[Juho L]

Originally Posted by ledge

This is possible without the behemoth which is the major label recording industry at the moment. The paperwork is huge because the recording business has made it that way, plenty of small businesses exist without having to be part of some massive conglomorate, why can't the music industry work similarly?

At least in Finland the state collects and takes care of taxing, not the music industry. ?hih. When you pay salaries to musicians, mixermen, etc, you're an employer, which means you'll have to be an entrepeneur which leads into a taxation hell and to seventh level of Dante's recepit inferno. Running a small business is not an easy task. Loads of work with the financial things.

The original point was that the Beatles made a fortune from only getting a few p per record sold, so if artists got a higher percentage of the actual sales they could make a living without having to sell massive quatities. It is only that the majotrs rip off artists so badly at the moment that it means that artists have to sell huge numbers of albums to make a living.

Wouldn't it be nice if you would get more pay for an average factory work so you wouldn't have to work extra shifts to get some money left after living costs. Life is like a flower bed: There is no flowers without manure and dirt. Totally equal business and market is total utopia. It's just a thing one has to accept. As long as humans are running the system there will be greedy bastards. But remember kids that the big music industry bullies are not the only one's cooping more than they need. for example think of Paul McCartney - Why none of you whine why he haven't spend his millions to support new music and musicians even he can burn 100 pounds in bright flame each minute and he would still have money left when he dies? Greed folks, greed. If the big bullies don't take the extra then someone else does. I'm not saying that the modern music industry is great, but don't bite the hand that feeds your fellows.

Did you read that link to Steve Albini looking at the numbers and who makes what?

A bad contract is a bad contract.

My point is that the middlemen are taking a far bigger slice of the pie than they deserve, not that they shouldn't exist at all.

Everyone takes a far bigger slice if they can. If you take a hundred people in a big hall with a huge box in the middle filled with 20 euro notes and put up a sign declaring "One note per person", what do you think does everyone walk out with one note in their hand? Of course they do, except they have their pockets and shirts filled with notes.

I agree that they are digging their own grave, and I'm not condoning downloading music and not buying it, though I will refuse to buy music from major labels. At the same time I don't really listen to music from major labels as most of it is not to my tastes.

But not buying it because of the label is really just doing damage to the artists. Buy the record, damn it! I bet my arm that you wear clothes that has one promille of the sales income spent to the salaries of the people actually making them and I also bet that the profits of almost everything you have bought is unfairly shared. Still you don't seem to make a number of it. We live in a rotten globalised world in which silly itty-bitty fraction of people get all the profits excluding the itty-bitty fraction that goes to the other people. Unfair world.

I'm pretty sure we are thinking the same thing here :)

What is this? A peace pipe of some sort! I fart in your peace pipe's general direction!