Fashion Contrast

Recently a few people have been getting fairly vocal or should I say simply been ‘tweeting’ about the Digital Economy Act which looks be little more than a slightly draconian approach to combating illegal music downloads. A large threat comes in how this law can mean your broadband connection can simply be disconnected if you are as brilliant blog Information is Beautiful suggests a ‘persistent pirate‘

Below is a fairly long and perhaps for some slightly non-understandable graphic to show how artists are being paid in this new coined ‘Digital Marketplace‘. What I can determine is that being a proper artist in this time means you almost need to go back to basics and make your own stuff and as long as possible continue to live to an almost “D-I-Y” style when it comes to recording and publishing your work.

I guess many artists are now seeing the potential rewards that a digital download campaign can bring in as an investment for the future of the band they are in. I say play the system for as long as you possible can.

This image is based on an excellent post at The Cynical Musician called The Paradise That Should Have Been about pitiful digital royalties. As ever, this was incredibly difficult to research. Industry figures are hard to get hold of. Some are even secret. Last.Fm’s royalty and payment system is beyond comprehension. (If you can explain it to me, please get in touch)
Note: these figures do not include publishing royalties (paid to composers of songs). The full spreadsheet of data does though. You can see all the numbers and sources here:http://bit.ly/DigitalRoyalty

For more information visit the original post here

According to research from the University of Warwick and Cardiff University people feel happy with money only when they earn more than their friends, neighbors and colleagues.

The researchers charged with this fairly obvious in conclusion task have said that the findings ‘may explain why economic prosperity over the last 40 years has not even slightly increased overall levels of happiness in the UK. Which I suppose is fairly ‘ground breaking’.

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, examined data on earnings and life satisfaction from seven years of the British Household Panel Survey carried out by the Institute for Social and Economic Research. Comparing individuals’ happiness with others of the same gender, age, level of education, or from the same geographical area, the study found that money only makes people happier if it improves their social rank.

Happiness by the Kilowatt

Lead Researcher Chris Boyce, from Warwick Uni’s Department of Psychology said this:

Earning £1 million a year appears to be not enough to make you happy if you know your friends all earn £2 million a year. Our study found that the ranked position of an individual’s income best predicted general life satisfaction, while the actual amount of income and the average income of others appear to have no significant effect.

A few interesting points where raised on the original article from where some of the context for this post is taken. I think its probably worth listing a few of the points made by the commentators:

• It’s not necessarily about improving social rank, so much as measuring success based on surroundings. For Example a person brought up in inner city, a council house in the suburbs will more then likely be seen as a source of happiness and a sign of success.
• Likewise for a person brought up essentially in money. Moving away from the ‘luxurious’ surroundings they have become accustomed to a similar move (point 1) would signify failure and continue to be a source of unhappiness.
• People need to concentrate on actually living and enjoying life.
• Stop worrying about how much money you are putting into ‘high interest paying savings accounts‘ and live happily and not worry about the almost irrelevant arguments about money which frequent having lots of money!

Article Reference – Independent “Money buys happiness if you’re richer than your friends”

Consumers repaid a record level of unsecured debt during October as they continued to focus on improving their finances in the face of the recession, figures showed today. People reduced their outstanding credit card, loan and overdraft debt by £579 million during the month, the biggest contraction in unsecured lending since Bank of England records began in their current format in 1993.

It was also only the sixth time on record that repayments for consumer credit have outstripped new borrowing.

But on the mortgage side, the number of loans approved for house purchase increased for the 11th consecutive month, rising to 57,345, their highest level since March 2008. The contraction in unsecured credit was driven by strong repayments on loans and overdrafts, with outstanding borrowing through these falling by £713 million during October, the ninth time the figure has been negative during the past 10 months. But credit card lending rose by £134 million in October, nearly double the £78 million rise seen during the previous month.

Well its good news that debt is going down and people are able to put money aside for savings and for the ever harder to get “first time buyer mortgages” . As last months figures showed that people are ‘spending’ in the real way…