It seems like a lot of what I find on the internet is older stuff but always very interesting. This is a piece from BBC News in the year 2005.

Alex Kapranos of the band Franz Ferdinand believes that the government needs to have a bigger role in Scottish music.

He states that for cultral output to thrive, there needs to be state input aswell.

I guess what he means is that music, as nice as it is, doesn’t make much money but costs a lot to produce. If the government want to have nice music on their radio stations, they need to provide funding for ‘musos’ to go into recording studios and make music. Aswell as helping less experienced, poorer bands with instruments, amps, all that kind of stuff to make the music sound good.

“I think the role of musicians is to question politicians rather than to go to bed with them,” Kapranos said.

So although musicians need funding from the government and are thankful for the funding they get, they shouldn’t suddenly write songs about how much they love the government. Bands should still stick to their Green Day, American Idiot punk roots which say ’screw the authorities’.

Kapranos believes some parts of music need help being sustained as they are not ’self sufficient’. I’m guessing this applies to the expense of making music which far outweighs the profit a small band gets from putting their music out there.

In addition to his comment about ‘bedding’ politicians, he also says having tea with them is not a good idea either, meaning it’s best not to get too close and friendly to one particular party.

I still think this goes back to the punk kinda movement where music was about doubting authority rather than agreeing. Even rock music has a degree of rebellion rather than conformity and I think it’s important to keep it that way. Even if bands do get help from the authorities, definitely does not mean they’re your best friend.

“If you take everything I’ve accomplished in my life and condense it down to one day, it looks decent!” – George Costanza

Tory.

Basically, this article from the UK says that some guys from some well thought of US universities are publishing a paper which asserts the benefits of internet piracy.
In my last blog I covered a few of the many reasons why people would want to pirate music. Obviously there are a lot more reasons, both good and bad.

Reading some of these articles makes me realise why I’m a journalist. I have to put these big words and big ideas into little bitesize pieces so that it’s understandable for anyone to read. Right now, I need someone else to put all this complication into bitesize pieces for me!

The basic jist of this article so far seems to be that economists say that the point of copyright, which stops piracy, is so that artists are able to make money off their product, ie: their music.
Their study shows that while a ‘business model’ may be destroyed by the technology of file sharing, artists will still produce new work.

An example of this according to them is that if music becomes free, people may have to pay more to see an artist perform live so that the musician still makes some cash.
I don’t know about you but I’d be happy to pay almost any amount of money to see the bands I love perform live.
My understanding has always been that artists make like 10c off every CD and make most of their money from performing live. Although I’m not sure how true that is but it sounds like if that is true, not much is really changing.

Left to right: Bob Bryar (drums), Frank Iero (guitar), Gerard Way (vocals), Mikey Way(bass), Ray Toro (guitar)

The next point is interesting. What about bands who don’t like live performances? I can see how stressful performing live could be and I personally understand why not every musician would want to follow in the footsteps of a band such as My Chemical Romance who performed live for 3 years straight (I think).