Stealing Money from Musicians
Anybody following the dust-up started last week by an NPR intern who wrote an article stating she's got 11,000 songs on her iPod but only has paid for about 15 CDs worth of music in her lifetime?
And the long but excellent rebuttal by David Lowry of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, who is now a music biz professor at the University of Georgia in Athens?
His argument is that technology makes it easier to do things that we know are ethically wrong (such as downloading that album off MegaRapidUploadShare.com). And while the record companies are losing out on this revenue, companies like Google, Comcast, hardware manufacturers, and the rest of the interweb's backbone are making out quite nicely from all this traffic, thank you. The end result is that musicians, especially independent artists, are getting the shaft and far worse than they did under the old model that featured greedy record labels. That being said, Lowry's diatribe can come off at times like, well an aging musician who's pining for the good old days (complete with a command for these newfangled downloadin' kids to get off his lawn).
I don't know what the answer is to all this but it makes for an interesting read.
Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
To fight this trend is like pissing into the wind. In this "new" environment, you give away the song as an incentive to come see the band live (and pay admission). Actually, it's not all that different from the "old" days when the record companies skimmed money off the band's earnings to set up and advertise live appearances. Oh yeah, and merchandizing!
"All I require is the ability to listen to what I want, when I want and how I want it. Is that too much to ask?"
Wow...
And never pay anything, ever! I think I might have a slight change of opinion on this sharing and pirating business. I've happily paid for the albums through iTunes on my iPhone and lap, and if I want to check something out I go to YT.
I just read the article and the notion that music is not worth paying for even if you're a huge music lover is an ego-centric view that makes me want to vomit! What a generation, Jeeebus.
Huh, I guess I just got a little more "radical" towards pirates and their ilk.
Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
I really like this part:
She then goes on to describe how many other ways she pirated the music.But I didn't illegally download (most) of my songs.
Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
I personally believe that recording music has no value any more. We can talk all day long about how it used to have value, and blame people for why it doesn't have value, but the fact is, it has no monetary value. But if musicians aren't making money off of recorded music any more, then why are they still making it? If it was such a huge burden, wouldn't we see a huge decrease in the amount of recorded music? Until the day comes that good musicians stop recording music, then there won't be any pressure on people to pay for music.
If bands feel that strongly about it, maybe they should go on a recording strike. They can say "we've decided not to record any more albums until people start paying for music again." What would be the reaction from people? Would they say "oh, I'm sorry, I promise I'll buy your next album"? or would they say "screw you, I'll go listen to someone else then." I would be willing to bet that any band that went on strike would disintegrate pretty quickly. And if not putting out albums that (don't make you money) causes you to disintegrate, then maybe all those albums that you made but didn't make any money from weren't doing you as much harm as you thought.
I think there will always be bands willing to put out free recordings of their music. As long as that's the case, recording music won't have much monetary value. Are the bands who are putting out free music to blame for the bands that are charging for their music not making money? We don't complain about google making google docs for free and slashing at microsoft's business do we?
There are plenty of ways to give value to recorded music, it's just that nobody wants to spend the energy to think of ways to do it. If a band said "buy our album and get $15 off your next concert ticket," I bet you'd see a rise in sales. The music industry as it stands is a dying industry. If they don't learn to adapt, then they won't make money, plain and simple. While I fully support the collapse of the music industry as we know it, a lot of good things would be lost, but I think more good things would be gained.
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I have no problem with bands giving out their music for free, nor do I have a problem with people spreading (sharing) music they love with friends and family for the sake of letting people know what they find awesome and great. It's the attitude that "music ain't worth shit even if I absolutely adore the artist and this music speaks to me in a way I really dig. This music is the soundtrack to my life, yet I will NOT support it because I will be the boss of this, not the artist!" I can't stand...
The music biz might have to change it's ways I agree with that, but why is the burden totally on the shoulders of the creator of the art, and no-one else? It's not just the industry, it's EVERYONE. There is a (supposedly) synergy there somewhere.
Last edited by Dahla; 06-28-2012 at 10:37 AM.
Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
This whole issue actually sums up a lot of the problems in the world. The take take take attitude without returning any value back to their community. Does anyone feel like this is getting worse? Or are we on the other side of the hill to where those who listen to music will pay for it because they value music in their life. The same argument can be made for any media actually, whether it is books or movies, however actually reading a printed book is more enjoyable and the movies have theaters where they can gouge you on popcorn. Music doesn't have those luxuries.
Well, the analogue to CDs would be a live show I guess, and there they can gouge you on t-shirts.
But I think for the most part people are willing to pay. Spotify and the like show that people are willing, it just needs to perfected. Some must loose the attitude of "on MY terms only" though. That goes for both producers and consumers I guess...
One thing that annoys me though is the anti-piracy propaganda thingy on the intro of DVDs I buy (and it's un-skippable). Come on! I bought the damn DVD. If they want to reach people with that message, hard code it into the files that's being shared on pirate sites not on stuff people actually bought.
It's all a question of what are your own morals and principles.
When I was a teenager I used to download everything pirated, video games, music, software, eventually plugins (I had the whole waves collection and sonalksis).
Now I pay for what I get. Since I was in bands and this sound business, I realized how stupid it was not paying for anything. Now I gladly pay for music, videos, games and plugins thanks to the digital world being better now with itunes, netflix, steam and digital downloads for softwares.
One good point on pirating though is try before you buy. Like the plugins I had, now I know which one I want and bought. But anyways now you get more and more companies making demos so piracy isn't good for this anymore.
I think the piracy was a phase the internet had to go through to make things evolve. I think we would never have seen streaming music and videos like spotify and netflix if it wasn't for sites like megavideos and the likes. But it's going to fade and something better will come out of it. Probably going to clean a bit of the crap on radio that isn't even played live (or is really bad live).
Hell, remember the 80s with bootleg cassettes? I wasn't born but some of you probably were.
Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
If I can't afford to pay for an album, and it isn't available for free somehow, I will likely not listen to your band. I won't see you live. I won't buy your merch. And I won't spread the word. Pretty much it. And before you go nagging me about not supporting bands, I'm patiently awaiting my periphery preorder bundle.
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Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
Nobody thinks music is worthless (ok maybe like 100 people on the whole planet do (they also probably wear straight jackets)). They just like free stuff.
It comes down to the fact that ALL sane people (and most not sane people) have a visceral desire to acquire the things they want for as little cost as possible. If you can get something you want for zero cost, than you're going to do it. You have to consider, though, that going against your conscience is a cost and so is whatever kind of negative consequences result form your actions. If the a person's conscience and their fear of repercussions are worth less to them than the price to buy something, and there aren't too many physical obstacles preventing theft, there's nothing holding them back, is there?
I think that's what's going on with most people who pirate music. There are very few people who do it because of some power trip. Almost no one thinks "I don't care how much I like this song, I refuse to support the artist". That attitude, though infuriating, is really a non-issue, in the big picture.
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Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
I think some of this is just the modern convenience of technology reducing the appreciation of the recordings. I remember when it was really important to have the actual product.. the quality of the packaging.. the artwork.. the CD artwork.. were all really important parts of the product. Remember when you were soo impressed with the 10 page foldouts.. they were awesome. Also... the mastered CD's were a different listening experience as the songs were meant to be played in order.
Now the product is just individual mp3 files and maybe some artwork image for your ipod... its not worth much... Only when the consumer wants the quality of the product over the convienence of the technology will it change. HDTV eventually caught on, but im not sure folks in general care about audio as much.. It sucks that the quality of our audio is decreasing with technology improvements for the average consumer. I guess I'm a part of that as well because I rarely buy albums in stores, but purchase the mp3s
Last edited by cakewalkgg; 06-28-2012 at 02:13 PM.
Great point.
I got a little... err, upset, of what she wrote because for her and her generation, paying for music wasn't something they felt like doing. I've heard many reasons for pirating, some good, some not so good and what she wrote I guess rubbed me the wrong way...
And she realized that even if she didn't support her chosen artists, then that wasn't her fault. Way to not take responsibilty for nothing.
Remember going to the record store and buying CDs just based on the cover art? Man, I saved up my allowance, and when I finally had enough I would cruise the metal shelf for hours. All those bands I hadn't heard before. Should I buy the album with a skull man from Megadeth standing next to a sign (It was Dave Mustain you know, the old guitarist from Metallica! That was all I knew...
Ah, good 'ol days. Haha
Last edited by Dahla; 06-28-2012 at 02:22 PM.
Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
I guess the thing that bothers me the most about all of this is that the artists have and still are getting shafted by large companies with big bank accounts. Sure there are artists that have made A LOT of money off of their music, but these musicians are really in the minority. In the old days, the record companies shafted the artists until they got big enough to call the shots. Now, artists never reach that point in their career. The Googles, YouTubes, Mega Uploads, Kazaas etc. of the world are the ones profiting from all of this. This includes huge artists that have spent decades drawing in fans. There are bands that write great music because it's what they want to do. Heck I do bedroom recordings that I pretty much know I'll never make a dime off of because that's what I do while my non-musician buddies go fishing, golfing, hunting, or whatever they do. Piracy is just wrong. All of the bands I have ever been in do give away free music and it is usually the best stuff that we've got. It has never stopped people from pirating it anyway. Nowadays, if I pay to have music recorded, I just hope to make back my investment. Recording and distributing music is easier than it has ever been and without piracy I could have made a decent amount of money rather than covering my losses. Musicians always get taken advantage of by someone with a larger bank account. Recent legislation to end piracy have been shot down because the tech world has dug into that bank account to spread fear around the Internet. Large studios have shut down because of this. Unfortunately, to produce a really great recording it still takes expensive equipment and highly skilled professionals to achieve. Not only that, but it takes immense time and money to promote music and get it out there. Most musicians devote a large part of their life learning their craft, but end up getting shafted by somebody. It would be nice for once if musicians were the ones making the money off of their music instead of everyone else. Telling musicians that they have to evolve because of piracy, is like telling the storekeeper that he should evolve to stop shoplifting. The problem is that most musicians don't have the resources to fight the other 2 800lb gorillas. It has become a fight between record companies and tech companies and both seem to have an unlimited amount of resources to fight each other. Recently, it seems as though the tech companies have the upper hand in all this because they control the media, and can very easily incite fear among the Internet generation. The fact is, without free movies, music, etc. the tech companies would lose a large portion of their revenue because there would be an overall drop in interne usage. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't go the professional musician route. I think that if I would have done to make it back in the day, I would be broke and homeless now. If things continue as they are now, I see more musicians taking the route that I did, get a real job and play music just for fun. That can eventually funnel down to the various people involved in music, including the recording engineers. If music was not in such a high demand, this would all be a moot point, but the demand for music is right up there with toilet paper. I buy all of my music, programs, etc because I have an inkling of what it takes and don't look at every musician that is on a big stage and say, what harm is it in pirating, these guys are rich. The truth of the matter is, most musicians aren't rich, and even if they have it now, it doesn't mean they will always have it. We should be in the golden age of music now that we don't have to just listen to what radio or MTV(back when they played videos) lets us hear. Instead, it is the golden age of piracy.
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Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
On a forum of audio engineers I'm slightly shaunt that no-one has yet mention the loss of quality of encoded music.
Never can an mp3 be compared to hundred of thousands of dollars in speakers, mics, pre-amps, patch bays, audio consoles, logistics, miles of cables, and every other important detail of a live show.
Hell, if you wrote a .txt index of all the cables that run a live gig that text would be bigger in size then a mpeg layer 1-7.
I'm actually 'borrowing' off rhapsody unlimited music about 30 cd's to play on a portable audio device in a club, and I was going through my encoding options, .ac3 .ogg. mp4 .mp3 and compared them to the wav recording off the phone (because if you record an mp3 than encode to mp3 you will loss in theory half the audio, slushy hi-hats for example are an artifact of this).
And mp3 sucked
I also save music from friends as .wavs, as well, (as my families cd archive has been destroyed in a flood)
Though, I always ask "can I borrow this cd" before take it out pop it in my laptop and rip it
It suck to know the current and future generations don't hear the decomposed quality of the music they hear.
I'm down for popping them all in jail
You should buy the album with boobs on it
If everyone was like you black sabbath would've never sold a single record of black sabbath
Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
I don't see me being able to apply this logic at my local grocery store. "All I require is the ability to eat to what I want, from whom I want and when I want it. Is that too much to ask?" And I can ride in a police car too? Cool!"All I require is the ability to listen to what I want, when I want and how I want it. Is that too much to ask?"
The older I get, the less sympathy for this sentiment. Everyone signing on the dotted line is an adult. "I had no idea when I signed with Satan Universal they'd being getting a deal that primarily makes sense to them and isn't in my best interest." Really?! You're surprised?
I guess the thing that bothers me the most about all of this is that the artists have and still are getting shafted by large companies with big bank accounts.
Last edited by garageband; 06-28-2012 at 06:10 PM.
"Well, if music's gonna move me, it's gotta be action packed!" - Johnny Dollar
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Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
Bootleg cassettes weren't all that big... cassettes were pretty cheap and affordable to begin with; buying a bootleg cassette saved you a dollar or two the most. Considering it was second generation, it hardly was worth it, unless perhaps it was a rare album hard to find in stores (there was no internet searching yet!).
But duplicating copies and sharing among friends - yeah, that was pretty popular. Well, I suppose that's also a form of "bootlegging". Although the music industry frowned upon duplicating and sharing, it certainly wasn't illegal to do so - as long as you didn't make a profit from it.
You know why majors don't like piracy? because they don't have control like when it was cds/dvds copies and vhs copies.
Sony is one of the biggest manufacturer of cd/dvd/vhs and player/writer AND one of the music majors. So before internet sharing and in the beginning when mp3 players weren't big, people used to copy on those formats. So Sony made money on artist OR on blank medias and copiers! Same thing for movies. It was a win-win situation.
With everything digital now, they don't have that control anymore.
Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
Prior to the golden age of piracy... A band I was in signed a recording agreement with a large independent lable... it was 12 yrs ago and there was no info in the contract about mp3 sales..... in fact they called CD's a "new technology" and our measly percentage of royalties was based on 1/2 of the SLRP of those units sold in CD format. This was great since they only printed CDs on the release ... This was not uncommon for entry level agreements according to the music lawyer we hired to review the contract.
Years later, for masochistic entertainment purposes... I sat down and really tried to figure how many units needed to be sold to pay back the advances for recording... I came up with a figure around 100,000 units sold at full SLRP... wich I think was 15.95 per CD... god forbid if a unit sold for <12.00... then we got half of the measly percentage... ohhh and we already got only 75% of the base percentage due to the "new technology" thing. I know there are other potential royalties possible for the mechanical part... but what the hell good is it to spend a fortune trying to collect chump change.
The point is.. the artists, in my opinion, need to find another way to make money if they want to make anything substanital. My gig was more than 10 years ago so things may have changed somewhat... but I doubt anything revolutionary has occured in the industry as far as the contracts go. The home artist has a lot of control over electronic distribution these days and I guarentee that an artist like Keith Merrow has made more money on his bandzoogle site than I did with a record deal... and he probably doesn't have a big "piracy" problem that he's losing sleep over. I can say this with confidence because I could have tried to sell the buildup between my toes as a cologne and could not have made less money than with the lable.
dudermn - I did mention the issue with lossy encoding.... it is really kind of sad that soooo much effort goes into the recording/mixing... only to end up a 5MB mp3 file on someones IPOD...
It's a pisser... but it is fun... I think self gratification of creating music is still worth it to me. At least when I turn my toes to the daisies i'll have some noise immortalized in the internet
Re: Stealing Money from Musicians
The thing about format and piracy is the pirates are the one actually listening to the good stuff haha. Most people, including me as I'm paying, are using stores like itunes, amazon, etc. that are all in mp3s where torrents have a lot of rips in .flac and lossless formats.
The store should offer a possibility to have it in the format you want, example bandcamp who offers MP3 320, FLAC, MP3 VBR (V0), AAC, Ogg Vorbis or ALAC. This would really do a competition to pirating on the format level.
Because seriously, a small percentage still goes to the store. Who seriously goes to the store, buy a cd, come back and probably will rip it on it's own only for the sound quality when he can have the mp3s on itunes under 2 minutes at home.
