OFF: the future of the rock industry (Was: A new richard meltzer interview)

[Jon Jarrett]

On Tue, 8 Aug 2000, Ted Jackson jr. wrote:

> Howls!  I'm an ex-member of the musician's union.  Unfortunately
> they only lobby for musicians on a per-gig basis.  Thing is,
> musicians are actually dumb enough to sign those awful major label
> contracts without [apparently] reading them.  The union is more
> concerned with live gigs, though they do set the rates for studio
> musicians.  In fact, to borrow your analogy, all movie music is union
> made [at least in the US]...

        Okay, perhaps Equity isn't the ideal template for what I meant,
except in as far as it was a collaboration of the exploited. I mean, there
are lots of bands with their own labels, there are even some small labels
who do the best they can by their musicians (hi Andy) - is it perhaps
the way forward for an association of musicians to take over the
actual output mechanism? To pick up your point, what if the union
formed a label? Could it make it? Would it have enough clout? Or has the
Internet made the whole argument redundant in any case? Such are the
thoughts in my mind as I try to put off drafting the rest of a conference
paper until tomorrow :-) Yours,
                                Jon

--
 |  Jon Jarrett (01223 741219)           jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
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