Lately more bands are giving the opportunity to their fans to download their songs for free or to buy their cd at a smaller price like Radiohead and Charlatans.The past years the record labels and the media have struggled against piracy by using the motto " piracy kills music". As they watch the record sales dropping, they have adopted an aggressive policy towards those who download or distribute music for free.In that battle even bands participated like that would actually go to court with their fans (Lars Ulrich vs Napster).
I believe that piracy does not kill but actually saves music.The record sales have been reduced over the past years but for me the cause is not the free exchange of music.The record labels exploit their artists and the price of the cd's its really unnecessarily high. Moreover, artists due to the pressure of the record labels have started to release records that are not worth buying. They have one or two hits on their album and then the rest of the album is of a bad quality.Why then would someone want to buy their record? If a record is good then through free downloading a wider audience can listen to their music.Don't forget that its impossible to buy every cd that we like. Then if their work is decent many people will buy their record regardless if they can get it for free. They will buy it to see the artwork, to read the lyrics, to have a good quality sound and mostly to support the artist or band.
When a band is worth people will buy their album and support it. Their music will be listened by a wider audience and in that sense piracy saves music.The only thing that a band or an artist needs to do to sell is to respect their audience.
(art by honeychick)
10 comments:
Exactly! And moreover I think that good musicians can earn a lot of money through concerts.
P.S.: senorita queremos mas posts! :)
Lawfulness kills blacks.
Some people have a really hard time making ends meet, while music stars kill their time in their limos and luxurious apartments. I consider it unfair -if not ridiculous.
Music piracy is a message; society says to music stars: you don't deserve it, you're overestimated and definitely not the hub of the world.
@ggk
surely through concerts they can earn a lot.Of course many are lazy...
(mi querida no tengo mucho tiempo libre ultimamente a causa del mi trabajo pero intento escribir mas)
@κουνούπι
the golden age of rock stars is surely gone and I am glad.
i totaly agree with you!!!
Also with the help of new technologies, our hard disks are being enlarged, and our connections getting faster. Thus we can download high quality records with less effort.
In my opinion, this is going to be a new era for music.
If "piracy" is killing anyone at all, that is the big buck music industry. And if property is theft, intellectual property is murder. The very notion that ideas can be the property of a corporation is ridiculous. Technology has enabled us to store ideas and reproduce them infinitely and with no cost at all, thus taking down the only excuse left to the music industry. The same issues apply to the software industry as well, in an even more ridiculous rate. Software corporations patent algorithms, terms, definitions, ideas at a ridiculous rate. The same with the pharmaceutical industry and in fact with any entity that claims intellectual property on any idea ever produced in this world. Unfortunately for them, as humanity evolves, and we do evolve, such claims will become obsolete and thus fade out of existence because they will no longer be relevant. To claim intellectual property is to deprive humanity of a valuable asset, it's ability to progress through innovation.
So how will the music industry survive in the future? Well, simply put, they won't. Dinosaurs didn't and they were huge and greedy as well. Either you adapt, or you get vommited out of this world, and the corporations are clearly having too much fun being gazillionaires at the moment to consider adapting. There was a world before the major music corporations and there will be a - better, evolved - world after them. The independent labels, the adaptive mamals of this evolutionary leap, will have to adapt slightly and find ways to realocate their fund raising process but I'm sure they will be fruitful and multiply.
And how will the bands survive without their album income? People may not realize it but there's a very limited number of artists that actually suffer losses because of music sharing - let's not call it piracy and play the ugly game. The vast majority of musicians gain their income by touring, performing at clubs or in festivals and by selling t-shirts and other paraphernalia. And, in a sterile music industry, where all you get to listen to is Britney Spears or Maroon 5, the average artist that currently gets no airplay by the mainstream media will be better off when people can just download tracks and take a sample of the band. And don't listen to me. Here's what Steve Albini has to say on the subject. Albini is a member of the legendary hardcode band Big Black and has produced legendary albums such as the Pixies Surfer Rosa, Nirvana's In Utero and has recorded for artists like PJ Harvey, Neurosis and the Stooges (and I think the Smashing Pumkins too). I can't say it any better than Steve, so here's what he has to say on the subject.
"Downloading and the culture of free music have affected the income of record labels, but the street-level music scene (as defined by bands, entrepreneurial independent record labels, studios like mine, etc.) is doing great. Bands have an easier time than ever getting their music out into the world, and bands don't even need a label to have an international following. It's actually a great time to be in a band.
My long experience with bands and musicians has taught me that they understand their place in the world pretty well. They also understand that music is (always has been) free to consume. If you play your radio, it costs nothing to listen. If you walk by an open window while someone is playing an album, it costs nothing. If you stand outside a club and listen, it costs nothing. Music is free. Musicians often sing and play informally (get this!) just for fun.
Records, concert tickets and the use of music in commerce -- those things cost money.
The primary relationship that drives all parts of the music business is the relationship between a band and its audience. Record retailers, labels, producers, managers, lawyers, promoters and other parasitic professionals all subsist on whatever money they can siphon off of this fundamental relationship. Mechanical and broadcast royalties (the royalties supposedly "lost" through file sharing) are the part of this transaction that is least efficient in getting money to the artist because most of it is siphoned-off by the rest of the music industry. Of a $15 sale, the average band stuck on a major label may not receive a single penny, and amortized over the life of a release may receive (after all the other players take their rake) a buck or so.
I should note that entrepreneurial independent labels that operate on a profit-sharing model can be an order of magnitude more efficient, and that one of the efficiencies is the lack of promotional outlay required because fan file sharing does the promotion for free
In short, these "lost" royalties are a huge part of the revenue stream of the institutional part of the mainstream music business, but a miniscule part of the income of a band.
Almost universally, bands and musicians are happy anyone is interested in their music enough to become a fan, and they know there are many opportunities to do some business with such a person that may or may not involve selling him a particular record.
They also recognize that a download by someone unwilling to buy a record is not a "lost sale," because that person has made it clear that he is unwilling to buy a record. You haven't lost a sale, you've made a fan for free. Fans eventually want to buy records, concert tickets and other things.
A single sale = a small bet.
A lifetime fan = a huge pot."
Again, sorry for the wall of text, this topic is one of my all-time favorites.
@notiskon
thanks for stopping by
@gorgi
Its truly a new era for music and I am glad that some bands have started looking for smaller independent labels or they create their own record labels.
@khayman
Thanks for taking the article one step further.You are right to say that apart from the music industry the same laws apply with the software and pharmaceutical industries.You have opened the Pandora's box!
Your reply IS a brilliant article (far better than I could ever write) "You haven't lost a sale, you've made a fan for free. Fans eventually want to buy records, concert tickets and other things."So true!
The reason that I love punk so much is because they believe that :
Anyone can play or write music that has something to say, they want to be in control of the price and distribution of their records, they advise you to steal their record and they distribute through distros and hand to hand.
I don't think I have much to say. What is in my mind is already said by khayman and pixie.
Piracy in general is a very interesting matter to me, both because game developping is my current job now and the fact that there is a big contradiction I still don't get. It's impossible for me to think that I am actually "stealing" something when I replicate media. It's not the same to steal a car than copying a music CD, unlike what the popular anti-piracy ad claims.
Personally as a game developper, I wouldn't mind if someone pirated my commercial games. I would understand that there is an ethical contradiction in considering copying software as stealing thus everyone wonders why not?
Sometimes I am thinking of the following example: Maybe today we have the means to copy data. What if in the future scientists develop a machine that can replicate matter? What if I can put in there food, computer hardware, gold, diamonds, money, etc and create similar copies of the same thing in great quantities? Would it be unethical or not? It would possible destroy economy as we know it today. But would someone dare say "I am not replicating food and technology to help 3rd world countries because that would be like stealing the companies". That's an ethical confusion that reflects what I feel about intellectual piracy too. Though it feels different because it's just copying ideas, but why shouldn't someone replicate all necessary material wares instad of having to pay for them when he will be able to do so? Why having to pay when you can solve povetry and all your problems with such a device? Yet the economic system would possibly seize to exist in such a case. Which may be just evolution.. (Seriously, I'd like to live in a world where I don't have to follow the "commercial standards" for my game developping job because of the necessity for gaining the most money possible, but enjoying life and a free creativity without the economical barriers and compromises. Sometimes I am jealous of the independent gaming community for freeware game developers where there is no barrier for creativity. In my current job we had to change my original idea of our game to what the market wants and it still isn't going any good :P)
p.s. And something just for a laugh. This is the anti-piracy add parody from The It Crowd. Hilarious!!!
Βασικά συμφωνώ. Πολλά συγκροτήματα δεν θα είχαν κλείσει δισκογραφικές δουλειές αν δεν ήταν το διαδίκτυο..
i dunno know if piracy kills the music...
but i do know that internet sharing has helped real music!!!!!!
{keep internet free}
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