Steve Albini: The Music Industry Is a Parasite -- and Copyright Is Dead

journovampire sends word of another thought-provoking rant from Steve Albini (mentioned here last a few years back for his paean to the beauty of analog tape for recording): The veteran producer addressed an audience in Barcelona on Saturday: "The old copyright model – the person who creates something owns it and anyone else that wants to use it or see it has to pay them – has expired."

Comments

Yes, but because

[saloomy]

The industry was created to cover the cost of production and distribution. Both of which today are much cheaper and can me made by individuals who have not "made it" yet.

Re:Yes, but because

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Because music, books and movies are part of our shared culture. You get culture for free just by being part of it.

2) Because the cost of duplication is essentially zero. So the cost of making the works has already been paid. The millions of dollars profit that some movies or music makes is evidence of double dipping, basically making society collectivelt pay more than it costs to make the work. Which is economically inefficient, BTW.

3) The people who are downloading copies are not likely to be in the market in the first place. See 1) for why people are likely to download random shit off the internet that they would never go purposely into a store to buy.

   

Re:Yes, but because

[Nyder]

The industry was created to cover the cost of production and distribution. Both of which today are much cheaper and can me made by individuals who have not "made it" yet.

I don't agree. While I don't work in the music business, I have friends that do, some successful, some not.

The music industry wants you to think it costs a lot to put out your own albums, and it doesn't. It never has. Smart artists, like Steve Albini, figured this out, and produced their own music. Cost was a few thousand dollars.

Distributing is where the record companies have it made, until internet, because they already had a presence in store and with advertising, as long as they felt your work was worth being advertised.

When you come to the record company with no demo, no master, and they sign you a contract, you end up paying way more then you would otherwise for getting that master done, and generally, unless your first album does really good, you don't make any money and don't pay off your debt to them. So you make a second album, increasing debt, etc... Sort of like borrowing money from a loanshark.

So before the internet, you could make a master, print out records/tapes for relatively cheap, but selling them was the hard part.

Now with the internet, honestly, you'd be a fool to sign on with any major recording company.

Re:Yes, but because

[VanGarrett]

Those who pirate their entertainment tend not to be likely to spend money on the content, to begin with. While I have no doubt that there are a good deal of jerks out there that could easily afford to pay for their consumption, the majority, I suspect, would do without, if no avenue existed to obtain the works without fee. That's really just the way the market works out. The impression I get, is that people tend to be willing to part with otherwise unallocated personal funds in exchange for such things that they like, but many just don't have those unallocated personal funds available to spend. Thus, Napster-like services are born and continue to mutate and propagate.

Downloading these things is easy for people to justify to themselves. They weren't possibly going to spend money on it, anyway; or the original copy still exists where it was to begin with, so it isn't really like actually sneaking a CD in your jacket pocket from a rack at Sam Goody at the mall. The store still has their copy to sell, you now have what you wanted, and nobody's poorer for it. See? Very easy.

Meanwhile, all the other kiddies in the class are asking each other if they've seen the new and hot feature film, or heard Taylor Swift's new album. Not being one with the tide is somewhat more difficult to justify, as that attaches more directly to one's identity. If you can't obtain or experience the cultural icons, then you may have to detach from your preferred social grouping, and toss in with some sort of hipsters or curmudgeons. This may be downright unthinkable to a lot of social drones, especially when they are very young, and as yet lack the experience needed to carve out an identity of their own. So abstaining from these musics, books and movies due to lack of funding becomes overwhelmingly more difficult to justify than obtaining copies from a faceless stranger in the night.

It's a cultural pressure we have, to consume, and the aggressive hyping and advertising the entertainment industry rains down upon us strangely promote it. The advertisements call an individual's attention to it, he tells his friend and his friend tells him back. Now it's a thing to both of them. They've connected on it. They connect with others on it. Some will have the capacity to pay for it, others won't. Those that can pay for it, by and large, do. Those that can't either get copies from those who can, or begrudgingly go without. Those who go without loose their connection with those who didn't, and become a lower caste in the social hierarchy (despite their greater integrity than the second group, which I suspect sometimes makes them spiteful-- thus: hipsters). Those who got their copies for free are then threatened by the industry over their life choices, and therefore, the cries of entitlement begin.

That's my guess at it, anyway.

Re:Yes, but because

[trout007]

Like all Intellectual Monopoly faithful you are missing the point.

The whole concept of property rights exists to determine who has the best claim on a scarce resource. I own my car so I get to determine what happens to it. If someone steals it I can't use it.

Ideas are not property. I can come up with a recipie for a great soup and share it with you and both you and I can still use it.

By creating laws granting intellectual monopoly this violates property rights. I supposedly own my hard drive but now because someone wrote a song and broadcasted it onto my property via radio waves they now have a claim on my hard drive. They will use force against me if I arrange the bits on my hard drive in a way that represents the radio waves they broadcasted onto my property.

Re:Yes, but because

[Altrag]

There's absolutely no reason copyright should not be infinite years

There is one reason: Derivative works. Since copyright as its currently defined generally prevents derivative works, having it expire into the public domain is necessary for the next generation of artists (or currently, their great grandchildren..) to build upon those works.

How many movies and books wouldn't exist if things like Homer, Shakespeare, Brothers Grimm, etc weren't considered public domain? How much Disney (aka: the primary proponent of perpetual copyright extension) wouldn't exists without those?

How much music wouldn't exist if Bach and Beethoven and other greats weren't generally available to modern musicians (or even music schools) because their estates still held copyrights and demanded $10,000 per "performance?"

Re:Yes, but because

[bzipitidoo]

It's fine that you realize that copying is inevitable and unstoppable, but you are still talking as if copying is immoral. It is copyright that is immoral. Copying is a natural right, and the way that the universe works. A radio broadcast or a concert or even just singing in the shower creates countless echoes of information. A shining light on a painting or written page bounces photons into the eyes of anyone looking that direction. Copyright is an entirely artificial restriction on these wholly natural processes. And for what purpose? To encourage the creation of more art. That is hardly the only way to encourage artistic endeavor. As to complaints that artists will starve without copyright, no, they won't. To support art, there is patronage, crowdfunding, performance, and endorsements, to name several other ways.

For copyright to really work, we are supposed to ignore all these echoes. See the movie at the theater, then buy it on DVD (or pirate it of course) if you want to see it again and your memory of it isn't satisfactory. The day may come when we all have inexpensive devices that augment our memory, allowing us to perfectly recall anything we see or hear and copy any of that we wish to another person or data repository, and then what of copyright? Copying has become so much easier to do over the past 40 years that copyright is already absurd now. With technology like that, copyright will be ridiculously archaic and worse than useless, it will be a major hindrance to the ability of its followers, if any, to function in society. For now, copyright blocks and slows the coming of the digital public library, a huge, huge improvement over the traditional library full of bound papers. The private bookstore is dying, and good riddance. Accepting copyright is like accepting a proposition that we should all use only one arm until the holders of the rights to use our other arms grant us permission, and each time we want to use our other arm, we have to ask for said permission and pay a fee. The industry has done an effective job of pushing the propaganda that copying is stealing, and hurts artists and is therefore unfair and immoral. They've confused the public with the seductive simplification that property is property and there is no difference between the physical and the intellectual variety. It's a simple, easy way to view the matter, but it is wrong, and the secret is out now. More and more people are seeing through their propaganda, ironically helped by the industry's clumsy, extreme, and harsh enforcement tactics that earned them the moniker "MAFIAA". For yet more reason why the industry is parasitic, a broad and extensive propaganda campaign, plus a terror campaign to scare the people who weren't fooled or who don't care, is just the sort of thing one could expect from parasites.

It's not just the future in which copyright doesn't work. It never has worked well, ever. Civilization would not have advanced to where it is today had ancient civilizations been able to lock down all information. No matter how much an ancient civilization wished to keep a new battle tactic or weapon secret, once used, their enemies would see it, and the survivors would not find it hard to understand and duplicate, or perhaps counter, or even improve.

Re:I agree and disagree

[raftpeople]

It seems like his point on copyright is accurate in that it's kind of swimming upstream these days, it's almost impossible to control the easy flow of content.

The article doesn't say, but I would be curious if he had ideas on what kind of arrangement would allow artists to get paid and that accepts that content can't be controlled.

Why bother Steve Albini?

[m00sh]

Steve Albini has been a slashdot darling because of his outspoken nature. However, it is all empty BS that is just armchair philosophy. It doesn't look like he's involved in the guts of the music industry to provide real insight but just out there to reflect our outsider slashdot user views.

Copyright is very important. Streaming revenues are based on copyright. Digital downloads are based on copyright.

Also streaming can be as high a quality as needed. I don't know why he think it is supposed to be low quality. It can be higher quality than radio and with 24 bit audio higher quality than CDs.

They are selling billions of tracks through digital downloads, people are listening to billions of songs through streaming services and there are many services that are working on music being aggressively categorized by moods, styles and what not. Cloud management of music library and instant access to the library has been a huge.

The music industry has been ridiculously dynamic and new innovations have changed where music is heading. Maybe great recommender systems that will boost music sales. Maybe super high quality music and services that provide a great music experience are on the way that people will want to build up a huge library.

Saying copyright is not working is wrong.

Re:Why bother Steve Albini?

[Anonymous Coward]

many services that are working on music being aggressively categorized by moods, styles

That's nice, but how is it relevant?

The music industry has been ridiculously dynamic and new innovations have changed

And now you sound like a broken industry advertiser machine. Yes, they have been pushing DRM on us and bribing governments "protect the.." ...their way of doing business. Yes, paying the artist 5% of profit is piracy because you no longer distribute physical vynil disks that suffer from "breakage" -- actual term used in a contract for distributing mp3s.

If the entire industry disappeared overnight we would all be much better off, even after factoring in their unemployment checks.

Re:Now if the moderation system here were working.

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with a good chunk of it. For example, most of the music industry (and the content-producing industries in general) have been following the old model perfectly, and fighting to keep it that way. A few players have moved to more user-centric models, and they've had varying amounts of success.

Still, OP does make good points, so I modded up. Posting anonymously because his mod is more important that anything I might get here.

Re:GPL and copyright

[SirSlud]

"The old copyright model [...] has expired."

Nobody is saying copyright law shouldn't exist.

Re:This is not a new idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." ~ John Lennon

So great that he released his music to the public domain.

Re:And..

[srmalloy]

me WaNt TEH MONIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

That's oversimplified. "We believe that individuals should pay for our granting permission for them to listen to music whose copyrights we hold, and if there were some way for us to guarantee that you would be charged each time you listened to the work, or idly whistled or sang it in a public place (a 'public performance' in violation of copyright), or even sang it in your shower where someone else could hear it, and prevent them from listening to or performing the work if they declined to pay, we would be throwing billions of dollars into trying to buy enough politicians to enact laws to make those controls mandatory for all works we hold copyright on." would be a better approximation. And that still doesn't plumb the depths of their greed.

The corporate industry just stagnates music

[LostMonk]

I wholly agree with Albini, the corporate music industry as a whole just stagnates music. The industry cherry-picks a tiny few young presenters, suit them with what is believed to be the most likely to succeed set of styles and hype their image beyond all proportion.
And in the background everything that is deemed "not popular/unlikely to succeed" is simply ignored. This how you get crap-loads of songs and music videos that are practically indistinguishable from one another.
Not too long ago music artists earns their living from live performances only, recordings changed that and allowed top performers to become very rich. Nowadays we might see things go full circle... A good artist should be able to make a living off her art, there's no law that says she's supposed to become a millionaire (and certainly not her manager).
Music has been around since humanoids could bang two sticks together and hum along, its not going to disappear -- hurting the industry is not "Destroying Music" like some would want us to believe -- Doing anything to damage the music industry in its current form will only do good for music in the long run.

Re: I agree and disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

The money is in live performance and merchandising. Recorded tracks are simply marketing for that.

Re: copyright protects punk rockers

[Jason Levine]

If there was no copyright, someone could release a sing and have it immediately appropriated by some politician/organization who they completely disagree with for no compensation. The artist could also wind up competing to sell his works against others selling his works.

The problem is that copyright has been extended to ridiculous lengths. Drop copyright down to shorter lengths (14 years plus a one time 14 year extension) and many of the copyright problems would vanish.

Copyright shouldn't be free-as-in-beer

[CanEHdian]

One of the problem is that copyrighted works can sit on a shelf for 100+ years and it doesn't cost the rightsholder a cent. So yeah, sure, increase copyright terms. Please. At zero cost, even a trillion-in-one chance of a work-on-the-shelf ever making any kind of money is still better than zero.

Even a use-it-or-lose-it system won't work, as you'll see extremely-limited runs just for copyrights' sake. NOT any other.

A proposal is to limit copyright to (compared to the current situation) a very limited time, say 10 years, with an optional extension -at a fee and with registration- for another 10 years. This would total 20 years, the same as inventors get to exploit their ingenuity and creativity at the cost of filing for a patent. This would level the playing field between the two, open up a gigantic public domain, and still give creators a full 2 decades to exploit works.

The most vocal opponents of this proposal will be: (1) the copyright industry, (2) "made men" (dead or alive) that somehow still cash in today for what they did many decades ago and (3) the Hordes Of Entertainment Lawyers that make a good penny with all the legalities, paperwork, clearances, etc. that comes with the actual use of copyrighted works.