Open source projects like Relisten [1] depend on the Internet Archive for long term storage of legally recorded concerts from artists like the Grateful Dead, known for their unique concert experiences. This is an invaluable public service for millions of music fans and a boon to American history and culture.
Look, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of copyright violation. But every time something like this pops up my instant reaction is that Internet Archive are inflicting this on themselves.
They are aiming to provide storage service for legally recorded concerts? Great. This should be a separate project, partnered and advertised, but formally unrelated to IA "backup the internet" thing. They are aiming to be a huge online library that allows you to "legally" borrow books? Great, let it be another separate project. Internet Archive has enough problems on its own, there's no need to keep loading all sorts of obviously dangerous initiatives on top of it.
The conventional idea is a band makes a CD of their songs, mastered to perfection, stamps out CDs and streams, and that's it. The exact same audio, let's call it the "radio edit". I hear the song on the radio, it's exactly the same. I can tell when a performer is lip syncing, because no singer sings a song the same way twice, and I know the radio edit. It's burned in my brain.
But, I discovered that when real bands, like Fleetwood Mac, play a concert, they play their old standards, but in a different way every time. I bought their concert CDs, because hearing different versions of the same song makes it fresh and fun again.
So my idea is, why don't bands produce a dozen or so "radio edits" of their better songs? I bet they'd increase sales, especially to people like me.
I suppose they think they are doing that with the "remastered" edits, but those all stink. Sing it again, Sam!
First you are wrong from the very start. Although the original source is usually the same many cases the radio-edit was not the same audio as the album version. It was usually much shorter. There is a reason it was called radio edit.
> So my idea is, why don't bands produce a dozen or so "radio edits" of their better songs? I bet they'd increase sales, especially to people like me.
In no particular order:
- because concert recordings already achieve this purpose.
- because time in the studio is costly, and you are not touring or composing while you are doing it.
- because every single person will have her favorite studio version, the same way they may have their favorite concert radio and most would not buy n versions of the same song and would dislike the slightly modified one. Some have already produced n version, uncensored and censored versions. Usually you like the one you heard first the most.
- Producing many different SKUs does not magically equal to making significantly more sales and can reduce revenues if stock of the less popular ones do not sell.
From the 'Save the Archive' site:
"But when their Great 78 Project rescued over 400,000 recordings, major labels responded with a lawsuit against the Internet Archive for research library streams of old vinyl records.... Artists and labels alike should partner with valuable cultural stewards like the Internet Archive—not sue them. It’s time to support nonprofit music preservation to ensure that our music and our stories aren’t lost to history."
Most of the hundreds of old 78 labels (Brunswick, Federal, Odeon, Okeh, to name a few) [0] are long gone, as are their masters (if any) and their artists. IA recovered those recordings from existing copies made long, long ago... preserving a cultural heritage directly from collections of music available -only- on 78s. Many of the recordings were made with fragile shellac.
That is apparently the focus of these invidious lawsuits.
Because they don’t make (practically) any money on CD sales, streaming, or radio plays, the record labels do. That one performance is recorded, and they get paid for that performance and the record label owns it. Any time that recording is played, it’s seen as a marketing to sell the album.
The artist makes their money through each live performance, so it makes sense for them to change things up so concert goers have an incentive to see something new.
May I introduce you to literally all of Classical and Jazz Music?
Hell, tons of other genres are recorded piles of times with each being different. Even in the pop world, covers exist, a long tradition of different artists doing the same song.
> So my idea is, why don't bands produce a dozen or so "radio edits" of their better songs?
I had that exact same thought today when listening to Snarky Puppy’s re-release of We Like It Here. I have become so familiar with the original release that all of the differences in the remixes sound like mistakes, and the alternative takes sound like the musician forgot to read the music.
Yes, I realise they’re improvised. Which is the point. Because they only published one canonical improvisation (until now) my conception of their music was made rigid in a way that probably wasn’t intended by the artists.
(It also makes me appreciate the work that Giles Martin did on The Beatles’ remixes, that any deviation would be seen as heresy, and yet he’s managed to avoid any substantive controversy.)
> So my idea is, why don't bands produce a dozen or so "radio edits" of their better songs? I bet they'd increase sales, especially to people like me.
They do though; more and more I'm seeing artists publish alternative edits, remasters, live versions, demos, songs-that-didn't-make-it, basically more of their back catalog onto streaming platforms. These "rare" tracks aren't going to sell albums so the investment to publish a new album won't be worth it, but uploading more stuff to streaming platforms is relatively cheap and easy in comparison. It's long tail stuff, but streaming platforms earn big on long tail.
thats like the entire jamband scene which been around since the 60s... the grateful dead, phish, kind gizzard and the lizard wizard...
one could also mention the electronic scene in there. aphex twin released ventolin in 1995 which was the same track remixed multiples times with different edits.
A while back, Scorpions decided to re-record all their hits and release them on an album. The result was so close in production and performance that Apple Music went ahead and swapped the new version in place of the original.
You'd dial up Rock You Like a Hurricane, and it'd play this thing that sounded just like the version you had burned into your head, but subtly different. It was like watching a car chase scene in a straight-to-Netflix movie where they thought they could get away with doing the whole thing in CGI. Straight down the middle of Uncanny Valley, to the point where you can't enjoy the song at all, and just spend your 4 minutes cataloging the tiny differences that don't live up to the Real Thing.
Those hit songs all captured Magic in some way that just can't be recreated. Plenty have tried what you're talking about (Great White did the same trick, redoing their early stuff with their new singer), but all it does is create bland copies that don't live up to the original. They actually make you wonder why you liked the original in the first place, since (in GW's case) the replacement is just a cookie-cutter blues rock song that anybody could have done.
It's hard to believe until you hear it, since yeah, it seems like a good idea.
> So my idea is, why don't bands produce a dozen or so "radio edits" of their better songs? I bet they'd increase sales, especially to people like me.
Because, to a first approximation, you and I don't result in any real revenue no matter what an artist does.
If you're a mid-tier artist, you want to fully extract money from your 100 rabid fans who will show up every single time you appear in that area and everybody else can go hang.
> So my idea is, why don't bands produce a dozen or so "radio edits" of their better songs? I bet they'd increase sales, especially to people like me.
When was the last time you heard anything off of Blackstar by Bowie? Or any of Johnny Marr's latest stuff?
The issue isn't creating music. It's getting any of your music played anywhere.
Pop music is kind of doing this, serially recording variations that prompt critics to ask "why are all songs the same?"
I've worked in a number of recording sessions. There are seldom actually multiple takes -- those cost money. There is usually one publishable take. When you've got that one in the can, you move on to the next song. But naturally I can't speak for major acts like Fleetwood Mac. Historically, bands varied a lot in terms of how much editing they wanted to do. Many hits were recorded in one take by hired studio musicians.
I agree that something like this would help bring back the authenticity to music, it would almost be like the equivalent of how DVDs have director commentary, outtakes, etc.
The entire copyright thing needs to stop. It is preventing great music from being made or at least released publicly.
I understand that some musicians get nice royalties and this is their full-time thing, but most of us get close to nothing from streaming and barely break even from record sales.
I'd rather get nothing and be allowed to sample and remix everything.
Only for the most successful ones. But I guess that is the future we are headed to: a cutthroat industry where there are a few successful musicians that give us the illusion that music is still created by people, and the rest of them out of a job anyway because of AI.
There's no "will be" about it. Live performances are the past, present and future of the music industry. Musicians have basically never made real money from recordings.
That it works for the top 0.1% of musicians demonstrates literally nothing about what the effects are for musicians in general. This is like saying that because Stephen King makes good money, writers are fine. It is a willful misunderstanding of reality.
The reality is that things have gotten much tougher for working musicians in general.
> Lobbyist organizations should redirect their power into making the government appropriately tax streaming platforms to fund artists, rather than side with monopolistic corporate players.
Sorry, what? We're talking about streaming platforms here that have contracts with record labels that have contracts with musicians. If those contracts aren't paying musicians enough, why is the solution to impose a new tax on streaming platforms specifically to pay musicians?
From the page they link to:
> The Living Wage for Musicians Act would tax providers’ non-subscription revenues and add a small fee to the price of music streaming subscriptions. DSPs like Spotify offering interactive music streaming services would pass their taxed revenues and royalties to a non-profit collection and distribution fund, that would in turn pay artists in proportion to their monthly streams.
Isn't this what these contracts are supposed to already be doing? If the numbers aren't making sense then the contract needs to renegotiated. If musicians don't have enough power to renegotiate then the government can and should address that. But why would the solution be to use the taxation power to do the job that royalties are already supposed to be doing?
This feels like a classic case of addressing the symptoms (musicians aren't making enough money) while failing to address the actual problem (musicians have no power to negotiate for what they want).
To solve this issue, copyright needs to be permanently tied to the person who made the work, and can never be transferred. Not allowing copyrights to be transferable grants significant leverage to the artist, whilst also allowing works to enter the public domain via the author's eventual death (or earlier if copyright expires in 20 years as it originally should have).
I just want a streaming service where all the money I pay (minus some fee) goes to artists I listen to. Right now the biggest portion of what I pay for music streaming goes to Taylor Swift and I don't even listen to her albums.
> The music we make today is valuable, and it’s time for the industry to treat it that way and invest in working musicians by paying fair royalties for streams.
They do treat it that way. They use the economies of scale and their skill at exploitation to steal it without paying a fair amount for it. By "fair", I mean an amount that would be paid if the industry were collectively owned by musicians.
But the key here is that in global capitalism, an amount of money is not proportional to the value you bring to others any more. Instead, it is proportional to how effective you are at growing the existing power structure itself, which is an emergent phenomenon of global, high tech capitalism.
Studios are akin to large corporations who extract raw materials for cheap from economically-poor countries. They exploit and short change the people who live there for enormous profits. Extracting "raw materials" as music is much the same phenomenon.
Therefore, in order to truly solve this problem, large corporations such as music industries must be taken down, and not negotiated with. So, my advice to musicians is not to negotiate, but to create and sell your music directly. Start a Patreon and take orders yourself.
I love the Internet Archive in its current form, but let’s assume that a court rules it can’t operate as it does now. Why couldn’t it adopt a system similar to YouTube’s ownership claim? For example, if the Internet Archive hosts a song owned by Universal, the company could claim ownership of that song and receive a share of the revenue each time it's streamed. To help cover costs, the Internet Archive could introduce a paid plan, like YouTube Premium, for 10 bucks a month. While this might not be the perfect solution, it would at least be better than a world without the Internet Archive.
What really stands out is the call to refocus on living artists rather than endlessly monetizing back catalogs. I think that’s where the industry’s priorities need to shift
>Make streaming services pay fair compensation
Others have probably pointed it out already but if it happens, streaming services are very unlikely to survive. They are not profitable even today. To make things worse, AFAIK there is research that basically says that streaming services will never generate money for their investors.
Spotify can only afford to pay its musicians "unfair" compensations. Otherwise it will be forced out of business.
[+] [-] block_dagger|1 year ago|reply
[1] https://relisten.net
[+] [-] krick|1 year ago|reply
They are aiming to provide storage service for legally recorded concerts? Great. This should be a separate project, partnered and advertised, but formally unrelated to IA "backup the internet" thing. They are aiming to be a huge online library that allows you to "legally" borrow books? Great, let it be another separate project. Internet Archive has enough problems on its own, there's no need to keep loading all sorts of obviously dangerous initiatives on top of it.
[+] [-] WalterBright|1 year ago|reply
The conventional idea is a band makes a CD of their songs, mastered to perfection, stamps out CDs and streams, and that's it. The exact same audio, let's call it the "radio edit". I hear the song on the radio, it's exactly the same. I can tell when a performer is lip syncing, because no singer sings a song the same way twice, and I know the radio edit. It's burned in my brain.
But, I discovered that when real bands, like Fleetwood Mac, play a concert, they play their old standards, but in a different way every time. I bought their concert CDs, because hearing different versions of the same song makes it fresh and fun again.
So my idea is, why don't bands produce a dozen or so "radio edits" of their better songs? I bet they'd increase sales, especially to people like me.
I suppose they think they are doing that with the "remastered" edits, but those all stink. Sing it again, Sam!
[+] [-] prmoustache|1 year ago|reply
> So my idea is, why don't bands produce a dozen or so "radio edits" of their better songs? I bet they'd increase sales, especially to people like me.
In no particular order:
- because concert recordings already achieve this purpose.
- because time in the studio is costly, and you are not touring or composing while you are doing it.
- because every single person will have her favorite studio version, the same way they may have their favorite concert radio and most would not buy n versions of the same song and would dislike the slightly modified one. Some have already produced n version, uncensored and censored versions. Usually you like the one you heard first the most.
- Producing many different SKUs does not magically equal to making significantly more sales and can reduce revenues if stock of the less popular ones do not sell.
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|1 year ago|reply
Most of the hundreds of old 78 labels (Brunswick, Federal, Odeon, Okeh, to name a few) [0] are long gone, as are their masters (if any) and their artists. IA recovered those recordings from existing copies made long, long ago... preserving a cultural heritage directly from collections of music available -only- on 78s. Many of the recordings were made with fragile shellac.
That is apparently the focus of these invidious lawsuits.
[0] http://78discography.com/
[+] [-] orev|1 year ago|reply
Because they don’t make (practically) any money on CD sales, streaming, or radio plays, the record labels do. That one performance is recorded, and they get paid for that performance and the record label owns it. Any time that recording is played, it’s seen as a marketing to sell the album.
The artist makes their money through each live performance, so it makes sense for them to change things up so concert goers have an incentive to see something new.
[+] [-] Tokkemon|1 year ago|reply
Hell, tons of other genres are recorded piles of times with each being different. Even in the pop world, covers exist, a long tradition of different artists doing the same song.
[+] [-] simondotau|1 year ago|reply
I had that exact same thought today when listening to Snarky Puppy’s re-release of We Like It Here. I have become so familiar with the original release that all of the differences in the remixes sound like mistakes, and the alternative takes sound like the musician forgot to read the music.
Yes, I realise they’re improvised. Which is the point. Because they only published one canonical improvisation (until now) my conception of their music was made rigid in a way that probably wasn’t intended by the artists.
(It also makes me appreciate the work that Giles Martin did on The Beatles’ remixes, that any deviation would be seen as heresy, and yet he’s managed to avoid any substantive controversy.)
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|1 year ago|reply
They do though; more and more I'm seeing artists publish alternative edits, remasters, live versions, demos, songs-that-didn't-make-it, basically more of their back catalog onto streaming platforms. These "rare" tracks aren't going to sell albums so the investment to publish a new album won't be worth it, but uploading more stuff to streaming platforms is relatively cheap and easy in comparison. It's long tail stuff, but streaming platforms earn big on long tail.
[+] [-] papaver|1 year ago|reply
one could also mention the electronic scene in there. aphex twin released ventolin in 1995 which was the same track remixed multiples times with different edits.
[+] [-] jasonkester|1 year ago|reply
A while back, Scorpions decided to re-record all their hits and release them on an album. The result was so close in production and performance that Apple Music went ahead and swapped the new version in place of the original.
You'd dial up Rock You Like a Hurricane, and it'd play this thing that sounded just like the version you had burned into your head, but subtly different. It was like watching a car chase scene in a straight-to-Netflix movie where they thought they could get away with doing the whole thing in CGI. Straight down the middle of Uncanny Valley, to the point where you can't enjoy the song at all, and just spend your 4 minutes cataloging the tiny differences that don't live up to the Real Thing.
Those hit songs all captured Magic in some way that just can't be recreated. Plenty have tried what you're talking about (Great White did the same trick, redoing their early stuff with their new singer), but all it does is create bland copies that don't live up to the original. They actually make you wonder why you liked the original in the first place, since (in GW's case) the replacement is just a cookie-cutter blues rock song that anybody could have done.
It's hard to believe until you hear it, since yeah, it seems like a good idea.
[+] [-] bsder|1 year ago|reply
Because, to a first approximation, you and I don't result in any real revenue no matter what an artist does.
If you're a mid-tier artist, you want to fully extract money from your 100 rabid fans who will show up every single time you appear in that area and everybody else can go hang.
> So my idea is, why don't bands produce a dozen or so "radio edits" of their better songs? I bet they'd increase sales, especially to people like me.
When was the last time you heard anything off of Blackstar by Bowie? Or any of Johnny Marr's latest stuff?
The issue isn't creating music. It's getting any of your music played anywhere.
[+] [-] mdp2021|1 year ago|reply
Call it the "studio version".
A "radio edit" is a cut for quick consumption.
[+] [-] analog31|1 year ago|reply
I've worked in a number of recording sessions. There are seldom actually multiple takes -- those cost money. There is usually one publishable take. When you've got that one in the can, you move on to the next song. But naturally I can't speak for major acts like Fleetwood Mac. Historically, bands varied a lot in terms of how much editing they wanted to do. Many hits were recorded in one take by hired studio musicians.
[+] [-] vunderba|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] skrebbel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] __MatrixMan__|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bjelkeman-again|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] eleveriven|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rectang|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] futureduck|1 year ago|reply
I understand that some musicians get nice royalties and this is their full-time thing, but most of us get close to nothing from streaming and barely break even from record sales.
I'd rather get nothing and be allowed to sample and remix everything.
[+] [-] WalterBright|1 year ago|reply
The smart musicians, like Taylor Swift, figured that out. Her latest tour brought in what, 2 billion dollars?
[+] [-] uhoh-itsmaciek|1 year ago|reply
[1]: e.g., like this one from David Lowery of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven: https://thetrichordist.com/2016/02/16/the-reality-of-touring...
[+] [-] vouaobrasil|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|1 year ago|reply
Are people spending crazy money on Taylor Swift at their local mega stadium, also hitting up local music venues? Seems unlikely.
[+] [-] adamc|1 year ago|reply
The reality is that things have gotten much tougher for working musicians in general.
[+] [-] lolinder|1 year ago|reply
Sorry, what? We're talking about streaming platforms here that have contracts with record labels that have contracts with musicians. If those contracts aren't paying musicians enough, why is the solution to impose a new tax on streaming platforms specifically to pay musicians?
From the page they link to:
> The Living Wage for Musicians Act would tax providers’ non-subscription revenues and add a small fee to the price of music streaming subscriptions. DSPs like Spotify offering interactive music streaming services would pass their taxed revenues and royalties to a non-profit collection and distribution fund, that would in turn pay artists in proportion to their monthly streams.
Isn't this what these contracts are supposed to already be doing? If the numbers aren't making sense then the contract needs to renegotiated. If musicians don't have enough power to renegotiate then the government can and should address that. But why would the solution be to use the taxation power to do the job that royalties are already supposed to be doing?
This feels like a classic case of addressing the symptoms (musicians aren't making enough money) while failing to address the actual problem (musicians have no power to negotiate for what they want).
[+] [-] x-complexity|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexandrB|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ozzsama|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] laserbeam|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] vouaobrasil|1 year ago|reply
They do treat it that way. They use the economies of scale and their skill at exploitation to steal it without paying a fair amount for it. By "fair", I mean an amount that would be paid if the industry were collectively owned by musicians.
But the key here is that in global capitalism, an amount of money is not proportional to the value you bring to others any more. Instead, it is proportional to how effective you are at growing the existing power structure itself, which is an emergent phenomenon of global, high tech capitalism.
Studios are akin to large corporations who extract raw materials for cheap from economically-poor countries. They exploit and short change the people who live there for enormous profits. Extracting "raw materials" as music is much the same phenomenon.
Therefore, in order to truly solve this problem, large corporations such as music industries must be taken down, and not negotiated with. So, my advice to musicians is not to negotiate, but to create and sell your music directly. Start a Patreon and take orders yourself.
[+] [-] daft_pink|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] doright|1 year ago|reply
https://archive.org/details/netlabels
https://archive.org/details/monotonik?sort=-downloads
[+] [-] nadermx|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|1 year ago|reply
I guess they are not "real musicians" because the internet doesn't agree with them?
[+] [-] mwinatschek|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cess11|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] eleveriven|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ozzsama|1 year ago|reply
Spotify can only afford to pay its musicians "unfair" compensations. Otherwise it will be forced out of business.
[+] [-] excalibur|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] Amekedl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] echelon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexandrB|1 year ago|reply
Example: https://old.reddit.com/r/musicindustry/comments/1ao87z5/spot...
[+] [-] dangus|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] romanobro56|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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