*facepalm*FargoDog said:Your idea that 'producing an album' only consists of how it gets into the hands of a consumer is extremely shallow. Recording and mixing an album can be a massively expensive prospect, especially when you get into the top-tiers of album production for huge artists, wherein you have dozens of people who have their hands all over the recording. Each one of those people need to be paid for the duration of their work, a good recording environment(s) needs to be sourced and thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment needs to be chosen and moved to wherever the album is being recorded. Starting from scratch, creating an album can cost millions. While digital recording has made it easier for smaller artists to produce music, it will never be a cheap process.Nemu said:While I disagree that "downloading is a human right", I tend to side more with pirates than I do with non-pirates as I am of the generation that grew up with CDs being priced high because "it costs a lot to produce them". Fine, okay, you tell me that they are priced $15 (average) because they cost a lot to be made (in reality it cost about 3 bucks, but whatever), and I have to accept it in order to own the music that I want.
Now, iTunes and Amazon (et al) offer the same albums for....$10-14 a pop, why? It certainly doesn't cost the same amount to "produce" these albums, so why are consumers forced to buy music that they like (in TERRIBLE audio-quality, btw) for CD-era prices? Because companies are greedy and are pissed that people grew tired of spending a ton of money for poorly produced/written/performed music. How many people have liked a song, spend 10-15 bucks on an album and HATE the album? Chance is chance, sure, but folks can't afford to throw money away these days.
Even when an album is purchased, so little of it actually goes to the musicians who worked on it. Studio musicians, per song, are paid royalties that can't even be calculated in any real world currency. That's if they get royalties to begin with. Most bands don't see a dime from their albums until the production costs are all paid off to the label, which can take years. I'm not saying there's no corporate greed involved - welcome to capitalism - but there's way more to it than some money hungry executives.
Unless you are Axl Rose, recording an album does not take "millions".
Digitizing an album does not cost more, or even equal to, production and distribution of a physical album.
No one "starting out" purchases millions of dollars' worth of equipment.
Nor do they sit behind a room-sized Mackie anymore.
Nor do starting bands routinely hire teams of producers, unless they have financial backing from a big name.
I do believe that I stated that musicians make nearly NOTHING from album sales, it is mostly from touring/appearances. Oh, wait, no, you conveniently omitted that part in my post.
Blah blah blah. I'm going back to gaming.