Yanko wrote:i haven't turned a radio on since i was like 9
i've always been highly picky with my music
Same here.
On topic: you could really give it a go with that Courtney article. Labels are distributors, their investment in the band returns with the first profits the band makes. That is a fact: labels get paid first, the artist last. But if their work is to distribute and nothing else, then if an alternative way of distribution is found, they lose the game. They are not needed anymore, they are old news. The profits they claim are absurd, but here's the catch: their sole reason of existence is making profits, the art itself is long forgotten. That's why they are fighting every competing way of distribution who can eat into their profits. Another problem is the distributor's usurpation of the authorship rights. They claim to own the art and are able to do so because of the questionable lobbying practices which gave them the right to do so, so all they can do now is wave with the laws and as far as they are concerned, it doesn't go any further than that. Well it does. Then of course the whole system is permeated with the label/distributor logic so if you kill it, the inevitable crash of the whole system is due, which nobody wants. On short term it'd be a disaster, on long term it might be a healthy thing.
I think you shouldn't go and try to change the opponent's or the professor's mind, you should try to present the case from the point of view which will make them reflect their own position and see that there is something wrong with their picture, that something fell out, and that is the art itself. Anyway, good luck.
In my rhetorics class I had to defend "male chauvinism," hehe, "yes, male chauvinism is a good thing."
The class full of chicks voted a draw and the professor granted my team the better argument. I hate those debates actually, you hear lots of utter bullcrap which at the end you find out can't be fought against.
