Just one request. We are all aware of the capabilities of protools when it comes to shoddy vocals ( the labels have shown us just how much they are willing to do to make pretty people with lousy voices sound ‘good’ ” ). Use the best people for the job, not the most beautiful, but I have a feeling you already know that. Engineers usually do.

And yes, Mac, Protools….. along with everything else you said.

Billy, Here’s a bit of my story. I’m a musician who’s been making music recordings a long time. I’ve made thousands of them while providing a mix of services which include producing, engineering, programming, composing, arranging, performing and offering studio facilities. I have made a career of this. I’m not wealthy but I survive by being fully committed to the medium I love which is the recorded work.

My clients are virtually anyone who wants a recording – i.e. other musicians, writers, composers, record companies, publishers, radio, television and film companies et al. Most of what I do I get paid for but I also do speculative work (a label currently), some pro-bono jobs, and some just for the love of it. Modesty aside for a second, I’m sufficiently good at what I do to have a problem accommodating all the work that comes my way.

In my world copyright is a non-issue. No one ever discusses it because it has zero bearing. It may as well not exist for any difference it makes to me and those in my circle. If people copy what I do my first reaction is to be pleased. It might be tempting to peer into their lives and see how much money they’ve made from my creations. But frankly I can’t be bothered with the negativity of that. I’d rather work on music, develop new projects, doing what I do, than become a royalty chaser.

Most projects over the years which involved record deals earned me little beyond small token advances. If I ever get a royalty cheque I will frame it as a historical document. The same goes for all of us where I am. The idea of receiving royalties from our hypothetical copyrights belongs in another place. We have always had to do things differently. It now happens that these differences seem to be running in sympathy with the sweeping changes in the creative industries. That pleases me.

I welcome the new possibilities because they offer the prospect of something genuinely new and something one can make a contribution towards shaping. From a self-interested view if copyright were abolished tomorrow it would make no material difference to me. What would do would be new structures which have an imaginative eye on the future and ones that stay fixed on the possibilities for musicians to earn a living commensurate with their worth.

This is a huge up-hill and requires a cultural mind-shift. It means getting away from the old ideas of unit commodities, statutory licensing, big deal contracts and the rest which were mainly structures around trying to find an artist who would lay a golden egg. It means people like us going into the community and asking those with money (there is no shortage of them) to invest in us. Doing this is, of course, only for the entrepreneurial few. But they are the trailblazers who will shape the future. It will be a future with a different spirit where artists are financed by their communities because their communities want what they’ve got.

I understand that I am an odd beast and no model necessarily. I use studio technology to express myself in recorded works. But my particular experience gives me an unusual perspective and some insight into possible ways forward. The emerging options through which creative people can engage the world feel natural to me. They open doors to a great untapped potential.

I have a label in the making which is being financed cooperatively by me and the other artists I work with. I have five new products waiting to go. It is a daunting prospect but an exciting one. I have no idea if our initiative will earn a penny. Given most recorded works earn nothing for anybody then the odds are against it. I remind myself that the vast majority of those party to a traditional copyright agreement never received anything from it anyway. It was never a good system for helping musicians make a living other than the privileged few. Most of us have always had to find other ways of earning from our talents.

I am confident my project will do something. I can be sure now with the distribution door being wide open that people will get to hear the work. Even in the worst event, with no financial return, the recordings will remain in existence as a form of expression. And that is what artists do – express themselves and hope to resonate. At one level the art is its own reward.

Billy, I applaud you and your colleagues for putting energy into getting a dialogue going here. I suspect it could easily be a full-time job. I imagine that you inhabit a different world from me, one that still has substantial interests in how copyright pans out. Although I agree with Crosbie Fitch that it is time copyright left the stage, it hasn’t yet and still exerts a powerful influence on motivations within the business. My experience in contrast is more in-keeping with the invisible majority of music-makers who have never been heard. I think I am easily tuned to how values and events will develop in future.

So the short answer to your question: I finance my recordings from the pockets of the people I work with. Sometimes one of them has written the song and they pay me, sometimes I have and sometimes I pay them. I just finished a session there today with a pedal-steel player who travelled fifty miles to come and play on a track. He had only recorded professionally once before and that was with me. He played beautifully and I paid him for his good work. Just as often people forgo payment happy to participate in a happy enterprise. And there is the crux: music shows no signs of losing its vitality and its importance in the lives of everyone.

Wasn’t ‘Gimme Some Lovin’ done on a cheapo multitrack recorder ?

How big did that get ?

It’s not what you spend that makes the record, and you’ve been around long enough to know the truth of that.

It’s even cheaper to promote it yourself, worldwide. And anything he does get, it’s all his. Best of luck to you Clark, and if your stuff is my ‘cup of tea’ you’re guaranteed at least one sale . Where can I sample some ?

I’m interested in how you finance your recordings?

Musicians should decide how their music is priced, and when they are paid. If they want to give it away for free, have it played for free fine, if they want to be paid for every time it’s played fine. Let them decide what to charge and when to charge.

The market then will either pay or not.

This can be great for new musicians, smaller venues that can’t afford the big names can play their music.

Radio stations can play all new music and not pay anything for the music or have a only the most popular if they want to pay what the musicians want to charge.

More importantly, and vitally for a2f2a, it is the failure of copyright, the impossibility of holding back the tide of individuals’ assertions of liberty in the form of file-sharing, that drives the pursuit of a means of exchanging art for money (given the market for copies has ended).

It has been three centuries since artists last tried exchanging their art for their audience’s money. We have a lot of catching up to do, a lot of cobwebs to clear up.

Though it’s not music, it still applies.

Wil Wheaton has been self publishing his books for a while now under the Creative Commons licensing model if I believe. He also sells his work as an UNPROTECTED .pdf file .. no DRM.

This time around ,, http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/10/memories-of-the-futurecast-episode-eight.html It would seem that the only advertising at all is his blog,and he’s been very successful, using a ‘trust your fans’ philosophy. I tried to get him to visit p2pnet a while back without too much success, and I don’t want to push, stalking is a crime after all , but it’s another proof of concept.

Trust your fans, you can compete with free, you don’t need DRM, and if your work is good in enough peoples eyes, they WILL pay for it.

I’ve attended the FAC meetings and heard Billy and others speak with great passion about the need to embrace radical and innovative new ideas. They do so because quite simply, they really do give a shit, want to make this situation work for everybody and abhor the idea of people thinking about “rich rock stars counting their money.”

I’m in a different situation, I’m not established so I don’t have experience of the ‘old model’. I fully accept that if I want to ‘earn a living creating music’ then I will do what is necessary to make that a reality. However, I at least need to feel there is an opportunity for remuneration (whatever form that takes) for me to consider it a viable proposition.

I know this is a massive issue and I’m not here for the sympathy vote and genuinely apologise if I’m over-simplifying things….there are certainly some very eloquent posts above.

The direct a2f models really seem like our best hope, as long as we are respectful.

Things are really changing now. It has been a long time coming and I thoroughly embrace it.

It is heartening to find on this new website some radical and progressive views. I think I’m not referring to Indiana Gregg.

Dreddsnik, Thanks for the welcome. I will hang on your every word!

Without any citations to back this up, i’m afraid i’m going to have to consider it nonsense. I am always willing to follow up and read any documentation that pertains to information presented, but without any backup, it’s not a fact, it’s opinion.