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“I bet that in Mozart’s time there were many other active musicians in and around Prague and Vienna and there’s a reason we’re not aware of their names and their works. Some of them probably even made their living at it, but many more would have been what used to be called the village band, ready to perform for a fee at special events but earning their wage from something else. Historically, launching yourself into the arts has been a chancy proposition. Cruel maybe, but then life often is. Music has always been an essential component of life, of celebrations, of spiritual exercises, even of battles. The only other art form which comes anywhere close to having the same power as music is poetry, and one could argue poetry is still vibrant, in the form of song lyrics and rap.” – Liz Newton

There’s a discussion thead here on a2f2a.com centering on the statement Artists need to be paid, and fans want to pay them. Below, as a comment to that, are some of my own, very personal, views as a hard-core music lover and fan.

Music Fan Manifesto: 2010
Jon Newton - p2pnet.net / a2f2a.com

1. P2P online music distribution is the solution, not the problem. And it’s here to stay.
2. Sharing is not stealing. With it, no money changes hands and no one has lost anything s/he used to own.
3. Copyright isn’t a right.
4. When someone pays good money for something, s/he owns it.
5. Once music is set free, it doesn’t belong to the creators. It belongs to the listeners.
6. Artists need to be paid, and fans want to see that happen. But it isn’t for music lovers to figure out how. It’s for fans to buy, share, enjoy and spread the word, just as they’ve always done.
7. Music is for everyone, not just a very few, relatively speaking, people with $1 (and more) to waste on grotesquely overpriced digital downloads manufactured by the Big 4 labels and their many direct and indirect offshoots, and associated and part-owned companies.
8. When conditions are reasonable and prices are fair, people can — and do, and in their millions — buy online music. The proof is the success of AllofMP3.com and the sites which sprang up in its wake, many of them selling by download size, not per ‘item’.
9. There are a lot more fans than artists, politicians and corporate music executives and for the first time, thanks to the net, they have a voice. A very loud voice. In Chuck Palahniuk’s book Fight Club the anti-hero, Tyler Durden, declares, Remember this. The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. We’re the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you’re asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.
10. Music piracy is an artificial concept created by the corporate music industry.
11. There is, however, counterfeiting and illegal copying and distribution. Criminal counterfeiters and duplicators are always far more technically advanced than both the entertainment industry and the national police and enforcement units that cynically act for them.
12. Crooks use the billions of CDs and DVDs churned out by the music industry as customisable templates for illegal ‘product’.
13. Counterfeiters who depend largely on physical product will find it harder to operate when music lovers are buying fairly priced music from sites offering fully, instead of partially, opened catalogues.
14. When one ‘illegal’ site is shut down, two more spring up in its place.
15. There’s no such thing as DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control. Anything which can be seen and/or heard in any form can be copied by one analogue or digital means or another. Digital files cannot be made uncopyable any more than water can be made not wet ~ Bruce Schneier
16. There’s no such thing as Big Music. There’s only a handful of outdated and outclassed corporations whose dependency on outmoded business systems applicable only in the physical 20th century has condemned to them to die in the digital 21st century.
17. There’s no such thing as a corporate music trade organisation — ie, RIAA, BPI, IFPI — acting in the interest of contracted artists. These ‘associations’  exist solely for, and are under the control of, the major record labels. They’ve become dumb weapons, and little else.
18. At present, there’s no such thing as a viable online corporate music market.
19. There’s no such thing as a music ‘consumer’ in the 20th century. Fans today are active participants in how, and by whom, music is distributed on- and offline. They’re in a brand-new economic territory in which they, and not the corporations, have power of control. It’s called freedom of choice.The days when people will buy whatever’s put in front of them, and pay whatever’s demanded, are gone forever.
20. We don’t owe the labels a living.
21. The corporate music industry depends absolutely on three  (to it) essential elements:  Bullshit;  Lies; and, Confusion.
22. Suing isn’t wooing. If they want us, they have to make us want them.
23. Soon, the Big 4 will be competing instead of controlling. They’ll have no choice. And when that happens, all the doors will open.
24. More and more people are logging on with every passing hour. The balance is shifting and anything that can be digitized WILL be digitized and sold online. When that happens, many of the existing overheads — cash tied up in storage, print costs, enforcement, PR campaigns, etc — will be drastically lowered or cut altogether. This, in turn, will mean more and more people will be buying more and more reasonably priced product via the net. And they’ll be talking about what’s good and what’s bad in their blogs, in emails, IM, texting, and so on. There’ll be no way for manufacturers to escape the results of releasing shabby product, as they’re able to do until now. We fans — ‘consumers,’ as we’re still contemptuously known — will increasingly find and share our own news and information, completely by-passing lamescream press corpse and the old marketing and sales religions.
25. The kids are alright and they’ll do right by artists, once the Big 4 are out of the way.

And finally, # 26 — what it’s really all about, sharing is caring.

Cheers!