Web-Only Album Wins Grammy 290
blamanj writes "Jazz artist Maria Schneider won a Grammy last night for her album 'Concert in the Garden.' What makes this unusual, according to CNET, is that she might be the first artist ever to win a Grammy for an album distributed solely on the Web. None of the sales were in record stores, and the album was financed through Artist Share."
that's nice (Score:5, Insightful)
See how it works, RIAA? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've downloaded most of Maria's album, and am looking for the final pieces. This is how distribution can and SHOULD work
Records Cos on borrowed time (Score:4, Insightful)
Come on, when a dead guy nearly sweeps the awards (regardless of the fact that Ray was talented), truly this an industry running out of options.
The big question... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a musician, I hope her win is a precedent that will be emulated over and over.
Nervous times for RIAA & MPAA... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not so much the distribution... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's really interesting is that the album was made with no involvement of a record company at all.
Re:Don't you mean INTERNET? (Score:2, Insightful)
what TYPE of "audio files"?!
and since when was the "web" just "HTML"?!
Booyah!
Re:See how it works, RIAA? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nervous times for RIAA & MPAA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, the RIAA doesn't "control" anything. They do the bidding of the big record labels, and take all the heat from people like you so Sony Music and the other actual villains in this story don't have to.
The last decision which the RIAA made was the standardized design of that little preamp that goes into the "phono" input of most stereos prior to 1998 or so.
All they do now is serve as a mouthpiece (and lightning rod) for the record labels in their efforts to lock down their IP. Ranting about how eeeeevil the RIAA is simply plays right into the hands of the labels behind it all.
Re:in all fairness (Score:2, Insightful)
I only responded to this because I feel that your opinion illustrates the real problem w/ the RIAA and organisations like it. They have lowered the standards that people have in music, and overshadow truly talented artists w/ a swath of oversaturated advertising
GD's crap wouldn't have been unique or unusual in 1984, let alone 2005.
Re:See how it works, RIAA? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't be a dick. Pay for the album.
*might*? (Score:1, Insightful)
Fact 1: The album was distributed solely on the web.
Fact 2: She won a Grammy for the album.
Fact 3: Ain't no *might* about it.
Re:Records Cos on borrowed time (Score:5, Insightful)
Maroon 5: The fact that they are successful suddenly makes them crap? I forgot, selling records make you suck They put out Songs About Jane in 2002. The fact that it is a really good album is what made it succeed, not some plot by the labels to push "crap." New bands like Maroon 5 disprove your point that the industry is running out of options.
Green Day: Retreaded? Once again, people like to slam green day as not being punk because they're popular. Nevermind that they continue to put out good songs. Ray Charles: He died less than 9 months ago. The RIAA didn't trot out a corpse to sell records, he recorded (obviously) and released the album before he died.
Can you even fathom that these people are musicians and not just pawns of the RIAA? They work hard (none harder than Ray) and try to get as many people as they can to hear their art. And then some pissant like you dismisses them as crap because they happen to be popular.
Your opinions on music are not the only ones that matter (shocking!) The fact you feel like Maroon 5 is crap, Green Day is re-treaded, and Ray Charles' album is a publicity stunt doesn't change the fact that they are all really good artists, and really good albums. But it's your loss for not appreciating them.
Re:OT:The Grammys (Score:1, Insightful)
i personally think that was lame, because those rich bastid artists (Damn i hate bono) could have easily shelled out way more money than will be made off of their raping of the beatles.
Buy Her Music (Score:5, Insightful)
If you truly want music to be free (as in speech), put your money where your mouth is for once. The success of such artists depends on the financial backing of people who claim to support independent music.
Re:OT:The Grammys (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, that was annoying. It's almost as if these people, that earn their living by being paid to entertain their audiences, are annoyed when people decide that they like their music, but not enough to pay for it. Pretty obnoxious, expecting to actually get paid for their work. Jerks! Soooo annoying.
Re:that's nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, yet another example of slashdot logic: "If I don't care about it, surely no one else does!" +1, Insightful!
Hate to break it to you, but the Grammys get a lot of viewership and attention. Now, this specific award may not have gotten a lot of attention. But the term "Grammy" carries a lot of weight in the music industry. If someone can win a Grammy using only web-based distribution, it's a big deal.
Re:OT:The Grammys (Score:3, Insightful)
But if you ran a small store, and for a year you lost all of your proceeds because you kept getting ripped off... wouldn't you want to do something about it, rather than just throw your hands up? And wouldn't at least some people in the situation want to get on the news and say: "hey kids! when you rip off my store, you're stealing from actual people!"
Professional musicians spend the best part of their lives getting to the point where they can earn a living at it. Ripping off music over the net is a recent development, and you can't blame career musicians (or aspirants) for wanting to change the course of this stuff back towards showing the artists a little respect. I'd completely agree with you if a musician wasn't making any money because no one liked their music (go get another job!), but the people in question are getting ripped off because people like them!
Re:OT:The Grammys (Score:3, Insightful)
It pisses me off to see people complain about "stars" not doing anything good for society, but when someone like Bono gets involved, he's labeled as cocky, a sellout, whatever. Walk in his shoes for a year and then talk.
Re:OT:The Grammys (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm happy to support artists like that. But buying a $18 CD, knowing that maybe a quarter is actually going to the artist, and the rest to a corporation that is lobbying to cripple my computer and restrict my rights to make whatever software I want...that just makes me feel dirty.
Re:in all fairness (Score:1, Insightful)
And I think the real problem is people like you telling other people what they are allowed to like and what to think. You complain about the RIAA repressing people, and here you are doing the same thing. Hypocrite, let people enjoy what they want and maybe they will be so kind to do the same for you.
Re:OT:The Grammys (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost as obnoxious as expecting to make money on an album, instead of accepting an advance which then gets taken out of album sales and paid back to the record label, so that you never actually see any money from it even if people do buy it. Look at the figures. [negativland.com]
Re:OT:The Grammys (Score:3, Insightful)
This is always so funny. I love the way that people who are too cheap, and too disrespectful of the very musicians they seem to like to listen to, respond to any challenge by attempting a redirect. How about this: let's forget worrying about whether it's theft (like of a baseball), or "infringment" (in the classic copyright sense of that word). You're trying to defend the practice of disregarding an artist's specific wishes. The artist agrees to play the music, and lays out the terms by which you can have your own copy of that music. In short: you can pay for it. Now, you don't want to pay for it... you want it for free, and want that person to be your personal musical entertainment slave. Who cares which law or regulation does or doesn't not exactly, specifically address it? You want people to sing, dance, make movies, write books, and otherwise create things that you like, and you want them to do it for you, for free, regardless of what they say.
You've got two choices here: admit you're angling to avoid paying for something that was created and distributed by the artist with the expectation that you'd pay, or that you really do think you should pay for it, and are simply too lazy to do so. There's no middle ground. If you agree that an artist should be paid, then you should honor the artist's terms. If you think the artist should create for you at no charge, then you're deliberately ignoring their rights (never mind legal: just plain rational and ethical), and have no complaint when they in turn seek to impact your rights in exchange.
Re:OT:The Grammys (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry, but making money off recorded music is a recent development.
Music has been around for THOUSANDS of years. The RIAA for a few decades. Technology created a whole new way to make money from music, and sorry, but technology continued to improve until it allowed regular people to share with their friends.
Musicians have historically made money from people paying to watch them play. Even when selling recorded music was at its best, that is still how the artists made their money. This really is gonna be disintermediation, with music on the net as advertisments to get people to like you and come watch your shows.
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN, TAX PROTESTING TROLL (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Years of court rulings tell this to be true
3) Common sense has been perverted by the IRS. Why do you think they only send subsection (b) and not subsection (a) on the Notice of Levy form? Because subsection a says that ONLY Government employees may be levied. So most HR departments (completly ignorant of the law) comply.
Why do you seek to mod me down? Ibrought up a legitimate wuestion of Jusrisduction. Now you find that I'm a "tax protester" and seek to silence me. Are you the IRS?
There are two kids of taxpayers in this world. Those that don't want to be a tax payer, and those who are mad at the tax payer for not paying their fair share.
Did you know that before the income tax, the federal budget had an "embarassing surplus" where did it come from if we had no income tax?
Did you know that 85% of the federal budget is spent on socialst (welfare) programs? Only 15% of what is spent today is needed to run the country.
You can thank FDR for all that.
Get a clue.
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN, TAX PROTESTING TROLL (Score:3, Insightful)
All of our founding fathers knew that slavery was wrong. But they also knew it could not change overnight without throwing the nation into great chaos. So what sis they do? They made every man whose life was worthless worth well over half of a life. This was a *huge* issue. But 3/5ths established slaves as having some value, where they had never been worth anything before. 3/5th is not insignificant. It was greater than zero, it was greater than 1/2 and it actually laid the foundation to increment up to 4/5 then finally to 5/5ths. The incrementing was cut short by the civil war and the industrial revolution. That is why Lincoln freed the slaves in their entirety. So they would bolt to the cities and fuel the industrial revolution. It is sort of the chicken and the egg problem - you need people to work on the machines to have the machines to do manual labor and reduce the need for slave labor. Lincoln gave it a kick-start.
I think it is short sighted of you that you accuse the brightest minds our government ever had of being hypocrites because they were constrained by a situation that they did not work to create. When all they did was al they could - setting the wheels in motion.
Furthermore, to grant millions of uneducated people, the majority of which could not read or write, much less speak english would have given rise to mass chaos in such a fragile time in our nacent country's history. Even of educated people that were availible were not as greatly schooled in the art of running a country.
And in fact we have evidence that Jefferson was a nice slave owner who loved his slaves.
A similar situation would be Social Security today. We know collapse eminent (only "when" is the question) yet we must fund those who have put an are anre relying on it now or will be shortly. We know the situation is wrong, and for a good number of us, we know we will see no benefits. It is wrong for the government to require us to contribute to a system in which we will never see a dime.
Do not belive those who use the term "Social Security Trust" because there is no trust. Had you read the statutes, you'd know that FICA is deposited into the rest of the treasury, along with all the other income tax. So how does it come out? Congress, every year, must appropriate and approve the SS benefits budget. If that fails, there is no social security benefits that year. Plain and simple. The SSA is only there to track how much money you put in and make sure you only get the benefits that they want yu to get.
If I had all the money that I put in to FICA, I'd be retiring 10 years before age 67 (which is how long I must be currently to take out, but that number can change at any time, along with the benefits that are given)