Len Davis Presents - Vinnie Colaiuta

[YamahaPlayer]

10 yrs ago, during the hey day of Napster, you had a specific number of people who stole music. Most of them wouldn't have downloaded it legally even if there was a service to do so. Why should they?

Well I think you have to also look at the group of people using, say Napster - I never did personally, or anyone I know. Music at that point was already freely available if you just knew where to look.

Let's make it a little more real and applicable; As a musician I have had to learn countless cover songs. Thousands would be a realistic number. I'm sure many here as well...

There are 3 ways I can go about learning these songs for gigs right?

1. Buy the albums/song
2. The band copies the song(s) onto a CD for me
3. I download them/get ahold of a copy myself.

Now realistically, option 1 is absurd. If I had to buy every album that I had to learn 1 song off of... it just wouldn't work right? Even buying an individual song... it just makes no sense fiscally. The industry would have collapsed long ago if every song every musician had to learn, they had to out right purchase.

It's a bit of a forced issue. What is someone going to copy them off youtube? Isn't that the same issue as it is?

And additionally, I only had to learn the lesson 1 time of hearing a great song on the radio, going and buying the album and finding it was mostly fluff with the or 2 radio hits - and that is a well known trick record companies pulled for years.

I have no problem supporting artists and musicians that make great work, what I do have a problem with is contributing to Richard Branson's island home because he developed a monopoly on the music industry.

[deseipel]

that's audio of a show with Herbie Hancock. Actual Proof. It's on Youtube also.

[S.P]

Deseipel, I can't speak for everyone else but I was a napster, kazaa user back in the day and I now purchase the music of the artists I like, be it on CD, itunes, amazon, beatport or spotify. I may just be out of the loop but it seems to me that back when stuff like kazaa and napster were around it was a lot easier to download music illegally. Nowadays, if you use something like limewire you are exposed to getting a lot of viruses and dud files and it there is the fear of getting prosecuted. I guess it depends where you are though. Here in the UK there is a digital copyright act which forces ISPs to identify people that are downloading/uploading music and movies illegally and there was quite a widely reported incident of a law firm going after several hundred people asking for them to pay a fine or face a lawsuit.

I don't disagree that piracy still is widespread. I also wonder sometimes about whether those who download illegal files would pay to purchase the tracks if illegal downloading was not possible. I think a vast majority of people would just reduce their consumption of music and the industry wouldn't actually benefit that much.

[deseipel]

it's certainly debateable, sure. I've downloaded stuff back when audiogalaxy was online. And now I've bought a few things from Amazon.

This is sad imo, but I think that more people have bought albums online (legally) as a result of the ipod alone. That's a different topic though.

I think the sad fact is that the industry has changed so much so that the artform has and will continue to suffer. It's never going to be what it was. It's not like it was a huge cash cow for musicians in the first place, but now... (from what I've read) forget it.

This sounds harsh , but the only people who say, "oh, it will come around again." are the people who are defenders of piracy and the idoitic idea that art deserves to be free. I digress. It's a different ball game now. And some would have musicians hocking t-shirts and crap just to make cash. yay art.

this is no rant towards anyone in particular, it's just sickening to me..

[DSOP]

Read this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159376 ... 1593762690

[YamahaPlayer]

Any time an industry is monopolized, and the public figures a way around that monopoly - the major companies will suffer.

Everything is just changing, will music be the way it was? Of course not! What folly to think so. Radio is dead. The Ipod (or any other portable music device) revolutionized an industry - which included excluding having to listen to commercials, radio, etc for music access.

The real culprit, that few ever realize is MARKETING. Marketing destroyed music. Art. And pretty much every thing else it has touched.

You really can't blame any musician for playing on shit pop albums - but you can blame the companies for designing and flooding the market with that crap while simultaneously denying access, distribution and otherwise to acts they didn't want the public to see - and that's the real kicker to the whole thing.

The proof is in the pudding, how many producers on Justin Bieber's album? 39?!


deseipel - Should art or music be free? Of course not. Will anything that can be digitized be distributed? Absolutely. Will piracy ever be stopped? Probably not. Just like all black markets, they grow and are rarely ever dented by legal victories.

I just picked up a country gig, bout half of the tunes are covers. Do you expect me to go buy those albums or songs? Or do you expect me to use the burned CD's the band gave me to learn?

[deseipel]

it's tough, I don't expect anyone to go buy 40 albums to get a gig.

It feels different when it's for a job, such as a gig. You use those songs to further support yourself and make a living. The 'classic' pirate downloads songs for pure entertainment (or some people just download stuff 'just so they have it'). The difference is intent and usage.

on a different topic, if you purchased enough albums, I would think you could deduct them on your taxes as learning expenses. But I'm no accountant.


We're living in an opened-Pandora's-box music industry now. Prepare for the rise in mediocrity and the adulation of crap. tis already happened to a large degree.

[YamahaPlayer]

It feels different when it's for a job, such as a gig. You use those songs to further support yourself and make a living. The 'classic' pirate downloads songs for pure entertainment (or some people just download stuff 'just so they have it'). The difference is intent and usage.

on a different topic, if you purchased enough albums, I would think you could deduct them on your taxes as learning expenses. But I'm no accountant.

True enough.

However I have a very good accountant, and basically "claim" as little as possible. Being a self employed you get F*CKED on taxes. It is truly absurd. Disgustingly so. To the point where I'd have to make substantially more, just to claim it, to lose it, to make what I do now if I actually was honest about what I made to the government.

BTW there are no "learning expenses", it would just fall under general business expense and in order to deduct, you have to make a particular amount, and you can only deduct so much, and only claim a loss for so long (3 years depending on your state). Small business get's REALLY hammered.

Anyway, if some kid wants to download every piece of music he can... so what? You know he's not even listening to it. You can run the math on even small music collections (Mine is 3 T-bytes) and winamp puts the total play time at basically an impossible number of hours. But if I need to learn a classic rock tune, blues tune, pop tune, modern rock tune, etc... odds are I have it and if not, can find it or a band has it to give to me.

If I dig on a band, I'll support them. If not - I wouldn't have bought it anyway. Like I'd go buy X given pop album right?

[S.P]

Yeah, you know when they say in the news "Piracy costing industry 3 billion a year". Do you think that they take the number of illegal downloads and assume those would have been 'legal sales' to get the estimate of the cost to the industry? If so that is false, because a lot of downloads only happen BECAUSE they are free....if people had to pay they perhaps wouldn't download those same songs.

Also, without downloads or sharing music between each other gigs like the one YamahaPlayer just got and which I know 'weekend warriors' tend to rely on the most wouldn't be economical if each musician had to purchase a copy of the 40/50 songs on their bands repertoire. So perhaps 'free' music in that sense helps more people have more opportunity to make money on a gig...even if its only a low paying weekend thing.

Again, I definitely do not think that piracy is right, I think that we should always strive to find a way which is fairest for all...i.e. each person gets paid for their music. To be honest though, say if I have to play a Justin Bieber song cover on a gig (god help me) then I wouldn't care if I acquired that song without paying it because in my opinion he is already getting way more money than 99% of musicians do in their lifetime and has a whole host of teens who buy millions of dollars of Justin Bieber CDs, singles, concert tickets and merchandise so its not like he is short. Meanwhilst for me, playing that gig might help me get some much needed funds to help pay for my studies and living expenses.

Edit: Just another thought, digitalisation is new in terms of the fact that A LOT of musicians out there started off before it and are now going through the transition. Perhaps it will in fact get better as the industry adapts and evolves to maximise the potential benefits of digitalisation. Plus it seems like in the hay day of the studio sessions, according to the account given by Vinnie in this interview, where he was doing 4 sessions a day and he was saying that all the players were 'knitting' or had their mind on getting out of there and onto the golf course. Abundance like that breeds complacency and I think it's good that people are challenged with new problems. It keeps people motivated, interested in what they are doing and breeds improvement!

[deseipel]

you have to be careful with that train of thought. "I wouldn't have bought it anyway." It's moot at that point. It's after-the-fact. I know what you're saying though. Here's the other thing: What did musicians do before the Internet? They did everything else to get a copy of the tune: recorded it from the radio, asked their friends who had it, asked the bandleader for a copy of the song (on cassette). The point is, someone else usually had the album, that they purchased. The old system 'accounted' for cassette copies or other media copies.

All that the Internet does is make it easier to steal. It takes 'that someone else' out of the picture (from above). Now, no one has to break down & buy the album. So in the old way, you had a system where one guy owned the album, who dubbed it for the musician on cassette. Maybe he does this for 4 or 5 guys he knows. Today, that one guy doesn't have to buy the album, so the 4-5 downloads probably only represent a loss of one sale of the album. Don't misunderstand, it's still enormous once you extrapolate it across the industry.

For me, it's really sad when I read 'if people had to pay...'. Well excuse us for wanting to get paid for all the money we put into it!


The answer is an ISP tax or a good DRM system, or the industry needs to work with the computer industry to build a new system.