End of File Sharing?

I think we got into an argument about whether engineers and producers are skilled and creative which was not my intention. I know several very highly skilled and talented people who do that and I wouldn't knock them for a minute. The guy behind the desk at a gig has probably the same or even greater responsibility for it being a good or bad gig than any of the musicians on the stage. Similarly many great tracks as phil mitchell says are the result of the skill and creativity of producers, some of whom are musicians in their own right who's instrument is the studio itself. I'm not knocking what they do or contribute. a good record can be ruined by shit engineering (my first experience in a recording studio back in the 80's confirms that ) and a good record can be enhanced.
Nor do I think that good equipment is of no value. It's the same as a quality sax will sound better than a cheap one played by the same player.
( a cheap sax played by someone like Andy Sheppard will sound better than the best sax in the world played by me though )

The point I was trying to make was about record companies. Do they REALLY pay their engineers such stellar salaries that it justifies them taking 40% of the sales of a cd to pay them? when the artist is usually getting 10% ?
Is it right that they take the copyright of the track away from the artist for themselves?
Even someone like Paul McCartney had to BUY back the copyright in the songs HE HAD WRITTEN from a corporation who were making the money out of them for themselves.
It's theft.
And then they do all this PR about illegal downloading killing music. well it's not. It's killing the music business as it is presently constituted. And that's a good thing IMO.

read this which is much better at saying this than me http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=all

to answer some of the other points in this thread.....
I do think that radiohead for instance have benefited from good production but I also think that they are very creative musicians dedicated to what they do and that they would have succeeded with or without that. And I also think they are in the driving seat, not the other way round

I think it's an insult to musicians to suggest that they have a lower set of hearing skills than engineers. A musicians hearing is not just about pitch sense, it is about the whole wealth of what the sound they are making is about. the arrangement, the dynamics, the mood the tempo and so on and so on. the engineer is there to help the musician make the recording sound as close to his/her vision as possible. Some engineers go beyond that to become an integral part of the band ( George Martin and the Beatles being the prime example)
but even he would not be known today if it were not for the musical genius of Lennon and McCartney.

Producer in this context is usually just another name for musician IMO. They take either technology, samples of live music or real musicians and use them to create something new that is their own idea made real.

Beethoven went deaf at the end of his life. I doubt he would have written a note if he had been born deaf !

the recordings I was specifically thinking of are the early recordings of blues musicians usually made on a reel to reel tape recorder with one mike in one take. or the early rock n roll tracks
listen to King Oliver recordings some of these were done on wax cylinders ffs..... still great music.

My main point was that producers are a valuable commodity on the process of making a record, and I thought you were discounting their worth, but I'm not trying to insult musicians at all, sorry if that's how it came across.

I completely agree with you on the business side of things though.....

Beethoven started to go deaf in his 20's, and he continued to write and conduct music for many years to come...... [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven"]Ludwig van Beethoven - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Beethoven.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Beethoven.jpg/250px-Beethoven.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/6/6f/Beethoven.jpg/250px-Beethoven.jpg[/ame]

I think you'd be surprised how much influence a producer will have over the sound of an album, I'm not for a second suggesting that they write the album or influence the writing/content of it, but they are certainly in the driving seat when it comes to defining a sound of an album...that's why a lot of bands do tend to stick with engineers/producers once they know they can deliver a sound they like, even if it isn't their initial vision of how they themselves think they should sound......Most bands aren't even there when the album is mixed down, so how can they have any influence over that other than saying, we would like to sound like "X"?

mine was that musicians (however you define them) are essential and I thought you were saying that their skills were of a lower order than engineers because all they had to be able to do was hear if they were in tune or not.
The essential thing in all this is that the process has to be CREATIVE.
much of the sterile genre debate that goes on on here misses that point. It's not whether 'minimal is shite' or 'trance is shite' but whether the track is shite and that is solely to do with whether it has something new to say.

oh and you were using Beethoven to back up your point that musicians don't have to have any ears at all to still be musicians. Beethoven was able to do what he did because he was a genius and had a phenomenal musical brain that enabled him to be able to write down the music in his head. Name me a deaf producer or engineer then

ps my earnings on saturday were £19.31 ..............

Forks, as an artist would you rather have 10% of £10 for a cd you have made, or 0% of £0 for an album of yours someone downloaded through a torrent?

And assuming your answer is the former, would you rather pay the legal bill to stop the latter yourself, or have many billions of business £s do it?

Anyway, I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make, other than 'stick it to the man'.

You can go on about musical talent, but if you ask me, I think it's pretty damn talented to set up a company, and for that matter an industry, that people can't make, buy or use music without. Whole economies are based on people seeing and taking opportunites. Doing so on the natural talent of a musician is no different to doing so on raw goods from the ground or a farm in my opinion. Why should your artistic licence be so cushioned and protected from the world that I'm not allowed to buy the copyright to it? Who cares if Paul McCartney had to buy the copyright to his music? He originally owned it, and chose to sell it in the first place. I appreciate you may have this lovey new-age kind of concept of your music as an expression/mood/feeling or whatever, and that's fine, i'm sure there's a lot of people view it like that, but there's also a lot of people view it as a potential business venture in which some investment might see a good return. There's nothing to say you're wrong and they're right. You think it should be treated one way, others think another. Ultimately the market's decided.

so that's it then is it? the market decides? all human truth and beauty reduced to a market. there is more to life than the market. If you think that everything is only the price it will fetch then I suggest you have a very sterile life to endure. I wish you joy of it.
And by your logic it's pretty smart to download music for free because you are using someone's natural talent to get something for free. in market terms it don't come any better than that.

You've kind of proved my point there, it is possible for musician to make music having poor hearing, if they are talented enough to do so, it's not possible for an engineer to produce good music with poor hearing, no matter how good they are at twiddling knobs....hence generally speaking engineers and producers have better hearing, because they need to......

On one hand you are saying that music is an expression of natural talent and that cannot be valued but on the other hand you are moaning about people downloading music for zero monetary gain to yourself.

Live by the sword, die by the sword....

You've not really answered anything I've said, other than derided it mockingly.

Personally I download music for free, and don't intend to stop. I'm not supporting music, industry, beauty of art, or the free market. I just want something to listen to on the bus to work in the morning.

ah but he was a genius. and I guess we are using the term hearing to mean different things. I meant it in the sense of listening and you meant it in terms of frequency response did you?

where did I do that ??????? I'm not moaning about people downloading music, mine or anyone elses.

I once saw a documentary about a DJ who went deaf and still carried on DJing

my answer is this.....
I'd rather have 100% of £5 than 10% of £10 or 0% of £0. our cd is a fiver and the man can keep his fucking grasping hand out of my pocket.
and by the way downloaded music is not 0% of £0. It means that someone is listening to the music you made which is the purpose of making it. You are so blinded by the market that you cannot conceive of a musician actually making music for non commercial reasons.
of course everybody needs to live so I'm in favour of musicians making money out of what they do if it brings pleasure to people. why not. but that doesn't mean the law should criminalise people for avoiding putting ever more money in the hands of big corporations. (who are all by the way a long way from whoever had the bright idea of publishing recorded music in the first place. do you imagine Guy Hands gives a flying fuck about music? )

yeh I think I heard him one night in digital

not my pocket cos I'm not involved with record companies but yes I do think the companies had all the power and the artists ( with a few exceptions) had very little.
This is all changing now due to the fact that the cost of distribution has reached essentially zero. this is a good thing and the days of corporations making all the money out of music is going. fast, And I think that's a good thing. if you don't then I guess we will have to differ. I wonder if you work for a corporation?

and just because something has always gone on doesn't make it right.

I see what you're saying, but when do you think it was any different?