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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 old distribution models no longer work. So the people losing will fight it tooth and claw. There are winners and losers in a New World Order. Artists can still make money, but they'll have to play more live shows and their recorded music is nothing more than promotion(fame) for shows.
I truthfully don't care about music. What I care about is when textbooks start becoming free. It will be a revolution in education. This will be especially the case when people write things like,"The comprehensive guide to calculus as to be learned by anyone who knows how to count" The computer means it can be an advanced and interactive media session. The free distribution will mean anyone can have it in their hands.
People will still try and discover new things even if they can't get paid for the information directly.
God spoke to me.
However, you make the assumption that all 10M people reading here are actively polling right now from any one of those torrents. You'd be mistaken.
Some of my favorites exist from back in the '20s when rip roaring jazz was abound everywhere. We see avant jazz go all the way up to present, with other counties spawning jazz musicians. Classical has mostly stagnated, but those who like those "stuffy sounds", that music has existed from the 1700's when the Church commissioned those pieces to begin with. We really start to get to the heyday of music, from the rock era starting in the 60's to the 70's. And we all know the groups that came from that time.
Now, if my numbers are correct, nearly every work published since 1/1/1922 is under full copyright protection. So... most "popular musics" are covered by somebody's copyright. And it turns out, if the record companies didn't own it, they bought it or sued for it. Big surprise.
Of course, you have indies and such, but they really dont matter (sorry). Yeah, if they organized into a force to fight against the ilk of the RIAA, they might have a chance, but then they would turn in to what they hated and originally fought against.
If you havent realized it already, but copyright is really useless in its present form.
*said while listening to music from ocremix.org , a free music site in dedication to remixing game music.
The essay is implicitly assuming that the most popular artists are popular because they're signed to a major label. The argument seems to be that the all-too-common claims that filesharing is good for the independent artists are bunk; filesharing has done nothing to break the hold of the major labels on the promotion and marketing of musical acts. As long as they can hold on to those, they will survive, and eventually they will figure out how to take advantage of the internet to make loads of money.
In the end, we'll have advertisements embedded into the hit singles, as part of the music and lyrics.
Are you adequate?
I agree completely. Once a band becomes known, then giving away their music helps promote their tours and merchandise (where the real money is made, at least for the band).
And some bands get it. I bought tickets to the upcoming No Doubt show here, and they (unexpectedly) e-mailed me a link and code I could use to download their entire catalog as DRM-free 256Kbps MP3s. Nice.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Hello, and thanx for your post.
First: It is not a claim, its a _reflection_
It is of course not possible to supply hard evidence on something that "didnt happen".
But its a fact that in my 15+ years as a net and music junkie, I still have not seen one single artist that actually made a career this way. I guess it could be different in f.i. the USA, where there is alot more mobility and a far larger audience.
One thing that is hard to come around is the fact that the music biz is profit driven. If there really was a vivid indipendent scene that was growing up by the means of filesharing, we would have seen attempts to control it a long time ago.
TBH i dont think the music industry has reflected much around this, as they really, really think that a file downloaded is a sale lost. I WANT to see a new and revised music scene grow forth, but the above mentioned tendency to follow the marketing of themajor labels is in my humble opinion a major problem to actually see this happen.
My attempts to bring it into the debate in the music biz has partly been striked down upon, as the major industry still has a utopian dream of making the "new world" fit into their old and geographically oriented systems. The problem seems to be that us filesharers seem to lack the fantasy, drive or conciousness to make it happen as well.
Exactly right, IMO. I've shared music of bands that have been defunct for 5-10 years, and get a bunch of downloads. I've ended up talking to some of these downloaders, and they typically buy whatever they can, but there's not much.
TPB may not list them in the top 100, but I'm helping clear merch for bands that don't even play anymore. It also turns people on to the bands they're now in, since I try to mention those as well.
Yeah, there's a lot of pirates, but there's also good uses for P2P that may technically break copyright. In most cases I can't find the people with the copyrights, in others they just don't care anymore.
P2P seems to be one of the best ways to archive music in multiple sites that exists. Many of the recordings I've shared are masters, and nobody but me had a copy until P2P. I like to think that they're much more likely to survive with 50 people having digital copies than one.
TPB may not list them in the top 100
I'm not sure TPB's top 100 is a good list to track distribution of independent and net-savvy bands either way; if they're distributing freely via their own site, or have their works easily available through sites like e-music, it'll quickly skew the statistics. For many unsigned bands or their fans, there may simply not be any need to involve TPB.
The statistics on last.fm are a bit more interesting then, and the post-Radiohead net release charts were amusing, as they were rather, eh, dominated by Radiohead.
In the end tho, marketing is still efficient, and channel control even more so. As long as the big labels retain the financial muscle to heavily influence most mainstream media outlets, they'll dominate the top lists.
Hopefully they'll lose that muscle through a combination of factors. On one end from the loss of ROI on overmarketing as p2p copying undermines it, and on the other as the importance of media outlets becomes fractured into personalized and socialized networks driven by the taste of at least a few more individuals.
Unfortunately it's going to take a while for the labels die. And until their control begins to slip the game will remain rigged..
Why would indie artists that support free sharing of their music be high on the list at TPB? The artists that allow downloading of their stuff usually offer it off their website, not via torrents. I don't go to TPB to download the latest VLC or Media Player Classic, they are on their webpages, just as indie artists music is. Dude tries real hard in the article but fails to make this easy to see explanation.