Is music ever private?
This picture is from the Flickr website. It was taken in 1946 and was uploaded by The Library of Congress.
“Where words fail, music speaks.”
Music tells a whole story on its own. Whether the story is hurt and betrayal or love and passion. Music can sometimes be the only form of communication when one individual can not speak what they feel. "Music is the strongest form of magic." -Marilyn Manson Music really is the strongest form of magic that exists because it tells you certain things about someone that you might not see other wise. I listen to love songs most of the time, but if you look closer at the lyrics they may tell you different.
You may ask yourself "when a musician writes a song, who exactly does it belong to?" But do you really ever look into it? Do you even think about it at all? For most of the people I know it would not even cross their minds. All they think is "they sang it so they must have wrote it so it's their song", but some of the time it's not really their song. Some musical artist's and groups have people write songs for them and do not give that person credit for the hard work they did. That song belongs to the musician that wrote it. If a songwriter wrote a song and lets someone else preform it, it still belongs to the songwriter.
Any type of music, recording or not, will always have inherent value no matter the genre, but one specific song might not have inherent value to a certain group of people or a certain person. For example, heavy metal does not have any inherent value to me. Country and some pop songs have a permanent impact on me and mean the most to me.
I, like many others in the world, get most of my music from iTunes whether it is music for free, 99 cents or $1.29. I do get some of my music from a YouTube Mp3 converter where you copy the URL and paste it so you can download the auto. I have never burned a CD for myself or a friend because I don't own any CD's.
I think it's a good thing when people distribute music online because it is spreading music around that could be from a band that is only known to the YouTube world by a select number of individuals and this way the band can become known and possibly get a record deal that could lead to fame. And as I said before, I personally do not burn CD's, but I think it is fine to burn them as long as you are not burning them to sell to others to make a profit off of something that is not yours.
Sometimes people illegally obtain music without paying for it, but with something like a free YouTube Mp3 converter that website itself is letting you do this and has already gone through the plagiarizing stages/laws. And these laws are the same for everyone.
Some people believe that there should be a limit on how long an artist can collect money on their songs. What do you think? I, myself, do not think there should be a limit as long as the earnings go to the artist or the artists family, close friend, husband, or wife if s/he is dead because the artist would still be making money if s/he was still alive and if they said "I want all my earning to go to my wife" in their will then that is who s/he gave the money to.
2 comments:
I have an argument to make with you: yes, some artists do not write their own music, but credit is given where credit is due. The reason it seems as though no credit is given is because the credit remains in the depths of musical contracts and CD booklets. I am saying that artists do not outright say that they did not write a song, but they do give written credit.
Ellie: I find it interesting that you brought up artists who do not write their own music. The problem is that the public sees the face(s) which preform(s) the songs, so to the public, the image of the performer is equivalent to the image of the writer. Let's face it, no one reads the fine print.
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