The Internet could not care less about your mediocre band
posted by Dave Allen, 137 Comments
If you are new to this debate or just joining the fray I’d like to point you to two links that are relevant to this very heated discussion: Who Cares About the Future of Music? and Cash Music a non-profit company, of which I am on the board and an adviser, that builds platforms for artists to build into their own websites allowing them to sell their music, T-shirts, concert tickets etc, and keep 100% of their proceeds.
In defense of NPR’s Emily White.
Last week I read with fascination the outcry of the self-appointed, self-centered “defenders” of musicians vs the Internet. i.e. musicians. The brouhaha had been kindled by a 20 year-old intern at NPR, Emily White, who made a confession that upset the maudlin, mildly-talented David Lowery and grownups in general who can write. They piled on trying to savage her, but not to worry; as UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher most famously retorted after being criticized by Geoffrey Howe, a member of her cabinet – “..it was like being savaged by a dead sheep.” So yes, bring on the dead sheep.
Why were people jumping all over Emily? Her post was titled: I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With. Here’s the first part of her post:
A few days before my internship at All Songs Considered started, Bob Boilen posted an article titled “I Just Deleted All My Music” on this blog. The post is about entrusting his huge personal music library to the cloud. Though this seemed like a bold step to many people who responded to the article, to me, it didn’t seem so bold at all.
I never went through the transition from physical to digital. I’m almost 21, and since I first began to love music I’ve been spoiled by the Internet.
I am an avid music listener, concertgoer, and college radio DJ. My world is music-centric. I’ve only bought 15 CDs in my lifetime. Yet, my entire iTunes library exceeds 11,000 songs.
I wish I could say I miss album packaging and liner notes and rue the decline in album sales the digital world has caused. But the truth is, I’ve never supported physical music as a consumer. As monumental a role as musicians and albums have played in my life, I’ve never invested money in them aside from concert tickets and T-shirts.
But I didn’t illegally download (most) of my songs. A few are, admittedly, from a stint in the 5th grade with the file-sharing program Kazaa. Some are from my family. I’ve swapped hundreds of mix CDs with friends. My senior prom date took my iPod home once and returned it to me with 15 gigs of Big Star, The Velvet Underground and Yo La Tengo (I owe him one).
During my first semester at college, my music library more than tripled. I spent hours sitting on the floor of my college radio station, ripping music onto my laptop. The walls were lined with hundreds of albums sent by promo companies and labels to our station over the years.
All of those CDs are gone. My station’s library is completely digital now, and so is my listening experience.
This is a 20 year old student telling it like it is. My only concern is that she may have never heard the sonorous sound of a vinyl recording. Other than that she has my utmost support.
Musicians (and as a member of Gang of Four I include myself here) don’t automatically deserve to make a living. They are not a special subset of society that should be supported at all cost. If that were the case there would surely be an honest argument against the States who are laying off teachers, police and firefighters; teachers educate our children, police and firefighters protect us from harm and sometimes death. Musicians, like all artists, are part of the foundation of our cultural groundswell and music is part of our reptilian past – every living thing has a heartbeat. Yet we talk of the “music business” and that’s where The Rime of the Ancient Mariner comes in..
The constant whining by David Lowery (this isn’t the first time) proves only that, whether he knows it or not, he doesn’t understand the Internet and how people use it (more on this later in the post.) Like many, many people who have had their lives or businesses upended by the Internet, his nostalgia runs so deep he wants everything to be the way it used to be. Ain’t gonna happen. If he looked long and hard in the mirror he might confess to himself that the way it used to be was a tragedy for the majority of musicians, and probably not that great for himself either, as his bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, like Gang of Four, were not exactly in the upper echelons of fame. We scraped out a living by touring and yes, David, selling T-shirts. The adage that musicians always pay back the mortgage to the labels but never own the house is entirely true in so many cases. We can’t blame the Internet for that.
This is where Lowery outlines his case. I take issue with it in its entirety because Lowery is attempting to solve the wrong problem. He is attempting in the present to solve a problem of the past – lack of music sales; ergo, damage to musicians income levels or lack thereof since the advent of the Internet. (Oddly he doesn’t mention that the music industry is most likely the only industry to ever, ever, sue its own customers. An inconvenient truth.) He even lays out in fine detail how much Emily would owe if she’d paid for all of her music (most of which came from the labels as “promos”. Once again Lowery doesn’t mention how music writers and radio DJ’s sold those promos to record stores..just saying.) He then asks her to cough up the dough for starving musicians.
He also rather insensitively points out, while undermining his argument, that “the average income of a musician that files taxes is something like 35k a year w/o benefits.” That’s almost $10k more than the current US median wage. There are around 8 million unemployed people here in the USA, many without a place to call home, who would gladly take that income. I find him so condescending that I want to break something right now.
I also find it disgusting that Lowery conjoins the deaths by suicide of Vic Chesnutt and Mark Linkous to this topic. He knows very well that those two brave artists, much braver than he, suffered through circumstances that were extremely personal and difficult to control. Had they been musicians or not, had nothing to do with the incredibly unfortunate outcome of their lives. It only goes to show how shallow and specious his entire argument is if he has to pivot it on their deaths.
Jay Frank wrote a post in response to all of this. In it he points out that Lowery need not worry about people downloading his music. Frank provides us a snapshot of a Google search: “when I went to look on Google Insights to see the level of demand for free music by David Lowery’s group Camper Van Beethoven, the message I get is, “Not enough search volume to show graphs.” “This basically means, from what I can gather, that less than 50 people per month in the entire world are even showing intent to steal his music. Statisticians basically refer to this as essentially zero.”
Here’s Emily again:
If my laptop died and my hard-drive disappeared tomorrow, I would certainly mourn the loss of my 100-plus playlists, particularly the archives of all of my college radio shows. But I’d also be able to rebuild my “library” fairly easily. If I wanted to listen to something I didn’t already have in my patchwork collection, I could stream it on Spotify.
As I’ve grown up, I’ve come to realize the gravity of what file-sharing means to the musicians I love. I can’t support them with concert tickets and T-shirts alone. But I honestly don’t think my peers and I will ever pay for albums. I do think we will pay for convenience.
That last line is the most important in this context. It also spells doom for musicians wanting to make a living by just selling music. The convenience that Emily is searching for is, as she mentions, provided by Spotify – by doing so she shows us that a musician’s enemy is not the music downloader. The enemy is Spotify, MOG, Rdio et al who license entire music catalogs from labels at great cost. The labels (in my case Warner Bros) then pay a pittance in royalties to the artists. The winners in this vast charade are the labels and venture capitalists.
Believe me I know. I recently received a royalty statement from Warner Bros in which I found that one of our most popular songs, ‘Natural’s Not In It’ had been streamed or downloaded through paid online services, almost 7000 times. That netted me $17.35. Now that was just one song out of our entire Gang of Four catalog. The statement amount in total, my share, came to $21.08. There was a big, red-inked stamped message on the last page that read, “Under $25 do not pay.”
Lowery points out in his passive/aggressive “Letter to Emily” that people are buying less music these days. I wonder if it has ever occurred to him that maybe that’s because they are being served up an all-you-can-eat cheap buffet of music from the likes of Spotify?
Anyway, I thought that this issue was long behind us. I wrote about where music and musicians were heading back in 2008. Here’s an updated version of The End of the Music Album as the Organizing Principle. And here’s Dear Musicians, Please Be Brilliant or Get Out of the Way.
Anyway, back to the Internet.
In what may, or may not, have been a misstep, Lowery posted his rant to The Trichordist blog whose tag line, Artists For An Ethical Internet, says it all. In using that tag line they show in brilliant light how much they misunderstand what the Internet is. And by doing so they undermine the very validity of their presence on the Internet. They can yell at the Internet into infinity and it will never blink.
The Internet can not be ethical. Only users of the Internet can be said to be ethical, moral, or philosophical; they may be terrorists, kidnappers, racists, deviants; they could also be atheists, religious zealots or spiritualists; they might be gay, straight, bi, married, divorced; employed, destitute…the list goes on. Whoever they may be they are users. The Internet is its own thing. The Internet doesn’t give a damn about musicians or your mediocre band.
And finally there’s this – Lowery writes about “immoral and unethical business models.” And includes this – “..they are “legitimate” companies like Google.” What’s with the quotes around “legitimate” does Lowery think Google is not legitimate? No, he thinks Google is the problem (read Devil..) because Google in his mind owns the “Unethical Internet” because of its advertising prowess. And I quote – “Google is also selling ads in this neighborhood and sharing the revenue with everyone except the people who make the stuff being looted.” Looted! Unbelievable.
He then rambles on about the “cost” of free music downloading – the $1000 laptop, the costly iPhone or Tablet, as if people only use these products to download music! He also falls into the same trap that U2′s manager, the ISP bully Paul McGuinness, falls into – blame the ISP’s for allowing access to the Internet, where as we know, people only go to steal music.. McGuinness is so well informed about the Internet that in the Billboard article I linked to he talks about the Googles! And he also said this about Apple and Google – “They didn’t invent the MP3, they just made the best one.” Erm.., what?
Clearly this a fool’s errand. At least we know who the fools are. They are what the economist Paul Krugman calls “Very Serious People,” for only they know how to fix things. Unfortunately, everything they do or say has no grounding in reality.
Grownups fear youth. That’s unfortunate. By sharing her reality, Emily White shows us she is grounded.
[Update] This just in, literally. @AmazonMP3 If you wanna get 19 of Paul Simon’s solo hits for $2.99, youre gonna have to do it by tomorrow: amzn.to/KHsARp Now who’s fooling who about the declining incomes of musicians?
June 24th, 2012 @ 4:39 am
Comments are now open again. I had to delete the more offensive ones as they were direct personal attacks and/or completely off topic and out of context. I will continue to delete those kinds of comments.
Also, to be clear this post is a defense of Emily White – please read her post first. Everyone leaving comments so far seems to be coming straight from David Lowery’s post without reading Emily’s.
Please consider the context. This discussion is about user behavior not the moral or ethical stance of downloading music. Clearly musicians/artists/creators ought to be compensated for their work if they are selling it. This post isn’t about that.
For those of you who think this is a personal attack on Lowery, then to you I apologize, that was not my intention. I could have been more artful in my critique but I’ve written it now and I stand by my position, as I’m certain David Lowery does of his position.
June 24th, 2012 @ 7:20 pm
dave: big gang of four fan here. but the copywriter/pedant in me forces me to point out that the correct phrasing is “couldn’t care less”.
June 24th, 2012 @ 7:22 pm
Ah, right. I often need a nudge! Thanks.
June 24th, 2012 @ 7:26 pm
Thanks for this post. There’s one thing I would like to argue though:
“an all-you-can-eat cheap buffet of music from the likes of Spotify”
Spotify is not as cheap as many people think. $120 a year (premium) is above the average spending on recorded music. Total 2011 U.S. music revenue was $7.01 billion according to RIAA, roughly $22 a year.
And they royalties they generate is a stream of income that keeps coming, as long as people are listening. Unlike CD or downloads. More about this issue:
http://www.spotidj.com/spotifyroyalties.htm
The issue, as you said in the post, is more likely to be the label taking the lion’s share of the new revenue while the artists are not paid well. I guess that’s always the problem with major labels, but not really streaming services’ fault.
June 24th, 2012 @ 7:30 pm
Some good points here. I’m not sure your characterization of Spotify’s payouts makes sense, though. You could compare your situation with a theoretical release of “Natural’s Not In It” as a 45 years ago. If the average person who bought that 45 played it ten times, then it would require 700 purchases of the record to get up to 7,000 plays of the song. If you had only sold 700 copies of a record, you wouldn’t be expecting a whole lot in royalties!
June 24th, 2012 @ 7:38 pm
Who will be the white knight to bring economic justice to Spotify? Or should you just submit to being fleeced?
I just want to note that the youthful accumulation of music is not as rosy peachy as they make it seem. When a human being is capable of hearing vast quantities of music there comes, by mathematical certainty, a point of diminishing returns. When you are listening to random obscurities all your life without forming meaningful attachments to any of it, you are creating a superficial musical judgement that may never encompass the idea of living intensely with a piece of music until you have thought it through and understand it completely.
As a musician, you may have composed music over time, and listened to it back as you played it countless times, until you fashioned something thoughtful and well-constructed. To know that this same piece will be just a passing piece of random noise in someone’s life, heard once, without understanding or the desire to ever hear it again because there is always something else, can’t be a comfortable feeling.
Outside of the economics of the situation, there is the currency of attention that is being squandered. I only want to be sure that the current incredible surfeit of music won’t lead us into a culture of superficiality. This is more alarming than the evanescent fantasies of Beatle-sized paychecks for every idiot who ever picked up a guitar.
June 24th, 2012 @ 7:39 pm
Yeah, the issue re Spotify is complicated and I’m mainly looking at it through the lens of my own income stream. But the deals between Spotify and the labels are not transparent, so artists remain in the dark..
June 24th, 2012 @ 7:41 pm
Tim, very true! But $17 for 7000 streams/downloads means 0.00242857 cents per..
June 24th, 2012 @ 7:44 pm
Tony, I couldn’t agree more. The old saw “the only thing that’s scarce on the Internet is attention” always rings true. I fear that we’ve hit the superficiality wall already. How much is too much is also an issue..
June 24th, 2012 @ 7:48 pm
Paying for any kind of art has always been the most tenuous of mug’s games. (It’s why I’m always looking over my shoulder, even when doing dishes.)
Clearly Lowery doesn’t realize the train has left the station. I love it when people (Lowery) repeat phrases like, “I’m not trying to shame you,” when clearly that’s the intention.
Overall, great article, with no easy answers presented, other than to try to think like the kids of today.
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:00 pm
Well said.
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:02 pm
Well, no, it’s 0.00242857 of a DOLLAR per stream! Quarter of a penny, in other words, going to the artist. That’s…maybe not bad? If Spotify were the only music service that existed and music was as popular as it is now, let’s say there’s a super popular song that’s played 100 million times worldwide. That’s not 100 million sales, of course, but plays, which is not out of the question. That would net the artist a quarter of a million dollars.
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:30 pm
I think there are merits to both positions, but as Spotify’s penetration increases, your 7000 plays will become 70000 (and upwards from there), and you’ll start to see real money. More importantly to musicians as a whole, the artists that control their own rights and distribution and don’t have to split their royalties with a label (i.e., most artists going forward) will do even better.
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:33 pm
Spot on! This is the rebuttal I have been composing in my mind since this whole brouhaha started. Leave it to a member of Gang Of Four to be witty and incisive about the issue. But seriously; $21.00? I guess there are always T-Shirts…
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:35 pm
hi Dave– excellent rebuttal to David Lowery’s rambling post about the horrors of the ‘immoral internet.’ It’s astounding he actually thinks the genii could be put back in the bottle.
And his disrespectful tone towards Emily was outrageous– hey, let’s scold modern music listeners, maybe we can guilt them into paying $15 for CDs again. Yah.
As a musician, I’ll admit that recent changes in the industry have been startling. But seems like it’s best to acknowledge them and adapt, rather than whine for the return of a long-gone era.
d
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:36 pm
When has anyone suggested that “musicians automatically deserve to make a living…?” That’s a strawman.
They do, however, deserve to be compensated when people consume their art. The free market should and would determine the value of music but cannot do so when it is obtained illegally to such a massive degree.
Musicians like Lowery aren’t just dinosaurs wishing for the old model…the label model sucked for artists, too… they just want to be compensated for the value that they create for others. If no one is listening, then there’s no value, but people listen to more music now than ever, yet little to nothing comes back to the creator of the product. Desiring fairness isn’t just “being old and not understanding the internet.”
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:41 pm
Dave, I agree with you and disagree with Lowery. That said, the distinction between his bands’ economic footprints and their artistic merit is one I’d hope you would have respect for. When you cross over into actually belittling his music (which by way of a disclaimer, I love very much), you do your argument no service.
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:47 pm
This topic deserves better than specious arguments – such as quoting the part of the article that talks about the lack of illegal downloads of Lowery’s 80s band and ignoring the other part where that writer acknowledged he had a legitimate (if difficult to quantify) claim regarding his more recent band (you know, the one that existed after the internet became popular).
Audience theft and their entitlement mentality are just not the fault of musicians or anyone else other than the audience, period. Whatever kind of music you think the public would buy if they only had the choice – it is being made, they do have the choice, and they’re ignoring it or stealing that music, too.
It has never and could never be the responsibility of musicians to police mediocre music from making it to the marketplace, and there has never been a time when there wasn’t plenty of it.
Any alleged decline in music quality that you’re blaming for audience behavior exists entirely in your mind. The only thing that has changed is the ease and scale of theft – the lack of enforcement is nothing new, because musicians as a class do not have clout. And make no mistake – this systematic disrespect has a relationship to how the audience can justify stealing from us.
Clearly the demand for music is still there – it is ubiquitous. People tend to be jealous of creative types, and that also plays a role in how we are typecast as wealthy drug addicted liberals. Make no mistake, this is typecasting with an agenda.
Unless we stick together (for starters) – as it saddens me to see Dave not doing – we’ll continue to be only just good enough to exploit, but not enough to pay.
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:52 pm
Dear Dave,
The Internet does many cool things for and to people. Arguably, making it possible to download music for free is one of them. When advertising and image design join that list you might want to revisit this topic and write about it from that end of the equation.
No matter. What I’m wondering is this: Why does the Internet make people behave, or at least present themselves, like seething dicks? This occurs to me now because your essay — which I read with great interest, by the way — overflows with scorched earth tactics that do nothing to further your argument and everything to make you seem like a digital hooligan. It also makes you seem less like someone who knows what he’s talking about, and more like a constructor/destroyer of straw enemies.
Let’s look at your own text.
David Lowery, who feels differently on this issue than you do, isn’t just incorrect. He’s also “maudlin” and “mildly talented.” Lowery’s position amounts to “constant whining.” Worse, his essay is “passive/aggressive.” If you’re using that last grenade to explode his yucky roping-in of the Chesnutt/Linkous tragedies (I agree with your disdain there, btw), then how can you justify ridiculing the musicians’ expectation of payment by waving the bloodied banner of the homeless, the unemployed and screwed-over firefighters, teachers and so on?
Does that not indict you for living the high life as what some intemperate types might call a corporate shill (love those Facebook shots from all your exotic business trips, by the way)? And don’t you feel just a little bit queasy quoting Margaret Thatcher — one of the 20th century’s great punishers of the working class — to give Lowery yet another righteous boot in the crotch?
“The Internet can not be ethical,” you write, and again, I agree with you. I bet Lowery does, too: he’s not calling for the medium to be regulated, he’s urging Emily White, et. al, to act in a way he believes is more fair to musicians. See? You agree with him, and you were too busy hating him to notice!
What Lowery, you and I all know is that it’s the people who USE the Internet whose behavior can/should define how its powers are deployed. But here’s the irony: the Internet itself, or more accurately, the people who write the logarithms that organize the Internet to appeal to searchers’ desires, do so with laser focus on hot-button subjects and words. Sex! Tits! Slams! Lashes out! Scandal! Fight! But why am I telling you that, Dave? As the headline of your essay (The Internet could not care less about your mediocre band) you’ve got your search engine optimization skills purring right along.
So I’ll do you a favor here and close by rephrasing my opinion of your essay by saying, simply, that it makes you seem like a pathetic, washed-up twat whose shitty band no one ever liked in the first place. That’s not what I think, but it’s short and punchy and SEO like a motherfucker. That’s what sells on the Internet. And everyone’s gotta earn a living, right?
Peter
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:52 pm
Tim, I was never good at math so I stand by the correction..! When you put it that way it must be galling for artists just starting out to see that..
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:54 pm
Gary, correct. Once Gang of Four was without a label we had more control, but not of the back catalogue that still resides with EMI and Warners.
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:54 pm
Michael, it’s true. Today’s musicians are not in the music business they’re in the T-shirt business..
June 24th, 2012 @ 8:57 pm
Travstw, I hear that all the time when I’m on conference panels or attending seminars. There was a push in the early 00′s to get health insurance for musicians as well as help them attain a middle class living. At one conference I asked why we aren’t doing the same for the migrant workers that arrive in Oregon each season to work the fields? I was stonewalled..
June 24th, 2012 @ 9:07 pm
Michael, I don’t believe I belittled his music. What I’ve heard of it has left me less than impressed though. I presume you refer to my saying he is “mildly talented” something I stand by. I don’t think that undermines my position in my post. I wasn’t intending to criticize his music, I was responding to his passive/aggressive stance against Emily. He tries to belittle her, he’s condescending toward her and her ilk, and more. It’s borderline sexism too. I obviously could have piled it on a lot stronger and I’m glad that I didn’t completely over reach. To your point this discussion has nothing to do with artistic merit versus economics, you’re right. My major insight is in the fact that Lowery, and many other pissed off anti-Internet musicians, don’t understand what the Internet did when it disrupted society, culture and business in one stroke. Bands such as Radiohead completely understand its power. Why others don’t look to them for how to engage their fans online I’ll never know. I do know that haranguing them in forums and such will only turn them off. Musicians need to understand user behavior. Demographics are history now, something that is a relic of print, TV and radio.. They also need to understand that all media are social.
June 24th, 2012 @ 9:14 pm
Mark, your stance here is all too familiar. The Internet changed everything. You can wave a stick at it but it doesn’t care. Musicians must adapt to its platform and serve their fans in a way that they want to be served. Calling your fans thieves, pirates or worse simply alienates them. A 20 year old has only known digital and the Internet. Why should she change what she does daily to suit a musician’s requirements? She won’t it’s that simple..you/we have to adapt to her behavior if we are to be successful. And please don’t paint me with the “not sticking together brush” I’ve fought long and hard over the last decade to get musicians to see what’s right under their noses. They didn’t see it. And they continue to make matters worse by complaining instead of branching out on their own. The record contract is the Albatross, or as I call it the Nanny-state.
June 24th, 2012 @ 9:30 pm
Peter, I don’t quite know where to begin. Exotic business trips? What are you talking about? Do you mean my 3 day vacation in Palm Springs as a guest of a friend which cost me nothing as I actually do not live the high life? My income is no higher than any middle class ad person I would wager not that it’s any of your business. I haven’t actually been on a business trip since attending SXSW this year. And I presume you understand that I reside in the USA not the UK right? As for advertising and image design joining the list as you put it – it’s already happened and I write about that too.
I’m actually happy to be the seething dick when I see someone attack young people. After all I teach many young people at the University of Oregon and I admire them immensely and learn so much from them. I say constant whining about Lowery’s Letter to Emily because I see the same stuff from him over and over. He’s flogging a dead horse which might be a metaphor for both his career and mine. I just don’t complain at length that no one cares any longer about my band and I don’t blame the Internet for it either. And Lowery’s essay is passive/aggressive, that’s why he brought up Mark and Vic’s suicides..it’s all the fault of the Emily’s of the world not buying artist’s music.
As I said at the beginning of my “scorched earth” rant – you can’t litigate human behavior. Sorry Peter.
And if you think I wrote the headline for SEO purposes then your far more subtle than I actually am. I was simply stating a truth and if it comes across as SEO-friendly then I’m the greatest accidental content strategist on the planet.
I’m just passionate about music and musicians and I’m tired of their complaints, and I’m tired of them blaming everyone but themselves for not finding a solution. But then again, no one is guaranteed an income from the arts.
June 24th, 2012 @ 9:32 pm
Thanks!
June 24th, 2012 @ 9:48 pm
I hink it’s pretty shitty that the states are laying off teachers,not sure why the two are connected?
June 24th, 2012 @ 9:54 pm
Ah Peter, having now clicked through to your website I see it is you that is playing the SEO Google bait tricks, not me. I’m happy for you to leave your comment reposted from here on your site, but I would ask you to correct your assumptions about my “business trips.” And using that headline “Famous Internet pedant Dave Allen is a dick” will bring you lots of attention from the Irish comedian of the same name’s fans, I can assure you of that. You also call me a “corporate ad man” and that’s not true either. Yes I work at an agency, no I have no skills whatsoever in advertising, although I have spent 18 years worrying about how people use the Internet. I’m an Interactive Strategist, make of that what you will. Agencies, unlike authors and musicians began adapting to the reality of the Internet’s disruption quite some time ago. You should do your homework before attacking me.
June 24th, 2012 @ 9:57 pm
Dave,
1. I live in Portland, Ore., same as you.
2. I don’t care how much money you make, and that’s nowhere near the point of what I was saying, but if you need to marginalize me without addressing my actual argument I guess that’s as good a distraction as any.
3. I’m so glad you’re here to protect the young people. That is so beautiful.
4. As is your admiration of the young people. You’re like Jesus. Only angry and mean.
5. Do you teach the youngsters to reduce their discussions to ad hominem attacks, too? And then to justify their savagery with a shrugged, ‘you can’t litigate human behavior’? Is that another way of saying that ethics are nothing compared to self-interest? If so, I hope you do learn a lot from the young people. The young folks I know are so much more warm-spirited than you are.
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:01 pm
Jon, the connection being if musicians should be treated as a “special case” what about everyone else who brings value into our lives..?
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:08 pm
Some basic things to think about, because if you really look into it, you’re supporting the same things that you so defiantly rail against.
1. Emily is not the victim, she is simply a victim of the propaganda put forth by those pseudo revolutionaries who proclaim entitlement to other people’s work.
2. What you fail to mention is that unauthorized file sharing sites are for-profit businesses that exist because they are selling stuff that doesn’t belong to them. And just so I’m clear. They don’t make money selling downloads, they make money from selling ads and subscription upgrades.
So here’s the deal Dave. Someone breaks into your house and takes you stuff. A week later and you come across a garage sale and lo and behold, it’s your stuff they’re selling. What do yo do?
2. You seem to be an intelligent, enlightened guy, albeit with your own standards. So in this whole right to choose piece, how did we jump over the individuals right to choose what happens wit their work. I think that is pretty basic and easy to understand.
You see that’s really Emily’s biggest mistake. She choose, not the artist, not the guy or gal who actually did
the work.
3. Spotify. Dave you need to do a little more homework on this one or risk appearing to be a corporate lackey, that is unless you got an equity share in Spotify like the major labels did, including your friends from WB.
Now if you, Dave, choose to have your music be “virtual road kill” and accept a really bad deal from Spotify so they can create a good looking spread sheet that they can take to VCs so they can get $200 million and you can get a coupon from McDonalds, one of their corporate partners, for a big Mac and fries along with another check for $17. so tens of thousands of kids can stream your music and your ok with that, than I only have one more thing left to say.
It is really kind of tacky to criticize the individual and their work, just to make a point.
Whatever you have chosen as your new line of work, I wish you all the best. Will Buckley, founder, FarePlay.
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:09 pm
Peter,
I’ve just realized something – you never read Emily’s post. If you had you wouldn’t have accused her of “illegally downloading music” in your Google-bait titled post “Stealing Music Is The American Way.” Stand up for Lowery all you want, call me as many names as you’d like but don’t tell untruths about Emily. Here’s Emily’s NPR post so you can correct your post http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2012/06/16/154863819/i-never-owned-any-music-to-begin-with
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:13 pm
Dave,
Funny how your attention to detail grows so much more precise when you’re the subject at hand. I’m looking at the logos of 14 corporate entities at the bottom of your blog, all of whom are clients of the agency for which you work (and which does indeed help promote their wares) and yet you don’t consider yourself a corporate ad man? Are you ashamed of your work? It actually seems kind of cool to me.
And are you seriously proposing that your career as an interactive strategist has not included a working knowledge of search engine optimization? What kind of interactive strategies are you creating? Do they involve actual interaction?
I love the Internet. I can’t wait to see how it continues to alter the media, society and the world. I just can’t understand why churlishness and situational ethics have to define so much of the dialogue about it.
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:14 pm
Dave – you do yourself a disservice by attacking Lowery and his band as opposed to his argument.
You do know people are going to JAIL right? So, ok, not immoral(?), just unethical and ILLEGAL…
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kinoto-founder-dirk-b-jailed-337795
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kinoto-founder-dirk-b-jailed-337795
Or are you suggesting that Grokster, Limewire, Kazaa should still be ripping off artists?
Well – I guess it takes a guy like Lowery to spark a national debate in defense of Musicians and the right to fair compensation.
Curious if you think these sites should be legally allowed to get a free ride on the backs of musicians? And if so why stop there? Why not let Film and TV use artists songs without licenses as well? What’s the difference?
http://ethicalfan.com/2012/04/wall-of-shame-april-2012/
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:23 pm
Dave,
I know your job is to be as ingrained in internet culture as you can possibly be, and perhaps that’s why you’ve come down on the side of this issue you have, but it really saddens me to hear a musician defending the status quo when it comes to music and technology.
Yes, as soon as technology made it possible, people started sharing music files, and record companies and musicians started losing money. So because people started stealing and have continued to do so, we’re just supposed to accept it and not try to do something about it, or even say, “HEY. Can you, y’know, maybe try to be a better person?”
There are TONS of aspects of technology that people are discovering may not be great for us – multi-tasking and jumping from site to site is actually making it more difficult for our brains to concentrate on one thing, internet anonymity is causing people to be cruel and inhuman, smart phone usage is encroaching on our in-person time with people we care about. So, for those of us who view these things as problems, should we just accept them and not make any attempt to change things?
There has been massive growth in the role technology plays in our lives in the last decade, but there hasn’t been a lot of thought given to ethics around this growth on the user side or the corporate side. (Even Google, whose motto is “Don’t Be Evil”, stole private user data from their street view cars.)
So obviously I think this is a larger problem than just downloading or burning free music, but it’s sad to me to think that there are smart people like you (a musician, even!) who have just accepted the situation and aren’t interested in working toward a solution that gives creative people what they deserve for their work.
No musicians I know are looking for a handout, or feel that society owes them a living. They just believe, rightly so, that theirs is a specialized skill, and their product has significant value in people’s lives, and should be valued appropriately.
~c
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:33 pm
Oh Dave, BTW, did you trademark those logos? Just curious.
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:34 pm
Peter,
No not ashamed, why would I be? I’ll be honest, I don’t know what “advertising” means in a digital age. I came up through music, started my own label in L.A., graduated to using the web for reaching music fans in 1993, was first indie label to have a website. In 1998 I joined eMusic.com to further my passion for getting music into people’s hands. Napster killed that, but any web company is only one step away from dissolution because of the zero-barrier to entry model of the web. I joined Intel in 2000 to work on music and Internet-connected products such as MP3 players etc and then after leaving in 2002 I found myself in the confluence of the web, popular culture and user behavior. So no formal background in advertising. I am very proud of the mobile-first beer finder I helped launch for Deschutes Brewery at North because it provides value – beer lovers want to find beer, the mobile site provides that for them. User behavior was studied, then we gave them what they were asking for. So yes, actual interaction. Of course I have a working knowledge of SEO. I don’t write post or essays with that in mind though. Just like music, if the content is strong then people will gravitate toward it. If not.. SEO won’t win you followers if the content sucks. As for loving the Internet and waiting to see how it alters media, society and the world – it did that about 18 years ago. It’s now up to us to just utilize its powers for the greater good.
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:44 pm
Rimpoche,
I’m not attacking his band, I covered that in a previous comment. This debate is not about Grokster, Limewire etc nor is about Napster back in 1999. It’s not even about the illegal downloading of music, as, if you read Emily’s post she states very clearly that she didn’t do that. No, my post is about how musicians don’t understand user behavior on the Internet. There is not a different subset of our species out there – we all are Internet users. I only suggest that musicians use the power of the Internet to improve their income streams. If they are afraid of piracy then they should not digitize their music. There’s a strong market for vinyl right now. The blame game leads to crisis not solutions. No site should be legally allowed to create access to any content, not just music, unless they have licensed that content. Many musicians and labels make music freely available for download and that’s exactly what they should do. That’s not what this debate is about.
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:46 pm
You’ve always been an asshole Dave. Now here your entire response is a not even well executed character smear. Not one point of rebuttal to lowery just pure name calling. Once a dick always a dick.
June 24th, 2012 @ 10:47 pm
Fantastic Dave.
I SEETHE when established folks belittle, condescend and otherwise diminish youth. I believe it is short-sighted, but it is undisputedly counter-productive to any interpretation of societal progress. One needn’t be an educator to understand their natural role as a more-experienced community member. It’s quite easy to be a bully, isn’t it? There seems to be nothing constructive about his comments.
With regard to the music and licensing bit, I empathize with the frustration of unfair policies/contracts. Notwithstanding such things—out of consumers’ control, in general—I too fail to understand those with enduring and strong stances against all things internet. It baffles me as an advertiser. I am not, however, an expert in the music industry.
Thought-provoking (clearly) read to end the weekend.
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:01 pm
Will,
Good grief! I’ll try and answer your questions but it’s getting late here on West coast time.
1. Emily is only a victim of Lowery’s memo to her. She is not guilty of illegally downloading music, read her post. She implicitly states that she didn’t download music.
2. I didn’t “fail to mention” anything. I was not discussing those illegal file-sharing sites as that was not what Emily’s post was about. The authorities can deal with that I’m sure.
2. (again) The analogy of someone stealing one’s stuff is a tired metaphor.
2. (Again, again) An individual can easily choose what happens with their work. One answer is don’t digitize it. Not subtle I know but the recording industry screwed us royally by selling us CDs of the very same albums we had on vinyl. That the CD is just ones and zeros came back to haunt them. There is also the Creative Commons, I highly recommend that avenue for handling who can do what with your online content.
3. Spotify. I have no idea what you’re talking about! You completely misread what I wrote about my Spotify experience, or you’re putting words in my mouth. How would I ever get “an equity share in Spotify? Unless you think $17 is a “share”?
3. (again) So you can happily come here and criticize me and that’s not tacky?
3. (again, again) I haven’t chosen a “new line of work” maybe you mean that, as a professional musician with a POV about the Internet I have to give something up?
All the best to you too Will.
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:03 pm
Thanks for your comment whoever you are!
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:04 pm
Dave Allen:
“No site should be legally allowed to create access to any content, not just music, unless they have licensed that content. Many musicians and labels make music freely available for download and that’s exactly what they should do. That’s not what this debate is about.”
Rimpoche:
Actually Dave that is what this debate is about. It’s about consequences for illegal behavior. I’m glad you accept that artist exploitation sites should be held responsible for ripping off artists worse than labels ever did.
I agree that many artists can and do give away their music away for free and that’s great if it is the artists choice, but it should not be anyone else’s. No one should force that upon the artist if it is not their choice, wouldn’t you agree?
I sincerely think you missed the point of David’s post and focused on one small commentary in a much bigger picture. You may not be up to speed on current stats, so I hope this puts the debate in context for you and I respectfully look forward to your thoughts.
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/why-arent-more-musicians-working-professionally/
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:13 pm
C’mon man. Word play?
She clearly states she has 11,000 songs, and only ever bought 15 cd’s. She then states she copied most of her music library from the college radio station she works at.
So, in the end, she’s passionate about music (apparently) but not passionate enough to buy most of it.
I think the number one point people keep missing is that Lowery warns if you don’t support something financially, don’t expect it to stick around.
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:16 pm
You’ve always been your own biggest fan Dave. In your mind you cold never do wrong. Who else but an egomaniac names there record label “world domination” ( and then promptly bankrupts it. And you are a terrible liar your post is titled “the internet could care less about your mediocre band” yet you claim it wasn’t a personal attack? How very newt Gingrich of you. Another thing I just read the twelve thousand word dissection of the music business you characterized as whining? “meet the new boss, worse than the old boss” Did you read it? It’s a fiery defense of artists. At least lowery is still sticking up for artists. You’re shilling for the man and calling people names. How the self righteous have fallen.
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:18 pm
Courtenay,
I don’t really know how to respond to this. The discussion is about a 20 year old and her views of how she accesses music today. She is describing the actual behavior of young people today. I’m not defending the status quo as you say, I’m asking musicians, or any creative artist for that matter, to understand how people use the Internet, the web and now of course, mobile. When they understand what their fans want, and how they’d like to access it, then they are golden – they can provide for their fans and create a commerce exchange. When the discussion always turns to “piracy”, “theft” etc then it fails to move forward.
People value a good. If they didn’t there would be no market for goods. The Internet is just a platform that needs to be addressed. By trying to avoid that platform, musicians dig themselves a giant hole.
I’ll leave you with this from Brian Eno, a more talented musician and thinker than I could ever aspire to be:
“I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time…”
“It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber.”
“Sorry mate – history’s moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.”
- Brian Eno in The Guardian
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:25 pm
Chris, yes fair enough. Let me ask you this – why is no one bringing up the fact that record companies routinely give away CDs for review and they end up in the used bins at record stores after being digitized, and no doubt uploaded somewhere? The artist is charged for the cost of those promos plus shipping. And back in the 90′s why didn’t the labels go after the Chinese bootleggers who were costing them a fortune in lost sales? If we are talking about money then the conversation should focus on following the money. And as for sticking around and making a living, I give you Radiohead, who routinely give away loads of their music. It creates demand for everything they do. Follow the user, create value.
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:32 pm
Dave Allen:
“When the discussion always turns to “piracyâ€, “theft†etc then it fails to move forward.”
Rimpoche:
No Dave the conversation fails to move forward when people like you apologize for piracy and create a false dichotomy. These are not mutually exclusive values and I don’t know why you would promote them as such.
Why would you sell out artists so that they can be exploited illegally and for profit by companies and corporations at enterprise level? If you can explain to me how addressing this illegal activity harms artists I’m all ears.
Everyone still in the game IS facing reality because it IS reality. There is no Either/Or, everything being discussed is in addition too, not instead of…
The point is that no one has the right to illegally exploit an artists work without compensation or consent and I’m not sure why you would defend that.
David Lowery has done more for artists rights and mainstream awareness of the issues musicians are facing than anyone else in the past ten years and you seem quiet content to see artists marginalized for another decade.
I’m sorry Dave, we all love the internet and this isn’t about being against technology and it’s not about not understanding the internet. Like cars, guns and any other technology the distinction is between LEGAL and ILLEGAL uses, and it’s really just that simple.
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:35 pm
Dear Andy Gill’s Revenge, I’d have way more respect for you if you weren’t hiding behind the cloak of anonymity. I didn’t name the label, Luc Van Acker did. It was his label and I joined with him to release records, that’s all. I didn’t bankrupt it, it belonged to a Japanese company in the end. I left well before it closed to join eMusic.com
The title of the post is not about Lowery’s band, it is a simple statement about the non-sentient entity we know as the web or the Internet.
Thanks for your anonymous comments and I’m glad you gave me the space to set the record straight.
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:44 pm
The bottom line for many of us is CHOICE.
Radiohead choose to give away some music.
In this day and age, you choose to sign with a label, and agree to the possible contradictions and compromise that goes with it.
Artists are never asked if they mind their music being copied and shared across the internet. In fact when a few contacted The Pirate Bay to discuss it, they were literally told to f**k off.
If the internet means free music is the new paradigm, I say those who believe it should start making it and sharing it.
Musicians who still want to charge a fee for their work should be left alone. If they are wrong, they’ll become irrelevant.
Sadly, in contradiction, they are often the most pirated.
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:53 pm
Who said I was “apologizing for piracy”? And I applaud Lowery for his work in advancing mainstream awareness. That has nothing to do with my post or my defense of Emily. And your assumptions about “seeing artists marginalized” just show that you don’t understand this debate, the one that has a very long thread across many blogs, not just this one. It’s about user behavior and how musicians can embrace that and be successful. I understand if you don’t want to accept that.
June 24th, 2012 @ 11:56 pm
I hate the cynical title of this article. And like others have said, you come across as petty by belittling Dave Lowery’s music and character by calling him “mildly talented” and saying he’s “whining”. It also doesn’t help support your argument.
As for the argument. Yes, you can’t fight the internet, you’ve got to work with it. Agreed. Nevertheless, people downloading my music free and illegally sucks. I’d rather earn money from it so I can buy better gear or strings.
Telling me to look to Radiohead as a model is moot because artists like me (and most from this day forward) didn’t get the corporate push Radiohead got. It sure helps your 4th release when you’ve already had 3 on a major label.
If most bands had a pay what you want model it wouldn’t matter because nobody’s heard of their band. Like every other artist you list as doing ‘valuable work’, the reason anybody has even heard their music is because they were promoted by a big label. These are not models for the current musician starting out.
As a DIY artist/entrepreneur, it’s kind of a shame that I have to be so business minded. Luckily I have a good head on my shoulders, but many great artists do not. And you know what? In the future, you might never get exposed to them.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:02 am
Great post. Just like for any business musicians and labels have to understand the customer use case for their product. Emily lays it out for them, anyone not listening (and what she’s saying should be very old news for anyone in the music business) does not want to understand their customer. Ignore your customer and perish, exactly as has occurred for umpteen companies and industries over time.
The music ecosystem has changed – permanently. And it’s not going back. Adapt or …. die.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:03 am
Calling Lowrey ‘mildly talented’ or pointing out how many Google searches his band receives doesn’t add anything to the larger discussion at hand, and that is disappointing because I often find you have interesting points to make. Courtney’s post above is very strong- bigger things are afoot here then simply figuring out how to make a buck off your target audience.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:04 am
Dave Allen:
It’s about user behavior and how musicians can embrace that and be successful. I understand if you don’t want to accept that.
Rimpoche:
The problem with that statement Dave is that “user behavior” ends in “Or I’ll Steal It.” I can accept that, AND I can also work towards meaningful change, at the same time.
What’s worse is that by apologizing for piracy you support those who profit from the Exploitation Economy. Why not just be honest and state that “user behavior” facilitated by for profit companies ripping off artists.
If people could, they would get everything for free. Id’ have more respect for these people if they were in fact robbing banks and gas stations. At least they would be consistent.
I also take issue of the idea that “morality” is not an effective tool for social change. It certainly has been in the past for all forms of civil rights and I’d say that artists rights should not be marginalized because you are afraid to call people on their bad behavior.
“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.†– MLK
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/artists-know-thy-enemy/
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:17 am
Matt, perhaps you’re right, I shouldn’t have called Lowery mildly talented. Does that change the fact that his attack on Emily was misguided. If so then I regret saying that because that was the point of my post. I didn’t point out the Google search, I merely referenced it to show that all is not what it seems. The record company propaganda machines have been at work for years blaming the drop in sales on “piracy” and those search results show, perhaps, it’s not as rampant as everyone thinks it is. Sorry to disappoint, but if you dig deeper you’ll find all is not lost. It’s just a learning curve ultimately.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:18 am
Sorry to Brian Eno, but his argument doesn’t make any sense. Whale blubber was replaced by a completely different fuel source. Music is just as important to people as it always has been, it’s just changed format from vinyl (tangible) to digital (intangible). So unlike the whale blubber situation, what people desire hasn’t changed, just the way people access that thing they desire.
And yes, by digitizing it, we’ve made it significantly easier to steal, but you’re saying that because it’s easy and because everyone does it, we should just accept it?
And if people are going to continue to get music digitally (which I think all musicians know), then it seems a discussion of people stealing digital music has to be a part of moving forward.
My issue is that over and over again, we just seem to be accepting that people act like completely unethical assholes on the internet (or when they interact with digital technology, like burning CDs).
There’s a great NYTimes article by Stuart Green about how stealing is defined in the 21st century:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/opinion/theft-law-in-the-21st-century.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
He defines it as “the misappropriation of things real and tangible.”
He essentially says in the article that people will download or burn music and steal cable and internet access, because a) they’re not stealing anything physical so it’s less “real,” and b) because the music doesn’t go away when we steal it – it’s still there for tons of other people to buy (or steal).
He thinks that maybe if we can change the language we use (and legal recourses we take) to recognize that different perception, it might help things. Call it “misappropriation”? “Digital trespassing”? “Digital Douchebaggery”?
I guess I’m saying that just like we shouldn’t attack young people (which I don’t think Lowery did), we shouldn’t think that just because young people are doing something that it’s progress or “the way of the future.”
It’s shitty. It’s stealing, however you word it, and if we know digitizing music is convenient for both musicians and listeners, the goal should be to either change people’s minds about it, or maybe to create digital downloads that go back to the days of vinyl: one copy for one person.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:32 am
It’s late here on the West Coast and I have other things to attend to. I’ll leave you with this until the morning:
[Update] This just in, literally. @AmazonMP3 If you wanna get 19 of Paul Simon’s solo hits for $2.99, youre gonna have to do it by tomorrow: amzn.to/KHsARp
Now who’s fooling who about the declining incomes of musicians?
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:33 am
“Musicians (and as a member of Gang of Four I include myself here) don’t automatically deserve to make a living. They are not a special subset of society that should be supported at all cost”
Who suggested this? I don’t think you’ll find that quote in the article that you’re arguing against.
“The Internet can not be ethical. Only users of the Internet can be said to be ethical, moral, or philosophical; they may be terrorists, kidnappers, racists, deviants; they could also be atheists, religious zealots or spiritualists; they might be gay, straight, bi, married, divorced; employed, destitute…the list goes on. Whoever they may be they are users. The Internet is its own thing. The Internet doesn’t give a damn about musicians or your mediocre band.”
Do you truly think that he was/is making the argument that the internet is a sentient thing and not made up of separate users?
Disagreeing with Lowery’s points is completely valid, as is disagreeing with White’s. Too bad neither side seems to be having the discussion without all the negativity, unfair generalizations, and insults.
June 25th, 2012 @ 5:04 am
I am left wondering where everybody’s ire was in the ‘good’ old days, in defense of the poor “artists” who weren’t able to get a record deal…or for the ones that did who could not get on radio playlists…or who could not get enough tour support/gig income to cover their losses, or, or, or…
So many knee-jerk reactions to what people think Dave wrote or said, rather than what he did – much like most people clearly skimmed Emily White’s piece to fuel their anger while missing the whole point. Critical analysis ain’t what it used to be. Ah well.
“talent” is nice – but it was, and remains, no guarantee of making a penny.
(Andy Gill’s Revenge’s brain is on fire….please would somebody piss in his/her ear?!)
June 25th, 2012 @ 5:39 am
David, thank you for taking the time to post this article. It sums up pretty much everything that threw up warning signs the first time I read Lowery’s piece. Once Lowery dropped the “buy that album or you shoot the artist” trope, I realized just how intellectually dishonest his writing could turn. Then I discovered that Lowery has been using his time working as a “quant” derivatives trader to shore up his economics credentials in this argument; a real folk hero, that one.
As we know, there are so many vectors at work to stir up emotions on this issue. Nostalgia is a powerful amnesiac, and so many of these angry responses to your post are just dripping with nostalgia for an “alternative rock” dreamworld, for an artist-centered workforce and chain of value that we know never really existed in the US/UK record industry. A nostalgia that denies that Camper Van Beethoven as an artistic endeavor could have existed outside of an ecosystem of cassette copies and used records– the echo of which Lowery now attacks.
I’ve got the “luxury” of a 50000+ archive of postings to the Pho list to draw from, going back to the first days of the list; I feel like I’ve been exposed to the fundamentals of the problem. I’m gobsmacked that so many rallying behind Lowery’s message seem to think the current debate about music/filesharing/internet exists outside of other cultural and economic forces. For those that have been posting boilerplate attacks on anyone who criticizes Lowery’s essay, here are a few other factors to consider that are not being discussed: there’s been a trend of corporatism and consolidation that has changed the music game since the mid 80s, at first tilting things towards the corporations and then against when they overreached. I’d start with RIAA’s successful effort to throttle the import of UK vinyl in the 80s, the consolidation of ownership of radio stations and the rise of monolithic programming via clear channel, consolidation of the labels, and ending with the ticketmaster/venue consolidations and the rise of the 360 deal (aka all-encompasing contracts with Ticketmaster that cover every aspect of an artist’s financial potential, from recorded output to live shows to each t-shirt or lunchbox sold). Each move has removed or limited market access to unknown numbers of genres and artists to focus the market on the the few products making the most money. Of course, Lowery also ignores other cultural changes that have taken place since the days of Key Lime Pie– specifically that the music industry has lost money to other entertainment options that didn’t exist before file sharing is rarely factored into the debate about declining music sales. For all we know, file sharing has no more impact on music sales than $120 cable bills, $15 movie tickets, $20 netflix/hulu/blockbuster subscriptions, and $150 concert ticket prices. Or a video game economy that out-gross Hollywood and music sales combined.
Personally, I’m an old guy from the states whose life was turned upside down when I discovered Gang of Four’s Armalite Rifle and the Buzzcocks’ Sprial Scratch ep on the same day in 1979. And I’ve never stopped being thrilled by the discovery of new music. And even if I’ve had plenty of glory days of concerts and turns of life keyed to the songs of brilliant musicians, I can honestly say that there’s just as much thrilling and brilliant music produced now as any time since Napster first rolled onto my screen. The pool of influences on the next generation of musicians is practically infinite, and for one I am excited to see what brilliant music comes out of the soup.
June 25th, 2012 @ 5:45 am
Dave, you asked “Why should she change what she does daily to suit a musician’s requirements? She won’t it’s that simple..you/we have to adapt to her behavior if we are to be successful.”
I would flip that question around and ask why as a musician I should bother to consider relating to people who decided – before hearing or having anything to do with whatever music I am making – that they aren’t willing to engage in a mutually respectful transaction when they want to have recorded music ?
They have taken themselves out of the market. I didn’t do that for them. The fact that they are consuming it anyway is their problem, not mine. Eventually some of them will realize that there is a relationship between how they obtain music, what they put into it (I don’t just mean financially – but also time and attention, and these things are all more related than the audience prefers to believe), and what they get out of music.
I don’t have to adapt or accept. I have little to lose, as a nobody in the world of music , and as someone no longer in posession of unrealistic, ego driven daydreams, I see what lies down the road of trying for “success” on those terms as defined by other people, and it’s just not for me. There is no rational purpose in selling out, when you’re not going to get paid anyway. I’d rather have a few ethically sound, mutually beneficial, positive interactions and leave it at that.
The vanity and need for approval on the
June 25th, 2012 @ 5:53 am
…part of musicians has also played a role in getting us where we are – that’s part of why there is an oversupply of music and why musicians accept lousy terms today. I accept a certain amount of personal responsibility for my role and that leads me to not seek things from other people (like approval and attention) that would cause me to make decisions on something other than the here and now.
Audiences need musicians, but the other way around need not be true – either at all, or on a larger scale than what can happen one on one, and that may lead to some interesting music.
As for the comment about the record deal, it’s a red herring. We don’t need to get record labels off our backs just to let ourselves get exploited by the audience instead; that is not an improvement. I don’t have a label, I just do it myself; and the attitude belies the reality that there are many small labels that are labors of love that treat musicians well.
June 25th, 2012 @ 6:15 am
Hi Dave, just download entire go4 back cat from file sharing site…awesome…cheers for the heads up X
June 25th, 2012 @ 6:50 am
Interesting and insightful. One point that hardly ever seems to come up is that through consumer products like Garage Band and the more professional ‘Protools’ its now cheaper than dirt to make a record which was definitely not always the case. Its almost true to say anyone can make a record. Maybe one can argue that the last glut of CD releases via the now declining CD Baby devalued all physical releases.
When an interesting unique artist appears, even a relatively traditional one like Ray La Montagne, people will still support the rise of that artist. It might be harder to ‘make it big’ but then again a phenomenon like One Direction feels just like the phenoms like Hannah Montana, Justin Bieber etc…in fact the pop business at heart feels the same.
In the interest of full disclosure I am a relatively minor record producer who needed to get a new job when the winds of technological change blew my way. Its really not that different to arranger Fred Wesley whose post James Brown arranging career was decimated by samplers, Fairlights and Akai.
By the way when was the last Vaudeville show?
June 25th, 2012 @ 6:53 am
The drummer to the rescue! Thanks Hugo, your partner in crime..
June 25th, 2012 @ 6:58 am
I have turned off commenting for the morning while I go through the backlog from through the night. If your comments are about attacking me personally and don’t remain in context of the discussion, they won’t make it through at all.
June 25th, 2012 @ 7:41 am
RIchard – your remark goes to the heart of something I mention to journalists constantly – the less publicized revolution in the music business is the technological revolution in recording. That has changed supply as well as demand, has put producers, engineers and recording studios out of business, and not coincidentally changed the economics of the record business as well by quintupling the number of releases that make it to market.
Dave, modern record contracts do not allow promos and mailout costs to be deducted from artist royalties – unless you’re on a profit split deal.
June 25th, 2012 @ 7:44 am
Patrick, thanks for the clarification re the promos..what do you think of them ending up in the used bins at record stores though? Or is everything distributed digitally now?
June 25th, 2012 @ 8:10 am
Richard, you make a good point about technology shifts in an Internet age. It could be argued that the over-abundance of CD releases, pouring out in the last decade from home “studios” resulted in a decline of quality while crowding out the more worthy contenders. We may never know. The audience shift is what interests me the most currently but we should definitely consider the technological revolution in recording that Patrick notes.
June 25th, 2012 @ 8:12 am
Crass, I hope you enjoy the catalog. Now do as Mr Lowery asks – donate money to a good cause.
June 25th, 2012 @ 8:19 am
Mark,
You are touching on the eternal conundrum. Do we make “art for art’s sake” or do we sell our “art.”? And if we sell it we enter the marketplace where the rules quickly change. The Internet allows you and other musicians to control what you do with your art. It allows you to create a following of music fans who love your music, and you can nurture that following by interacting with them almost one on one. You can also ask them for money to support your art – Amanda Palmer just raised more than a million dollars on Kickstarter recently. People will say “well she was on a label before she did that” but that’s not the point – her fans forked out a million bucks because they love her and will support her whenever she asks. It’s a covenant between the artist and her fans. We ought to see more of that.
June 25th, 2012 @ 8:28 am
my main issue with the thrust of these ‘stop whining and find yourself more fans’ counter to lowery’s arguments is this: since only 10-20% of our roughly calculated fan base is still buying our stuff legally (and i don’t count spotify as legal, as their payment scale is laughable to all but the biggest major label acts) and it takes 8-10k records sold as an indie to break even – using that math, there’s a shitload of really important, influential artists that would’ve had to quit 1 or 2 records into their heydey. big star. husker du. little willie john. irma thomas. (half the artists i have ever loved, really) we would have lost them all. because apparently they were so terribly mediocre they couldn’t amass 100k fans. i’m sorry – it’s stealing. and yes, i’m a dinosaur. it costs me about 20k to make a record, paying musicians, engineers, graphic artists. and more if i hire anyone to promote the thing. sure, i could record something mediocre sounding on home gear, despite my having no aptitude or desire to do so, and mock up the art myself, and may wind up doing so yet. but don’t expect me to not whine about it. it sucks. me and my misguided, pathetic little 30k fan base had me happily earning a mid-career kindergarten teacher’s salary 10 years ago, which also helped a bunch of other creative professionals scrape the bottom of the middle class by hiring them to play, mix, master, design, photograph, and roadie this apparently unworthy little career i had. they’re fucked too. i’m sorry. the ethical argument is all we have. each record costs us thousands of dollars and hours of labor, plus years of experience to make – just like each bottle of wine that gets sold for 15 bucks and drunk only ONCE. just because it’s easier to steal music than booze doesn’t make it right.
June 25th, 2012 @ 8:33 am
I’m officially sick of this debate (and the seemingly endless snark and bitter chops-busting it engenders), but I am pleased that you give voice to one of the things that bugs me about this topic: the issue of “deserving.” It makes me uncomfortable to hear people say, “Musicians deserve to earn a living.”
I would love to live in a world where everyone got to earn a good, worry-free living with their talents and gifts–I say this completely without sarcasm. The sad reality is that some people do and some people don’t, and the art/entertainment world has never been a meritocracy. To add “deserving” to the equation adds a layer of unnecessary and frustrating self-deception.
There is an arrogance to assuming that anyone “deserves” anything on this earthly plane. We get what we get through some mysterious confluence of skills training, inborn talent, faith, luck, genetics, social position, personality, persistence.
I believe that people should be compensated for their time, effort, preparation, and training–e.g., I think it would be great if clubs paid bands no matter how many (or few) people they bring in. But let’s not murk up the waters by talking about “deserving a living.” (B.t.w., I’m a musician, among other things).
June 25th, 2012 @ 8:35 am
This is much too long a trail of posts/comments to really tackle in a comment. Dave, alongside Emily and David, obviously knows how to get conversations started. Glad to see it happening.
Beyond all the finger pointing, I’ve thought about my personal path in music. Like Emily and Travis Morrison, I sat in our college station’s listening room dubbing tapes. I’m the same as anybody — doing it because I loved the music. At that time, of course, the discussion of consumer responsibility wasn’t nearly the topic it is today. Our language has switched in the past 20 years. Responsibility, compensation, royalties, licensing, impoverishment, ethics.
When I try to remember who I was at 20, beyond my music consumption habits, I see the humor of this entire debate. Emily, the now-silent 20 year old intern, has sparked a nationwide debate on the ethics of kids. I understand we’re talking principles here, though I think it is worth pointing out that we’ve no idea what the long tail of this looks like.
There’s no way I cared about, nor could have conceived of, my consumer behavior from then to now. The point was always, and continues to be get as much music as I need. At the time that meant dubbing CDs, BUYING thousands of CDs, BUYING tons of vinyl. As I’ve gotten older, thankfully with a slight bit more income, I’ve continued buying and streaming music.
I’m one of millions of people who do very similar things. Try as we all might, there’s no way we could have logically tied a connection between the “then” me (as much free as I could get) and the “now” me (purchasing/supporting things that are important to me, streaming). Emily’s the same way. All the kids cited in all these articles are the same. We’re all the same, though nobody has the exact same path. Trends matter, but individual behavior matters more – especially when we’re getting down to dollars and cents (as we are in Dave’s $17.35 and David’s $2,139.50).
A point I think that has been glossed over in Emily’s post – she lays out her advice to musicians (and labels, and producers, and anybody attached to whatever the music industry means now): “I do think we will pay for convenience.”
I’m not sure who is a dick, is mediocre, is exploitative or artful but I know Emily’s quote above – like it or not – is one of the challenges every industry must face now.
June 25th, 2012 @ 9:19 am
@Dave
The problems that are causing all of these arguments aren’t really about anything Emily, you or Dave discuss.
The problem is that music was devalued in the publics eye due to the copyright infringement that was so rampant online in the last 15 years and that many “legitimate” technology companies profited from it. There is selective prosecution of these companies today but the biggest ones continue to profit in a big way.
Companies like Google who allow advertisements on sites with copyrighted matrial, companies like Grooveshark and YouTube who by default allow copyrighted material to be posted on their sites and only take it down when asked. Companies like Apple who knowingly created the IPod to allow easy, uncontrolled, access to any song. Then when artists started becoming outraged at the rampant copyright infringement, Apple (who had this planned from the launch of the iPod), launched the iTunes store so that they could appear to be “legitimate” and take an additional 30% from the very artists that made the iPod such a giant success in the first place!
It’s analagous to me opening a pawn shop, allowing stolen merchandise to be sold and then using the excuse “I didn’t know it was stolen”. But in this case, the websites don’t vet the items at all; at least as a pawn shop owner, I am legally obligated to do my best to make sure it’s not stolen (look at the item, check serial numbers, etc). And while I’m at it, I’m going to sell advertising space on my pawn shop wall.
I also have to say that your comments about the internet not being able to be ethical are just wrong. It’s not about being “ethical”; it’s about acting within the laws of our society. Copyrights are protect by law. Anything you do, say, or post online IS REAL and the laws that govern these actions apply just as much if you copying a file from a server, allowing a stream of a copyrighted movie from your website, or stealing a physical CD from your local HMV.
June 25th, 2012 @ 9:28 am
Paula, I’m pleased that you’ve found a way to express this sentiment far better than I did or could of. The attacks on me when I say that is because as a professional musician I’m expected to toe the line, even if the line is not true. As a reasonable person could see, if they read Emily’s post, David’s and mine, no is trying to deny anyone a living from making music. David is interested in changing people’s behavior which is a gargantuan task, if not impossible. I’m interested in understanding people’s behavior – it’s my day job. So he and I would probably never see eye to eye on the issues at hand but we can at least attempt to make a difference
June 25th, 2012 @ 9:35 am
Thank you, Tony Patti (comment #6). How much great stuff could we be missing simply because the Law Of Diminished Returns turns away many musicians with vision? Granted, that makes for a great filter (hence the title of Mr. Allen’s piece), but there will always be Clear Channel playlists to make sure the mediocre continues to rise. But maybe there is hope, as evidenced by the number of Groupon-style ticket offers for Nickelback’s summer tour.
But like Patti warns, the internet allows everyone to adopt the mindset of “Yeah, okay. But what else have you got?” And I just paid too much for a UK vinyl reissue of SOLID GOLD. I’m sure many longtime music fans feel like a kamikaze pilot who crashed on an island, survived the wreckage but doesn’t know that the war’s been over for a very long time…
June 25th, 2012 @ 10:02 am
Robby,
You appear to make some of the same mistakes that others make about the Internet. As I point out in my post, people are ethical, technology can’t be ethical except in the extreme abstract or science fiction, but I’m willing to be wrong. You say Apple did something wrong but they didn’t, they operate within the laws that you say should and do stand. As far back as I can remember, the iTunes software and the iPod were joined at the hip – it was impossible to share music from one iPod to another and the files used DRM. Google also is a good whipping boy but the whipping is entirely without merit.
I think generalize when you say that all music was or has become devalued. I suspect, and actually know anecdotally, that people are more connected to music than ever and they are willing to pay for it too – they see its intrinsic value on many levels. If people weren’t buying music there’d be no recording industry right?
Your argument seems to smack of delegitimizing the Apple’s and Google’s of the world but I don’t follow your reasoning behind that. Apple makes products and people buy them for many reasons. A mere handful may use a device for downloading music but we’ll never really know how many, and given the success of the iTunes store I’d say people are buying legal downloads all of the time. It would hurt musicians’ incomes even more if Apple were not allowed to sell music. And Google isn’t the policeman of the Internet as much as musicians would like to think it is.
In this day and age musicians need to make clear, direct connections with their fans and engage with them as much as possible. If they don’t it’s over except for the superstars..
June 25th, 2012 @ 10:16 am
Robby’s comment about the internet being like a shady pawnshop is spot on, there are unethical businesses practices all over the internet. Don’t let the issues be confused. There is a profound moral difference between sharing something with a friend and distributing, without permission, other people’s files for commercial gain.
Most of these discussions avoid this big elephant in the room, the new middleman webmasters that get rich off of advertising by exploiting not just music but photos, videos, writing, etc, and not sharing that income with the creators. Kim Dotcom skimmed $175 million. That money certainly did not go to anybody but himself. And he was just one of many. Not acknowledging this issue gives cover to these sleazy, unethical distribution businesses.
The internet is not like the weather, it was created by humans it can be changed and made better by humans. So it is shocking that you would say the internet cannot be ethical. Individuals may do what they want but unethical for profit businesses can be regulated, just like in real life. The same technology that websites like Google and Facebook use to sell people’s personal information over and over again could be used to figure out a payment to artists whose content generates so much of the internet traffic and so advertising revenue.
June 25th, 2012 @ 10:27 am
Dave, we service most of our promos digitally these days. But there are still some sources that require physical (most college radio, funnily enough given the source of all this), and of course record stores. So yes, some end up in used bins. They’re a double headache – you pay to manufacture and ship them, and then (potentially) lose a sale to boot. But way less of an issue for us than it was 15 years ago.
June 25th, 2012 @ 10:45 am
hey dave. great read man. I’ve always felt pretty torn on the subject… being a musician, I always thought it was important to support musicians, and buy their records when they come out. but I also grew up with mix tapes, and cassette copies and all that, and I appreciate the value of spreading music in that manner. the internet has blown the doors off everything.
at this point, I am just thankful that I was born when I was, and was able to really experience record stores, mix tapes, mail order catalogs + everything else that goes with it. I’ve come to accept people like Emily White, for growing up in the technological age of accessibility. I only hope when people like me go off on some “how it used to be” rant, they don’t just think i’m some jaded, too-cool, old guy, and maybe see some charm in how things were.
stay posi.
June 25th, 2012 @ 10:49 am
Joe,
I think you are confusing the Internet the platform, with the Web and its interface the browser, the software. Web companies that illegally share music files build sites that are Internet-based on the back end for storage for sure. They then create the UI to make their illegal wares available to the user. They can be and often are shutdown. We don’t need to change the Internet and I assert that “it” cannot be ethical. You are confusing Internet users with the platform itself. We just need to shut down any illegal operation that trades in copyrighted material. Once again I must point out that that was not the essence of my rebuttal to David Lowery’s post.
June 25th, 2012 @ 10:58 am
Thanks Patrick! You win for the most positive and upbeat comment so far!
June 25th, 2012 @ 11:00 am
Jason, wait! Are you telling me that there are newly re-released Gang of Four vinyl Solid Gold albums back on the market? Here I am in the last to know position..
June 25th, 2012 @ 11:07 am
Actually we litigate human behavior all the time. In fact, unless you’re putting up a “No Dogs Allowed” sign, pretty much all litigation relates to human behavior but whatever. I take the gist of the title to mean that law itself is often insufficient motive to alter human behavior. That is undoubtedly true but probably of limited relevance to the issue addressed here.
I’m a musician and I defend myself. I found David Lowery’s piece both interesting and articulate and while I wouldn’t frame some of the argument exactly as he did, I didn’t find it to be “savage” to her in the least. While I also found the original article by Ms. White to be interesting and topical, I agree with him that there are glaring questions that she seems to have been utterly unaware of.
There seem to be a number of overlapping parts of this discussion that often get mistakenly substituted for one another. The most significant of these is the conflation of compensation (i.e. the money I am owed for my labour and its product) and copyright ( my ability to determine for myself how, when, where and under what conditions to make the product or service available)
The statement “Musicians (and as a member of Gang of Four I include myself here) don’t automatically deserve to make a living.” Is undeniably true. Most musicians don’t make a living being musicians and they rarely ever have. However, when people avail themselves of a muscian’s work (like a gig) or a musician’s products (like a release) the musician does deserve to be paid. The fact that technology makes it effortless to do so still doesn’t make violating copyright OK.
But, and this is my only real complaint against Lowery’s article, Ms White is a little bit of an outlier inasmuch as most people who have large music collections they didn’t pay for probably didn’t work in places like radio stations where music is specifically sent with the expectation that it will be widely shared outside of broadcast.
I fully agree that the internet has changed the model for the distribution/dissemination of all sorts of things, especially music, and that there is no going back. But I think you misread his emphasis (or maybe I did). I took the thrust of his argument not to be that we should return to the old days of label control etc. but more that modern consumers seemed to be unaware of how directly they’re having an effect on the people whose music they take. The question of median income doesn’t really add anything since most people who make music don’t make enough to file it on their taxes.
The paragraph about the google search for Lowery’s music is simply snide and does the rest of the posting a disservice.
As I said, copyright and compensation are separate but related issues. Copyright can be seen (I think) as the more ‘moral” asset and compensation the more ‘practical’ one. Usually copyright is only considered as a prelude discussions about money (i.e. as giving the artist the right to negotiate for the royalties deriving from a product) but it’s much more than that.
If I create a piece of music and decide to only release it on vinyl, I have the exclusive right to do so. If someone comes along and digitizes it and makes it freely available, they have violated my rights and paid me a tremendous insult. The fact that they may be enthusiastic fans who wish to help “promote” my work doesn’t matter. They’ve stepped in to my choice. This same principle is what allowed Tom Petty, Jackson Browne and numerous other artists to enjoin the Republicans from using their songs at events.
If I, as a free and independent person, fully informed about the pros and cons of my decision, decide to sign a horrible contract that is terribly unfair to me with a third party (usually known as a record company), it’s nobody else’s business to intercede on my behalf without my permission. And that permission is the key.
Where the issues of compensation and copyright do converge is precisely when an artist elects to “release” their work. When someone violates the compensation part, they are also violating the copyright part. As a matter of practicality this is not a big deal; it’s unlikely anybody is going to start negotiating publishing royalties for songs they downloaded. But as a matter of principle, this is quite important: if I, as an artist, simply shrug off my rights to the compensation I’m rightfully owed, how do I then make an argument for those rights elsewhere?
What is intrinsically different if it’s an individual who’s violating my rights, or a group of individuals or a company or even a major corporation? If someone wants to use my music for an ad for a product I disagree with, I have the right to say no. If a label wants to extend the term of a license to my music I have the right to say no. If someone wants to put my music on a compilation, I have the right to say no. And if someone wants to take or give my music away without honouring my copyright, I have the right to say no.
People (other than the Supreme Court) might argue that a company using my music and an individual sharing it are intrinsically different. They’re not. They’re both “transactional”, it’s simply a question of scale. A company can derive a more widely tradable good (money) but the individual is still deriving benefit, albeit usually non-monetary, from taking the music or giving it away.
I find the issue of people buying less music because they have more choice (e.g. via Spotify) rather bizarre. I think people are buying less music because they simply don’t have to buy it. And I think Lowery’s point that the reason Spotify can pay such a dismal rate is because the only alternative is to simply get nothing and the reason that the alternative is nothing is because people are already not paying.
It seems to me that this has made the marketplace even more unfair than it was before. The Simon Cowells and LiveNations are doing better than ever. Concomitant with not paying for recorded music, people are more and more reluctant to pay anything, let alone a fair ticket price, for non-mainstream music. The days of get-in-the-van as a norm are long gone. So, while my heart completely agrees with your “Be Brilliant or get out of the way principle”, the odds are now stacked much further against the outsiders than they’ve ever been. A quick look at the non-smooth/lounge jazz scene in any city will confirm this. And I can’t help but think the two attitudes (“why should I pay for recorded music?”/”why should I pay for live music?”) are part of the same mindset.
Maybe I misread it, but my impression of the Lowery article was more that he was trying to drive home just how skewed the current systems are. We need a fairer compensation system that is still convenient for the consumer. But I kind of agree with him that iTunes/ Amazon/Bandcamp/Emusic etc. are not really SO onerous or expensive as to not already be convenient. He’s right that it’s really not such an ordeal to have to click and download a song. But it’s obviously not the complete model we need. If it were, we’d be talking about something else…
June 25th, 2012 @ 11:23 am
Dave, my comments are not “whipping” without merit. The companies that I am talking about have been and will continue to be sued for copyright infringement numerous times. Companies that you defend are being shut down by the FBI. This is a fact and you cannot deny it. Just do a quick Google search and you will find so many cases where this is true (yes, even Apple, Google and Microsoft). Or just try to download the latest Justin Beiber album from megaupload.com, napster, morpheus, kazaa, etc. and let me know how it goes.
And you missed my point about ethics on the internet. I didn’t say the internet itself is or should be ethical; that’s analogous to saying guns themselves should be ethical and that clearly does not make sense. I said that the people and companies that use the internet should act within the LAWS. These technology companies know that from a financial point of view, it’s better to break the law by default and then deal with the lawsuits later rather than build the technology that protects copyright holders in the first place.
And music HAS been devalued. Again, another fact you cannot deny. The average price of an album was around $18.99 fifteen years ago and it’s $9.99 today. Overall music sales are way down and people don’t feel like they should hav eto pay for music anymore; it’s well documented.
And stop playing the “hey musician, suck-it-up, times have changed” card. What would happen in the pharmaceutical industry if all of a sudden they couldn’t protect their IP due to a new technology? They would STOP MAKING drugs because it wouldn’t make financial sense.
Remember, copyright laws exist for a reason; not just to put money in the hands of the creators but to enrich society as a whole and drive innovation. They should be protected.
June 25th, 2012 @ 11:24 am
I misspoke when I said the internet can be ethical. What I meant was that businesses can be ethical, the profit made from both illegal traffic and the legal advertising revenue generated by illegal traffic, both those can be easily cut off with current technology. The take down notice systems has been shown not to work, as soon as one is taken down a new pops up. It’s a constant whack-a-mole. Previous technologies used by businesses like the printing press, film, radio, TV, etc have all been held responsible for what they distribute, it is bad for the internet and even more so for society for the internet to have this loop hole. Responsibility would allow those that want to be honest and ethical to succeed and not have to compete with fast buck crooks. Society as a whole benefits from honest business models, not unethical ones. If internet companies can not make money selling a product or service on merit and integrity, something’s not right.
June 25th, 2012 @ 11:29 am
I’ve been watching this debate unfold, and having read Lowery’s article, and Travis Morrison of the Dismemberment Plan’s counter-piece on Huffington Post, this article is the only one that hits on a very important point; one I have re-iterated time and time again to bands that I work with, or students asking for pointers about getting started in the design industry — “no one owes you anything.”
In the mid-90′s, I was told point blank by my art teachers repeatedly, embarking on the journey of “art as career” at the time was basically a fools errand; that I was setting myself up for a life of disappointment and waiting tables at best, starvation and eternal couch surfing at worst. Somehow, 13 years into my career, I’ve avoided these pitfalls (knocks on wood), and it all comes back to not getting comfy/staying hungry…no one owes you anything, adapt or die.
I have a number of friends who are extremely talented musicians, many of whom are approaching their late 30′s/early 40′s, who are still waiting tables between tours that barely break even, who are still unfortunately under the spell that birthing a record into existence absolves you of having to do “anything else,” and thus, viewpoints like Lowery’s are born.
As someone who grew up in the “silver age” of indie rock (the pre-internet Matador, Merge, Touch & Go, etc. era), watched it build to this glorious apex right around the end of the nineties, watched Napster & the internet blow the lid off things in 2000, smugly assured that we had “beaten the majors,” the cream would always would rise to the top, and we’d all be happy, productive, shiny rainbow factories. Your established Mogwai-sized indie acts could finally afford lavish production and world tours; smaller bands could embark on epic double album explorations, etc.
Everyone finally was getting “their due,” and all seemed well.
Then…3~4 years later it was all gone. Most people I know still actively recording and touring (in the embittered “Lowery camp”) place the blame squarely on the shift of outlets like Pitchfork shifting to the role of tastemakers (rather than underground cheerleaders), allowing an outside “invasion” of mainstream pop and dance music into their previously “gimme indie rock or gimme death” format.
However, let’s look at 2003-2004. Simultaneously: Myspace, Youtube, the rise of indie outlets like Pitchfork, music blogs/aggregators really starting to get traction, bittorrent, file sharing portals (rapidshare, megaupload, and so on), GarageBand, CDBaby, etc., not to mention the sharp mainstream rise of other entertainment mediums like video games.
For those hung up on the knee-jerk “Y2K via 1990′s daydream” ideal of “how things were going to work from now on,” it absolutely buried them, since the convergence of all these social/technological factors at once simply turned up the noise. Warhol’s 15 Minutes Of Fame coming to fruition. Through the democratization of production/distribution, anyone can be a musician, producer, engineer, DJ, critic, etc.
Yet despite it’s apparent “valuelessness,” people are still making music. I’d argue despite everyone’s griping, people are making more GOOD music than ever but like just we did prior to the 21st century, we still have to dig for it a bit right now.
Once bands like Radiohead that are seen as the last credible remnants of the “old ways” hang it up, what happens next? The days of music being a lucrative career like it was in the 60′s and 70′s are long since over. No one owes you anything, adapt or die. If you care about music, get involved, or get out there in the trenches. Go to a show, buy a t-shirt, start a band, make people believe in you.
June 25th, 2012 @ 11:32 am
Here you go, Dave. As you can see, there are only two copies left:
http://www.banquetrecords.com/rsd12gof
June 25th, 2012 @ 11:38 am
One last quick thought since I wrote all this while on the phone: lots of people get hung up on “logo = brand” and that’s usually not the path to success. Similarly, I’d wager “recording = band” is not a smart move.
June 25th, 2012 @ 11:42 am
As soon as you started with the weak digs at Lowery I stopped reading.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:23 pm
Such fast sellers, I may be rich!
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:24 pm
Chris, I believe your comment needs a decent response so please allow me to dwell on this and respond later today. Thanks for this btw.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:37 pm
Robby,
There’s a very strong argument that the CD prices you mentioned, $18.99 or more were unsustainable because of the value proposition. A CD at that price with one hit song on it and the rest filler felt like a ripoff. And stop blaming the Internet for a decline in overall music sales please. It is but one part of the problem. The consumer, especially youths, are more into gaming these days, music has simply lost its luster. Games cost a lot of money, and people buy them. There’s also the advent of the smartphones and other handheld devices, again they cost money. The spending shifted from music to many other places so that $9.99 reflects a true market price that is sustainable for now. The consumer dollar is stretched extremely thin. I still see massive music sales from certain artists so the consumer must value their music.
And please, there’s a common thread here about me “defending companies” which companies am I defending? If you mean Apple or Google, two massive public companies, then yes I defend them. Against what I’m entirely unsure, you tell me.
Also bad analogy re drug companies – their copyrights expire and that’s why we have generics. They then switch to a more lucrative market while continuing to sell the drugs that became generic at market prices that are sustainable.
So yes, hey musicians, times have changed. Ignore at your peril.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:45 pm
Joe, I agree. Society does win when business practices are legal and ethical. That hasn’t been the debate here really. The Internet is not TV, Radio etc again you confuse the Internet with the public web. A TV company can be held accountable for what it produces, sure. The Internet is not a company though. So if the Huffington Post slanders someone the resulting lawsuit will be sent to the Huffington Post, not the Internet. It’s an important distinction and one that gets so muddled it creates problems with discussing digital issues.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:48 pm
Right on Chris Haskett! And there’s an even a bigger issue underneath. Without your consent about the use of your files, whether it be personal information or a piece of art, your liberty is taken away, your rigth to control your own destiny.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:51 pm
First, good article, as I though Emily’s was as well. Honesty, not opinion, is lacking in so many ways these days.
A few points: in regards to spotify, and other similar services, the revenue generation is not bad, if you do not work under the old style label model. Being in a tiny band (and don’t get me wrong we’ve never netted a cent) we’ve made reasonable money compared to our overall plays. That said, all the revenue goes directly to us.
In terms of what’s happening now, with music, any artist can obtain digital distribution if they pick the right manufacturing company, or subsequently without producing a physical product, there are services which will set all that stuff up at a fraction of the cost of making the physical product. Thinking that labels are useful is somewhat outdated, beyond some minor potential exposure or packaged tours. Even someone like me, perhaps a hobbyist at best, can get music to as many people as will listen under its own weight.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the Internet age has, in many ways sent us 20+ years into the past. The only way for a small artist to survive is touring (and yes t shirt sales) relentlessly. That’s the only way to grow. And guess what, when a band’s Name becomes recognized, it is so much easier for a new potential show goer to find them and check them out.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:53 pm
Adam, that’s a great overview of how things were and what happened. Thanks for that. One quibble. I’m not sure the income levels of 60s and 70s bands was any better for the majority of them. The bell curve in earnings occurred in the 90s with huge hikes in concert ticket prices and those $18.99 CDs. That was unsustainable for many reasons. Again everyone, please don’t blame the Internet. I can’t find the link right now (I’ll keep searching) but a I saw a great video interview with Mick Jagger, who when asked what he thought about music “piracy” replied, ” it was never that great for us regarding earnings in the 60s and 70s, then there was a bubble and we got rich..” or something to that effect. And he’s a former student of the London Schol of Economics so maybe he knows something about economic cycles
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:54 pm
Dave, not sure why you seem to be avoiding my point? I specfically said Internet Companies and Businneses, and a company can be held accountable, as you point out. And the technology exists.
June 25th, 2012 @ 12:58 pm
Joe, if you look through this thread of comments you will find that I have said many times that companies who illegally share copyrighted material should be shutdown under the appropriate prevailing, jurisdictional laws. I don’t know how many times I can say that today. Of course businesses and companies can be held accountable. You simply can’t make the entire global Internet accountable for many, many reasons that I don’t want to keep pursuing here.
June 25th, 2012 @ 1:00 pm
Zark, thank you for your very level-headed and succinct comment. You clearly understand that the game has changed forever.
June 25th, 2012 @ 1:04 pm
BTW, anyone got any thoughts on this: [Update] This just in, literally. @AmazonMP3 If you wanna get 19 of Paul Simon’s solo hits for $2.99, youre gonna have to do it by tomorrow: amzn.to/KHsARp Now who’s fooling who about the declining incomes of musicians?
June 25th, 2012 @ 1:07 pm
Hi Dave,
I’ve been following all sides of this and I have to say it’s been an interesting read all around. One of the things that I’ve focused on is what the poster David (at 8:35 am) mentions that Emily wrote: “I do think we will pay for convenience.â€
Since digital music is the convenience the next step should be musicians posting songs/albums to their own webpages and linking each song or album to their paypal account for direct payment. This way the only fee that’s taken is paypal’s fee for being a middle man. I did this as an experiment for one of my labels where I posted the songs from my new album onto the site. I also posted the album via CD Baby to iTunes, Amazon, etc. This way there’s a chance for people to buy my album if they either stumble across my label via the web or stumble upon my album via the big digital stores. Granted, I’ve had no buyers of my songs either way but it is highly gratifying knowing that as an independent artist I can offer my album for sale in different digital marketplaces and still have control over my product via copyright.
To me, the main thing here is giving your potential fan a choice of where to get your music. To make it available either directly from you or through mainstream outlets. During the early days of punk rock (note: I was born in 1982 but have done a great deal of research on it as I’m a huge fan. And Dave could elaborate on this too if he’d like) it was hard to get records into stores without major backing (especially in the US. Black Flag tried to get MCA distribution for “Damaged†but that ultimately backfired leading them to be caught in a legal battle over rights to their name and the record for two years after the release of the album). The alternative was to press the album yourself and sell it via mail order and at shows. The internet has broken down that barrier and now both major label and independent musicians can be found on iTunes and the like for a small fee. If punk rock taught us anything it’s to embrace change while retaining control over your own product. If someone bought my album and gave it to all their friends that would be damn cool. Seeing that I did the same thing for my friends with tapes (and later CDs) which is how we shared music in the 1990s.
June 25th, 2012 @ 1:37 pm
My whole point was that the TECHNOLOGY companies profit from the pirated music. There are too many companies to list but we can start with Napster, Kazaa, Morpheus, Megaupload, PutLocker, PirateBay and we can move on to the ones that are more in the grey but still very guilty; YouTube, Facebook, Google, Grooveshark, and yes Apple.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/temptations-itunes-lawsuits-300733
One of the more telling phrases, from Steve Jobs himself “[S]ince Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others.” Apple knowingly created the iTunes store to get around this licensing.
And it’s not just music, it’s movies and books too:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-11/u-s-files-antitrust-lawsuit-against-apple-hachette.html
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/apple-major-publishers-hit-federal-antitrust-lawsuit-over-162802123.html
There are so many lawsuits that you just can’t deny it.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57353515-93/grooveshark-now-feels-lawsuit-wrath-of-all-major-music-labels/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204616504577171180266957116.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NinjaVideo
June 25th, 2012 @ 1:49 pm
Dave, yes the game has changed but I hope you don’t think it’s over. It will be a sad day if folks believe that the status quo is the best we can do? That nothing can be done about say, search engines and social sites making huge advertising profits from the traffic to illegal sites? Major Internet companies track your traffic and commercial site’s traffic all the time on the Internet in order to sell advertising. This same technology can be used to take the monetary reward out of shabby business practices.
Principles are even more important than ever when change is happening. They were developed over time to guide us through any storm of human controversy or conflict. While circumstances may change, principles do not.
June 25th, 2012 @ 1:58 pm
Didn’t Billy Corgan already solve all of these problems with fan retweets?
June 25th, 2012 @ 3:08 pm
Joseph, thanks for contributing another clear-headed comment. Everything you say is correct and certainly practical re getting your music out there under your own control. I love that you understand that it’s about giving the music fan a choice of where to buy your music. And your point about music sharing via mixtapes or loaning of CDs doesn’t get addressed by the musicians who hate the sharing ability of the Internet.. Keep doing what you’re doing, it may well work out, and if it doesn’t at least you can rest on the knowledge that you gave it a really good try.
June 25th, 2012 @ 3:17 pm
Robby, I’m not denying anything, I’m just not necessarily agreeing with all of your points. That’s what we are debating. Steve Jobs certainly did an end run around the major labels who were too feckless to outwit him. If Steve had wanted to distribute music then he would have licensed it. He did not create iTunes to get around this licensing as you say. He started iTunes to sell music as an online music retailer. They are the world’s biggest music retailer, a milestone they achieved back in 2008! http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/04/03iTunes-Store-Top-Music-Retailer-in-the-US.html Why are you ragging on Apple, a company that sells more music than any other company in the world? I really don’t see the logic in that stance. Once you move to YouTube, Google and Apple as the enemy I’m afraid to say you appear to have lost the plot completely.
Your enemies are obvious – you list them: Napster, Kazaa, Morpheus, Megaupload, PutLocker, PirateBay. I don’t know why Napster is in that list because they became a company that licenses music from the labels. The rest, and there are many more too, have been dealt with by the authorities as far as I know. Is that not good enough for you? What more can be done – in a concrete and workable fashion I mean?
June 25th, 2012 @ 3:30 pm
You justify stealing if the demand is so low that Google Insights doesn’t graph it out. Weak. Incredibly weak. I also believe that the hypothetical argument of “no one would ever buy the music they’re stealing anyways” is poor and irrelevant. This is an ethics issue, to me.
I fully understand that there are a lot of views on this, some artist care and feel they should be paid, others are thrilled their music is being downloaded for free. I think more often than not, it’s the newer artist that don’t realize the harm in people stealing their music. However, I do believe every artist should be able to determine all of this (whether they want to give away free downloads, or charge for them).
June 25th, 2012 @ 3:31 pm
And Dave, I mean no disrespect, we just obviously disagree. I’m a rock musician and I love Gang of Four, but I don’t own any of your records. You’re a musical inspiration to me and many of the bands that I love.
If we would have had this discussion ten years ago, I would have run down to my local record shop and bought your records. Instead, I just searched on Grooveshark and over 400 results came back, and within 15 seconds I was listening to “Entertainment!” for FREE. There was a video add for a terrible band that I first had to watch for 10 seconds and then clicked “close”. Now I’m streaming ALL of your music FOR FREE ALL DAY while Grooveshark makes money by showing me more ads from within their website (served by something called AdRoll which is like a Google Adsense ad). Then I watched your live videos on YourTube, where I don’t have to leave the comfort of my home or buy a concert ticket to even experience it, I had to see a few ads, but that’s ok with me.
How much of that ad revenue are you/your band mates/EMI/Warner getting? NOTHING. Are you really saying this doesn’t piss you off ??? Come on.
June 25th, 2012 @ 4:35 pm
Dave, you were right, I was kind off topic last night. Forgive me for my passion, it is just obvious that musicians need to make a sustainable wage.
But I also fhought of your business and I couldn’t thinking about what would happen if your designs were leaked after hours and hours of work and they lost all their value. I would imagine your client would be very unhappy and you would be furious.
So how is that different from musicians losing control of their work?
June 25th, 2012 @ 7:08 pm
Tom, I’m not justifying stealing, nowhere in my post or comments have I justified stealing. Did you read the entire posts, all three of them, before commenting? Is it that you can’t be bothered? I find it disturbing. And where is this from – “I also believe that the hypothetical argument of “no one would ever buy the music they’re stealing anyways†is poor and irrelevant.” Not from my post for certain.
June 25th, 2012 @ 7:15 pm
Robby, I appreciate your sentiments and I’m glad that you like my music. I’m also glad that you have access to it now, and for free. That’s entirely ok with me. I have no idea if that ad revenue is shared with the labels I am on. I don’t spend my time worrying about that, just as I have never spent my time worrying about how MTV ever paid royalties either. There are not many models out there that help musicians properly capture all available revenue streams so I’m not going chasing rainbows. The business has changed so dramatically in the last decade or more that it no longer resembles the business I became part of more than 30 years ago. And that’s fine. Nothing lasts forever.
June 25th, 2012 @ 7:28 pm
Will, we would make sure that our designs don’t leak. Our agency’s business model is to take note of the changes that will affect our business, and we did that a few years ago and adapted to the new digital reality. Musicians need a new business model too because everything has changed. I’m sorry that I don’t have a better answer than that.
June 25th, 2012 @ 10:09 pm
As a person who was young in the pre-digital age, I also got much of my music for free. My and my friends made tapes, particularly good mix tapes were copied again. I raided my mom and dad’s albums, I made many of my own shirts with band names. I went out to see bands at local clubs in NYC, like CB’s and such and back then the clubs were crowded and bands had long guest lists I was usually able to get on.
When I could I paid for new records, paid to see larger bands, bought a shirt. But not that much, most of the musicians I listened to were also not rich and not making a lot of money on their art. Not that I was begrudging them but my own finances didn’t allow me to purchase tons of new records and pay for arena concerts. But often I bought used records, and most of my friends still do that a lot, I don’t see how that’s adding to royalties much.
Now because of digital music, I do have more of it than ever, thanks to torrents, but the amount I have to spend on music hasn’t changed much. When something comes to town I want to see live I usually have to pay, and now if I want a shirt I buy it. But honestly this whole argument is somewhat of a straw man, as you have pointed out. Musicians as a whole are not highly compensated, and those ‘lucky’ enough to have been able to record with major labels often don’t see many royalties.
June 25th, 2012 @ 10:19 pm
BTW, I work in the photo industry, and a lot of photographers get their panties in a twist about people taking their photos. Photo usage is not something the public has ever had to buy before and trust me most people stealing your picture are not potential customers, since photo usage is generally a business to business transaction. It is not worth having your pictures so watermarked and impossible for photo editors to save by having your website as flash, because users that steal the pics wouldn’t buy them, and photo editors will often pass you by if you make it hard.
Photographers also want to go back to the good old days, when many of them could make a living. But they also made money on a type of photo that is justifiably not worth much anymore. Mediocre photographers are definitely also wise to figure out the new way things work become awesome and indispensable.
June 26th, 2012 @ 12:44 am
In the end I think it’s better to value good artists.
I’ve read lots of good photographers are leaving their jobs, or being made redundant.
If there is not much money in music, and music artists aren’t valued, lots of talented creative young people will find alternative careers – which is bad for music.
I believe you get what you pay for.
Whatever the new business model is, the priority for consumers should be supporting great music (or great photography, or great journalism).
If everything is left up to simple market forces, we’ll end up with art that pays (generally populist, like Beiber and GaGa) and art that doesn’t pay will become a hobby.
June 26th, 2012 @ 3:59 am
I’ve just reached the 30 mark, I still remember buying my first album on casette, and remember the joy of waiting at the record shop at 8:59 to run in and get the album that I’d been waiting months for and spending weeks listening to it over and over, but increasingly over the years my life has become more and more digitised. I spend most of my time at or near a computer or phone, and while I have a collection of over 500 CD’s at home, I never listen to them. As soon as storage was reasonable they were copied straight onto the computer. Since spotify came out, I don’t think I’ve bought more than 2 albums. That is my source for music.
Consumer listening habits have changed, most people I know don’t even want full albums any more, they just cherry pick their favourite songs and bundle them into playlists. The Market and consumer behaviour has changed so drastically over the last 10 years, and the music industry is doing it’s best king Cannute impression trying to stop the world that has already raced past it. The majority of artists will need a backer, someone to put up the cash for the recordings and adverting, someone to promote them, but the out dated contracts and the mechanical rights and they still apply to digital sales are the thing crippling the industry, not the consumer.
June 26th, 2012 @ 4:59 am
Dave:
I can see, and respect, some of your points. I also can see, and respect David’s. I won’t blather on about my areas of disagreement with you. Others have made similar cases already and you’ve been very responsive. Kudos.
However, I must take issue with one of your points (which no one has addressed): You have stressed several times that Emily didn’t illegally download music. This is technically correct but let’s be real: She ripped (off) tons of tunes from the NPR library. So while she didn’t “download” them from file-sharing sites, what she did was not so different. And do we know how many of those songs she let her friends rip to their libraries? No.
So, make your points, fine. But let’s not pretend what she did wasn’t virtually the same as downloading them from a site. One can consider it stealing (as I do) or not, but it’s the same as downloading.
Thanks for the thoughtful piece,
Geo
June 26th, 2012 @ 6:45 am
I feel like making light of Lowery’s hypothetical internet downloads is a bit disingenuous. It’s like when Republicans criticize wealthy Democrats for trying to enact minimum wage legislation. Are people only allowed to speak out for causes that directly impact their own pocketbooks?
That said, I’m somewhere in the middle on this argument. I wish Spotify or something like it would crop up that is a lot more fair for musicians. I don’t mind paying for music, I would just like to see more of it go to the people who made it.
June 26th, 2012 @ 3:32 pm
[...] latecomer but well worth waiting for… Dave North The Internet could not care less about your mediocre band Share or print:EmailTwitterPrintShareStumbleUponDiggRedditShare This entry was posted in [...]
June 26th, 2012 @ 9:14 pm
[...] in point; my last post. I spent a week researching the topic and the ensuing debate around it, then another 12 hours [...]
June 27th, 2012 @ 8:35 am
[...] The Internet Could Not Care Less About Your Mediocre Band Musicians (and as a member of Gang of Four I include myself here) don’t automatically deserve to make a living. They are not a special subset of society that should be supported at all cost. [...]
June 28th, 2012 @ 8:19 am
[...] along with retorts from two of my favorite musicians, David Lowery and, in response to him, Dave Allen. It seems that the original post and the disagreeing between other bloggers and commenters made for [...]
July 2nd, 2012 @ 8:30 pm
[...] style. A longstanding commentator on the relationship between the internet and the music industry, Allen insisted that music in the digital age is essentially a public good, and that attempts by musicians to recoup their lost revenues were at best quixotic and, more [...]
July 3rd, 2012 @ 6:53 am
[...] take on the whole kerfuffle, and he does not disappoint. At all. Go read the whole thing, entitled: The Internet could care less about your mediocre band. In it, he makes a ton of good points, but it all comes back to two things: (1) the old system was [...]
July 3rd, 2012 @ 8:41 pm
[...] style. A longstanding commentator on the relationship between the internet and the music industry, Allen insisted that music in the digital age is essentially a public good, and that attempts by musicians to recoup their lost revenues were at best quixotic and, more [...]
July 4th, 2012 @ 11:56 am
[...] Gang of Four musician Dave Allen also had an interesting piece The Internet Could Not Care Less About Your Mediocre Band My biggest takeaway from the article: Here’s Emily again: If my laptop died and my [...]
July 13th, 2012 @ 3:16 pm
[...] in point; my last post. I spent a week researching the topic and the ensuing debate around it, then another 12 hours [...]
July 23rd, 2012 @ 3:00 pm
[...] the further I try to get away from this stuff, the more I get dragged back in. My last tiff with a musician with a beef took up a lot of my time, so I’ll try and keep this one short. Smashing Pumpkins frontman [...]
July 24th, 2012 @ 12:28 am
[...] the further I try to get away from this stuff, the more I get dragged back in. My last tiff with a musician with a beef took up a lot of my time, so I’ll try and keep this one short. Smashing Pumpkins frontman [...]
August 9th, 2012 @ 2:40 am
[...] speaker on the day will be Gang Of Four’s bassist Dave Allen who has lots of thoughts about music and tech himself, being the Director of Interactive Strategy at North, a Portland “brand [...]
August 16th, 2012 @ 11:05 am
[...] lawn.EDIT: Dave Allen of Gang of Four restores my faith of old punks getting it with the excellent The Internet Does Not Care About Your Mediocre Band. He really does – and points out some other silliness of that article (thanks Jeb for the [...]
August 21st, 2012 @ 11:00 am
Dave, you haven’t done anything at all creative in decades. Who cares what you think?
August 21st, 2012 @ 7:19 pm
Hi Dave,
While I can see your point that musicians shouldn’t expect to make decent money let alone even a living, I do have to wonder– do you include independent film producers, photographers, video game designers and writers in that camp, too? Because their work is taken all the time as well.
If I illustrate storyboards, or if I am a freelance copywriter for an ad agency, and my client doesn’t pay me my day rate, do I chalk it up to the modern age, and just get another job?
If I am a band like Beach House and the ad agency or client in question chooses not to use my music, but instead makes a sound alike, should I raise my fist in the air that I’m with the times?
Perhaps you can provide me with occupations that you have given your approval of being fit for making a living in the singular sense.
Because while i haven’t done all of the jobs above, I have done more than a few, and I’ve been burned a few times by people who think my work isn’t worth anything. And frankly I can’t afford to be burned any more.
Any suggestions would be very helpful.
Cheers,
Alex