Real Brave Audio

I already posted something about this but this is starting to get me angry. I announced on this blog that the music industry is now after people who want to learn how to play guitar. I think I should elaborate why THIS is the next battle in the damage control the industry is trying to do.

Songwriters and it’s publisher make good old dollars when records are sold, when they perform the songs, when the song is played in a TV show, movie and on the radio. They also make money or recieve royalties when sheet music for that song they wrote is sold. Rather than going into a whole analysis of this fact let’s just take it for what it is and realize that our poor famous rock stars and their sad publishers are losing money from the fact that sheet music sales are down. In the early 90’s a popular song would sell aproximately 25,000 copies of sheet music. Now it’s down to maybe 5,000 copies (NY TIMES).
People- the industry is still sagging from the digital music revolution. So, like any major scary corporation would do, they are protecting their assets by going after sites or people that are profiting from what they are losing. But isn’t that PART OF BUSINESS? For example: Company A is selling flowers at their shop and have so since 1932. They are a family-owned company, shrewdly run and complete bastards to everyone yet they have the only flower shop in the neighborhood. Since they are the only shop in the neighborhood, they charge whatever they want because the people in the surrounding area have no place else to go. Company B decides that they can open up shop in that neighborhood and cut into that market by charging significantly lower prices thereby making more flowers available to more people for practically nothing. Company A gets mad at this and decides to to sue company B for cutting into their profit margin.

Ok, this would never happen. Budding guitarists, probably as broke as I was when I was 12 and learning the instrument, are looking to these sites to get information on how to play their favorite songs. Yes, these songs are copyrighted and that does mean something, but I don’t feel bad for this industry. Not only are they alienating themselves from consumers for sueing them for peer to peer downloading, but they are sueing the tab sites that enable guitarist to share their tabs on the internet. Look “Music Industry”, the ball is already rolling. You just can’t stop it by calling “foul”. Besides, people are resilient. They will find a way around that obstacle too.

The internet is a place where people go for information. It is also a place that enables schmucks like me to say what I feel and make some sense of silly situations like this and prove it with fact. It’s time that this huge conglomerate made up of Publishing companies, Licensing companies , Sheet Music and the Record Companies RESTRUCTURE THE PAYMENT SYSTEM. You are NOT going to fix this by sueing the people that pay your salary.

I guess you can say that this all this copyright infringement mumbo-jumbo (peer-to-peer music downloads, tab sites, etc) IS stealing. I say it’s not and I’ll tell you why. I have been recording, performing and playing for 20 years and have had modest success. In that time I have had one record contract which I backed out of because the company wanted 100 percent of the publishing rights. Since then, that I have recorded songs that are damn good and people are shaking there heads because my band (or maybe even me) is/was a great talent that noboday will ever hear. There are probably millions of stories like mine. But if you go to an “industry conference” and network with your “portfolio” and schmooze in every single night club, you give your music away now to get noticed. On your website, you let people download music so that they can hear it and understand it through all the static that is all around them. If I have to do this, then what makes “Mr/Mrs Famous Recording Artist” any different?

I say: too bad. Times change.