This entire thread has been great, but I'm really sick of businesspeople being stereotyped as greedy, white, racist, homophobic, powermongers intent on oppressing all minorities.
People start businesses for one reason - to make money. There's a lot of other smaller reasons to start a business; doing something you love, being your own boss, ect. But the bottom line is that you start a business to make money. To record execs, artists are no different than toasters and blenders. They don't care if you're black, white, hispanic, asian, ect. They don't care if you're male or female. They don't care about your plight trying to make it in the world. Your sob story means nothing. They care wether you can sell records and make them money. It is not the businessman's fault that techno does not sell very well. Nor is it his duty to make it sell well. Businessmen have no obligation to any market (scene) other than to provide a wanted product/service and to provide that product/service in an ethical way. In the same way, artists have no obligation to work with businessmen or give in to the demands of businessmen. If you don't like how the game is played, start your own game. Go it alone and see how well you'll do. It's easier now than ever to become successful without utilizing the traditional systems in place. Put yourself in the businessman's shoes. If you have one million dollars to develop a product (artist) and you have two choices, one being an almost sure money-maker, and one being a real long shot, which do you choose? You go with the money-maker every time. If you don't, your business does not survive. Imagine 430-West being presented with the option of putting out a Random Noise Generation album, or an The Impaler album. Which one do you think they're gonna choose? The money-maker. Sure, The Impaler is a nice guy. He's had it rough in the music scene. Nobody has given him much of a chance. His music is great (heh, lets pretend here). But the bottom-line is you don't invest your hard earned money on something that's probably going to fail. That would just be stupid. Is the race card valid when applied to business? Sure, in some cases, but not in the broad case of record industry. They only provide what will sell. They have no obligation to do otherwise. If you're going to play the race card, you have to attack the reasons why mainstream audiences would rather buy whitebred pop than minority produced techno/house/whatever. This might include attacking minority individuals that make the rest of the race look bad (rappers with their 40s, guns, hoes, ect). Or maybe attacking Europeans that claim (and may even believe) they brought electronic music to the States. How about replacing affirmative action with actual equality? Or taking on the people that could bring forth quality schools in urban areas. I'm basically trying to show that the problem is much larger than the record industry. It's wrong to expect Virgin and Sony Records to mold the majority of people into what a handful of people think music listeners should be like. It is simply not their obligation to do so. You cannot blame record execs pushing what sells and then complain yourself that you're not making money because you refuse to produce music that sells. Anyone that makes techno can just as easily make trance if they so choose. If you choose your integrity over money that's you're choice. It's not the businessman's fault that the result of your choice does not sell. I have the mindset of an ethical businessman. I don't care who you are or what your story is. If I can make money off of you, I'll invest in you/your product/your cause/whatever. Your value to me has nothing to do with race, gender, or sexual preference. THAT'S equality, and it exists in the business world. ===== Krhn! - [Detroit Intelectronic Listowner ] [aim : krhn3][Visual ID - http://facelink.com/Krhn ] [Intelligent Electronic Music Discussion: ] [http://www.egroups.com/subscribe/intelectronic ] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - sign up for Fantasy Baseball http://sports.yahoo.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
