Death by download
“Ninety five per cent of music downloads are unauthorised, with no payment to artists and producers,” according to a recent report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
It’s not a new story, but it is one that has a direct effect on my life and income. My career as a musician and composer has included collaborations with major acts such as The Orb, and my own project “Another Fine Day” has had a fifteen year run of performances at The Big Chill. Now, I’m beginning to wonder how long I can go on. Fans at my gigs offer home-copied CDRs of my albums for me to sign, not real ones, and think nothing of it. MySpace “friends” send me emails praising my music to the skies, and then say that they’ve sent multiple copies of it to all their friends, and then they expect me to thank them for this unsolicited “promotional activity.”
I shouldn’t complain, I’m told: the more music of mine there is floating around the planet—legal or illegal—the more chance there is of people hearing it and enjoying it. In my other career as a composer for film and TV, there will be more chance of it getting heard by the right producer or director, and generating income either by licence or commission. All of which is—possibly—true. Yet a ratio of 95 per cent illegal to 5 cent legal does seem just a trifle excessive.
Like most of my generation (closer to 50 than 40) I too made my own illegal cassette copies in my youth, but that activity required a certain amount of recording ability, and the copies were made in real-time, each iteration getting worse in sound quality. These days copies can be made at a click of a mouse with no loss of quality.
Yes, we have iTunes, and yes, there are various moves afoot to generate income streams via deals with mobile phone companies and webstreaming from websites, but almost all these deals are between the major record companies and the service provider, leaving the independent sector out in the cold. Major artists who’ve already made their name via the old industry model (spend millions on promoting a few artists, get more millions back from record sales) can afford to offer their music for free, hoping for T shirt sales and stadium gig receipts to make up the shortfall, but for most independent artists, that simply isn’t a viable business model. We need some income—any income—from recorded music, to survive.
It can be argued that no musical form deserves to survive simply because it exists (though classical music wouldn’t exist today without considerable subsidy) yet more and more it’s beginning to look as if many musical genres are in danger of disappearing. Not because people don’t want to listen to them, but because they refuse to pay for the music. The consumer is currently living in seventh heaven: there is more good music available, both new and old, than there has ever been, most of it for free, if illegally— yet inevitably that situation will change. Good music requires cash as well as talent to survive, and also the skills to record it properly, which themselves are disappearing as studios close.
The major record companies, many of whom released some of the greatest music ever made “by mistake” (ie, they never made any money from it, but funded it from more commercial music) can no longer afford to take the risk in funding any project that isn’t obviously commercial. More and more these days, releases are dependent on major TV promotion from reality shows.
So: if you’re the kind of music lover who enjoys music that isn’t lowest-common-denominator pop, rock, hip-hop, or country… listen up. If you don’t pay for it, in a few years the only place you’ll find it will be in the darkest reaches of the internet, recorded on the cheap, and probably not particularly well played or produced. Musicians need time to develop their skills and ideas, and time is money. No money equals no time equals not very good music.
You gets what you pays for.
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I sympathise with your financial predicament, and yes, it would be nice if music paid you proper like for your output, but would that save quality music? Isn’t there an adage that Art is born in bondage, lives in strife, dies in freedom…
rc in paree
Great article Tom.
And sadly so true!
Steve
It’s a tragedy it’s no longer enough to have the songs and talent to make a living as a a musician, that one has also to be a marketing genius and willing to insert the name of a product into their song before seeing any return even more so.
Art is dead.
Sad state of affairs, and I dont think there is anything that can be done about it now.
Well here we all are again, preaching to the choir.
“everybody” knows musicians are all fabulously wealthy if their stuff is cool enuff to get a lot of D/L`s.
Shame “everybody” never stops to think about HOW the musicians are supposed to get rich or even FED if nobody pays anything.
A few pence per download would be OK-ish but only IF the money went to the music creator rather than someone running a D/L website.
See you all in the workhouse, guys
“Art is born in bondage, lives in strife, dies in freedom…”
As platitudes* go, this is up there with the best!
Tom, well said, I’m sure that many folks identify with this.
I suspect that, sadly, very few downloaders spare a seconds thought beyond “I’m getting this for free – coool!” This would mean thinking beyond the next 10 minutes…..
*For Platitude read bollocks
Great article Tom.
Guess there’s no chance of me getting to park the Rolls in the swimming pool huh?
“Musicians need time to develop their skills and ideas, and time is money. No money equals no time equals not very good music.”
Nail. On head. Squarely.
well said.
““Art is born in bondage, lives in strife, dies in freedom…”
As platitudes* go, this is up there with the best!”
- exactly !!
Maybe hairdressers would do a better job if we all just walked out after the haircut without paying ?
Maybe the BBC would improve if no-one paid the license ?
Maybe video games would be better if we all just nicked them ?
Maybe your local curry house would serve you better food – if you never paid ?
Most ignorant music thieves have some strange idea that they are just stealing from stinking rich record companies. Well, the same few on the payroll at the major labels are still OK thankyou very much – but more and more and across the board it’s artists who are getting screwed – by those who profess to love them the most.
It’s the artists who pay the biggest price.
It’s the artists who can not afford a family or a home or anything approaching a normal life..
But hell that doesn’t matter, because apparently thats *good for art !?
I have a personal little saying and that is :
“Everyone loves music – but no-one loves musicians”
(well unless they are they few luvvies that the mass media tell you to love)
This piece might have been stronger if you’d put in some actual facts about the kind of deals done (or not done) by the likes of Pandora, LastFM, YouTube, MySpace etc and how little money is trickling down to musicians. And perhaps a plug for the Featured Artists’ Coalition? Or anything else in a similar vein championing the rights of artists?
The “stinking thieves” rant will get plenty of high-fives on the muso forums (see above ^^^^^) but surely your aim is to get your POV out to a wider audience – where I don’t think finger wagging has much currency.
An excellent article but I think overly pessimistic. However I know musicians who openly copy music illegally so is there any hope? Personally I think the problem is governments only think banking and finance are important, they seem to forget that fashion and music generate billions upon billions. Once they realise this maybe they will tighten up the laws.
well as a musician who’s never stopped making music for over 30 years, and who’s made comparatively very little from it during that time I don’t see any difference – still shite, but fun!
It’s just incredible when any new technology comes along like digital music we (the industry) only sees the positives, I’m sure if the record industry had foreseen this they would have developed “digital vinyl” or some sort of complex analogue compression that still needed expensive pressing plants. What is more worrying than everybody robbing my tunes is the fact that anyone at all with the right gear can get it out there – something which is always put across as a positive thing, yet all it does is mask the quality material. In the past only the truly dedicated or actively industrious could get it actually out onto the marketplace.
Dilution of culture, the pools of genius have become oceans of dross.
Is there not at least a possibility that the rise of illegal downloading will actually encourage independent producers and labels?
Major label recordings are, unsurprisingly, far easier to acquire illegally; your typical dubstep white label 12″ can’t be found on Limewire.
At the same time, simply getting your music out to a wide audience has always been one of the big challenges for small labels – today, the combination of the MP3 format and the internet goes some way towards mitigating this.
What this could mean is that the big labels get screwed as all the Britney fans download her new album illegally, while the indies – at least the savvy ones – thrive as they exploit the power of the internet to expand their audiences, who, with broadened musical horizons, then turn to legitimate retail outlets to get hold of the tunes they can’t download illegally.
It sounds like a plausible model, anyway. I download lots of music for free, but I spend just as much on music as I ever did – it simply goes on the more obscure stuff.
TN
Tom – great article; good points well made.
TN – Is there an advantage to ’screwing’ the big labels? I don’t see it, and I know this industry well. And when you say you download lots of music ‘for free’, is that a euphemism for ’steal’? Finally, does anyone still really believe the old, dated and vacuous idea ‘that the rise of illegal downloading will actually encourage independent producers and labels’?
@Far Quad, without wanting to get into a tit-4-tat – “Yes, we have iTunes, and yes, there are various moves afoot to generate income streams via deals with mobile phone companies and webstreaming from websites, but almost all these deals are between the major record companies and the service provider, leaving the independent sector out in the cold.”
Tom did mention some of the streaming deals there – although not figures admittedly.
I appreciate your word & plug for the FAC, but really there’s no need to *patronize other peoples comments.
Far Quad- you have a point, and maybe I should add at least one hard fact concerning the websites and deals you mention.
Let’s take LastFM- who took at least 18 months to get around to sorting out any kind of deal- they pay 0.000733 per ‘radio play’ (where an artist’s tune is played as a result of a ‘tagged’ request to play certain kinds of music) which means that the artist will have to achieve 1257 plays to earn £1 (actually, about 97p)
Compare this to the PRS rates for BBc Radio 1 – £15.58 per play
or even, say, BBC Radio Shropshire – £0.33 per play
There’s quite a big difference !
1257 plays on Radio 1 = £19,584.06
1257 plays on LastFM = £1
So while these deals with web-streamers do represent some kind of income, so far, it’s not the kind of income any of us can even remotely live on.
There is an adage out there that ‘information wants to be free’ and that music somehow ’should’ be free. All well and good, but somewhere along the line those who consume music will have to pay for it, somehow, and at a rate that allows those who provide to earn some reasonable recompense for their work. At the moment, that just isn’t happening.
Well said that man. However, Far Quad makes a good point about who the target audience for this message should be.
Illegal downloading is here to stay and steps towards reducing volumes can only come with a massive change in social culture. For example, as has been seen with drink driving.I suppose it’s up to us from within the industry to lobby public opinion and appeal to those with a grain of altruism to pay for product.
In some respects, the author is fortunate to have his art appreciated. The trick now is leveraging that and turning it into £’s. Some degree of thinking outside the box is needed here.
For those with a ‘following’, maybe added value can provided for fans that buy the music. Newsletters, preferential tickets, members only areas on the web etc. That is, supplying additional services that cannot be easily duplicated.
Phil
@ B.A : my “^^^” comment wasn’t directed at you personally FWIW, it was more referring to the general tone of the first few comments, and ivan’s “here we are preaching to the choir”
This problem though was aggravated by the major record companies. There was a demand for downloads, yet it took years for the majors to comply, believing that downloading was not going to be significant.
Another problem was that because CDs can hold over an hour’s worth of music there would be two or three good tracks, the rest were often substandard fillers. Apparently last year, if downloads are taken into consideration, more singles were bought than ever before. So while condemning illegal downloads the majors and BPI set up a situation that helped it thrive.
The price of albums was kept artificially high, Pink Floyd’s first album was still selling for £17.00 until recently, as were some of the Beatle’s early albums.. At least the majors have learned that legal and financial clout and a putative cartel with the M.U. and BPI does not work. They would prosecute fourteen year olds while torrent sites flourished. The entire response from the majors was bizarre and ineffectual.
this is good though tom. its just a phase we have to get through to kill the major record companies. no musician i know would have anything good to say about major record companies and this transition period is what we need to get rid of them. unfortunately means we will all have to be skint in the meantime while *someone* figures out another model to replace shop sales on the net. its very clear to me now that the free download model is not working for anyone except people who dont care about us anyway
(this took me several years and a ‘creative commons type’ label to figure out 
Great piece, Tom, and I feel an elegy coming on…
But how does this look in a slightly more historical perspective? You’re talking about music RECORDINGS, but this is a relatively recent invention, along with the recognised and wealthy singer song writer.
Prior to some point in the 50s, most musicians made their money through LIVE performance, and there is little doubt that live performance is going up as revenues from CD sales go down. I’m sure I don’t need to mention all those dinosaur band revivals. And on the Indie circuit, it’s gigs that count more and more. Is this a bad thing?
The other way song writers would make their money was through PUBLISHING. As far as performance rights on sheet music, things haven’t really changed. In fact Leonard Cohen must have at least paid of his bent accountant by now with all those re-releases of ‘Hallelujah’ over Christmas.
So your elegy is for the brief period – say 50 years – of the heyday of mechanical reproduction for music. But music persists, subsists, and consists in something much more than recording labels surely.
Indeed, Peter, gigs can sometimes make money- but as many a gigging artist will point out, gigs rarely make money for most artists. The dinosaurs can afford to do it- and make a good deal of money from it- because they had the luck to benefit from the massive promotion given to them by the ‘old’ music industry model, and can afford to give their music away for free.
At the start of their careers, the labels also offered both time to develop the dinosaurs’ craft (in terms of deals which allowed the first couple of albums to fail commercially, in return for higher sales on later releases) and ‘tour support’ – ie, funding for tours which helped the artists out. Both have now disappeared almost entirely- new artists are expected to sell big on their first albums, and tour support- well, you can whistle for it, but you won’t get it. Some independent labels now require their artists to contribute financially to CD manufacture, and certainly won’t help out to cover the costs of tours which usually make a loss for the artist, who have to cover all the costs themselves. “Pay to play” (ie, venues charging artists to perform) is still very prevalent at the low end of the business.
In the old days of sheet music, there were far more opportunities for artists to perform and make a living- no TV, no Internet, not even Radio available, and plenty of music halls to offer employment. All gone now… and the ‘professional’ songwriter model (working in the Brill Building knocking out songs for artists who didn’t write their own) has taken a real knocking, since labels now favour, financially, artists who write their own material- one reason for the ‘filler’ problem (where there are only 1 or 2 decent songs on an album)
Yes, publishing is a good source of income, but more and more, only for artists who’ve managed to get their names well known enough to get some kind of product endorsement and become useful for advertising.
So while music does persist and subsist, the opportunities for new artists to get started, let alone paid, become fewer and fewer- yes, they can now get their music up on Myspace and even iTunes, but if no-one knows they are there, it just gets lost among the ‘oceans of dross’ (to quote from a poster above) and few people find it. If they want to gig, they’ll probably have to pay the venue owner for the privilege.
I’m hoping that Kris Weston is right- and that this is some kind of inter-regnum where most musicians will just have to hang on for dear life until ’someone’ sorts something out- but in a world where mechanical recordings still constitute the main way that most people consume music, it seems only fair to expect musicians to receive some income from that consumption. We can’t just be expected to produce it, for free, simply for the love of it- much as we would like to. It costs- in time, and money, to make it.
Illegal downloading does at least dramatically lower the entry-costs for musicians trying to understand a wider range of music and hone their tastes. Yes, this will probably lead to the making of music that wasn’t worth making, but a lot more that is worth making will be widely cherished. I guess your reaction depends on what you think about mass participation in any activity, and whether you think the arts is a realm for god-like genii.
Given how easy it is to edit and produce music these days, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if music became less of an occupation. If music is their job then musicians can spend most of their time in a music industry bubble, one where it’s relatively easy to be supplied with drugs. That’s a recipe for self-destruction. If more people were part-time musicians they are much more likely to have ties to the non-music industry world that keep them grounded. This wouldn’t necessarily lead to a reduction in the quality of music, since hobbyists can do great things. After all, a patent attorney with a physics hobby named Einstein published papers that would upend centuries of thought…
Just to pick a hole in the BBC vs Last FM comparison, one listen on Last FM means one song to one listener, unless there are a few friends gathered around the computer.
On BBC1 we are talking several million people at any given time.
Also, BBC1 has a very limited amount of time dedicated to music – shall we be generous and say 12 hrs at 15 songs an hour? That makes 180 songs maximum in a day – and of course some will be repeated on heavy rotation.
How many songs does Last FM provide in a day? According to Wikipedia it has 21 million active users. Let’s say 1% are listening at any given time, giving 210 000 songs going out at any moment.
Admittedly my numbers are estimates, but I tried to err widely on the side of caution.
Do you really think that a play on LastFM should generate the same amount of royalties as one on BBC1?
James – I’d agree that it is very easy to edit and produce some kinds of music- ie, mostly electronic – these days, but any genre that requires proper spaces and skills to record acoustic instruments needs more than a back room and a computer, and the skills required to record it properly. Both Olympic Studios and Marc Angelo’s have closed recently due to the lack of budget available to make those kind of recordings- and the lack of budget is directly attributable to reduced revenue from recorded music.
If music becomes purely a hobbyist activity, then I do think the quality would suffer. Musicians need time to practice, experiment, and build skills – like any other professional. I don’t suppose you’d be that happy to employ an amateur builder or solicitor ? I think it’s really good that hobbyist musicians do now have a better chance than ever both to record their music and release it – but I also think that a fair recompense for musicians efforts- and the chance to put some proper time into the activity- is both fair and good for music. BTW- while some sectors of the music biz are indeed known for drug use, it’s by no means obligatory, nor do most of us live in a music industry bubble…
Johnny- no, I don’t expect LastFm to pay anything like Radio 1 (and actually, the difference is even greater than I posted- LastFM pays per song play, Radio 1 per minute)- but the ratio, assuming the average song lasts about three minutes, is something on the order of 30,000 – 1 … even assuming the web audience grows and more sites (like Spotify) come on stream and deliver some kind of payment, it’s still hard to see how all those payments are ever going to add up to anything that represents more than beer money.
I find it interesting that some of these posts seem to imply that somehow musicians shouldn’t expect to get paid. Since I assume that most of the posters are employed, and some may even enjoy their work, may I ask those that do enjoy their work, if they’d be prepared to do the same work, for no money at all ? What is it about music, and musicians, that makes it a special case, and that we shouldn’t expect- and indeed, are being unreasonable to expect, an appropriate recompense for the enjoyment we give to others ? I think this is the crux of the matter, and would be genuinely interested, (in a spirit of discussion, not conflict), to hear some views on this.
Tom, thanks for your reply, and deep apologies if I inadvertently implied that you personally take drugs or live in a ‘music industry bubble.’ I didn’t say that perhaps it would be better if music became a ‘purely’ hobbyist activity. I just think it would be a good thing if more people created music rather than just listened to it, even if there was no expectation of payment. Music clearly is an important part of who we are as a species, and developing characteristically human abilities helps us live a more meaningful life, I think.
I confess my suggestion was mainly directed at rock music, which has such a self-destructive streak it sometimes seems as if suicide is literally almost ‘the done thing.’ I remember reading an article about some frontman who carried out a plan to become a legend by recording one album, do ‘legendary’ antics and then commit suicide. I just think it probably would be a bit more difficult to view yourself as a unique genius bestriding the world if you also work in a call centre, and that maybe they’d produce more music that properly reflect the realities of the time rather than the affectations of their posing.
Thank you for your insight into recording acoustics, although to me some of the most beguiling acoustic music yet made were various field recordings of early blues artists in the American South. Perhaps your analogies with solicitors and builders are misplaced though, as if a solicitor or builder gets it wrong then the results can be more catastrophic than a dodgy chord. Mind you, what I wouldn’t give to live in a house designed by hobbyist architects like Thomas Jefferson, Leon Battista Alberti or Michelangelo!
Although I think there is something useful in our traditional valorisation of amateurism, I obviously recognise that we live in a specialising world, and, indeed, why should music necessarily be any different. In the same spirit of discussion, I’d be interested to know why musicians, poets, novelists etc. *are* regarded as special cases- the vast majority of us, after all, do not receive some income from what we did decades ago, or perhaps from what our parents or grandparents did decades ago. Moreover, I have long been confused as to why intellectual property law gives such a long protection to artists whilst only giving 20 years to inventions- inventing a drug, say, is enormously expensive, whilst writing a novel requires a pen, ink and paper…
Your arguments are strange James, especially your assertion that Michelangelo was an amateur. Amateurs do not play classical music to the same standard as professionals. I would say the same of many styles of music, jazz, techno, MOR, new age, ambient even folk music. Maybe you prefer the punk, or its pre-cursor, skiffle, approach but I would say the best punk and skiffle groups were also professional. The best rock music has always been professional as well. Even a lot of the field recordings were of artists who were, or went on to be, professional – Josh White, Ledbetter being two examples. However I think your arguments miss the point. Tom’s original argument was about professional musicians being ripped off by having their music downloaded illegally, he did not say that amateurs should not give their music away for nothing. My analogy would be that if you prefer home cooking then that is fine; but don’t go into a professional restaurant, with a professional chef, and refuse to pay because you prefer home cooking.
If your concern is with me, as a musician, spending most of my income on drugs then I can assure you the only powerful narcotics I have ever taken, were painkillers when I had excruciating pain in my jaw. However drug taken is rife, especially in the the financial institutions, therefore it is entirely irrelevant to any music discussion.
Ian Stewart, perhaps my arguments seem strange partly because you greatly misunderstand me? I think in particular there’s the ambiguity about whether ‘amateur’ means ’someone who does an activity for free’ ’someone who produces inferior quality work’ and something like ’someone who does something as a side project.’ I meant the third sense. That’s why I was trying to use the term ‘hobbyist.’ Hobbyists may or may not get paid for what they produce. So yes, absolutely Michelangelo was an ‘amateur’ architect- he was devoted to sculpture with an intensity that few people ever equal. Everything else, especially painting which he detested, was a side project, as far as I am aware.
Yes, of course professional musicians are, on average, better than amateurs. I was simply observing that if it should come to pass that there are vastly fewer opportunities to be a professional it wouldn’t necessarily be all doom and gloom- amateurs can still produce great stuff, and may have a wider range of cultural influences that may cross-fertilise in interesting ways. That’s all. I wasn’t saying it’s wrong for musicians to get paid for their work!
My second post was not in response to the original post but to the points in Tom’s reply to me, which perhaps you haven’t read. My point about field recordings was not about the status of the musicians but the acoustics of the recording- many of them were just recorded in a bedroom.
I assure you that I do not visit torrenting sites and think “I, Virtuous James, am saving rock stars from themselves!” Nor am I saying that the problem is caused by the music industry- it’s a post-Romantic culture that keeps the idea of the exalted artistic genius but drops the idea that the art represents the fruit of the national culture, leading to the idea of a unique genius doomed to be misunderstood by the philistine masses. It was just also prevalent with artists starving in 19th century Parisian garrets. But the music industry can exacerbate it.
I don’t understand your point about drug use, although I am sorry to hear about your poor jaw. Surely drug use that is intended to boost musical creativity would be as relevant as cocaine use and aggressiveness on the trading floors? Perhaps even more so, as heroin has long been used to boost creativity, but the effects of heroin are largely dependent on the personal and cultural expectations of those effects, but I haven’t read any similar research on cocaine.
It’s really very simple.
I have a product – a piece of music. I put it up for sale. If it sells millions, I make a lot of money. If it doesn’t sell at all, I make no money. But if people steal it (ie download it without paying), then they are criminals and they should be stopped.
And James, referring to your post above (Feb 15 at 8:54) and subsequent nonsense: What on Earth are you talking about?
Biggles, I’ll put the gist in the very simple terms you are most comfortable with:
1. Chin up, even in the worst case scenario good music would continue to be produced.
2. Why do scientists get 20 years of IP protection and artists get up to life+70 years of protection?
Personally, I can’t think of a good reason for number 2. It seems very obvious to me that if music went out of copyright after 20 years and you could download it from an official place for free then artists could still make lots of money. That’s because they could issue special, deluxe editions on the basis that all profits would be divided up solely between the people who wrote, played or engineered the record. People would buy such an edition in great numbers partly because they want to thank the musicians, partly so they have something physical to display their taste to visitors and partly because by paying lots for something everyone knows they could have got for free is a very clear demonstration of status. Plus every time a great album fell out of copyright there’d be great press attention, which would make the status gained by possessing it even greater.
Am I wrong? Anyway, I know I was rambling earlier and being a bit scattergun in my references, so that’s probably all I’ll say, though I really would like to hear some explanation of why scientists do get treated so differently from artists.
James, you have completely missed the ‘gist’ as you put it. Read the article again.
By the way, I will not indulge in a battle of wits with such an obviously unarmed opponent, so make as many jibes about simplicity as you please. Just try to stick to the subject at hand and, while you’re at it, stop making unwarranted assumptions about musicians and drugs (and about me, come to that. Chin up, indeed!) It would also be nice if you could avoid going off on completely irrelevant tangents. Thank you.
Biggles, you were asking me to summarise my general observations, not the original article. Good grief! But thank you for your completely irrelevant tangential comments and I hope you can engage with one of the arguments in the article or comments section next time. Chin up, eh!
@James “Why do scientists get 20 years of IP protection and artists get up to life+70 years of protection?”
Personally I think seventy years after the composers death is too long, up to the death of direct dependents would be good enough. However I have not thought about scientists so will not comment. Regarding pharmaceutical companies though, I do support a longer patent term. As a result of of drugs being out of patent after seven years pharmaceutical companies are forced to invent new drugs and do this by inventing conditions that don’t exist so they can sell a drug to treat it. However all this has nothing to do with illegal downloading. If you are not prepared to pay for music that musicians charge for, go on the websites where musicians give it away. If you don’t want to pay for a restaurant, cook at home or go to a charity soup kitchen; but don’t go to a restaurant and sneak out when the bill comes!
Ian, I’m open to the prospect of longer patent terms for pharmaceuticals too, although I hope it would still be set about the generation-long. My reason for mentioning it was mainly because I think the music industry is losing a bit of credibility by constantly seeking longer copyright terms on the pretext of supporting a relatively few older musicians. The internet, like any disruptive technology, is upsetting social norms, and new, sustainable, ones take time to form. It’s particularly difficult to do this with the internet due to the ease of feeling that no-one is watching- convenient rationalisation is rife. The music industry is in crisis. However, I, perhaps naively, believe that if the music industry said ‘OK, we’ll cut a new deal- IP parity with inventors, and when copyright’s up we’ll put them on an official website for free download’ and if artists released plush new editions as I outlined above, then I believe that people would have a much stronger sense that downloading copyrighted music is immoral, have many fewer rationalisations to visit The Pirate Bay etc., and artists could potentially make more money than they did under current copyright laws. It’s worth noting that pharmaceutical companies often react to a drug coming out of patent by raising the prices. People still buy the brand name drug rather than the generic.
In the meantime I wish musicians, who (on pain of unwarranted assumptions) often seem to be generally left-wing, would pay less attention to songs about world poverty and more to unionising and demanding better wages from their employers. Maybe that might even lessen the charge of hypocrisy levelled against so many left-wing millionaire rock stars. Who knows.
I’d just like to say that I agree with your restaurant analogy, Ian, and I think that all the ripostes I’ve heard are basically self-serving rationalisations at root. The only types of music I feel might be exceptions are classical and opera. That’s because, as Tom Green noted, they wouldn’t exist without taxpayer subsidy. I believe they are subsidised because it’s thought that it’s somehow beneficial to society-at-large if as many people as possible are exposed to it. If there are zero reproduction costs and tax money has already paid for it, I can’t see it’s immoral. Ideally there’d be a site where you can download standard interpretations by subsidised groups for free. Classical music buffs would still pay for recordings of different interpretations/musicians, I’m certain. I’m open to any counter-arguments, though.
That’s all I have to say, and I hope I won’t be moved to reply again. Thanks Tom and Ian for your posts.
James. The technology exists for me to access your bank account and ‘download’ the contents without your permission. Although this is illegal, you clearly feel that, as the technology exists, such activities should be allowed, perhaps encouraged. One obvious advantage to you is that you will not be so tempted to experiment with drugs – not least because you will no longer have the funds to do so – with the further advantage that your mind will then be clear to engage in rational argument and discussion. You might even discover the joys of ’sticking to the point’!
With that in mind, perhaps I should now go off to an Internet cafe; in the meantime you should perhaps say goodbye to your savings!
James- yes, I’m sad to say that naivety may well be in evidence, in the belief that making copyright terms ‘fairer’ (I’m not getting into that one ! …) might make illegal downloaders/copiers more likely to ‘do the decent thing ‘ and start paying for the music.
The problem is precisely that most of them don’t see that what they’re doing is in any way reprehensible, and few of them know (or care) anything about copyright, let alone length of terms and the fairness of same. So they’re not likely to change their behaviour in any way if copyright terms are changed.
Nor, I believe, is there much of a market in the ‘plush new editions’ idea- this might work, on a small level, for an older fans market of big old bands- still the largest market for physical CDs- but it’s one that will slowly disappear. The whole point of those kinds of releases is that they’re ‘limited editions’ too – which kind of limits the available income from them ! If you’re (as most of us artists are ) not -particularly-well-known-and-certainly-not-a-Star- then the market for limited editions is very small indeed- in the low hundreds, at best. Few people are likely to pay through the nose for something relatively unknown which they could get for free.
As for our unions and ‘employers’ … the Musician’s Union does its best, but its role is mostly limited to setting rates for musicians working within a subsidized system- ie, classical and a bit of jazz. These genres represent about 4% of the recorded music market- the rest of us, regardless of the union, have to work with ‘clients’, not employers, are effectively self-employed, and have to work within a framework where prices and ‘pay’ are fluctuating (mostly downwards, right now) and completely driven by the free market- often to the point, as I pointed out, that musicians have to pay to play, not get paid. The MU tries hard to address this situation, but there are always ‘wannabes’ who are happy to work for nothing, both in the gigging sphere and ‘music for TV+film’ industry. There’s very little chance of musicians setting any kind of real agenda for pay or commission fees, though organizations like the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society do set standard rates for use of music on TV programmes etc. Even this is under attack, since there are now a large number of ‘production music’ libraries working outside the MCPS and charging very low rates.
The public perception of music and musicians is a weird one. We are supposed to be garret-living visionaries living some kind of exalted artistic life and dropping our muse-inspired works on an adoring public (while at the same time, driving cars into swimming pools and snorting vast quantities of cocaine) and if we are lucky to ‘make a record’ we are, necessarily, millionaires, immediately (and therefore it’s OK to copy our music because we don’t need the money)
The reality, for most of us, is very different. We work in an industry where the ‘free market’ ideal is at it’s most vicious, with working conditions and pay most people would find insupportable and laughable. If we try to avoid the rip-offs of the ‘major label’ industry, we have to become legal experts, marketing experts, website designers, as well as ‘artists’- and still we see our ‘product’ taken for free by a public that is supposed to love it. Those of us outside the classical genre have a hard time getting any support from government, at all.
I think it’s time we looked at the European model. Ireland still has a ‘no income tax’ rule for artists, France insists on a 40% francophone radio play rule and pays a stipend to any musician who does 4 gigs a month or more.
A combination of the two- where any musician who can prove that a certain (to be discussed) number of people are listening to his/her recorded work, for free, gets paid an equivalent of the minimum wage, and relieved of income tax on a further £10,000 earned on top, would certainly work out a lot cheaper than the billions the tax payer is paying out to bankers, right now.
Bah, there goes my hope of not replying! Wonderful post, Tom, even better than your OP. Thanks for the info about other European models- I had vaguely heard that Bono moved his money from Ireland (?) to a tax haven, so had no idea the Irish model was like that. I wouldn’t be surprised if 40% of British radio play was British music already, though the French stipend does seem like a good idea given how much live music can contribute to a community, and your combination seems reasonable too.
I think the music industry does need to try a different tack simply because it has been constantly ‘crying Wolf’ about copying music for 30 years. Now perhaps there is a wolf the industry can’t just say the same old things. Perhaps we’ll have to disagree about my idea for copyright limiting- I don’t see any reason why the numbers of deluxe editions should be limited- surely the big point of limited editions is to create a sense of status and exclusivity, and buying what you know is out of copyright would do that anyway. I was envisaging people who already know the music would buy the special editions, for the reasons I explained. I appreciate that you do know far more about the music industry than I do though.
There is precedent for social norms growing up about copyright- look at the rampant copyright piracy in the US during its Gilded Age. Once the social disruption caused by the internet settles down and the penny drops that the arts is one of our few world-class industries then I think some strong norms concerning copyright will emerge. I can’t predict what those will be though! I do think that clearer copyright law would help establish these, however. It would certainly help me. To be straight with you, I only visit torrenting sites to download music which I believe to be in the public domain, i.e. over 50 years old. Such music includes a great deal of jazz, blues and American folk classics- even ‘Kind of Blue’ is hitting the big 5-0 this year. Even so, I sometimes wonder if what I am downloading is digitally remastered, how would I know if so, if that affects the copyright, and if so does that mean that companies could remaster the recordings every x years until the end of time. You shouldn’t need to be a legal expert to access public domain material, even if the issues were clean-cut, which I believe they are not. I’d like a website where I could download public domain works in the knowledge that I am not cheating anyone. I can’t be the only fan of half-century old music in a similar position. Removing the legitimate reasons to visit such sites would be very handy in making copyright-infringing websites socially unacceptable, and it would remove the temptation to download copyrighted music that’s just a click away from public domain stuff.
The music industry does sound appalling, but not necessarily worse than many other industries in the days before unions developed and established norms. There are laws about venues needing a licence if more than two people play- it surely wouldn’t be unthinkable to add a condition that every venue of X capacity must employ MU members, and every professional recording or broadcast must do too? That would give the MU some leverage…
I agree with what you say James about copyright confusion and also I dislike the extreme views of some copyright agencies. For instance, if you are a DJ and you buy vinyl, which can cost £8.00, you need a license (that costs several hundred pounds) to record it onto your laptop so that you can DJ with it in Ableton Live. There is no way, whatsoever, that money is going to go to the dance producer – it is going into a bureaucratic slush fund.
Another example is a composition of mine is being played in a concert, the license fee is so high that it was not worth the ensemble playing it. But that license fee doesn’t come to me, it goes into the slush fund that is divided up amongst others. (In the end I changed the name for one performance only).
This extreme attitude is giving composers/musicians/producers a bad name, whereas what I think most of us want is the torrent sites and P2P sites closed down and the owners prosecuted. I certainly don’t want DJs to have to pay for their music twice.
However this doesn’t contradict Tom’s main points. For people like us, illegal copying makes a huge difference to our income, as we work in specialist fields and our work is released on very small labels that really struggle. Obviously I don’t know you James, but from reading your posts I would doubt people like you are in any way a problem, the problem are sites like Pirate Bay who are on a putative moral/political campaign to make all things free. Or P2P networks who just have no intention of paying because they don’t care and don’t think about anyone but themselves.
James – just a brief note. The old ‘2 in a bar’ rule requiring no license on the part of the venue is long gone. These days all venues, including pubs, need a license (very expensive, with insane paperwork required) if they’re to allow live music on the premises. The result has been a fairly dramatic reduction in venues that allow live music.
Just so you know …
Thank you!
blah blah – this james dude – i only read his first post – i was pretty offended – it showed a complete ignorance of music, musicians and everything it takes to make *good* music. music is NOT easy mate. try it sometime. and let me hear your music when you do…. mwa hahaha…
look, piratebay is awesome and we should all embrace the anarchic model. but dont ask me to pay fucking taxes while you steal my tunes. im thinking of putting copy protection on my next album – im talking 2048 bit crypto keys which i will update weekly…
Brilliant article. One of the most honest opinions on the subject I’ve read in a long time also. I think when we live in a world where art is being destroyed by commerce we are in big, big trouble. Things aren’t getting any better either, as we at TheMusicVoid have investigation. Those music executives will stop at nothing in starving true artists – http://bit.ly/6T0dAa