Comments on: 14 year old girls and music ethics

By: Shannon

Shannon — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 06:40:52 +0000

Seb, *no* to a blanket music tax on ISPs. It would be regressive, favouring the already wealthy (eg RIAA). The only way it could be distributed fairly would be through the most invasive surveillance of all online behaviour. Not to mention that much file sharing now happens via LANs and portable hard drives.

I’m not a capitalist, but when it comes to these issues I’m sympathetic with the capitalist notions that the customer and the free market are right. And they are currently speaking loudly and clearly about how they want to engage with music.

By: adrian

adrian — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 03:00:34 +0000

“…it was of so little value to them, that once they tired of a song, it was entirely removed from their digital media and their lives.”

isn’t that what ‘14 year old girls’ (to use a horrible generalisation, but i’m sure you understand my meaning) have always done? for decades it was cheap 7″ singles. when cds kicked in in earnest in the early 90s, record companies really struggled to establish cd singles, mostly because all the ‘14 year old girls’ were buying cassettes for their walkmen – simply because cassettes were cheaper – there was never any argument that the cassettes had better sound – and then they’d chuck them once the cheap cassettes got chewed up by their cheap walkmen 3 months later. what do downloads have to do with this phenomenon? they just happen to be the media of choice at the moment. but the way the actual music is treated is exactly the same. if record companies wish to mass promote top 40 product, they can’t eat their cake as well. did they really think for the last 5 or 6 decades that the music they were plugging wasn’t “of so little value to them”. if you make product rather than music, that’s how it will be treated, no matter what the format. the only difference now is that the record companies don’t get money for it. people now give them exactly what they’ve always thought their ‘music’ was worth.

By: Neil

Neil — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:08:57 +0000

I like that they put different values on things consumed consciously and things experienced consciously. I suspect though that this is less to do with their being savvy consumer-critics than their perceiving life experiences as cultural capital to be accumulated.

In the contemporary context of popism, I’m surprised that that a separate idea of musical authenticity (between live work and recordings) persists in music consumers. But maybe that’s because popists are old.

I’m with them on chucking downloads away. I never keep podcasts and rarely keep tracks I’ve downloaded, unless I’ve listened to them so much that they’ve become a part of my world.

By: seb chan

seb chan — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 06:41:32 +0000

Then music is fully commoditised . . . like the provision of water, electricity, gas, sewerage. Problem is, the financial models haven’t caught up with this.

Sewerage workers still get paid and electricity plants are profitable – it just requires a different set of economics and an understanding that consumers may freely move between suppliers.

But who are the suppliers in a commoditised digital music world?

Probably the ISPs – which again seems to mean that the way forward is a blanket music tax on internet connections.