... the arts politics and class - a lesson for R3

[Richard Barrett]

scribed books were usually exchanged without charge between monastries and/or universities.

"In the 13th century, Paris was the first city to have a large commercial trade of manuscripts, with manuscript-book producers being commissioned to make specific books for specific people. Paris had a large enough population of wealthy literate persons to support the livelihood of people producing manuscripts. This medieval era marks the shift in manuscript production from monks in monasteries to booksellers and scribes making a living from their work in the cities." (Wikipedia)

[ahinton]

Technology's surely something of a double-edged sword here; on the one hand, it enables composers to self-publish and distribute their work but, on the other, it enables people who get hold of it thereby to scan and upload it without the composer's permission and distribute it without said composer getting a penny from it.

The question that I sought to ask was how most composers wold manage on commissions alone if their other sources of income from their work (i.e. the "intellectual property" ones) were to be withdrawn altogether.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"In the 13th century, Paris

"13th Century"??? I was thinking of Bede and the 9th! And as for Paris ... well ... !

[Richard Barrett]

"13th Century"???

Yes - they almost had the internet then, so I guess it's not really a fair comparison. But then there's Greece and Rome.

[Ian]

Choosing to give away scores or recordings is not the same as giving up your ownership of the intellectual property. The latter would result in you loosing all control of your work thus enabling others to exploit it in any conceivable way.

I realize that commissioning is still a part of the classical music mind set, and I’m sure for a few composers commission fees make up the most part of composing income. But given that PRS distributes well over half a billion pounds of music royalties every year I doubt if commission fees are that significant overall. They are certainly not for me.

Bandcamp.com is a very good site for making available recordings and ‘merchandise‘ - which presumably could include scores. You can set a minimum price, which can be zero, but buyers have the option to pay whatever they want above that. Hardly anyone downloads stuff without making some contribution - usually between 5 and 10 pounds for an album, for example.

[Richard Barrett]

what I think should be valued is instead merely tolerated, so long as it doesn't cost anything.

I do think about issues like this a lot. For one thing, I've had numerous discussions with friends in the commercial music world who stand to lose out financially to a far greater extent than someone like me, given that there are very few composers for whom commissions+royalties+music sales & hire add up to a living, and most will therefore be involved in performing or teaching or something else - I've had a vast variety of "something elses" over the past thirty years!. On the other hand among my friends are a number of poets, who've never had a snowball's chance in hell of deriving any significant income at all from their creative work, and they view the situation in music with a certain wry amusement.

Actually I do think people value music, and culture in general; what they don't value so much is the fact that most ordinary people have less cash floating around than they used to, while they see the "1%" constantly enriching themselves and governments seemingly being impotent to change this. This is the Zeitgeist we're dealing with, and like all such, it's in some way transitory and nobody knows how it will develop, hopefully towards a more cooperative kind of society with a more cooperative view of what place music (to name only this) has in society. I want to stress that what I'm talking about is the result of optimism rather than pessimism.

What I'm trying to say in a roundabout sort of way is that "giving things away" is only seen as odd in the kind of society where eveything is supposed to have a cash value attached to it, and if it doesn't have one the implication is that it has no value at all. This is something worth resisting I think.

[Flosshilde]

I agree, I think they should get income from doing their work. I expect to get paid for composing and performing.

I can understand how/why you would be paid for performing, but I don't understand how you would be paid for composing, unless you either charged a fee each time one of your compositions was performed, which in effect is renting it to the performers for the duration of the performance, or sold a composition outright, so that it became the property of the purchaser & nobody else could use it - in the same way that, when I sell something I've made I am paid for the time I take making it, the proportionate cost of my workshop, tax, etc (in theory) and the purchaser has sole use of the item.
When you say that nobody should benefit or derive an income from owning property, do you think that nobody should rent out housing (or anything else, for that matter)?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

does this link work?

http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/our-new-ebook-sharing-revolution

[Richard Barrett]

does this link work?

http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine...ing-revolution

Yes, the previous one did too after putting in the missing colon after "http". I'm looking forward to having a good look at that later on.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

... there does seem to be an interesting and growing body of practices in sharing; especially in the open source software development scene

[Richard Barrett]

I can understand how/why you would be paid for performing, but I don't understand how you would be paid for composing

Almost all of what I do is written to commission: a performing organisation of some kind (ensemble, orchestra, broadcasting company, festival etc.), or in some cases more than one, pays a commission fee to a composer for writing a new work, and then might have exclusive rights for the first performance, for all performances within a certain period of the first, for the first recording etc.

When you say that nobody should benefit or derive an income from owning property, do you think that nobody should rent out housing (or anything else, for that matter)?

I do, yes. The present class system with its growing inequalities, as I'm sure we all know, depends to a great extent on the way that wealth (eg. property) in itself may be used to generate more wealth.

[ahinton]

I do think about issues like this a lot. For one thing, I've had numerous discussions with friends in the commercial music world who stand to lose out financially to a far greater extent than someone like me, given that there are very few composers for whom commissions+royalties+music sales & hire add up to a living, and most will therefore be involved in performing or teaching or something else - I've had a vast variety of "something elses" over the past thirty years!. On the other hand among my friends are a number of poets, who've never had a snowball's chance in hell of deriving any significant income at all from their creative work, and they view the situation in music with a certain wry amusement.

Actually I do think people value music, and culture in general; what they don't value so much is the fact that most ordinary people have less cash floating around than they used to, while they see the "1%" constantly enriching themselves and governments seemingly being impotent to change this. This is the Zeitgeist we're dealing with, and like all such, it's in some way transitory and nobody knows how it will develop, hopefully towards a more cooperative kind of society with a more cooperative view of what place music (to name only this) has in society. I want to stress that what I'm talking about is the result of optimism rather than pessimism.

What I'm trying to say in a roundabout sort of way is that "giving things away" is only seen as odd in the kind of society where eveything is supposed to have a cash value attached to it, and if it doesn't have one the implication is that it has no value at all. This is something worth resisting I think.

Yes, indeed you do give and have given a great amount of thought to these issues and I'm pleased to read some of the outcome of that here. One question that arises from what you write above is whether some people might think that a widespread acceptance of the need (on most composers' part) for some of these "something elses" night be perceived as undermining the value of whatg they do when compared to other people who work at what they do without any need to have a second string to supplement income or to provide the majority of such income.

I don't in principle see "giving away" as especially "odd", particularly given that those who do it must be presumed to "own" it - or possess some kind of creative rights in it - in order to be in a position to "give it away" at times and by means of their chosing; the composer's right and choice to "give away" anything of his/her work is his/hers alone, as indeed it should be. That said, of course the notion that everything must either have a cash value or none at all is an utter nonsense that needs illustrating at every reasonable opportunity. Yesterday, I sent someone a .pdf copy of one of my scores for free and the previous day I happened to have sent someone else a .pdf copy of the same score for a charge because it had been ordered from me; I don't see a problem in principle with either, to the extent that the decisions to do each were mine.

[ahinton]

Almost all of what I do is written to commission: a performing organisation of some kind (ensemble, orchestra, broadcasting company, festival etc.), or in some cases more than one, pays a commission fee to a composer for writing a new work, and then might have exclusive rights for the first performance, for all performances within a certain period of the first, for the first recording etc.

OK - well that's good, for you, at least and I'm pleased to hear that it's the case, but what's your view of the position of the composers who write less of their work than you do to commission, in terms of the sources from which they might resonably expect or hope to receive income from having written what they have done?

You wrote

I do, yes. The present class system with its growing inequalities, as I'm sure we all know, depends to a great extent on the way that wealth (eg. property) in itself may be used to generate more wealth

in response to Flosshilde's
"When you say that nobody should benefit or derive an income from owning property, do you think that nobody should rent out housing (or anything else, for that matter)?"
Do you include in this view the preference that no one should rent social housing (or anything else, for that matter)? If so, what would anyone do to house him/herself (or anything else, for that matter)? Yes, of course the growing inequalities of which you write are a black mark on society as a whole and the ways in which it operates, but is a realistic alternative that people should not only not "own" anytghing but also not be expected to "rent" anything from those that do "own" things?

You own wealth yourself - that is to say the wealth that you alone have generated in the value of your own work; of course we're not talking here of cash values but wealth in terms of real values - i.e. values that transcend those of cash...

[Flosshilde]

Almost all of what I do is written to commission: a performing organisation of some kind (ensemble, orchestra, broadcasting company, festival etc.), or in some cases more than one, pays a commission fee to a composer for writing a new work, and then might have exclusive rights for the first performance, for all performances within a certain period of the first, for the first recording etc.

Which I suppose is the same thing as someone buying a composition & having (more or less) exclusive use of it.

I do, yes. The present class system with its growing inequalities, as I'm sure we all know, depends to a great extent on the way that wealth (eg. property) in itself may be used to generate more wealth.

Off-topic, I know, but I do think that private rented housing does fulfill a useful function, for example in fulfilling a short-term need, in a way that state rented housing can't & shouldn't. The problem is the way it operates now.

[Richard Barrett]

Which I suppose is the same thing as someone buying a composition & having (more or less) exclusive use of it.

Not really, because there isn't always an exclusivity clause and when there is it's for a limited period.

As for private rented accommodation, yes I can confirm there's some use for it, having lived in such places since I left the parental nest! (not that I ever had a choice) And of course there are places, like Germany where I lived until recently, where the system works a lot more effeectively than it does in the UK. But as a general principle I think the use of money to make more money is fundamentally wrong, that's all: hereditary privilege and financial speculation for example.