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Goal is to provide forum “where everyone can get together and work things through intelligently, and without acrimony.”John Newton over at P2Pnet had a conversation with Billy Bragg, English alternative rock musician and member of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), recently to discuss how artists and their fans can can come together to decide how best to create a stable digital music business for the 21st century.Bragg is an outspoken critic of efforts to fight illegal file-sharing. He’s said in the past that artists should be able to “decide when their music should be used for free, or when they should have payment,” that ultimately fighting illegal P2P will be a costly, long-term endeavor with absolutely no guarantee that any savings, if even achieved at all, will wind up in the hands of artists as the record labels promise.”He also pointed out recently that while record labels spend millions in a fruitless battle targeting teen file-sharers, its “real enemies,” those sites profiting from P2P, “are disappearing off the radar into darknets.”Unlike UK pop singer Lily Allen, whom called P2P a “disaster” for emerging artists, Bragg thinks it’s “vital” for them to “flourish.”Moreover, he thinks the real solution, as should any sane person, to it all, is to create viable digital alternatives that offer music fans what they want while earning the industry a profit.That being sad Bragg and Jon devised a list of what they call “vital aspects” for digital music in the 21st century.It reads:Creators want, and need, to be paid for their work, and we, as music lovers, want to pay them.Trying to use technical sanctions to solve the ‘pirate’ problem won’t work — no way, no how.We need to start talking, and keep on talking, until we’ve found ways to resolve the various issues that’ve been keeping us apart.We need a space on the net where everyone can get together and work things through intelligently, and without acrimony.With these four pillars, if you will, in mind, they plan to launch a new blog sometime in the near future so that every one can meet and have a forum to discuss the problems and suggest solutions. It’s an honest and heartfelt attempt to solve a problem that both music artists and their file-sharing fans agree exists, but more often than not disagree on how best to solve it.Now we have an opportunity for both to work together and change that.
The only problem with that idea that I can see is, talking to the artists is one thing, but talking to the cartels and getting any common sense out of them is another thing entirely.
Bragg writes material for other artists Nobby as well as performing his own releases (a real musician too !) so he is a serious contender and respected by many of the other UK artists for his creativity, also the FAC organisation is made up of artists who are fed up with the labels taking the lions share of the booty when they the artist are doing the majorty share of the work, I,m sure if discussions get underway the labels will feel the chill from both ends the debate and will do their best to derail the process.
