RE: Technology professional by day, grad student by night. Hello steemit.
Hi @davidbrogan,
Nice to meet you too. Thank you for the feed-back. I'm attending Capella University (www.capella.edu). Not sure if it's still true, but when I started, it was the only online accredited school I could find that offered a PhD in a field like Information Technology or Computer Science (which would have been my preference).
I'll make sure my son sees your comments about music as a profession. I'm sure he'll appreciate them. I am cautiously optimistic that technologies like steemit and lbry.io will make music an even better profession by the time he's ready to start pursuing a career. (fingers crossed. ; -)
BTW, he posted the first movement of a symphony that he's working on this morning. I'm sure he'd appreciate feedback from someone who's knowledgeable about music, if you'd like to check it out. It's here - https://steemit.com/music/@cmp2020/my-first-symphony-movement-1-complete . Obviously, I'm biased, but I think it's pretty good for someone who has had no formal instruction in theory or composition. (We're starting him in theory lessons in the fall.)
Cheers for the heads-up on (www.capella.edu). I will be sure to check them out. I live and have lived a very transcient lifestyle, never in one place very long.
As such, my first degree was distance learning with the Open University (I think they were the original trailblazers of "online education" if I am correct? Anyhow, it was a long time ago now). My masters degree was with BathSpa Uni in England. Again, they offered the first online distance learning Masters Music degree of it's kind in the world.
I think music will have a bright future once the new paradigm shift takes hold in musician's consciousness. Namely, that the days of money upfront from major label contracts are largely gone, or from charting and making a quick kill. The money is now in the long term game. That on places like Spotify (like Steemit now) you will continue to receive income every time your music is played many many years down the line. The current problem is updating antiquated copyright and licensing laws made for a pre-digital age, and forcing platforms like Spotify and YouTube etc. to respect copyright and fairly compensate creators for their efforts.
Hence why I see Steemit as a potential "Game Changer." Fingers crossed it will work out.
I will be sure to check out your son's post also. Best Wishes, @davidbrogan
As a musician and an anarchist, I'm curious about your views on copyright. From most perspectives, I'm in the liberty-wing of politics, but probably still on the statist side from your perspective. Intellectual property is one of those topics that takes me in circles.
Certainly, the laws now are outdated and anti-innovation (at least in the US), but I'm not sure what things would look like in the ideal case. In computer software you have similar issues to music, so I've often wondered how "open source software" concepts could be applied to music licensing. I guess the creative commons license is a start in that direction, but I've never taken the time to learn how that works.
Might be too much for a comment thread, but I've followed you, so maybe a topic for a future post.
I liked what RadioHead did with "pay what you can afford" even if that is nothing. If we could get people to operate on the 'Honor' system it would be great, but always people will game it. Personally, I don't mind, but I am sure many others do. I operate on the principle that most people (I hate generalizingm but there you go... Trump is having an effect on me) are basically 'good'. There will always be a minority that are not... but I apply a "Bell Curve" model to these things... minority very 'bad'... majority decent folk.... another minority very 'good'.
My take is simply if something has a commercial value in the marketplace, and you or I are the creators, then we deserve to be compensated on some level for being the innovators/bringing the idea to market/ time/labor/energy.
I believe the market itself should determine the level of compensation, and why I love what is happening here on Steemit. How do we apply a fair copyright? I forget the philosopher off hand, but he said the individual's rights should be respected first and foremost, except where the rights of the greater community or majority should come first. That the greater good should take precedence over the individual good.
I believe 'principle' models such as Credit Unions, Co-operatives and fellowships such as A.A. afford us templates of what could work successfully on a universal scale, if the majority were willing to adopt such principles.
Definitely a topic worth many posts. I would look forward to reading yours. I know there are even variations on the "Creative Commons" licence, accredited or non-accredited, and what is happening presently in the musical sphere and the U.S. courts as we exhaust purely "original" ideas re: Led Zeppelin, Robin Thicke/Pharell, and now Ed Sheeran is very interesting for the future.
Best for now, David B.
P.S. Isn't it crazy that this far into the digital age and C21st, traditional Universities are still lagging so far behind with the provision of online courses? I mean, for pity's sake! LOL :)
When I went for my masters degree at nights, every time I had to deal with the Dean's office or the Bursar's office, I had to physically be on campus during the day time. It made me nuts. It was like stepping through a technological worm-hole back to the 1980s.
Amen, I can relate to this. I still had to attend "Summer School" (I kid you not, they actually called it that) and "Weekend Workshops"... which sort of defeats the whole purpose. Still, a step in the right direction. Now if we could onyl drag the music colleges kicking and screaming out of the C19th, never mind the C20th. (Thinking my experience of trad. UK music institutions here).