Wednesday, September 23rd 2009
The Truth: Miscellaneous
The Low Down
The fight (not necessarily an unstoppable force) against the immovable object that is P2P downloading has provided fodder for what could easily become a regular series on Antiquiet. There’s certainly a great deal of interest among passionate music fans, worldwide, for these topics and several others related.
I think it’s time to go a little further than simply pointing and laughing.
I wish I didn’t have to provide this disclaimer, but I should, given my reputation and the oversight of this site by certain interested parties: I buy music. A lot of it. I pay for it with actual money. I have removed myself personally from the P2P equation. I’ve gone straight.
Obviously, I have a lot of respect for artists. Antiquiet is irrefutable evidence of this. But that’s nothing new. A few years ago, with all the respect for artists in the world, I conducted myself exactly how many of our readers do: I downloaded quite often to sample, as I simply could not afford ‘blind buys,’ nor have I ever had a snowball’s chance in a microwave at simply kicking what can only be described as a hopeless addiction to good music.
All that’s really changed is that I can now afford to take a lot more chances, and I get a lot of music sent to me for free by publicists that want me to talk about it.
But let’s look at this behavior that’s supposedly ruining the music industry.
As many of our readers do now, once upon a time I downloaded, and with not the slightest bit of remorse; I would just look at piles of CDs, ticket stubs, and t-shirts I had spent countless last dollars on. I watched those piles grow exponentially when the number of bands I liked grew beyond the seven on the radio to the hundreds and ultimately thousands that could be found on MP3 trading forums. And that’s one bone of contention in the argument: Those who download say they directly, financially support artists they like (and might otherwise never have discovered) in one form or many others, with many examples handy.
But what if they don’t like what they downloaded, and they don’t purchase? Or what if they liked it just enough to keep it, but couldn’t quite afford to pay the $10 for what is essentially nothing more than a license they know no one’s ever going to check? Or maybe they can’t afford the $30 ticket that becomes $65 after “convenience fees.” These people are the alleged thieves. These are the people being blamed for the downfall of the industry.
In their defense, they say they only avoided a purchase that wasn’t going to happen anyway, and not buying is not exactly stealing. Maybe it is. Or maybe we have piles of research proving that they’re not harming anyone at all in any way, shape or form. Regardless, it’s a moot point. The people buying and the people stealing, by and large, they’re the same people. They’re the people that care enough about music to pay for it when they can, steal it when they can’t, and spread the word to others either way.
We’ve raised this point before, and it’s been questioned. It’s one of those things that’s hard to prove or accurately quantify. People say that they buy what they download and like, but do they really?
According to the RIAA, they do.
Wow, I’m blown away by this article. Lots of great points and research. I’m spreadin this shit around.
Hell yeah!
Spotify can never replace iTunes, at least not for me. Unless you really believe that Spotify will last for the rest of your life, one day your source of music will be gone. Like waking up one day and your iTunes library has been erased, with no way to replace it. Not to mention the obvious problem of having to be connected, and not being able to completely choose your own quality/format.
As for the file sharing dead horse, I download. I download the shit out of music. I do it because I can, and because there’s no way I could afford to pay for as much music as I DL. If I had to pay for all music, I guess I would just have way less music. But there are also a ton of bands that would lose out on my concert ticket money, because I wouldn’t even know about them. I don’t ever listen to the horrendous radio, I don’t have cable, and I don’t see any kind of awards shows. I find music through friends and through various blogs and websites.
I don’t feel bad about downloading because I’m pretty certain that any band I download is probably doing better than I am financially, and well, for whatever reason I just don’t care. I’m in a band and I value our music and would rather it be paid for. I also know that we make way more money from playing shows and selling physical CD’s at those shows than we do on an average day of just waiting for people to buy our shit on iTunes or Amazon.
Because superficial tarts like Lilly Allen deserve to have valid opinions on integrity with songs like…
http://www.metrolyrics.com/not-fair-lyrics-lily-allen.html
Good article with lots more good articles to follow up on.
I used to P2P, but my pc isnt the best so stopped it for a while. But I can think of a few bands that I bought their album from listening to it first. (Mr Bellamy I’m looking at you here for your albums – which i buy then go and see you live for a price as OTT as your music ;-) )
I am from UK and use the Spotify program. When it gets to USA it will take over. Incase you dont know, there are occasional adverts between playbacks, and the library is not as full as you would wish, but you can still find a lot of good songs on it and it has made me want to buy more albums cos i get to listen to it first. But hey, its just like P2P. So are they gonna ban streaming next? Who knows.
In such economic drivel, we need to be more careful with our money. So these sites help us make the right choice.
Remember Lily Allen made her name via myspace so she has some nerve saying anything about free music.
I was really surprised just how damning CRIA’s own research was to their own claims. That study pretty much contradicts every claim they make about lost sales, and confirms what those of us on the other side have been saying for years about stagnant airwaves and the success of the try before you buy sales model, and its their own study.
First, Skwerl, great article.
Second, Two Hearts One Blood, “I don’t feel bad about downloading because I’m pretty certain that any band I download is probably doing better than I am financially, and well, for whatever reason I just don’t care. I’m in a band and I value our music and would rather it be paid for.”
Did you actually read what you wrote before posting it?That’s about the stupidest comment on downloading I’ve heard, and highly hypocritical as well. If you don’t care about someone else’s music, why should anyone give a fuck about yours?
Plus, I listened to your “music” and sorry, but trust me, no one is going to want to steal or pay for that shit, so you don’t have to worry.
I enjoyed what you had to say about the radio formats. But I believe that is a huge problem on it’s own. Radio stations are driving people to download because they can never hear what they want to hear on the radio.
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If the rock stations don’t play Metallica, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Green Day every 2 hours they lose advertising revenue. But there are a great deal of people, myself included, who have been steered to P2P because radio sucks and because I can’t buy the records I like at most chain record stores.
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I always hear about how the music industry has become a group of niche markets where only a few new groups are succeeding. P2P is an easy target, but maybe just maybe, the reason people aren’t investing in albums is because they all suck. If labels are going to exist 15 years from now, they need to expose the niche artists and pressure radio stations to get air play (not payola).
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The 360 deals seemed like a good plan…but the labels haven’t been taking advantage like Live Nation has up to this point. I don’t see Live Nation complaining about money problems. Love or loathe them (and their association with the evil monocle wearing Ticketmaster guys that are passing Go and collecting $15.00 with every ticket purchase), at least LN is creating new business model’s to compete in the changing market.
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The labels killed themselves because they have over saturated the market, because they promote the shit out of acts long past their prime, and because they continually look to business models created in the 50′s and hope they will still succeed today.
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They day the labels and terrestrial radio die off will be a glorious day for music. We’re just on the verge of hitting stage 2 of the Music Industry…the stage where the internet is embraced rather than feared.
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Plenty of people understand that now, but not enough.
You know I used to download a ton and then buy the albums I liked from a used CD store to minimize costs and wasted money (on shit music). But I honestly got scared by a lot of the RIAA’s suing and threats, so I slowed my music downloading a bunch. Almost to nothing. And you know what, I’ve pretty much stopped buying CDs too. When I do buy a CD it’s either a) from a band I love to the bone and have no fear on purchasing or b) music I’ve been looking for from the days I was downloading that I am just now coming across used.
And it’s not just CDs. Maybe it’s that I am getting older too, but I don’t go to shows (or buy other merch) as much any more either.
Take from that what you will, but I HATE that my love of music has actually been dialed down thanks to the RIAA and their tactics. But I guess I can cling to my current CD collection and enjoy the hell out of it for the near future.
i just realized i cut out a paragraph in which i introduced mike, who came up with most of the research. i know i thanked him at the end, but really, i can’t thank him enough. he came up with the studies, without which this would have been nothing more than another blog rant.
Oh f*ck me these guys are good… These guys are really good.
Awesome article. Spot on.
Just want to reiterate what you mentioned…
The sad irony here is that as the radio stations have become more homogenized due to corporate control and greed, true music fans have gone “underground” to get their music by tapping into the P2P networks. If the radio stations played music or AT LEAST had the freedom to play music like they used to (i.e. stream whole albums, play independent music, etc.), I’m sure we’d see a more balanced and reasonable usage of P2P.
Furthermore, had radio remained a reliable source of music, it would be interesting to think how this would have or could have better evolved WITH P2P network technology. In other words, radio stations offering free streams/downloads of the songs in their rotation or select singles, etc.
The amount of control from record companies that has dominated the radio airwaves for the past two decades has not merely encouraged but forced consumers to hit the web and track down what they like.
I also can appreciate the argument you present as music addiction. That’s exactly what it is. Very few of the people I’ve ever known who have downloaded music did it because they were consciously thinking: I could buy this, but I’ll download it instead. Now, I’m sure that happens to an extent, but everybody I know who has ever downloaded did so because they finally found what they were looking for (a band’s brand new song) after weeks of anticipation and hours spent trolling through forums and news sites just for a tracklist or a song title.
So with radio now a complete joke and with MTV totally in the toilet (and hardly Lars’ golden throne, at that) where the hell are true music lovers supposed to go to find their music? And god forbid we actually do want TO BUY and PAY FOR music, where do we go for that? Best Buy? Target? Walmart? Oh ya, because that’s what I want, to search for a piece of art and hope to be inspired when I’ve got soccer moms pushing strollers with whiny kids and bags of gerber or corporate types trying to find a replacement ink cartridge or some geezer trying to figure out which refrigerator to buy.
One last note now that I’ve begun this rant: the last 50-60 years has been interesting because for the first time in history we’ve got mass produced art marketed and sold like a consumer good. Nothing was ever really like that before: you didn’t see big posters and commercials for books. But music (and movies, too) are a sort of strange phenomenon. For example, I believe the most expensive painting the world is Jackson Pollock’s No. 5, 1948 sold by David Geffen for around $150 million. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Nirvana’s Nevermind (also owned by Geffen) is a piece of art tantamount in its integrity and statement to this painting. Unfortunately, what this means in the mind of a record company executive (see Jimmy Iovine’s post above) is that this album must sell 10 million copies in order to give it the value that the industry imagines that it has. So the pressure is on the artist as well as the art itself to sell, not to create. Pollock was dead for years before his painting was ever “worth” this much… but Cobain ultimately took his life (in part) because of the pressure to be a best-selling commodity.
It’s bizarre what has happened to the idea of the artist. Their role in and responsibility to society has been beaten, gagged, and raped and what’s left is not art at all… but a product that now sits to the left of toys and video games on a shelf.
Thank you for the article, great read and research!! I don’t know about downloading disappearing in the near future but I do know the RIAA and other anti-piracy groups scare tactics are NOT in the best interest of music; or musicians for that matter. I leave you with what I think is a very edifying and still valid article from @demonbaby http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html