Fellow artists, the aim of this site is to encourage dialogue between people who love music and people who love making music. Our aim is to explore, through constructive debate, how our two communities can work together to shape the music industry to reflect our needs, rather than those of the multi-national corporations that control the recording industry.
For artists, the idea of a direct artist-to-fan model, in which we make our music available ourselves and reap the economic benefits, has never been closer. Yet, so far, the potential has only been hinted at. Our objective at this forum is to explore with music fans how viable a2f models might work and to introduce those ideas into the ongoing debate about the new digital music industry.
If you do decide to post here, be prepared for a hostile reaction. There are those both within the industry and within the p2p community who do not want this dialogue to produce positive results that will make their entrenched positions indefensible.
As a result, the debate around this issue sometimes becomes over-heated, such as in the recent intervention of Lily Allen. For that reason, I would suggest that you do not post under your own name, but select a pseudonym that allows you to be frank without fear of being attacked professionally, neither by p2p users nor by your labels.
It would also help the debate if you could resist accusing p2p users of stealing or being thieves. Everyone taking part in this debate agrees that artists should be paid for their work. Please conduct your arguments for fair remuneration in reference to that declaration.
My participation in this initiative is based on my understanding of two principles that are central to the beliefs of the p2p community. Firstly, that there is no technological solution to the problems that artists face as a result of the digitisation of music and, secondly, that p2p users are willing to pay for music if they can be sure that the money is going to the artists whose work they enjoy.
Billy Bragg, a2f2a co-founder
October 21st, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Billy and Jon,
Many thanks for this initiative. It has been a long time coming, and a long road to opening up this frank debate between the two most important communities in music – the artists and the fans. I hope this site/blog/initiative helps convince artists that technology is NOT our enemy.
All the best,
Neil
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:09 am
Billy and Jon,
Excellent idea on starting this website.
Im a big lover of music and of course i download it. I have many reasons for this and am willing to discuss in a reposnse to a more suitable post.
I do however go to a fair amount of gigs and buy albums from artists who i’ve either supported since they were a nobody, an artist who treats fans with respect and artists who believe that technology/downloading is not all bad.
I look forward to being a aprt of the discussions
October 25th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Good to see that this site is up and running as promised, and I will be very happy to participate.
I will be using my own real name to post here, and I am a member of the Pirate Party UK. Of course anything I may say is likely to be my own personal opinion, and should not be assumed to be PPUK policy unless indicated.
For the record, although I can’t make music, I do love music, and believe we need to adapt to a changing world where digital information can be shared, rather than to try to force everything to behave the way it used to with physical media.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
A great idea that I hope will open both sides up to the debate over the future of copyright, filesharing and music industry in general. With Mandelson’s plans for three strikes and you’re cut-off we really need to discuss these ideas..
November 19th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I have never lost my love of music however today it is more difficult than ever to pay for music if you are anything less than a techie on the net or a dinosaur that still visits the CD store. Listen to this presentation by Cory Doctorow on how the music distributors are screwing this up for everybody with Digital Rights Management (DRM). They have treated this as “a problem instead of a demand signal for the market…”
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/15/my-drm-and-ebooks-ta.html