Pioneering French Electronic Artist Thinks Creative Industry Should Get '$300-400' Of Each Smartphone Sale
from the but-it's-'not-a-tax!' dept
The number of times figureheads of the copyright industry have proposed (and often collected) a “you must be a pirate” tax on media are too numerous to count. (Not literally, of course, but it’s been several dozen times…) The operative theory is that most people buy blank media and devices only to load it up with infringing content. This stems from the industry’s innate fear that any new technological advance (VCRs, high speed internet connections) serve one purpose: to make infringement faster, easier and more widespread.
Jean Michel Jarre, a pioneer in the field of electronic music, has peeked into the future (well, more of the present, really) and has glimpsed an untapped goldmine — one that would “allow” the common man/woman to pay what’s “owed” to content creators.
Here’s what Jarre had to say in an interview he gave during the recent Midem conference. He states that creators should work with tech companies (which is a good idea) but then goes on to explain that “work with” means “collect an arbitrary fee from” (which isn’t).
[C]reators needed to sit down with phone companies, computer companies selling hardware, as well as the distributors of all kinds of art forms, and create the right business model for creators. He doesn’t, however, think that consumers should have to pay. “Music, photography, media, film – it’s all going to be free on the internet. We have to accept it,” he said.
But that doesn’t mean that creators can’t get paid. “Think about when you listen to a song on the radio,” he explained. “You are not paying for it, it’s not illegal to do it, because the rights have been paid for on top, beforehand, by the radio station, by the network. We have to find exactly the same kind of system with the internet.”
“We should never forget that in the smartphone, the smart part is us creators. If you get rid of music, images, videos, words and literature from the smartphone, you just have a simple phone that would be worth $50. Okay, let’s accept that there’s a lot of innovation in the smartphone, so let’s add $100 for this innovation – the remaining $300-$400 of the price should go to [the creators].”
Paying artists is not a tax or cultural levy, he said, adding that artists were here before electricity and will be here long after the internet. “We need each other, so at the end of the day we have to find the right partnership. We are talking about a business partnership, not a tax, and this shouldn’t affect the consumer.”
Jarre may be a talented musician, but if he thinks this “won’t affect consumers” if creators are given $300-400 of the sale price of a smartphone, he’s completely (or willfully) ignorant of market realities.
The $300-400 that smartphone makers are used to keeping for themselves (which Jarre handily believes is all profit margin) will have to come from somewhere. And that “somewhere” is the consumers. Instead of $499 MSRP, the phone will leap to $899-999. Once those prices go up, consumers will purchase fewer phones, especially with more service providers in the US looking to eliminate subsidized purchases. Fewer sales means less money flowing back to the creators — which in time will mean those extracting this amount (based on the faulty assumption that the only thing that makes a smartphone “smart” is infringing content) will be back to ask for a higher fee — which will result in even fewer sales — and so on, ad infinitum, ad absurdum.
Despite his protestations, this fee (Jarre seems to approach it as a licensing strategy, right before asking for an arbitrary figure that’s three-quarters of the retail price) is a tax/levy. The only way it wouldn’t be is if phone makers entered into licensing agreements. But what would they be licensing? A new phone carries very little unlicensed content (if any) before the consumer fills it with their own. Some of this content will already be licensed, having been purchased from any number of legitimate services. Some content, of course, will not be licensed or otherwise paid for. But taking a chunk out of every sale presumes that all smartphones are nothing more than handy carrying cases for infringing content. Hence, it’s a tax or levy, of the “you must be a pirate/criminal” variety.
For all of Jarre’s defense of creation and innovation, he automatically gives the creators — whose content may never be on the phone in an unlicensed form — the largest portion of each phone sale. He makes a small concession for “innovation” that tops out at $100. “Creators” are apparently worth 3-4 times as much as the innovators who crafted the smartphone Jarre sees as an untapped revenue stream.
This clashes with Jarre’s earlier statement where he says artists were here “before electricity” and will outlast the internet itself. If artists are everlasting and smartphones (or the internet) only fleeting, why is the payout so skewed towards the hardier species (so to speak)? Jarre wants to have it both ways: artists “deserve” this because they’ve been a cultural force since the beginning of time but are simultaneously on the verge of extinction and badly in need of a handout from the Hot Tech Thing Du Jour.
He drives this cognitive dissonance home further with this:
“We are the people creating the future – not manufacturers of computers or cables. We are the extraordinary.”
Well, if that’s the case, maybe the people “creating the future” should be taking a smaller cut than these short-sighted tech innovators, or better yet, pitching in to keep these manufacturers of pocket-sized cultural vessels afloat until the next wave of innovation hits.
Underneath it all, he’s right about the creative force of the world’s population. It will continue even without grabbing 75% of a smartphone’s retail price. The world’s creators didn’t wait until adequate copyright protections were codified by their respective governments before creating and they’ll continue to create even if they think the world’s tech innovators are somehow coattail-riding their creations to the tune of billions of dollars. They’ll do it in the face of piracy and the addition of innumerable “competitors” thanks to the elimination of barriers to entry.
Jarre gazes at this longevity and strength and sees it as a position of leverage against (apparently) parasitic tech companies. When he smashes it all together to make his clumsy point, the strength is now supposedly a weakness, and creators nothing more than a disadvantaged group begging for loose change outside a manufacturer’s headquarters. It becomes as incongruous as a Mob enforcer telling his extortion victims that the reason they have to pay is because he a.) can kill them and their families and b.) because he’s a disenfranchised member of an ethnic group that has been historically poorly-treated in America.
Jarre does likewise. Artists are unstoppable! Please give us free money.
Filed Under: entitlement, jean michel jarre, royalties, smartphones, tech industry
Comments on “Pioneering French Electronic Artist Thinks Creative Industry Should Get '$300-400' Of Each Smartphone Sale”
Didn't quite think that all the way through...
But that doesn?t mean that creators can?t get paid. ?Think about when you listen to a song on the radio,? he explained. ?You are not paying for it, it?s not illegal to do it, because the rights have been paid for on top, beforehand, by the radio station, by the network. We have to find exactly the same kind of system with the internet.?
Following the radio example, where listening to the music doesn’t count as infringing because it’s already been licensed, the logical conclusion to such an idea is that if such a ‘You must be a pirate tax’ was implemented, then any downloads, from music, movies or books, would then be legal, because the ‘license’ had already been paid for by the tech companies directly, and the customer indirectly.
So congratulations, you got $300-400(split up however many ways) from the sale of a device due to all the infringing work you were sure would be placed on it, and in exchange, you will never be paid for your works again.
New movie comes out? Already paid for, download away. New album released? Same thing, already been paid for, download to your heart’s content. Like the new album you just downloaded and want to listen to their older works? Go ahead and download them all, after all, the manufacturer already paid for the ‘license’.
Of course, if such a thing were proposed to him and others like him that want to tax people based upon what they might do, I’m sure they’d throw a fit, and demand that even after companies/people shelled out a couple hundred for a ‘license’, they still deserved to be paid, again, for their work on top of it, very much a ‘we demand to have our cake and eat it too’ situation.
On top of that, in such a situation, the money would just go to a ‘collection’ agency, who have shown to have serious issues actually paying artists, and that’s if the artist in question is a big-name one, smaller ones get completely screwed.
Re: Didn't quite think that all the way through...
And, of course, there’s the screaming success of the radio rights payment model in making sure that individual artists, no matter how small, receive fair compensation for their work.
Oh… wait…
Re: Didn't quite think that all the way through...
I remember once where getting played in the radio was an honor, and you got to get your music out to the people. Now it’s the other way around.
Here’s a better idea, Jarre: Work. For. Goddamn. Hire.
The rest of us have to do it, what the hell makes artists any different?
This entitlement is the reason copyright maximalists keep pushing to steal (an appropriate use of the word here) more money from our wallets.
“Our” being the consumer.
Want me to pay for your work? Good luck with that, because I don’t pay for your “work”. I pay the middlemen who mark up your work and give you a pittance in return.
So stop whining. If you want more money, talk to your goddamn distributor and leave everyone else out of it.
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^This. Pay attention, Jarre.
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Better still… raise the money, pay the artists, and make the recordings free.
Crowdfunding, government grants, philanthropy, fan clubs, consumables – there are all sorts of ways to get artists paid without selling music.
I don’t the french have ever produced a ‘pioneer of music.’ Although french, whiney no-nothings, are pretty common.
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Look up his history. I remember listening to some of his stuff in the early to mid 90’s. It was pretty ground breaking and received a lot of acclaim even though it wasn’t your typical pop chart stuff.
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He certainly had some inspiration in a certain japanese arcade game and a german band. But then again, you cannot create anything without some inspiration and Jean-Michelle Jarre did make some pretty interesting music.
Ultimately I think it is in eye (or ear) of the beholder, what is ground breaking and what isn’t.
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I remember listening to some of his stuff in the early to
mid 90’s
Try 70’s.
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I was merely pointing out when I was introduced to him. Not that he wasn’t considered ground breaking before that.
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jackn wrote:
Erik Satie. Claude Debussy. Pierre Boulez. (To name just a few of the most well-known in one genre I’m familiar with.)
The sad fact that this particular guy is an entitled fool (which has no bearing on the quality of his music) doesn’t warrant sweeping generalizations about an entire nation.
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Like I said…..
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Um…Daft Punk? Winner of what? 5 Grammys this year? Sorry, but the French do have creative, commercially successful artists out there.
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Grammys??? I didn’t know they recognized pioneers (or even artists/musicians). Isn’t that more for the teen mindset?
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Wait, Daft Punk is French?!
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What is it about the French that means that some Americans are compelled to post ignorant xenophobic comments rather than anything of real value? I’ve never worked out any real reason why this is so common when o other nationality seems to attract this kind of stuff.
(Yes, I know I’m making an assumption about nationality there myself, so I apologise if I’m wrong – but it’s usually true)
“whiney no-nothings”
The irony of having said this in a post that not only consists of nothing but ignorant whining, but manages to wrongly spell “know” is quite hilarious.
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I don’t know. It’s pretty annoying.
The sense of entitlement! It burns!
Fine, let’s go with this insanity. But in exchange all your works are automatically in the Public Domain (including those yet to be produced), you are forbidden from charging a cent for licensing and all other levies are void.
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Makes perfect sense, that all media is then pre-paid and essentially public domain. But, what about people who don’t have smart phones? Are they barred from all entertainment through other venues? Does he want a levy on computers, televisions, cars used to drive to a theater?
Everyone wants to be a utility. Nice check comes in the mail automatically, no selling, no creativity – matter of fact, if they get paid automatically, what impetus to create anything other than crap?
I shouldn’t have to change how the system has worked, everyone else should keep my business model relevant.
Without me nothing else would happen, so everyone else owes me a living.
You tech companies make money, but only because of my creations… nothing you other people have done rises to my artistic pinnacle.
Perhaps instead of chasing tech companies, they should instead be asking why the labels aren’t giving them more in an age when costs have dropped because of tech.
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How about a tax on these whiny bitches that annoy the shit out of us after making all their crap. Shouldn’t Google and Apple be paid for dealing with this bullshit?
A Question Occurs...
Would an artist-creator-extraordinary human have to pay these fees?
Just how does one become an a-c-eh anyway? Is there a test?
Maybe being recognized as an a-c-eh is a matter of success. But what if you measure your awesomeness by how poorly your work is received? That’s artistic, isn’t it?
Or maybe it’s just being called an a-c-eh by someone else. Does a brother-in-law qualify? If your dog thinks you’re cool, it that enough?
Re: A Question Occurs...
It’s very simple; create a 501(c)-something group like the Authors Guild, Graphic Artists Guild, etc., etc., and get yourself in good graces with the WIPO cabal. Of course, once you begin receiving a slice of the non-title specific dark money sloshing around from all these “licensing agreements,” you’ll be expected to faithfully attend the dog-and-pony show conferences and conventions on copyright, and extol the virtues of copyright maximalism and the evils of piracy.
Another entitled prick who has his music deleted from my computers.
You’re welcome Jean Michel Jarre
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Same here. Music deleted. Oh, wait. I didn’t have any of his music anyways. Tell me again why he should get a cut of my mobile phone purchase? Also if smartphone prices go up by $400, well, I guess I’ll stick with what I have now until it dies and then it’s dumbphone time.
Minor correction:
No, his theory is based on the assumption that the only thing that makes a smartphone “smart” is content, period. Since he assumes that smartphones are becoming the principle means of distributing content, he proposes replacing the current means of taxing content with the named price hike on smart phones. That way, you don’t need to differentiate between non-infringing and infringing content as the content is “pre-paid”.
Which still seems pretty much ludicrous, just in a different department.
Re: Minor correction:
It also neglects the fact that there are already many PAID means of getting content onto a smartphone. He seems to be assuming that anything on a smartphone is pirated regardless of it’s origin.
No, the smart part of a smart phone is that it’s a mini general purpose computer with a nice radio, and a semi-decent camera and microphone attached. I don’t need anything on it from what he would define as “creators” to make it worth the price. Just the ability to use maps, and check the weather are invaluable, and that only scratches the surface. And images? Really? 99% of the images on my phone are photos I took myself of my family, my pets, or other miscellaneous points of interest. Is he suggesting that he should get payed for my images?
The problem with this is that the internet is the radio station, and the smart phone is the radio in his example. Only he’s suggesting that the radio makers should be paying him instead of the radio station.
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Not to take his side but, in the UK at least, you DO pay a tax on your TV and radio that goes to pay for content. So there IS precedent. But that’s a special situation I think.
Re: entitlement syndrome
“Is he suggesting that he should get payed for my images?”
Yes
since he thinks the ‘smart’ part comes from his genius, you owe him money for any usages of the phone
I have yet to learn how it would be determined who these “artists” are and why we have to pay them whether we experience their offerings or not.
Jarre’s sense of entitlement is through the roof; who the hell does he think he is?
Okay, so he had one hit that I know of but he’s failing to take into account the fact that artists get paid for live performances and that there are other ways of making money via genuine scarcities. He could also set up a channel on YouTube, etc., and rake in advertising revenues from that. Or make a profit-sharing deal with websites and internet-based companies.
All of these ideas are based on people WANTING to give him money, rather than him taking it “because he’s an artist.”
I get fed up of these people, they really think their shit don’t stink. Let them earn their money like the rest of us. If he’s spent it all, that’s his problem.
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“Jarre’s sense of entitlement is through the roof; who the hell does he think he is? “
In fairness to Jarre, the man is (was?) a musical visionary. He’s one of the small club of musicians who has influenced almost all those who came after him, whether they realize it or not.
But the thing about visionaries is that they usually specialize. Being a visionary artist does not translate well into being a visionary in public policy. I’m not sure that he understands this.
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Was, sadly. I first became aware of him in the late 80s when I saw reports of some incredibly things he was supposedly doing in his massive concerts (“playing” high powered lasers with special gloves to stop his hands being burned to a crisp, etc.), after which I obtained a few of his albums (first one pirated on tape from a friend, of course), and was a bit of a fan for a while. I went off him when he released new material in the 90s that sounded very much like his older material and sounded shockingly dated when compared to modern electronic music. The only things I’ve bought in 15 years are MP3 copies of a few of his older albums back when I had an eMusic subscription before the major labels killed it for me.
In other words, yet another irrelevant dinosaur who doesn’t understand the modern industry or how people actually consume music so wants a ransom from others. Sad, considering how forward-looking he once was.
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Yes, his later stuff started to suck mightily. His early stuff, though, is actually pretty brilliant. It’s a product of its time, and a lot of elements seem cliche now (but they weren’t then — they became cliche because so many others imitated him), but still — you gotta give credit where credit is due.
It’s too bad he’s turned into such an asshole (or maybe he always was one — I don’t know the man).
?We are the people creating the future ? not manufacturers of computers or cables. We are the extraordinary.”
no you are not. you are remixing the past and perpetuate the present, the status quo. the only thing extraordinary around you is your sense of entitlement.
The amount of personal and material resources that goes into technological development exceeds your tiny little contribution by orders of magnitudes and has an actual tangible effect on the quality of life of people, lots of people. You don’t, not even close to the degree technology does.
You need the technological progress to stay relevant, but the progress doesn’t need you. and if you go away there will *still* be countless people creating artworks using the abundance of new possibilities without crying about the glorious past that never was.
You sir, are a ignorant hypocrite. And if I would have to choose between you and your ilk and technology, I can live without you, but not without the technology.
You are insignificant.
Huh, and I thought we paid for radio with our ears, having to listen to idiotic car salesmen and accident lawyers trying to drum up business. Who knew I was a leech on creativity by making these radio stations pay for the content.
Why, if only we had a similar concept in place online. Why, some kind of “internet radio”, in which I could listen to music with the occasional advertisement. Certainly that would be a swell thing.
I’d listen to it on the iPhone knockoff I made for $50 bucks worth of parts and $100 worth of “innovation” crafting an operating system for it.
Of course he is an “artist”. He certainly isn’t an accountant or doctor or any other career the requires accountability for his stupidity.
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Are you sure he isn’t a politician? It seems both are exempt from accountability.
Actually, I kind of feel sorry for the guy. He seems really naive about how markets work. I get that he’s envisioning the industry switch to a different business model where everything is paid for up front so that the issue of whether content is infringing or not doesn’t matter. He just really hasn’t thought it through. Then add on top of that the fact that in one sentence he says he wants the tech industry to partner with the content industries to build his better business model, then apparently is completely oblivious to the fact that he just insulted the major industry he wants to join him in his little plan by saying that the innovation part of their industry is worth such a small percentage of their product. Good luck with that but here’s a tip: If you want an industry to partner with you and in effect give you a piece of their pie (any size piece) it might not be such a good idea to insult them in your sales pitch. Just a suggestion.
lolwut
No, the em spectrum, the manufacturers of radio broadcasting and/or receiving hardware do not pay.
The BROADCASTER pays. They pay from ad revenue, which is earned by having tons of people listening.
If the content creators had not by and large(not entirely, granted) been so beholden to idiotic legacy distributors, they could have monetized content in this fashion from the get go online. They were late to the table, someone else ate “their” lunch, and now they whinge. As they say in the Russian Army, “tufki shitski”.
The notion that “content creators” need a handout is idiotic. The money made via spotify, youtube, netflix, etc… is huge.
Define “us”, shitbag. If I wanted to listen to idiotic beeps and whistles, I’d put an R2-D2 sound bite on a loop. I use my smartphone to read (techdirt and wikipedia being my two favs), to use facebook and email to interact with friends, family and colleagues.
I have very little music on my phone (all of it purchased) and all the pics and movies on their are taken by me. So am I creator? I suppose I should get the $300-$400 tax levied against my phone, then, since I’m the primary creator of content I consume.
Two things
There are two things I’d like to address about this article.
1. I really, really wish that you and Jarre would stop saying “creators” would be the beneficiaries of these taxes. They’re not.
Most Western countries, including the U.S. and Canada, have “you must be a criminal” taxes on blank media. How many artists see a single dime from that? Not many. You have to be a member of one of the collection societies in order to get it, and those societies are notoriously skewed towards only the Top 40. That’s assuming you get paid at all – most of those royalties go to the copyright holders, which are almost never the artists themselves.
Jarre himself might be one of those artists, but he’s one of the very few.
2. Jarre: “If you get rid of music, images, videos, words and literature from the smartphone, you just have a simple phone that would be worth $50.”
I can’t believe he said this with any degree of seriousness. What most people use their smartphones for, is web browsing, email, social networking, or shopping. To be sure, people listen to music on their smartphones – much of it through streaming services such as Pandora, Rhapsody, or Spotify, which users pay for. But even if their music and literature is 100% infringing, it would still be a tiny portion of the value of a smartphone.
As for the images and videos: if we’re talking about a smartphone, then we’re talking about images and videos that consumers created themselves. Let’s not forget the other primary selling point of smartphones: they are also cameras. A smartphone is much more valuable to consumers as a creative tool, rather than a “consumptive” tool.
Popular musicians, including Jarre, add maybe 1% to a smartphone’s value. If that.
Re: Two things
Well, yeah, but if you take away words then there go all web pages, email, written weather forecasts etc since those are all made up of words. Images? Welp, there went any pictures. So no maps or anything like that either.
Re: Two things
Exactly, there is plenty of user generated content that makes tech worthwhile. The point here is that these taxes/levies (or whatever they want to call them) aren’t going towards the user generated content creators. So when someone puts content on Facebook (ie: pictures of their family) and it gets taxed (ie: via one of these levies) where does that money go? Not to the user generated content creators. No, to the stupid record labels and motion pictures associations and publishers and whatnot and they are the ones that are least deserving of anything beyond jail time and punishment for scamming artists and stealing from the public domain (ie: through lobbying for copy’right’ extension laws).
How is this different from farm subsidies?
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Farmers actually have to work quite hard and they’re essential.
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Strong anti subsidy arguments.
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people without food tend to die, people without music not so much…
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Farm subsides make food more expensive…
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It’s not different from any subsidy. They’re all just different kinds of protectionism.
Re: Farm subsidies
Not much – they used to be more transparent.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/New_Farm_Bill_Forbids_Disclosure_of_Which_Companies_Receive_Federal_Crop_Insurance/32802/0/0/0/Y/M.html
But the media and ordinary Americans won?t know who will receive these subsidies because the legislation keeps this information hidden away.
While the bill was working its way through Congress, a bipartisan provision in it would have required lawmakers and the Obama administration to disclose crop-insurance recipients.
But the agriculture lobby convinced members of Congress to do away with this section of the law.
I’ve heard many ideas for slowing down the usage of cell phones, this one might work!
Remember the tax/levies on blank media?
Yah, that worked out SO well, we should do the same thing with EVERY computing device, right?
This whole line of thought is utter BS and should be treated as such!
If YOU, as an “artist”, want to get paid, you need to do something about it! Something as in ADD VALUE to your product! Musicians have had great success in offering “limited editions” of their work with things like vinyl records, hardbound books containing art and/or photos relevant to the music, or other collectibles.
Failing that, why don’t you get off your fat butt and go TOUR!
The amount that this fool is proposing is not the objectionable part, the objectionable part is the entire IDEA of taxing technology to benefit artists that havent produced anything new or noteworthy in DECADES! Want to get paid? MAKE SOMETHING NEW!
Terrestrial Radio free......
Um, perhaps I’m mistaken, but….
Isn’t terrestrial (a.k.a. traditional) radio free? Not even the broadcasters pay for it as it is seen as a form of advertisement/marketing? Haven’t we all heard about the PAYOLA scandals where record companies “paid broadcasters to play their music”? It’s that nasty little thing that groups that the RIAA want to change as they charge internet broadcasters (streamers) and complain about the need to harmonize the rates?
If he wants to move all creative streaming to the terrestrial radio model (no one pays as it’s all marketing) I’m all for that. Too bad it undercuts his “you must be a criminal” tax plan.
Re: Terrestrial Radio free......
You are mistaken.
The broadcasters pay the publishers.
If a business plays a radio where the general public, or just their own workers can hear it, then they also have to pay musical rights organisations.
If a cd store plays music to tempt people to buy, they will also have to pay the licensing groups – (UK and Ireland)
It’s a heck of a system, it’s no surprise they would want to expand it.
Re: Re: Terrestrial Radio free......
No he is correct. In America there has been a history of that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola
So JMJ wants digital music to work like radio huh? Ok when are they going to start cutting checks to the cellphone manufacturers for allowing their music to play on their phones?
I don’t know. People on this site constantly misunderstand the situation vis a vis music.
It’s special. It is not like any other “consumer product”.
If I have a car I want to sell, I have to pay for radio or tv time to get my product out into the public,
If I have a restaurant I want to promote I have to pay for radio or tv time to raise awareness and hopefully increase the number of my customers.
If I have a song I want to sell. I don’t have to do that.
Instead, I charge the radio or tv station if they play it. Other parts of my industry will also and separately charge the people with radios or tvs where the general public might hear or see them whilst they are playing the music I want to sell and on top of this, everytime they play the song I have to sell and pay me for the privilege it has a positive effect on the actual sales of my music.
Now, this might seem like I get my advertising for free, and I do, but this is not unfair or wrong. The proof of that is, that there is in fact a law against me paying the radio stations to play my music, because sometimes when I have a real no hoper that I’ve wasted a lot of money on I can be tempted to do just that and the whole point of the music industry is that everybody pays the publishers.
Just to highlight that point, if the car company, or the restaurant or say a jeans company use my music with their advertising campaign, they pay me for the privilege and yup, you’ve guessed it, I also get a sales boost from that.
Now, this is the way that this business works, we, the publishing companies that is, not the actual musicians, get paid in every way, by everyone.
Who ultimately pays for the money we invest in our bands? well, they do of course, out of the 5-10% share of the profits that they get.
So, the musicians pay, the radio stations we rely on to boost our sales, they pay, the advertising companies who inadvertently also boost our sales, they pay, youtube, spotify, they pay, the consumers, they pay so why on earth should cd/dvd/electronics manufacturers not pay.
It’s so clear, once you have your head in the fundament of the music business.
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Why should they pay?
You don’t even have an argument.
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Look if a restaurant plays music, from the radio or from cd it helps create an ambience. That’s worth something to the restaurant so they pay. Obviously they don’t like doing so, but it’s the law so they’re s.o.l.
The fact that the ambience or atmosphere also has important contributions from paint, wallpaper, chairs, tables, table cloths, cutlery, plates, glasses, lighting, and they don’t have to constantly pay licensing fees for the use of those is neither here nor there.
If music helps your business, it’s worth something and we should get paid. That has always been our stance and that continues to be our stance.
If you haven’t objected to, nightclubs, restaurants, barbers, coaches, having to pay fees to the music business then what possible objection can you have to electronics manufacturers having to pay a bit too, when music clearly is of benefit to their businesses too.
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“Look if a restaurant plays music, from the radio or from cd it helps create an ambience.”
“The fact that the ambience or atmosphere also has important contributions from paint, wallpaper, chairs, tables, table cloths, cutlery, plates, glasses, lighting, and they don’t have to constantly pay licensing fees for the use of those is neither here nor there.”
Are you for real?
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My sarcasm detector went off at the first one…
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now there is a business oportunity, sarcasm meter calibration.
Some people need to use percussion maintenance on their meters. Recommended method is palm of the hand against the middle of the forehead.
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Unfortunately, Poe’s law rather throws a wrench into the whole process, it can be hard some times to tell the difference between joking sarcasm, and sincere crazy.
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The problem here is the disconnect between the phone manufacturers and the publishers. The manufacturers are not using the music to enhance their product like in your other examples. The phone manufacturers build in the ability for the END USER to enhance the product that they already purchased with music. The manufacturers are receiving no benefit whatsoever from the music publishers it’s the end users that receive the benefit and only if they choose to.
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PS it’s also rather baffling how shallowly people read.
Skim and attack, not really the best tactic.
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So, the musicians pay, the radio stations we rely on to boost our sales, they pay, the advertising companies who inadvertently also boost our sales, they pay, youtube, spotify, they pay, the consumers, they pay so why on earth should cd/dvd/electronics manufacturers not pay.
Let’s put your argument in some situations other than music and entertainment:
– Pay an additional tax on your car that goes to gasoline refineries because cars use gas.
– Pay an additional tax on your stove that goes to food suppliers because you use food when you cook with your stove.
– Pay an additional tax on your garden hose that goes to the water department because hoses use water.
I could go on, but those examples are sufficient to see how silly your argument really is.
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Disappointing GWiz, – 100 on comprehension.
You even quote and still don’t manage to get your head around it.
Putting the argument into other situations, and marvelling at what a bizarre place the music business is and has been in was rather the entire point of what I wrote.
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Putting the argument into other situations, and marvelling at what a bizarre place the music business is and has been in was rather the entire point of what I wrote.
Ok your right, I didn’t get your point at all.
For one thing, all of the income sources you listed actually value your music and they pay for that value. How does some shmoe, who’s never heard of you, doesn’t care for your music and will never listen to your music having to pay you when he buys a phone compare to any of those things?
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Putting the argument into other situations, and marvelling at what a bizarre place the music business is and has been in was rather the entire point of what I wrote.
To add another point – as bizarre as the music business might be, even they did not go as far as taxing the purchase of record players in the past. Plenty of manufacturers of record players made decent profits in the past didn’t they?
The reason they didn’t is because they realized that it’s a symbiotic relationship – one makes a profit selling the device and other makes a profit selling the content, but both are required for either to make any money.
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Because the public representatives didn’t give it to them, not because they didn’t want to either stop or tax record players.
To quote a reliable source:
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20111108/17562016686/history-hyperbolic-overreaction-to-copyright-issues-entertainment-industry-technology.shtml
-John Philip Sousa, the composer. In 1906, he went to Congress to complain about the infernal technology industry and how it was going to ruin music:
These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy…in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.
Yes, the tech industry was going to kill music, because of “these infernal machines.” –
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Mind you, everytime the music industry complains about something that technology could prevent, it’s usually something they don’t much like in the first place.
Like people engaged in public performances of copyrighted material in front of every house in the summer evenings without payment to the copyright holders.
It just tends to be they are suddenly more scared of the new than the old, despite the fact that historically, the market has gotten bigger with each technological advance and sure sheet music lost out to records and sure records lost out to cds and sure cds lost out to mp3s but there are now more musicians than ever, making a living at doing what they like, making music than at any other point in history.
It just doesn’t suit the publishers.
They’ll adapt, we just have to convince the politicians to stop pandering to them.
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The one fact that really blew my mind was that in UK and Ireland (I don’t know about other places on this) even a cd shop, playing music to prompt people to buy have to pay licensing organisations for the right to do so.
Now that’s really having your cake, eating it, having everyone’s cake and eating them too and still wailing that there isn’t enough cake.
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Really?
The other income sources value the music?
How often have you been somewhere where they were playing music you would have paid them to stop playing, but they were still paying for the pleasure of irritating you.
Also, as with restaurants, lots of things contribute to ambience and are of value. Paint, decor, etc, etc.
But none of those get to pop by every week, month or year and collect a licence fee for your use of the product you paid for.
Why is music, paid for music, different from paid for plants, paid for paintings, paid for furniture, furnishings, tableware etc?
It’s not different, but it’s been treated different and because it didn’t terribly impinge on the average consumer it didn’t really get noticed. Just now, when people put a video on youtube of their child dancing to any old music on the radio, suddenly they find themselves being told that the actual value in it, was the music on the radio.
The average person can easily tell, the particular music in that case is pretty much irrelevant, if that song didn’t exist the kid would’ve been dancing to something else.
But the music companies can’t see it that way, because they’ve lived in this bizarro world of getting paid by everybody for everything for 3 or 4 decades.
They can’t snap out of it on their own, how could they.
They have a skewed view of reality that has been pandered to for too long.
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You’re still getting it 100% wrong though.
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No you don’t. You don’t HAVE to buy airtime to sell your product. You CAN buy airtime for advertising. That is ONE way of doing it. But there are others some of which cost little to nothing at all.
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True
but nonetheless
tracks get airtime
cars get airtime
restaurants get airtime
airtime boosts all their sales, it has a positive benefit to their pockets, but only two of them pay for it and one of them is legally prevented from paying for it (and even then they still get caught doing just that, now and then)
Point is, how can we expect the record publishers to have a rational view on getting paid when they have been getting paid for the kind of promotion other businesses have always had to pay for. It seems normal to them, we can’t really expect them to have an untwisted view of how the economics work when they’ve had the ultimate fantasy for so long.
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Record labels also have to pay to promote albums. They aren’t prohibited from buying Radio or TV airtime to air a commercial to promote an album release. They do that all the time. The difference between buying commercial airtime and payola is that when people hear a commercial they know the company paid for it. When people hear a song on the radio, they simply think the station decided to play the song like every other song that they play. Payola is under the table and hidden from the view of the public. One is upfront and honest the other is not. There is a big difference between the two.
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Payola was a problem because it was hidden from the view of the public & because airtime has a direct link to sales.
Every play of a track is effectively advertising, but the best bit of it is that most of it involves the people who stand to benefit from the sales also get paid for each play.
That’s getting paid so that a third party can boost your sales and that is heaven.
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Comparing buying airtime for advertising to payola is comparing apples and oranges though which is what you were doing. The record labels are prohibited for engaging in payola for a good reason. They are not prohibited from buying advertising time just like everyone else.
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I wasn’t really. The point was simple
airtime -> sales
so
it’s advertising
The music business is the one business that gets paid rather than has to pay for a proven effective method of advertising their product.
They can also engage in other promotional type stuff, which they can pay money for, but nothing is as effective as airtime so their best advertising option is something that they not only don’t have to pay for but actually get paid for. It is abnormal in the business world, it is abnormal in life, people who enjoy the benefits of this abnormality will never understand that it is as abnormal as it is.
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The correct word for what you are describing is PUBLICITY. Which is a more generic term. All advertising is publicity but not all publicity is advertising. Radio airplay is publicity, not advertising. Sure good publicity can have a positive affect on sales, which is one of the goals of advertising, but they are not inherently the same thing.
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Call it publicity if you like.
But if we agree that the purpose of advertising is to drive sales, then publicity that drives sales is indistinguishable from advertising.
Especially, if that particular mode of publicity is the biggest driver of sales that you have.
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Funny thing you say that the purpose of advertising is to drive sales and one of the first things you learn in an advertising class is (except for that cheesy direct marketing type) advertising is designed to do a lot of things but selling a product is not one of the and many a fortune has been lost on this misconception.
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This could explain why the people who use advertisers are finding their worth considerably less than they were led to believe once they are able to measure their effectiveness in the online world.
People can believe what they like about what they do, but companies don’t pay for ads for products or services because ads don’t drive sales.
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Businesses do love free publicity
A positive or even neutral mention on the radio or tv or the newspapers is gold dust.
Advertising, that they haven’t had to pay for.
But rarely do you get that level of publicity and get paid for it too which is what the record business has.
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If I am making a movie and I need a new car for a scene, the manufacturer of that car will automatically benefit from the use of their product in my movie whether I have convinced them to do a product placement deal or not. And no, not all products that appear in movies involve product placement deals either.
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“not all products that appear in movies involve product placement deals either.”
True and in fact, paid for product placement should be banned in the same way payola was banned.
The biggest benefit to any manufacturer or service delivery company or any other business is advertising that doesn’t look like advertising. It’s way more effective than advertising that people recognise as advertising.
But the occasional random choice of a director to select something that might provide some cachet to a brand or make or whatever is not the norm for any product other than music.
Music getting played on the radio is the de facto norm of the music industry. It’s the single biggest driver of sales and not only does it not cost the music industry anything, they actually get paid for it.
It is a unique situation which has led to a unique mindset that has no real equivalent with any other business and partly explains the crazy schemes they keep coming up with.
We need legislators to realise that the old music business has been in an unusual position in getting paid by more sources than any other business and often for things that other businesses actually have to pay for. That the music business has been in a particularly favoured position and that the future cannot involve doing them more favours, but in bringing them back to the norm for business enterprises.
They’ll throw their tantrums, but it’s to be expected and they will get over it, just don’t pander to them anymore.
Just tax the people
Maybe the government should collect a small tax from everyone yearly and then disperse the money to the artists… making copyright a thing of the past. All content would be public domain.
I am sure the government could easily determine who the best artists are and hand the money far better than some collection agency.
Re: Just tax the people
Excellent idea. I’m sure the government could do this with the high levels of streamlining and efficiency that we have come to expect from government.
Re: Just tax the people
That seems like a quick way of killing of all forms of protest music, and anything that mentions drugs sex or rock and roll.
Actually...
Actually, the cost of the hardware, manufacturing, design, software, distribution, and marketing of a smartphone device (plus a smidge of profit for those involved in each step) is EXACTLY what they are asking for it. Amazingly coincidental, huh? It’s almost like… not only is Jarre completely unschooled on how much pirated media actually costs him (very very very very very little), but he is completely out of touch with the costs of hardware design, manufacturing, distribution, software, graphic design, distribution, and marketing too… Strange, but true.
Who gets what money?
Lets even give him his $300 per phone.
Who decides where that money goes?
Music industry, movie industry, video game industry, book industry…ect ect
I mean who and how do they decide whom gets said money?
Do we randomly assign money to the big players and then the artists get basically nothing?
Do you spread it out evenly based on general popularity so each artist gets a fraction of a penny per phone?
Or do you want to go NSA style and root through people’s phones to see what media they have on it?
Did this bozo even think his plan all the way through to see what the real world implications were?
What if I don't listen to Jean Michael Jarre?
Should I still be having to pay him? What about the artists I do listen to who are not represented by major labels?
And yet I still can’t copy the songs off my ipod.
I bet this Jean guy uses the internet. He must be a pirate.
Another moron
?Think about when you listen to a song on the radio,? he explained. ?You are not paying for it, it?s not illegal to do it, because the rights have been paid for on top, beforehand, by the radio station, by the network.”
–
NO!!! Y00000 think about it… Its paid for by revenue from advertising… which I listen to. So no one listens for free smacktard… its the commercials we listen to that pays for your crappy music.
–
“?We are the people creating the future ? not manufacturers of computers or cables. We are the extraordinary.”” – Entitled narcissist much?
–
watch?v=x8dqzTl0vUI
Maybe we need to take his “computers” and “cables” away and see where this… “artist” would be today.
Title is wrong
“Pioneering” French Electronic “Artist” Thinks Creative Industry Should Get ‘$300-400’ Of Each Smartphone Sale
–
FTFY
Re: Close but not quite
Over-Entitled French Electronic Asshole Thinks Greedy Leeches Like Himself Should Get ‘$300-400’ Of Each Smartphone Sale
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Double fixed
Wrong Wrong Wrong!
Jarre says “If you get rid of music, images, videos, words and literature from the smartphone, you just have a simple phone that would be worth $50.”
I stand as proof that he’s completely wrong. You know what I don’t use my smartphone for? Music, movies, or literature.
Re: Wrong Wrong Wrong!
Me neither. All I use my phone for is making calls, sending text messages and emails, taking and sending photos, browsing the internet, playing games, waking me in the morning, navigating in the car, checking traffic cameras, tracking commercial flights, ordering food, lighting my way, buying movie tickets, and a bunch of other app-enabled tasks. There’s no way I should’ve paid more than $50 for all that, I got ripped off!
Re: Wrong Wrong Wrong!
I have a small collection of ~40 songs that I keep on my phone just in case I want to listen to them. The kicker is that all of those songs have already been paid for. I bought them, be it from Amazon, Microsoft’s Zune marketplace, or on a physical CD. I also have four or five books; again, every one has already been paid for.
Not only does the creative content on my phone represent a stunningly small portion of the time I spend using it, but I also have already given them money for that small portion.
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But see, at some point in the future you might download some music or a movie or two without paying, so it’s only fair you pay a couple hundred now, just in case that ever happens. /s
A few thoughts.
IN THE USA at least..
Artists make more money at concerts then from the labels..
(most times)
ALSO,
If you work, you get paid.
HOW many times should you get paid for 1 days work??
But thats part of the problem in the USA..MANY corps get paid, many times for 1 service.
Cable gets paid by YOU, and the Commercials, and internet services…
TRASH company gets paid for YOUR recycling, as well as selling it to another company..
Some companies get paid, 3-4-5 times for 1 product or service…
The SAME, DVD hardware has been in CHEAP DVD players for years, just a NEW case and name..
Even with a few added features, its the SAME INTERNALS..
Other nations give SAT for free, as its cheaper then installing Antennas around the areas they serve. In the USA they charge you for WHAT they should be paying to BROADCAST to you..
It goes without saying that this guy is clueless. If he wants to be paid, and paid consistently, he should be seeking people willing to pay him to do what he does. If it takes him X number of hours to make something and he requires Y quantities of income to live on, then he should be seeking people that will collectively meet that threshold so that he can release it directly to the public domain. Then he has his income and he can extend it even further by touring.
If things like Kickstarter have taught us anything, is that people will pay to have stuff created and earn VIP/premium benefits for increasingly larger contributions. It’s probably the least risky path for anybody to get paid for their work. If nobody pays you, you’re not obligated to produce anything. If the threshold is met and you deliver on your promise, you’re guaranteed to get paid. It’s a distributed version of a work for hire model. Instead of one client, you have many and they all want the results of your work, which they are willing to pay their share for.
The post has a math error in it:
>The $300-400 that smartphone makers are used to keeping for themselves (which Jarre handily believes is all profit margin) will have to come from somewhere. And that “somewhere” is the consumers. Instead of $499 MSRP, the phone will leap to $899-999.
Adding $300-400 to a $499 MSRP gives $799-899.
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The other $100 goes to the politicians.
A pioneer in the field of electronic music? So all his income depends on transistors, right? Perhaps he should pay three quarters of his lifetime income to messrs Bradeen, Brattain and Shockley? Sounds about as fair to me…
Then every movie production should give me $100 per showing. Same logic applies. I have an idea that always existed as an archetype.
Yeah, umm, Mr. Artist? Lots of luck making electronic music without cables or, you know, electronic noisemakers. And computers with specialty software to eliminate background noises from your music. And so forth.
As for “creating the future”? Yeah, I would consider (granted, I’m a computer guy, so…) the people developing augmented reality, high-precision surgical robots, video streaming services and such to be making the future. Don’t get me wrong; music is nice. But it’s not going to connect me with video to a friend from across the world, it’s not going to fix up my internal organs and it’s not going to generate new vistas to interact with.
You arrogant twat. Know what the major thing on my phone is? Photos. That I take. And you want me to have to pay *you* for those? I fucking took them, asshat.
Mike, you are missing the historical genius that this guy displays.
$300-400 is insane! Way to high. No one is going to agree to that.
Ok, so how about we make it $10. That’s less than 10% the price of a phone, less than 10% of what we originally asked for. %10 is the price of 2 Starbucks coffees.
We got him down to $10? Lets agree to that, because compared to $300, 10 is reasonable.
Now that both sides have agreed that compared to what they asked for, 10 is reasonable, how can the governments turn that down?
And now $10 of each phone, which both sides agree is worth it, and won’t affect anyone, goes to pay this reasonable licensing fee.
Until the memory and screen resolution of new phones increase. So we have to raise the fee of course.
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Hopefully, both sides won’t agree to it ever. Extortion is extortion regardless of the amount involved.
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I would gladly pay an extra $10 up front on my phone. Hell, I’d be glad to pay and extra $20 up front on my phone.
All I ask in return is one little thing. In return for my guaranteed up front payment, I should have free or at least heavily discounted access to the music streaming services of my choice. So I won’t need to pay the monthly fee for Xbox music, Beats, Pandora, Spotify or whatever I happen to want to use for as long as I own that phone. I don’t begrudge the company a few bucks to cover bandwidth and server costs but since royalty fees are a big part of the cost I should save a ton of money over the two years or so I will own my phone.
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Not me. Why should I get soaked for a service that I won’t ever use? That’s simple theft.
Elevator music
I have never heard him on radio. But I thought I heard Rendezvous in an elevator. Who’s gonna pay for that.
Or maybe if it’s the case that everyone is pirating stuff nobody really believes in IP laws that strongly. As such, a functioning democracy ought to abolish these laws.
I, as a member of the public, want IP laws abolished. I want our laws to be democratically passed laws and I want my voice heard (doesn’t mean it has to be the only voice heard though). I don’t want my voice drowned out by corporate campaign contributions and revolving door favors. That’s not democracy. I want democracy. I want IP abolished. I want politicians to take my voice into consideration when passing laws.
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Get and get elected. That’s about the only way to get any traction.
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Get rich* and get elected.
“If you get rid of music, images, videos, words and literature from the smartphone, you just have a simple phone that would be worth $50. Okay, let?s accept that there?s a lot of innovation in the smartphone, so let?s add $100 for this innovation ? the remaining $300-$400 of the price should go to [the creators].?
Wow. I’ve not read anything so ignorant outside of the usual shills here. Let’s start with the obvious:
“music, images, videos, words and literature”
What’s missing from that list? Software. Apparently, he’s not interested in making sure *those* creators are rewarded, even when they’re the ones either making his content useful or even accessible. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that app store purchases are rising and hugely profitable for many companies right now, while his preferred industry is failing?
“you just have a simple phone that would be worth $50.”
Then, there’s this. He, of course, failed to mention everything else that goes into making a smartphone useful – from the GPS that allows navigation to the camera that allows content creation on its own the the processor and chipsets that allow the phone to be used for anything from business to widespread personal communication between friends. No, it’s “just a simple phone” without some crap tunes on it…
“there?s a lot of innovation in the smartphone, so let?s add $100 for this innovation”
Funnily enough, most phones actually make less than this for the manufacturer right now. Their “innovation” is rewarded by success in the marketplace. This isn’t guaranteed, of course – look at the state of Blackberry – but, that’s what reality is like: some people have to lose.
“the remaining $300-$400 of the price should go to [the creators]”
…and he’s the dumbest thing of all. Note that he’s not merely saying “creators” should get $300-400 of the price. He’s saying the REMAINING $300-400 should go to them. In other words, he hasn’t factored in any other revenue. he hasn’t factored the manufacturing costs, shipping, the retailer’s cut, cost of returns and warranty repairs. He’s literally saying that the smartphone makers should get $100 for their innovation and the rest of the retail cost should go to random people whose content may never be used on the phone (remember – these devices have huge numbers of uses beyond merely consuming content).
What an asshole, and as a former fan I hope that this is a mistranslation of what he meant to say rather than his actual opinion, because it’s astonishingly ignorant at best. I haven’t even touched on the real problems I have with the idea of this kind of scheme in the first place (e.g. how do I know the artists I listen to get the money rather than whatever talentless tosser happens to be selling more singles through RIAA cartel outlets?), but the way he’s made this argument kills it before he’s even tried debating.
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Even if all that were true (it’s not), it still would not warrant ANY tax for him and his ilk cause the music played from this phones has already been paid for.
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Of course, although the old industry hands probably won’t admit that so long as they can pretend that piracy is their only problem.
There’s also the point that many people may be paying more for music than they did before, thanks to the features of the smartphone – for example, impulse purchases which would otherwise be lost, apps such as Shazam that allow you to find the name of a song that you might otherwise forget to search for (and thus lead to impulse buys), apps that allow listening to radio stations or libraries (e.g. Spotify) that you couldn’t otherwise access, etc.
I can sympathise with Jarre’s intended point and am thankful that he at least pays lip service to working with tech companies rather than trying to sue everybody, but he’s so far off the mark in so many ways it’s depressing.
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I don’t think you can really call it ‘working with tech companies’, when his suggests are all ‘Tech makes all the concessions, ‘Creative Industry’ gets all the rewards’.
That’s ‘dictating terms’, not ‘working with’.
Great plan!
Its no wonder he sees himself as a “creative” and not an actual thinker. Or planner.
In the US of A a hunk of that money would go to the Government workers to implement the Great plan! Then the RIAA/MPAA/whatever other guild will want a cut to administer that Great plan!
The only way to get your “fair share” of the Great plan! is you, as a “creative” will have to pay to register with the RIAA/MPAA/whatever – the same as now.
My usage habits of MP3 players is not on the phone (runs down the battery) but instead on $10 MP3 players that run off of AAA batteries where I listen to podcasts. How in this Great plan! do those people get their “fair share” or are they not able to because their “creativeness” is not “music”? Does my $10 MP3 player become $310?
All about the money!
You guys!
You make assumptions. You skipped portions of the article. You didn’t read the original interview. You bring in arguments that Jarre didn’t even say. And you are certainly not aware of several underlying facts and systems.
As an example, if you actually learn that Google, that one company of several internet and software giants, made billions and billions of profit last year off the backs of people looking for content, you should ask yourself why they should facilitate content search and bring people to free download sites without paying something for it. Why are tech giants, broadband suppliers and hardware corporations entitled to profit from content more than the creators?
Jarre isn’t on a crusade for his own pockets. He is president of an organisation that represents 3 million creators. The very artists and composers you all listen to. He has been in the music business since 1970 and knows more about these issues from the inside than all of you together. You think you know stuff because you can google for it? Get real.
And the best part is that while considering Jarre a whiner, all you do is whine yourself, without justification.
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Then go ahead and point out where Masnick made an error. I’m not paying extra money so someone else can get paid for music and services I don’t have on my phone, and you’re an idiot if you think this is deserved.
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“I’m not paying extra money so someone else can get paid for music and services I don’t have on my phone”
Exactly. Like most industry sycophants, he’s missing the major points raised – a great many people either don’t consume their content on these devices at all (despite Jarre’s attempt at misdirection, they have many other uses) or ALREADY PAY for the content they consume.
But, no, Google blah blah pirates blah blah we want free money blah blah why isn’t the world like it was in the 70s…
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Tired, old, debunked comments are old, tired and debunked.
Why not educate yourself on the opinions of others rather than whining that others are whining without bothering to look at what they’re saying to begin with? but, then you’d have to listen to real complex opinions and present real facts, which few industry defenders ever bother to do.
Assuming that we are the first humans, and that neither ART nor TECHNOLOGY have been developed and that developing one of them would forever make the other’s development unachiavable, then which of the two would we choose te develop?
ART: We have to accept that it’s true technology is not an actual need to create art, so developing it first is possible (of course modern time has demonstrated that art is easier to develop when one has technology).
Art is not an actual need for survival.
Art CAN be use to make survival easier, by allowing our knowledge to be passed on to future generations.
Art can make our days brightier by just seeing/hearing it.
Art in these times has not to be payed for, but people has to make an effort every time one wants to see/hear it.
WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY, Art CAN still evolve.
WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY, Art evolution MIGHT be limited.
WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY, Individual pieces of art WILL NOT become easier to create.
WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY, Human life will stay more or less the same.
TECHNOLOGY: Developing it might be harder than art. (assuming a simple rock used as a hammer is not technology).
Technology is not an actual need for survival.
Technology CAN be used to pass on knowledge to future generations.
Technology at this point is free, but creating it requiers an effort every time it is created.
WITHOUT ART, Technology can enable the developing of new technologies.
WITHOUT ART, Technologies can enable the evolution of previous technologies.
WITHOUT ART, Individual pieces of technology WILL become progressively easier to create.
WITHOUT ART, technologies will at some point allow us to reach what we have achieved until now. (and even more)
In such situation I’d chose TECHNOLOGY.
How dare’s one who calls himself an artist(I admit an artist IS a creator), call geeks to those who develop the technologies he uses to make a living.
Engineers are themselves creators, now, I dare him to make a living from scratch, without using the technologies he so much underestimates.