Artist dies of exposure

[diane-michaels]

Great essay in the New York Times today http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/opinion/sunday/slaves-of-the-internet-unite.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Harpists aren’t the only ones who are asked to do our job for free.

[kimberly-rowe]

Nice! Thanks for sharing Diane!

[Sylvia]

That was wonderful. I think our situation is worse, tho, because people want us to play for free AND HAUL A HARP to do it!

[Angela Biggs]

Good article. After reading this, I linked to the original article on Facebook and got a response from a man who owns a sound equipment business. Apparently they have the same problem — and they haul a lot more than even we do. 🙂

[Sherri Matthew]

The comments that followed the article told a lot. – not just musicians, but just about anyone in the creative sector. Especially if your work can be digitized and made available online. I’ve never had a problem with making full-length streams available of my work, so that people can become familiar with what I sound like, but I do take exception to free downloads. It removes the incentive to buy the tracks (and really, is 99 cents that much??) I’ve bought other musician’s recordings both as a show of support and a matter of principle. I’m beginning to think this free thing is what’s putting the global and U.S. economies into such a mess. At some point people are going to have to go back to old-fashioned paying for things, and then maybe employment might pick up again. Just my thoughts on that matter. 🙁

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