[The Old Hoosier]

It has always been part of the human experience, but only as long as there has been someone to feed the artists. You have a very naive view of the economics involved.

[=Intervention=]

Do I? The existing megopolis of A&R men, promo men, hustlers, previewers, stage hands, recording producers, executive producers, producer producers, and so forth is construct of the 1960s-1990s America and the technology available at that time. You really think that with the demise of this construct , there's no way to make a buck off of music? Now my friend, that is niave. (If the old order perishes, there will not not be a new order. A power vaccum will always be filled.)

[George W. Bush]

It has always been part of the human experience, but only as long as there has been someone to feed the artists. You have a very naive view of the economics involved.

Great art, great music, even great mathematics are not done for money. They're done by the love of the creator for the ideas, the sounds, the colors, the composition.

Real artists must create. It is integral to their being. They'll do it as a hobby if they aren't paid. But the really good ones almost always do make a living out of it.

A lot of great art and music has been produced by persons who hadn't gone professional yet. Heck, Einstein was working as a Swiss postal clerk when he published the theory of relativity. And never did anything truly significant again. Mendelsohn created the stupendous achievement of Midsummers Night Dream when he was something like 19. Never did anything nearly as remarkable again. The examples are almost innumerable.

Your argument for fatcat recording companies reminds me of how the liberals argue for the National Endowment for the Arts. As though art or music would die if people weren't compelled in some sneaky way to support them. I think this is a very limited view of music and art, very 20^th century, as though we still live in a world where the big recording company finds an aspiring young artist, publishes their work, DJs play their work because they like them and then people buy the published works. It's all just a shell game now. And look at the cultural heritage it has given us. What a stifling musical poverty we are suffering through with rap. And we always thought disco and punk were the bottom of the barrel.

At this point, anything that diversifies the music market would be a blessing.

[Magic Fingers]

"It has always been part of the human experience, but only as long as there has been someone to feed the artists. You have a very naive view of the economics involved."

And you have a very uninformed view of the creative impulse.