The Filesharing Conspiracy

reply to post by darkelf


It's more about the fact that businesses don't see fans for what they are but for what they can get out of them. Maybe not the artist but the business types in charge of the distrubution.

I used the term rob because its what they claim it to be and I don't want to spend time debating semantics. Fine let's call it that but try to see that it's a reaction to your action.

Originally posted by darkelf
reply to post by daskakik

 

Originally posted by daskakik

I can listen/read/watch your goods and I decide what it's worth. Put a donation button on your site or blog or whatever and I will donate if I think your product is worth it but if you push and try to strong arm me into paying what you want then I will push back and just rob you. It's that simple.

YIKES! I used to know a kid, a few years back, that was a thug. When I asked him why he stole, he told me that it wasn't fair for someone to have something that he couldn't buy. So if he saw something he wanted, he just took it. He died not long after that in some gang violence.

So that is the future of the world? If I don't like the asking price,I'll just take it?

No
The future (and past 2-5000 years) of the world of economics is that if your asking price is considerable more than the marginal costs of production, your business will find less and less customers and eventually die.

Marginal cost of production for a digital recording=0
Ergo price for digital recording will be more or less equal to 0
You can ask 90.000 dollars per second of your great homevideo.
But you wont find many customers.

It amazes me how people are able to look at, say the i-tunes store and not see that it is a whole lot less maintenance and capital and labor using than
- a factory producing records
- Logistics to ship the records to stores
- stores

And you are trying to tell me that that humongous drop in production costs should not affect the price in any way?

reply to post by debunky


It should reduce price. However, it should not make things free. It still takes time and effort to write, record, mix, and put together the art work. The cost is not zero.

You also have to figure in the time it takes to upload the music to Itunes, Rhapsody, and other services. Then you have to monitor it to make sure everything is working properly, plus you have to go through from time to time and check downloads versus money paid to make sure everything is right. If you get a service to do it for you then you have to pay an initial fee and a "maintenance" fee. So it still cost the artist.

$0.99 seems fair for a song to me. I buy cds though because I prefer the sound quality to that of compressed 128Kbs MP3s. I buy them from Amazon usually. Amazon usually charges less than $17.00 a cd and if I buy more than $25.00 worth of stuff they will ship it to me free.

I am willing to pay the extra price for what I want. If you don't want the extra price then you can pay $0.99 and get the song you want. Usually the whole album is only $10 or $12.

If you don't want to do that a lot of places like Rhapsody offer a monthly service with unlimited music for $15 or less. If you dont want to do that you can go to the Internet Archive and download books, movies, music, and more that are in the public domain. Some of these are new productions that the artists are giving away. You can also go to Pandora or Jango and listen to custom radio stations free of charge.

The price has dropped and the amount of free stuff has risen. There is no need, or justification, for the theft of an artist's work.



[edit on 29-6-2010 by MikeNice81]

Originally posted by MikeNice81
reply to post by debunky

 

It should reduce price. However, it should not make things free. It still takes time and effort to write, record, mix, and put together the art work. The cost is not zero.

$0.99 seems fair for a song to me. I buy cds though because I prefer the sound quality to that of compressed 128Kbs MP3s. I buy them from Amazon usually. Amazon usually charges less than $17.00 a cd and if I buy more than $25.00 worth of stuff they will ship it to me free.

I am willing to pay the extra price for what I want. If you don't want the extra price then you can pay $0.99 and get the song you want. Usually the whole album is only $10 or $12.

If you don't want to do that a lot of places like Rhapsody offer a monthly service with unlimited music for $15 or less. If you dont want to do that you can go to the Internet Archive and download books, movies, music, and more that are in the public domain. Some of these are new productions that the artists are giving away. You can also go to Pandora or Jango and listen to custom radio stations free of charge.

The price has dropped and the amount of free stuff has risen. There is no need, or justification, for the theft of an artist's work.

I have pirated all music everything because 17's for a CD is too much thats how many packs of noodles and bread and sandwiches. All radio stations play the same 10 songs and are pre-recorded this and that.

I am using technology to my advantage and if you can't survive in the music industry well, maybe its time to change. We as humans don't need music or entertainment, you think you need it. But you really dont. The media wants you to go to the concert, call in to the radio to request your favorite song, will tell you what jeniffer lopez newsest movie is coming out. I don't care. I could do without it.

I have multiple other sources of entertainment: park, beach, my own pirated music, my dvds that i have bought, books, sex, texting, online, dining out. Just because miley cyrus is supposed to be the hottest thing does not mean I think she is all that, and I don't care if she stopped producing music or any of the songwriters I like stopped producing music because they are not my idols. They are just like any other person out there. They are nothing special to me, never have been, never will be. All they do is provide a mediocre service to entertain my ears while I am at the gym or driving are are not necessary in our life expect be people who want you to think that "omgz its miley cyrus i h@V3 to go s33 h3r!!"

bunch of losers

reply to post by THE_PROFESSIONAL

I am using technology to my advantage and if you can't survive in the music industry well, maybe its time to change. We as humans don't need music or entertainment, you think you need it. But you really dont. The media wants you to go to the concert, call in to the radio to request your favorite song, will tell you what jeniffer lopez newsest movie is coming out. I don't care. I could do without it.

Then why not do without it? Why steal from somebody that is trying to earn a living if you can "do without it?"

They are nothing special to me, never have been, never will be. All they do is provide a mediocre service to entertain my ears while I am at the gym or driving are are not necessary in our life

If music means so little to you and you have so many ways to entertain yourself, why waste time downloading and pirating music? If it is not necessary to have for survival, and you think there is no great quality in it, how is there a justification for stealing it? According to what you typed, you would have a much more fun life if you slid away from the computer and did something else with your time besides stealing music you don't enjoy.





[edit on 29-6-2010 by MikeNice81]

Originally posted by MikeNice81
The price has dropped and the amount of free stuff has risen. There is no need, or justification, for the theft of an artist's work.

You are quite right and many people do this. Could be the reason why the business is loseing.

I just wish that artists would stop sticking up for the bloated middle man which creates nothing and takes from both the artist and the fan.

The internet makes it possible for you to reach out to the fans directly and have then support you directly. Don't have to pump up the price of a CD to $15 or even $10. Most artists get about $1 to $1.50 per CD. A fan would gladly give you $5 if you give away your album for nothing and they liked it. Probably buy other stuff if you make it available.

Would work kinda like this:
Pay what you want fares

Believe it or not it has worked.

Originally posted by MikeNice81
reply to post by debunky

 

It should reduce price. However, it should not make things free. It still takes time and effort to write, record, mix, and put together the art work. The cost is not zero.

You also have to figure in the time it takes to upload the music to Itunes, Rhapsody, and other services. Then you have to monitor it to make sure everything is working properly, plus you have to go through from time to time and check downloads versus money paid to make sure everything is right. If you get a service to do it for you then you have to pay an initial fee and a "maintenance" fee. So it still cost the artist.

$0.99 seems fair for a song to me. I buy cds though because I prefer the sound quality to that of compressed 128Kbs MP3s. I buy them from Amazon usually. Amazon usually charges less than $17.00 a cd and if I buy more than $25.00 worth of stuff they will ship it to me free.

I am willing to pay the extra price for what I want. If you don't want the extra price then you can pay $0.99 and get the song you want. Usually the whole album is only $10 or $12.

If you don't want to do that a lot of places like Rhapsody offer a monthly service with unlimited music for $15 or less. If you dont want to do that you can go to the Internet Archive and download books, movies, music, and more that are in the public domain. Some of these are new productions that the artists are giving away. You can also go to Pandora or Jango and listen to custom radio stations free of charge.

The price has dropped and the amount of free stuff has risen. There is no need, or justification, for the theft of an artist's work.



[edit on 29-6-2010 by MikeNice81]

Yes, but I-tunes has all that overhead cost because they are being stupid.
For example they buy bandwidth to make a point to point transfer of the data. But there is a technology out there that distributes the load among thousands of systems, piggybacking it on the hardly ever used upload that comes with every internet access (Torrent)

Costs for recordings have decreased as well in the past years. A mid-range PC can do today what you had to have a sound engineer & studio for just a few years ago.

So: basecost went down, variable cost is 0. If we add composers and performers wage to base cost the market price for a recorded piece of music would be basecost/# of customers. If we assume that we paid 10.000 dollars for the recording/composing after 1.000.000 customers (not all that many) we would have to charge fractions of a cent. I tunes is nearer to market price and will survive longer (plus they have the i-pod monopoly), but ultimately 99c is about 98.9 cent above marketprice.
Its simple economics.

[edit on 29-6-2010 by debunky]

[edit on 29-6-2010 by debunky]

reply to post by daskakik

I just wish that artists would stop sticking up for the bloated middle man which creates nothing and takes from both the artist and the fan.

The bloated middle man has a staff that spends their time researching new places to market your material. From blogs, to weekly circulars, to international magazines. They spend hours everyday building a datbase of places that might review your work or write a feature on you and increase your exposure. Then they take time to keep it updated. On top of that they are calling these people, writing them, sending them promo material, and trying to get you more exposure.

They have guys that spend all day calling radio station directors and show host making sure they recieved your newest material and trying to convince them to play it. They have to research all of these places so that is more time.

Another part of the label is working looking for opportunities to license your music or image. They then have to do all of the leg work of trying to convince these people to use your stuff instead of somebody else's.

Then there is the guy that makes sure your posters and flyers get out to promote your tour through the western states. He is also calling radio stations and college stations in or near where you will be playing in hopes that they will partner up for some kind of promotion.

There is somebody calling independent record stores to help set up value adds and personal appearances. He is also calling radio stations trying to get you some interview time.

It takes a team of people to do all of this while the artist does things like perform, write music, travel between shows, autograph signings, radio interviews, meet and greets, and so on and so forth.

It isn't as simple as give away your music + gig a lot = a following. The labels really do a lot of work on behalf of artists. Especially inie labels.

I'm not saying that CEOs should make five million a year. I'm saying don't think the middle man is doing nothing.

reply to post by MikeNice81


There you go doing it again. You keep thinking you need them and that they deserve what they take as their cut because they say so? That's the scam on the artist. They have all these people moving and making this thing happen cause they care for you and your art.

You can get your stuff listened to by giving it away. If people like it they will head on over to your site drop a couple of bucks and find out where and when they can check you out.

The best part is that for those tasks that actually need people to actually get done, you could hire people locally and pay them a fair price without paying for the bloated parts of a record company like over paid CEOs, unused space, equipment and/or human resources.

Don't know how much it would cost, in man hours, but it's gotta be less than the 80% to 90% they take on CD sales.

Originally posted by MikeNice81
reply to post by daskakik

 

I just wish that artists would stop sticking up for the bloated middle man which creates nothing and takes from both the artist and the fan.

The bloated middle man has a staff that spends their time researching new places to market your material. From blogs, to weekly circulars, to international magazines. They spend hours everyday building a datbase of places that might review your work or write a feature on you and increase your exposure. Then they take time to keep it updated. On top of that they are calling these people, writing them, sending them promo material, and trying to get you more exposure.

They have guys that spend all day calling radio station directors and show host making sure they recieved your newest material and trying to convince them to play it. They have to research all of these places so that is more time.

Another part of the label is working looking for opportunities to license your music or image. They then have to do all of the leg work of trying to convince these people to use your stuff instead of somebody else's.

Then there is the guy that makes sure your posters and flyers get out to promote your tour through the western states. He is also calling radio stations and college stations in or near where you will be playing in hopes that they will partner up for some kind of promotion.

There is somebody calling independent record stores to help set up value adds and personal appearances. He is also calling radio stations trying to get you some interview time.

It takes a team of people to do all of this while the artist does things like perform, write music, travel between shows, autograph signings, radio interviews, meet and greets, and so on and so forth.

It isn't as simple as give away your music + gig a lot = a following. The labels really do a lot of work on behalf of artists. Especially inie labels.

I'm not saying that CEOs should make five million a year. I'm saying don't think the middle man is doing nothing.

Is that the same research that concluded that radiohead would never be able to appeal to american listeners?
Until napster came along, and proved that Marketing is only necessary if the access cost is prohibitive?

reply to post by debunky

Costs for recordings have decreased as well in the past years. A mid-range PC can do today what you had to have a sound engineer & studio for just a few years ago.

No it can't. It can record information if you have the correct interface. It however can not fix the acoustics in your room. It can not provided access to tens of thousands of dollars worth of the industries best microphones, preamps, and plug ins. It can not provide a technician to make sure every piece of equipment works properly and any piece that breaks is fixed. It can not provide an intern to run buy extra strings or lunch so that you can concentrate fully on what is happening in the studio.

It also can not ensure that your music is properly mixed. Lets face it that is really one of the most important parts. If you have something artistic worth saying it is worth saying so that people understand it. You don't walk around talking with cotton in your mouth. You don't type weird letters and symbols that nobody can recognize. If you say something you want people to completely understand what you are communicating. Why should it be anything less with your "art." Art is supposed to transcend normal communication. So, why hobble it with bad sound quality?

A computer gives you the ability to record something using the interfaces and tools you can afford. A studio and engineer give you the ability to rent more than you could afford yourself and a chance to turn that sound you dreamed of in to a reality.

So: basecost went down, variable cost is 0.

Base cost did go down. However, variable cost has not went down to zero. You still have to have a server at the least to store the information on. You also have all of the overhead that comes with being an artist.

If we assume that we paid 10.000 dollars for the recording/composing after 1.000.000 customers (not all that many) we would have to charge fractions of a cent.

You are seriously over estimating how many customers are buying or downloading albums. I know that Warp records does less than 6,000 units across their whole catalog in a week. So we are talking about less than 312,000 verifiable customers across their entire catalog. If you break that down across the 60 artist on their label that comes out to less than 5,200 albums per band. Of course the number will vary but you get the point. One million people combined buying and pirating is a huge number. It is a gross inflation of the actual market for most artist. That means your model is off by a great magnitude. Then you have to figure in things like promotion, registering your web domain, site hosting, and on and on.

Oh and for ten grand I can get the whole album recorded and mixed (with a grammy award winning engineeer or a multi platinum engineer) plus a video, behind the scenes video, photography, and 6 nights in Nashville. You have to provide your own wardrobe, transportation, make up artist, hard drive for sessions, food and blank cds. If I have to provide any of that it is extra. So that part of your equation was right on the money for a project.

Variable cost is 0
Torrent
9 billion copies cost exactly the same as 3.

reply to post by debunky


Actually no it isn't that kind of research. It is research in to avenues of promotion, which is still necessary.

As I recall Radiohead had a pretty good receprion with Creep which was their first single in the US in 1992. Napster didn't make Radiohead and it didn't prove that marketing and promotion was dead.

I remember when Cage The Elephant's song was used in the commercials for Borderlands. Sells went up something like 20% in a matter of days. The Ink Spots saw a jump in sells when Fall Out 3 came out. Sharon Jones experienced an increase in sells after her album was featured in the movie Baby Momma. Abney Park saw an increse in popularity after being featured on G4. Album sells go up after a positive review in a magazine like Rolling Stone or Filter. All of these things also increase turn out at shows.

Even something as simple as a ticket give away on a radio station can increase show attendance by 10 or 20%.

Promotions, marketing, and advertising are all vital. If it wasn't would Coke be the most popular soft drink? According to taste tests it would be Pepsi. Yet Coke spends billions of dollars to ensure they are number one in people's mind when they buy a soft drink. It pays off year after year.

You have to promote and market otherwise you will just be another voice in the wilderness.

Edit to add a little bit about radio head.

From Wiki

By the time Radiohead began their first North American tour in June 1993, the music video for "Creep" was in heavy rotation on MTV.[10] The song rose to number two on the US modern rock chart, entered the lower reaches of the top 40 pop chart,

[edit on 29-6-2010 by MikeNice81]

Originally posted by debunky
Variable cost is 0
Torrent
9 billion copies cost exactly the same as 3.

The variable cost has to include physical product because not everyone wants a digital file. I refuse to buy 128Kbs MP3s. I want a physical product and I am willing to pay for it. There are still people out there like me. This means that the cost of that product has to be figured in to distribution.

So on a torrent do I get a download with the same speed as with dedicated band with? I haven't tried it. From how it was explained to me it varies depending on the number of people logged in to the network at a given time. So couldn't it be slower if say only 10 people were logged in to an artist's particular area on the iTunes network?

[edit on 29-6-2010 by MikeNice81]

Originally posted by MikeNice81
So on a torrent do I get a download with the same speed as with dedicated band with? I haven't tried it. From how it was explained to me it varies depending on the number of people logged in to the network at a given time. So couldn't it be slower if say only 10 people were logged in to an artist's particular area on the iTunes network?

Torrent is for stuff that is totally free. What this means is that I can have a copy of your album in my shared folder. Someone finds the torrent, which is like an ID for your album. They download it and open it with a torrent client. The program then looks for all those connected to see who has this file and starts downloading.

You don't even have to be connected. If I and others have your album in our shared folder anyone can download it from me and/or any one else connected at the time. That's right we freely share our drive space and bandwidth with you. Isn't that nice of us?

Edit to add - What this means is that you can't control who gets and doesn't get a copy of your file.

[edit on 29-6-2010 by daskakik]

reply to post by daskakik


Then my simple queation is how can somebody use it in the way Debunky said iTunes can use it? If it means that you can not control who is getting then how would they get a price. Would you be paying for a one time decryption tool or a one time use client?

Originally posted by daskakik
reply to post by MikeNice81

 

There you go doing it again. You keep thinking you need them and that they deserve what they take as their cut because they say so? That's the scam on the artist. They have all these people moving and making this thing happen cause they care for you and your art.

You can get your stuff listened to by giving it away. If people like it they will head on over to your site drop a couple of bucks and find out where and when they can check you out.

The best part is that for those tasks that actually need people to actually get done, you could hire people locally and pay them a fair price without paying for the bloated parts of a record company like over paid CEOs, unused space, equipment and/or human resources.

Don't know how much it would cost, in man hours, but it's gotta be less than the 80% to 90% they take on CD sales.

I didn't say that they care for you and your art. At an indie level they usually do. However, when talking about Universal and Sony I know it is different. That seems to be a distinction that most people advocating piracy or giving away music don't understand.

Most smaller labels and small imprints do hire locally and work on a shoe string budget.

What it cost in man hours is the loss of ability to do the other things an artist needs to do. Even a small label like Warp or Yep Roc has at least 8 people working just on promotions, marketing, and licensing. Then they have a couple of acountants to watch and make sure that all the money that is owed is coming in and being distributed. When all of the essential staff is added up it takes about fifteen or twenty people if you count the interns.

I don't defend the large labels taking 80 or 90%. I do however defend the fact that good labels do play an important part in helping artists. They provide a loan of capital to help them get professional production, start their marketing (getting art work, photos, and what not) and get on the road with artists that have a following.

Smaller labels like Yep Roc, Warp, Daptone, and Aligator, all work hard for their artists. Most take less than 80% off of their artists.

Originally posted by rick1
reply to post by StargateSG7

 

I am curious what is your background in music? I read your post twice but I didn't see anywhere you made mention of qualifications that would allow you to make those types of judgements.
Also quantity has no bearing in quality of music. Smarter? Artists are certainly intelligent but have never been accused of being Einstein. More artistic? Come on Dude even you know being artistic is subjective from the buyers point of view.
You may be right or you may be wrong but that is not the point. The point is why would any civilization relinquish their most prized and creative activities to machines? That is a step back not a step forward!

---


So getting back to my original argument with regards to
the financial support of artists in this day and age, I can
offer a pretty good estimation of what the EFFECTS of POWERFUL
software mated to ever more powerful CPU's will be when
that technoloy is NOW ABLE to perform tasks that ENCROACH
and SURPASS human abilities in subjects such as graphics design,
2D & 3D animation & image synthesis, the writing arts such as
novels, scripts & poetry, music composition AND the
humanistic & soulful playback of those compositions,
architecture & product design, cooking, photography
and finally multimedia recognition, categorization,
management and distribution.

In short, the effects will be DEVASTATING because the average
artist is FAR MORE intellectual and soulful than the typical
brain-dead North American/European/Developing World
multimedia CONSUMER who really just wants to sit their widening
derrieres on their soft couch or chair, waiting to be SPOON-FED
whatever corporate media PAP or PULP is both CHEAP or FREE
and QUALITATIVELY GOOD ENOUGH for their simple desires.

And if a machine CAN and WILL give them what they
want and fast enough, then YOU THE ARTISTS are TOAST
when it comes to making a living off it.

Sure.....a few people will see the light and be WILLING to pay
for human-made artistry, but I have to be the CYNIC HERE and
profess that, realistically, the average multimedia consumer
(...and you're NOT average if you're on this site!) is far too stupid
and far too LAZY to even bother looking for and PAYING to get
QUALITY human originated multimedia content. They'll fall back
on the mass machine-produced multimedia content that
will satisfy their most basic urges! It's a sad if not cynical
commentary on our society, but I highly DOUBT that I'm wrong
in my assessment on the future economics of today's art forms.

---

And to answer the question of my musicological
qualifications, I have 30+ YEARS of music experience!

That would be Alto Saxophone and Synthesizer with some
formal training in Musicology and of course my DIPLOMA
from the Cinema, Television, Stage & Radio Arts program
at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT)
specializing in computer graphics with an interest in
Sound Design!

Add in my now 18 years of PROFESSIONAL sound design,
soundtrack composition and video editing/3D animation,
I thus think I might have some say in what is QUALITATIVELY
good sound and MUSIC!

These subjects have helped IMMENSELY in my second career
in neural net design and programming of high-end expert
systems that focus on HIGH-QUALITY, FULLY AUTOMATED
production of multimedia works including, Music, Still Images,
Written Word Poetry and Commercial grade story telling
(i.e. Movie Scripts and Pulp Novels), and of course the BIGGIE
of fully automated 2D & 3D Animation/Video Production/Editing.

And it seems we have reached a milestone of where a Quad-core
Intel/AMD system with 4 to 8 gigabytes of memory can EASILY
create HIGH QUALITY works of art that RIVAL if not EXCEED the
abilities of HUMAN artists!

My current paid-work project is our Midgrid system...

See website for an overview of a small sampling of it's abilities:

www.midgrid.com

which is a grid-processing system DESIGNED to LEARN
and EVOLVE, tackling many subjects from text translation,
context-sensitive searching of audio/video content,
advanced stereoscopic vision recognition and object
recognition/categorization to automated music production
to automated video editing plus 2D & 3D image synthesis.

It's basically the equivalent of a human mind in terms of it's
learning ability and merely lacks the 120,000 Intel Quadcores
I think it needs to match the FULL general executive thinking
power of the human mind.

The version running on my desk, while currently limited
in it's scope because of computer hardware horsepower issues,
has DEMONSTRABLY SHOWN an uncanny ability to at least RIVAL,
if not EXCEED HUMANS in it's abilities to autonomously
create specific categories of QUALITY multimedia content.

So I can quite justify my position in saying that software
and hardware CAN do just as good a job, if not BETTER! than
humans when it comes to creating multimedia content on
a fully autonomous basis.

It's quite a Computer Science acheivement that while sitting
at this desk, that I have multiple processes running on a simple
Quad-core that are SIMULTANEOUSLY rendering synthetic images,
automatically writing my help manuals, autonomously editing a
video together from disparate video files and automatically
searching and categorizing both AUDIO & VIDEO CONTENT!

And the end results will be "Pretty D**n Good Enough" for
commercial and consumer end use.

Comments are definitely welcome!

[edit on 2010/6/29 by StargateSG7]

[edit on 2010/6/29 by StargateSG7]

[edit on 2010/6/29 by StargateSG7]

Originally posted by MikeNice81
Most smaller labels and small imprints do hire locally and work on a shoe string budget.

Right there are different size record labels just like there are different types of downloaders. I'm sure these smaller labels are already using some of the ideas that are in essence self promotion but like you said a band may not have the time or the know how to put them into action and these companies fit that role.

That is the idea. A company that will work with you to get those tasks done and not a big company who signs you and then gets control over your art, what it should sound like, what you should look like and how much it is worth.

Originally posted by MikeNice81
reply to post by debunky

 

Costs for recordings have decreased as well in the past years. A mid-range PC can do today what you had to have a sound engineer & studio for just a few years ago.

No it can't. It can record information if you have the correct interface. It however can not fix the acoustics in your room. It can not provided access to tens of thousands of dollars worth of the industries best microphones, preamps, and plug ins. It can not provide a technician to make sure every piece of equipment works properly and any piece that breaks is fixed. It can not provide an intern to run buy extra strings or lunch so that you can concentrate fully on what is happening in the studio.

It also can not ensure that your music is properly mixed. Lets face it that is really one of the most important parts. If you have something artistic worth saying it is worth saying so that people understand it. You don't walk around talking with cotton in your mouth. You don't type weird letters and symbols that nobody can recognize. If you say something you want people to completely understand what you are communicating. Why should it be anything less with your "art." Art is supposed to transcend normal communication. So, why hobble it with bad sound quality?

A computer gives you the ability to record something using the interfaces and tools you can afford. A studio and engineer give you the ability to rent more than you could afford yourself and a chance to turn that sound you dreamed of in to a reality.

You said:

"No it can't...."

--- WRONG! It can now!

Mix & Master, Fix or Manipulate Acoustics, Synthesize a mic
or pre-amp, warm up a recording and do a number of other
tasks by manipulating bits & bytes....it can even manipulate
the individual phonemes (i.e. words) in the recording
including changing what was said or sung into different
pitches & tempo, vocal styles and even different gender.

ANY environment can be simulated or synthesized
upon ANY computer platform...it's just a matter of
available computing horsepower and time!