Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Being Broke and Loving Music





 "Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything" -Plato



Through his quote, Plato has established a view of music with which I concur. I believe that people should have the right to free music because it is something everyone should be able to experience both physically and mentally. No matter who you are or where you are from, you should be able to listen to or perform music. It connects people in ways that words alone cannot describe or encompass.



I am not really sure how I feel about obtaining music freely because the only way for me to obtain music is to download it as I don't have a lot of money. While I would like to obtain music legally by purchasing CDs, I do not have the extra money to be spending on the works of my favorite artists. So due to lack of sufficient funds, I obtain my music through an MP3 converter. On one hand, I think that legal issues create problems and those should be avoided. I think as long as someone is not stealing CDs from a store or committing a crime such as ones that involve going out and potentially harming people or property, then they should be okay. On the other hand, obtaining music illegally and/or without paying for it takes money away from the artist(s) so by doing this, people are potentially ending someone's career, as the success of an artist depends on their ability to keep producing music. Artists depend on the money from CD and download purchases to keep producing music. Like I said, I'm not really sure how I feel.



This brings me to my next topic: the amount of time an artist should collect royalties on a song. I think that once the artist has been out of the industry for ten or more years, they should stop collecting royalties on their songs. On a similar note, I do not think an artist's family should collect royalties on a song after said artist has passed away because the artist has ownership over the song, not the family. No one should collect money on a song after the artist passes away unless they have written rights to the song. When a musician writes a song, I believe that is belongs to said musician as they are the creator of the song. Like John Lennon said, "Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." To wrap it all up, I believe that a musical composition can have inherent value, but that not all musical compositions necessarily do. Whether a musical composition has inherent value depends on the person. For example, I am a fan of music with meaningful lyrics but meanings can change and become irrelevant over time. A recording I believe does have inherent value because someone is always making money from recordings.

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4 comments:

Unknown said...

You and I have different opinions on where the money should go/who collects after a certain date. I think that if an artist leaves someones name in their will for the money they make to go to then they should receive this money. What do you think about this? Does it change your opinion at all?

October 9, 2013 at 11:44 AM
Afterwalker said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
October 9, 2013 at 11:45 AM
Afterwalker said...

You bring up a very good point. Music is something that, for many people, makes life worth living, and denying someone that simply because they are short on funds is unjustified. Like you said, music "connects people in ways that words alone cannot describe or encompass." Music is a form of communication. Would the law deny someone the ability to see or hear to perceive what others were saying, simply because they had less money than someone else? I would hope not. I believe that it should largely be up to each individual musician how the sharing of their music is handled. If a musician is ok with free downloading of their own music, it should not be punishable.

October 9, 2013 at 11:49 AM
Unknown said...

I understand what you are saying about lacking money to buy all the songs you want (I have this same issue), although I think that taking anyones music without paying for it shouldn't be legal. What has been keeping me from getting music from the MP3 converter is that the artist who's music I'm getting could very well have the same money issue, and I just don't think its fair to deny them your payment for something they worked so hard for.

October 9, 2013 at 10:40 PM

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