Music industry woes
I just saw a post on Slashdot reporting that a Seattle-based band, Harvey Danger (a group akin to Ben Folds), has released an album online, for free download. This is an experiment in publicity, and to some degree a statement that file sharing can be a Good Thing.
While this is not particularly amazing, as various groups have been doing this for a while now, it got me thinking..
Something I've been taking an interest in lately is the somewhat outdated state of copyright laws (and friends). There's a distinct 'recording industry vs. everyone else' feeling.. It appears to me that the industry, and the laws that protect it, is lagging sadly behind reality.
The nature of the 'information age' is such that the distribution of all forms of information (including music and movies) is excessively easy.. New file-sharing technologies are coming into existence all the time, and are becoming increasingly anonymous. More to the point, the distribution of many forms of copyrighted material (namely music, movies and software) is becoming more and more common, and consequently more talked about, and (dare I say it) more accepted.
Although it doesn't hold true for all situations (what if murder, rape, or property theft became widespread?), I do think it's important to at least try to 'move with the times', and adapt to society, within reason. I personally don't hold the opinion that those individuals who happen to download music are immoral, or criminals – I don't think such an opinion is particularly common, and it is growing less common.
Rather, groups that represent the music industry and related industries, such as the MPAA and the RIAA, are becoming increasingly unpopular. They are frequently thought of as 'school bully' figures (see "Recording Industry vs The People" for some reasons why)
In an era of capitalism, ad nauseum, it seems to me that the music industry (like most other creative industries) is more geared towards huge profits than actual music and creativity. This is an unfair blanket statement, and not all record companies are 'evil', but generally speaking, are we losing sight of the big picture, amongst profits?
Instead of fighting the populace… Is it perhaps worth brainstorming some ideas to fit into this new system, and still protect artists (which should be the whole point of the exercise)?
Downhill Battle propose an interesting solution to the problem. They suggest a system of collective licensing: For a flat monthly fee (they suggest $5-$10), download all the music you want; Musicians and labels are paid based on their popularity. Artists get paid, people can get fair access to music.
Although this solution seems like a very reasonable one (and probably the one I'd be putting my money on), I quite like the idea of having free downloads, and facilities to contribute financially, too. I don't know how well such a system would work (how generous are people?), but it's an interesting concept with a collaborative flavour. It would be nice to live in a system based on generosity and honesty, instead of enforcement and punishment (okay, that's black and white). I sure find giving money to musicians who make good music, and developers who make good software much more satisfying than going and buying a copy of Microsoft Office (heh, not that I've ever done that..and that's another issue entirely)
Stepping back… I know it's entirely idealised, and such a thing may never work in the real world, but wouldn't a system based on giving be more rewarding than a system based on the threat of punishment? I can imagine it would be very empowering, where the power is in the hands of the people, instead of the governing authorities. A society based on such principles would have to be a hybrid, combining elements from previous structures, including capitalism. Obviously, you'd still pay at the supermarket, but what if software, music, and movies were free? If you liked them, you rewarded the creators.. (and if you didn't, you get disapproving frowns, but not taken away to court). I wonder how such a system would work, en mass?
That's a gross oversimplification, of course, there would be many factors.. I'm reading a book at the moment called Blue Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson, which investigates the formation of a similar societal structure. A variety of different economic systems are investigated, including a 'gift economy', which is an interesting, although difficult to achieve, concept. Another interesting element is that all corporate entities are cooperative, owned by the workforce, with management hired by the workers. It's very hard to predict how such a system would work, in the real world, with large populations – It's hard to reason about huge group dynamics.
Okay, got lost on a tangent there…
Anyway.. I've given $22 to Harvey Danger, and good luck to them.
Related posts
- New music section I’ve just added a new music section, with embedded players....
- More music I wrote a piece of…Electronica/rock, I suppose it is: Burn...
- A TV series with music like this can’t be bad I’ve just re-discovered Hustle (Wikipedia entry), a fun and stylish...
- Pandora: “Can you help me discover more music that I’ll like?” I’ve just been pointed to Pandora, an offspring of the...
- Sue ‘em all! Attacks from the RIAA continue, as their victim count reaches...
2 Responses to “Music industry woes”
Leave a Reply
You’ve got it backwards. It’s not that copyright law has to move with the times, it’s that it shouldn’t have moved with the times as it did under the influence of media cartels.
The original idea of copyright, remember, was that it would grant limited rights to a content creator for a limited amount of time so that they may make money off their creations. These rights are granted at the expense of the freedoms society had to begin with. Society gives up the right to copy (for a limited time) so that an author can make some cash back for his book.
In giving up these rights and allowing profit taking, more content creation is encouraged. The idea is that society benefits more by encouraging more content to be created than it loses by temporarily giving up its rights to distribute or derive from the work of others.
That was all good and well until recently, where the length of copyright was dramatically increased, punishments became more severe, and a much greater range of rights were signed away (the right to reverse engineer, for example).
The problem is that the reasoning has changed – it’s no longer about maximising benefit to society, it’s that people believe they have a right to make money off their creations. It doesn’t matter how crap a movie is, or a book is. The right to gouge is increasingly written into law.
If you liked them, you rewarded the creators.. (and if you didn’t, you get disapproving frowns, but not taken away to court). I wonder how such a system would work, en mass?
It wouldn’t, because this is too anarchistic a view of the value of artistic endeavour. Popularity is not a measure of how good something is. This would make the problem of cookie-cutter pop music worse, not better.
You can’t cut out the middleman (the record labels in the music industry, the publishers in the software industry) because there has to be a method whereby the currently popular products support products that haven’t yet had a chance to become popular. It’s like the health system paid for by tax dollars – you pay for it knowing that you pay in part for a thousand obscure treatments, procedures and pieces of equipment. You may, at one point in your life, need one of those obscure machines that go ‘bing,’ at which point it’s a damn good thing you supported the system, instead of just the medical treatments you liked.
it’s no longer about maximising benefit to society, it’s that people believe they have a right to make money off their creations. It doesn’t matter how crap a movie is, or a book is. The right to gouge is increasingly written into law.
A good point.. and it’s probably going to get a lot worse before it gets better. It seems to me the only way this super-capitalism thing is going to become less extreme is by burning itself out.
Popularity is not a measure of how good something is. This would make the problem of cookie-cutter pop music worse, not better.
I wonder if there’s a solution to that problem. How else would you reward creators? A cap on rewards? Penalties for appealing to audiences with an IQ less than 50? (I like that one)
You can’t cut out the middleman
No, but you can change the middleman – Make it less self-centered, more directed towards the good of the whole. I know it’s a very different situation, but look at sourceforge.net, a ‘middleman’ for OSS software development. I know that’s OS, so obviously some things will hold true that wouldn’t in a different environment, but organisations can exist to better their area, instead of themselves, and still be worthwhile.
I suppose that’s fairly representational of the rest of the system currently, too.. Many large organisations exist purely to make more money and expand, to make more money.. To expand, to make more money. Gotta make with the moving forward!