Janis Ian on the Internet Debacle

Datasage writes "Janis Ian, famous songwriter and artist, writes about her views of free music downloads, the music industry and the evils of the RIAA in this article." Yet another artist with substantial first-person experience speaking out, reminiscent of Courtney Love's speech.

Comments

Re:more artists against RIAA

[JimPooley]

Oh yes. Jacko was complaining that the recording industry was racist (And we all know how proud he is of his black heritage, don't we.) and not trying to bolster his faded career at all...

Compassion for the artists?

[LeiraHoward]

I find it interesting that the artists are that badly mistreated (as far as low royalties, etc.) And this artist does have a point. I know I myself have bought CD's from artists that I had never heard of until a friend sent me an .mp3 of their song. I liked it so much, I wanted more, and went out and paid for it.

I think that the RIAA is just frightened that they are losing control. If they were really worried about the artists, they would be paying them more, and not resorting to some of the more unethical practices that have become standard in the music industry.

If they really wanted to help the consumer, they could lower CD prices everywhere, so that more people could purchase more songs.

If they really wanted to help the artist, they would funnel more money to the artist, rather than their own pockets.

The truth is, though, that they only want to help themselves, and as such, there isn't much we can do about it. We can let our voices be heard, and hope that one day, CD copying will be just as legal as taping something off the radio or television.

Great Article...

[2g3-598hX]

And David Bowie had some pretty good stuff to say, too.

Just a thought, but it would be great if more stars of the 60s spoke out against the record companies on this one. Those decrepit baby boomers owe it to us later generations...

Lobby your favorite aging rocker. I bet their back catalogues make up a sizeable portion of record company revenue, and the've already made a fortune so they have less to risk by speaking out. And once we get Ozzy Osbourne et al on the case...

I fear

[rhadamanthus]

That nothing will change though. There is simply TOO much money at stake here--but its the same old problem with the RIAA and friends...

Basically, corporations such as Disney and industry groups such as the MPAA and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) cannot seem to fathom the existence of a customer who is both honest enough to not steal, yet smart enough to not let him/herself be ripped off.

The opposing view: A study compiled by the Yankelovich Partners surveyed 16,000 Americans between the ages of 13 and 39 who say they listen to more than 10 hours of music a week and have spent at least $25 on music in the past six months. Among the findings: 59 percent of those who said they heard a certain piece of music for the first time while online ended up purchasing that music as a CD.

What is truly patheitc is how they rant and rave about how they want to "protect the artist", all the while doing just the opposite--and GETTING AWAY WITH IT. What the RIAA does not want you or I to realize is that they most certainly do NOT represent the artists contracted to their labels. They represent nothing more than a coalition of companies milking copyright to its fullest extent.

Copyright is no longer a good thing. It is sad that such a good "idea" has become such a misused and abused facet of corporate ideology and overwhelming greed.

----rhad

Re:I fear

[5KVGhost]

I was watching some talking head on one of the tv money shows the other night. They were discussing, what else, corporate mismanagement. This guy was some kind of hot-shot investor, and he was all hot and bothered because company executives had forgotten their one true purpose: to serve the shareholders!.

WTF?!

Both of you are correct, actually, but I think you're a little bit more correct.

Shareholders have to get some return on their investment or they won't stay shareholders or attract new ones. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Of course, the proper way to give them a return on their investment is please the customers who buy their products, thereby keeping the company healthy, and ultimately delivering some profits that can be distributed back to the investors (and/or re-invested to fund the continued operation of the company.) So, yeah, make money for the shareholders by having lots of happy, paying customers.

But pleasing consumers and making competitive products can be hard work. So some CEOs, for their own immediate benefit and to satisfy impatient shareholders, have taken advantage of all sorts of short-cuts to make profits appear without the hard work of actually offering decent products or services. It might be massive "cost cutting" that fires the most competent employees or sells off strong but unglamourous assets, accounting tricks to hide poor sales and bad investments, or lots of other things. All of these get rich quick schemes tend to maximize short-term financial gain at the expense of the long-term health of the company. So it's not really matter of selfishness vs. pleasing the customer. It's more a matter of enlightened self-interest vs. immediate gain with no interest in the ultimate consequences.

Something I think is just as bad is the current demand for constant growth. It forces otherwise sane companies to overextend themselves with pointless acquisitions and other silly corporate strategies simply for the sake of keeping irrational market advisors happy. Corporate growth, like growth in living things, must be directed, purposeful, and carefully controlled or it weakens the body rather than strengthening it.

(I think obligatory MS-bashing there at the end is a bit off base, BTW. MS can do whatever it wants with its products, and they're really no worse than many other companies as far as rampant upgrades are concerned. MS has supported some bad legislation in the past, but they're boy scouts compared to really nasty companies like Monsanto, which can do way more real-world damage than any computer company ever dreamed of.)

Re:I fear

[nomad_monad]

>As long as people like you are going to sit on
>the sidelines, pissing and moaning about how
>little they can do, nothing is going to happen.
>Welcome to self-fufilling prophesy land...

That's an unfair characterization of Aceticon argument. I think it was meant to illustrate the problematic nature of your suggestion when taken out of the realm of pure theory and into the field of pragmatic action. To interpret this specific criticism of an equally specific solution as a general proclivity towards "sitting on the sidelines, pissing and moaning" is an accidental lapse in understanding at best, a strawman at worst. Granted, if you don't like the current state of things, it's better to seek out avenues of change that exist within the current socio-economic structure, which is what your money pooling to voting bloc idea embodies. However, the criticism leveled against it also demonstrates that sometimes, that very same criticism reveals the inadequacies of current mechanisms of power and representation, and the need to think of changing or adding to those mechanisms in the search for a viable solution. In other words, the answer is not always found by working with the rules of the game as they exist today, but by changing those rules (or by changing the game itself). Unconstructive negativity has no use when pursuing goals of social progressivism, but that doesn't mean criticisms of proposed emancipatory solutions represent mere naysaying. It has to be a rigorous process.

Re:I fear

[nomad_monad]

It might be unfair, but it's more or less accurate. It's not like presented another way to solve the problem of corrupt corporate management.
True enough, an alternative solution wasn't presented... at least not yet. But my point was that a lack of an immediately proposed alternative doesn't necessarily imply that the person noting an objection is simply a naysayer. Rather, such conclusions should be reserved until the end of the discussion, not the beginning. Maybe I'm being a little pedantic, and in any other context I'd agree with that, but when discussing proposals for social change.... best to be thorough.

And while "changing the rules" always sounds nice, it's also a dangerous game. Communist systems always fail because they expect human nature to change eventually, and in the meantime, we'll keep a gun pointed at your head to force you to change.
Where did I ever mention communism? Actually, this is demonstrative of the current problematic when critiquing the current state of capitalism -- criticisms have a tendency to be mischaracterized as favoring communism (or socialism) as an alternative simply because of argumentative inertia (i.e. this was how the debate was framed for 100+ years, so it's easier to think of it like that). That's another kind of thinking we need to get away from. There are many variants of capitalist systems, as any debate between laissez-faire and regulatory economists will reveal -- to level a critique against its current incarnation is not always suggestive of a desire to do without the idea completely. This is the case with me.

For all the awful things about the capitalist system, it is designed to model how humans actually act, which makes it a heck of a lot more likely to succeed than systems that rely on human nature to be different or that rely on a central body of "experts" to dictacte how things should be.
Agreed. Never said otherwise. Although the latter half of your statement seems to be reflective of our current reality in the U.S., lack of communism notwithstanding.

As for changing corporate policies, vote as a consumer; let these companies know that if they support building DRM into everything, you won't buy their products. Buy up their stock and get your guys on the board of directors. There are ways to do this, all within the system.
This is why I used qualifiers such as "sometimes" and "possible" and "perhaps" in my last post. Sometimes change can be effectuated using the mechanisms that already exist. Sometimes new approaches need to be created. Oftentimes, a combination is the most successful. Boycots can be effective (as can selective investments, such as Green Funds), but it's harder selectively target a company that doesn't depend on end-consumer products for profits, but rather profits by selling materials to other companies... like Enron and Andersen Consulting..

Let your elected officials know that if they pass laws requiring DRM in everything with a D/A converter, you're going to campaign to get them out of office. If it REALLY matters to you, you can do something about it within the system.
Or you can do something to add *to* the system, or something to remove something *from* the system, or pursue activities *outside* the system. What's dangerous is drawing a false dichotomy between acting through what may be inadequate means, and not acting at all, because not only does it tend to constrict creative thinking/approaches, it's underlying assumption -- that the system works AS IS -- only reinforces the status quo.

Think of this all as a qualifier to your argument, and not necessarily an objection to it.

Re:Debate reveals artists' true colors

[FatRatBastard]

Mettalica was in it for the prestige and decided to suck up to the record company who was promoting them and making them 'famous'.

No, Metallica was in it because, unlike 90%+ of the artists signed to the big five, they actually *own* their recording rights. Look at a Metallica CD. It doesn't say (C)(P) Electra (their lable).

Now, this is not to say I agree with Metallica's stance, but its understandable why theirs and Janis' view points are different.

Re:Famous songwriter and artist?

[eyegor]

That may be true. But her point about music downloads increasing sales (even for forgetable artists) is true.

Most music out there is utter crap. I've been burned badly so many times by buying discs by highly-hyped, but untalented "artists" that I'm almost afraid to buy anything.

Enter the Internet.

Now I can preview music and give it a test drive. Do I find a lot of crap? Yep. And I don't buy the discs, nor do I continue to listen to it.

BUT... I do find a fair amount of good stuff and do you know what? I actually BUY the disks. Really!!

I have 20 - 30 CDs full of MP3s that I've downloaded from the 'net and about 1200 CDs that I've purchased from the store (approx 250 since I've been "stealing" music from the Internet).

Are there people who just download the music and never buy a disc (effectivly stealing the music)?

Yes..

They need to pay for the music they listen to in order to reward the artist for producing it. Otherwise, why should the artists continue even trying?

Things need to change. The record companies need to lighten up and people who download and listen to the music need to get some ethics and pay for what they use.

My 2 cents.

Re:I want an apology

[onion2k]

Yes Napster et al make great sampling points. Try before you buy blah blah blah.

However, if you happen to be a formulaic nobody churns out the same old dirges album after album (mentioning no names Lars.. oops), then people are going to be sick of paying 15quid (I'm English, dollars to you I guess) for an album with perhaps 2 or 3 reasonable tracks. And what do they do? They download/copy/rip the stuff they like, and don't pay for the filler. And as far as record companies are concerned, filler pays.

You see, people who download aren't really hurting the artists who have been around for a while, and have a hefty back catalogue that will actually be aided by new listeners. No. The people that are 'harmed' are the so-called 'musicians' who are happy to stamp out track after track, album after album of the usual cookie-cutter chart crap. These are the tunes that appeal most to the very people who can't afford to buy a 15quid/dollar CD, Children. They're the very same people who haven't the intellectual ability to crack some encryption or whatever. So whats left? Downloading.

Sure, Janis Ian is right. People downloading a 27 year old hit isn't going to hurt sales of an ancient Ian album. But thats not the same as saying its not going to hurt anyone.

I'm as bad for this as the next pirate. I would never have gone out and paid for the latest Puddle Of Mudd album, theres only 1 good song on it, but I have it. I've not bought the Blade 2 OST, but I'm listening to it. Just a couple of examples as to where the recording industry has been hurt.

If artists want me to pay my hard earned cash for their music, then they ought to make albums I'd be happy to pay for.

Re:Debate reveals artists' true colors

[niola]

I think you have the wrong impression of Metallica. While they did ruffle a lot of feathers with the way they proceeded, their argument somehow got lost in all the hoopla. Their stance was do not share their studio albums, but share bootlegs etc. to your heart's content.

Anyone who has gone to a Metallica show knows that they ENCOURAGE recording of their shows fror your own enjoyment. In fact I have even heard instances of them letting people jack recording gear into their console at the show should you happen to be close enough.

Their argument, whether you agree with it or not, was that artists should have final say on what is shared and what is not. On this point I would have to agree with them. It shouldn't be the fan's or the label's decision. The decision should be the artists that created the work. If they want to selectively allow some works to be shared and others not, it should be their perogative.

--Jon

Maybe the distribution of cd sales is the problem

[bmf033069]

The article is very good and brings up a point that I have been seeing in my latest cd purchases. I haven't bought a top40 cd in a long time, but now that there is greater access to music online, I'm buying many cd's from bands I have never heard of previously.

The number of cd's that I have bought has gone up, but they aren't any of the one's that are being promoted by these companies. I really wonder if these count in the sales numbers or not...

Re:I want an apology

[dinotrac]

Why? Artists should be compensated for their work --- if it creates sufficient value that you wish to exploit (hang a copy in your living room, listen to it in your home, etc) it.

This is different from saying that the recording industry shouldn't be piled high on a bonfire and doused with lighter fluid.

The problem is that you 20-to whatever morons want to exploit the artists even more than the recording industry. You don't want to pay them anything!

If you were to seriously campaign for artists' rights and to propose somethng that would help artists at least as much as your personal music collection, it might be easier to take you seriously.

It's a cover up!

[rberton]

The primary reason for the RIAA's position is not the hurting of record sales. After all, when Napster was up record sales were up significantly, as well.

The real reason is that record companies spend a lot of money on generating one hit song and a persona to go with it. If you delve beneath the surface of the album (listen to any other song) you will realize it's a piece of shit and the jig is up. The record companies survive on the top 40 radio songs that convince people to buy the album because the song is so catchy, knowing full well that the rest of the album is crap.

Like any sales practice (including software), it's about vaporware. Any movement to shed some light on the "product" would be squashed by any company.

Can you imagine Microsoft or Oracle allowing people to sample snippets of source code before they buy the product? That'll be the day.

I'm so tired of this debate....

[Eric Damron]

There are basically three sides to this issue:

1. The music industry's that want to control music so that they can maintain their high profits. They don't care about the artists or the fair use rights of individuals.

2. The internet takers who want no controls over music so that they can get what they want without paying for it. They also don't care about the artists or about the law in regards to the rights of the copyright holders.

3. The people in the middle who believe in fair use rights but also know that for good or bad, sharing copyrighted material without the copyright holders permission is just plain stealing.

I fall in the third group. The fact is that if an artist decides to disseminate his music to which he has not already signed the rights away, over the internet for free he has every right to do this and it is perfectly legal to so. However, it is also a fact that the copyright holder has the legal right to decide how his work will be disseminated. It is also important to realize that the artist isn't always the one who controls the copyright. If he has sold the copyright to the recording industry then he has further say in the matter.

The fact that the recording industry is an evil empire is irrelevant to the issue of music stealing.

So, the bottom line is be responsible. Share only the music that you have been given permission from the copyright holder to share.

Re:Control

[swm]

it's all about control

This absolutely correct, and Ian seems to not quite get it

If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here's a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise would never purchase a CD in a store...It's instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping non-existant...a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs.

All true, and if you think about it, you realize that this is why the music industry is terrified: if you have the internet, you don't need the record labels.

Further discussion at How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate .

Re:Debate reveals artists' true colors

[Rogerborg]

• Their argument, whether you agree with it or not, was that artists should have final say on what is shared and what is not. On this point I would have to agree with them. It shouldn't be the fan's or the label's decision. The decision should be the artists that created the work. If they want to selectively allow some works to be shared and others not, it should be their perogative.

This is absolutely correct. It's the letter and spirit of copyright law.

Unfortunately, it's also largely irrelevant, because the vast majority of artists don't own the rights to their own work. They have chosen to sell them to big labels, and have no legal or moral rights to comment on how that work is used.

The only people that can comment on the work are the weasels in suits at the labels. Whether you agree with it or not, that's the law, and I suggest that it's also what's right, because artists are persuaded to sign away all rights not by being beaten with a stick, but by being shown a huge carrot.

You can argue that artists don't have a choice, that the only way to get wide distribution is to sign in blood to a label. Bullshit. If you want wide distribution, put your music on gnutella. Signing with a label is about greed, it's about gambling that you'll be in the 1% that actually makes money, and makes it big. Oh, delicious irony, that 99% of artists are wrong, and get screwed. Dumb, greedy fucks.

I was one of the few people that actually agreed with the substance of what Metallica were saying. But the trouble was that they should have stuck to just talking about themselves, rather than appearing on a platform with repulsive label weasels, and dribbling on about other artists' rights (most of whom have none). If they were being honest, they should have said "Screw everyone else. Just don't pirate our stuff, because we've been good to you in the past, you selfish fuckers." But they didn't, they toed the corporate line and tried to imply that the respect that they'd earned also applied to the hordes of talentless meat puppets that infest the airwaves and MTV-a-like channels. Bzzt, wrong, both legally and morally.

I'll see your Bullshit and raise you a cow fart

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I agree that it's stealing but I don't believe that this is an issue that can so easily be broken down into black and white.

To begin with all of your facts are completely in order and in a perfect world I would agree with you 100%. The artist should be the one who has the final say in the matter within the limits of copyright as it was originally intended to be used. There can't really be any argument about that.

In many cases though the music being "stolen" by me (and believe me, I've "stolen" plenty of it and to use your term, I'm cool with that)was already stolen by a record company from the original artist. They might have done it "legally" but as artist after artist has come forward to say it's still stolen from them fair and square. These companies have been raping the shit out of artists from the dawn of their inception and that's what their entire house is built on. It's their MO, it's WHAT THEY DO. They do it within the (flawed) lines of the law and they pay these artists a token amount for endless ownership of what the artists have made. They pay the lawmakers to keep those lines flawed so their business in screwing people is safe. It's a scam and it's a ripoff and the performers who no longer need the record companies all, or at least mostly seem to agree that it's true. At the same time they gouge the artists audience for access to that material. They are reprehensible.

Now you are dealing with a thief stealing from thieves. The "victims" this time around are the ones who made their fortunes on the backs of musicians who frequently have brief careers and often end up little better off than when they started. Can anyone dig up any real empathy for the recording companies at this point?

It's still illegal but I see some grey forming around the edges.

the point people keep missing

[alizard]

Shutting down P2P and Internet Radio isn't about protecting artist royalties or even record label royalties.

It is about control. The RIAA record labels want to close down any venue that is easily accessible to the public where the independent (as in unsigned by major record label) artist can upload her own music without having to go through a gatekeeper under record label control.

The ability of RIAA record label suits to make a living depends on their being able to say "You can't make a living without us."

With easily available CD on demand and band merchandise on demand, all a musician needs if his/her material is any good is exposure... a musician no longer needs record labels and record stores to sell CDs and T-shirts.

The last choke point that allows RIAA labels a chance to make money off artists and the public is exposure to masses of people. Internet Radio and P2P allowed an easy way for the independent artist to get to the people.

When people say "I bought CDs from bands I never heard of thanks to Napster, etc.", this doesn't make the RIAA want to keep P2P / Internet Radio open, their business is to make sure you only buy from RIAA artists... to find RIAA artists, turn on any Clear Channel radio station. Where an independent without a major promotion budget isn't going to be heard.