Last week, I received a form letter from my old boss, Jim Urie, CEO of Universal Music & Video Distribution. The subject line introduced it as a Call To Action, and it was a follow-up to a bold speech Urie had made at the National Association of Recording Merchandisers convention last month, on behalf of Music Rights Now.
Jim begged me to become “more aggressive in lobbying our government, more outspoken in drawing attention to the problems caused by piracy, and more actively engaged.” Because, as Jim said, we “cannot win this fight alone.”
My initial reaction, of course, was something to the effect of kiss my ass, Jim Urie. Last year, with inquiring minds and a grand ambition to pass ourselves off as responsible journalists, we asked ourselves how much of the record industry’s woes can really be attributed to piracy. We got a few answers, and the most credible and well-researched one came from researchers at Harvard Business School and UNC Chapel Hill, who produced an empirical analysis that found that the net effect of piracy on music sales is “statistically indistinguishable from zero.” This inconvenient truth was even supported by a report filed by CRIA, the Canadian branch of the RIAA.
Thousands of clever analogies have been made to illustrate the music industry’s plight. As a fresh one goes, if there were no bouncers outside of concert venues, we would see ticket sales plummet just as fast as CD sales. Well, that’s one way to look at it; People don’t pay because they don’t have to, and so the solution must be to hire a bouncer. A big, mean motherfucker with a chip on his shoulder and a tiny penis to overcompensate for. Someone no one will dare fuck with.
People love simple explanations, but like most clever analogies and op-ed pull-quotes, this hypothetical ticket illustration oversimplifies a complex issue and insults the intelligence of everyone within earshot. To examine it for 5 seconds more than anyone who thought it was a good one, the ticket fee is only one of many ways that concerts take money out of our pockets, and it’s only one of several factors when we’re considering getting up off our asses and out to a show.
Yet, as a brilliant young man once said, “sometimes you need to realize an elephant is heavier than a mouse.” In other words, you can’t say that just because I would rather hop a fence than purchase a $65 ticket to your show, that I don’t respect the value of music. I mean, you can say that, but if you do, you’re an asshole.
How about this one: Complaining about piracy is like complaining that you can’t make a decent living selling air. Or here we go: Lobbying the government to help protect your CD business is like calling 911 and asking for a ride to work.
To be fair, Music Rights Now’s primary objective is to get the ISPs to voluntarily work with the copyright holders to shut down internet users sharing art illegally, outside of congress. But their blatant lack of faith in this idea (as they continue to half-heartedly pursue it) is completely understandable. They know as well as anyone that it all comes down to money in the end, and that the ISPs’ income directly comes from bandwidth that is mostly used to exchange music and movies and TV shows illegally. And in a moment, I’ll explain why there’s no way in hell that the ISPs would go along with any idea that involves them making a lot less money.
The author of the concert analogy, Jon Sheldrick of Music Think Tank actually wrote a really compelling piece around it. It’s called “Why You Should Pay For Music,” and you can read it here. In the opening paragraph, he lays out a thesis clearly: “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.”
Sheldrick then goes on to explain how directly paying for music supports artists more than any other form of support imaginable, and he makes a very convincing case for this. And just before we get to the concert analogy, he dismisses the legal argument, as we do, as a quixotic distraction: “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.” And I’ll help explain why he’s right, in a moment.
Sheldrick also offers the point that as a listener, you’ll actually enjoy the music more if you wait for the release date, and worship the ritual of listening for the first time according to the meticulously crafted official schedule. If I wanted to dispense another snarky analogy, I could say that it’s like jerking off in the maintenance closet at work compared to drawing a bubble bath, lighting some scented candles, dimming the lights, and romancing yourself with some exotic oils through a long, quiet evening at home.
Of course, either way, the end result is the same. And who has time for romance these days, anyway?
Jim Urie just got bitch slapped.
I’ve said all I needed to say about this subject in most of your previous essays about this. I’ve moved on from analyzing the situation, as have most other people. The one’s who are left in the ring are The Big 3, and a bunch of top 40 listeners who neither buy music that often NOR listen to that much of a variety of it. They’ve filled up their iPod nanos with maybe 500 songs and probably payed for a third of it. They’ve gone to 4 concerts in 10 years and twice it was Britney Spears. But they don’t compare to people like me and you who have downloaded thousands of tracks, but also spent thousands of dollars on music(i.e. Vinyl, merch, digital tracks, concert tickets etc.) I just continue down my desired path of music entertainment and hardly glance back at a fighter swinging in the dark who has failed to see that most of their valuable customers AND money making acts have left the building.
Great piece!
Spot-on and very well documented. You guys kick ass.
Insightful as always. I continue to feel no guilt for the music I download seeing as I spend thousands of dollars a year on music. Mostly on local acts w/tickets, merch etc. It’s a great feeling to buy someones EP and then immediately watch them take that $5 or $10 and walk to the bar and buy themselves a drink. However they spend it is their business. I’m just glad I could help.
oh and BTW, step away from the maintenance closet, it’s occupado!
nicely put.
I listened to an interview with Stone Temple Pilots by Adam Carolla. He asked them something about their roots and added “and all of this was before people had to look for bands on the internet…” They said, “yes, thank god!”
I was born during 1977. I became a major consumer of CDs during 1991. I was only moderately interested in a few bands during the cassette tape era, but I remember distinctly the moments when I discovered bands through terrestrial radio (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc.) or at a record store (Pavement). Many or even most people who are my age or older speak longingly of those days. I think that there is currency in their words. Now we must wade through rivers of shit to find anything that is even remotely decent.
In fact, I can think of only one artist from Myspace who I randomly discovered and follow now. Another “brilliantly talented” (with all due sarcasm) artist who Myspace touts as one of their projects: Katy Perry.
I also discovered the great L.A. band Dios by wild happenstance when I made a rare trip to Buddyhead.com — which is an otherwise horrible site.
I guess that I’m saying that a part of me misses “gatekeepers” and the quaint ways that people who were actually informed about music (record companies, old school dj’s, record store owners, etc.) would pass that info along to us.
People who never worked for record companies might think that they never had people who were actually passionate about music because they see the salesmen who are there now– the salesmen who were brought in during the internet boom.
There is a part of me that wishes music could somehow be disallowed from being on the internet.
Great editorial, though. “Allow me to retort.”
I’ve had the best of both worlds. Back in the day, my only means of new music was through the radio, record stores, and friends. And while that had it’s charm and was functional for it’s time, I much prefer today. The ease of recording has removed almost all of the roadblocks for artists these days. No longer do you have to know someone or have a shit ton of money to be able to record a few tracks. If you’re even remotely a fan of music, I bet you are at the most, 3 degrees of separation away from someone w/a decent home studio. This opens the floodgates and allows everyone an equal chance. This however leads to a ton of crap being out there, but also allows for an equal amount of new, amazing music. Back then we only had a handful of maybe a few thousand people, dictating what was good and what will be sold to the rest of us. Now? We have millions. Not only do we have millions of voices, we have some amazing tools (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter) to whittle those millions down to a few hundred people that share our almost exact taste in music. We then embark upon this epic journey of discovery together. We all come across crap, but we move on and warn others. When we find a true gem, we gush about them, hoping to spread the love to as many as possible. It is these discoveries that make the journey not only tolerable, but downright exciting. Furthermore, we have sites like Antiquiet, further bringing us together and I for one, wouldn’t have it any other way.
Labels are shitting their pants while realising they’re pretty much out of the equation.
Recording is easy. Sharing is stupid easy. So… WHY them, again?
Also.. they want us to stop sharing, ‘couse its some crooked way to get music. But they wont stop autotuning and playbacking the “artists”. Thats a crooked way to dispose, fuckers.
Nice job. Great article! These guys are as bad as the bands begging for money after they already screwed us over.
Nice article guys. The major labels, and apparently this Jim Urie character, need to realize that they had their golden age, but it has passed. There just isn’t the same amount of money to be made anymore, and piracy is NOT the culprit. When the RIAA is questioned by a government agency because they can’t even produce the statistics they use to back up their ridiclous claims about the thousands of jobs lost and millions of dollars forfeited in the industry due to piracy, something is wrong. It’s time for them to evolve and figure out new revenue streams besides overpriced CDs; revenue streams that involve a product that consumers will happily buy and not feel cheated. Because one thing is for sure…the internet isn’t going anywhere.
One small side note – not sure how valid that info is about napster and grokster attempting to cooperate with the labels. Not trying to sound like a know-it-all douche here, but I studied these cases in law school in a cyberlaw class, conducted by a professor that was by no means anti-piracy, and neither napster nor grokster had any intentions of getting any kind of licenses from the labels. In fact, in the later grokster suit, internal memos between company executives and employees which were introduced as evidence said they planned on promoting their company as the “next” napster, and welcomed a lawsuit for the press and promotional attention it could bring their service.
Keep pieces like these coming!
This kind of feature is what separates you from all the other music blogs out there. You actually know and care about your subject matter.
If someone offered me a cheap, tasteless, flat glass of wine for free or a nice big full-bodied glass of red for $9.99 I’d always pay the lousy ten bucks. The only reason to buy CD’s and record albums is because they actually sound better. Music from shared files sounds lame. It’s quality vs. quantity. If record labels want consumers to buy albums they have to keep their quality ‘better’ than the freebies. Better quality can be achieved either through the musical ability of their bands and/or in their packaging and sound production/recording. If not, the result is loss of business for the record companies.
That argument may have held water ten years ago, but with the advent of sites like What.Cd – which offer ultra-high quality recordings that are often far better than what CDs can provide – it’s a misleading and primitive idea to assume that we’re stuck with CDs because “they sound the best”. They most certainly don’t.
digital formats are scalable. a cd is always going to be 16 bit at 44.1khz. if i could buy 24 bit versions of classic albums direct from the labels, they would get a lot of my money overnight. but currently, to get truly high fidelity, i would have to go to a place like what.cd that has lossless rips of japanese sacds and shit. though vinyl rips, as blackgrease says below, are a total minefield.
your quality argument is not just off, it’s backwards.
You do realize most of What’s content are just perfect CD rips, right? Unless you mean the vinyl rips, which I avoid as they’re hit and miss with the ripper.
As for the article, it’s a shame it still needs to be written. It’s old news and anyone who gets it, gets it. There is no real new insight in the article, just shit that’s been said for years now.
Do we really need more articles like this? It’s old news and a waste of time in my opinion.
About John Sheldricks quote…it’s a great dream to imagine a world where people are willing to part with their own money because they want the artists to flourish. If only the money from album sales went directly to the artists I think a lot more people would be inclined to spend more money on CD’s, digital music and even vinyl.
Generally I don’t buy CD’s anymore…I mean what’s the point really. I do for the bands I really care about.
The reason for this is I know where most of the money from CD sales goes.
If I shop at a big retailer 90% + of that money goes to the retailer and the label (assuming it is a major label release).
If I shop at an independent record store the price of the album increases often by more than 50% and still 90% of the money goes to the store (which doesn’t bother me in this case) and to the label again.
It’s hard as a music consumer to want to give your money to help support the artist when the artist reaps little to no financial benefit from your purchase.
You guys have chronicled and referenced the Radiohead/Nine Inch Nails method vigorously so I won’t get into the specifics of it. But the In Rainbows/The Slip idea of offering the music for free as a vehicle to support touring income is the way of the future in my opinion.
I know you can say it is easy for Radiohead/NIN because they are established acts with hungry fanbases, but lets face it; bands make most of their income from touring. A higher ratio of my cash spent at a concert will go to the band than the amount from buying the record.
Maybe this needs to be embraced by more acts.
I can’t help but think of the Arcade Fire here. Neon Bible was recorded, produced and funded by the band. And like Radiohead/NIN, the only reason to use a record label was for physical distribution of their album. The album that nobody is going to buy, but needs to made available just in case they get lucky.
That’s the only thing the labels can offer right now. Physical distribution of music. That is the last shred of hope for them.
If that is all they can offer then they are truly fucked. Because music can be distributed to me with two clicks of my mouse via Transmission (BitTorrent program). And it doesn’t cost me any money.
And if I like that music…well guess what: I’m going to dole out ridiculous amounts of cash to go see that band in concert and do my very best to be in the front row to have a better spot than anybody else. I pay out thousands just in the costs of the tickets each year.
It isn’t a Music Business crisis…it is a major label crisis…and fuck them anyways. The music business will survive without the traditional system.
Why?
Because of people like me, who are willing to pay when we know the band will get the money and we will get something out of it.
Well, I’m not an audio engineer (nor did I stay in any motel’s or hotel’s last night) but it stands to reason that a CD or a vinyl release (from a label) will always be the best recording from a band. Since, the labels have the master recordings from the artist. However, I am always open to new ideas and insights (and Chianti’s!). Therefore, I went to what.cd (never heard of the site I’m just a 37-year old music listener bored at work trolling websites – then again who isn’t?) and for the effing life of me can’t get in – all the site says to me is: {You’ve stumbled upon a door where your mind is the key. There are none who will lend you guidance; these trials are yours to conquer alone. Entering here will take more than mere logic and strategy, but the criteria are just as hidden as what they reveal. Find yourself, and you will find the very thing hidden behind this page. Beyond here is something like a utopia – beyond here is What.CD.} Now I love espionage as much as those Russian spies that are sitting in a New York jail right now but come on homies if this site has the best audio recordings of the music I crave let me in! I never liked Rubik’s cubes either.
It’s a private site. You need to be invited in.
What.cd is the shit…if you find yourself so lucky as to get in like I did…you can download every album as soon as it leaks at every bitrate.
For those of us that only download at 320kbps…what.cd is essential.
They do most albums in flac too
i find it silly to rip flacs from cds which are average quality to begin with. but a flac from a better than cd source is delicious, and yes, you can get them on what.cd.
which we should probably stop drawing attention to, haha.
Let’s be honest, anyone who cares about shutting it down knows about it.
(Btw, 320 kb mp3s aren’t worth the extra space)
I can hear the difference between 160 and 320…there is a difference.
uh, there are a lot of steps between 160 and 320. 320 is overkill. v2/v0 lame vbr is great and produces smaller files. the difference between a cd and anything over 192 is only audible to very trained ears. 160 is audibly shitty. i rip all cds v0, and i’ve got a fancy schmancy 24 bit hi-fi system. i use 24 bit lossless only if i have a better than cd source. if you’re ripping 16 bit 44.1khz cds to flac, you’re a retard.
Or you have no concern for hard drive space
guess it’s fine for long term archival. i’m probably going to rip my crate of live shows from aperfectcircle.net to flacs on a ssd before the discs fall apart. but i think within 5 years most of our music (that which is common, major label studio albums, etc) will move to the cloud, whether it’s itunes or spotify or some not yet created service.
flac has advantages other than audio quality, which is why most people who download it do it
Sorry, I didn’t read all the comments, and I’m not very familiar to english language. But I can still think so… I think that no artists need any record company to show off their work. Not anymore. Earlier, we had a few bands releasing a few albuns and we buying cds… nowadays we have a million bands sharing their work all around the web, doing their own tours, getting sponsored, etc…
I really don’t think anyone needs a record label to make music and make a living out of it. But we will always have people like Lars Ulrich paying a million dollars to a bassist only for join the band, so… someone has to finance it… not me, sorry.
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