Thank you, Taylor Swift! Apple Reverses Course, Will Pay Artists During Apple Music Free Trial – Mac Rumors

Thank you Taylor Swift! Very much and without any sarcastic connotation.

Bringing this issue to the general public’s’ attention was (is!) important. Managing to do it the way you did, saving both yours and Apples face is no small feat and a testament to your diplomatic ability.

I can only hope that more high profile artists choose to make the improvement of the reality of the contemporary middle class music industry workers the central message when talking about compensation. It is so vital for the tech industry to start to understand that while they think they are fighting a fight against the behemoth that the labels and their huge catalogs are, they are really hurting the small, middle class industry and their individual service people that are in control of their business themselves.

And as a side note: in the case of tech vs music industry the economic principle of substitution is not the issue. Because listeners aren’t substituting one song for another one, they are merely substituting the technical way of receiving the same song.

Again. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Source: Apple Reverses Course, Will Pay Artists During Apple Music Free Trial – Mac Rumors

Europe

Dear attackers on Europe,

I believe, that the problems people are talking about are way (waaaaaayyyy…) overblown.

Let’s start a little calculation with some really really rough estimates:

Let’s take the Euro economies that seem to function:

Germany – 80 million people
France – 64 million people
Netherlands – 41 million people

That gives us a total of 185 million people.

Now if everyone of those 185 million people decided, that a united Europe mainly stands for a peaceful Europe and that that is something we all prefer then shouldn’t it be worth it to us to pay, say € 1.000,- to get this whole artificial attack on Europe over with and get on with our lives?

That would amount to € 185 billion Euros and I would just like to put this number out so we get a sort of a feeling of what we’re dealing with here. I’m not saying that € 1.000,- isn’t a lot of money, but it is certainly something that is manageable by almost every citizen to come up with within a year or two.

And then we can deal with the real problem in Europe: the lack of democratic legitimacy of the European Commission and its mafia like dealings and elitist behavior. And perhaps then we can start to see where the future of Europe and its strength really lies: being peaceful and ridding the world of the unsustainable concept of nation states.

Let’s not fall into the trap of the divisive propaganda.

That’s my opinion.

Oh, and PS: get rid of speculative investments based on food commodities. That’s basically just a crime.

3sat Kulturzeit zu Crowdfunding

Gestern wurde in der Sendung “Kulturzeit” auf 3sat das Thema Crowdfunding behandelt.

Ich finde den Beitrag sehr gelungen, aber die Tatsache, dass es in Deutschland mittlerweile auch Plattformen für Crowdfunding (mysherpas, startnet, etc) gibt haben die Macher des Beitrags leider ignoriert.

Einerseits ist es natürlich verständlich, sich an den berühmten und erfolgreichen Projekten zu orientieren, andererseits fände ich es auch toll, wenn man die Pioniere im eigenen Land auch zu Wort kommen lässe. Das ist meiner Meinung nach dann guter Journalismus, so wirkt es doch etwas opportunistisch.

Gemeinsam für die Kunst – Das Sponsoring-Modell “Crowd Funding”.