[mythtv-users] It's over, the RIAA is toast

[Greg Woods]

Probably the first large-scale use of free music was begun in the 1970's
by the Grateful Dead. They explicitly permitted taping of their concerts
and distribution of those tapes. In their case, it made business sense;
the people who would be interested in Grateful Dead concert bootleg
tapes probably already had all their albums anyway, and the Dead clearly
have made most of their money from concert ticket sales, not album
sales. I have no doubt that their friendliness toward tapers had a lot
to do with why they achieved great commercial success, whereas many of
their San Francisco psychedelic-rock brethren, such as Quicksilver
Messenger Service, did not.

Personally, I have some sympathy for the artist, but as a sysadmin, I
write code, but I do not get paid over and over again for the same code.
If I want to make a living, I have to keep writing code. Similarly it is
not unfair to expect that if someone wants to make a living making
music, they have to keep making music. 

Experiments such as the Grateful Dead and Nine Inch Nails show us that
it is possible to make money from making music other than in the
traditional, album-royalty way.

--Greg