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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."
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.
BBC News Link.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
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.
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Hmmm... How ironic. I trust that the appropriate copyright permission has been sought for the above post. ;)
Anything is possible given sufficient time and money.
I'm sure karma whoring is covered under the exceptions for fair use in copyright law.
(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...
Nah the publisher wouldn't mind since parent also included "Advertisement" before the 2nd paragraph.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
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
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
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!