Sorry to be so cliche with the war on drugs stuff, I just hate that jerks like Henderson can act as if there’s a solution to the problem IF ONLY WE WERE WILLING TO ACT ON IT. There is no solution to people downloading music. The fact is that audio can be effectively ripped at a resolution high enough that we all agree it’s plenty beautiful, and don’t need more. So even if they stop people from COPYING the tracks they buy, the tracks will be rippable as long as people are able to listen to it (hmmm, if only we could stop this pesky ‘listening’ problem). The only way to force people to buy your stuff is to force them to use devices that don’t play the ripped tracks, which means devices that don’t play the formats people want. Obviously, this it what DRM enforcement is all about.

Back to drugs, I’m thinking we install chemical controls in the brains of everyone (a la Neuromancer) and block all known drugs from being absorbed. Then people can’t do drugs! Or, that is, until the people come up with a new drug that isn’t blocked, or new versions of old drugs… Oh well. If we don’t try the proposed ‘install chemical blocks in people’s brains and don’t let people remove them’ solution, then how will we know that it wouldn’t have worked?

According to this study: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2005/03/01/artistsdiversity050301.html the ‘average’ income for a full time artist – as of 2005 was around $23,500. Now if you factor in that in order to be a full time artist it is usually necessary to live in a major (expensive) urban center and the fact that there are many artists who make significantly more than that average and it paints a bleak picture for most of them.

There has been a rise in recent years in artist run labels and co-operatives like Arts & Crafts which should help. Personally I’m not interested in the welfare of the big labels, I’m interested in artists (in music and elsewhere) being able to support themselves and focus on their art rather than work a full time day job and treat their art as a hobby – you just get better results (artistically) that way. This: http://crp.publicbroadcasting.ca/ is actually meant to fix that. It proposes creating an artificially larger market. So the number of people in Canada wouldn’t actually change, but in terms of arts and culture an individual in the Canadian market is worth more than an individual in the US or European markets. It would provide tax incentives for Canadians to spend more on arts and culture and allow Canadian artists to keep more of what they bring in.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939600/steve_jobs_the_rolling_stone_interview/

I suggest you read the whole thing, but the bit I was most interested in:

“A young artist gets signed, and they get a big advance — a million dollars, or more. And the theory is that the record company will earn back that advance as the artist is successful.

Except that even though they’re really good at picking, still, only one or two out of the ten that they pick is successful. And so, for most of the artists, they never earn back that advance — so they’re out that money. Well, who pays for the ones that are the losers? … The winners pay. The winners are paying for the losers, and the winners are not seeing rewards commensurate with their success. And so they get upset. So what’s the remedy? The remedy is to stop paying advances. The remedy is to go to a gross-revenues deal and to tell an artist: We’ll give you 20 cents on every dollar we get … but we’re not gonna give you an advance.”

This model would really support the YouTube generation of Pro/Am talent, don’t you think?