Zimerman walks off because "..You Tube is destroying Music"

[Nick Armstrong]

Since when (and how and why) did "Why don't UKIP as well" amount to an order to slumber?

[jayne lee wilson]

You go to a concert. The concert is "given", one to one, by the artist(s) to you - to the audience members; the music moves between you - but there would be no event without those individuals in the audience, or those on the stage. The listener gives herself to the experience, and creates it by doing that, as much as the artist does, by playing.

Then - instead, you, the audience member, holds up an iPhone and records the performance. Then, there is no experience of the music - the recording device comes between performer and listener; a two-way baffle which destroys an experience, stops the movement of the music in the present moment.

Later, the attendee takes out the recording, watches it repeatedly with poor sound quality, cuddles it to herself, shows it off to her friends - I was there! All that is left is - a selfishness; a fake theft, a data retrieval with little relation to the actual event, which leaves the artist's actual sound and performance OUT of that high-definition picture; and leaves the human possibility of an experience, on the stage or in the audience, IN THE MOMENT - nowhere.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs hate it as much as Krystian Zimerman - why SHOULDN'T they hate it?

[Sir Velo]

What are the odds we will find this to have been an elaborately orchestrated (pardon the pun) publicity stunt?

[ahinton]

You go to a concert. The concert is "given", one to one, by the artist(s) to you - to the audience members; the music moves between you - but there would be no event without those individuals in the audience, or those on the stage. The listener gives herself to the experience, and creates it by doing that, as much as the artist does, by playing.

Then - instead, you, the audience member, holds up an iPhone and records the performance. Then, there is no experience of the music - the recording device comes between performer and listener; a two-way baffle which destroys an experience, stops the movement of the music in the present moment.

Later, the attendee takes out the recording, watches it repeatedly with poor sound quality, cuddles it to herself, shows it off to her friends - I was there! All that is left is - a selfishness; a fake theft, a data retrieval with little relation to the actual event, which leaves the artist's actual sound and performance OUT of that high-definition picture; and leaves the human possibility of an experience, on the stage or in the audience, IN THE MOMENT - nowhere.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs hate it as much as Krystian Zimerman - why SHOULDN'T they hate it?

Brilliantly and sensitively put, jlw; one can always rely on you for getting to the nub of such matters! Thank you for this.

[ahinton]

What are the odds we will find this to have been an elaborately orchestrated (pardon the pun) publicity stunt?

A worthwhile point, for sure, but I suspect that those odds are pretty small, actually.

[Thropplenoggin]

Hardly a convincing report. It studied the habits of 16,000 Europeans. That would be a pretty small sample for the UK - for the whole of the EU it's miniscule.

"According to our results, a 10% increase in clicks on legal streaming websites lead to up to a 0.7% increase in clicks on legal digital purchases websites," claimed the report.

'up to' 0.7% is likewise miniscule, & I would have thought statistically insignificant, and it refers to people listening on legal sites, not listening to illegal material. And Zimerman has said that record companies have turned down programmes for recording because they have already appeared on you-tube.


The article was very short & said very little. It quoted a response from the group of people who might be most interested - as any reasonable report should (otherwise it's not much more than a regurgitation of a press-release). Hardly an 'obsession' with balance, & as for Kafka .

This is the kind of response - an attempt to humiliate someone, and, furthermore, by someone who was not actively engaged in the discussion at that moment - that drives me away from these boards. I don't come here to be humiliated by someone trying to show their intellectual superiority in all matters. Whatever happened to polite discourse? Time for me to bow out for a while and concentrate on other matters. I'll still be checking PMs periodically.

To paraphrase the Dude: "This passive-aggression will not stand, man!"

a la prochaine...

[amateur51]

I can well see ahinton's point about copyright issues which are perfectly valid and I'm simply playing Devil's Advocate, The temptation to do so in response to some members here I find quite overwhelming,

And it's heartily reciprocated too, scotty

[amateur51]

You go to a concert. The concert is "given", one to one, by the artist(s) to you - to the audience members; the music moves between you - but there would be no event without those individuals in the audience, or those on the stage. The listener gives herself to the experience, and creates it by doing that, as much as the artist does, by playing.

Then - instead, you, the audience member, holds up an iPhone and records the performance. Then, there is no experience of the music - the recording device comes between performer and listener; a two-way baffle which destroys an experience, stops the movement of the music in the present moment.

Later, the attendee takes out the recording, watches it repeatedly with poor sound quality, cuddles it to herself, shows it off to her friends - I was there! All that is left is - a selfishness; a fake theft, a data retrieval with little relation to the actual event, which leaves the artist's actual sound and performance OUT of that high-definition picture; and leaves the human possibility of an experience, on the stage or in the audience, IN THE MOMENT - nowhere.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs hate it as much as Krystian Zimerman - why SHOULDN'T they hate it?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i must say i am torn between wanting to read stuff for free in the graun or indie and i refuse to even look at the Tgraf or Murdochsposhrag because they want a fee; i watch and use youtube a lot .... it does not pay royalties as far as i know .... yet writers and performers need to make a living [and yes the web publicises and spreads the word as Chas T reminds us with his link to Mrs pepper's excellent web site devoted to the works of her late husband]

old as i am [enough at any rate] to know that holding on to books, lps, etc is almost pure illusion .... that jayne lee wilson is right ... it is blasphemy to record on your phone a live performance and believe you are doing anything at all creditable ... and then and then we all have the towers of C90s full of radio music and interviews ... the psychology of believing we can capture and keep performances is entirely modern and technology dependent eh ... but now sprog's generation carry their smart phones close to their souls eh?

if artists do not want it to happen they and the venue managers have to see to it ...

we will likely have to learn to pay for our pleasures rather more than we currently want to ... certainly we should accept artists and authors rights to fees for their work

people will steal because it takes maturity/wisdom [mostly - big signs in big letters also help] to see the illusion you are chasing when you do steal, [that you can possess the sublime .. ]

i live in a house overwhelmed by books, cds, and up until last year lps cassettes as well, hard drives packed with legit music and texts .... as many here do as well no doubt ... perhaps in the future you just subscribe to the cloud and it is all just there .... will that availability fill my collectors need to possess? it interests me that i do not see quite what it is that i may actually be hooked on ...

[Sydney Grew]

. . . the sales . . . drop away . . .

Sales schmales! The real problem is the corrupt and discredited system of capitalism. In an ideal society the artist would not and should not have to concern himself with the obscenities of "sales".

I see U-Tube as the harbinger of a coming joyful communism - mark II.

[ahinton]

Sales schmales! The real problem is the corrupt and discredited system of capitalism. In an ideal society the artist would not and should not have to concern himself with the obscenities of "sales".

...as you have already written under another ID elsewhere. We do not live and are unlikely to live in the "ideal society" of which you write but, even if we were to do so, someone would still have to concern him/herself with sales because, if the artist's work is not distributed, the artist's income will suffer accordingly. Putting on concert and theatre performances costs money, venues cost money, making, distributing and retailing recordings costs money. Capitalism (corrupt or otherwise) or no capitalism, there are always costs and always people involved in music making who have to make a living from it; how else would any of them survive?

I see U-Tube as the harbinger of a coming joyful communism - mark II.

Well, you'd be wrong. YouTube isn't above the law, nor - as far as I have experienced it - does it pretend to be so.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

Then you find me so. I have recently had YouTube take down hundreds of items that infringe copyright. I don't like doing this kind of thing and fully support "fair use" uploads of short extracts of pieces but, when whole tracks of entire works or even entire CDs are uploaded, the sales of the CD concerned drop away and royalties therefrom do likewise. Yes, YouTube is indeed a great facility, as long as it's not abused which, more often than not, it is.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

Apologies if this has been mentioned already but according to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22780812 :

"Jasper Hope, chief operating officer at London's Royal Albert Hall, said filming at live events was not a problem - as long as it did not disturb the artist or the audience".

Disturbing and at odds with what he can read on the back of any Proms ticket.

[ahinton]

Apologies if this has been mentioned already but according to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22780812 :

"Jasper Hope, chief operating officer at London's Royal Albert Hall, said filming at live events was not a problem - as long as it did not disturb the artist or the audience".

Disturbing and at odds with what he can read on the back of any Proms ticket.

Unless he can't read, perhaps...

[Sir Velo]

OK, there are abuses. However, YouTube allows the public to hear performances which, in many cases, are not otherwise readily available. Consequently, it can (as in my case) create an interest in a performer or a composition which will lead to a sale of product which would not otherwise take place. While it is indeed possible to find instances where a performance may have 50,000 hits with very few follow up sales, one has to ask oneself how many actual sales would have been registered anyway? Probably very few. Many of the hits are made just out of curiosity, as happens here on this forum, for instance, where a member posts a link. Indeed, if member x posts a link to a performance of Brahms 3rd symphony which I watch without subsequently purchasing,has the industry really lost a sale? I defy anyone to say that he or she would have bought that record had they not seen it on YouTube.

One of the reasons for this, particularly for classical music aficionados is that the sound quality on YouTube is not comparable to CD or tbe best downloads. Therefore, a very small minority will be content with YouTube. Those that are, probably would not have the means to make a physical purchase anyway. If my appetite for a work is kindled by YouTube this will invariably lead to a purchase of a CD or download. The chances are this would not happen but for the audition on YouTube.

If you want to follow the anti YouTube lobby's argument to its logical conclusion, you might as well say that any broadcast of a piece of music or televising of a concert is a bad thing. After all, there is little to stop the individual from making a recording for their own use. I'm old enough to remember the "Home Taping is Killing Music" furore whipped up by the music industry back in the day. Still seems to be here.