The RIAA Armageddon has begun

Yeah, I buy a ton of albums off itunes and the standard has been $9.99 for years.

I still remember paying $19.99 + tax for Outkast's Aquemini CD at Warehouse Music back in '98. Don't miss those years.
xpost

spend more on their beer tab than they do at the merch table

Wait, who *doesn't* do this aside from teetotallers? Beer is expensive, man.

"I still remember paying $19.99 + tax for Outkast's Aquemini"

Worth every penny.

Wait, who *doesn't* do this aside from teetotallers? Beer is expensive, man.

lol you should have seen me at 90s Cure shows, I would basically buy one of every t-shirt

I think the first 3 times I saw them I dropped $300 on shirts without even blinking

then I looked at a pile of t-shirts that would take me a month to go through and I started blinking

Cor blimey. I don't have anywhere near enough money to do stuff like that. Anyway, even if I drop £15 on an LP at a show, I will have spent at least £20 on booze... I don't really think that because booze is expensive I should have to buy another bloody 7" or something, I've already paid in to the goddamn gig.

Someone had to keep Robert Smith in hookers and blow eyeliner and pies xp

LOL@DJP's extensive shirt collection.

I don't go to a lot of shows (try living two hours from where anyone plays), but I chip in at the merch table when I can. Though one of the last shows I was at, it was nothing but vinyl. I guess that's great for some people, but I haven't had a turntable in 20 years.

The merch table at the Acid Mothers' show was mind-boggling. Musta been thirty albums laid out.

I refuse to pay eight bucks for a shot of cheap whisky.

I usually buy a t-shirt if it's a band I'm really into, or if they have a good poster I'll score one of thsoe

*those

Aimee Mann ‏@aimeemann

Thanks for the update! RT @darklordjames: @aimeemann You and most musicians need to learn that your product isn't worth $10 any more.

I have a box in our basement storage that has something on the order of 50 t-shirts in it, half of which are Cure and Prince concert t-shirts, that I haven't even opened in 11 years

in summation: 90s touring artists I saw, you are welcome

lol you should have seen me at 90s Cure shows, I would basically buy one of every t-shirt

Hahah um....

Haha, Mat Mt, I'll only buy vinyl, so I feel that way about CDs... until I find out that actually the record will never be pressed on vinyl and I really should have bought the inferior format while I had a chance. I will buy demo CDs by new bands for a couple of quid, though, and the odd cassette release.

I wear a tie most of the time so I've kind of stopped buying band t-shirts, as it's difficult to rock a logo and a tie simultaneously.

Mat Mt? I meant Matt M. Sorry for inadvertent anagramming.

Make note aerosmith, there's a growing demand for band ties/tie pins out there these days

The ability to record and encode and share and stream music efficiently and inexpensively is the greatest thing.

"Free music" is like so bloody amazing I can't understand this argument.

Oh man, a proper band tie pin would be the most awesomely rad raddest thing.

xposts

spend more on their beer tab than they do at the merch table

guilty!

Lowery is like one of those American politicians who continue to insist that Americans *should* pay for health care.

Sorry I'm having my own private idaho right now, I just tuned in

OK but hey -- people also get to produce and distribute and consume video much more easily and inexpensively now than before the internet, but people who work in TV and movies and the monetized end of web video haven't had their livelihood remotely as endangered by the new reality. there could probably be some middle ground between that and what's happened with music.

Lowery is like one of those American politicians who continue to insist that Americans *should* pay for health care.

I imagine if he read that his head would explode.

spend more on their beer tab than they do at the merch table

Wait, who *doesn't* do this aside from teetotallers? Beer is expensive, man.

― emil.y, Tuesday, June 19, 2012 11:56 AM (35 minutes ago)

you clipped the end of my statement which implied spending $0 at the merch table. I'm talking about ppl who never visit a merch table but don't think twice about dropping $20 on beer because they can't download a beer for free. I guess if they could we would have a big long thread about the value of getting drunk and the long hours brewmakers spend cleaning out their tanks.

lol at "@darklordjames" weighing in

Lowery is like one of those American politicians who continue to insist that Americans *should* pay for health care.

More like an American doctor

yeah i mean 'owning your master recordings' as something even on the radar of many musicians as any kind of priority seems like a relatively recent development that we can probably thank diy indie for to some extent

Ray Charles made ownership of his master recordings a condition of signing with ABC in 1959. I don't know how much (if any) precedent there was for it at the time -- the biopic naturally dramatizes the point to make it look like absolutely no one owned their masters. But I always wondered if/how many other artists started making this demand once they got wind of Ray's deal.

Oh man, a proper band tie pin would be the most awesomely rad raddest thing.

Pretty sure Laibach had these when I saw them in '92. Hell, they may have had their own line of ties.

Not so sure about band logo ties, really, it seems a bit 'zany'. But a tie pin, yes yes yes. Nice neat little logo you can pin on to whatever tie you like.

I imagine if he read that his head would explode.

xp I'm sorry to take that tired socialist gambit here, but Canada and Europe are filled with OK-paid musicians who back up their tour budgets with grants and publicly/privately sponsored events; their recordings are paid for by licensing deals; they have jobs, too, that don't necessarily require insurance plans.

I don't think any argument can be made about "life sucks for American musicians" without getting to the root of the problem, which imo is America's health care system. Blaming an intern for not taking care of a depressed/addicted songwriter and a paraplegic/depressed songwriter and citing "medical bills piling up" is a reenforcement of free market economic stupidity

Like how can there possibly be a creative class if people have to pay $500 for herpes medication

i missed the part where Lowery blamed the intern for not looking after songwriters

I used to have Einstürzende Neubauten earrings, but I don't think they were official merch.

Joe Perry: yo Steve is our tour accounting done yet? bills kinda stacking up here.
Steven Tyler: yeah I got it, I've been kind of putting off forwarding it
Joe Perry: what do you mean? that was our best tour since Pump, couldn't believe some of those gate numbers! was it time to pay the insurance again or something?
Steven Tyler: no, Joe, it's -- it's the tie pins. We're going to have to eat a lot of money on the Aerosmith tie pins.
Joe Perry: well, it's just a merch item, right? How much money's left after we eat the tie pins?
Steven Tyler: After we eat the tie pins -- carry the 5, right, decimal over three places...there is no money after we eat the tie pins

I don't think you're supposed to eat them. They're kind of pointy.

xp and then they ate the rich and it was all good again

pretty sure aerosmith could find an alternate use for pins

@ Que actually he does it pretty explicitly, buttressed by "of course I'm not saying this to make you feel bad, I'm just telling you to donate ~$2.5K in their memory"

I present these two stories to you not because I’m pointing fingers or want to shame you. I just want to illustrate that “small” personal decisions have very real consequences, particularly when millions of people make the decision not to compensate artists they supposedly “love”

The artist only has to “repay” (or “recoup”) the advance from record sales. If there are no or insufficient record sales, the advance is written off by the record company.

I haven't had any first-hand experience with this, but is that even remotely accurate?

just as i get albini wanting to make this about the '90s alterna-singing craze, i get a canadian wanting to make this aboot health care

listen everyone just download shit but you don't have to be such a dick that you brag about it in a NPR thinkpiece ok?

that's cause it is. The article is about Linkous and Chesnutt being abandoned xp

@ Que actually he does it pretty explicitly, buttressed by "of course I'm not saying this to make you feel bad, I'm just telling you to donate ~$2.5K in their memory"

i don't see him placing any blame in what he's saying that not paying for music has real consequences, but he never once says that the intern is to blame/has to take care of songwriters.

listen everyone just download shit but you don't have to be such a dick that you brag about it in a NPR thinkpiece ok?

^^^^^^

^^^

^

oops let's try that again

i don't see him placing any blame. he's saying that not paying for music has real consequences, but he never once says that the intern is to blame/has to take care of songwriters. the article is not about songwriters being abandoned, and if that's your takeaway you are missing the point

most people I know don't actually give a shit about illegal downloading & do it themselves but it's hard not to feel a unique strain of contempt when some nicely dressed kid smoking Rothmans goes out of his way to say "I love your stuff...I don't actually own any of it" [feigned shrinking-back-from-anticipated-attack gesture here] "Sorry, I'm" a) "poor" b) "evil"

does he make scare quotes when he says evil or does he pronounce it like Richard Burton?

her last paragraph is so hilarious

What I want is one massive Spotify-like catalog of music that will sync to my phone and various home entertainment devices. With this new universal database, everyone would have convenient access to everything that has ever been recorded, and performance royalties would be distributed based on play counts (hopefully with more money going back to the artist than the present model). All I require is the ability to listen to what I want, when I want and how I want it. Is that too much to ask?