At 04:04 PM 12/4/2003 -0600, Herbert Ward <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Some industries just naturally have an insecure business model. Examples >include artistic sky writing,
Quite the contrary. Sky writing, like the manufacture of toilet paper and strings for instruments, have a very secure business model where the product has a very short life span. As soon as the writing in the sky blows away with the wind, you have to do it all over again. I used to do that kind of flying in my younger days. >I hope that Napster et. al. will have the effect of reducing the overall >commerciality of music, to mankind's great benefit. The difference between commerciality and patronage is that one makes music available to a large number of people and the other only to a select few. As for the effect of free exchange of music, it is good to bear in mind that the indigenous residents of the Kalahari desert, the rice farmers of India and China, or the street beggars in the swampy slums of Bangladesh are not part of this new fangled accessibility to music, yet they constitute a considerable portion of this thing you call "mankind". What we are really talking about is the replacement of commerciality with free access to music by a very small segment of humanity, the one that is rich enough to own personal computers and afford Internet access. The reason Napster has not put out the big labels and the concerts promotes out of business yet, is that the consumption of music in general in this world is far higher than the part of it which is consumed by pimply rich kids in US suburbia. But as Hernan Mouro described to us the situation in Argentina, we can see the writing on the wall when it comes to our little corner of the world. Soon enough, we all close our doors and go put our money in real estate or stocks and bonds, and what musicians will have to put up with is an endless circulation of the same stuff. Nothing new will come about. Not in contemporary music, and not in early music. > But, as our publisher >friend pointed out, collapse of the tree in which facsimile publishing is >perched may not be beneficial. I think it will very beneficial for me to have this tree collapse. At least that branch of it on which I am sitting. Just to imagine all the time in the world I will have then to do the things that really matter, like playing the guitar. And who knows, I may even buy back that lute Hans Jordan made for me in 1960, on the recommendation of Diana Poulton. It's available. Matanya Ophee Editions Orphe'e, Inc., 1240 Clubview Blvd. N. Columbus, OH 43235-1226 Phone: 614-846-9517 Fax: 614-846-9794 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.orphee.com
