I'm on record on some online forums as being PRO file sharing.
Yes. I support and engage in downloads of music that I didn't pay for.
I pay for a lot of music - A LOT. I get a lot for free too. Me and millions of other people.
Personally, most of the music I've obtained for free is music that I had zero intention of buying in the first place.
Once "owning" the music I've found very little of it has been good enough to justify paying for.
Likewise - I've PAID for loads of music and later felt disappointed with my purchase. We've been living in a world where the former is considered theft and the latter is "accepted business" practice.
Not any longer.
Steve Lawson points to Bassist Gary Willis' Blog where Gary takes the indie musician's position on what he calls "unpaid downloads". He's opposed to it.
That's fine. He's also smart enough to acknowledge that his rant will probably have little impact on the practice. Ranting against downloading music has been the music industry's PLAN A for almost 10 years now. As Dr. Phil might ask - how's that working out for ya?
That's why I'm not opposed to file sharing. It's not going away. The genie is not going back in the bottle & there's no return to the good old days. I certainly don't need another wall to bang my head against.
When you look back - it's pretty clear that once music went digital it was game over for the business of selling enough copies to earn a living. The only variable was time. How long would it take for the system to crumble?
As far as I'm concerned the industry cheated the odds for a really long time. The industry got nearly 20 years of income out of the totally un-protected EASILY duplicated CD format. That was long enough to earn record amounts of cash on new music AND re-sell their ENTIRE back catalog to boot.
They even killed off the DAT machine as a viable consumer product to stave off the inevitable just a little bit longer.
It was such a good business.
But - it's coming to an end. Let's mourn it's passing, and even lament it as "the good old days' - but let's not kid ourselves into thinking it's the only way it SHOULD or COULD be. At least not to the point it blind us into thinking our mission now is trying to save the old system by any means we can imagine.
The present music business was built up on the idea of selling copies of songs. Technology has now made "copies" of songs practically worthless. Fight this and you will create hell for yourself.
I know. It's painful. Particularly if you grew up vested in the idea that musicians make their money by selling copies of songs. Particularly if you yourself used to, or ARE making your money selling copies of your songs.
In fact - you might think that musicians are ENTITLED to earn a living by selling copies of songs.
We aren't. That notion was developed during a time when the idea actually worked.
Guess what?
I know - that was never supposed to change. Or if it did - it was supposed to be gracefully and painlessly replaced by a newer better way to sell copies of songs.
Disruption sucks. It totally fucks with entitlement. Get used to it.
The mistake being made by many in my view is in equating the value of the music - with the costs ADDED to the music by a form of distribution.
That old form of distribution - built on controlling the manner of how COPIES are made available contributed greatly to the price/cost (value) of the music. But most of us didn't really see that.
In the old system a CD was worth $18.99 largely because you couldn't get the music any other way. You were - as they say - thrown over the barrel.
Manufactured scarcity kept the price control in the hands of the creator. We mistakenly think we're paying $18.99 for the music. We weren't. We were paying a premium for the near monopoly on the distribution of that music. So much for free markets. One piece of evidence was the strict uniformity of CD prices. CDs from new artists you never heard of sold for roughly the same price as CDs from the super stars.
Today though, once you sell the first CD for $18.99- infinite copies can be made virtually free. Doesn't mean they will be made. But they COULD.
The music hasn't changed. What has changed is the "premium" exclusive & tightly controlled distribution creates.
What does this tell us?
It tells us the old system allowed us to mistake the VALUE of the old distribution system for the value of the music itself.
In other words - the artificial scarcity created by the old system inflated (or "added to" if you prefer) the value of the music.
P2P and open distribution hasn't devalued music as Willis and many others suggest.
Perhaps it's finally revealed the TRUE value of the music itself in a frictionless market.
How much is a song worth when there's no monopolistic distribution infrastructure to support? When getting AND copying the song is as easy as clicking a button?
No one HAS to pay extra for the monopoly on distribution any more. So prices SHOULD come down - way down.
Yes - free is pretty close to where music pricing is settling at. Maybe .10 cents for a song is fair. Maybe .15 Maybe it's free. We'll find out.
Either way - no one is ever going to stop you from charging $18.99 for your CD.
Good luck with that.
Now some of you know that I have one of those day job things.
You might be thinking how easy it must be for me to write off an entire industry and the means of my fellow musicians from the lofty comfort of my cushy day job. Fair enough.
Until you consider that my day job is in broadcast commercial radio.
Some facts.
A.) Commercial radio in the US has ZERO reputation of being a stable work environment for talent.
I've been extremely fortunate, LUCKY you might even say.
Many of my friends over the years have not shared in my luck. They're doing other things for money now. They love radio no less than me - certainly they should be entitled to earn a living doing it - right? Yeah.
B.) Commercial Music radio is deeply affected by the health of the music industry.
Call it trickle down misery if you want. We're feeling the chaos in radio also. More is on the way as the industry attempts even MORE consolidation. Do you think that will mean MORE jobs and opportunities?
uh huh.
C.) Commercial radio is also facing massive technological disruption.
Talk about head in the sand - I work in an industry where they've NEVER had to compete to be the medium of choice for music. Never. Until very recently Radio was the ONLY choice.
The people running this business have ZERO experience at not being the only place to hear free music.
Anyone heard of Pandora? Live 365? Shoutcast? ect.... just wait till wifi hits autos.
Is there any reason why it's safe for me to expect I will be able to earn a decent living working in commercial radio in 10 years?
What about our business model of amassing an audience and then selling advertisers time to talk to that audience? Should that be "preserved" just because that's the way we've made our money for the past 70 years?
Should I be posting long screeds about how we should stamp out all these music alternatives - that the people in radio deserve to earn a living doing commercial radio the way it's been done for 70 years?
Yawn.
Yet - this is what I think about when I hear musicians whine about how they're entitled to earn a living by selling copies of songs. Why do they think that? Because that's the way it's always been done. But this is an entirely arbitrary arrangement that FELT right when it was enforceable.
To think that you're entitled to earn a living the same way you/they USED to seems lazy to me.
Ok - so you say taking a song off a P2P network is considered "illegal".
Let's venture into the conceptual world of "legal" and "Illegal".
"Legal" and "Illegal" are labels. They are cultural negotiations. Things that were Illegal yesterday can be decriminalized tomorrow. Things that were legal yesterday can be criminalized tomorrow.
Things change and they are, in fact, changing.
Think about this from another angle.
Why is paying for a single COPY the "accepted" LEGAL way to get music? It isn't the fairest to the artist.
Artists would be much better served if they got paid every time someone LISTENS to their music.
Why should artists "give away" a song for only .99 and then let that person listen to it thousands of times without ever paying again? That artist is getting ripped off.
Radio has to pay a royalty every time it plays a song - how come you don't have to pay when you listen at home or in the car? Obviously this type of arrangement is far fairer to the artist. Yet we're not doing it. Clearly "fairness" is not the prime mover here.
The reason is enforcement.
If there were a way to enforce it - it would be "illegal" to LISTEN to a song without paying to listen to it each time.
Of course - that's not enforceable - so instead, you're charged to own a COPY which you are free to listen to as much as you'd like without ever having to pay for again (total rip off of the artist - but totally enforceable)
Well - until recently. Charging people for every single copy of music that is made is becoming less & less enforceable.
Because of this the very idea of selling copies of songs as a primary business has a very limited shelf life. We're the lucky ones that are witnessing it's end.
It's painful. Not all of us, artist & label alike will survive the transition to whatever is next. Especially if we try to stick to the old way of doing things.
I don't know what's next for my music or my day job in radio. It's both terrifying and exhilarating.
Both industries are having their basic economic models challenged and undermined.
All I know is clinging to the past - desperately trying to hang on to what once was is sure fire way to go the way of Buggy Whip makers.
All the trends are pointing to massive consumption of copies of music at very low prices. Musicians and artists will have to find new ways to create unique, non-duplicatable value.
I'm guessing there's going to be a fair amount of every man for himself for a while. And from that chaos we should be able to find some really good NEW ideas.
Here's a positive note. The old system was written and put into practice mostly by people who are now dead. The biases and interests of those people were served best by the system they created. That system is cumbling and many of the people who are manning the ship today have no idea how the ship was built. They just know how to steer.
We now have the opportunity to re-create a system - to alter the balance of power and re-define it's biases more in favor of creative people.
Let the games begin.
BTW - I've opened "comments" for the first time in months because I really do genuinely believe in conversation about these issues. But if the spam gets out of control again I'll have to close it up.
My Myspace blog always has open comments and I approve all comments. Even really stupid ones.
