Most of the working musicians I know have been paying close attention to the real-life drama unfolding in the file-sharing world lately. That's not to say all of said working musician friends agree with what I am about to say here, but the majority of them do (whether they will publicly admit it or not). Between the outcry around proposed government anti-piracy initiatives, the recent Megaupload arrests, and multiple file-sharing sites shutting down or drastically (and rapidly) adjusting their policies in the days since, there is a full-blown, game-changing spectacle underway.
The music industry has been ravaged by the digital age, the primary culprit being illegal file sharing on websites with practically zero regulation. The past two decades have been something of a Wild West on ye olde Interwebs. No rules, no accountability. By the time the music industry reacted to what was happening, it was too late.
While performing at and attending the CMJ music conference in New York City in fall 2009, I learned that at that time, 91 percent of all new music was downloaded illegally over the Internet instead of purchased. Since then, things have only gotten worse. Record stores are closing, music rags are shutting down, and the glory days of rock and roll are over... which I actually don't give even half a shit about. In fact, I'm glad the music industry got destroyed. It was fucked-up anyway, so who cares? Poor (filthy rich) record executives making hundreds of millions of dollars on the backs of artists. Boo-hoo. I'm crying for you. Really. I am.
My beef is not that I feel bad for record labels or the talentless hacks who run them. I think it's good that the overall priorities in the entertainment industry have been forced to change and that the powers that be have had to reexamine what it means to be of value to their consumer base. What pisses me off is having over 91 percent of my personal intellectual property stolen, often before it even has the chance to be finished and released to the world. As a professional musician, a lot of time, hard work, and money goes into making a record. As an independent musician, that money comes directly out of my own pocket. Being a starving artist honestly isn't all it's cracked up to be anymore, people, and getting ripped-off has always sucked.
Even when I was on a major label, I got totally screwed because so much money was put into the recording, printing, PR, and distribution side that trying to recoup from consumer sales based on that 9 percent of people obtaining the album legally was almost impossible. Everyone had the record months before it came out anyway, because of file sharing. The week before it was released, one site that posted download counts on files reported over 18,000 illegal downloads of my record before my lawyer had them take the file down. That alone comes out to $180,000 -- for my songs -- of which I saw $0. My record deal was a 90/10 split at the time, but guess what 90 percent of $0 is? You guessed it! Still $0.
Think of it this way: if you were a painter and were putting the finishing touches on your pieces for a show, wouldn't you be upset if someone broke into your studio, took your unfinished paintings, and hung them in their public gallery without your permission? Let's say you had some finished work hanging for sale in your own space, but every time someone saw something they liked, they removed it from the wall, tucked it under their arm, and left without paying for it? What if 100 people came to your show opening and 91 of them decided to steal one of your paintings off the wall? Then what? Paint faster to keep up with the demand? Really focus in and cater to those remaining nine do-gooders so you can pay your bills and eat? Is it really up to those few people who still believe stealing is wrong to support the entire industry? It surprises me that honest, everyday people who tip servers well and are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a pair of jeans think it's perfectly fine to steal music -- and not just a little music, but tons of it. Something's off here. Way off.
I know this is the part where all the kids and hipsters start to roll their eyes and say things like, "You just don't get it, grandpa," and, "It's freedom of speech," but I don't actually believe that stealing my intellectual property is your constitutional right. Sorry, everybody. I get that you are used to consuming music like it's chewing gum, but those days are numbered. I'm glad that file sharing companies are getting shut down, and I'm happy that the people who have been stealing from me and my fellow record-makers all these years are going to pay for their crimes (or at least stop doing illegal piracy facilitation business as usual). Organizing a $180,000 heist would get you sent to prison in real life, so what's the difference?
Next time you hear a song you like, I encourage you to purchase it instead of stealing it. Supporting independent musicians just feels better than robbing us of our livelihood. I promise! Hell, you could even go to your favorite local record store, buy a CD, and look at the cover art for hours. You know, for old times' sake.
Fingers crossed that your favorite record store is still around...
For more, visit LoganLynnMusic.com.
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Writers are doing it when they self-publish. Artists are doing it and market prints and posters for those of us who can't afford originals. It's the middle men who don't create the art that are the dodos. Louis CK sells directly to a willing audience instead of dealing with HBO. He was already famous when he did, but internet sensations become that through direct marketing.
Otherwise, a musician is perpetuating a farm model instead of a techno business. A farmer (not an agribusiness) plants the stuff, worries about the weather, tries to keep the food alive, harvests the food, and earns.........not as much as the distributors, the grocers. Around here we call our farmers Local Heroes.
As Apple says: Think Different. And yes, stealing is still always wrong.
It doesn't matter how good of a baker you are, if you can't operate a business, you don't open a bakery!
Musicians and record labels will eventually find themselves in the position of "adapt or die". No matter how much they whine or how many blogs they post, they will inevitably be forced into bankruptcy unless they accept societies rules.
""Ignore basic economic principles at your own risk. Technology changes. Economic laws do not." That's from the Chief Economist at Google from a book published by The Harvard Business Review. They might know a thing or two.
The creator of an intellectual property owns the right to authorize the making of every copy of that property.
For someone else to make that copy without authorization, is to deprive the author of that right.
To deprive someone of their right is to wrongfully take something from them, which IS stealing!
To steal is both illegal AND immoral. Further more, to routinely steal intellectual property of high quality lowers it's value, which in turn lowers the incentive for others to make it. And particularly for them to make it of high quality.
However, the business model for such property has certainly changed forever, and for the better!
The solution will inevitably bring bigger profits than ever seen, and it will deliver them to the ones that really deserve it most, the artists.
See, in the past, infinite intangibles always came contained in finite tangibles. Which allowed us to control their monetary value. But, with the dawning of the digital era the bond was broken, and the monetary value of intangibles reduced to nil, though their intellectual values remained.
Artists should utilize the superior advertising effectiveness of fans by giving our movements away for free, and focus on the sale of physical tokens of endorsement for fans to flaunt like flags (much like political campaigns). This assortment of merchandise could even be priced in tiers to represent the degree to which believers believe in the meaningfulness of an artist's campaign. This form of social commentary will have an immense affect of the influence of art in our culture, and will likely change the world in exponential ways.
What should labels do? Put infected torrents up like mines all over the web so it majorly detours people from choosing to live lawlessly and without regard for civil liberties. Because, when we live without liberty, we all become victims.
As for you fans, you should stop stealing, and start boycotting. Because corrupt corporations don't deserve the benefit of your free advertising. Join the revolution! Stand and support the artists that want you to spread beliefs. Start by spreading the belief that good art is free art, AND ONLY FREE ART!
WE NEED YOU!
And guess what else? Stealing will always be wrong.
You make enough of something the cost to make and produce that something always comes down. Often with the quality improving!!
See that, I just did the same thing you did, but I said the opposite!
The labels should and will die off from refusal to adapt. The artist should embrace the fans. They are the ones that will make you.
Treating your fans like thieves wont help you at all. Start using real facts when you try to make a valid argument, that will help your case. Spewing off bogus figures only shows you are to stubborn, incompetent, or just to lazy to do your own research.
Any business that has flat out refused to play by capitalisms rules has gone out of business. It's time the music industry to play on the same field as every other industry.
With all the programming wizards out there, it must be possible to come up with a scheme to prosecute illegal downloads the way shoplifting is handled. Because realistically, downloading pirated tracks or movies is the equivalent of stealing a CD/DVD, or at least part of one.
And as far as the record companies go, they dug their own grave, they are dinosaurs who deserve to fail. I'm just sorry that artists and valuable artistry has to be compromised along with it.
How they can be so incredibly stupid as to watch the digital age just pass by and not figure out how to make money on it and provide music at an agreeable price is beyond me. All I can say is, thank goodness for innovators like Apple.
The problem isn't so much with downloading a single CD or DVD. The problem lies on the other side with the people who are responsible for putting up the files. This represents the distribution of thousands of stolen CDs or DVDs.
It is easy to take the record companies to task for responding slowly, but you have to remember that the music industry was very large and nothing that large can also be nimble. A supertanker can take up to two miles just to turn. The record companies employed hundreds of thousands of employees trained the business model they were using. These people cannot be simply be re-trained overnight even assuming the record companies could develop an effective strategy that quickly. This is a lot different from a couple college kids playing on the Internet in their dorm room. The question that they were suddenly faced with was, "How do you compete with free?" We are still struggle with this now and likely will for years to come.
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The Problem
The MPAA & RIAA claim that the internet is stealing billions of dollars worth of their property by sharing copies of files. They're willing to destroy the internet with things like SOPA & PIPA in an attempt to collect that money.
The Solution
Let's just pay them the money! They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies to be just as valuable as the original. That makes it a lot easier to pay them back in two ways: a. We can email them scanned images of dollar bills instead of bulky paper and b. We don't have to worry about the hassle of shipping huge quantities of cash.
lets send Logan Lynn his 39k or more copy'ed money as he also claims that 1 copy is 1 sale so go ahead and be happy whit copy money
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https://torrentfreak.com/and-when-even-the-death-penalty-doesnt-deter-copying-what-then-110807/
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A few centuriesago, the penalty for unauthorized copying was breaking on the wheel. It is a term we’re not very familiar with these days, but it was a form of prolonged torturous death penalty where the convict first had every bone in his body broken, and then was weaved into the spokes of wagon wheel The cause of death was usually thirst, a couple of days later.
Breaking the Wheel
It was in France, prior to the revolution. Some patterns were more popular than others, and to get some additional revenue to the crown’s tax coffers
But the peasants and commoners could produce these patterns themselves.. So the nobility went to the King and demanded that the monopoly they had bought with good money should be upheld by the King’s force.
The King responded by introducing penalties for pirating these fabrics. Light punishments at first, then gradually tougher. Towards the end, the penalty was death by public torture, drawn out over several days. And it wasn’t just a few poor sods who were made into public examples: sixteen thousand people, almost entirely common folk, died by execution or in the violent clashes that surrounded the monopoly. In practice, everybody knew somebody who had been horribly executed for pirating.
Here’s the fascinating part:
Capital punishment didn’t even make a dent in the pirating of the fabrics.
Also, who are you?
Copyright's constitutional purpose is to promote the useful arts and sciences. But copyright was drastically limited - because the founding fathers recognized that you can't own an idea, copyright maxed out at 28 years, and then feel into the public domain. The biggest "theft" has come from legacy industries who can only function by being given a government enforced monopoly.
If we were functioning on the original model, the entire Beatles catalog would be public domain. The arts worked just fine under that model in America for over 100 years. It didn't stop people from writing and releasing music. What you want is to make privilege a right - and looking at you just from attitude alone: I don't hear a single. Now look at that. Tome Petty is going to sue me for "theft" of his idea.
It doesn't matter if you use arguments based on pure logic, economics, or sociology, you come to one inevitable conclusion: It's morally okay to pirate music.
Terrestrial radio doesn't violate copyright be no copies are being made. That said, performance rights are protected by copyright. Despite what you might think, terrestrial radio is not free. It is an ad-supported model which many sites on the internet have tried as well. Radio stations pay royalties to Performing Rights Organizations (PRO) like ASCAP and BMI and those royalties are passed on to the copyright owners.
Watching a movie with friends doesn't violate copyright because, again no copy is being made and it is not a public performance.
Receiving a file from a friend does violate copyright because a copy has been made and distributed, and the owner hasn't been compensated. If it is just one friend sending a file to another friend, that is considered incidental infringement and no one is very concerned about it. The issue is when that file is placed on the internet where thousands of people can make exact dupicates.
As usual, Joseph fails to understand or use basic logic...
Quite unfortunate.
I'm glad you realize that I have a property right in both my hard drive and MP3 player and that you don't. Tell you what, I'll continue to arrange the bits on MY hard drive in any manner I see fit, and if you don't like that, you can feel free to continue whining to everyone within earshot about how that particular arrangement of bits on my hard drive is "stealing" from you.
Me, having access to a dictionary and common sense, will continue not to care.
File sharing is the airplay the gatekeepers have denied most musicians for DECADES. File sharing is not "stealing" - if you really have 18,000 people downloading your stuff and you can't turn that into a fanbase, then you don't deserve to live off your music. Have you ever heard of connecting with your fans?
File sharing doesn't kill musicians, obscurity does. I've been lucky enough to put out 8 albums and our fanbase paid for all of them. You have to do things called "shows" and give people a reason to support your work.
Sure, obscurity kills careers. So does "filestealing" You can't share something you don't own. Sure, doing shows is great. Non-performing songwriters can't do shows. How do they get compensated when their music is stolen. What about all the other professions involved in creating recorded music? How do they get compensated? Your very narrow perspective doesn't take in the greater reality.
The business model is still evolving, but Logan Lynn has chosen which one he wants to use. If you don't agree with it, you still don't get to steal his work.
It's definitely not *priced* free, but the market value of music is still close to $0.
"If you don't want to pay the price he's asking, you can't own the digital file."
It seems we can, actually.
"The business model is still evolving, but Logan Lynn has chosen which one he wants to use. "
That's not how capitalism works.
You don't just choose whatever business model you want and expect the market to change so it will work. If you choose a bad business model, you go out of business.
At least, that's how it's supposed to work. It doesn't currently work like that due to very poor legislation that's shielding the entertainment industry from the very laws of capitalism that our economy is founded on.
It's time the music industry enter the 18th century.
You seem to have the wrong idea(or just a very basic understanding) on the entire issue. The debate that exists on this subject is whether it's moral or not, which isn't as black and white as you seem to think it is.
If you want to learn more, feel free to read through some of the arguments posted on here - that'll be a good start.
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It's no secret that various major labels and big music organizations have a history of not paying artists what they're owed under the law. We've covered plenty of examples of fancy "accounting" to avoid having to pay, such that even big stars claim they never see royalties. However, Jeff Price, over at Tunecore has uncovered what may be an even bigger scam on the publishing/songwriting side of the business, creating a giant shell game, wherein major labels are getting hundreds of millions in royalties that are owed to songwriters, but are never paid.
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see ther ewen if 1 download is LOL 1 sale you still had no money as riaa and music companis wud steal it them from you
If enough people are downloading your work, then you learn to work the fanbase. Why should we as creators be any different than carpenters? Unless we give them a reason to support us and make it easy for them, we're not doing our job. The reality for all but 1% of authors has always been than you don't just get to phone it in and pick up a check.