presser_kun's Profile

Years ago my company (a print music publisher) sent me to a conference given by Rolland, the digital keyboard company. A top Japanese scientist heavily involved in their R&D at the time spoke of bringing technology down to the masses by broadening the base of the tools. Recording is a good example. Once the domain of specialists, sound engineers with years of experience and hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, now anyone with a decent Mac and Logic Pro (even Logic Express!) and a mic or two can produce quality recordings. Granted, there is still a place for the expert, but -- Well, you get my point, I'm sure. Mr. Jobs has brought the technology of music/video distribution (perhaps even creation, to a point) down to the masses. Which means you and I can do whatever we want with content, from share it to create it. Now it might interest you to know these words come from a print music composer. My company specializes in choral and instrumental music for sacred and educational markets. When a piece of music I wrote sells, I get ten percent of the retail price. When someone photocopies it, I get nothing. And yet I welcome what Jobs has almost singlehandedly done. "I want what I want when I want it." That's the American way. I just hope that we'll learn to balance (there's that pesky word!) the desire to have/have for free with the need we all have to honor those who create. If we do, then we'll find that it's distribution that's going away, not the music, the video, or the ideas that make them.