Re: Q- is it okay to upload covers to my website?

hank alrich wrote:

Why should you feel you have the right to use someone else's composition
for free in order to advance your own career? What do you do for a
living? Steal ***? If the song is good enough for you to want to show
off with it, it's good enough for you to pay for that privilege, or
compose your own material. If that's too tough, tough. Your sense of
entitlement turns into theft, and for what? So you can be on the web?
Big deal.


Plagiarism is the musical equivalent of stealing. It is overly dramatic to suggest that covering a song and not paying for that is stealing.

The web is an extension of everyone's living room - look at youtube. It is nothing like TV or other previous media. The world has changed, and it is ridiculous to suggest that every cover should be paid for. Especially when no profit is being made. As you youself said "For what? So you can be on the web? Big deal." And I agree totally!

It's nothing to do with composing one's own material either. I don't choose to play covers because I can't write songs! I play covers because I love playing other people's songs too. And there *is* a sense of entitlement. I am not interested in profit, I am interested in music and art. People deserve to make a living, including me, and not at each other's expense, but the music itself, the notes and chords and words, in my mind there is so much more to gain by sharing them than by hoarding them.

Maybe I'm a socialist or hippy or what have you, but that's tough - this is the arts, it's my territory, not the territory of the capitalist, even though it looks that way!

If you want to talk about people using music for profiteering, then the likes of me are not the culprits. Look into the behaviour of companies like Live Nation and Sony/BMG.

Jon

P.S. I hope this is good natured debate, I can never tell on rmmga and have no desire to get into a flame war. Absolutely no offence is meant, Hank, and I respect your opinions.
.

Quantcast