I want to go back to the system where musicians are not rock stars trying to sell you a product, they are ordinary people with a day job who enjoy making and sharing music for their own entertainment.
We don't demand this of any other profession yet musicians should have a day job and make music for the love of it? I want to go back to the system where musicians were rewarded with money to put invest into their next project. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I don't think Spotify nor Pandora are the answer. My musician friends feel like it's the new Payola. They don't like to be on there because the royalties on 1000 plays is not even worth the postage. Yet, they can't afford not to be there because so many other musicians and listeners are using it.
Thomas Jefferson's proposal for the Amendment that granted copyright and patents was:
Art. 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions
in literature and their own inventions in the arts for a term
not exceeding — years but for no longer term and no other purpose.
Madison, on the other hand, wrote:
Monopolies, though in certain cases useful, ought to be granted with caution,
and guarded with strictness against abuse. The Constitution of the United
States has limited them to two cases--the authors of books, and of useful
inventions (...)
The ridiculous copyright extensions pushed for by the mafiAA? Ridiculous suits against network printers, computer illiterate grandmas, and children, sometimes for more than the GDP of the entire world?
> "I want to go back to the system where [musicians] are ordinary people with a day job who enjoy making and sharing music for their own entertainment"
I am not sure this system ever existed, and I would be sad if it did. People have been writing music as their 'day job' since the 16th Century - the difference was their salaries were being paid by patrons rather than the general public.
A system where musicians have to spend 8 hours a day on a 'day job' rather than spending time improving their craft, composing, and playing doesn't sound like a very good system to me.
I don't care if they have a day job or not; but I don't want rock stars selling a product either, which is why I don't think artists making money only through concerts/t-shirts/crowdfunding is a good idea. iTunes and Spotify don't care if an artist is introverted or not.
?? Before money, artists still needed food and shelter...
> Yet, somehow, there have been professional musicians for likely thousands of years.
But does anyone really want to go back to the patronage system?