Apologies this will be another long one
@robertwerntz great attitude and my respect to you you know the reality of a performing professional.
@a-j-trumpet that is the truly the reality the frustrations of the modern world, the recordings made with poor equipment that we have no control over are pathetic and yet these we have to live with.
But to both of you while agreeing that both you guys know exactly what is going on and have a clear knowledge of the problems we face,
I would repeat myself that the unpalatable truth that I object to and want to warn members of is the modern habit of recordings made of us in secret with unsuitable equipment of our playing that is not a performance we have rehearsed but are instead our worst practice sessions and are published without our knowledge.
Several times I have been recognised by members of the public and they said to me oh I saw you on the internet and they mention me being viral or facebook or some other widely published social media recording of me and all recordings made on mobile phones without my knowledge or permission.
Some people have made a great deal of money from secret recordings they have made of me that went viral and they were monetised. And I got nothing from it but a bad reputation.
It is a form of theft that destroys the victim.
I want editorial control I want to make sure that recordings of me are recordings of me playing well and entertaining, not selected highlights of me messing up during practice or during rehearsals.
"Oh wasn't that funny ha ha ha give my page more likes everybody and I will show you more musicians messing up".
It is underhanded unreasonable and immoral.
Many is the time I have been told that these pathetic recordings will make me famous, my reply is always, I already am famous go away.
They think that making a very poor recording of me failing in practice sessions will somehow make me anything other than a figure of ridicule.
We professionals need good press and good recordings that honestly reflect our abilities and the quality we deliver to audiences on stage.
In short we need to let people know the quality of what they can expect to hear if they pay to hear us.
We work hard polishing our abilities and our acts until we give close to perfection when and where it counts, and then we discover some sneaky individual has illicitly recorded us on a bad day in a practice session and published those poor and unmusical practice sessions.
It is like supermodels being photographed by paparazzi at the beach when they have no makeup no hair no great outfit and they look comical and pathetic, then these semi abusive images are published globally with evil comments, look at ugly old whatshername pretending to be a model.
They make sales the public gets to laugh over their breakfast paper the TV stations and Tv commentators get an item, then they all move on but the supermodels career is forever harmed.
Supermodels should be in control of what people see of them, their looks are their value, and professional musicians should be in control of what people hear of them, what we sound like is our value, if we are unfairly made to sound bad careers are forever harmed.
If I mess up on stage in a performance then I deserve to be reproached or admonished.
But I dont deserve to be reproached or admonished if I never mess up on stage.
We might put 1000 hours in rehearsals to finally sound great for a 1 hour stage appearance, we should not have to see the worst of that 1000 hours published as a comical feature on the internet page of a pathetic individual who has no life beyond making fun on facebook of people they meet.
People should only see that 1 hour of our polished superb performance that they paid to see and that we are paid for and that is where it counts.
If I am learning a new work to eventually appear in my set, I dont want my mistakes made while learning it to be forever used against me.
Libel is defined as "a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation"
Defamation is "a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury".
We are talking about doing things that are damaging to musicians and that are against the laws of Libel and Defamation, but so far it remains unlitigated and untested in law possibly because it is so very common and so recent.
Many see no harm in it or think it pointless for musicians to object. What harm could it do to smear a musicians reputation, grow a backbone mr musician.
But I see a future where musicians dont practice much for fear of it being used against them, they then employ bouncers who guard them against illicit recordings every moment of the day or they simply give up music and take up painting instead or some other hobby where they aren't so easily ridiculed.
We get gigs because audiences want to hear us, they want to hear us because they believe they will hear something wonderful. If all people hear of me is some amateurish sounding recordings full of errors and wrong notes on the internet made on mobile phones audiences will not pay to see me live.
This is my life this is the world to me. People judge me on what they see and hear.
Am I upset about this, of course I am and you should be too.
These people harm our careers and harm our earning power. And they do it simply for internet likes on facebook and that is unforgiveable.
And they do it in secret so it will cost them nothing and they will get some juicy content for their social media page.
It makes people laugh but humour is always based upon victimising someone.
Let us not be the victim here and see our careers go down the toilet for some idiots social media likes.
We create, we create beauty and make the world a better place.
These people who do this are parasites and destroyers of beauty.
Be aware it is happening and protect yourselves from it if you can, for some it may be too late, this bad press lives forever.