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Reflections On the Less-Cool Effects of Filesharing
surpeis writes "This snub is an attempt to point the finger at something I feel has been widely ignored in the ever-lasting debate surrounding (illegal) filesharing, now again brought in the spotlight by the Pirate Bay trial. I should state that I am slightly biased, as I have been running my own indie label for some years, spanning about 30 releases. It's now history, but it was not filesharing that got the best of us, just for the record." (surpeis's argument continues below.)
I try as far as humanly possible to view the debate from all angles, and before entering the music biz myself, I was a strong believer in Internet as the driving force to develop new markets. Since then life has taught me a lot, and as said I will try to share one of my major concerns in this (hopefully) short snub.
My observation is based on a lot of trying and failing, as well as being a moderate user of filesharing myself — mainly to check out stuff I read about but cannot get my hands on in the local store back here in Norway.
My concern is about this argument, which has been seen in most any debate about this subject for the last 10 years, usually formulated roughly as below:
"Filesharing will provide massive marketing to new artists, and drive forward a new and more dynamic music market."
I beg to differ.
One thing that has become more and more obvious to me is that the power of the market more than ever is still safely held by the biggest corporations in the music biz. I will try to explain why.
If we use TPB as an example, they have about 10M visitors per day, which gives us a good base for pulling out stats. If you look at their Top100 list at any given time, you will find exactly 0.00% artists that are not (major) label signed. This might not be very surprising, as TPB naturally would reflect the music market in general.
But if one starts thinking about it, it has the ironic effect that TPB is a driving force of consolidating the market power of the major labels rather than driving forward any new music. The conclusion has to be that "pirates" are just as little resistant to the major label marketing as any other person. Even though there are thousands and thousands of artists out there that want their music to be shared and listened to, they are widely and effectively ignored by the masses. In fact, one might say that TPB and the likes are countering the development of new markets, simply because the gap between the heavily marketed music and 'the others' is wider than ever, when the bare naked truth about peoples taste in music is put into such a system.
This puts a heavy responsibility on the pirates, one that I don't think they are aware of nor able to handle. The day we find the top crop of the aforementioned artists that are actually free to share on the top 100 list, we have a winner. Until then the only thing that we will see "die" is the small indies that cannot benefit from heavy marketing. Thus, more market power is given to the major labels, and all of us reading this will be dead and buried long before they stop making a reasonable income from selling oldies and goldies, radio play, publishing, etc.
The actual 'mystery' is why the major labels don't see this themselves, and continues to take services like TPB to court. They are, and I'm pretty sure about this, the actual winners in the ongoing war. The price paid is extending the status quo when it comes to growing new markets.
So, ladies and gentlenerds: Are we really driving forth the music scene of the future? Or are we actually turning into useful idiots keeping the arch-enemy strong and healthy while the suppliers of correctives (indies, free music) are effectively kept out of the loop? What could possibly be done (technically or socially) to provoke changes to this and hit the major labels where it actually hurts?"
My observation is based on a lot of trying and failing, as well as being a moderate user of filesharing myself — mainly to check out stuff I read about but cannot get my hands on in the local store back here in Norway.
My concern is about this argument, which has been seen in most any debate about this subject for the last 10 years, usually formulated roughly as below:
"Filesharing will provide massive marketing to new artists, and drive forward a new and more dynamic music market."
I beg to differ.
One thing that has become more and more obvious to me is that the power of the market more than ever is still safely held by the biggest corporations in the music biz. I will try to explain why.
If we use TPB as an example, they have about 10M visitors per day, which gives us a good base for pulling out stats. If you look at their Top100 list at any given time, you will find exactly 0.00% artists that are not (major) label signed. This might not be very surprising, as TPB naturally would reflect the music market in general.
But if one starts thinking about it, it has the ironic effect that TPB is a driving force of consolidating the market power of the major labels rather than driving forward any new music. The conclusion has to be that "pirates" are just as little resistant to the major label marketing as any other person. Even though there are thousands and thousands of artists out there that want their music to be shared and listened to, they are widely and effectively ignored by the masses. In fact, one might say that TPB and the likes are countering the development of new markets, simply because the gap between the heavily marketed music and 'the others' is wider than ever, when the bare naked truth about peoples taste in music is put into such a system.
This puts a heavy responsibility on the pirates, one that I don't think they are aware of nor able to handle. The day we find the top crop of the aforementioned artists that are actually free to share on the top 100 list, we have a winner. Until then the only thing that we will see "die" is the small indies that cannot benefit from heavy marketing. Thus, more market power is given to the major labels, and all of us reading this will be dead and buried long before they stop making a reasonable income from selling oldies and goldies, radio play, publishing, etc.
The actual 'mystery' is why the major labels don't see this themselves, and continues to take services like TPB to court. They are, and I'm pretty sure about this, the actual winners in the ongoing war. The price paid is extending the status quo when it comes to growing new markets.
So, ladies and gentlenerds: Are we really driving forth the music scene of the future? Or are we actually turning into useful idiots keeping the arch-enemy strong and healthy while the suppliers of correctives (indies, free music) are effectively kept out of the loop? What could possibly be done (technically or socially) to provoke changes to this and hit the major labels where it actually hurts?"
The assumption is that pirated music should favor the less known artists somehow? Why would anyone be surprised that download statistics mirror sales and radio stats in general? It's just another outlet, but it CAN create awareness if sparked properly by other means
This guy makes a big claim, that filesharing services such as TPB are hurting indie artists, but provides abosolutely no evidence to back it up. There is absolutely no evidence against this either: "Filesharing will provide massive marketing to new artists, and drive forward a new and more dynamic music market."
The closest thing to evidence he has is a list showing that the Top 100 contains only popular stuff. Duh. Not saying he is wrong. I have always thought that the "we are helping indie artists" was overplayed by freeloaders such as myself who like to get something for nothing. But this guy wrote too many paragraphs to supply no evidence.
If we limited commercial copyright to 5-10 years, then it would hugely help new artists. By reducing the value of the back-catalogues, it would mean a strong incentive for publishers and music-labels to support new music.
Unless people are exposed to new music, through word of mouth or otherwise, they won't know its out there. For instance, there might be a song written that resonates with my soul and will change my life, but if its made by an indy artist in norway, how will i know its out there?
File-sharing is an on-demand service, people don't browse through looking for titles of songs that sound nifty (that's what pandora is for, finding music relevant to their interests), they punch the name of a new release dvd into the search box and hope axxo has ripped, encoded, and uploaded it. Why do they seek out these movies? Because they were made aware of it. Say that I tell you to seek out the movie called Brazil. You might seek it out, but why? Because I (someone) told you to.
I thought all of the above was obvious, filesharing is not the step 1 in the following, but it might go something like this:
The hypothetical "P2P as marketing" steps. (not saying this is correct, but it was always my understanding that this was how it worked whenever people argued that p2p was GOOD for artists).
1. People find out about your band(s).
2. People search for those bands in TPB or their p2p client.
3.People fall in love with the music.
4. ???
5. Profit!
Leave out step 1 and there is no Profit!. And no, steps 1 and 2 are not reversible for 99% of the population. Also, i'm not going to go into what is required to fill in step 4.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
When music was first (largely) being distributed via offerings like mp3.com and Napster, there was the ability to browse by genre and mine down to find various other bands you might like. There was lots of indie bands making their way to the surface, similar to Apples "genius" feature in itunes.
p2p is only a file sharing protocol, you still need to know what you're looking for before you can download anything, thus people are only going to download stuff they already know about.
If you want to unearth cool indie bands, you'll need a more traditional site with intuitive groupings to showcase them.
- tensions in our lives that are attacking our minds, unite themselves together to make our consciousness blind - op'ivy
Agreed. The author seems to be implying that he was promised P2P would solve all his marketing needs. As a distribution system there is only one thing it reliably does: distribution.
True, but I think there's more to it than that.
Yes, P2P doesn't solve marketing needs. But it also does something else: drive distribution costs to 0. This is the critical issue: Right now, while the big labels are still fat off of profits from non-P2P, they use those profits to market, and they conquer all markets that way - non-P2P and otherwise.
But once P2P is the main game, and it's just a matter of time, then the situation will be radically different. The big labels and the big artists won't have those non-P2P sources of cash, so they won't be able to flood the planet with their marketing. This will be a huge boon for indie artists.
So, the original argument is valid right now. But not in the long run.
"He has a right to make a profit"
Where the hell did you got that? From RIAA or Walt Disney Corp.?
No, he has no right to make a profit. Nobody has.
But he has a right to *try*.
I think it has been cited so many times, but here goes again, from Heinlein:
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of protecting such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit."