Culture, Not Commodity

One of the things that Live! Music Review helped institute in the public perception was the idea that music had more value in its cultural relevance than in financial rewards - financial rewards which were, more often than not, reaped by music industry executives instead of the actual creators. Soon, even the mainstream press was giving bootleggers a sympathetic ear. Music critic and historian, Dave Marsh, probably put it best when interviewed for an article in the Orlando Weekly:

 "That’s precisely the problem," says Marsh. "To the RIAA this stuff is just property, where to the rest of us it’s culture," he says. "Anybody who would reduce Bob Dylan live in Manchester in 1966, or Bruce Springsteen at the Bottom Line in 1975, or various blues and gospel records which for years could not be had in any other way, to the same level as ... Triscuits is a person who ought to be fired summarily if the industry in question has any self-respect. Of course, it hasn’t," he adds. "It has a gaping need for profits and doesn’t know the value of its own commodities. That’s one reason why viewing it as a commodity is a disaster." 

Marsh was responding to this quote from Frank Creighton of the anti-piracy division of the RIAA: "People decide when to release it, how to release it, what price they’re going to release it at, etc., etc. Nobody’s sitting there screaming at the fact that Triscuit has not come out with a new cracker yet -- hasn’t released a sour cream and onion cracker."

https://www.orlandoweekly.com/orlando/getting-the-boots/Content?oid=2265184