Wilco on P2P, Digital Music and the Internet

Saint Aardvark writes "As if Wilco wasn't the coolest band in existence anyway, Wired has an interview with them about their relationship with P2P, the Internet, and their fans. For example, they were contacted by fans who'd downloaded A Ghost Is Born before it was released. Lead singer Jeff Tweedy explains, 'They wanted to send money to express solidarity with the fact that we'd embraced the downloading community. We couldn't take the money ourselves, so they asked if we could pick a charity instead -- we pointed them to Doctors Without Borders, and they ended up receiving about $15,000.' Many other choice quotes make this a fascinating read."

Comments

How nice for the fans to donate money

[Neil Blender]

Now, if they did that for all the albums they stole, we could end world hunger.

Doctor's Without Borders?

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like a much better charity than the RIAA's Lawyers Without Ethics.

Watch out

[Folmer]

Now RIAA will attack them for condoning piracy...

Re:Watch out

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nothing, Ween is creating their own p2p app.

Re:Watch out

[hackstraw]

This isn't much of a revelation. Wilco, like many music artists that work for a living (ie, play live gigs), don't depend on record sales for their paychecks, they get it from working.

Its these bubblegum music manager creation "artists" that cannot play (eg, Ashlee Simpson), but have canned lyrics that appeal to a large number of people that depend on record sales for their income. Actually, its more of the music manager's and the labels that depend on the record sales for income. The artists get a token commission which provides them enough money to feel rich for a period of time until they have to get a real job.

From Wilco's website:

wilco does permit audio taping and trading of live performances wherever it does not conflict with venue or other restrictions beyond our control. we do not allow direct soundboard patches. we also do not allow videotaping.wilco supports the free trading of live recordings for non-commercial purposes.

I would bet that any other taper friendly band would not care about p2p or whatever, because, again, these bands work for a living, and they know they will make money when they are working.

Lost Sales?

[fembots]

Selling entertainment is like selling perishable fruit, you need to do it while it's still fresh and desirable.

For example, I quite like Scissor Sisters' "Take Your Mama", so I paid for the CD and listened to it. But I must admit you can only listen to one song for so many times until you're sick of it. So now the enjoyment from this song is long gone, but I have already paid $20 for this now-known-as piece of plastic and song that I no longer enjoy.

I believe any potential "lost sales" are from people who, on one hand, don't want to pay for the music, but on the other, want to enjoy that particular music.

Will this be considered "Lost Sales" if someone told you:
"Nah, this shitty movie is only worth watching it once, why would I pay for the DVD/Movie?".

This person could pay for the DVD/Movie and watch it once, or download it from the Internet and watch it once. Either way this person got one unit of enjoyment out of this, but it's not quite the same to capitalist.

Re:Is Slashdot just hotlinking Fark?

[MikeMacK]

hotlinking Fark?

Is that a Heinlein reference?

Re:Anyone else see 'em at the Orpheum...

[(54)T-Dub]

I did hear an interesting piece on npr talking about the 'Numbers Stations' phenomena. Appearently they got the name for their albumn "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" from a CD compliation of these number stations.

Re:"We couldn't take the money ourselves"

[xThinkx]

It's most likely a record label issue, while record labels (usually) can't prevent you for doing things for free, they DO control all money you receive for sales of albums, merch, etc. That's why bands that make gold records often make more off of non-record-company related deals (like interviews, photo shoots, hosting MTV shows, modeling contracts, movies, etc.) than actual album sales (not that the album sale profits rae anything to laugh at).

Article's on fark.com too

[EZmagz]

Just got done reading the interview, and it's nice to see that some musicians are still pretty grounded and down to earth. By far my favorite quote in the article is this:

WN: Your critics might say that it's easy for you to say that, given that you're already a commercial success.

Tweedy: I'm grateful that I've sold enough to have a house, take care of my kids and live decently. But that's a gift, not an entitlement.

Those last three words blew me away. Although I'm not a huge Wilco fan, I definitely appreciate where they're coming from. To me at least, they embody what a True Musician consists of. Somebody who plays music for the sake of making music. Somebody who if they make enough money playing at clubs and hawking CDs to make a living, then GREAT! But if not, they'll still be playing on the weekends and at nights when they're done with their 9-to-5.

Now contrast that with Britney Spears or Ashley Simpson. Think they'd be singing in their garage if their "music" career never took off? Fuck no. Since they only care about entertaining and not making music, they'd probably be just another coked-out stripper on the LA Strip, telling you how they're going to make it big and be somebody between lapdances and serving you a $10 cocktail.

Regardless, it's glad to know there's still a few bands out there who are in it for the love.

makes you realize the size of the market

[museumpeace]

given the dismal % yield on most charity soliciting, getting 15000$ form total strangers is a good showing. This is just an anecdote from the war raging between copyright holders, major labels and file swappers but it does make me think: The size of the market if you include all who file-swap and download must be vastly greater than the market that only counts those who buy CD's or are on the fence about a CD purchase. If a band could get a few pennies/track each from the larger market and nobody was peeing away millions on promotion, it just seems possible they could earn a living by their art and not soak their fans in the process. If downloaders thought of themselves as "supporting the band's future work" rather than "buying this song" ,which they could just as easily swipe, maybe they'd pay a little and not mind. Is that the paradigmn shift thats gnawing away at the mass marketing of music as we now know it? Given the huge exposure potential of freely available streamed samples, why would you need to spend on poromotion anyway? For years we have had shareware vendors giving away one version of a program in hopes that users would be pleased enough to pay for a better version. How similar is that model to what Wilco is doing?