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Old 11-30-2014, 06:39 AM   #8 (permalink)
Oriphiel
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Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: The States
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Hey man, piracy (and other factors) have made things very hard for musicians. These are tough times; only the really innovative and the really generic manage to survive long enough to make a name for themselves. But trying to create a magical utopia where money doesn't exist is like... Well, like doing just that. It doesn't work. Who's going to pay the upkeep for this place? You? And where will you get the money? From us ordinary people. And to get our money, you'll have to give us something we want, which creates refinement of product and competition (because if this catches on, you can bet someone else is going to copy you and compete with you). Basically, you'll pull a Communist China; start off as a communism, but begrudgingly morph into a capitalism in order to survive.

And what happens when a band walks into your studio and starts singing about rape and murder, playing hour-long jams, and refusing to let anyone else in the studio? You'll kick them out and set rules. And when other problems arise, you'll set more rules. And when the bills get higher and higher, you'll find more ways of making money. And then pow! You're a record company.

This is the sort of thing you should have learned shortly after leaving high school. Money isn't evil, it's a placeholder for the herds of cattle we used to spend entire lifetimes tending to, the fields of crops we broke our backs keeping alive. It created the comfortable life-style that now allows you to sit on your comfy chair in front of your comfy computer and complain about stuff in front of an audience of potentially millions of people, all in an instant. The fact that you can now create whatever you want to create, being able to use the knowledge of every artist that has come before you with the click of a button, instead of spending all of your time running away from saber-toothed tigers, and sometimes being safe enough from predators to make cave-paintings and carved idols, is something you should be beyond grateful for.

Now stop complaining and work hard, even live in a bus and flip burgers if you have to, like every other successful band in the past sixty years has had to do at some point in their careers. And be glad that you weren't born in Medieval times, when unskilled Bards were just killed and forgotten about.
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