Open Letter to Music Pirates from NPR

[TheOctavist]

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/...gs-considered/

[mlsstl]

Excellent article. I don't know if society is already so far into the entitlement mentality that things are beyond repair, but it is nice to see someone point out that these people are already spending a lot of money in support of their music habit. It's just going to the already big corporate entities for their smartphones, network connections, hardware and such, not the artists.

[Mnyb]

Or google et al and all the fake dl sites makes money too. just try to find the legal alternative in some cases .

There many legal sites for downloading FLAC or similar these days ( octavist pushed a bundle in another post ) .

Search " [ any artist ] flac " and see the first 20 pages of google is hits from spam/add powered download sites , then just maybe their bandcamp zunior or boomcat link turns up , 20 pages later maybe the artist own page .

So it's clear that someone else is making the money.

So I search first for the artist own site to locate eventual legal options but in many cases they don't link all thier buying options anyway ? Only an iTunes or amazon link , then later you find it on zunior or similar ?

But anyway an interesting link good article and all comments where worth reading too amazing ! normally you should never read comments on articles on the net it usually brings out the future unabombers or similar ilk .

[pippin]

I beg to differ.

It's not a good article. It's actually a very bad article. I agree with the general direction making clear that a "free culture" is bad for musicians and that they have to make money and that it's not OK to just "pirate" music but the article is full of stereotypes, false claims and bad/wrong examples.
It's not true that I can get any music I want with a few clicks (legally, that is). It's true for Lady Gaga, but she has no income problem, too. But of the music I listen to and buy today (even the new one!) less than 50% is even available on iTunes. Spotify et al are a little better but they are also villains by David Lowery's measures.
I'm too lazy and have too little time to hunt down stuff on file sharing or download sites so there's a lot of stuff I will only ever get through streaming services or mixes, but I WOULD buy that stuff if it was just available.
The article also completely confuses author's rights with recording rights and is plain wrong in some of the legal claims it makes. "The accepted norm for hudreds of years of western civilization is the artist exclusively has the right to exploit and control his/her work for a period of time." Somebody might want to discuss this with the likes of Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and George Michael who are among those who essentially made this true - for high profile artists and not hundred of years ago but only during the last few decades and by sheer market power.

But the thing that infuriates me is the example about Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse). David writes that his suicide was partly caused by a harsh financial situation caused by a lack of income from his music and directly attributes this to piracy while hinting record companies are the good guys helping musicians and guaranteeing them income. ("There is no other explanation except for the fact that “fans” made the unethical choice to take their music without compensating these artists.")

In this particular case things could not be more wrong.
Sparklehorse happens to be one of the minds behind one of my favorite albums of the recent years ("Dark Night of the Soul", together with Brian Burton (Dangermouse) and David Lynch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_N...ul_%28album%29 . The other example given, Vic Chesnutt, was also involved in a track of that album, btw.).
It's probably his commercially most successful album but only became such after his death. And the reason for this has nothing to do with piracy, it was due to a rights dispute with EMI which delayed the release for more than a year, when it finally came out. Had that not been the case I doubt he would have been in the dire financial situation David describes.
And it was the artists themselves who distributed the album freely (on their own web site) while the dispute was not settled. That was where I originally downloaded it from, for free, like probably many others, too. You can argue whether this was legitimate or not (they might have been distributing something they themselves didn't hold the rights for, see above on that) but you just can't claim that this had to do with "free culture", piracy or anything.

Of course I don't know details about the contracts involved and I would not claim that there weren't legitimate reasons for EMI's position, and also David Lowery sure knows much more than I do about what was going on with this and maybe it was between the artists, I don't know. But to put this forward as an example of why only record companies are the good guys guaranteeing the artists a nice income and taking away any risk from them while everybody else around, Spotify, Apple and especially the customers are evil and drive them into suicide is just so ridiculous it makes me mad.

No, this is NOT a good article.

[mlsstl]

I beg to differ.

It's not a good article. It's actually a very bad article. I agree with the general direction making clear that a "free culture" is bad for musicians and that they have to make money and that it's not OK to just "pirate" music but the article is full of stereotypes, false claims and bad/wrong examples.
It's not true that I can get any music I want with a few clicks (legally, that is). It's true for Lady Gaga, but she has no income problem, too. But of the music I listen to and buy today (even the new one!) less than 50% is even available on iTunes. Spotify et al are a little better but they are also villains by David Lowery's measures.

I'm too lazy and have too little time to hunt down stuff on file sharing or download sites so there's a lot of stuff I will only ever get through streaming services or mixes, but I WOULD buy that stuff if it was just available....

...Of course I don't know details about the contracts involved and I would not claim that there weren't legitimate reasons for EMI's position, and also David Lowery sure knows much more than I do about what was going on with this and maybe it was between the artists, I don't know....

I'm rather confused. You slam the specific Sparklehorse example and then admit the article's author probably knows "much more" than you about the details. I don't understand the logic of claiming this is a bad example while at the same time admitting the author almost certainly knows the facts of the situation far more clearly.

I know that I don't know - I don't listen to that particular style of music - but your complaint comes off looking odd.

I do know that business situations can get complicated and messy, with the underlying cause of a problem manifesting itself to the public in ways that don't clearly reveal the roots.

The music business has always used the massive sales of their most popular artists to support the whole, whether based on Madonna, Gaga or Bing Crosby. They were willing to gamble on new artists and put up with most of their artists having mediocre or poor sales because the money worked out. They never knew where the next one-hit wonder or enduring superstar would arise.

Unfortunately, that system doesn't work too well when most of your customers think they are entitled to free stuff, whether for the big names or the not-so-big. One can nitpick about the root causes involved in the specific examples, but I think, overall, the article's author makes a valid point and illustrates it well.

[pippin]

I'm rather confused. You slam the specific Sparklehorse example and then admit the article's author probably knows "much more" than you about the details. I don't understand the logic of claiming this is a bad example while at the same time admitting the author almost certainly knows the facts of the situation far more clearly.

My comment re the author knowing "much more" was about WHAT SPECIFIC issue with the record company EMI (and maybe between the artists) led to the delay. However what I DO KNOW (and what is undisputed, btw) is that it was an issue with EMI causing the delay and loss of income.
And that it NOTHING to do with piracy.

And all of that while the author claims that piracy kills artists while record companies are their saviors (sorry, this is NOT me exaggerating, that's what he says with his examples).
Sorry, this hurts.

The music business has always used the massive sales of their most popular artists to support the whole

This is not true.
The music industry has used the massive sales of their most popular artists to develop a marketing and distribution chain that allowed them to promote other artists from whom they made more profits.
What music industry also did was "develop" new artists, yes. But they did not do this by subsidizing them with revenue from more popular artists - they can't because the really successful artists have way too much negotiating power, they don't earn the record companies a lot of money. What brings profit for record companies is long-term contracts with newly "developed" artists who profit from the marketing push and give away a greater revenue share in return.

This model is indeed falling apart. But the reason isn't piracy (piracy hits pretty much all artists in the same way), the reason is that the marketing channels (the ways through which especially young people learn about music and exchange about them) have completely changed. There is no MTV anymore (ok, MTV is still around but they don't play any music anymore but do "dismissed" instead. Why? Because record labels now want money for the clips instead of paying them for addition to the rotation) and twitter, facebook and YouTube have taken their place.
Record companies have not been able to keep up with this development. Partly, because they are slow corporate dinosaurs and because they were so focused on piracy but also because in that environment there is no real need for them. Today, you don't need a contract with record shops, and the like, you don't need the heavy upfront investments so band's managers have been able to do the marketing side themselves. It's the same dissolution of value chain thing the internet has triggered in all service businesses.

And regarding that "most musicians can hardly live from their music": that's always been the case. The reason is simply that most artists don't make straight business decisions into becoming a musician but because it's their calling, they dream of the fame and the chicks or simply because the music itself matters to them. In such an environment you'll always have too tough a competition for most to live.
The same thing has been true 10, 20 or 100 years ago.

[mlsstl]

Pippin, guess we'll just have to agree to mostly disagree regarding the impact of piracy on the music business. You seem to want to substantially discount the impact, preferring to assign blame to various aspects of corporate greed.

However, big corporations have always been greedy, and the music companies are no exception. Your example regarding MTV is hardly new. Up to 1941, ASCAP was virtually the sole US copyright entity. Their contract with the radio stations was expiring and on renewal, they attempted to double dip on the fees charged for radio stations to broadcast music. The stations refused. ASCAP simply assumed they had all the cards in their hand and the stations would cave in short order.

They didn't, but instead formed BMI and started broadcasting public domain material (they say Stephen Foster had a big revival). The radio stations also started recording their own music, using musicians and composers not under the ASCAP contract. This consisted heavily of country/hillbilly and black music, which became very popular with the public. The styles eventually merged to become rock 'n roll.

It sure disrupted the status quo, but the big music companies eventually co-opted the upstart and absorbed them into the corporate structure.

Time will tell if the music industry figures a way to live with the new reality. While some of their problems were indeed self-created (the MTV situation sounds like a near repeat of 1941), a lot of people would disagree with you that piracy is not a problem. A widespread sense of entitlement is an issue and has its costs, whether they are fully understood in advance or not.

I'll now bow out of this discussion, as I've pretty much said what I have to say. Hope you find something good to listen to this evening. I'm enjoying the Schubert Ensemble's version of Franck's Piano Quintet in F minor. Good stuff.

[Mnyb]

Yes piracy is a rampant problem .

And so is the music bussiness refusal to actually adapt , why can't I simply buy lossles files of any artist 2012 and why could I not a decade ago and how come that it was apple that actualy took any kind of file sale to the masses ? and why did it took so long to get rid of drm .

The historical non existence of actual legal options are bit skimped over in the article , it is not complete but represent one piont of view

[pippin]

Pippin, guess we'll just have to agree to mostly disagree regarding the impact of piracy on the music business. You seem to want to substantially discount the impact, preferring to assign blame to various aspects of corporate greed.

No. That was absolutely not my point.
I have no problem with greed by companies, that's their job. If they drive it too far, it's their death. All of this is called "business", it's OK and it's what we all live from.

There's also no question that piracy is a problem, however, it's vastly exaggerated because piracy is mainly a problem from people who otherwise would not pay anyway and the complaint is not new. The comparison with physical theft is ridiculous as are the reactions. Ridiculous but completely understandable. The record companies are trying to cash in for as long ans as much as possible. Which, again, is their job.
Real piracy IS already unlawful, we do have legislation against it ans it IS being enforced. Today.

Also, bad weather in parts of a world is also a rampant problem, yet the only thing you can do to it is to adapt to it. We are seeing a complete disruption in service business models. Not from piracy, but from a change in the value chain. Everybody has to cope with that. Try running a travel agency, a book store or a newspaper and you know what I'm talking about.

What the record companies do right now (and movie industry as well as publishers start to line up), however, is to try to lobby to write laws that secure them a better position at the cost of customers, competitors and even fundamental liberty rights and even the fundamentals of the legal system, they ask to privatize it and take away the presumption of innocence because it "hurts their chances to enforce their rights". Even today you have law by which they can get you punished by merely stating that you had done something bad, without real proof and you have no chance whatsoever to get a judge involved in this.
And the worst thing is that they succeed in using government resources to do this. The US foreign office (in it's role as an "ambassador" for US content industry) is trying to force other companies into far reaching legislation that would never ever be considered in the US, in a lot of countries (Spain being an example I know about) they were successful.

They do all this by means of exaggerated claims. And the above article was a very good example of that because it stated that piracy actually KILLED musicians while in one case it was clearly now, well, the whole truth.

Time will tell if the music industry figures a way to live with the new reality.

Of course they will. Especially "music industry" as a whole as opposed to only record companies.
Will it be the same players? Certainly not. Some will, some will change. Same is true for business models. That's how it is with disruptive change.
But molding the status quo into concrete by means of law will make everybody lose. I fully understand that they try but we must not follow that propaganda. And they are not alone, what publishers do these days is just as bad. Besides the lex-Google they are trying to push through (which is probably the most ridiculous claim I've ever seen, asking money beyond what you can get on the free market from somebody who's service you are actively ASKING to use; but the Google is big enough to defend themselves so I'm not concerned) they are trying to kill of competition by bloggers through means of law which certainly will hit the freedom of speech. Well, it's their right to try, at least they don't try to sue their customers.

[Soulkeeper]

To me, the word combination "music industry" is an oxymoron. It can die for all I care, I wouldn't piss on it if it was on fire. I am convinced that the death of music industry will have no negative effect on music whatsoever, probably the opposite.