…are belong to this guy:

Checkout Andrew Cantino’s new word association site. It’s a fun little toy, and (best of all) yours truly helped with the design and styling.

I closed out my Pay the Artists post with this little promise:

I don’t do these posts-in-series very well. We all know how the Making the Blog series went. My mind wanders, my ADD kung fu is too strong, the winds of change…

Well, let’s see if I can wrap this “pay the artists” discussion up promptly.

Let’s recap:

1. I get most of my music from non-CD, non-iTunes sources.
2. Currently, the main reason for this is that it is cheaper for me.
3. Because I save money by shunning CDs, I can afford to see more concerts.
4. The musicians I see in concert make more money (% wise) off these concert tickets than they would off a comparable expenditure on CDs.
5. The musicians I like enough (and have an opportunity) to see in concert make more money from me as a customer.
6. Artists who are good enough to peak my interest (to buy a CD), but aren’t good enough to motivate me to go to a concert don’t get any money from me.
7. Artists who are good enough to peak my interest, but don’t tour near me don’t get any money from me.
8. I feel good about giving more of my money to musicians.
9. I feel good about giving less of my money to record companies.
10. I feel bad about the poor guys on the end of (6) and (7) who might have gotten some money from me if I was more of a CD buyer and less of a concert-goer.

How do I (and others like me) reconcile that last item? That’s the point (or part of the point) of these ramblings. Here is a random list of suggestions. Most of this is not even possible for various reasons but fun to think about anyway.

• Low-Tech Option: Every musician must have donate button on their website. Optionally, the musician can post what their current take is per song. Now take a calculator and add up all the money each musician would have made (n x $0.10) off your jolly-rogered music collection. Go to said musicians’ websites and donate appropriate amounts of money.
• Post-Scan Option: Let’s build a web application which will scan my computer for music files. I can then select which n of those were obtained illegally. The app will calculate n x $0.10 and bill me the total. The company behind the app will be responsible for making sure the artists in question receive the proper portion of that money. In addition, artists can contact the company to report their actual earnings per song to be used in calculations. As an added feature (for Apple-bashers only), allow the users to calculate and pay all or part of the $0.55 the record labels would have gotten from iTunes-like services for each song.
• Integrated Option: Let’s build a service to sit on top of Kazaa, BitTorrent, allofmp3, or whatever tools kiddies are using to yo-ho-ho music these days. This service will keep a running total ($0.10 per song) of what is due to each artist. Users can then logon to websiteforservice.com to total their bill and submit their payment. Moneys are distributed in the same way as in my second suggestion.

Possible names for these apps: “Pay the Artists” or “Guilt No More Payment Systems”. My conscience wants a service like the ones kiddingly postulated above. My busy life and need to write 1000 word essays keeps me from pursuing the manual option (keep telling yourself this). For now I will stick to my system of keeping a rough tally for my “concert fund” and continue to support musicians that way, while robbing them of a little profit up front in order to listen to their wonderful work.

For those interested enough to read this far, here is a link to a pretty interesting article about iTunes, musicians, and the music industry. <a class='body' href='http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/
‘>iTunes: Facelift for a corrupt industry.

Thanks,

How come no one has produced a keyless entry for home doors yet?

Update:

Here’s a groovy photo I snapped somehwere in downtown Chicago.

Remember that little puzzle game I made in Visual Basic 6? Of course you don’t. Well… now that I have image-posting capabilities, here are some screenshots. The game’s not too flashy. I’ve always intended to add some pizazz to the game or port it to the web or SOMETHING. If anyone is interested in seeing the code for this, drop me a line.

Grab the Puzzle Dropper installer.

I just had Andrew Cantino update a link he had on his site to point to my blog rather than my web design site. And since he has a link pointing here, I thought I would return the favor.

Please check out Andrew’s AbsurdlyCool Freebie Finder. And here’s a link to Andrew’s personal blog.

Now Andrew’s another fellow with a lot of real estate on the web. So I won’t be surprised when he emails me asking to change that link to his other blog.

The new automatic image attachment feature works (mostly). In celebration, here are a few pictures of my cats. The gray kitten is Remix, and the tabby is named Moxie. Enjoy!

You can’t tell, but I’m testing a new feature for the blog which will make it easier for myself (and others) to add images to a post. In the meantime, check out this picture inspired by an idea for a t-shirt.

A bit of creative curiosity and a lot of personal guilt have got me thinking about my music acquisition habits. It’s been six months or so since I’ve bought a CD that wasn’t a gift for someone else. These days I get my music online.

I’m part of the demographic of people who are bothered more by the cost of CDs rather than the inconvenience of them. $10.00 per CD (or even $0.99 per song) is just too steep for me when other options are available. I like having CD quality. I like jewel-cases with the track titles and little books full of lyrics, photos, and art. But I also like a lot of other things I could spend that money on. Mmmm…
cheese steaks.

I more often listen to music on my iPod than a CD player. So being able to rip songs off a CD I buy is crucial. CD “protection” which prevents me from moving my music to a perfectly “fluid” format is not acceptable for me, and in this case I could be driven to illegal online downloads for inconvenience purposes rather than economic ones. It seems like this may be the case in the not-to-distant future.

Let’s assume I’m speaking hypothetically from now on to avoid incriminating myself…

If I rip songs off a friend’s CD or download music from allofmp3.com, I’m not only sticking it to RIAA. I’m robbing the artists of the little bit of money they would have received from the sale of a CD I didn’t buy. I’ve been able to ease my conscience so far by believing that the money I have saved shunning CDs has gone earnestly towards more concert trips. I’m sure I’ve spent more on concerts this year than I’ve spent on CDs (and concerts) previous years. I’ve gone to concerts I wouldn’t have gone to if couldn’t have heard the musician’s music for free first. Add to this the fact that artists receive a larger percentage of a concert’s profits than percentage of record sales.

From a high-level perspective, I am giving a larger portion of my disposable income to “the artists” than I would have if I were buying CDs and ignoring cheaper (so called illegal) online distribution channels. And this has kept me content for the past 2 years or so.

Let’s take a more detailed look at things though. I’ve downloaded a Kanye West CD and a Jason Mraz CD. I’ve seen Jason Mraz in concert before and will probably see him again. And while Mraz (and his band) may get as much as 1/3rd of the $100+ I’ll spend on tickets for his shows, how does this help Kanye West? Surely I owe this guy money.

But maybe I can just say, ‘Well, Kanye West just failed to impress me enough to motivate me to see him live.’ However, if I wouldn’t have been able to get his album for free (or really cheap without paying his label), I might have bought his CD. And in that case he would have gotten somewhere between $0.25-$2.00 for that CD.

[side note: I wish I had a good reference for how much artists get paid for CDs and concerts. If you have one, let me know. This page sites $0.0755 per track: Giving Away Music to Make Money. I’m also using the “common knowledge” that artists make more money from concerts than through CD sales.]

What about Mr. West and that $2.00 I owe him? I don’t know what to make of this. It’s very possible for me to say that I wouldn’t have downloaded the music if I had to pay (more) for it. That eases my conscious a bit.

But what about other artists, who I would see in concert if they played a venue closer to me? I’ve downloaded some Taproot. And I would see these guys in a heartbeat next time they show up in the Philadelphia area.

[results of a quick search: Taproot comes to Atlantic City with Stain’d, POD, and Flyleaf December 12th, 2005]

… but I haven’t been able to catch a Taproot concert so far. I have some “mp3 bucks” stored up to spend on that band. I could go out and buy the Taproot CD I guess, but I’d rather send them a check in the mail.

… not a bad idea, eh?

I’ll report-in later to expand on this topic with some ideas I have for “paying the artists”. In the meantime, anyone from the Kanye West, Jason Mraz, or Taproot families can contact me to get that check.

[other reading: Here is a website which explains a lot of thoughts I have on “illegally” downloaded music (with more research and analysis to support it): The Recording Industry is Trying to Kill the Goose That Lays the Golden Egg.]

So what do I do when I’m not posting to the blog?

I read other blogs. Here are some of my favorite I’ve run across recently:

• Matthew Good – Canadian Musician, Artist, and Political Activist
• Michael Bechtel – Accenture Tech Labs Employee
• WebWord – Web Usability and Design Expert
• Mark Cuban – Dallas Mavericks Owner and Businessman

Enjoy!