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Paul McCartney Goes After MP3.com
sarchasm writes, "Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney's publishing company MPL Communications is suing MP3.com. It's good to see that another poor starving artist is helping to fight the big bad MP3 movement. For more info, see the story on Yahoo.
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The development of recorded music, which really became an important industry in the mid 40's (even though the first phonographic tubes were credited to Edison's lab in the 1880's, I think) changed the way we understand music in such a dramatic way, it's almost unimaginable to us now. Before that time, the popular music industry consisted of songwriters who would write and sell sheet music: musicians would buy the music and perform locally. Once a musician bought the sheet music, they would pay a royalty for public performance, but home performance was, of course, unlimiited. This practice goes back at least to the 19th century (as did the practice of paying off performers to promote songs.) Musical works in the US were protected by copyright from 1831, The music was preformed locally: that meant that one hit song could provide a modest but real living for a large number of local musicians (remember them?). Radio often consisted of live performances of music, and the same royalty practices would eventually apply to radio. The definition of the recording of a performance as being another performance, and thus something to which the artist had rights, grew out of a series of court cases involving radio and TV broadcast.
With the advent of recorded media - i.e., performances - available as saleable objects, the production of music completely changed. Rather than a large number of local performances and productions, it was much more profitable to resell the same performance over and over again. Thus was born the era of the "pop star;" a musician who would get much, much richer than the composers and songwriters on whom he relied, whose single 'performance' would be renumerated again with each purchase of the media, and again with each public playing of that media. Obviously, most of today's music stars are the beneficiaries of this system: local performance is just an adjunct to the business of creating and distributing media.
This has created a chiaroscuro of winners and losers: for one thing, mediated mass appeal became much more important than before; local musicians often struggled, as did those who relied on serious music audiences (classical and serious music was and is sustained by performance attendance, as well as by public and private grants and academia.) Paul McCartney, obviously, was a Big Winner, as was the whole industry involved in the production and distribution of little pieces of plastic. Some niche musicians were able to distribute their audience much farther than they would have been able to before the development of reel-to-reel, LP's, CD's, etc, so sub-genres of music (folk, punk, goth, trance, industrial, etc.) could thrive, as long as they could find a popular audience - and sometimes a symbiotic relationship with the manufacturers of youth cultures would develop.
The engine of technology is about to exhaust this model, however, and there is no going back. Music is again going to be a service, not a commodity. Some people will thrive in this environment: artists who manage to create live experiences which draw audiences, composers who get grants to create complex works and get them performed, or who have academic careers; musicians who are paid to produce music for games, film, and theatre, and amateur composers and musicians who are motivated by a passion for the music, who then might find themselves with an unexpected audience (ever hear of Daniel Johnston?) The people who will lose are largely those who were winning in the old system. It would be blithe to paint them as spoiled whiners who deserve to suffer now: many of them were talented, creative people whose output might suffer in a post-commodity musical millieu, and some types of music will frankly get less money than before. Also, there will probably be new opportunities for vultures and parasites, for agents and headhunters and plaigarisim lawsuits. But, thanks to the distributed and grassroots aspect of the new technologies, the cat is solidly out of the bag. It's just a matter of how long it will take before enough people are sharing music digitally, that the old industry infrastructure simply collapses.
This is not the artist's label
The company of which Paul McCartney is the principle owner, MPL Communications Inc, is suing MP3.com. We frequently represent Microsoft as Bill Gates, why not do the same to Paul McCartney?
A statement even came from his personal publisist about the suit.
Nate Custer
"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm; usually because they could not walk" Nietzsche
This is reminiscient of something the RIAA tried to pull about 8 years ago. I used to work in an independent music store and suddenly we got the word from all the big music distributors (Sony, BMG, Uni, Polygram, etc) that they would be pulling ad support for stores that continued to sell used CD's. Their reasoning was bizarre to say the least, claiming that we couldn't resell a CD we bought from a customer because the artist wasn't receiving any royalties. They even lined up Garth Brooks as the industry mouthpiece to say he didn't like it that music stores were profiting from something he created, never mind that he'd already received royalties on that CD once.
Anyone who has ever worked at a music store knows that the profit margins are pretty slim. New product from a company like Sony cost about $9 per and to compete with places like Best Buy we had to resell it around $12. A used CD on the other hand we could buy for around $3.50 and sell for $8.50. Needless to say, we definitely emphasized the used CD part of our business. Eventually NARM (National Association of Music Retailers) got their collective sh*t together and protested and the RIAA eventually dropped it. And poor Garth continued to sell 5 million units every year.
This case will be a little different because NARM will believe they stand to lose as much as the RIAA if mp3's are still distributed. It just sounds like Paul is the designated industry voice in this case, most likely because it will appeal to the people in their 40's and 50's who have more control over what's going on, at least in the legal area.
The whole controversy over mp3's is a smokescreen anyway, just the RIAA wanting control over how music is distributed. The bulk of what you'll find on the Napster is top 40 radio crud that will still sell no matter what. Sure kids'll download a few Britney Spears singles but she isn't going to be missing any of the money. The bands who are really hurting for money, the ones that barely get by anyway, won't miss it either. Bands like that tour and sell T-Shirts. Plus, I've searched the Napster numerous times for bands like Fugazi and I might run across one or two tracks at the most despite the fact that they've sold tens of millions of CD's over the past 15 years. People who like the independent/local bands will continue to buy their product because they want to support them. When the used CD thing happened, I asked a member of a band that was on a major label what he thought and he said to go ahead and buy the used CD because he'll never see any of the money anyway.
Less popular bands are essentially indentured servants to whatever label they are on anyway. The record company might give you a million dollar contract (over 4 or 5 albums, no less) but then they'll want you to make a video and go on tour and guess what, they charge you for that and takeit out of your royalties. Then when it comes time to record your next album, they'll make you pay for the studio time out of your contract as well.
Face it, the RIAA doesn't give a crap about the artist unless the arist is a "radio-friendly unit-shifter" (thanks for the term, Nirvana). They just want to control how the music is distributed.