Pioneering French Electronic Artist Thinks Creative Industry Should Get '$300-400' Of Each Smartphone Sale
from the but-it's-'not-a-tax!' dept
The number of times figureheads of the copyright industry have proposed (and often collected) a "you must be a pirate" tax on media are too numerous to count. (Not literally, of course, but it's been several dozen times…) The operative theory is that most people buy blank media and devices only to load it up with infringing content. This stems from the industry's innate fear that any new technological advance (VCRs, high speed internet connections) serve one purpose: to make infringement faster, easier and more widespread.
Jean Michel Jarre, a pioneer in the field of electronic music, has peeked into the future (well, more of the present, really) and has glimpsed an untapped goldmine -- one that would "allow" the common man/woman to pay what's "owed" to content creators.
Here's what Jarre had to say in an interview he gave during the recent Midem conference. He states that creators should work with tech companies (which is a good idea) but then goes on to explain that "work with" means "collect an arbitrary fee from" (which isn't).
[C]reators needed to sit down with phone companies, computer companies selling hardware, as well as the distributors of all kinds of art forms, and create the right business model for creators. He doesn’t, however, think that consumers should have to pay. “Music, photography, media, film – it’s all going to be free on the internet. We have to accept it,” he said.Jarre may be a talented musician, but if he thinks this "won't affect consumers" if creators are given $300-400 of the sale price of a smartphone, he's completely (or willfully) ignorant of market realities.
But that doesn’t mean that creators can’t get paid. “Think about when you listen to a song on the radio,” he explained. “You are not paying for it, it’s not illegal to do it, because the rights have been paid for on top, beforehand, by the radio station, by the network. We have to find exactly the same kind of system with the internet.”
“We should never forget that in the smartphone, the smart part is us creators. If you get rid of music, images, videos, words and literature from the smartphone, you just have a simple phone that would be worth $50. Okay, let’s accept that there’s a lot of innovation in the smartphone, so let’s add $100 for this innovation – the remaining $300-$400 of the price should go to [the creators].”
Paying artists is not a tax or cultural levy, he said, adding that artists were here before electricity and will be here long after the internet. “We need each other, so at the end of the day we have to find the right partnership. We are talking about a business partnership, not a tax, and this shouldn’t affect the consumer.”
The $300-400 that smartphone makers are used to keeping for themselves (which Jarre handily believes is all profit margin) will have to come from somewhere. And that "somewhere" is the consumers. Instead of $499 MSRP, the phone will leap to $899-999. Once those prices go up, consumers will purchase fewer phones, especially with more service providers in the US looking to eliminate subsidized purchases. Fewer sales means less money flowing back to the creators -- which in time will mean those extracting this amount (based on the faulty assumption that the only thing that makes a smartphone "smart" is infringing content) will be back to ask for a higher fee -- which will result in even fewer sales -- and so on, ad infinitum, ad absurdum.
Despite his protestations, this fee (Jarre seems to approach it as a licensing strategy, right before asking for an arbitrary figure that's three-quarters of the retail price) is a tax/levy. The only way it wouldn't be is if phone makers entered into licensing agreements. But what would they be licensing? A new phone carries very little unlicensed content (if any) before the consumer fills it with their own. Some of this content will already be licensed, having been purchased from any number of legitimate services. Some content, of course, will not be licensed or otherwise paid for. But taking a chunk out of every sale presumes that all smartphones are nothing more than handy carrying cases for infringing content. Hence, it's a tax or levy, of the "you must be a pirate/criminal" variety.
For all of Jarre's defense of creation and innovation, he automatically gives the creators -- whose content may never be on the phone in an unlicensed form -- the largest portion of each phone sale. He makes a small concession for "innovation" that tops out at $100. "Creators" are apparently worth 3-4 times as much as the innovators who crafted the smartphone Jarre sees as an untapped revenue stream.
This clashes with Jarre's earlier statement where he says artists were here "before electricity" and will outlast the internet itself. If artists are everlasting and smartphones (or the internet) only fleeting, why is the payout so skewed towards the hardier species (so to speak)? Jarre wants to have it both ways: artists "deserve" this because they've been a cultural force since the beginning of time but are simultaneously on the verge of extinction and badly in need of a handout from the Hot Tech Thing Du Jour.
He drives this cognitive dissonance home further with this:
“We are the people creating the future – not manufacturers of computers or cables. We are the extraordinary."Well, if that's the case, maybe the people "creating the future" should be taking a smaller cut than these short-sighted tech innovators, or better yet, pitching in to keep these manufacturers of pocket-sized cultural vessels afloat until the next wave of innovation hits.
Underneath it all, he's right about the creative force of the world's population. It will continue even without grabbing 75% of a smartphone's retail price. The world's creators didn't wait until adequate copyright protections were codified by their respective governments before creating and they'll continue to create even if they think the world's tech innovators are somehow coattail-riding their creations to the tune of billions of dollars. They'll do it in the face of piracy and the addition of innumerable "competitors" thanks to the elimination of barriers to entry.
Jarre gazes at this longevity and strength and sees it as a position of leverage against (apparently) parasitic tech companies. When he smashes it all together to make his clumsy point, the strength is now supposedly a weakness, and creators nothing more than a disadvantaged group begging for loose change outside a manufacturer's headquarters. It becomes as incongruous as a Mob enforcer telling his extortion victims that the reason they have to pay is because he a.) can kill them and their families and b.) because he's a disenfranchised member of an ethnic group that has been historically poorly-treated in America.
Jarre does likewise. Artists are unstoppable! Please give us free money.
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Filed Under: entitlement, jean michel jarre, royalties, smartphones, tech industry
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Didn't quite think that all the way through...
Following the radio example, where listening to the music doesn't count as infringing because it's already been licensed, the logical conclusion to such an idea is that if such a 'You must be a pirate tax' was implemented, then any downloads, from music, movies or books, would then be legal, because the 'license' had already been paid for by the tech companies directly, and the customer indirectly.
So congratulations, you got $300-400(split up however many ways) from the sale of a device due to all the infringing work you were sure would be placed on it, and in exchange, you will never be paid for your works again.
New movie comes out? Already paid for, download away. New album released? Same thing, already been paid for, download to your heart's content. Like the new album you just downloaded and want to listen to their older works? Go ahead and download them all, after all, the manufacturer already paid for the 'license'.
Of course, if such a thing were proposed to him and others like him that want to tax people based upon what they might do, I'm sure they'd throw a fit, and demand that even after companies/people shelled out a couple hundred for a 'license', they still deserved to be paid, again, for their work on top of it, very much a 'we demand to have our cake and eat it too' situation.
On top of that, in such a situation, the money would just go to a 'collection' agency, who have shown to have serious issues actually paying artists, and that's if the artist in question is a big-name one, smaller ones get completely screwed.
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Re: Didn't quite think that all the way through...
Oh... wait...
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Re: Didn't quite think that all the way through...
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The rest of us have to do it, what the hell makes artists any different?
This entitlement is the reason copyright maximalists keep pushing to steal (an appropriate use of the word here) more money from our wallets.
"Our" being the consumer.
Want me to pay for your work? Good luck with that, because I don't pay for your "work". I pay the middlemen who mark up your work and give you a pittance in return.
So stop whining. If you want more money, talk to your goddamn distributor and leave everyone else out of it.
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Crowdfunding, government grants, philanthropy, fan clubs, consumables - there are all sorts of ways to get artists paid without selling music.
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Ultimately I think it is in eye (or ear) of the beholder, what is ground breaking and what isn't.
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mid 90's
Try 70's.
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Erik Satie. Claude Debussy. Pierre Boulez. (To name just a few of the most well-known in one genre I'm familiar with.)
The sad fact that this particular guy is an entitled fool (which has no bearing on the quality of his music) doesn't warrant sweeping generalizations about an entire nation.
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(Yes, I know I'm making an assumption about nationality there myself, so I apologise if I'm wrong - but it's usually true)
"whiney no-nothings"
The irony of having said this in a post that not only consists of nothing but ignorant whining, but manages to wrongly spell "know" is quite hilarious.
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Fine, let's go with this insanity. But in exchange all your works are automatically in the Public Domain (including those yet to be produced), you are forbidden from charging a cent for licensing and all other levies are void.
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Everyone wants to be a utility. Nice check comes in the mail automatically, no selling, no creativity - matter of fact, if they get paid automatically, what impetus to create anything other than crap?
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Without me nothing else would happen, so everyone else owes me a living.
You tech companies make money, but only because of my creations... nothing you other people have done rises to my artistic pinnacle.
Perhaps instead of chasing tech companies, they should instead be asking why the labels aren't giving them more in an age when costs have dropped because of tech.
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> they should instead be asking why the labels aren't giving
> them more in an age when costs have dropped because of tech.
The costs have not come down because the labels do not use tech.
The labels are afraid of tech. (and math, and due process.)
But most importantly, the labels find the cost of the copyright levies on tech and blank media to be prohibitively expensive and therefore they don't use tech to lower their costs.
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A Question Occurs...
Just how does one become an a-c-eh anyway? Is there a test?
Maybe being recognized as an a-c-eh is a matter of success. But what if you measure your awesomeness by how poorly your work is received? That's artistic, isn't it?
Or maybe it's just being called an a-c-eh by someone else. Does a brother-in-law qualify? If your dog thinks you're cool, it that enough?
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You're welcome Jean Michel Jarre
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Minor correction:
No, his theory is based on the assumption that the only thing that makes a smartphone "smart" is content, period. Since he assumes that smartphones are becoming the principle means of distributing content, he proposes replacing the current means of taxing content with the named price hike on smart phones. That way, you don't need to differentiate between non-infringing and infringing content as the content is "pre-paid".
Which still seems pretty much ludicrous, just in a different department.
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No, the smart part of a smart phone is that it's a mini general purpose computer with a nice radio, and a semi-decent camera and microphone attached. I don't need anything on it from what he would define as "creators" to make it worth the price. Just the ability to use maps, and check the weather are invaluable, and that only scratches the surface. And images? Really? 99% of the images on my phone are photos I took myself of my family, my pets, or other miscellaneous points of interest. Is he suggesting that he should get payed for my images?
The problem with this is that the internet is the radio station, and the smart phone is the radio in his example. Only he's suggesting that the radio makers should be paying him instead of the radio station.
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entitlement syndrome
Yes
since he thinks the 'smart' part comes from his genius, you owe him money for any usages of the phone
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Jarre's sense of entitlement is through the roof; who the hell does he think he is?
Okay, so he had one hit that I know of but he's failing to take into account the fact that artists get paid for live performances and that there are other ways of making money via genuine scarcities. He could also set up a channel on YouTube, etc., and rake in advertising revenues from that. Or make a profit-sharing deal with websites and internet-based companies.
All of these ideas are based on people WANTING to give him money, rather than him taking it "because he's an artist."
I get fed up of these people, they really think their shit don't stink. Let them earn their money like the rest of us. If he's spent it all, that's his problem.
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In fairness to Jarre, the man is (was?) a musical visionary. He's one of the small club of musicians who has influenced almost all those who came after him, whether they realize it or not.
But the thing about visionaries is that they usually specialize. Being a visionary artist does not translate well into being a visionary in public policy. I'm not sure that he understands this.
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In other words, yet another irrelevant dinosaur who doesn't understand the modern industry or how people actually consume music so wants a ransom from others. Sad, considering how forward-looking he once was.
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It's too bad he's turned into such an asshole (or maybe he always was one -- I don't know the man).
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no you are not. you are remixing the past and perpetuate the present, the status quo. the only thing extraordinary around you is your sense of entitlement.
The amount of personal and material resources that goes into technological development exceeds your tiny little contribution by orders of magnitudes and has an actual tangible effect on the quality of life of people, lots of people. You don't, not even close to the degree technology does.
You need the technological progress to stay relevant, but the progress doesn't need you. and if you go away there will *still* be countless people creating artworks using the abundance of new possibilities without crying about the glorious past that never was.
You sir, are a ignorant hypocrite. And if I would have to choose between you and your ilk and technology, I can live without you, but not without the technology.
You are insignificant.
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Why, if only we had a similar concept in place online. Why, some kind of "internet radio", in which I could listen to music with the occasional advertisement. Certainly that would be a swell thing.
I'd listen to it on the iPhone knockoff I made for $50 bucks worth of parts and $100 worth of "innovation" crafting an operating system for it.
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lolwut
No, the em spectrum, the manufacturers of radio broadcasting and/or receiving hardware do not pay.
The BROADCASTER pays. They pay from ad revenue, which is earned by having tons of people listening.
If the content creators had not by and large(not entirely, granted) been so beholden to idiotic legacy distributors, they could have monetized content in this fashion from the get go online. They were late to the table, someone else ate "their" lunch, and now they whinge. As they say in the Russian Army, "tufki shitski".
The notion that "content creators" need a handout is idiotic. The money made via spotify, youtube, netflix, etc... is huge.
Define "us", shitbag. If I wanted to listen to idiotic beeps and whistles, I'd put an R2-D2 sound bite on a loop. I use my smartphone to read (techdirt and wikipedia being my two favs), to use facebook and email to interact with friends, family and colleagues.
I have very little music on my phone (all of it purchased) and all the pics and movies on their are taken by me. So am I creator? I suppose I should get the $300-$400 tax levied against my phone, then, since I'm the primary creator of content I consume.
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Two things
1. I really, really wish that you and Jarre would stop saying "creators" would be the beneficiaries of these taxes. They're not.
Most Western countries, including the U.S. and Canada, have "you must be a criminal" taxes on blank media. How many artists see a single dime from that? Not many. You have to be a member of one of the collection societies in order to get it, and those societies are notoriously skewed towards only the Top 40. That's assuming you get paid at all - most of those royalties go to the copyright holders, which are almost never the artists themselves.
Jarre himself might be one of those artists, but he's one of the very few.
2. Jarre: "If you get rid of music, images, videos, words and literature from the smartphone, you just have a simple phone that would be worth $50."
I can't believe he said this with any degree of seriousness. What most people use their smartphones for, is web browsing, email, social networking, or shopping. To be sure, people listen to music on their smartphones - much of it through streaming services such as Pandora, Rhapsody, or Spotify, which users pay for. But even if their music and literature is 100% infringing, it would still be a tiny portion of the value of a smartphone.
As for the images and videos: if we're talking about a smartphone, then we're talking about images and videos that consumers created themselves. Let's not forget the other primary selling point of smartphones: they are also cameras. A smartphone is much more valuable to consumers as a creative tool, rather than a "consumptive" tool.
Popular musicians, including Jarre, add maybe 1% to a smartphone's value. If that.
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Farm subsidies
http://www.blacklistednews.com/New_Farm_Bill_Forbids_Disclosure_of_Which_Companies_Recei ve_Federal_Crop_Insurance/32802/0/0/0/Y/M.html
But the media and ordinary Americans won�t know who will receive these subsidies because the legislation keeps this information hidden away.
While the bill was working its way through Congress, a bipartisan provision in it would have required lawmakers and the Obama administration to disclose crop-insurance recipients.
But the agriculture lobby convinced members of Congress to do away with this section of the law.
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Remember the tax/levies on blank media?
This whole line of thought is utter BS and should be treated as such!
If YOU, as an "artist", want to get paid, you need to do something about it! Something as in ADD VALUE to your product! Musicians have had great success in offering "limited editions" of their work with things like vinyl records, hardbound books containing art and/or photos relevant to the music, or other collectibles.
Failing that, why don't you get off your fat butt and go TOUR!
The amount that this fool is proposing is not the objectionable part, the objectionable part is the entire IDEA of taxing technology to benefit artists that havent produced anything new or noteworthy in DECADES! Want to get paid? MAKE SOMETHING NEW!
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Terrestrial Radio free......
Isn't terrestrial (a.k.a. traditional) radio free? Not even the broadcasters pay for it as it is seen as a form of advertisement/marketing? Haven't we all heard about the PAYOLA scandals where record companies "paid broadcasters to play their music"? It's that nasty little thing that groups that the RIAA want to change as they charge internet broadcasters (streamers) and complain about the need to harmonize the rates?
If he wants to move all creative streaming to the terrestrial radio model (no one pays as it's all marketing) I'm all for that. Too bad it undercuts his "you must be a criminal" tax plan.
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Re: Terrestrial Radio free......
The broadcasters pay the publishers.
If a business plays a radio where the general public, or just their own workers can hear it, then they also have to pay musical rights organisations.
If a cd store plays music to tempt people to buy, they will also have to pay the licensing groups - (UK and Ireland)
It's a heck of a system, it's no surprise they would want to expand it.
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Re: Re: Terrestrial Radio free......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola
So JMJ wants digital music to work like radio huh? Ok when are they going to start cutting checks to the cellphone manufacturers for allowing their music to play on their phones?
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It's special. It is not like any other "consumer product".
If I have a car I want to sell, I have to pay for radio or tv time to get my product out into the public,
If I have a restaurant I want to promote I have to pay for radio or tv time to raise awareness and hopefully increase the number of my customers.
If I have a song I want to sell. I don't have to do that.
Instead, I charge the radio or tv station if they play it. Other parts of my industry will also and separately charge the people with radios or tvs where the general public might hear or see them whilst they are playing the music I want to sell and on top of this, everytime they play the song I have to sell and pay me for the privilege it has a positive effect on the actual sales of my music.
Now, this might seem like I get my advertising for free, and I do, but this is not unfair or wrong. The proof of that is, that there is in fact a law against me paying the radio stations to play my music, because sometimes when I have a real no hoper that I've wasted a lot of money on I can be tempted to do just that and the whole point of the music industry is that everybody pays the publishers.
Just to highlight that point, if the car company, or the restaurant or say a jeans company use my music with their advertising campaign, they pay me for the privilege and yup, you've guessed it, I also get a sales boost from that.
Now, this is the way that this business works, we, the publishing companies that is, not the actual musicians, get paid in every way, by everyone.
Who ultimately pays for the money we invest in our bands? well, they do of course, out of the 5-10% share of the profits that they get.
So, the musicians pay, the radio stations we rely on to boost our sales, they pay, the advertising companies who inadvertently also boost our sales, they pay, youtube, spotify, they pay, the consumers, they pay so why on earth should cd/dvd/electronics manufacturers not pay.
It's so clear, once you have your head in the fundament of the music business.
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You don't even have an argument.
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The fact that the ambience or atmosphere also has important contributions from paint, wallpaper, chairs, tables, table cloths, cutlery, plates, glasses, lighting, and they don't have to constantly pay licensing fees for the use of those is neither here nor there.
If music helps your business, it's worth something and we should get paid. That has always been our stance and that continues to be our stance.
If you haven't objected to, nightclubs, restaurants, barbers, coaches, having to pay fees to the music business then what possible objection can you have to electronics manufacturers having to pay a bit too, when music clearly is of benefit to their businesses too.
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"The fact that the ambience or atmosphere also has important contributions from paint, wallpaper, chairs, tables, table cloths, cutlery, plates, glasses, lighting, and they don't have to constantly pay licensing fees for the use of those is neither here nor there."
Are you for real?
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Some people need to use percussion maintenance on their meters. Recommended method is palm of the hand against the middle of the forehead.
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Skim and attack, not really the best tactic.
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Let's put your argument in some situations other than music and entertainment:
- Pay an additional tax on your car that goes to gasoline refineries because cars use gas.
- Pay an additional tax on your stove that goes to food suppliers because you use food when you cook with your stove.
- Pay an additional tax on your garden hose that goes to the water department because hoses use water.
I could go on, but those examples are sufficient to see how silly your argument really is.
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You even quote and still don't manage to get your head around it.
Putting the argument into other situations, and marvelling at what a bizarre place the music business is and has been in was rather the entire point of what I wrote.
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Ok your right, I didn't get your point at all.
For one thing, all of the income sources you listed actually value your music and they pay for that value. How does some shmoe, who's never heard of you, doesn't care for your music and will never listen to your music having to pay you when he buys a phone compare to any of those things?
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To add another point - as bizarre as the music business might be, even they did not go as far as taxing the purchase of record players in the past. Plenty of manufacturers of record players made decent profits in the past didn't they?
The reason they didn't is because they realized that it's a symbiotic relationship - one makes a profit selling the device and other makes a profit selling the content, but both are required for either to make any money.
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To quote a reliable source:
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20111108/17562016686/history-hyperbolic-overreactio n-to-copyright-issues-entertainment-industry-technology.shtml
-John Philip Sousa, the composer. In 1906, he went to Congress to complain about the infernal technology industry and how it was going to ruin music:
These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.
Yes, the tech industry was going to kill music, because of "these infernal machines." -
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Like people engaged in public performances of copyrighted material in front of every house in the summer evenings without payment to the copyright holders.
It just tends to be they are suddenly more scared of the new than the old, despite the fact that historically, the market has gotten bigger with each technological advance and sure sheet music lost out to records and sure records lost out to cds and sure cds lost out to mp3s but there are now more musicians than ever, making a living at doing what they like, making music than at any other point in history.
It just doesn't suit the publishers.
They'll adapt, we just have to convince the politicians to stop pandering to them.
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Now that's really having your cake, eating it, having everyone's cake and eating them too and still wailing that there isn't enough cake.
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The other income sources value the music?
How often have you been somewhere where they were playing music you would have paid them to stop playing, but they were still paying for the pleasure of irritating you.
Also, as with restaurants, lots of things contribute to ambience and are of value. Paint, decor, etc, etc.
But none of those get to pop by every week, month or year and collect a licence fee for your use of the product you paid for.
Why is music, paid for music, different from paid for plants, paid for paintings, paid for furniture, furnishings, tableware etc?
It's not different, but it's been treated different and because it didn't terribly impinge on the average consumer it didn't really get noticed. Just now, when people put a video on youtube of their child dancing to any old music on the radio, suddenly they find themselves being told that the actual value in it, was the music on the radio.
The average person can easily tell, the particular music in that case is pretty much irrelevant, if that song didn't exist the kid would've been dancing to something else.
But the music companies can't see it that way, because they've lived in this bizarro world of getting paid by everybody for everything for 3 or 4 decades.
They can't snap out of it on their own, how could they.
They have a skewed view of reality that has been pandered to for too long.
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No you don't. You don't HAVE to buy airtime to sell your product. You CAN buy airtime for advertising. That is ONE way of doing it. But there are others some of which cost little to nothing at all.
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but nonetheless
tracks get airtime
cars get airtime
restaurants get airtime
airtime boosts all their sales, it has a positive benefit to their pockets, but only two of them pay for it and one of them is legally prevented from paying for it (and even then they still get caught doing just that, now and then)
Point is, how can we expect the record publishers to have a rational view on getting paid when they have been getting paid for the kind of promotion other businesses have always had to pay for. It seems normal to them, we can't really expect them to have an untwisted view of how the economics work when they've had the ultimate fantasy for so long.
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Every play of a track is effectively advertising, but the best bit of it is that most of it involves the people who stand to benefit from the sales also get paid for each play.
That's getting paid so that a third party can boost your sales and that is heaven.
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airtime -> sales
so
it's advertising
The music business is the one business that gets paid rather than has to pay for a proven effective method of advertising their product.
They can also engage in other promotional type stuff, which they can pay money for, but nothing is as effective as airtime so their best advertising option is something that they not only don't have to pay for but actually get paid for. It is abnormal in the business world, it is abnormal in life, people who enjoy the benefits of this abnormality will never understand that it is as abnormal as it is.
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But if we agree that the purpose of advertising is to drive sales, then publicity that drives sales is indistinguishable from advertising.
Especially, if that particular mode of publicity is the biggest driver of sales that you have.
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People can believe what they like about what they do, but companies don't pay for ads for products or services because ads don't drive sales.
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A positive or even neutral mention on the radio or tv or the newspapers is gold dust.
Advertising, that they haven't had to pay for.
But rarely do you get that level of publicity and get paid for it too which is what the record business has.
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True and in fact, paid for product placement should be banned in the same way payola was banned.
The biggest benefit to any manufacturer or service delivery company or any other business is advertising that doesn't look like advertising. It's way more effective than advertising that people recognise as advertising.
But the occasional random choice of a director to select something that might provide some cachet to a brand or make or whatever is not the norm for any product other than music.
Music getting played on the radio is the de facto norm of the music industry. It's the single biggest driver of sales and not only does it not cost the music industry anything, they actually get paid for it.
It is a unique situation which has led to a unique mindset that has no real equivalent with any other business and partly explains the crazy schemes they keep coming up with.
We need legislators to realise that the old music business has been in an unusual position in getting paid by more sources than any other business and often for things that other businesses actually have to pay for. That the music business has been in a particularly favoured position and that the future cannot involve doing them more favours, but in bringing them back to the norm for business enterprises.
They'll throw their tantrums, but it's to be expected and they will get over it, just don't pander to them anymore.
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Just tax the people
I am sure the government could easily determine who the best artists are and hand the money far better than some collection agency.
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Actually...
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Who gets what money?
Who decides where that money goes?
Music industry, movie industry, video game industry, book industry...ect ect
I mean who and how do they decide whom gets said money?
Do we randomly assign money to the big players and then the artists get basically nothing?
Do you spread it out evenly based on general popularity so each artist gets a fraction of a penny per phone?
Or do you want to go NSA style and root through people's phones to see what media they have on it?
Did this bozo even think his plan all the way through to see what the real world implications were?
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What if I don't listen to Jean Michael Jarre?
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Another moron
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NO!!! Y00000 think about it... Its paid for by revenue from advertising... which I listen to. So no one listens for free smacktard... its the commercials we listen to that pays for your crappy music.
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"�We are the people creating the future � not manufacturers of computers or cables. We are the extraordinary."" - Entitled narcissist much?
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watch?v=x8dqzTl0vUI
Maybe we need to take his "computers" and "cables" away and see where this... "artist" would be today.
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Title is wrong
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FTFY
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Close but not quite
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Double fixed
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Wrong Wrong Wrong!
I stand as proof that he's completely wrong. You know what I don't use my smartphone for? Music, movies, or literature.
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Not only does the creative content on my phone represent a stunningly small portion of the time I spend using it, but I also have already given them money for that small portion.
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A few thoughts.
Artists make more money at concerts then from the labels..
(most times)
ALSO,
If you work, you get paid.
HOW many times should you get paid for 1 days work??
But thats part of the problem in the USA..MANY corps get paid, many times for 1 service.
Cable gets paid by YOU, and the Commercials, and internet services...
TRASH company gets paid for YOUR recycling, as well as selling it to another company..
Some companies get paid, 3-4-5 times for 1 product or service...
The SAME, DVD hardware has been in CHEAP DVD players for years, just a NEW case and name..
Even with a few added features, its the SAME INTERNALS..
Other nations give SAT for free, as its cheaper then installing Antennas around the areas they serve. In the USA they charge you for WHAT they should be paying to BROADCAST to you..
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If things like Kickstarter have taught us anything, is that people will pay to have stuff created and earn VIP/premium benefits for increasingly larger contributions. It's probably the least risky path for anybody to get paid for their work. If nobody pays you, you're not obligated to produce anything. If the threshold is met and you deliver on your promise, you're guaranteed to get paid. It's a distributed version of a work for hire model. Instead of one client, you have many and they all want the results of your work, which they are willing to pay their share for.
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>The $300-400 that smartphone makers are used to keeping for themselves (which Jarre handily believes is all profit margin) will have to come from somewhere. And that "somewhere" is the consumers. Instead of $499 MSRP, the phone will leap to $899-999.
Adding $300-400 to a $499 MSRP gives $799-899.
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Yeah, umm, Mr. Artist? Lots of luck making electronic music without cables or, you know, electronic noisemakers. And computers with specialty software to eliminate background noises from your music. And so forth.
As for "creating the future"? Yeah, I would consider (granted, I'm a computer guy, so...) the people developing augmented reality, high-precision surgical robots, video streaming services and such to be making the future. Don't get me wrong; music is nice. But it's not going to connect me with video to a friend from across the world, it's not going to fix up my internal organs and it's not going to generate new vistas to interact with.
You arrogant twat. Know what the major thing on my phone is? Photos. That I take. And you want me to have to pay *you* for those? I fucking took them, asshat.
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$300-400 is insane! Way to high. No one is going to agree to that.
Ok, so how about we make it $10. That's less than 10% the price of a phone, less than 10% of what we originally asked for. %10 is the price of 2 Starbucks coffees.
We got him down to $10? Lets agree to that, because compared to $300, 10 is reasonable.
Now that both sides have agreed that compared to what they asked for, 10 is reasonable, how can the governments turn that down?
And now $10 of each phone, which both sides agree is worth it, and won't affect anyone, goes to pay this reasonable licensing fee.
Until the memory and screen resolution of new phones increase. So we have to raise the fee of course.
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All I ask in return is one little thing. In return for my guaranteed up front payment, I should have free or at least heavily discounted access to the music streaming services of my choice. So I won't need to pay the monthly fee for Xbox music, Beats, Pandora, Spotify or whatever I happen to want to use for as long as I own that phone. I don't begrudge the company a few bucks to cover bandwidth and server costs but since royalty fees are a big part of the cost I should save a ton of money over the two years or so I will own my phone.
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Elevator music
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I, as a member of the public, want IP laws abolished. I want our laws to be democratically passed laws and I want my voice heard (doesn't mean it has to be the only voice heard though). I don't want my voice drowned out by corporate campaign contributions and revolving door favors. That's not democracy. I want democracy. I want IP abolished. I want politicians to take my voice into consideration when passing laws.
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Wow. I've not read anything so ignorant outside of the usual shills here. Let's start with the obvious:
"music, images, videos, words and literature"
What's missing from that list? Software. Apparently, he's not interested in making sure *those* creators are rewarded, even when they're the ones either making his content useful or even accessible. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that app store purchases are rising and hugely profitable for many companies right now, while his preferred industry is failing?
"you just have a simple phone that would be worth $50."
Then, there's this. He, of course, failed to mention everything else that goes into making a smartphone useful - from the GPS that allows navigation to the camera that allows content creation on its own the the processor and chipsets that allow the phone to be used for anything from business to widespread personal communication between friends. No, it's "just a simple phone" without some crap tunes on it...
"there�s a lot of innovation in the smartphone, so let�s add $100 for this innovation"
Funnily enough, most phones actually make less than this for the manufacturer right now. Their "innovation" is rewarded by success in the marketplace. This isn't guaranteed, of course - look at the state of Blackberry - but, that's what reality is like: some people have to lose.
"the remaining $300-$400 of the price should go to [the creators]"
...and he's the dumbest thing of all. Note that he's not merely saying "creators" should get $300-400 of the price. He's saying the REMAINING $300-400 should go to them. In other words, he hasn't factored in any other revenue. he hasn't factored the manufacturing costs, shipping, the retailer's cut, cost of returns and warranty repairs. He's literally saying that the smartphone makers should get $100 for their innovation and the rest of the retail cost should go to random people whose content may never be used on the phone (remember - these devices have huge numbers of uses beyond merely consuming content).
What an asshole, and as a former fan I hope that this is a mistranslation of what he meant to say rather than his actual opinion, because it's astonishingly ignorant at best. I haven't even touched on the real problems I have with the idea of this kind of scheme in the first place (e.g. how do I know the artists I listen to get the money rather than whatever talentless tosser happens to be selling more singles through RIAA cartel outlets?), but the way he's made this argument kills it before he's even tried debating.
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There's also the point that many people may be paying more for music than they did before, thanks to the features of the smartphone - for example, impulse purchases which would otherwise be lost, apps such as Shazam that allow you to find the name of a song that you might otherwise forget to search for (and thus lead to impulse buys), apps that allow listening to radio stations or libraries (e.g. Spotify) that you couldn't otherwise access, etc.
I can sympathise with Jarre's intended point and am thankful that he at least pays lip service to working with tech companies rather than trying to sue everybody, but he's so far off the mark in so many ways it's depressing.
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That's 'dictating terms', not 'working with'.
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Great plan!
In the US of A a hunk of that money would go to the Government workers to implement the Great plan! Then the RIAA/MPAA/whatever other guild will want a cut to administer that Great plan!
The only way to get your "fair share" of the Great plan! is you, as a "creative" will have to pay to register with the RIAA/MPAA/whatever - the same as now.
My usage habits of MP3 players is not on the phone (runs down the battery) but instead on $10 MP3 players that run off of AAA batteries where I listen to podcasts. How in this Great plan! do those people get their "fair share" or are they not able to because their "creativeness" is not "music"? Does my $10 MP3 player become $310?
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You make assumptions. You skipped portions of the article. You didn't read the original interview. You bring in arguments that Jarre didn't even say. And you are certainly not aware of several underlying facts and systems.
As an example, if you actually learn that Google, that one company of several internet and software giants, made billions and billions of profit last year off the backs of people looking for content, you should ask yourself why they should facilitate content search and bring people to free download sites without paying something for it. Why are tech giants, broadband suppliers and hardware corporations entitled to profit from content more than the creators?
Jarre isn't on a crusade for his own pockets. He is president of an organisation that represents 3 million creators. The very artists and composers you all listen to. He has been in the music business since 1970 and knows more about these issues from the inside than all of you together. You think you know stuff because you can google for it? Get real.
And the best part is that while considering Jarre a whiner, all you do is whine yourself, without justification.
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Exactly. Like most industry sycophants, he's missing the major points raised - a great many people either don't consume their content on these devices at all (despite Jarre's attempt at misdirection, they have many other uses) or ALREADY PAY for the content they consume.
But, no, Google blah blah pirates blah blah we want free money blah blah why isn't the world like it was in the 70s...
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Why not educate yourself on the opinions of others rather than whining that others are whining without bothering to look at what they're saying to begin with? but, then you'd have to listen to real complex opinions and present real facts, which few industry defenders ever bother to do.
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ART: We have to accept that it's true technology is not an actual need to create art, so developing it first is possible (of course modern time has demonstrated that art is easier to develop when one has technology).
Art is not an actual need for survival.
Art CAN be use to make survival easier, by allowing our knowledge to be passed on to future generations.
Art can make our days brightier by just seeing/hearing it.
Art in these times has not to be payed for, but people has to make an effort every time one wants to see/hear it.
WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY, Art CAN still evolve.
WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY, Art evolution MIGHT be limited.
WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY, Individual pieces of art WILL NOT become easier to create.
WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY, Human life will stay more or less the same.
TECHNOLOGY: Developing it might be harder than art. (assuming a simple rock used as a hammer is not technology).
Technology is not an actual need for survival.
Technology CAN be used to pass on knowledge to future generations.
Technology at this point is free, but creating it requiers an effort every time it is created.
WITHOUT ART, Technology can enable the developing of new technologies.
WITHOUT ART, Technologies can enable the evolution of previous technologies.
WITHOUT ART, Individual pieces of technology WILL become progressively easier to create.
WITHOUT ART, technologies will at some point allow us to reach what we have achieved until now. (and even more)
In such situation I'd chose TECHNOLOGY.
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Engineers are themselves creators, now, I dare him to make a living from scratch, without using the technologies he so much underestimates.
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