Sorry, but this sounds like self-congratulatory rationalization: I steal stuff because I’m a special sensitive snowflake!  I really don’t think people download music for free because they have some magical relationship with the music.  They do it because they can.  If they could download throw pillows for free, they’d do that too.

It’s hard to feel bad about the music industry’s problems because the artists were already getting treated like shit before the Internet came along, and at least now there’s a chance of rebuilding a decent business out of the rubble.  But I don’t think most people care whether artists make any money from it.

There’s also a considerably more simple dynamic at play:

In this confrontational model the consumer is always pretty much always being ripped off by the corporations who, even when they provide a service, make it an ordeal.  (Just read a thread or three about how much of a nightmare the so-called “customer service” or “warranty” experiences can be.)  People deal with paying for a product or service but not getting it, or what it should have been, or what it was promised to be.

Music and movies represent a chance for people to get something for free from this massive machine.  It’s not rational and it’s not necessarily legal or ethical, but it is the one chance that the consumer gets to walk away on the upside of the deal.  And they’re taking it.  Downloading represents not so much as an entertainment industry problem in and of itself but rather a vast number of consumer resentments, and the entertainment industry is the means to the retributive end.

That, and real income has stagnated or dropped for decades, so people have less money.  That too.

I think you are on to something with your point about how personal/collaborative music feels. I can’t think of anything else that evokes such strong memories and associations with different points in my life. There are certain albums that seem perfectly to encapsulate stories about myself and my family, and even moreso mix tapes I have made that tell the story of a particular time in my life better than I could with words. The difficulty comes with the marriage of art and industry. That is a necessary partnership, I think, but one that is still pretty fraught with difficulties on both ends.

While its still very important to me that I acknowledge and compensate the labor of the artist who created that music, it does also feel like a relationship in a way that I hadn’t really thought of until now. Not in a creepy fangirl way, more in the sense that music can start to inhabit you and really feel like it is part of you in a very profound way (I know it’s one of those songs when I listen to it over and over again, until I know every bit of instrumentation and every word, and I play it loud so I can feel it echoing inside my chest). If I am understanding you correctly, what you are suggesting is that a model that acknowledges this feeling of intimacy and involves more direct production/compensation between artist and fan would be more likely to succeed than one with successive layers of middlemen between your money and the person whose work you wish to reward. Yes?

Basically, the capitalist consumer model creates an adversarial relationship between corporations and consumers.

Not necessarily.  But it certainly is the case for any business model within the capitalist consumer context built on controlling intellectual property, the defining characteristic of which is its reproducibility.

Actually take what Cris says and take it to the next level. We as a society do not pay for content.  Content is cheap. We can get books and movies at the library, we can listen to music on the radio, we can get a lend of things from our friends, whatever. We pay for the packaging, the medium that the content comes in if it is convenient and enjoyable enough in its own right.

But in terms of the actual content itself, virtually nobody has any problem with in some way, consuming content without paying for it, be it a public library, a movie rental, a loan of a CD from a friend, whatever. In all those ways, we’re getting the benefit of the content without directly rewarding the creator/publisher.

That’s what big content is up against, and they have no idea about any of this. The message that should be sent by them is one of directly rewarding the creators (and that involves transparency in their business dealings)...a carrot, in other words, rather than a stick.

I’d be a lot more understanding of the RIAA’s position if they didn’t fine people so outrageously for downloading. I mean, that one woman got fined 80k PER SONG. That’s ridiculous. That’s not how much a digital copy of a song is worth, period. I mean, you can buy it legally for less than a dollar.

That’s the first problem with their argument, anyway.

Lol, a brit punk rocker I like tells the audience to buy the pirate version of his stuff, “or you will give money to the c**ts who have me by the balls”.

Um, music piracy makes you pretty much the exact opposite of a special snowflake.

I’d be a lot more understanding of the RIAA’s position if they didn’t fine people so outrageously for downloading. I mean, that one woman got fined 80k PER SONG. That’s ridiculous. That’s not how much a digital copy of a song is worth, period. I mean, you can buy it legally for less than a dollar.

That woman had the option for settling for a few thousand dollars.  She opted not to take the deal.  Also, the fines are determined by federal law, not by the RIAA (although I’m sure the RIAA’s lobbyists had some influence).

People don’t feel the same about music like they do other products—-as Reznor argues, they don’t think of it as product as all.  It’s art.

Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I don’t see most people’s relationship with music that way at all.  Sure, music snobs or people who are avid fans of a band (even if the band doesn’t pass snob muster) might feel that way, but I think most people don’t.  Most people simply want something for nothing and I’ll bet that most downloaded music doesn’t even get listened to.  It just sits on the downloader’s hard drive or iPod.

I download it for convenience. I want to listen to “that song” right now. If there’s a fast cheap way to get it immediately I’ll get it.

Which brings us to Napster and iTunes not having a lot of the good stuff. I once tried to find “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles on Napster and there was nowhere to be found. Who wants to pay for   a lame “Beatles Tribute” band ?

Also, a lot of us know that artists are exploited by their labels. If the pimp doesn’t get it’s share of money I don’t really feel that bad. Why would I care for a greedy record label executive ?

Cris hit the nail on the head above - both music and news have been basically free for so long that when the old business models stop working for the publishers, most people don’t really care a whole lot or even understand the problem. Meanwhile, musicians (creative people that they are) continue making music as they always have, and have been better at figuring out how to make money than the old industry has.

Just as the music side of this is always on Sound Opinions, the news side of this is an oft-recurring theme on another podcast(and public radio show) I listen to, On The Media. Though I think monetizing the news is actually harder than monetizing music.

BTW Amanda, I want to thank you for mentioning Sound Opinions when you listed your favorite podcasts a while back. I’d never heard of it then, and now it’s become an essential. In fact it’s now become my main source of information about new music, since I can rarely stand the radio these days. I’d be happy to hear about any other music podcasts you recommend!

Sorry, but this sounds like self-congratulatory rationalization: I steal stuff because I’m a special sensitive snowflake!

Yeah, no, I did say I paid for music this week.  I’m usually too lazy to steal. But thanks, try again.

“the fines are determined by federal law, not by the RIAA (although I’m sure the RIAA’s lobbyists had some influence). “

Kennedy died on November 22, 2963, (although I’m sure the assassin had some influence).

If I am understanding you correctly, what you are suggesting is that a model that acknowledges this feeling of intimacy and involves more direct production/compensation between artist and fan would be more likely to succeed than one with successive layers of middlemen between your money and the person whose work you wish to reward. Yes?

Not sure.  But experience shows that if that is true, the way to work it is to have multi-level buy-in strategies.  Which is basically how TV and movies operate—-you pay the most for the in-person experience, but some is sent free to you, and some you pay minimal fees for (like Netflix).  I think if people are given levels of buy-in and feel they have some control, they’re more willing to pay.  For instance, I’m often willing to pay $5 more for an album on vinyl than on CD, because of durability.  But perhaps this is mostly because I have options.

“Kennedy died on November 22, 2963”

I did not do a typo for 1963.  My typing merely went into an alternate reality.

I think what pisses me off most about the RIAA and the record companies and so forth is this:
People like that are always preaching the church of capitalism at us.  Always.  And one of the biggest choruses in the capitalist hymnbook is that if you overtax or overcharge then the consumer will find grey and black market options for delivery of the product or service.  Funny how they can’t scream that loud enough when it comes to taxes which pay for hospitals, but hope that we’ll forget it when it comes to their ripoffs.

Downloading isn’t bucking the model, it’s microeconomics 101.

I’d rather have someone download my music from TPB or LimeWire and spend the money they’d spend on the CD or the iTunes on a t-shirt, hat, or a concert ticket.  Hell, listen to the music, visit the site, and click a sponsor’s ad would still be awesome.  I get more money from that stuff than CD sales anyway.  iTunes, however, does make me more money than selling the CD.  I get a decent bit back per track and per album and none of that has to go back into the costs of making more fucking CDs.

“There’s no brand loyalty in the pop music industry; Columbia Records doesn’t have partisans like Ford or Mercedes or Toyota do.”

Definitely true now, but not so true back in the day.  Artists were often closely identified with the label their music was on, especially on specialty labels like Stax.

Of course, the same was true to an even greater extent in the movie biz with the Big Studios.  But now, movies are typically made by people who only use the studios for distribution, or renting studio space for sets, etc., so the old connection between artists and their studios is gone too.

Music is made the same way, in home recording studios or independent recording studios.  The record company gets in on the distribution side, which is what’s directly under attack by the Internet revolution.

If you paid $18 for a Linkin Park CD, how much of it would go to Linkin Park anyway?...

(BTW, while I will admit to coming across downloaded mp3s of some of my favorite music, which somehow ended up on my computers, somehow, I do own scads of physical CDs.  I have given the music industry thousands of dollars over the years.  I have a lot of things to fell guilty about, but downloaded music is pretty far down the list…)

This was tweeted by Warren Ellis earlier today (or retweeted, to be precise:

“cash made by @amandapalmer in one month on Twitter = $19,000; cash made by @amandapalmer from 30,000 record sales = $0”

Downloading music, when done from the artist, on an honest basis, is profitable for everyone (you get music, cheeper than buying CDs and they get paid). Everyone (but the music corporations) wins!

I have nothing intelligent to add to the debate on downloading. Just: vinyl is *more durable* than CDs? Since when? Vinyl scratches if you look at it funny.

Part of the reason I was so very eager to switch to CD format for everything was that vinyl was so easy to scratch.

Maybe it’s a “if you take excellent care of your stuff, your vinyl will last longer than a CD” thing, but if you take crappy care of your stuff, like I do, your CDs will stay in much better condition than your vinyl. I think maybe this is a music aficionado opinion and has nothing to do with how Jane Schmane’s music collection works.

If you paid $18 for a Linkin Park CD, how much of it would go to Linkin Park anyway?…

If you paid $18 for a Linkin Park CD, you’ve got much bigger problems than worrying about how much of that money they’re seeing.

The trademark model doesn’t work anymore. It was passable when the Framers were running about, but it’s toasty now. I once read of a system of funding arts where each citizen received credits for supporting arts of their choice. Artists receiving credits get proportionate funding from the state. Their art is “free” to the citizens. In effect, everyone votes for the music (etc.) they like and the more popular stuff gets its artist directly paid, cutting out most modern middlemen. I’m obviously leaving out tons of details, but the point is we have to radically change the present model, and any new model will be extremely novel in order to work.

Actually take what Cris says and take it to the next level. We as a society do not pay for content.  Content is cheap. We can get books and movies at the library, we can listen to music on the radio, we can get a lend of things from our friends, whatever. We pay for the packaging, the medium that the content comes in if it is convenient and enjoyable enough in its own right.

But in terms of the actual content itself, virtually nobody has any problem with in some way, consuming content without paying for it, be it a public library, a movie rental, a loan of a CD from a friend, whatever. In all those ways, we’re getting the benefit of the content without directly rewarding the creator/publisher.

I think this explains particularly well why so few people think of downloading as theft, including people who would never shoplift the hard copy of an album they’ve downloaded.  It’s easy to see why the physical CD and its packaging are consumer products, and how the jobs of a lot of people in the middle might depend upon their sale.  But the content, as art, seems like the farthest thing possible from a consumer product—even, I’d say, when that content is obviously engineered to move plastic.  Illegal downloading lacks both the sense that one is stealing a consumer product with an obvious monetary value and the visceral sense of risk or wrong that might come with actually avoiding the security cameras.

I’ve known a lot of musicians, some now becoming successful, and have generally heard from them that they don’t care how people get their music, as long as they get it.  What they want is attendance at their shows, where more of the money goes to them, they’re more likely to get new fans and a review, and they can sell their own things—in addition to the obvious enjoyment they get out of performing for a crowd.  In fact, I don’t think I know a single musician personally who does not illegally download music.  They tend to pay for three things: vinyl or other editions whose physical copy has some intrinsic value; shows and the merchandise there; and the recordings of small indie bands whom they want to see succeed.  That’s about all I pay for, too.

Semi-important nit to pick about the description of the corporate model. Maximizing return for shareholders is in most companies a quaint 20th-century notion. It’s about maximizing returns for management with the constraint that you can’t quite piss shareholders off enough so that they fire management—but wih the counter-constraint that management is the shareholders’ primary source of information about how the business is going and what alternative courses of action are available.

This means, for example, that a few manufactured megahits are preferable to many more medium-sellers, because there’s more ego boost in it for the labels’ top managers (and more hookers and blow that can be diverted from the revenues.) Or for the RIAA, a bunch of huge lawsuits (with quotes in major newspapers, travel for meetings with lawyers, and the general appearance of Doing Something) is preferable to trying to convince a bunch of egomaniacs at the labels to do things differently…

What I’m sick of is hearing a single I like and then paying $15 or more for the album with its cover art and everything, only to find out that I don’t like the rest of the album. I don’t know if I’ll like the whole album unless I download it. If it’s an artist I like or a recommendation from someone with similar music taste, I’m willing to spend the money on the physical CD. If I’m unsure of it and trying it out, I’ll either not buy it or listen to it at all, or I’ll download it or have someone burn it for me. With Way #1, the artist gets no money or appreciation of their art, and I get no music. With Way #2, if I like the music, I will drop hella money to go to the live show AND buy a T-shirt.

I do not feel guilty about this system, and I think a large part of it is what Amanda and other people have mentioned: I tend not to think of music as a product (and disdain any music I do see as a product), and I’m used to getting it free on the radio and YouTube.

But Lauren:

With Way #2, where’s the profit for the record label? Think of all those poor guys in their office making distribution deals that keep independents from getting exposure. How can you deny them the lion’s share of music revenues?

CDs are the format of last resort. Vinyl if I expect greatness from an album, digital download from Amazon or iTunes if I just want to be able to listen to the music, and CD if I can’t achieve the music anyway else. Basically, I burn and bury the disc at that point. Especially since most LPs comes with a CD or a slip to download the music in MP3 format from the label’s website, I really like Vinyl because it’s the best of both worlds.

I pirate only when an album is out-of-print or is a special “import” and they want to charge over $30 for it (and even then I can count the number of times I have done this on one hand). Fuck that noise.

I realize that a lot of people have their iPods hooked up to their home stereo systems, but if you don’t have that, or want something that you don’t have to keep synching to your computer whenever you get a new album (or just want to be able to keep the iPod in the car and not have to worry about where it is), you should check out Logitech’s Squeezebox system. We have the Duet and the Boom and it’s awesome. /plug

Jim Infantino (aka dba Jim’s Big Ego) has been giving it away for a long time - and making a living off of it.

Repeat: he’s been giving it away for a long time, making a living from it, and he’s not Radiohead or Trent Reznor.

http://www.jimsbigego.com

I’ll be brutally honest: I steal all of my electronic entertainment.  Music, movies, books, games, TV, you name it.  I haven’t paid for anything in many years.  Why?  Because I don’t have a job (finishing a degree) nor the money to pay for such services.  Therefore, if there didn’t exist means for me to get these things for free, I wouldn’t get them at all.  Is this unethical?  Some people may feel so.  But I don’t really care.  I do what I can.

Dan, GHEoBF, what I meant was that if you liked certain artists, or certain types of music, there were labels that could give you what you wanted. 

Today’s music world is way too fragmented to even develop an association like that…

One thing I don’t understand is why record labels get upset if you download a song THAT IS NOT AVAILABLE IN AMERICA FOR ANY PRICE. I love dance remixes of songs. Many of them are never made available to the US consumer. They might be available overseas or only to DJ’s. Sometimes they are on iTunes in other countries, but we can’t buy songs from iTunes in other places.

So I don’t get why I can’t download a copy of said songs? Since I am not allowed to purchase them legally, and therefore the record labels aren’t going to get money from me anyway, what difference does it make?

And this brings me to another big question. Why can’t all the music on iTunes be available everywhere? For heaven’s sake it’s all on the computer, what possible difference could it make that I’m physically located in the US? Puhleeze, would they friggin get into the 21st century for christs sake?

With Way #2, where’s the profit for the record label? Think of all those poor guys in their office making distribution deals that keep independents from getting exposure. How can you deny them the lion’s share of music revenues?

Haha, exactly. As we saw with the Wall Street bailouts and $250,000/yr not being considered a living wage, some of these corporate suits seem to think they’re owed expensive lifestyles just for being alive. If you, as a record company manager or whatever, help distribute and sell your bands’ albums, then yes, you deserve some money. But you don’t deserve more money than the musicians actually producing the content. And if the musicians can market their own stuff on the Internet and don’t need you, then you don’t deserve any money.

Gotta agree with a lot of the above posters- the major label system is long past the point of relevance.  Big established artists like Radiohead et. al. are better off doing direct digital distribution.  Less prominent artists are still better off putting their music out there for free(ish) and making their money on touring and merch.

That being said, I am a vinyl addict and I regularly spend $200+ a month on new/used records, mainly Japanese punk, including regular orders from Japanese record stores/labels and US distributors that carry that stuff.  Otaku weirdos like me may seem out of the mainstream in that regard, but it’s the same model that lead to the decline of network television and newspapers- specialization.  Just in the same way that the increasing diversity of cable news channels and blogs did in the aforementioned, there will always be an audience for every genre of music, and bands are better off doing it for themselves than signing some bullshit contract with a label that virtually guarantees that the record is nothing more than an advert for the tour.  My band just put out a record, and the deal was this: we paid for the recording, the label paid for the pressing, and we got our band copies (20% of the press).  We will sell the records at our shows for whatever we want, and if we sell out the label will sell us all their unsold copies at cost.  That’s way better for us (the band) than getting points on the record and some bullshit tour support.

Also, and this is a purely personal sentiment, I don’t see why people need to make a living playing music.  Hell, there was a time (before TV, and possibly even radio, of course) when most families gathered on the porch or around the piano to sing and play purely for personal pleasure.  I’ve been playing music off and on for over ten years in various bands and never once did it occur to me that I could or should make a profit off of it.  I have good friends in a band that I virtually guarantee no one on this site has ever heard of that have already toured Europe and Japan in the last 12 months and are currently planning a tour of Brazil.  Granted, they’ve broke even on those tours and everyone has a day job in the band, but I can’t imagine anything better than being able to play to audiences all over the world based totally on your own initiative.

Ironically, if it wasn’t for p2p technologies like napster or tpb, I wouldn’t have discovered songs like Cows with Guns.  Downloading that song actually prompted me to purchase the CDs from the artist’s own website. 

Personally, I prefer getting CDs if possible due to having a physical product as well as getting the highest relative audio quality compared with lossy file formats available for downloaded purchase. 

Now if itunes started offering songs in apple lossless format or .flac at current pricing, I may reconsider. 

Have a fair number of CDs and lossless albums which somehow migrated to my collection from p2b or thanks to the library.

Something that I wish more people would pick up on is the extent to which the “record company” model of business really is over.

Think for a couple seconds about the really big thing that record companies actually do. The big, simple thing—I’m not talking about signing artists, A&R;, putting up money for studio time, or advertising and promotion. All that stuff is just the sauce on the steak. At the heart, record companies were actually in the manufacturing and distribution business. They manufactured a widget that had recorded music on it (LP, 8-track, CD, cassette, whatever), then tried to put that widget into a store where a consumer could buy it. That was the real reason why record companies existed. If you wanted to hear your favorite band’s music, the only way you could do that short of seeing them live was to purchase it on some sort of physical media (and it was far from guaranteed that a copy would be available in your town). In a very real way, record companies were nothing more than the middle man.

What’s happened over the past few years is that the middle man is no longer needed. If you want to hear a band’s music, it no longer has to be pressed onto some sort of physical media. What once required a huge manufacturing and distribution infrastructure can now be done over the internet for free. The service that record companies provided is no longer needed. It really is that simple.

It’s similar, I think, to the problem newspapers are experiencing. For all the talk of the media’s role, the changing media, etc etc, what really makes a newspaper is that they’re the ones with giant fucking printing presses. Seriously, the amount of capital it would have taken to create start-up equal to something like the NYT or the WaPo as they existed a decade or two ago is just staggering—there’s a reason why papers are owned by old families with more money than god.  You could have the greatest writers and reporters in the history of human kind assembled in a room, but without multi-million dollar printing presses in the basement (or money to pay a printer) and a vast distribution network, you don’t have a paper. Or at least you didn’t a few years ago. Nowadays, Amanda could write something and within minutes 50K people could read it. No printing press required. Not to get all geeky, but it’s a hell of a thing.

All the trends seem to point to one thing: that the format of the future is ‘no format’. Sooner or later content, whether music or games, will be available for free or on subscription basis only. Revenue will be earned by other means, such as advertising. Or, in the case of music, the downloaded album will become the promo for the money-making live event.

if it works for BOOKS - a medium that i would like to point out, has a *much* smaller base than music - it *WILL* work for music, if the industry will just STOP being fucking Luddites and get with the new tech. they will get a smaller slice of the pie, sure, but the pie itself will be bigger. it’s just that record execs are too fucking STUPID to understand this.

Not necessarily.  There’s a distinct difference between a downloaded text and the physical artifact of the book; reading it online may well prompt a desire to have it in hardcopy.  However, the downloaded MP3 is, essentially, the item itself.  You may well buy the CD for extras such as the packaging, but the meat of the matter - the important stuff - is in digital format, now in your computer or your MP3 player.

This was a very interesting read, post and comments both, but as a working musician, a little frustrating. Almost every discussion I see deals with the industry and the consumer, mostly leaving the artist out of it, except for those few who have somehow increased their income by giving stuff away or holding bake sales at their shows. Almost all of the substantial sources of money for most musicians (not talking about Radiohead here) have dried up over the past 10 years. There is no such thing as a money-making live event (or, god forbid, tour) for most working musicians - even good ones. T-shirts, hats and other swag cost money to produce, and yield tiny profits if any (at best, they’re a good marketing tool). Music is a lot of work and expense to write, arrange and record, and can be downloaded for free - - a percentage of people will pay to download or buy vinyl, but I don’t think this honor system will hold once the last generation of people who grew up having to pay for music is gone. Even television shows aren’t paying royalties for using original songs anymore.

This intense, personal relationship with music that everyone feels is now funded almost entirely by the artists producing the music. At least when the music industry was in its heyday, there was some hope of reaching a point of success where you could actually make a living as an artist (Radiohead and NIN had the benefit of the industry starting out, and I doubt they’d be doing so well now if they hadn’t).

I’m not a fan of the recording industry, especially from the homogenized pop 90s on forward, but I also don’t think $12 is that much money for a recording, considering the work that goes into producing it. Most people blow 2 or 3 times that much on drinks at a bar without thinking twice about it, and I think most people would probably place a higher personal value on their favorite music than on 2 vodka tonics. This is what’s happening with arts across the board, however, unless you are a brilliant marketer and can use your art to sell widgets. The sucky part of that is that a lot of great artists are not great marketers, and a lot of bad, boring artists are (just so its clear I’m not grandstanding, I am a good marketer, and probably have more success than I deserve).

I’m really curious to know where people see this going. Live shows, tours and swag don’t make money unless you’re Trent Reznor, and vinyl is expensive to produce. I’m not attacking people for file sharing - - that genie is already out of the bottle - - but somehow, money is going to have to get to artists, or art will become nothing but a hobby.

I’m finding more and more that being a professional musician is a lot like being a woman. You’re expected to do a lot of hard work for free, which, while vitally important to the people who benefit, will be consumed and taken for granted, and you are never, never, never supposed to complain.

The last thing I want to say is that my main worry is not how things are now, but how they will be 10 years down the road. I think that the financial success of artists like Reznor and Radiohead in the current climate is largely built on the decaying ruins of the former, better-funded structure that they grew out of (the Industry, the pre-file-sharing system of music sales, old school copyright protections, etc.). With the ever-expanding definition of creative commons and 2 or 3 generations of adults who think recordings should be free and live performances either cheap or free, I think we’ll be in trouble.

Anyhow - - thanks for an interesting post, Amanda. I’m a long-time lurker on Pandagon and enjoy your work!

Well there’s one more thing.

Music downloading isn’t really a replacement for CD sales. That’s not how it’s seen, and it’s why people don’t see it as stealing. It’s a replacement for radio. The MP3 culture is a way for people to “program” their own personal radio station. If you look at how people actually use their MP3s, it’s not to listen to whole albums, they put it on shuffle and mix up all the artists and songs, even randomly. But it’s their choice on what they have on the playlist.

Personally, I’m of the opinion that music downloading is killing the radio stations, and it’s the rise in sales of other culture formats such as movies and video games that are driving CD sales down.

I think it was Cory Doctorow who proposed a blanket license system for P2P downloads, similar to the one that exists for radio play: the site owners pay ASCAP or whoever based on their traffic, a random but representative sampling is taken of what is being downloaded, and the artists/copyright holders* are paid based on the number of times their work is downloaded. 

Artists get paid, The Pirate Bay stays in business, the consumer doesn’t have to pay unless they want to…the record companies are still screwed, though.

*The songwriter, not the performer.  Kids, ALWAYS insist on the writing credit.

For me, it comes down to the lack of a physical object being stolen.  Not because I don’t recognize the existence of IP, but because my stealing a given ‘unit’ of electronic media doesn’t deprive another person of the ability to purchase that same unit, unlike if I were to steal a TV.  This is different in my view from stealing IP and reselling/retransmitting it in that it’s as if I functionally don’t exist in the sense that if I were to disappear, nothing would change from the perspective of content producers. 

That said, if I had money to spare, I would definitely hook it up (as I did when I was a kid, but right now I can barely pay my rent)  Not because I recognize what I’m doing as ‘wrong’ - otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it - but because I appreciate the talents of these people and want to help them out as much as I can.

Good article. I think another reason people download for free is they feel they’re being scammed by having to buy a whole album when all they really want is maybe one or two songs off it. I’ve done this multiple times, including (speaking of NIN) buying several CD’s just to find a single song (“Wish”).

iTunes helps a lot in this category. The artist gets paid, and the customer only has to pay for the songs they want at a buck a pop, as opposed to paying up to $15 for a whole CD.

PS as an alternative to “free” downloads, you can often locate a favorite song on YouTube along with the accompanying video. Here, for example, is the aforementioned “Wish”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68KxXeeHXHk&NR=1

Just as a quick aside, Nine Inch Nails played their last show at Bonnaroo 2009.  Reznor said that the band was going to become defunct and didn’t mention anything about any future projects, he just said that NIN would no longer be playing live shows or releasing any music.  It was an incredible set, though.  I think loudest of the whole festival and luckily in songs where he was a bit too whiny for my tastes he opted to show off his new scream-o voice.

exholt—totally. i owe my music snobbery (read: excellent taste) almost entirely to being in college in a dorm room with a T1 connection in the heyday of napster.  i came from nowhere, tx.  i have no older siblings.  i had exactly zero access to anything that wasn’t played on mtv or commercial radio until the internets.

You were lucky to have had college T1 access when napster existed.  Unfortunately, napster came out around the time I graduated so I had to content myself with downloading my tunes off of a 33.6 k dialup modem for the first few years. 

As for discovering music…didn’t have the money or the inclination to get into music beyond occasionally listening to classmates stereo systems/radio until college.  P2p was great for discovering non-mainstream US artists and international music which was hard to impossible to find in the US. 

You may well buy the CD for extras such as the packaging, but the meat of the matter - the important stuff - is in digital format, now in your computer or your MP3 player.

If you’re talking lossy formats like mp3, aac, or ogg….that means you’re really settling for a downgraded version of what’s on the CD in terms of audio quality….especially if they were encoded at below the equivalent of an mp3 at 256 Kbps 44 khz.  If you’re actually paying for a lossy digital file like Amazon or Itunes digital downloads…..the prices they are charging are a ripoff as those files ARE NOT equivalent, but downgraded compared to CD audio quality. 

Would agree, however, if you’re talking about lossless formats like .flac, Apple lossless, .ape, etc.

I have nothing intelligent to add to the debate on downloading. Just: vinyl is *more durable* than CDs? Since when? Vinyl scratches if you look at it funny.

Yeah, I did a double-take on that too.  Not only because vinyl scratches easily, but also because records go through more direct wear each time they are played because of the needle sitting in the groove….unless you’re wealthy enough to own a $1500+ record player I saw a while back which plays records using a laser to read the grooves like your average CD player. 

CDs on the other hand have extremely little wear and tear from heavy use…..and the vast majority of that is handling and placement into player/CD case by users….not the actual playing of the CD itself…

CDs do scratch due to user handling issues…..one reason why I treat my storebought CDs as an archive and do most of the playing/lending off of spares burned onto cheap CD-Rs.

You do have to take care of vinyl, but with a properly maintained turntable, the needle doesn’t actually damage the vinyl.

There is so much copy protection on CDs that are put out nowadays that my CD player—which mind you is not *that* old (less than ten years, I believe) and doesn’t have any copying capabilities—can’t play half the new CDs I buy. I took very good care of my CDs and when I went to re-rip them at a higher bitrate, many of my older CDs had bad sectors and weird skips in the track. Not a scratch to be seen on the disc—just the media degraded over time. I was able to put on one of my mom’s old “Hello Dolly” record on the turntable and it played just fine because she took care of that record. The Peter Gunn soundtrack is around 50 years old and it still plays great.

But more than that, vinyl is literally a sound wave, recorded. It’s uninterrupted, there are no “sectors” to be read, it’s not creating a picture of sound from a bunch of little pictures of sound, it’s just a sound itself that is amplified, which is pretty cool.

Also, a lot of us know that artists are exploited by their labels. If the pimp doesn’t get it’s share of money I don’t really feel that bad. Why would I care for a greedy record label executive ?

Renmiri on 06/23 at 07:15 PM

Because, you pompous, self-rationalizing tool, you’re ripping off the song writers and the artists as well.  Not only do you not have clue about the industry, you don’t even know all the people you’re ripping off…

I’ll second (or fifth) the radio thing. That’s why people think it’s normal for music to be given away for free, because radio stations do it all the time.

I wonder how big a band has to be before they can make a living touring? Do you literally have to be Trent Reznor, or is it enough to be a sorta well-known band like Superchunk, or someone at that level?

There is so much copy protection on CDs that are put out nowadays that my CD player—which mind you is not *that* old (less than ten years, I believe) and doesn’t have any copying capabilities—can’t play half the new CDs I buy. I took very good care of my CDs and when I went to re-rip them at a higher bitrate, many of my older CDs had bad sectors and weird skips in the track. Not a scratch to be seen on the disc—just the media degraded over time. I was able to put on one of my mom’s old “Hello Dolly” record on the turntable and it played just fine because she took care of that record. The Peter Gunn soundtrack is around 50 years old and it still plays great.

Haven’t encountered too many “copy protected” CDs which couldn’t be ripped using exactaudiocopy ripper software on a standard PC with most decent quality CD/DVD drives.  Not only does this ripper ensure accurate rips, even with some surface damage provided your drives are decent*, it also comes with various compression codecs for both lossy(LAME mp3 encoder) and lossless (flac) formats. 

Out of curiosity, what albums have you been buying with the copy-protection?

* Am using drives in old PCs up to 10+ years old either dumped on me or found abandoned on the street.

Because, you pompous, self-rationalizing tool, you’re ripping off the song writers and the artists as well.  Not only do you not have clue about the industry, you don’t even know all the people you’re ripping off…

From what I heard from several friends who actually work as musicians who signed/considered signing with the big 5 record labels…..the vast chunk of that CD price goes to the record label. 

The share of a $15-$20 which goes to the artist ranges from a low of 10 cents to a high of $2 per CD…..and the latter is only attainable assuming you’re a bigname like Madonna. 

This is also assuming you sell a ridiculously high minimum number of CDs stipulated in the contract so you don’t end up owing the record label money…..a clause which ends up biting most bands/artists who start out or who have not reached Madonna levels of superstardom.  A reason why the theme of exploitation in the music industry is so strong with record labels…especially the Big 5.

Exholt you’re misunderstanding or missing the point. I don’t have any problem ripping CDs. The copy protection on newer CDs is making my COMPONENT CD PLAYER that is IN NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM USED FOR COPYING not read new discs. For example, I can’t play “Uh Huh Her” by PJ Harvey (I got White Chalk on vinyl). “Choir Invisible” by The Deaths is not readable. This is a Component CD player. That’s all it does. It is not a copier, it’s not the CD drive in my computer, it reads CDs and there’s a couple of RCA jacks in the back that I hooked into my receiver. It can’t read the fucking discs because they’ve been monkeying around so much with copy protection that it doesn’t know how to get the track listing. There are a few others, but frankly I just ripped them to MP3 on my computer (which ironically, CDex has no problem reading anything), and I listen to the CDs over Squeezebox. But it seems like utter bullshit that you can’t even guarantee that a CD that you purchased legally will play on your relatively new CD player when you have no problems whatsoever with older CDs because they don’t have any Copy Protection. When I buy an LP, I know it will play on my record player.

But it seems like utter bullshit that you can’t even guarantee that a CD that you purchased legally will play on your relatively new CD player when you have no problems whatsoever with older CDs because they don’t have any Copy Protection.

You get no argument from me here. 

This is what happens when corporate execs who are adamant on sticking with a long obsolete business model insists on placing constraining impediments in consumer products in a vain attempt to control and maintain it.  Though many have used the term “dinosaur” to describe their mentality…I think equating them with record corporate execs is a grave insult to the dinosaurs…..

Renmiri’s pimp analogy interests me because it’s used so often, and it’s not a match. The John (the consumer) may be screwing the pimp (the record industry) out of his cut, but he’s not paying the whore (the musician) even the pittance that the pimp did - - which, in the end, makes the John worse than the pimp.

Cris - thanks for the commiseration! I didn’t mean to imply there’s no value in a music hobby. I have a dance hobby, and I really enjoy it…but I don’t equate my dancing with Fred Astaire’s, and the idea of a world where people with a real talent for dance can’t afford to make a career of it really depresses me.

Also, singing fishermen aside, for most of recorded human history there has been living wage or equivalent (barter - room and board) work available for professional musicians, whether through the church or the monarchy, vaudeville, radio, steady piano bar gigs, big bands in night clubs and later, recording, studio work, etc. Even in your hypothetical fisherman’s community, Fisherman Bob’s beautiful voice or song writing ability would afford him respect and support. He would sing at Goody Wickham’s funeral and, when he found himself in need, Goody Wickham’s family (and the rest of the community who relied on his skill to sanctify various occasions) would not let him starve. I’m not arguing that there has ever been much money in music, but it has traditionally been enough for many musicians to scrape by on, and by and large that’s no longer true.

I loathe what the music industry has done to friends of mine and to some of my favorite artists (poor Van Morrison - - god); but I can’t really muster any outrage on behalf of the people who are getting sued right now.

Katie, I don’t have any sympathy for the people getting sued right now either, but by your own admission there is a point in the future, when not even the percentage of people who feel they should pay for music now will do so any more. We will pass through the singularity and we will pay for our music some other way- perhaps the way suggested by paying for a ‘blanket licence’ when you get an internet connection- perhaps some other tech system we can’t imagine. When that day comes, and it will come in our lifetime, we will look back on this period and wonder what the hell we were thinking, how we quite literally destroyed this woman’s entire life because she transferred some bits and bytes from one computer to another, something pretty much every other westerner her age has done and will continue to do- forever. Yes, it’s against the law, for now. So was alcohol, so was dating outside your own race- we now look back on prohibition and antimicegenation laws as MISTAKES, terrible mistakes. So put yourself in that future position and say: Is this doing anything? Helping anyone? Is it going to change anything? You can argue that information shouldn’t be free, but that doesn’t change the fact on the ground that IT IS, and that is a good thing. Every new media form kills an industry that thrived off the old media form it supplants. Radio killed music hall. I don’t think we should have outlawed radio to prevent music hall musicians from having to find a new job.

As long as there are humans, there will be music. If it stops being an ‘industry’, that’s not an intrinsically bad thing for society, even if it hurts you personally. It doesn’t hurt you as much as this lawsuit has hurt this woman, for something that won’t even be a crime in the future.

I can’t really muster any outrage on behalf of the people who are getting sued right now.

Then, in effect, you’re condoning the RIAA’s installation of Trojan-like software on other people’s PCs, random legal fishing expeditions, disproportionate damage demands*, and the use of coercive legal threats against those they accuse of “stealing music”......even when there have been cases where they’ve sued people who never downloaded the music in question because their methods of finding downloaders is spotty in places. 

In at least one case I know of….they’ve even sent lawsuit threats against those who’ve never even owned a computer with which to “steal music”. 

* Whether it is mandated by law is moot as RIAA/MPAA lobbyists had a key role in shaping regulations in this area.

things change and the trend is for fewer and fewer people to be willing to pay for content (especially content as it is provided with such strict limitations that impair USING that content on as many platforms as the consumer has available), this will eventually require a change in the law in order to be relevant at all.

Placing constraining barriers on music fans’ usage of purchased music in vain attempt to preserve obsolete business model, wildly suing music fans or potential fans right and left, long history of treating music fans as a cash cow to be milked to death, failing to adequately deliver on music and mediums music fans actually want in a timely manner, rampant exploitative practices of both artists and music fans by the music industry, overly dependence on the state to maintain and further its obsolete business model(IP laws and regulations) while treating and attempting to extend what was supposed to be LIMITED AND TEMPORARY granted monopolies into effective long-term state-sanctioned sinecures…...and the music industry and their apologists wonder why most music fans aren’t too willing to sympathize with the music industry’s “plight”. 

laws only have meaning to the extent that they have the endorsement of at least a majority of the governed.  intellectual property laws aren’t somehow exempt from this.

What the music industry and many Americans have forgotten was that IP laws were never meant to provide effective long-term state-sanctioned sinecures as they currently are in practice….but to provide a temporary limited monopoly using state-sanctioned protection known as IP laws to encourage creative and inventive works which after the expiration of that monopoly would enter the public domain to be used and enjoyed by society at large. 

Funny how the second part of this bargain between the artist/inventor/IP-based business and the US state/society has effectively been ignored and forgotten….especially over the last few decades…..

isn’t that where the MP3 player comes into being? like, you can download for free music to listen to on the computer, but you have to *pay* for a format that can play on a portable system?

Can you explain what you mean here?

Since most downloaded music, whether legal or otherwise, comes in mp3 format, why would anyone need to pay for a format playable on a portable system when all the ones on the market that I know of can already play mp3s without any issues. 

Many can also play music in other freely accessible file formats like ogg and flac.

exholt:<blockquote>From what I heard from several friends who actually work as musicians who signed/considered signing with the big 5 record labels…..the vast chunk of that CD price goes to the record label.

The share of a $15-$20 which goes to the artist ranges from a low of 10 cents to a high of $2 per CD…..and the latter is only attainable assuming you’re a bigname like Madonna.

This is also assuming you sell a ridiculously high minimum number of CDs stipulated in the contract so you don’t end up owing the record label money…..a clause which ends up biting most bands/artists who start out or who have not reached Madonna levels of superstardom.  A reason why the theme of exploitation in the music industry is so strong with record labels…especially the Big 5. </blockquote.

So if you download illegally, that will help the artists.  Because the minimum number of CDs won’t be reached and the band will end up owing the record label money.  Thanks, exholt!

Or if the band makes their own CDs (this isn’t that unusual these days), they won’t have gotten anything from you in return for their work and financial investment.  They just keep making music and you just keep taking it without paying anything for it.

But hey, they can go on tour, right?  They can easily take six months to a year off their day gig, during a recession, because no one who’s a musician should be living off being a musician anyway, right?  And do all the booking and publicity themselves.  And hope that they don’t get cancelled or get fucked out of getting paid.  And get a buttload of hats and t-shirts and stuff made with the money they don’t make with their musical careers and drag them around and hope they can sell them and they don’t get lost or damaged or stolen. 

No one who’s a musician has any health issues, children, family, friends who need them around.  No one who writes music has music they can’t just go out and tour on, all music is tour-able, if it takes three orchestras and an elephant to make those noises, you better be prepared to shovel some peanuts. 

If I write amazing music but don’t perform very well, screw me because I can’t tour.  If the artists who record my tunes sell only 1,000 units instead of 2,000 units, so what?  I should just be glad my music is out there making people happy.

So if you download illegally, that will help the artists.  Because the minimum number of CDs won’t be reached and the band will end up owing the record label money.  Thanks, exholt!

Oldfeminist,

I see you’ve drunk the RIAA kool-aid and thus…assume anyone who has been accused of downloading must have done it….despite documented cases that they’ve been wildly accusing people right and left…even those who were discovered to not even have computers….much less internet connections to download music. 

I also see you missed the part where I mentioned that if it wasn’t for p2p apps like napster…I wouldn’t have discovered independent and international artists from whom I directly purchased CDs as a result. 

In light of the great power disparity between the music industry and the people being sued/threatened with a suit….I cannot feel sorry for a bunch of corporate hacks who feel entitled to use our society’s legal system to maintain their obsolescent business model so they can guarantee themselves lifetime state sanctioned sinecures…..something the drafters of original IP laws never intended…...

From what you’ve written above, your knowledge of the issues of “music downloading” and IP laws seems to be limited to whatever the RIAA and other corporate lobbyists who’d love to rewrite IP laws so that copyrights and trademarks are unlimited by time expiration and thus….they’d never have to abide by the second part of the IP bargain with society…..after a limited period of time…the IP protected work goes into public domain so it can be used and enjoyed by the rest of society without restrictions.

Argh….meant to say:

From what you’ve written above, your knowledge of the issues of “music downloading” and IP laws seem to be limited to whatever the RIAA and other corporate lobbyists want.  Keep in mind they’d love to rewrite IP laws so that copyrights and trademarks are unlimited by time expiration and thus….they’d never have to abide by the second part of the IP bargain with society…..after a limited period of time…the IP protected work goes into public domain so it can be used and enjoyed by the rest of society without restrictions.

Not only is this a misuse of our society’s legal resources as it is not our job to subsidize a failing obsolescent business model of corporate execs who seem to not only ignore what music fans actually want in terms of product and product delivery mediums, but go out of their way to antagonize them by treating them like criminals…....it is HORRID PUBLIC POLICY….especially in a democratically-based society where free exchange of ideas and information unimpeded by corporate controls is critical for its maintenance and well-being.

exholt:  “I see you’ve drunk the RIAA kool-aid and thus…assume anyone who has been accused of downloading must have done it”

Are you high?

I said nothing at all about the woman who was fined heavily for downloading.  Nothing at all.  I also didn’t endorse expanding IP rights.  You seem to be fighting several straw oldfeminists at once. 

“I also see you missed the part where I mentioned that if it wasn’t for p2p apps like napster…I wouldn’t have discovered independent and international artists from whom I directly purchased CDs as a result. “

Good for you.  Do you do that for all the music you download and keep?  Buy CDs of what you downloaded?  Or just of stuff you can’t find online shared for you for free against the wishes of the rights holders?

“From what you’ve written above, your knowledge of the issues of “music downloading” and IP laws seem to be limited to whatever the RIAA and other corporate lobbyists want.”

Sigh.

I’m married to a recording artist and songwriter.  We produce and sell CDs of his group.  We pay for the recording, mixing and post-production, the physical CDs, the rights for the tunes he didn’t write, the publicity, and the performances of the people on the recordings. 

So my perspective is of a small rights holder who is in the business.

Not every CD you don’t buy would have enriched a big corporate entity.  Some would have paid our bills, or the bills of other musicians who are scraping by, or at least paid for a part of that last recording session.

And yes, most of his money is from performing, and no, he doesn’t usually get upset when people share his music.  Though the guy who asked him for a copy of the CD for free so he could rip it and copy it and then hand it out to a bunch of mutual friends was seriously testing his good nature.  There’s free music on his website.

I wish there could be a little give and take on the subject from you.  Instead I keep hearing this constant “if you pay for music you’re not paying musicians you’re just duped by the RIAA” bullshit.  That’s only partly true even in the big corporate world.  In our case, it really does feed the musician.  The only people benefiting are the people who were involved with the music itself, except perhaps for non-writer transferred rights holders via the Harry Fox Agency.

Hi oldfeminist,

Very heartening to hear from someone else coming at this from the pro musician perspective. When I wrote before that I can’t muster much outrage for the people being sued right now, it’s not because I think the tactics of the RIAA are perfectly fair, or that I don’t think it’s wrong for innocent people to be accused - - It just bothers me that this situation merits bulging outrage, but the plight of musicians, who are being expected to single-handedly finance this brave new world of free music generally meets with a shrug and ‘too bad - go get a real job.’

Going back to people’s comments about the tendency of new technology to displace people and eliminate entire professions or cultural norms, it is true. That happens - lamentable, but unavoidable. Computer design comes in and suddenly skilled hand drafters and paste-up people are no longer needed. Recording comes around, and the piano bar becomes a thing of the past. What’s different about this situation is that demand for music has not waned - - it has actually increased - and the performers who were previously scraping some kind of living making music have not become obsolete or been supplanted by something better - they’re just expected to continue doing what they’ve always done, only without compensation. This is not like cinema killing vaudeville - this is more like American corporations moving overseas, so they can stop paying a living wage.

The eternal and universal humanity of music aside, most people don’t want to download amateur recordings - they want the good stuff that someone with talent and skill carefully thought out, arranged, produced and recorded. ‘Chocolate Rain’ or ‘What, What’ are entertaining, but they’re not what you put on your iPod and listen to over and over on repeat to help you get through a day of tedious data entry, or when you have a bad breakup or your brother dies or you want to think about someone you’ve just fallen in love with. They’re not, generally, what you remember or associate with important moments in your life or use to help you get through tragedy. Those good, professional recordings that everyone downloads by the hundreds and thousands represent hours and hours of hard work, thousands of dollars of (usually) the artist’s money, and, most importantly, good ideas you probably couldn’t have come up with yourself.

All I’m trying to say here is that the people who are doing all the work to support the free exchange of creative material should be compensated in some way, so the free exchange can continue without completely burning the artists out. I’m not even suggesting we should go back to the way things were - a new way would be fine. I actually think licensing unlimited downloads would be a great idea, if it didn’t just end up being another equation where higher-ups get all the money and the musician is, again, screwed (which is what I anticipate will happen). Beefing up funding for the NEA and making grants available to bands and songwriters as well as arts orgs would be a terrific first step, and probably the most logical one, if the analogy is going to hold (local funders in my city have already started doing this). If art, music, journalism, writing have all become something that people expect to be able to consume in vast quantities without directly compensating the people who made them, then maybe they should be funded the way that highways and public parks (and arts organizations) are.

Good for you.  Do you do that for all the music you download and keep?  Buy CDs of what you downloaded?  Or just of stuff you can’t find online shared for you for free against the wishes of the rights holders?

I wish there could be a little give and take on the subject from you.

Oldfeminist,

Funny you ask me for a little give and take after you pulled exactly the same stunt the RIAA has been pulling with music fans at large for years….assume guilt and cast the most negative aspersions on those who don’t agree…...

Sorry….but if it walks like a duck and quack likes a duck…...

when the music/napster/pirating/etc stuff started, i didn’t understand *why* it started, because it seemed so obvious to me what the problem was - music listen on the computer is not at all the same as music listened to on a stereo. computer listening should be the equivilent to radio listening.

Denelian,

I now understand where you are coming from as someone who started college just as the internet became introduced to the public.  What effectively happened by the mid-late ‘90s, however, was that mp3 became the default file format for music distribution/downloading because it was perceived by most to have the right balance between optimal compression while maintaining acceptable level of sound quality. 

The latter may sound odd (no pun intended) as unless the mp3s are encoded at least at 192 Kbps 44 khz or better…at 256 Kbps with a decent encoder like LAME, a lot of the mp3s online actually sounded at best like Stereo FM radio….and sometimes crappier than that if one had a halfway decent soundcard or played it on a decent stereo system. 

Then again, the combination of convenience, low/no cost, and the fact the vast majority of computer owners had low-end computer systems with marginal soundcards and speakers meant that even the crappy mp3s were just “good enough”.

To this day, the most common file format in use on computers and media players happen to be the mp3 format which means that one can easily fill that player with mp3s created from one’s CD collection and/or downloaded legally or otherwise off the internet.  A reason why I did a double-take on your previous comment as there is no real separate “computer only” audio file format.  Mp3 works on both computers and every media player I know of.

In my mind, mp3s are a better quality equivalent of ye olde audiocassettes.  Good enough for most people though I’d rather get my music on CDs or failing that….lossless audio file formats like flac, ape, or apple lossless. 

Unfortunately, there are no online musical outlets which sell music in such formats.  The day Apple’s Itunes store does is the day I go online to purchase some international music albums…especially since I have 2 Itunes gift cards I have yet to use up.

I agree with Katie, musical content should be paid for like radio- every ISP should charge a small tax on all internet users, and that money should be funnelled to artists on a pay-for-play basis. It wouldn’t be possible to capture every play, but, like television, the representative sample should be enough to show a fair play.

It would take a while for a system like this to come into play, but it could definitely be a solution.