by Jon Sheldrick
Let's get one thing straight: I love free music. If a musician decides to give away an album, I'm the first to download it. I am against the RIAA lawsuits that sue people for sharing music. Rather than scaring people into buying music, I advocate a culture in which people actually want to spend money on music, because they understand the positive repercussions it has on the medium of recorded music, and the lives of the artists that produce it. What I hope to do in the following paragraphs is persuade you that not only does paying for music benefit that artist you claim to support, but also benefits you, the listener.
I'm not going to make a legal argument. It may be valid but just isn't relevant in practice. A law is only as effective as the means by which you can enforce it. And, unless something crazy happens in the world of Internet regulation, no one will be able to forcibly stop people from sharing music. After all, if there was no bouncer outside a concert venue, we could expect to see ticket sales plummet just as fast as CD sales. The problem is that many people just don't value music in a meaningful way. What do I mean by that? Well, I understand perfectly well that people value music in the sense that they enjoy it, and love rocking out on their iPod. However, they don't value it in the sense that they will willingly fork over $1 for a song, thus helping the artist who made it continue to produce awesome music. If I'm going to convince you to buy your next record, it's not going to happen by scaring you with abstract arguments about copyright law.
I used to illegally download in high school. I remember when Napster first came out. It was incredible. It was fast, free, and delivered on-demand music; what could be bad about that? I can say, in all honestly, I did not once think about how it could negatively impact a musician, until I saw first-hand what it was doing.
After high school, I went to NYU, hoping to become a recording engineer. At the same time, I began to record my own music, in the hope of someday making a living from it. In an effort to get a grander perspective on the business I longed to enter, I got an internship at an indie record label. There I saw artists, with sizable fan-bases, question whether they could record another album. The demand was there, but the audience was not paying for the product they claimed to love so much. This directly translated to artists not recording albums, plain and simple. Instead, they embarked on relentless tours, leaving little to no time for writing new material and recording it.
During this time I also started to look for work in recording studios. There, I saw an effect of file sharing that was not immediately obvious. Musicians could no longer afford to pay recording engineers (amazing artists in their own right). As music sales continued to decline, studios all over New York City were shutting their doors. And it wasn't just the big time Hit Factory places; small independently run studios were going under as well. It wasn't that they were creating inferior products. It was a direct result of people not paying for music. This led to a decline in the quality of recorded music, at least when talking about independent artists who don't have a 1 million dollar advance to burn through.
As I saw this going on around me, I stopped to think. If I want to be an audio engineer at a studio, how can I download music illegally? It would be utterly hypocritical of me to download an album for nothing, and at the same time hope that someone else would buy one I worked on. I realized that if I wanted things to change, I would have to start by doing it myself. Hands down, the best way to support your favorite artist is financially. Of course, telling your friends about songs and re-tweeting alerts helps, but it does not necessarily enable artists to produce moremusic. At the end of the day, what good is a fan who tells 1,000 friends about your album if none of them actually buy it? Sure, those people might go see the band live, but concerts and recordings have totally different budgets and costs. When you go see a live show, it doesn't make up for the record you ripped off LimeWire. Your ticket price pays the roadies, the sound guys, the tour manager, the gas bills, the van insurance, and maybe, if they're lucky, the band. That form of logic reduces recorded music to a PR Tool, aimed at promoting the sale of tickets and t-shirts. And what does that say for recorded music as a medium? Will recorded music be reduced to the importance of a T-shirt, used to promote a live show? Recorded music provides a listening experience that is unique and rewarding in its own right, and listeners should strive to preserve that. Fans should respect the wishes of the artist. If a musician asks that you pay for an album, you should respect the time and effort that went into its creation, and pay for it.
Perhaps people don't really care about how artists make their living. But there are positive repercussions for the listener. First, I guarantee you, it will make the listening experience more rewarding. You will have a recording whose quality matches what the artist intended. You will listen closer. Just like you would savor the taste of an expensive bottle of wine, you'll savor the sounds of that record you bought. After all, good music is not meant to be "chugged". Buying a record will also make it easier for that artist to produce another one, meaning you get a kick-ass sounding follow-up to that record you just sipped slowly with some cheese and crackers. It is, in essence, a "win/win".
Don't believe me? Try it out. Wait for the release date, like you would a souffle coming from the kitchen. When it arrives, set aside some time to put it on. You can end the listening session with the comforting feeling that you are enabling the artist you love to continue to create beautiful music, that you will be able to tweet about in the very near future.
At the end of the day, it's really a moral argument. Unfortunately in the music world, as with life in general, the moral road is not always the easiest route to take. As Plato said, "[Music] gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything." In this sense, it is almost as important as the air we breathe. I urge you to meditate on this. How much does music mean to you? How does it positively affect your life? Hopefully many of you will come to the conclusion that while you may not have a fat bank account, ten dollars for a record you will play 100 times is a damn good deal.
Courtesy of SoundCtrl.com. Sound Ctrl will be hosting an internet week event June 10, 2010 in NYC discussing issues facing the music industry. RSVP: soundctrl2010internetweek.eventbrite.com
Jon Sheldrick is an audio engineer with MuseAmi,and also leads a group called Fatty Acid. You can listen to his music (and download some things for free!) @ fattyacid.bandcamp.com.
I once watched a dude at a show ask RJD2 to sign the disc of the the show he had JUST bootlegged. The tickets specified that the artist requested no recordings. So when RJD2 took the copy, the kid actually said, "That's mine, I made it." RJ responded, "It's actually MINE, because *I* made it... but if you can find three people in here that disagree, you can have it back." The kid called him a name and split. I mean, if you can look your favorite musician right in the face, and say you deserve to steal from them--there's just no helping you.
It is all about a sense of entitlement and a belief that the artist owes them something for their fandom. If any one of these pirates (and I was one once, too, until I had friends being affected by it) were in the position to have any of their own work stolen, they might get it. Until then, steal they will.
a. you can spend $5000 for MAYBE 10 days of studio time which isnt really enough to track and mix a proper record (especially with unseasoned artist)
b. OR you can spend the same amount and own your own mobile studio that's pretty comparable to the gear you'll find in "legitimate studios". sure there's a learning curve but it's not rocket science.
obviously the benefits of owning your own gear has many benefits that outweigh the traditional route
1. artist can work at there own pace and get the takes they want without worry about the ever ticking studio clock
2. there are no engineers telling them "you can't do that".
3. it decreases the possibility of lost inspiration. if an idea comes, it can immediately be documented.
so until studio owners admit to themselves that a seachange has occurred right under their noses, you will see more of them going the way of the dinosaur
-Jon
on another note, i am also a recording engineer and i don't believe that downloading music is the reason so many studios are closing their doors. the major midsized to large recording facilities have been running on a 1970's model for too many year after the introduction of the "pro-sumer gear" boom. the cost of studio time is ridiculously high and the returns are only marginally better than if one takes a DIY approach.
I myself spend tons of money on used records, but also pay for new stuff. The fact is that they're no longer pressing Stockhausen records, so I don't have much choice :)
WRT the recording studio issue: I think a lot of readers have been dwelling on this too much. I know there are plenty of factors outside of file-sharing that contribute to studios closing. My goal was to educate people on how much work goes into a recording, so that they may feel more compelled to spend money on the final product. Even if a band is recording themselves, it still takes a fair amount of time and money.
-Jon
People DO NOT have to pay out money to consider music valuable and to be willing to spend money on music when the transaction actually yields value to the customer. Making music scarce artificially through laws when music is easily distributed world wide pretty much for free just isn't going to work long term.
I would beg to differ. I don't think I've heard anyone say that, inside or outside the industry. Even touring is becoming too expensive for artists. And I'm not just talking about the little guys....there are some Grammy winners that are going broke...read this shocker:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment_and_arts/10220002.stm
The reason I brought up Audio Engineers was not to vent frustration. It was merely to educate people to how some records are made, so they can realize that there's more than just musician effort going into the product. My goal with this post was to make people think about how they value music, and I think educating people about the recording process helps that effort.
Even if a band is recording themselves (as I do all the time) there are still costs. Mics, Computers, Preamps, Cables, Software, Space Rental sometimes; and it adds up. Easily in the thousands. (which is a LOT to someone like me) So even if you assume no one needs a fancy studio, there still needs to be some financial support for the recording process.
More artists are releasing under their "own" label today then ever.
But there are real limits to independent artists as well. Performance licenses demanded by royalty collection organizations (BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, etc.) are closing down opportunities in small venues like restaurants and bars by demanding fees far in excess to what these businesses can afford. Jazz is all about improvisation on existing music...er.... I guess we mean copyright infringement. Bad Jazz.
Copyright law (and patent law for that matter) isn't supposed to be there to insure that making a living with music is easy. It is supposed to promote the development of "Science and the useful Arts".
Today we are seeing an explosion of content being produced. Some of it good, some of it very bad. If we consider the fact that this is happening even as the Recording Industry fades, then from a policy perspective one has to wonder if we need the costs and penalties of massive copyright law.
"Performance licenses demanded by royalty collection organizations (BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, etc.) are closing down opportunities in small venues like restaurants and bars by demanding fees far in excess to what these businesses can afford."
True, so if an artist feels that way, they shouldn't register with a PRO. Personally I think the PRO's are about to be downsized considerably, because there is technology out there that will make their day-to-day work obsolete. I have seen it in action, and will change the game of royalty distribution forever, in a positive way.
-Jon
Fortunately, modern advances in digital recording technology are letting bands produce their own professional-quality recordings without the aid of professional audio engineers. Even if the internet had never been invented, the demand for audio engineers would be way way down.
New advances in technology can make skills, even skills that required years of hard work to acquire, obsolete. It may suck for you, but it's not really in the public's best interest to, e.g. boycott robot-made cars (which seems roughly analogous to what you're asking them to do).
On the plus side, it's not quite as if you've chosen a career in, say, buggy-whip manufacture right as automobiles are being invented. There will still be some demand for audio engineers from the top acts (you'd better be excellent at what you do though) and in teaching smaller acts to do it themselves, selling them equipment, etc.
But more music is being recorded today than any time in history.
How do these two observations square with each other? The fact is the technology to make a great recording and mix an album has become so cheap and effective that recording studios are increasingly unnecessary.
Even if all illegal downloading were to stop tomorrow, the recording industry would not stop its closing of recording studios and laying off of recording engineers.
Even if labels began to grow again, they wouldn't give that added revenue to recording engineers and artists. It would go to mostly the corporate fat cats and wall street insiders, and a small slice provided to the children's table for the investors.
Illegal downloading isn't the problem here. The problem is that things change, and technology does tend to erase unnecessary industries which increasingly have no way to add value in the process. Do we need the labels to record? Increasingly, no. To distribute music? Increasingly no. To advertise music? Increasingly, no.
If the industry wants to really solve this problem, they need to FILL THE GAP that exists in the business, and provide an easy, cheap, reliable way to access content legally. But they love the gap because they can jack up prices.
I fully understand that file-sharing is not the sole reason a recording engineer gets laid off. My point was that there are people other than the musicians themselves that put lots of hard work into records that are pirated. My hope was to make people realize that there are lots of people involved in making a record, and we should think about them all when deciding whether to purchase or pirate an album.
"Even if labels began to grow again, they wouldn't give that added revenue to recording engineers and artists. It would go to mostly the corporate fat cats and wall street insiders, and a small slice provided to the children's table for the investors."
These so-called "fat cats" are so few and far between these days. I honestly don't care about them. I want to support independent labels, where every single person at the organization deserves credit (You obviously have no idea how hard these people work, and how passionate they are about music) Even still, it's an artists fault for signing a silly deal that siphons off money to a "fat cat". Plenty of indie labels out there that give artists great deals.
Is less immoral to download Elvis, Michael Jackson, or Jimi Hendrix for free compared to a living artist?
Can I buy the Beatles for 1/2 price?
Many of these artists have been able to quit their day jobs by utilizing the Internet as it was designed. For communications, and marketing to a worldwide audience. Not as a distribution channel. Time for the author and the record labels to realize it's a new world, out there.
Either you buy into the system of exploitation, as it exists. You buy cd's, nothing changes. I go into the store and buy a bands new album. Does that action help the artist get a better percentage of the profit? Does it force the label to treat the artist better? Does if force the label to treat us fans better? The answer is self evident. You dont change something by doing something that hasnt worked. thats the height of insanity.
lets all try and get the artist more money than 1 dollar per cd. Lets get them access and ownership of masters. lets get them treated fairly. get them A and R reps. But lets not dillude ourselves into thinking any of that will happen by buying a cd.
The thought that some billionaire ceo gives a hoot about me or my music taste beyond how it impact his bottom line, is something that is so absurd.
Furthermore, if you don't like the "watered down mindless meaningless music" why would you advocate that people download it at all? If you want to put the record labels out of business, DON'T BUY THEIR MUSIC. The result is the same. But don't be a hypocrite and download the very music you say has no value.
Think of it on a bigger level -- if you believe that it is acceptable to download illegally because you disagree with the labels, where do we as a society draw the line? Movie studios and book publishers often have tough contracts -- is all of their property up for grabs too? What about corporate patent holders who sign one-sided contracts with inventors? Should we just abandon intellectual property altogether? Think about the consequences of your views.
If I don't like Walmart, I can go to some other store AND BUY THE EXACT same product. You can't do that with copyrighted content, because the copyright gives the labels a MONOPOLY on those products. All you can do is just do without, if you don't like a label/studio, but you do like an artist/song/movie.
As for tossing out Intellectual property altogether, I don't think that would be such a bad idea.
Today there are so many patents on smart phones held by so many different entities (Apple, Google, HTC, Blackberry, Palm (soon HP), IBM, Microsoft, etc.) that it is quite safe to say that absolutely nobody can make a *LEGAL* smart phone. Nobody. It is impossible, because there isn't one company out there that has what it takes to license from all these groups every patent they need.
Patents are great to keep out competition. The big corps don't want to do without patents because little companies could spring up and take away their market share.
A Patent never proves you have the right to produce a product. A Patent only proves you have the right to stop someone else from producing a product.
The assertion that record labels are full of passionate music lovers is absurd. its pie in the sky. Are you honestly telling me, the label owners, the ceos of the majors, care about us, the music fans, or their artists? Are you honestly going down that road? Anyone with half a brain can look through history and see thats not the case, that from the word go, labels and ceos have taken advantadge of fans and artists. There is a reason people steal the music. the free part of it is huge, but its also the ridiculous actions of the labels that brought it on. The cramming down our throats of watered down mindless meaningless music (pop, radio music), the increasing cost of a cd, the crowding out of local indie shops by the walmarts and best buys of the world, the clueless nature of the labels on how to deal with illegal downloaders (is it really approriate to fine a mother of 4, 1 million dollars for downloading 22 songs (22 songs is about 2 cds worth of songs, or 40 dollars worth of music).
The record industry is reaping its karma. you treat people like crap, you end up bankrupt
Walmart crowding out the indie store? Maybe if someone actually bothered to go into the indie store to buy a record it wouldn't have had to fold. Rent for a store isn't paid on love alone.
Todays downloading culture is probably hitting the small to midlevel artists the most. Who often happen to be the ones who are making that more interesting and unusual kind of music People who function at that level need to get their income from several sources as gigging is usually not enough to pay the bills. This will make it impossible for them to quit their dayjob since, as I said, rent isn't paid with love alone. That of course makes it harder or impossible for them to tour since not many employers are that symphatetic to employees taking a month or two off to go on the road. Besides touring costs money and where is that going to come from?
Why is watered down pop so common? Maybe that's the only thing that's actually paying any bills these days? Everything else is just an economic liability.
Umm yeah. I am gonna do what i want. I will promote artist rights and a dismantling of the record industry because its the sane thing to do.
The author of the original article, is naive thats the main crux. We all can support artists in a variety of manners.
I'm fully aware that an artist on Interscope makes near to nothing on their CD sales. But that's the artist's fault for signing the deal. They are fully aware of what percentage they will be making. Also, you can't just assume that someone makes nothing from a CD sale. There are so many independent bands out there that welcome help from independent labels and are happy to share profits, should there be any. The label I'm on (Ropeadope) splits profits 50/50 with their artist. Is that morally wrong? Just because the label gets 50% does that mean you should just steal it? I think not.
I'm all for dismantling the record industry, just as long as when it's reassembled, the musician's wishes on how they want to distribute music are respected.
-Jon
At the end of the day, most bands support themselves in their day jobs, and their music is an act of love. I had a guy doing some painting for me who produces music. Sorry, but it has always been this way, even with labels, and it will always be this way.
You cannot charge money for culture, for ideas, for sound waves in the air. You can charge for physical things like signed albums, album art, seats at concerts. You can charge businesses licenses to your art and content, endorsements, and publicity services. If you are popular enough, you are going to be on easy street even if all downloads all the time are legal. That is because some aspects of art are always scarce.
One needs to understand the roots of issues. The industry has never changed and will never change. It must be dismantled.
Listen, say what you want about the labels, but no artist is required to sign a contract with one. Especially in an age where artists can record and sell themselves online, it is dishonest for you to ring your slavery bell. In fact, it is more akin to slavery to take someone's product and not pay anything for it.
Finally, have you ever stepped foot in a major record label? My guess is no. Record labels are full of hard-working, passionate music lovers who work hard finding music that consumers will love. Sure, money is a part of that, because it's not free to sign, promote, and tour a new artist around the country. But at the end of the day, if people don't love the music, no one gets paid anything. So, of course labels try to find the best artists they can that appeal to the most consumers possible. And what the hell is wrong with that? Society benefits, the label benefits, and yes, the artist benefits. Putting aside the $100-200k signing bonus they receive, they are also promoted and given a tour advance by the label.
And I do what I can to change the laws so that downloading will be legal.
After all, this isn't "stealing" as you are not taking away their product. The problem is that their "product" is just a legal tax that doesn't go to content creators for the most part anyway.
We live in a democracy, and we do not have to make the world safe for corporations.
Whats more important, is overhauling the entire industry. Dont artists deserve more than a measly dollar for their art? Dont bands deserve their masters? Dont bands deserve better treatment than they currently receive.
As I look at it, if you buy a cd, you are supporting a corrosive, corrupt and exploitative system that values money over art.
Music changed my life. I am here today because of it, it altered my trajectory. It soothes, comforts and is my life raft. But the fact of the matter is, as long as money is the focus of it all, we all lose out. The majors, dont care. They dont care i have a handful of records that define my life, made me a better person. They only care about money. And thats sad.
Nothing changes for the artist as long as their toxic relationship with the industry is intact.
Music is everything to me. Artists deserve more...We all deserve more.