The great music copyright debate.

[pHz]

nice post sean ...

slainte rob

[herodotus]

For everyone who is concerned about artists, but who realize that record companies are in fact EVIL. I make the following suggestion:

Copy all the c.d.s you want, and send $4u.s. to the
artists themselves. This way the artists get something like twelve times what they would get from the record companies, while the latter get what they deserve: ZIP.

And please don't accuse me of ripping people off. I don't have any mp3s, stolen or otherwise. Furthermore, as a musician of 20+ years, I am well aware of the difficulties involved in making money as a musician and do everything that I can to support the artists that I admire.

I am simply trying to point out that the whole "stealing is just wrong" attitude is TOO DAMN SIMPLISTIC. The only promotion that most musicians I know have ever gotten is from c.d. burning and the like. Many bands whose shows I have seen were introduced to me via a burned c.d. I wouldnt even know who the Melvins are without it. I now have 5 of their discs: all legally bought and payed for. And I have seen them live twice.

I know that many are less scrupulous. That is why I haven't come out and said "Stealing is right" What I said is that things are more complicated than people realize.

[Emerald Tablet]

the Melvins

mmm never heard that name
wait downloading now

[Emerald Tablet]

listened to it
deleted it. not for me
saved me a bad bargain

[dystonia_ek]

Because we've all lived through the era of tape, vinyl and cd we've always seen music itself as a commodity. It hasn’t always been this way. Maybe the p2p networks are decommodifying music. Perhaps musicians will have to revert to selling themselves as performers. Possibly.

That's a point that's being mulled over in many quarters right about now, and very relevant.

[herodotus]

listened to it
deleted it. not for me
saved me a bad bargain

If you get a chance, check out their album "The bootlicker". Totally unlike their heavier stuff and truly brilliant.

[herodotus]

BTW, I realize that I have been making an oversimplification myself.

I have repeatedly said "Record companies" as if they are all monolithic beasts like Sony and Time Warner

Of course that is not the case. Labels like Ipecac and Restless are not at all evil in the way that Sony and the rest are.

Not that this makes a huge difference in the grand scheme of this argument. I just realized my own stupidity and wanted to correct it.

[dystonia_ek]

I heard a record that sampled one of my older ones once. I was actually pretty amused by it, and didn't feel ripped off at all, especially considering that after selling a few thousand copies my record company at the time (a then-smallish but well connected and now large UK independent label which shall remain nameless) hadn't paid me a cent (though one of their A&R people sent me two $20 bills in a registered envelope once).

Since getting screwed by said company, which made my life very difficult for some time after, I started releasing everything myself. One of the other things I did was abandoning the notion of copyrighting my work. Say I press around 500 copies of a CD, which is a typical run for me. The profit from sales is reinvested in the next releases, and everything pays for itself. But 500 copies doesn't go too far. So if one of the owners of one of those 500 copies wants to spread copies of his copy further that's fine with me - it'll reach a larger than projected audience, and frequently I've gotten letters from people who had bootleg copies of this or that who are now paying customers. So sales are better, the customer base has enlarged and I can think this year about pressing larger runs when I relaunch the operation this year (my label has been inactive for various reasons for the last five years, but that's another story). My sales were never hurt - and even if they were, the stakes aren't that high anyway as the money I make from music comes principally from soundtrack and sound design work - few independent artists can survive in more than the most marginal way from sales and gigs alone, unless you want to tour eight months out of the year or something like that. Many musicians I know have adopted this model in the last decade.

New forms of more ephemeral media are changing the landscape of the music industry, and all these flailings-around on the part of Sony or Warner lawyers and PR flacks are natural for creatures fighting obsolescence and extinction - they're trying to impose a physical model on (i.e. if I have one orange, and you take it then I have no orange) something that works in a completely different way (i.e. if I know something, and I share this knowledge with you, then we both have the knowledge - no-one loses anything, if anything everyone gains, and if knowledge is shared than more productive use can be made of that knowledge by many as opposed to just one) , and, sadly, a lot of artists are being just as reactionary and refusing the sort of autonomy that this evolving situation has the potential to offer to them.

[dystonia_ek]

Wow, people really aren't getting this.

As a musician, in America, you have 3 basic forms of income (outside of direct money from live shows).

1.Mechanical royalties: This is income guaranteed by copyright law. There is a MECHANICAL ROYALTY RATE that the law determines, and which is owed to the authors of works whenever these works are used commercially. or sold

2 The AUTHORS share of Licensed Royalties. These (along with #3 below) are what organizations like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC collect from radio stations, clubs, and the like.

3. The PUBLISHERS share of Licensed royalties .

Now here is the deal.

The vast majority of major label contracts force musicians to give up almost all of this income.

These contracts are drawn up by LAWYERS. This is what all of their aforementioned power in the industry comes from, not from chasing down napster and the like.

The labels know that most real musicians are totally ignorant of the complex world of entertainment law. That is how they screw them.

And so cheering on the record companies for cracking down on p2p and the like is like cheering on the guy who stole your identity for "finding" and prosecuting the poor bum who found your empty wallet after the real theft was over and done.

It's amazing how so many musicians are still so blind to this. They're like 'Hey, Sony, my ass still hurts but can we do that again? I won't struggle as much this time, unless it excites you if I do!'

[munchkin]

Wow, people really aren't getting this.

As a musician, in America, you have 3 basic forms of income (outside of direct money from live shows).

1.Mechanical royalties: This is income guaranteed by copyright law. There is a MECHANICAL ROYALTY RATE that the law determines, and which is owed to the authors of works whenever these works are used commercially. or sold

2 The AUTHORS share of Licensed Royalties. These (along with #3 below) are what organizations like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC collect from radio stations, clubs, and the like.

3. The PUBLISHERS share of Licensed royalties .

Now here is the deal.

The vast majority of major label contracts force musicians to give up almost all of this income.

These contracts are drawn up by LAWYERS. This is what all of their aforementioned power in the industry comes from, not from chasing down napster and the like.

The labels know that most real musicians are totally ignorant of the complex world of entertainment law. That is how they screw them.

And so cheering on the record companies for cracking down on p2p and the like is like cheering on the guy who stole your identity for "finding" and prosecuting the poor bum who found your empty wallet after the real theft was over and done.

It's amazing how so many musicians are still so blind to this. They're like 'Hey, Sony, my ass still hurts but can we do that again? I won't struggle as much this time, unless it excites you if I do!'

I agree! It get's so tiresome being scolded by people who believe the fantasy that copying music affects the profits of the musician. This is pure fantasy and has never been proven statistically. It's just moralising based on a false premise.

The reality is that the profit margin was decided long ago when that contract was signed. It's basic wage slavery without the rights offered to other workers.

Just try asking your record company to give you a pension scheme or to provide health cover. It will all come out of that tiny little profit margin you signed your creativity away for. It's the most unfair working contract imaginable. You'd probably get a larger percentage of income if you were picking tea in China.

That's why musicians are trying to break away from the multi-nationals stranglehold on media. Prince springs to mind - he's just won a Grammy without any help from the multi-nationals. I'm sure that loads of his music is available to download free yet he manages to make a respectable income without some conglomerate milking his profits. He may have started out benefiting from the promotion offered by Warner but he's paid them back a million times over in terms of the money that they make out of him.

The reason that the issue of unfair contracts is raised in the debate about downloading music is to point out what actually does affect the profits that musicians receive. Unfair contract are what decide whether musicians make a living out of music - not downloading mp3's. And until the real issue is addressed the record companies will continue to use the red-herring of copying music and ignore unfair contracts.

To anyone who is concerned about the welfare of musicians and wants to do something to help them make money then campaign against unfair contracts and copyright laws instead of backing the RIAA and furthering their propaganda.

[munchkin]

And another thing...

I don't see all the independents going out of business because people are copying the music of the bands they have on their rosta.

If anything there are far more indie's than 20 years ago. One of the reasons for this is the internet and the ability to share and distribute new music by new musicians.

In fact, we have a number of musicians at KVR selling their music quite successfully. Maybe they're not about to give up the day job but this would've never been possible even 10 years ago. So to say that downloading is affecting musicians detrimentally is nonsense. It's opened up huge opportunities that didn't exist before.

On a personal note, I used to buy all the latest releases from Factory, 4AD, Mute etc. etc. back in the late 70's and early 80's. And then copy them on tape for my friends. They used to do me tapes of stuff I hadn't heard. Did this kill New Order, Depeche Mode etc. etc? No it didn't! If you listened to John Peel who the f**k didn't tape his sessions from time to time? Get bloody real!

Let's have less of this hand wringing about copying music and more criticism of something we can actually campaign about - unfair recording contracts.

[kritikon]

You're damn right they are! Just look at the artists that had gotten screw over the years because of the way the music industry conduct dirty business that benefit the industry itself & their stockbrokers more than the artists that made the music:

Little Richard
Prince (WB Music Group owns the master tapes)
TLC
George Michael
The Beatles (Michael Jackson & Sony Entertainment owns the publishings)
Madonna (just recently in 2004)
Dr. Dre (Suge Knight owns the The Chronic)
N*SYNC
Teena Marie
Martha Reeves

Yes, quite true...all of their record companies made more money than those artists, but those artists also did very well thankyou - they are not working as security guards at Sainsbury's because the record companies fiddled them out of their dues - in fact most of them live lives of luxury.

Much of the crap you hear about major labels is just that...it's a f**king business and always has been - and it is for small labels also. If major labels are so evil, why is it that 99.9% of musicians would leap at the chance of a deal with one of them, and that all the major stars have also done so at some time in their careers - possibly because they have large-scale distribution, access to top notch production facilities and more to the point - make the artists rich. So don't give us this false "major labels are evil" crap...small labels often also give out at best 25% royalties - more usually 12.5% and some alot less than that. They ain't no different and you're fooling yourself if you think they are.



And Factory records.....hmmm .....they're doing great business now aren't they? I used to regularly pass the shuttered up Hacienda and Factory premises. Modern practices obviously did well for them, eh? 4AD - are they still trading? Doubt it.

[kritikon]

And...good post Rabbit.

Like you say...nothing I have read in this topic arguing for theft is anything other than rationalisation for bad behaviour - they are the flimsiest of logic justifications.

It's a common psychological trait to justify mistreatment of a victim - demonise the victim...they deserved it, therefore my mistreatment is justified. Yeah, yeah, yeah....the bloke I stole from is a bastard, so he had it coming to him. Two wrongs have never made a right, no matter the coincidences of outcome. If you thieve off a bastard, it still makes you a bastard for the thieving. So all that happens is now you have two bastards instead of one.

[whyterabbyt]

munchkin quoth
I agree! It get's so tiresome being scolded by people who believe the fantasy that copying music affects the profits of the musician. This is pure fantasy and has never been proven statistically. It's just moralising based on a false premise.

Conversely:
I disagree. It gets so tiresome being scolded by people who believe the fantasy that copying music doesnt affects the profits of the musician. This is pure fantasy, and has never been proven statistically. It's just justification based on a false premise.

See, the problem is that you say its a false premise because it hasnt been proven. No, its not a false premise, its an unproven premise, and there's a difference between those two things. The converse premise is also an unproven one, btw, so its just as much of a 'fantasy'.
The problem is that I dont see anyone giving any explanation of how someone is supposed to support themselves if they can't sell music. You talk about Prince and whatever, but what about small acts who never got the chance to make their name globally before 'rebelling against the man'? Yeah, the major labels run an unfair system, but how on earth does that become a justification for wholesale avoidance of paying your favourite artists? Conflating these two issues does precisely nothing to help the artist.

[munchkin]

And...good post Rabbit.

Like you say...nothing I have read in this topic arguing for theft is anything other than rationalisation for bad behaviour - they are the flimsiest of logic justifications.

It's a common psychological trait to justify mistreatment of a victim - demonise the victim...they deserved it, therefore my mistreatment is justified. Yeah, yeah, yeah....the bloke I stole from is a bastard, so he had it coming to him. Two wrongs have never made a right, no matter the coincidences of outcome. If you thieve off a bastard, it still makes you a bastard for the thieving. So all that happens is now you have two bastards instead of one.

It's also social acceptable behaviour to believe RIAA propaganda and moralise on behalf of these bastards but we can rise above this by exposing these bastards for the hypocritical crooks that they are.