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Ask a Music Producer/Publicist About Filesharing and the RIAA
Bill Evans is one of those people in the music business who doesn't get a lot of public exposure, but keeps the wheels cranking behind the scenes. He's not just a musician and techie, but a publicist whose clients include Numavox Records artists Kerry Livgren and Michael Gleason as well as progressive rocker Neal Morse; he's produced (among many others) songs for the Burning Annie soundtrack and the Kansas Tribute Project. Naturally, since he makes his living in the music business, Bill is not 100% in favor of unrestricted filesharing. But what might work? And what might not? Let's find out what this music biz insider thinks -- one question per post, of course. Answers to the "Top 10" questions will be published soon after he gets them back to us.
What do you see as the most promising means of maintaining the commercial tie between artist and audience, but in different form than today's "stone tablet", whereby a song or album is burned onto a CD with copy protection? What about enhancing other revenue streams, like fan clubs, for example?
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Have you or anyone you know done any studies of the marketing effect of free music sharing? That is, how much has the free marketing that is a result of filesharing offsetting the potential lost sales?
"Naturally, since he makes his living in the music business, Bill is not 100% in favor of unrestricted filesharing."
Is it really the case that making a living in the music business rules out unrestricted filesharing? Might not there exist alternate business models that are fair to the artist and the consumer? What about producing music makes it necessary that selling the music needs to be the primary money-maker?
smd4985
Have you ever/do you often use a P2P file sharing client, and what do you think of it?
Where do you think we might have been now had the music labels come up with legal online song swapping? Do you think we would have ever heard of Napster?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The concept of copyright was concieved of way back in "ye olden days" to restrict who could and could not print books; it also conveniently allowed an author to control who profits from their works. We adapted the second cause here in the USA, and have since extended copyright to just about any form of creative expression.
But, copyright is still a control of making a copy, which is getting to be almost farcical in a world where most creative output can be easily and near-freely copied.
Do you think that it would be a good idea to alter copyright so that, instead of selling pubslihers a right to copy works, artists sell consumers the right to have a copy of a work, however that they want to get it and however many redundant copies they want?
(Let's just ignore the privacy and feasability problems for the moment; statistics and security can probably fix them to be "good enough.")
Do you think anything productive can emerge from the RIAA suing its user base? Do you think it will actually result in people listening to more music legally?
Do you feel threatened by a technology that would allow artists to sell their music directly to consumers and potentially make your job and many other such jobs obsolete, saving said consumers quite a bit of $$$ as well as paying said artists quite a bit of extra $$$ and allowing these artists to retain full rights to their own creations?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
What's your username on Kazaa?
If there was a mechanism to subscribe to music for a flat monthly rate, how do you think this would work along the lines of:
1) Who would you subscribe to? Would you have to subscribe to EMI/BMG/Sony one-by-one, or would there be a number (or one?) blanket subscription for varying genres or labels?
2) How would money be disitributed? By the number of times tracks have been listened to/downloaded?
So many people outside the RIAA have a negative opinion of the RIAA, primarily because of its stance against file sharing and certainly as a result of its tactics to discourage filesharing. As someone on the inside of the music industry, what is your opinion of the RIAA? Is it a necessary evil that really does help artists? What do you think of its tactics with regards to filesharing?
With album sales reaching an all time high (at least here in the UK -- I assume the US is similar), why does the RIAA keep insisting that online music is killing the industry? I personally download music from the net as a taster to see which CDs I should buy. I appreciate that there are some who do it purely to avoid having to spend the money, but the evidence seems to show that it's not a big enough problem to be hurting the industry. Do you think that this situation will continue, or will the balance swing towards more people avoiding buying music that they can download for free?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
isn't that like asking Sauron about his feelings on freedom in Middle Earth?
No, really, it's a serious business question.
-- Bill Gates
Microsoft
People tend to complain a lot about the profit margins in the music industry, and use this as an argument to not buy CD's but download them. Furthermore, a lot of people complain that copying their collection is just fair use, and they feel restricted in their rights by the recent developments in DRM. Without the music industry however we wouldn't have CDs to rip, or DRM protected tracks to download ;)
We (consumer and industry) obviously need each other.
So my question is:
Can you think of (a) profitable business model(s) that would *not* use DRM?
I'm a big advocate of the prosperity of music artists, especially small-time ones. I go to a lot of concerts. I like to buy indie music direct from the band. I generally try to avoid buying music from big-name production houses because I'm sick of all the gratuitous and pervasive advertisements and endorsements that come along with it.
That being said, my question is (and I hope you can even answer this): when I lay down my $15 for a CD, where does that money go? How much goes directly to the artist? The producers? Publicists and people in your position? Record company CEOs? Charities? Etc etc.
Basically I'm concerned that if I fork over $15 because I really like the music, I think that a big portion of that should go directly to the artists themselves, but in reality $14.95 is ending up making CEOs wallets fatter.
--j
Does the music industry need some type of reform, especially in the area of contracts and artist rights?
Online distribution undermines this model and forces the record companies to spend more marketing dollars as a percentage of revenue. The success of iTunes seems to support this. While it is successful in terms of the # of songs sold, no handful of artists dominates its sales as with traditional channels.
So my question comes in a couple of parts. First, is all of this stuttering towards an online distribution system really more about control? If so, given that the iTunes experiment seems to bear out the thesis that online distribution costs them in control, how will we ever get to online music distribution that is equitable for everyone involved instead of one weighted towards big record companies or towards music pirates?
Why does the entertainment industry seemingly ignore large scale pirates who are making money off of selling copies and obviously detracting from sales, and instead target hoards of college kids who have no money to pay the court costs/settlement, and are not profiting at your industries expense? Don't such actions largely result in a bitter taste in your consumers mouth, leaving them less inclined to either halt actions which the industry deems inappropriate, or less apt to embrace alternative solutions put forth by the industry?
Considering the consolidations in the radio industry, and the hostility against webradio, People such as myself find no place other than P2P to turn to for new music. In your mind, what is the best potential copyright-friendly solution to the problem of a lack of venues for new (and classic) music exploration?
Do services such as the iTunes Music Store, Buy Music really represent the future of music like Steve Jobs and Scott Blum would like us to believe, or are they just another way to deliver music along with CD's, cassetes, and the radio?
In your opinion, what do you feel has caused the greatest financial impact to the music industry? If the answer is not "file sharing," then what is the industry doing to combat the problem?
Goo goo g'joob.
I joined the Apple Music Store. I presently possess about a hundred or so .MP3 files downloaded from Napster/AudioGalaxy/Kazaa/Limewire.
I decided to see how many of these files were available legally from the Apple store, out of at least two motives: curiosity about the effectiveness of corporate-driven, rather than fan-driven music distribution, and a genuine intention of replacing my unpaid-for files with paid-for versions.
It turns out that almost none of the files I'd downloaded were available through the Music Store.
The reason is simple. I am interested in all sorts of old stuff (20's, 30's, 40's, 50's) and weird stuff (novelty records, things like Bernard Cribbins 'Ole in the Ground, etc.)
When fans share files, it makes available almost the entire history of recorded music.
When music companies sell files, the range of what's available is much, much smaller. For example, when it comes to popular music of the fifties, most of what's available on the Apple site comes from one companies single series of CD's entitled "so-and-so's 16 most requested songs."
How do you set up a fair system that pays artists but still allows for the continued preservation and availability of items that are so old or unpopular that their commercial value is very, very small?
How can you avoid the "dog-in-the-manger" phenomenon of companies that will neither make material available nor give permission to others to make them available?
The iTunes Music Store has what's generally considered the most sensible approach to DRM: share with no more than three computers on the same subnet, burn to no more than 10 CDs without changing your playlist, and make this apply to every downloadable song. In contrast, BuyMusic.com has much more restrictive DRM and they change with every song. In your opinion, do either of these stores have DRM "done right"?
I have a friend who also has his own music studio and has worked with some pretty amazing talent. In talking about the current state of the music industry, he has two interesting observations:
1. The music industry is impacted negatively by file sharing, at least at some level.
2. That his studio is most certainly not harmed by filesharing, but in fact is seeing a rather large increase in business as more bands try to get a decent polish on their work so they can get their MP3s out there.
Do you think this is just annecdotal, or true for most music studios?
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Here in the UK that CD album sales are at an all time high with a 12% rise in sales this year.
Would you like to comment on that, given that
i) there are no similar RIAA anti-piracy actions being taken here,
ii) average prices have fallen to below the psychologically important 10 barrier?
--
This sig is inoffensive.
One of the things that major media distribution companies (including music, video, games, etc) argue is that the only reason the prices are so high on media is that piracy of their product makes the prices go up. Many, however, are not convienced of this argument and think the prices would likely stay the same and the profits of the company would be the only thing affected (which is what I think annoys most of the users of the world: that the cost is so high when production costs are so low). Do you have a feel for whether on at least whether the music industry really would lower the prices on all its media if the piracy came to a sudden end, or do you think the prices would just stay the same?
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Many musicians don't even know how to check their email, much less run Pro Tools. Also, as a producer, his job can't be replaced by a computer. To get a good sound, you still have to use a good studio and hire trained engineers.
Then, after the CD is finished, you can try to use technology to bypass traditional marketing, but right now, it's a joke. Selling your music directly isn't a problem for anyone. Marketing your music, that's the rub. Fancy as the internet is, the most effective way to sell music is to force-feed it to the people directly, through radio and MTV. That's not gonna change for a long time.
c-hack.com |
With all the attention DVD's have been getting lately (for instance)and the main cause of their sales boom being pricing (20$ and under) - don't you think that the CD industry could save itself simply by lowering the cost of CD's to say - 5-7$ like vinyl used to be?
Go read some bible: nubible.com
1- Why is the music industry focusing prosecution efforts on poor individual college students who are (a) difficult to track down and (b) not making any money on their endeavors when there are large organizations which are (a) centralized, so stopping them might do some good, and (b) profiting from their activities?
2- If free file swapping is so damaging to music CD sales, then why aren't mafia types trying to stop this phenomenon as well, given they have so much to lose?
The CB App. What's your 20?
I think that this disproves the allegation that swapping is killing music and that the real culprit is a CD price that has stayed high while production costs have gone through the floor. Do you agree? If not, why not?
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
It seems like the major role of a record company is to find artists, promote their music, and produce and distribute albums. Advances in home studio technology and the increasing popularity and bandwidth of the Internet mean that it is possible for an artist to self produce and promote their music.
Do you think that it is likely that we will see a major artist go this route in the near future? And if this became a viable model what could record companies do to continue to add value to music?
The RIAA has pushed for legislation to grant them tariffs/taxes on sales of certain digital and recordable media sold to consumers, to defer some of the costs of piracy. They also have raised prices of materials such as CDs to help pay for losses they claim occur in the industry because of file sharing.
My question is that why does the RIAA need more legislation to go after filesharers or pirates to stop losses that no independent auditing company has been able to find, and with all the income they're getting from DAT and CD-R Music blanks, and lawsuits against filesharers, pirates and bootleggers, how much of this goes back to the artists, producers, engineers, etc? instead of simply in the RIAA and its labels' pockets?
And on a side note, why should the US or any other country continue listening to the RIAA talk about its losses, when no independent label or artist or distribution channel are getting any of these taxes or tariffs? Shouldn't we also be giving money to these labels, or should we start repealing these one-sided decisions?
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
When a radio station plays a song, it pays one of the agencies like ASCAP (forgive me if I've got it wrong; it's been a while since I was a musician), and at least in theory the writer of the song (usually the musician) gets a small royalty assuming they've set up a publishing company to collect those royalties. From what I've heard, this can end up being a significant part of a musician's income. As I understand it, there are problems with tracking radio play -- you can't listen to everything at once, so you depend on random sampling and reports from radio stations -- but the idea is good.
So how about treating filesharing the same way? Track which files go where; every time a Metallica song, say, is copied, Metallica gets a nickel. It might not be as practical now that there's not One Big Place (Napster) where everyone goes, but there are still lots of centralized file-trading services (I think Kazaa and the like apply...I haven't been into this for a long time) where copying could be tracked. The services get charged based on volume, presumably like radio stations are, and they can pass those charges on to subscribers or advertisers. Musicians get paid, people get music, and a new millenium of peace and happiness dawns upon the earth. :-)
Is this a good idea, or have I taken some massive, secret dose of crack somewhere along the way?
Carousel is a lie!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Assuming the worst, that RIAA sucessfully shuts down free filesharing networks and everything is pay to play, how would they provide hard to find or out of print selections? I am curious how they envision their library to work.
Many of the items I have downloaded are old or obscure and do not fit in their libraries. There are many like me. Will they try to force us to only select the items they control, or have they addressed the issue of out of print/free stuff another way. A beer band in Cleveland may be the best thing going, but if they silence this band's offerings because they are not "signed with the label" they really are only forcing their control over what the listener can hear. They are offering a less robust product but charging more for it.
Will there be any free venues available if RIAA wins?
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
What are your artists/musicians/clients are saying about online file-trading? Love it? Hate it? 50-50?
Do you find that indie artists are more likely to embrace file trading for marketing/name-recognition purposes than well-known artists?
One of the lessons that seems to be "learned" time and again by the content industry is that the best way to combat piracy is to lower the price. For example: when I was a kid movies on VHS were fairly expensive ($60-80 IIRC), and everyone had at least a shelf full of movies they'd rented and copied, or taped off TV. Now that prices are reasonable ($10-15) nobody bothers to go to that trouble, and yet everyone I know still has at least a shelf full of movies, but now they're "origionals".
So, how does the record industry justify the current price of CDs? Doesn't it seem obvious, given the lessons of history, that the inflated price is the root cause of piracy?
I should note, perhaps, that I neither pirate nor buy CDs at this point. Why should I buy a CD when I can get a DVD of a major film, with all kinds of extras, for the same price? It seems to me that this has far more to do with the decline of CD sales than online filesharing.
Finally, I understand that CD prices were supposed to have dropped as a result of the recent lawsuit, but I haven't seen a difference in either record stores or mail-order record clubs, such as Columbia House. In fact, the prices seem to have gone up slightly.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
What are the major differences between radio and file sharing?
If musical artists dream of getting played on the radio (because of the wonderful effects exposure has on an artist), why would an artist not also dream of having his/her songs being shared by millions of people around the world? Isn't the Internet just a vastly improved distribution and exposure mechanism?
Would the same concerns arise if radio was able to achieve the same quality as MP3?
To many of us, file sharing is more ethical than many traditional aspects of the music industry.