[Hudlug] Elvis Costello! I spit on the floor!

[Anne Wilson]

On Wednesday 25 Sep 2002 11:17 am, you wrote:
cord company were all perfectly aware of how
> the promotion was working.
> If you were a famous recording artist, how chuffed would you be if your
> record sales were dropping because the general public were trading all your
> music as mp3s? This is your livelihood remember! Careers tend to be short,
> so you need to make as much money as you can whilst you are still famous.

In theory I agree, but in practice I'm not sure that it's that simple.  For 
starters there appears to be no evidence that sales are dropping because of 
on-line music - indeed some artists believe that their sales have increased.

> I think most artists and record companies know that digital formats via the
> internet are the future.
> But they can't simply give that sort of material away, as there would then
> be no record companies, and hence no beautifully recorded music, as it
> would cost too much money to do more than record music in home studios.
>
I understand that the artist gets around 4p for every CD sold.  Seems to me 
that if all the tracks were available on line and the artist got 5-10p for 
every track downloaded he would be delighted.  It's the record companies that 
wouldn't.  Of course there would probably be a knock-on effect on sales to 
those who need to buy the CDs.

As for the suggestion that it's impracticable to deal in such small sums, 
there really isn't a problem.  There are plenty of possibilities such as the 
Americal PayPal.  They would probably gross up and charge weekly or monthly 
to the credit card given at sign-up.  It could be done, but big business does 
not want it to be done.

Anne