last night, i didn’t
have practice with mercy, and i didn’t watch the game either!  i heard of
our terrible loss today from a friend.  Canes have to win 3 in a row now to
grab the Stanley Cup.  i think thats right.  ok, i hate to do this.
but i’m doing it because i’m sure you wont take the time to read the
article.  so
here’s the part that really stuck out to me:  “If
you’re providing free entertainment, which is obviously what the music business
is doing, then you have to figure out some way to sell advertising to the people
who are paying attention to your free music. But nobody seems to have any idea
how that might be done. Or you can provide stuff that’s free, and use the free
stuff to promote something else of more value that people, you hope, will buy —
now called the “legitimate alternative.” (Putting video on the CD is one of
those ideas — though, of course, you can file-share video too.) Or sell the CD
at a level that makes it cheap enough to compete with free (free, after all, has
its own costs for the consumer).”

did you understand all that?  it costs money to
make music.  i dont understand why no one understands that.  Another
quote:  “Accordingly, costs will have to shrink. Spending a few million to
launch an act will shortly be a thing of the past. (The formal catalyst of the
beginning of the end of big development costs may be the Wall Street Journal‘s
story a few months ago that precisely accounted for the $2.2 million launch
costs of a singer named Carly Hennessy, who went on to sell 378 CDs.)”

the big labels take huge gambles on
releasing a new artist.  in the example above, they spent so much money,
but only sold 378 cd’s?  If my math is correct, that would place the actual
cost per cd to be:  $5,820.11.  Would you pay that much for a cd?
duh, no one would.  so they even the costs out between all the artist they
publish for.  some will not sell enough, some sell more then enough to make
up for the ones who didn’t sell enough.  some sell millions and they help
to overcome some of the cost of these that dont sell.  but for some people,
they think music should be free.  the artist already have money so there’s
no reason to purchase their cd’s.  i personally know 2 friends who are
artists.  and i’m not sure if i would be a third or not, i’ll let you
figure that out.  any, these two friends, Mercy and pretzelboy (check
website to the left in the links) record and perform and do things, but have no
means of quitting their day job. how do you think artist get money?  it’s
just given to them for the hell of it?  i recently paid $35
dollars for a single cd.  a friend asked me to make a copy of it for him.
i refused.  i go to record stores and buy $20 dollars worth of cd’s from
the dollar bin.  i come away with a bag full of music, and i’m still
helping to promote the artist.

each

word is
a
link here (durnit i ran outta links 😉 )