just want to be like those starving artists who sell one $10,000 painting a year, but stay true to thyself. Fine for some, but some folks here might actual value commercial success. Musicians hardly have a solid-gold track records when it comes to common sense business (i.e. Boston, VanHalen, Simon & Garfunkel, and the list goes on, ba-da-bump da da dump).

Just because you can cram a whole studio into your Roland Fantom doesn’t mean you can also cram some business sense into it as well. Be smart, eh? Some of us out there wouldn’t mind selling 50,000 tracks at 10 cents a track rather than someone else’s pricing schema of selling 5,000 tracks at $1.00 a piece.

Heck, I listen to Bruce Springsteen’s Radio Nowhere a few times a month because it was a free iTune download (which is where I heard it first before it got a little radio airplay) and that album is on my “to purchase” list just because of that one song. I haven’t bought a Springsteen album since Born in the USA (and had no intention of ever doing so after his disastrous Tunnel of Love nonsense).

So cry and wail and gnash your teeth all you want, but consumers dictate the market (as Ed above pointed out), not the artists. And the smart ones will seek out the business gurus (if they intend on making a living do it) rather than stick to their self-righteous guns. As for the guy who wants to do only live shows, hey that’s great (and actually validates Arrington’s points). We have a great coffee shop here in Melbourne that he can come and visit. He’ll easily clear enough for a cup of Iced Chai Tea. 30 minutes for $3.00. Down here in Florida, we call that “minimum wage”. But, hey, the money’s pure, I guess, so enjoy!

Comment #62 pretty much sums it up.

stupid hippis.

I’m glad you picked this one up, Peter. Arrington could have only written this from a place of feigned ignorance to stir blog hits – the premise is not even real:

Think of listening to your favorite song on headphones, lying on your floor.
Think music defining the ambiance at a restaurant.
Think of endless working hours with music as your company.
Think of having guests over and how important that record is that you choose.

Viva recorded music. We can only be at the beginning.

Other than that the depth of any possible discussion of economic justice seems a bit beyond the scope of musicians making a living – almost no musicians as we typically think of them *are* making a living in our culture, unlike many in the last 5,000 years.