Neil Young Blasts Google in New Essay

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Canadian music legend Neil Young is slamming Google and other tech giants for ripping off the artist community. He alleges that these companies profit greatly off of musicians but pay them nothing in return. He even accuses Google of directing people to pirate sites for free content.

The Tech Giants have figured out a way to use all the great music of everyone from all time, without reporting an artist’s number of plays or paying a f*cking cent to the musicians. Aren’t they great companies!!! It makes you wonder where the next generation of artists will come from. How will they survive?
 
Canadian music legend Neil Young is slamming Google and other tech giants for ripping off the artist community. He alleges that these companies profit greatly off of musicians but pay them nothing in return. He even accuses Google of directing people to pirate sites for free content.

The Tech Giants have figured out a way to use all the great music of everyone from all time, without reporting an artist’s number of plays or paying a f*cking cent to the musicians. Aren’t they great companies!!! It makes you wonder where the next generation of artists will come from. How will they survive?

News at 11, books spread literature.

Cain-Faceplant.jpg
 
Get a job you Hippy!

Seriously: I doubt it will ever be that bad. Before musicians made big bucks, they played local gigs. And I see more and more of that. Also bands like Walk off the Earth, and The Piano Brothers, 2Cellos, Lindsey Stirling et all are making it by using social media like youtube.
 
Wait didn't he make that stupid "audiophile" music player that was supposed to kill the ipod?

A southern man don't need him around anyhow.
 
"How are artists to make it in the digital age?"

By going digital. They need their OWN Youtube channel, and every other social media profile then they reap the benefits. They work that into their contracts also, that the publishers cannot touch the funds they make from their own youtube channel.

Adapt, and evolve with the industry. That's what you do. Pirating has been around long before the internet. My friends and I all shared our cassette tapes and CDs back and forth. Now I just youtube music when I want to listen to a specific song, no need to pirate.
 
Alternate headline: "Baby Boomer Doesn't Like This New-Fangled Internet Business".

I'm pretty sure I read the exact phrase "Where is the next generation of artists going to come from?" more than 20 years ago when the kids were downloading songs with Napster and Kazaa. It's very sad that we have had no new artists since then.

 
Sounds like sour grapes. The next gen of artists are accepting the new status quo and thriving from it, deshackled from the label system that was prevelant before it.

He's just pissed because he doesn't understand how search indexing works so he parrots the "but they're linking to free copies of my work!"

At one point artists are just happy to share their art. When it becomes all about greed, you stop being an artist and start being a product. How about we just fix the ridiculous copyright terms they're afforded?
 
So why does no one turn in and get removed all the pirated content on Youtube? Probably because it's too nice to listen to anything you want for free. It's like everyone has forgotten the laws and morals because it's too easy to get it for free now, it's become the norm.

You have to admit that the artists have really taken it on the chin with less sales for physical discs, while youtube and google take in loads of money. Is this right? I think that is what Neil is saying. The amount of money artists can make from youtube is probably vastly less than they were getting when you had to buy it.

If you look into it, artist now mostly make money from ticket sales. If they can't tour and make money, they usually have little to no money from CD or even digital sales, as the youtube effect has made most fans just look for a freebie.
 
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If it wasn't for copyright abuses of others, there would have been a lot of albums I would not have bought for lack of knowledge.
That may be true, except all the other people that didn't buy because it was free has caused Lars Ulrich to not be able to get a fourth swimming pool. :D
 
So why does no one turn in and get removed all the pirated content on Youtube? Probably because it's too nice to listen to anything you want for free. It's like everyone has forgotten the laws and morals because it's too easy to get it for free now, it's become the norm.

You have to admit that the artists have really taken it on the chin with less sales for physical discs, while youtube and google take in loads of money. Is this right? I think that is what Neil is saying. The amount of money artists can make from youtube is probably vastly less than they were getting when you had to buy it.

If you look into it, artist now mostly make money from ticket sales. If they can't tour and make money, they usually have little to no money from CD or even digital sales, as the youtube effect has made most fans just look for a freebie.

Nothing is free, Youtube WAS free for a few years until google bought them.

Lets say I want this new %name in here% pop star video with my own picture that I've drawn cause some reason, that view revenue is directed to the content creator and in this case that would be the pop star, the ads are split between youtube as operation and content owner if it's registered, money is not given to you.
If you make it a no ad video and the content is identified to be that pop stars content they can automatically add ad's and get their money.

Content can be registered and chosen to be automatically taken down and this is automatic, pretty much no defeating it apart from making it sound different by adding pitch or slowing it down.

When youtube did not have ads all on youtube was free, but now the tech giants make no "free" money from artists, who does? pretty much no-one.
Sites like youtube bled money for 10 years cause hosting stuff is really expensive and youtube still isn't a money machine.

Before with music the money was split usually like this:
Song->
Record label.
*-> Potential license companies for other countries.
-> factory to make the cd's.
-> company shipping the cd's.
-> Company that store em and distribute to the distributors.
-> Distributors

about 2/3rd didn't even make it to the record company so what have changed?, it's not like we didn't copied music back then, if anything piracy was more common before but it was physical, who didn't have VHS recording capability or stuff like that and exchanged it among friends.
 
Nothing is free, Youtube WAS free for a few years until google bought them.

Lets say I want this new %name in here% pop star video with my own picture that I've drawn cause some reason, that view revenue is directed to the content creator and in this case that would be the pop star, the ads are split between youtube as operation and content owner if it's registered, money is not given to you.
If you make it a no ad video and the content is identified to be that pop stars content they can automatically add ad's and get their money.

Content can be registered and chosen to be automatically taken down and this is automatic, pretty much no defeating it apart from making it sound different by adding pitch or slowing it down.

When youtube did not have ads all on youtube was free, but now the tech giants make no "free" money from artists, who does? pretty much no-one.
Sites like youtube bled money for 10 years cause hosting stuff is really expensive and youtube still isn't a money machine.

Before with music the money was split usually like this:
Song->
Record label.
*-> Potential license companies for other countries.
-> factory to make the cd's.
-> company shipping the cd's.
-> Company that store em and distribute to the distributors.
-> Distributors

about 2/3rd didn't even make it to the record company so what have changed?, it's not like we didn't copied music back then, if anything piracy was more common before but it was physical, who didn't have VHS recording capability or stuff like that and exchanged it among friends.

YouTube is nothing but ad real estate. That's pretty what Google does now, buy up properties to sell ads on and use that money to fund their next moonshot which statistically is very unlikely to happen.
 
...So what every company does with every employee...ever...since...the...start...of...time.
 
Google is no saint, but I am so tired of seeing people blaming them for stupid shit.

Google indexes content that is available on the internet. Yes, that index allows some people to find other peoples content, and once they find it they can do things the owner hadn't intended with it.

This is shitty, but it is not the fault of the index.

This is like blaming a company that sells maps because a burglar may have found your house on a map.

It's just sheer stupidity. It's just like the European "right to be forgotten" law. The ability to not have youthful indiscretions follow you for life on the internet isn't necessarily a bad idea, but blaming the index for it is. The fault lies entirely with the host.

Go after the source of the information or content. Don't blame the neutral index.
 
Canadian music legend Neil Young is slamming Google and other tech giants for ripping off the artist community. He alleges that these companies profit greatly off of musicians but pay them nothing in return. He even accuses Google of directing people to pirate sites for free content.

The Tech Giants have figured out a way to use all the great music of everyone from all time, without reporting an artist’s number of plays or paying a f*cking cent to the musicians. Aren’t they great companies!!! It makes you wonder where the next generation of artists will come from. How will they survive?

Him: *whine whine whine* I cant keep up with the times *whine whine whine*

Me: Keep up or gtfo.
 
I want to respect his opinion but honestly its just part of a larger population that are truly out of touch with the current phase of digital media. Truth be told too, if it wasn't for google, youtube, pandora, internet, etc. most of these artists from the 60's-80's would have zero air play in terms of their current projects. Most of them can't get air time on OTA radio to save their lives and feel the need to take their angst out on the internet. Talk about biting the hand that feeds ya. Maybe he should change record labels again(look it up). BTW I wonder how Geffen is doing these days.
 
Yep, the Pono. I think that whole thing crashed and burned.

https://gizmodo.com/dont-buy-what-neil-young-is-selling-1678446860
The author of that article is more wrong than Young. Young's device' format is overkill for end consumer. Ironically in the face of his rant, appropriate if you're going to duplicate alternate format, sample, mix the audio to any extent. But OTOH, the CD audio format is not adequate its is about 1-2-bits short for the average consumer and 3-4 bits short for the upper end of the population. The bitrate issue has to do with how you reconstruct the analog for a speaker. Since you can't rely on what the end player is doing, you over-constrain it with the extra sampling rate.

Just to add, the music industry knows full well they did the bare minimum on the CD format so if it was copied in anyway involving analog or other formats, it's notable degradation would build immediately.
 
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...says the guy who created the Pono and charges a fortune for the player AND the content.

Here's a tip, you want to make money for your work? Go out and perform and refuse to work with Ticketmaster so they people who actually perform can get a fair cut of the ticket sales AND the tickets won't be priced beyond what the average fan can afford. Last tickets I bought, Ticketmaster even charged me to print them on my own printer using my own toner - but if I picked them up at will call, where they printed them on their heavy ticket stock using their printers and their toner, it was free. Or cheaper at least. COMPLETELY backwards.

And it's stupidly simple for anyone to have a web site these days and sell the music directly to the consumer, CUt out the money suckers like the RIAA and your music can be both more affordable to legally buy AND you can make a greater profit.
 
Wait, wait, wait... you mean to tell me that Youtube has ads???

Also, do a search on "Google to MP3". Youtube is literally the biggest source of "pirate" MP3s. Sure the quality on some is not so good, but for most people it's just fine.
 
Has this looser got an MP3/FLAC player to roll out soon? It seems the only time we ever hear from him, is when he is about to peddle crap.
 
So why does no one turn in and get removed all the pirated content on Youtube? Probably because it's too nice to listen to anything you want for free. It's like everyone has forgotten the laws and morals because it's too easy to get it for free now, it's become the norm.

You have to admit that the artists have really taken it on the chin with less sales for physical discs, while youtube and google take in loads of money. Is this right? I think that is what Neil is saying. The amount of money artists can make from youtube is probably vastly less than they were getting when you had to buy it.

If you look into it, artist now mostly make money from ticket sales. If they can't tour and make money, they usually have little to no money from CD or even digital sales, as the youtube effect has made most fans just look for a freebie.

Nope, people report it. It just doesn't get taken down because now they have the option of co-opting the monetization stream of the violator. So it stays up, but the labels come in and get the money.

The old bastard is upset because that money isn't necessarily distributed to the creator by the labels. Same as it's ever been.

He also doesn't like that google sets its own rates for the copyright infringement instead of being burdened with the mechanical copyright rate. Which is a more apt argument.
 
Nope, people report it. It just doesn't get taken down because now they have the option of co-opting the monetization stream of the violator. So it stays up, but the labels come in and get the money.

The old bastard is upset because that money isn't necessarily distributed to the creator by the labels. Same as it's ever been.

He also doesn't like that google sets its own rates for the copyright infringement instead of being burdened with the mechanical copyright rate. Which is a more apt argument.
Good comments. Funny how the people in power allow the infringement to go on, then step in and get the proceeds. Not exactly a moral stance since they are getting ill gotten gains. It's like shooting fish in a barrel too, as they know people will view it, and when the ad revenue comes in then they claim what you did was wrong.
 
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