skip Heller <velaires@earthlink.net> wrote:
Do these laws benefit Jello Biafra? Ellery Eskelin? John Oswald?
Do we see Jello or Ellery on the news pounding a pulpit about how downloading is "robbing us of our livelihood"? No --
Hi Ya'll, Just for the record, I have posted on news groups that I prefer folks not make and trade CDRs of my recordings or live concerts. I understand the pros and cons and to sidestep all the moral or legal arguments I would just say that if it we're up to me I would prefer that folks not do this with my music.
They're making the bulk of their cash going out and playing live to that clientele and collecting the money directly, instead of having to wait up to a year to see if the recouped on their last release.
Of course the money I make from recording doesn't come anywhere close to what major label pop music generates but it's still money that I need to keep doing what I do. My advances, royalties and publishing money all add up to enough that I'd sure miss it if it weren't there.
Burn American Music discs for your friends. Give 'em a disc with Tim Berne, Cecil Taylor, Uri Caine, Ellery Eskelin, Mark Feldman and Chris Speed.
I appreciate your zeal Skip, really I do. But no thanks, I'd prefer you didn't. If it were that easy I'd give it away myself. It costs money to make these things happen. I gotta pay my band and if it weren't for a record company with some cash to get the ball rolling I wouldn't be able to fund these things to begin with. And so I value the relationship I have with my small label and would like to see them continue. It's sometimes rather close to the bone for them. And if I do decide that I want to give something away I can. In fact, we just put a cut on a promo sampler for WIRE magazine of which 30,000 free discs were made. That's not to say that you're wrong in your ideas about promoting music, nor am I going to get self righteous about folks who make CDRs of my stuff (although I have had fans come up to me and ask me to sign bootleg CDRs of my recent discs. I thought that was audacious as hell!!) But I do value the fact that I can generally control the means and presentation of my work and I'd like to continue doing so as long as I can. It's not that I see what you're proposing to be a threat, just that it's a fine line and it gets crossed all the time. So just to keep it simple I just prefer that folks not duplicate my music onto CDRs for others. And for live shows as well, I really don't like folks to tape and trade them. I go to great lengths to document my music as best I can. A version of a show on someone's walkman from the 20th row is simply gonna sound terrible and I'd rather not have that out there as an example of our sound. In fact, the sound on 99% of the live tapes of my band that are made by festival engineers for live radio broadcasts on our European tours just suck...terribly. I can't imagine how anyone could listen to that and feel moved to wanna pursue it any further. But that's just me. I know there are other viewpoints and I'm not particularly interested in hashing those out. I just wanted to drop in since my name was mentioned and offer my 2 cents. For whatever it's worth... Respectfully yers, Ellery ================================= ELLeRY ESKELiN/MiCHELLE VAn NaTTA RaMiChElLeRy/PrImE SoUrCe PrOdUcTiOnS http://home.earthlink.net/~eskelin/ =================================