Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Chicago Symphony Trombone and Tuba S


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Posted by Brian Frederiksen on December 04, 2000 at 10:21:16:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Chicago Symphony Trombone and Tuba S posted by Sean Chisham on December 03, 2000 at 20:05:47:

This is a first - I'm disagreeing with Sean!

Napster has it's place. There are artists that sign with Napster to distribute their material and this is probably the best way for a new artist to get known. There could be a place for military bands to disribute their music. This is not distributing copyrighted material. It is the distribution of copyrighted material that is the problem.

Let's face it, CD for the brass community are mabe about .0000001% of total CDs sold. There are costs for production that must be picked up and most CDs do not break even. In the 1970's when the CSO Trombone and Tuba Section record was made, Jay Friedman paid for it out of his own pocket and lost money. With talk about a re-release, part of the talk was to cover expenses past and present.

When the Jacobs CD came out, I made a major purchase of them to help spread the risk. I'm still sitting on 30% of them. Part of the reason - "sharing." With the CSO Section record from the 70's, Jay lost money the first time and really doesn't really need to go through it again. I offered to purchase a ton of them to spread the risk but now someone has decided to put it on Napster without permission.

We are not crazy, Jay Friedman is not computer savy but as a member of the Chicago Symphony, has great respect about copyright laws which in this case have been violated. He will have a cow when he hears about this! In my case, should I put up in excess of $10,000 for CD's that can be obtained illegally? No - I'll buy another horn!

The point is that in a small community such as brass players, anything released has very limited demographics to sell to. Very few projects break even nevertheless make a profit. If the odds are against you from the beginning then it is placed on the web for free, you got to be nuts to produce anything. What happens is that nothing will be produced and an art form takes another hit.

Sean brought up the point of listening to something before buying. Yes, a valid point but you can hear 30-60 seconds to get an idea if it should be bought rather than the whole thing. As far as quality of sound, there will be further compression technology that will improve the sound in the future.

I'm not picking on you Sean, a matter of fact, I'll buy you a beer of your choice in Atlanta this weekend! As list mom, you must set a policy about Napster. Some brass lists ban it completely but it is a great tool and if there is legal use of it, we should all be aware of it but promoting illegal use such as this should be banned.

Is this the future of music?



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