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Musicians on Internet & Filesharing
reverseengineer writes "A Pew Internet & American Life survey asked (large PDF) 809 artists and 2,755 musicians, songwriters, and publishers about how they use the Internet, and whether it has been beneficial or detrimental to their success. Results (larger PDF) are quite interesting, with near 50-50 splits on a variety of questions involving fair use and filesharing. A quote from Pew's summary: 'Across the board, artists and musicians
are more likely to say that the internet has made it possible for them to make more
money from their art than they are to say it has made it harder to protect their work
from piracy or unlawful use.' Here is the NY Times summary [ Free registration blah blah ] of the survey."
Pew File-Sharing Survey Gives a Voice to Artists
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
Published: December 6, 2004
The battle over digital copyrights and illegal file sharing is often portrayed as a struggle between Internet scofflaws and greedy corporations. Online music junkies with no sense of the marketplace, the argument goes, want to download, copy and share copyrighted materials without restriction. The recording industry, on the other hand, wants to squeeze dollars - by lawsuit and legislation, if necessary - from its property.
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The issue, of course, is far subtler than this, but one aspect of the caricature is dead on: the artists are nowhere to be found. A survey released yesterday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an arm of the Pew Research Center in Washington, aims to change that. The report, "Artists, Musicians and the Internet," combines and compares the opinions of three groups: the general public, those who identify themselves as artists of various stripes (including filmmakers, writers and digital artists) and a somewhat more self-selecting category of musicians.
Most notably, it is the first large-scale snapshot of what the people who actually produce the goods that downloaders seek (and that the industry jealously guards) think about the Internet and file-sharing.
Among the findings: artists are divided but on the whole not deeply concerned about online file-sharing. Only about half thought that sharing unauthorized copies of music and movies online should be illegal, for instance. And makers of file-sharing software like Kazaa and Grokster may be unnerved to learn that nearly two-thirds said such services should be held responsible for illegal file-swapping; only 15 percent held individual users responsible.
The subset of 2,755 musicians, who were recruited for the survey through e-mail notices, announcements on Web sites and flyers distributed at musicians' conferences, had somewhat different views. Thirty-seven percent, for instance, said the file-sharing services and those who use them ought to share the blame for illegal trades. Only 17 percent singled out the online services themselves as the guilty parties.
"This should solve the problem once and for all about whether anyone can say they speak for all artists," said Jenny Toomey, the executive director of the Future of Music Campaign, a nonprofit organization seeking to bring together the various factions in the copyright wars.
Ms. Toomey, whose group helped draft part of the survey, believes that artists are usually underrepresented in the debates about the high-tech evolution of the industry.
"These decisions need to be made with artists at the table," she said, adding, "it's not enough for both sides to reach out and get an artist who supports their position."
Indeed, big-ticket acts like Metallica and Don Henley have famously denounced illegal file sharing. And the Recording Industry Association of America, which has filed thousands of lawsuits against individual file-sharers, often invokes musicians as prime movers in its crusade.
"Breaking into the music business is no picnic," its Web site reads. "Piracy makes it tougher to survive and even tougher to break through."
File-sharers, on the other hand, often point to high-profile performers like Moby and Chuck D who acknowledge that the online swap meet has provided them with valuable exposure.
"I know for a fact that a lot of people first heard my music by downloading it from Napster or Kazaa," Moby wrote in his online journal last year. "And for this reason I'll always be glad that Napster and Kazaa have existed."
Without questioning the convictions of artists who feel strongly one way or another, however, the Pew survey appears to show that the creative set is both mindful of the benefits the Internet promises and ambivalent about the abuses it facilitates.
"The overall picture," said Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Project, "is that the musician-ar
Yes the internet is a great way to distribute music. However this does not mean its OK to download music without the creators permission. It is their choice where and how their creation is made available, not yours.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The artists that lose big are the big artists - but most artists are struggling. The big challenge for 98% of artists isn't combating theft, but rather getting their name and work known enough to be in demand. Personally, I believe that any artist looking to get recognized would be wise to put their work out on the peer-to-peer network, with links to their websites in the filename info. Unfortunately, people like the RIAA (who represent the other 2%) who are making this kind of thing difficult.
Its legality cannot be discussed as long as it is always refered to first and formost as ILLEGAL filesharing.
This is another way of starting a sig with this and ending it with that.
I think you can reasonably accurately predict (with some exceptions of course) where an artist falls on the "Internet Good" or "Internet Bad" debate based on how famous they are.
Those that are already famous want to wring every cent out of the fame they've worked hard to get and therefore loathe the Internet's ease of file sharing.
Those looking to become famous love the Internet's ease of file sharing because it enables more people to be more easily exposed to their music.
I'm a big tall mofo.
23% of respondents were not home.
54% of respondents pretended like they were not home.
20% of respondents were undecided.
6% of respondents had no front door.
There was a 3% margin of error.
Unknown host pong.
So this is a little bit about what the artists believe the effect of filesharing has been on them, but I'm sure it's hard for anyone to really know. This doesn't tell us too much about what the actual effect of filesharing is on the artist. So many factors change over time how could you attribute your increased/decreased success to any one factor confidently?
BBC News Link.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
I think this really underscores the issue and shows how the RIAA is not representative of the musicians thoughts and concerns.
Most musicians, especially struggling musicians, enjoy using the Internet and File Sharing programs to share their music (See pdf) . However, most feel that their work should be protected and they should get some sort of compensation from it (a perfectly justifable argument. Can't make much music if you're starving) (See pdf).
How are the above to concerns and attitudes towards file sharing in line with the RIAA's past, recent and future actions.
Also, this was an anonymous survey so it'd be interesting to really see who fell where (pop stars vs local bands).
-Teiresias
Why do musicians go for recording contracts anymore? It is obvious that the vast majority of them recieve no significant ongoing income from record sales. Most small bands seem to make more money touring. For them to have succesful tours, people need to hear their music, record labels don't help with this. Sure there are people who have made vast sums of money from the record industry, but most make very little or worse end up in debt. Its an expected value problem.
"brxref
From CNN:
But two-thirds of those surveyed said file sharing posed little threat to them, and less than one-third of those surveyed said file sharing was a major threat to creative industries.
Only 3 percent said the Internet hurt their ability to protect their creative works.
The real question is if idealogue file-swappers will respect the wishes of those who DON'T want their material being swapped around on P2P networks.
If you don't respect the wishes of those people, you violate the idea that this is for the artists. That includes Metallica, even if you hate Lars Ulrich. You can't pick and choose your moralities.
I don't get why copyrights don't matter in P2P articles but they matter in "GPL source code theft" articles.
The concept of trying to poll certain musicians to reflect what all musicians as a whole think about the internet seems flawed. Considering how many genres music spans, how could you get an accurate reflection? How many punk bands made it into this poll?
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
The other 50% couldn't manage to open the pdf file.
(initial comment: many thanks for flagging the large PDF documents clearly as such!)
We get to hear quite a lot from the "industry" side of the music business; it's nice to get a little balance from those "other" people who are also involved in some way with the music business, the actual creators.
I'm not surprised they're split over the issue, personally -- the future of music distribution is not at all a clearcut thing, and even the artists need someone, somewhere to be paying them for their work. Naturally, there are many more solutions that will work for the artists than there are solutions that will work for the industry that has developed purely to advertise and distribute their work through very limited, specific channels...
Movies are a different animal than music and it seems reasonable to protect them. Movies require huge investments by the studios compared to music. Movies also are the only product of actors. I can see recorded music serving primarily as an advertisement for musicians live shows. Movies aren't performed live, the movie is the only product (excluding merchandising). If people started sharing video recordings of plays, I would see no problem with that. With plays, the main product is still the performance in the theatre.
"brxref
Even though most of the "news" is not properly fact checked, and is blindly accepted as true, I have issue with the article that says:
Indeed, big-ticket acts like Metallica and Don Henley have famously denounced illegal file sharing. And the Recording Industry Association of America, which has filed thousands of lawsuits against individual file-sharers, often invokes musicians as prime movers in its crusade.
Metallica, yes, Don Henley, dunno.
Metallica can continue to charge $75+ for half full concert venues (vs $35 and sold out, no pun intended).
Don Henley on the other hand is no sympathizer for the RIAA.
The Eagles have their own recording company and they are not RIAA members.
Also, this url, http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0217-01.htm, has more info straigh from Don Henley's mouth (pen, keyboard, whatever).
Music "piracy" usually only hurts the suits at the recording companies. I have a hard time feeling too sorry for them. They're making their living by charging artists for advertising and distributing their work, and the internet makes that very low cost or free. The business model has changed, and the recording industry has not changed with it. A band can now make a very professional recording all on their own, advertise it, and distribute it for next to nothing. The suits just haven't realized it yet.
-- Gargonia
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Here is the NY Times summary [ Free registration blah blah ]
Usually they require a DNA sample or your first-born child!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
On the subjec (partly at least) this is definitely an interesting read for a point of view the public seldom gets to hear: Courtney Love does the math, By Courtney Love
... Only Wookies share Light Stock Freighters with Scoundrels.
Here, "use the internet" can mean anything from communicate with agents or people who book gigs or recording engineers or fellow musicians, to communicate with fans, to put up web sites with band info, sample tracks, etc. Most people wouldn't think of "having all my work traded on file sharing systems without my permission" as "how I use the internet." So a conclusion like "across the board, the internet helps artists make more money" is disingenuous. Note that I'm not saying that the net is good or bad for musicians, just that such a broad conclusion is dopey.
IE, they're not believing the RIAA crap that 1,000 downloads actually equates to 1,000 lost sales.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
The vast majority of these artists have signed over control of their IP to a second party - ones whose opinion of the Internet and filesharing are well-known by now. Talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words. The artists' opinions for a poll/survey are one thing, but that is not generally reflected in the contractual agreements they voluntarily execute.
I suspect that over the long term, rather then having 1 megastar for every 1000 aspiring artists, you will have many different niche artists of middling fame, known to their fans though not beyond.
Those that are currently struggling anyway really have nothing to lose from filesharing, and plenty to gain.
But the mega star types will have an eroded fan base as the fans find music more directly in line with their personal tastes. And artists who peaked early will not be able to coast on their old glories for nearly as long. Songs that would have made them hit big will not sustain them as long as people will just buy one copy when they hear it the first time, and probably just grab copies after that. Or just rip their original to new mediums as the medium changes.
END COMMUNICATION
Radio promotion is so skewed towards the big labels. They have backdoor payola, fine. In a competitive market, alternative (not music type) stations would form to serve that niche market. That hasn't happened for a couple of reasons, media conglomerates and the crackdown on internet radio. I understand why record companies wouldn't want some internet radio station playing Britney Spears (makes it easy to pirate), but why do they care about artists they don't try to promote to traditional radio. What does a record company lose if an internet radio station is playing Elliot Smith and Ben Folds? God forbid those artists actually attract a following. I think it all comes down to the RIAA wanting to control the exact type of music we hear, and making it very dificult to hear anything else. I know that there is some internet radio, but it is very obscure thanks to the RIAA
"brxref
"Nine out of ten artists agree that the practice of recording a movie or TV show on a VHS
tape to watch at home at a later time should be deemed legal under the fair use provisions
of copyright law."
Wow. I didn't know Jack Valenti had an album out.
Same story, some like it some don't. If you were a part time musician working at Red Lobster throughout the week the internet has the posibility for world exposure. If you are a pop singer who doesn't write you own material and has a huge record deal you'll probably try your hardest to protect your assets. I have definitly bought some albums through iTunes I would've never heard of otherwise... also non-mainstream record label sites that offer free downloadable mp3's allow me to hear the music first which if I like the song I buy the album.
I'm getting tired of all this "hurting the business" stuff. I live in Iceland where we have a national statistics institute run by the government that monitors record sales, movie attendance, rentals, sales etc.
File sharing is huge in Iceland, about 10% of the nation use the largest P2P network every month, and there are several other domestic networks and the plethora of foreign networks. P2P started to hit it big 4 years ago.
Record sales have been up 11% each year, we hold the world record in movie attendance, movie sales up 26% since last year and so on. You should also note that the average movie ticket costs $14, rentals are $8, CD's and DVD's are $30-45.
This is not a strange coincidence to have this burst along with the growing of P2P networks. And don't give be crap about being an island in the north-Atlantic - movies are usually screened here before the "previews" in the US. Hell Sigurrós the world renowned Icelandic band even have their own P2P network!
Really it's more like...
37% were sleeping in until 4pm
33% had their phone disconnected for non-payment last month
18% couldn't hear the phone over the drums and Marshall stacks
12% were intoxicated to the point of being temporarily incapacitated
As many people are learning these days, getting a recording contract is basically the same as getting a loan. But -- Courtney Love's ramblings notwithstanding -- a lot of musicians (like me and the others in my band) are willing to enter these deals because:
1) The "loan" buys you recording time, publicity, transportation, expenses, per diems, etc. Things that a starving band can rarely afford.
2) The "loan" is repaid from CD sales. And that's the fair trade because we realize that chances are slim to none we're going to sell enough CDs to cover our costs. But this isn't a bank we're talking about. Nobody's going seize your home or car because your CD sold 100 copies.
3) You typically get to keep merchandise revenue. And that's the silver lining: even though you never see money from your CD sales, you get to earn money on the road.
So, given that a band's goals are usually to afford to keep playing, recording and performing, a record deal sounds ideal. If you end up being the 1 in a million who "makes it" then you're obviously set. If you don't, then at least you got to "live the dream" for a lot longer than you could have you if you had to foot the bill. Along the way, you make some decent press, build up a fan base and basically have a great time.
Win-win I say.
(footnote: since we were dropped by our admittedly shitty label we've made decent money selling CDs and songs online at places like iTunes -- but still nowhere near the amount we received from our "free" loan which paid for our last CD's production and then some).
I remember a time when there was an internet radio station called "Soma FM" available for free on the internet.
(Slashdot even had some stories when they were forced to close down)
They played a lot of _very_ interesting music I never heard before -
and that you wouldn't get on your typical commercial radio station either for that matter.
That was the time that I actually bought the highest number of CDs I ever did in my Life!!
I remember more often than not, that I heard some _really_ amazing stuff there - and simply opened another tab on my browser, went to amazon and just ordered a bunch of CDs.
- It's been some time now that I bought any CD at all - not because I 'd be downloading stuff or such
rather because I just wouldn't know what to buy - the stuff on mainstream radio just isn't worth it..
just my 2 cents
perl -e 'printf("%x!\n",49153)'
but...wait for it....
Bill Gates should ban the mp3??
Feel free to make jokes about the hair. Thanks to this guy, I found out that I'll never make it in the business, as I am a 30-something musician in the midwest.
Well, it was fun while it lasted.
Take a look at some of the student/indy films in the past two years. For a small sum of, say, a few thousand bucks, people are making short films that easily rivals anything hollywood is putting out, including special effects.
no
The artists are given temporary control
To anybody who participates in the creation of a recording or other work of authorship, how is life plus 70 years "temporary"? It sounds more like a prison sentence for a double murder than an acceptable bargain to promote the progress of science and useful arts.
If p2p application makers are held responsible for illegal file-swapping, should not gun makers be held responsible for the illegal use of their products?
I stole this signature
I'm not going to shed any tears over the RIAA losing money but to pretend filesharing hasn't had a huge impact on record sales is ludicrous. When I was in college in the mid 80's I bought a lot of music as did a lot of my friends. I run a medium sized message board now and I can tell you the majority of my college-aged posters pay for very little, if any music. They download almost everything they listen to and burn their own mixes from their downloads.
I'd like to believe that is what is going to happen, but there are a few important things to take into consideration.
The wierdest, most difficult to address assumption is the idea that people don't currently like what they really like. I'm inferring that from your idea that people will go more 'more directly in line with their personal tastes.' It seems like a logical assumption from the standpoint that if you were given 5 choices before, once you've been given 50 that included those 5, you'd statistically pick new things. But I think that reasoning ignores certain aspects of what makes stardom and pop culture exist in the first place.
People like to like the things that other people like. There are advantages of being into pop culture. It's a lot of common ground to have with strangers. You can talk about it and establish the overall persona of a person on fairly neutral territory. The statement "Did you hear the lead xylophonist of 'Lurch Cadets' had albino triplets?" isn't going to be as effective at deteriming how you relate to another person as talking about something you actually both already know about.
I think that independent artists will rise independently of any pop-culture fall. When you consider how many times people hear the same songs over and over again, there is plenty of room to have both massive pop culture and niche involvement.
Let's not forget that a lot of artists sign deals with RIAA-affiliated labels, only to have the label decide not to "push" them. The label can just sit on their work, and the artist has no recourse. They can't release it on their own because the label owns it. They can only sign a label deal if they sign over the rights. If the label then decides that you aren't the "in" sound, you are basically dead in the water. They control the content and the delivery system. Hopefully with things like satellite radio and the internet, this can change.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
So, I dislike Courtney as much as anyone, but this is just BS. She's telling a similar tale, but she didn't "steal" anything from Steve Albini. Albini's take on this is a classic that should be read by all thinking persons who want to develop an informed opinion on this subject. His tale is much more gloom and doom, however... The band ends up in the hole. At least in Courtney's story, the band gets $45,000 to live off of, and ends up with a $0 balance. I could tell you a personal story about ending up in debt to a record label... Does that mean I stole it from Steve Albini? Yes, I realize this is Slashdot, but it only takes a moment to think before you post.
i'm the jedidiahmarkfoster your parents warned you about
Most 'artists' (of any kind) don't make a living selling their work, sure most would like to, but the reality is that most are just hard average hard working 'Joes' (and just to be PC 'Janes'), many of whom have trouble buying $20 cd, as many 'non artists'.
For this to be a real survey they would need to beak the artists into several catagories:
I make enough money from music to:The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
It's musicians like you, who think of it more in terms of 'art' than 'a way to maybe make big bucks', that I think and hope will benefit the most from this development.
The 'business' part of 'music business' is giving way to the 'music' part, finally.
Meep.
There's always going to be views one way or another on ANY public forum. You've decided to pick up on a few people that support your arguement, which you could do with any arguement because slashdot has so many posts.
But I don't see it that way. I usually see both sides when I look at slashdot comments. If you choose to focus in on the trolls, that's your right, but it's ignorant and it doesn't speak for the entire slashdot community like you implied.
Stupid? Take a look in the mirror.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -