Newsgroups: ufra.cmbbs.kino-tv, uk.music.alternative, uk.music.breakbeat, uk.music.folk, uk.music.misc, uk.music.rave, uk.tech.digital-tv, unihigh.sports, viwa.music.lyrics, viwa.music.talks.rap, viwa.music.uue, wales.music, z-netz.alt.sat-tv
Subject: Re: Help me, please. I want one song...
From: Dick Gaughan <dickg (@) dickalba.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 21:35:13 +0000

In <96g8a0$rum$1 (@) soap.pipex.net> on Thu, 15 Feb 2001 09:44:38 -0000, "Geoff Winkless" <geoff-at-farmline-dot-com (@) 127.0.0.1> wrote:

>Cost of CD: 19p
Cost of case+cover: 10p
Cost of distribution: (probably ~)5p
>
Total cost of CD single: 34p

And the studio where the recording was done doesn't bother charging, the engineer, producer, session musicians, songwriters, composers and the artists who do the sleevework all donate their time free as they don't have mortgages to pay or children to feed, there are no MCPS charges, all the recording equipment is used without any charge as the people who build them just give them to recording studios free and, of course, the electricity company doesn't send bills to recording studios.

Really cuts out the major costs in making a CD, that does, can't imagine why it never occured to me to do it that way before now.

There are a great many ordinary working people out here who depend on sales of recordings to scrape a living, most of whom probably earn less than you do. If we don't get paid, sooner or later we stop working and if enough of us go out of business there will eventually be nothing left to steal.

Strip away all the self-justifying crap and the argument comes down to, "big record companies are stealing from musicians et al so that makes it OK for everybody else to steal from them, too".

I'll explain that to the bank when they put me out of business.

The simple fact is that it's not only the profits of fat-cat record companies that the one-working-braincell (the one that goes "me! me! me!") prats are really hurting, it's people who are just about managing to stay one step ahead of bankruptcy. Either they genuinely don't comprehend that or they just shrug and say "f*ck you" so long as they can get what they want when they want without having to pay for it. I know which of those I regard as more likely.

--
DG

 

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