WARNING: This is long, and probably boring for most of you, it's just some thoughts on the state of Intellectual properties in America today as it pertains to Magic, Music, and any other art form.
I'm a child of the 80's and grew up trying to catch David Copperfield everytime he came through Detroit at the Fox Theater. I fell in love with magic for the same reasons I feel in love with Pink Floyd or a great movie plot, it was all about the intrigue and mystery.
I have never been a professional magician and never will be . However, my love for the art has always endured and I usualy carry a few things with me or in the car just in case the moment came up.
However, this editorial is not about my very few impressive illusion skills. I recently have been checking out the Theory 11 forums on a regular basis and I noticed an issue occuring in the magic industry that I deal with every day in my career.
I am the Director of A&R for a music publishing company based out of Nashville and NYC. My job is to find songwriters and to help develop their careers and manage there creative lives. I sign them to a "publishing deal" which means I pay them a salary and in return my company partially owns anything written during the contractual term. I then take those songs and try to get major recording artists to record them. For instance, I have had our copyrights recorded by acts like The Plain White T's to Rascal Flatts.
My industry is in such a state of turmoil right now. We are nearly ten years away now from the first mention of Napster. My industry was slow to adopt the concept that the internet would be a viable distrubution method. Just like any large corporation sector of this country, the music business has been doing their work in the same way since the dawn of popular music. We (music industry) fought Napster like Hollywood fought the VCR. We lost valuable educational time during this period trying to stop an inevitable and massive change.
I hold no personal resentment towards the millions of young people that download copyrights (including mine) illegally and instead feel like it is a clear exmaple that the education of the issue failed. Many of you that post on this site on a regular basis are in high school. I hear your stories about performing tricks during the school day and the excitement acheived when an effect works. I also read about the frustration you go through when those fellow classmates go home and watch Youtube to learn the effects for free.
This is the very same concept I go through in my industry. People don't see why they should have to pay for a full album (whether it be on iTunes or from Walmart) since the artists are wealthy enough as it is. The problem is they just don't know who all gets paid from the purchase of a single song or album. Every time you purchase an album from iTunes or a retail store, their are often hundreds of people making a living from your purchase. A typical cd usually contains ten songs, often times there are usually two songwriters per song and each of those songwriters also have a publishing company that has taken a financial risk on them. Believe me, the majority of those people are not extremely wealthy. I have songwriters ranging from age 19 to 65 writing for me and their success levels range from multiple #1 singles and grammy nominations, to never having had any success at all. I know of only one songwriter in the 20 year history of the company that never has to work again. The rest are people like me and you, just trying to make a living.
I am not completely sure of how the royalty stremas work in the magic industry. However, since often time there are DVD's and effects that credit the new routine back to an earlier working, I can imagine there may be similar structures to how the business works. I'm sure Wayne, or any of the artists here ,could chime in and provide a much more accurate look at how this works. I think it's fair to assume though that there are several people making a living every time one of us purchases a DVD. Someone made the music, edited the film, worked the camera, designed the original effect, reworked the effect, packaged and then mailed it to you.
Somehow we need to figure out how to teach the younger generations the value of art once again. The age of the inetrnet is so amazing for so many reasons. However, the future of intellectual copyrights rests almost soley on the moral values we hold or pass along to the youth. We can never fight every battle of illegal copyright exposures. There's just to many and the internet is just too expansive. The other major issue is that many of the businesses that help provide a platform for this exposure don't see things from our perspective (youtube,limewire). They feel they are doing nothing wrong and shouldn't be blamed for what users are doing on their web space. The bottom line is, they benefit from the intellectual property of others or artistic expression of others. Some of this is legal, and some of it is not and they chose to look the other way whether it be clips of a movie, music videos, or magic.
So just remember, next time someone downloads music illegally, they are doing the same crime we complain about every week in these forums about the magical effects we love and value. The best thing we could do for the artistic communities is to value what they create. You can't change people's views, and although you can try to educate them, it's often difficult to pass long values to our stubborn peers. What we can do is show the world that the younger generations do value art today.
You don't have to understand a single word I said about the music industry, or understand how the business behind the magic industry works. Just continue to show support for the arts by purchasing copyrights legally and then respecting that copyright by not passing it along for free.
Many of you save up for months to buy one effect. I applaud you for that. Please continue to do so and your actions will speak greatly for the future of artistic expression.
Theory 11: Thanks for the amazing site, the forum to allow us to vent, and for helping to keep us itrigued and mystified.
-J
I'm a child of the 80's and grew up trying to catch David Copperfield everytime he came through Detroit at the Fox Theater. I fell in love with magic for the same reasons I feel in love with Pink Floyd or a great movie plot, it was all about the intrigue and mystery.
I have never been a professional magician and never will be . However, my love for the art has always endured and I usualy carry a few things with me or in the car just in case the moment came up.
However, this editorial is not about my very few impressive illusion skills. I recently have been checking out the Theory 11 forums on a regular basis and I noticed an issue occuring in the magic industry that I deal with every day in my career.
I am the Director of A&R for a music publishing company based out of Nashville and NYC. My job is to find songwriters and to help develop their careers and manage there creative lives. I sign them to a "publishing deal" which means I pay them a salary and in return my company partially owns anything written during the contractual term. I then take those songs and try to get major recording artists to record them. For instance, I have had our copyrights recorded by acts like The Plain White T's to Rascal Flatts.
My industry is in such a state of turmoil right now. We are nearly ten years away now from the first mention of Napster. My industry was slow to adopt the concept that the internet would be a viable distrubution method. Just like any large corporation sector of this country, the music business has been doing their work in the same way since the dawn of popular music. We (music industry) fought Napster like Hollywood fought the VCR. We lost valuable educational time during this period trying to stop an inevitable and massive change.
I hold no personal resentment towards the millions of young people that download copyrights (including mine) illegally and instead feel like it is a clear exmaple that the education of the issue failed. Many of you that post on this site on a regular basis are in high school. I hear your stories about performing tricks during the school day and the excitement acheived when an effect works. I also read about the frustration you go through when those fellow classmates go home and watch Youtube to learn the effects for free.
This is the very same concept I go through in my industry. People don't see why they should have to pay for a full album (whether it be on iTunes or from Walmart) since the artists are wealthy enough as it is. The problem is they just don't know who all gets paid from the purchase of a single song or album. Every time you purchase an album from iTunes or a retail store, their are often hundreds of people making a living from your purchase. A typical cd usually contains ten songs, often times there are usually two songwriters per song and each of those songwriters also have a publishing company that has taken a financial risk on them. Believe me, the majority of those people are not extremely wealthy. I have songwriters ranging from age 19 to 65 writing for me and their success levels range from multiple #1 singles and grammy nominations, to never having had any success at all. I know of only one songwriter in the 20 year history of the company that never has to work again. The rest are people like me and you, just trying to make a living.
I am not completely sure of how the royalty stremas work in the magic industry. However, since often time there are DVD's and effects that credit the new routine back to an earlier working, I can imagine there may be similar structures to how the business works. I'm sure Wayne, or any of the artists here ,could chime in and provide a much more accurate look at how this works. I think it's fair to assume though that there are several people making a living every time one of us purchases a DVD. Someone made the music, edited the film, worked the camera, designed the original effect, reworked the effect, packaged and then mailed it to you.
Somehow we need to figure out how to teach the younger generations the value of art once again. The age of the inetrnet is so amazing for so many reasons. However, the future of intellectual copyrights rests almost soley on the moral values we hold or pass along to the youth. We can never fight every battle of illegal copyright exposures. There's just to many and the internet is just too expansive. The other major issue is that many of the businesses that help provide a platform for this exposure don't see things from our perspective (youtube,limewire). They feel they are doing nothing wrong and shouldn't be blamed for what users are doing on their web space. The bottom line is, they benefit from the intellectual property of others or artistic expression of others. Some of this is legal, and some of it is not and they chose to look the other way whether it be clips of a movie, music videos, or magic.
So just remember, next time someone downloads music illegally, they are doing the same crime we complain about every week in these forums about the magical effects we love and value. The best thing we could do for the artistic communities is to value what they create. You can't change people's views, and although you can try to educate them, it's often difficult to pass long values to our stubborn peers. What we can do is show the world that the younger generations do value art today.
You don't have to understand a single word I said about the music industry, or understand how the business behind the magic industry works. Just continue to show support for the arts by purchasing copyrights legally and then respecting that copyright by not passing it along for free.
Many of you save up for months to buy one effect. I applaud you for that. Please continue to do so and your actions will speak greatly for the future of artistic expression.
Theory 11: Thanks for the amazing site, the forum to allow us to vent, and for helping to keep us itrigued and mystified.
-J
