WSJ article -- "...music industry faces pressure to revamp"

[Len911]

wikipedia....The concept for Vevo was described as being a streaming service for music videos (similar to the streaming service Hulu, a streaming service for movies and TV shows after they air),[13] with the goal being to attract more high-end advertisers.[14] The site's other revenue sources include a merchandise store[15] and referral links to purchase viewed songs on Amazon Music and iTunes.[16]

[mojobone]

As for "socialism" (someone mentioned here) if everyone wants to work for free, then go for it.

For one, that's not how socialism works, and for two, slavery as an institution in the USA has not entirely been dealt with; there are an awful lot of people, wage earners who are already working for free for some part of their day, every day, and not just while at work. Corporations have even found ways to rip off salaried workers; I'll refer you to the book, "Nickel & Dimed". Tying health care to employment dooms just about every worker over fifty to remain in the job they're in, if they can; the perception is if they leave their employer, they lose their health insurance. This may not be technically true but as a practical matter, it turns out people formerly making $350 a week cannot afford $600/week COBRA payments while looking for work/finding it/waiting another 90 days-6 months for new benefits to kick in. Employers know this and use it against the workers to gain ever more advantage.This was the situation prior to Romneycare, and the only reason things are any better now is that insurers are prohibited from denying coverage for so-called pre-existing conditions, and even now, it's a pretty good bet that people with those conditions aren't being offered the same insurance as healthy folks. For more on the subject try "From Freedom To Slavery" by Gerry Spence.


Socialism is a great thing, one this country has had since Ben Franklin organized a volunteer fire department; socialism is what pays for schools, police, firemen and until recently hospitals. Socializing risk, education and healthcare actually saves money, long term and I'll give you few quick examples.

Think Big Pharma is interested in cures? Wrong; they only pursue treatments, cuz a cure you'd only pay for once. This is why we use public money for medical research that ultimately pumps $6 for every $1 spent back into the economy. (NASA did even better, when they had a budget, and our CDC has provided incalculable benefits all over the globe) Dollars spent on public education benefit us even more. If we don't educate everybody, we're all worse off for that; if we don't treat indigent people with contagions, guess who else gets sick?

And our approach to the homeless? Doctors in Hawaii are trying to define chronic homelessness as a disease, so they can use Medicaid funds to get them off the street. Dear God above, why would anybody want to do something so obviously stupid? Because it would actually save money; even in Hawaii's mild climate, elderly people sleeping rough end up in the emergency room 6-8 times a year, consuming million$ in public money...each. You could put up all the Kardashians at Trump Tower for what gets spent every month on Hawaii's ER 'frequent flyers'. Yes, It's actually cheaper to provide housing outright to people who are incapable of supporting themselves, and this is even more true in places that ain't Hawaii. Our once-healthy social safety net used to prevent hundreds of thousands from falling into our still-broken justice system, God help us all, and it all costs something.

Now I'm not gonna claim that every government-run social program is efficient or effective, but when done right, socialism has a net economic benefit. Any fiscally-conservative capitalist should be able to get behind that, unless he's been sucking at the teat of Ayn Rand, who BTW collected Social Security 'til she died. There's a line neocons like to quote when bashing Karl Marx, "...from each, according to his ability to each, according to his need." The thing they consistently fail to mention is that Marx lifted that phrase from The Holy Bible.

[lgstarr]

Vevo

Wikipedia: Vevo is an American multinational video hosting service founded on December 8, 2009 as a joint venture between two of the "big three" record companies, Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

Also on Wikipedia, "... with the third "big three" company, Warner Music Group (WMG) joining Vevo in August 2016.[5]"

What took them so long??

[lgstarr]

As for "socialism" (someone mentioned here) if everyone wants to work for free, then go for it.

For one, that's not how socialism works, and for two, slavery as an institution in the USA has not entirely been dealt with; there are an awful lot of people, wage earners who are already working for free for some part of their day, every day, and not just while at work. Corporations have even found ways to rip off salaried workers; I'll refer you to the book, "Nickel & Dimed". Tying health care to employment dooms just about every worker over fifty to remain in the job they're in, if they can; the perception is if they leave their employer, they lose their health insurance. This may not be technically true but as a practical matter, it turns out people formerly making $350 a week cannot afford $600/week COBRA payments while looking for work/finding it/waiting another 90 days-6 months for new benefits to kick in. Employers know this and use it against the workers to gain ever more advantage.This was the situation prior to Romneycare, and the only reason things are any better now is that insurers are prohibited from denying coverage for so-called pre-existing conditions, and even now, it's a pretty good bet that people with those conditions aren't being offered the same insurance as healthy folks. For more on the subject try "From Freedom To Slavery" by Gerry Spence.


Socialism is a great thing, one this country has had since Ben Franklin organized a volunteer fire department; socialism is what pays for schools, police, firemen and until recently hospitals. Socializing risk, education and healthcare actually saves money, long term and I'll give you few quick examples.

Think Big Pharma is interested in cures? Wrong; they only pursue treatments, cuz a cure you'd only pay for once. This is why we use public money for medical research that ultimately pumps $6 for every $1 spent back into the economy. (NASA did even better, when they had a budget, and our CDC has provided incalculable benefits all over the globe) Dollars spent on public education benefit us even more. If we don't educate everybody, we're all worse off for that; if we don't treat indigent people with contagions, guess who else gets sick?

And our approach to the homeless? Doctors in Hawaii are trying to define chronic homelessness as a disease, so they can use Medicaid funds to get them off the street. Dear God above, why would anybody want to do something so obviously stupid? Because it would actually save money; even in Hawaii's mild climate, elderly people sleeping rough end up in the emergency room 6-8 times a year, consuming million$ in public money...each. You could put up all the Kardashians at Trump Tower for what gets spent every month on Hawaii's ER 'frequent flyers'. Yes, It's actually cheaper to provide housing outright to people who are incapable of supporting themselves, and this is even more true in places that ain't Hawaii. Our once-healthy social safety net used to prevent hundreds of thousands from falling into our still-broken justice system, God help us all, and it all costs something.

Now I'm not gonna claim that every government-run social program is efficient or effective, but when done right, socialism has a net economic benefit. Any fiscally-conservative capitalist should be able to get behind that, unless he's been sucking at the teat of Ayn Rand, who BTW collected Social Security 'til she died. There's a line neocons like to quote when bashing Karl Marx, "...from each, according to his ability to each, according to his need." The thing they consistently fail to mention is that Marx lifted that phrase from The Holy Bible.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/23/ ... socialism/

[Len911]

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/23/ ... socialism/

There isn't just 1 example. Capitalism vs Marxism is probably a better description. Those are 2 economic systems. So much depends also on the political influence of the system. Is there actually a pure form of each, probably not. Also, there is the history.

The German war reparations owed to the USSR impoverished the Soviet Zone of Occupation and severely weakened the East German economy. In the 1945–46 period, the Soviets confiscated and transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the industrial plant and by the early 1950s had extracted some US$10 billion in reparations in agricultural and industrial products.[35] The poverty of East Germany induced by reparations provoked the Republikflucht ("desertion from the republic") to West Germany, further weakening the GDR's economy.

Wikipedia

I suppose you could look at history from the Spanish-American war, at least Cuba and Puerto Rico, Cuba emancipated from the U.S. and Puerto Rico became a territory. Cuba endured the U.S.'s boycott and hostility, and with Puerto Rico on the cusp of insolvency, and Cuba, well, being courted now by the U.S., http://www.huffingtonpost.com/salim-lam ... 49968.html

https://www.umass.edu/chronicle/archive ... omics.html

the 20th century's great ideological schism actually pitted the private capitalism of the West against the "state capitalism" of the USSR. "The struggle between communism and capitalism never happened," says Wolff. "The Soviets didn't establish communism. They thought about it, but never did it."

I don't know how we got here,lol, because as far as what the artists makes probably wouldn't be much different whether it was capitalism or socialism. It would mainly affect how a particular music company was run.

[mojobone]

I don't know so much about the 'great ideological schism of the 20th century' whatever is meant by that, but this is the 21st century, and here in the USA we have enough democracy to decide which aspects of our economy need to be socialized. HINT: health, education and justice shouldn't be run for profit.

The trouble, as I see it, is the amount of unaccountable cash being deployed by enemies of democracy, disguised as enemies of socialism, and maybe also the amount being spent to demonize socialism itself. Socialism, by definition is what's good for people, whether they know it or not. It has its origins in our revolution, and that of France, during what we now call The Enlightenment.

[lgstarr]

I don't know so much about the 'great ideological schism of the 20th century' whatever is meant by that, but this is the 21st century, and here in the USA we have enough democracy to decide which aspects of our economy need to be socialized. HINT: health, education and justice shouldn't be run for profit.

The trouble, as I see it, is the amount of unaccountable cash being deployed by enemies of democracy, disguised as enemies of socialism, and maybe also the amount being spent to demonize socialism itself. Socialism, by definition is what's good for people, whether they know it or not. It has its origins in our revolution, and that of France, during what we now call The Enlightenment.

I agree with Richard Dreyfuss:

“I am a constitutionalist who believes that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights must be central and the parties must be peripheral,” Dreyfuss said, noting that few Americans have ever really studied these documents in school.

“Civics has not been taught in the American public school system since 1970. And that means everyone in Congress never studied the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as you and I might have,” he said.

Dreyfuss said knowing the basics of government is essential to being a functional American citizen.

Ignorance of the basics “is a critical flaw because it’s why we were admired and respected for so long, it gives us our national identity, it tells the world who we are and why we are who we are, and without a frame that gives us values that stand behind the Bill of Rights, we’re just floating in the air and our sectors of society are not connected,” he said.

http://www.westernjournalism.com/actor- ... education/

[Len911]

I just finishing watching "What Happened, Miss Simone?" on Netflix. I think in those days civics was taught in the streets.

It's not that I disagree with Richard Dreyfuss, but I sorta wonder where he's been all these years? He seems to have missed all the civil rights movements at the very least. Fox news is probably not the best place to get a civics lesson,lol!

[lgstarr]

I just finishing watching "What Happened, Miss Simone?" on Netflix. I think in those days civics was taught in the streets.

It's not that I disagree with Richard Dreyfuss, but I sorta wonder where he's been all these years? He seems to have missed all the civil rights movements at the very least. Fox news is probably not the best place to get a civics lesson,lol!

Well, as it turns out, Fox News was the only place to get to hear what Richard Dreyfuss has to say! As for "where he's been all these years" I can't say, except that I remember seeing him seriously scrutinizing the history section at "Bookstar" which used to be on Ventura Blvd. in Studio City.

As for civics, I've done research recently which proved that it hasn't been taught extensively or well for decades which is part of the reason why, in a generation, we've lost all connection with our heritage, our founding documents and principles, and why people now simply assume that we are supposed to get everything in life through the Matrix (one person, when asked, assumed that it was "Obama's stash".)

[Len911]

This article agrees with you about civics.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/a ... ed/507293/

It's probably less to do with teaching civics than the trend away from a liberal education towards more of a "professional" or job oriented education. In the suburbs where I live, school bonds usually always pass, they are always willing to spend on buildings and infrastructure, never on teachers (exception; coaches) or books.

To be fair, the public schools probably shy too much away from controversy. http://www.thv11.com/news/local/ark-bil ... /419912844
Not to mention evolution, sex education, or any other "controversial" subject. Personally, I don't think the public schools should be run like a madrassa,lol!

https://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/25/ ... s_his_work
Can you even imagine Marxist economics being taught in public schools or universities? It's not like economics is religious, or is it,lol? Can you even imagine Marxist Home Economics in high school?

Our heritage, founding documents, founding principles, founding fathers, is fine as long as they are studied for what they are or were, without myth. One of my favorites is our "Christian heritage", though how many Christian's are okay with deists, and how many agree with "The Jefferson Bible"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism#Dei ... ted_States