I don't think that's their primary argument or that he's trying to make an argument at all; its more an an observation that piracy helped him obtain some of the music he loved most growing up, especially the obscure stuff. Again, I agree with you, its just you're framing his thoughts as an argument that's trying to win people over when I think that is a bit unfair.
no surprise there. i also think if more bands embraced torrents, it would help them get their music heard. sadly there is no monetization model for that though..
Artists generally don't make money off CD sales anyway, record labels do. The artists make money from doing live shows. The monetization model for the artist is to bypass the record labels, give their music away for free, and build up a fan base who go to their shows to see them live.
Here is an article from 2000 written by Courtney Love (outlandish woman, i know, but has lots of experience) and she outlines what musicians actually get out of working with a record label.
and this saddens me. what message is this sending out to wannabe musicians hoping to earn a living from their craft? that there is no longer a value in recorded music.
most unsigned artists would be lucky to make anything from live shows and many signed artists actually pay to go and support better known acts.
It's not sad at all! It means technology has enabled the artists to do the recording and production themselves or for very cheaply, and there isn't a need for the big name record label anymore. There IS value in recorded music, just not the need for BigCo music label to get it done.
All you've pointed out is that the costs of production have fallen. Big deal! It doesn't matter if production prices fall 50 or 80 percent: if revenues are zero, then the musician is still screwed.
Whether or not production costs fall to zero, a musician still needs to eat food. The OP is complaining that in the presence of widespread filesharing the price inevitably falls to zero. This is not some kind of new technological reality that we must accept! It is a reality brought upon by the lack of respect for property rights! If Portobello Road market were not policed, and were known not to be policed, does anyone here seriously doubt that theft would become widespread? Sorry, but people have a tendency of being a bit cheeky if they know they can get away with it (though whats worse is when to the cheek, self-serving rightousness and finger-wagging [evil capitalist labels! evil evil labels!] is added).
People keep saying that the crux is that distribution is free in electronic form. That's true, but it's no more relevant that pointing out that the sun that allows an orange tree to grow is free --- it is far from being the only cost. Releasing an album is an expensive business -- it requires a concerted advertising and publicity campaign. These types of campaigns are not cheap. Widespread filesharing decimates potential profits because many of those that otherwise would have the album don't. So it doesn't matter if the filesharer personally "profits" -- he is still harming the artist, because some portion of his disposable income that should have gone to the artist (after all -- the consumer did listen to the music) didn't.
It doesn't matter if production prices fall 50 or 80 percent: if revenues are zero, then the musician is still screwed. So you agree that musicians are getting screwed by music labels. CD sales have always been a promotional tool to get fans to go to live shows, not a revenue source for the artist (but it's a huge revenue source for the labels).
Widespread filesharing decimates potential profits because many of those that otherwise would have the album don't. That's the whole point of embracing file sharing as a method for releasing your music, so that people discover your music who otherwise would never have found it. And don't forget, the musicians don't get profits from CD sales anyway!
> It doesn't matter if production prices fall 50 or 80 percent: if revenues are zero, then the musician is still screwed. So you agree that musicians are getting screwed by music labels.
Err, no. I don't see how you make that deduction. I would agree that there have been many cases where musicians haven't gotten the best possible bargain, and there are indeed some particularly egregious cases. Still, there is plenty of law (e.g. undue influence) and precedent in place to protect musicians at least from egregiously unfair contracts.
The money (for artists) in recorded music has always been from royalties. Radio play, commercials, movies, TV shows, video games, etc. are what actually make money. The (professional) musicians I know play gigs for cash, compose for royalties, and record for fun.
> i also think if more bands embraced torrents, it would help them get their music heard.
That's a theory that hasn't been borne out by the evidence, and doesn't even stand to reason if you think about it. Let's label the 10,000 or so bands in existince in the UK alone, and let's assume each of them released an album every two years, in torrent form. The average listener would need to listen to 5,000 releases every year to stay up to date, or more than 14 or so new albums every day!
Of course that's not practical. So what's the solution? How do you whittle the number down to something manageable. Well, you could listen to just a subsample, but then you could be missing then next Fleet Foxes! Or the next Mozart.
No, the solution is for someone who really, really, thinks that band 7,819 is the new Fleet Foxes, as opposed to band 6,412, to put his money where his mouth is and advertise and publicise the band. And that's exactly what major record labels do. And that's why they are no more obsolete than publishing companies are. In effect, we pay labels some fraction of the album price to save us from having to dredge through myspace to find something listenable.
Unfortunately, for that to work people need to pay for their music. And for that to occur, government needs to crack down on filesharing. IMHO
that's all well and good, but it isn't actually monetizing the music itself.
what is lacking is simply an efficient means of charging people for music.
i think with the right system, musicians would actually earn more from their music and innovators could develop really cool tools and not worry about getting sued.
The same could be said of the open-source software model. Selling support is not exactly "monetizing the software itself", but it still pays the bills...
I think that selling merchandise is a great way to get income, a friend's band (who are a reasonably popular goth metal band) have just started doing this and it's working well for them!
Fair point, but I think that it's a reasonable equivalent to the 'Band <-> Merchandise' comparison.
I think it's worth noting too that with several years experience in the music industry* I found that most musicians I knew were unable to pay the bills by playing music, the only common exception to this was people playing in cover bands who tend to make more money than unknown original artists.
*I worked for Gibson Australia for nearly 4 years.
Superficially, I can see why you draw this analogy. Open-source programmers make their code freely available, but companies can still profit by providing support. Everyone happy.
But we need to remember why this model works. Programming is a relatively highly paid job. A programmer who works for a decade or so can afford the opportunity cost of doing unpaid work. The average musician, on the other hand, works at a pub!
Second, look at who are the purchasers of software support. These are invariably companies with deep pockets. Had they not purchased the open-source solution (which is cheap on account of that good samaritan programmer's efforts!) they would have purchased the equivalent closed-source solution, at a greater cost. Compare this with merch in music: the customers here are just individual consumers. And the typical pattern here is you go to a gig, and the first chunk of your money goes to your ticket, next to drinks, and if you have money left over, then you might buy a t-shirt (I'm musician, and was told by a professional manager [she works for the company that manages Amy Winehouse] NOT to buy excessive amount of merch -- she said that it was the weakest link; the one thing the customers really could afford to do without).
I agree with your second point regarding the difficulty of making money doing original music. It really saddens me, but c'est la vie I guess: not everyone loves music, and live music at that, as much as me. Demand is what it is. But what really galls me is filesharing, because in that case, the price is artificially zero. It is zero because there is not property enforcement. And that, frankly, sucks.
Well said. Unfortunately I really don't see the situation changing any time soon. Bands like Radiohead can afford to use alternative distribution models because they're already well known. Newcomers don't really have too many viable options apart from trying to get signed to a known label or simply doing it for the love until, and if, they get noticed.
I think the whole situation is made worse by 2 main factors:
1: A lot of musicians think that they'll get noticed simply by writing and playing good material. That is not enough. Most successful original bands really have to work to get noticed, it may take many years of constant gigging, demos and networking before anything happens, if anything happens at all...
2: The disparity between the well-knows and the unknowns: Like the film industry there is a huge divide between bands that are well known and the up-and-comers. This makes breaking in much harder because it's almost impossible to advertise enough to get noticed in the sea of advertising and hype spewed out by the big labels. This problem may start diminishing though if the traditional labels fall as hard as I'm sure many of us think they are going to...
I totally agree. In fact I'm playing in a band right now, the Signals (http://www.myspace.com/thesignalsuk -- only demos, no band recordings so far), and what I'm realizing is that, in effect, 100% of the effort needs to come from you until you have a watershed moment, and then a label will begin to court you.
And it's not that labels are inherently malicious either; another band I know, Lucky Elephant (http://www.myspace.com/luckyelephant -- check 'em out, really nice and melodic!), just got a GBP 15,000 promotional advance for their recently released album. The label told them straight-up that there was very little likelihood that they'd ever make their money back.
As for your point about the labels falling on their faces: I'm not so sanguine about the future here. In most declining industries, it's the market leaders that fare the best -- in the music business, the majors! The indies are the ones that are screwed, which is sad because historically they've signed the most innovative acts (e.g. Island pre-2000s). Universal music is the only major label to have increased its market share in the last five years. It is not in commercial danger to my knowledge, and is likely to survive the current recession. The same cannot be said for Domino (of Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys fame). My fear is that once all the indies are gone, we'll be left with p-p-p-poker face p-p-p-poker face ad nauseum.
