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bickster

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The over all point of this is if an artist feels that they do not want to be on the same platform that pays a man a stupid amount to peddle bollocks, they can and do choose to take their music elsewhere. That's the sweet taste of freedom. Of people choose the platform expressly or partly for listening to that artist then they too can use that freedom to go elsewhere. Rogan fanboys on the internet are not going to change that and they can sit there smugly knowing that they won and fans of Neil Young lost. 

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1 minute ago, Seat68 said:

The over all point of this is if an artist feels that they do not want to be on the same platform that pays a man a stupid amount to peddle bollocks, they can and do choose to take their music elsewhere. That's the sweet taste of freedom. Of people choose the platform expressly or partly for listening to that artist then they too can use that freedom to go elsewhere. Rogan fanboys on the internet are not going to change that and they can sit there smugly knowing that they won and fans of Neil Young lost. 

I don't think that's the overall point at all - in fact I don't think it's relevant to the discussion.

Obviously an artist can do that, same as any citizen can choose to peddle bollocks. Nobody is claiming that it's impossible to do either of those things - what we're discussing is whether it's a good thing to do them, and whether people should.

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2 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

Neil Young has spent his career sticking it to the man: the question is, that now that he's worth $200m, is he himself now the man?

I think anyone who would sell their entire back catalogue to a company should be taken off the artistic roll call. 

 

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44 minutes ago, Mister_a said:

Yeah, for sure, but banning all discussion on the (any) topic doesn't seem to me to be a way to advance knowledge.

Surely you can see a middle ground between banning discussion and providing a platform to 200 million people. 

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18 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Surely you can see a middle ground between banning discussion and providing a platform to 200 million people. 

I think people should be left to make up their own mind, regardless of the size of the platform.

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1 minute ago, Mister_a said:

I think people should be left to make up their own mind, regardless of the size of the platform.

But that doesn't happen. When Rogan presents an 'Expert' people put trust in that issue. 

When you allow someone to spread conspiracy theory lies to hundreds of millions of people, its only natural you're going to have lots of people buy into that lie. 

Look at January 6th in America.

Our PM spouts conspiracy theories and lies and gets away with it. I'd argue partly because of the reason you argue here in that say what you want and let people decide. It sounds nice but it just doesn't work. Look at how propaganda has damaged society throughout history. Do you blame people for not making the right choice? Or blame the the people misleading them?

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22 minutes ago, Mister_a said:

I think anyone who would sell their entire back catalogue to a company should be taken off the artistic roll call. 

 

You've just eliminated 99.999999% of musicians.

Publishing companies are the lifeblood of succesful musicians not record companies. It is the publisher that sells the rights to your product not the record company. And that is where the real money is and always has been

Musicians aren't going to phone up Hollywood Studios, Games Developers etc and and icence their songs to a product, that just isn't the way it works.

Your statement shows a complete lack of understanding of how the industry works.

 

 

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I does seem odd that people living in countries with adversarial political systems, where every party devotes their energies into convincing the electorate that the other party are untrustworthy scoundrels, that they should pick on a single person to blame, when a sector of the population is reluctant to trust the Government.

Certain minorities have whole sectors of the political apparatus dedicated to convincing them that the majority of the population are against them.

The history of enforced sterilisation and medical experiment, not to mention arbitrary internment, can't be encouraging.

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14 minutes ago, bickster said:

Your statement shows a complete lack of understanding of how the industry works.

This may be so, but I still disagree with artists who sell their entire catalog, not artists whose music is sold for adverts etc. 

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1 hour ago, Panto_Villan said:

It was certainly established fact that the Earth revolved around the sun before Gallileo challenged that.

No, absolutely not. It wasn't, - at least not in terms of science. It was religion that decreed that, (if I remember my school German correctly (Das Leben Des Galilei)).

The church stated that Earth was the centre of the Universe, not based on evidence, but based on faith (not fact). Galileo with his pesky telescope gathered evidence, put it to review and, er, was declared a heretic etc. by the church. Scientific peer review has improved a bit since those times, thankfully.

Anyway, Spotify - they need to treat musicians better.

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6 minutes ago, Mister_a said:

This may be so, but I still disagree with artists who sell their entire catalog, not artists whose music is sold for adverts etc. 

They aren't "selling" their catalogue. They are assigning them to a publisher, whose job it is to licence the music to other products.

The $200mil NY recieved for the rights to his back catalogue is effectively an advance on the royalties that will be recouped over the length of the contract. Once the advance has been recouped from the artists percentage of the royalties, the money will then get split between the publisher and the artist by whatever split is agreed in the contract. Now in NY's case, that will likely be when he's dead and it will be his estate that benefits

There can be all kinds of artistic control built in to a publishing contract

The term selling is absolutely wrong, it's a media term and it's nonsense.

A musicians publishing company is a recover of royalties, the money in the sale is an advance on those royalties

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1 minute ago, bickster said:

The term selling is absolutely wrong, it's a media term and it's nonsense.

 

Buying/selling the rights to (future) income/royalties seems to cover it, perhaps?

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Just now, blandy said:

Buying/selling the rights to (future) income/royalties seems to cover it, perhaps?

Well simply, it's an advance on future royalties

But it isn't just collection, the publisher will be looking to actively licence those works to movies / games / compilations etc

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10 minutes ago, bickster said:

They aren't "selling" their catalogue. They are assigning them to a publisher, whose job it is to licence the music to other products.

The $200mil NY recieved for the rights to his back catalogue is effectively an advance on the royalties that will be recouped over the length of the contract. Once the advance has been recouped from the artists percentage of the royalties, the money will then get split between the publisher and the artist by whatever split is agreed in the contract. Now in NY's case, that will likely be when he's dead and it will be his estate that benefits

There can be all kinds of artistic control built in to a publishing contract

The term selling is absolutely wrong, it's a media term and it's nonsense.

A musicians publishing company is a recover of royalties, the money in the sale is an advance on those royalties

Thanks for this. I'd never looked at the details that these deals entail. Really interesting stuff. 

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20 minutes ago, Mister_a said:

Thanks for this. I'd never looked at the details that these deals entail. Really interesting stuff. 

Just as an example, this article on Bowie's royalties being sold in The Guardian touches on what I'm talking about

Quote

David Bowie: publishing rights to song catalogue sold for $250m [...]

The publishing rights to David Bowie’s huge and peerless catalogue of songs have been sold by his estate to Warner Chappell Music (WCM), the publishing arm of Warner Music Group, in a deal worth at least $250m (£185m) according to anonymous sources [...]

(The at least is because it is an advance to the estate.Then follows some corporate guff praising themselves and Bowie which is best skipped as it's just fluff until it get's to...)

 

These deals allow the publishing companies to accrue income from royalties, as well as when music is licensed for use in films, TV and advertising.

Terms of the Bowie deal have not been disclosed but the Bowie estate has historically closely controlled the use of his work. The 2020 biopic Stardust, about the birth of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona, was forbidden by the estate from using Bowie’s music. [...]

Another film that does already have the blessing of the estate is a forthcoming untitled documentary by film-maker Brett Morgen, who is using thousands of hours of rare and unseen live performance footage as its basis [...]

(note the control of the estate in both the previous and new deal)

 

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1 hour ago, blandy said:

No, absolutely not. It wasn't, - at least not in terms of science. It was religion that decreed that, (if I remember my school German correctly (Das Leben Des Galilei)).

The church stated that Earth was the centre of the Universe, not based on evidence, but based on faith (not fact). Galileo with his pesky telescope gathered evidence, put it to review and, er, was declared a heretic etc. by the church. Scientific peer review has improved a bit since those times, thankfully.

Anyway, Spotify - they need to treat musicians better.

What you’re saying is indeed correct, but only in hindsight. The veracity of the bible was considered higher back in the day - it was considered a scientific fact God created the Earth then, so Galileo was going against existing science at the time. It took decades before his work was accepted by the scientific community.

Wikipedia tells me Tycho Brahe (himself a historically significant astronomer) went to great lengths to construct an opposing model that revolves around the Earth because he just couldn’t accept the premise that scripture was wrong.

The point I’m looping back round to is that it’s not always obvious at the time that a particular piece of science is wrong. That’s not to say you can never say anyone is wrong (e.g. flat earthers) but it’s not quite as easy to discern the scientific truth as it seems. That makes it tricky to deplatform based on the science imo. Or certainly it’s a power that could easily be misused.

 

Edited by Panto_Villan
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17 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

it’s not always obvious at the time that a particular piece of science is wrong

I agree. Science is a process, a continual loop of theory, experimentation, observation, consideration, conclusion, peer review and challenge etc.

But what the science isn’t is (for example) medical science developing a vaccine, testing it, trialling it, monitoring its impacts, determining its safe and effective and then a podcast host on Spotify going “U wot m8, s’bollex all that. Brainwashing, take worming pills instead” (I exaggerate a bit).  If it’s about which is the better band, or pizza topping, then fine, but when it can lead to adverse health outcomes, it needs carefully curating, not being treated as some kind of equally weighted perspective.

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31 minutes ago, blandy said:

I agree. Science is a process, a continual loop of theory, experimentation, observation, consideration, conclusion, peer review and challenge etc.

But what the science isn’t is (for example) medical science developing a vaccine, testing it, trialling it, monitoring its impacts, determining its safe and effective and then a podcast host on Spotify going “U wot m8, s’bollex all that. Brainwashing, take worming pills instead” (I exaggerate a bit).  If it’s about which is the better band, or pizza topping, then fine, but when it can lead to adverse health outcomes, it needs carefully curating, not being treated as some kind of equally weighted perspective.

I’d agree here. Equality of opinion is definitely preferable.

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