The last word on Lily Allen and her anti-filesharing campaign
beatcroft.blogspot.com
beatcroft.blogspot.com
As a side note, I don't understand the recent trend for bands to only have a MySpace page, and not have their own site. It just seems a little tacky to me.
As far as it goes, I dislike MySpace because it is an excused for a half-assed web designer to slap something together and call it a "Band Site". I've seen a few MySpace pages that blew me away, and that really showed how good of a platform it could be. Those were, by far, the exception though, so every time I see a MySpace band page, I think "Wow, these guys are only willing to put this much work into their online presence?" Sure, my idea of a "good" site is rather skewed, but a lot of band sites are downright dreadful, and there really isn't an excuse for it.
Btw, some MySpace pages look good enough/decent, at least when compared to full blown sites which don't offer too much info and are also implemented 100% in Flash.
There are a select few people who have proven to me time and again that they produce high-quality music worthy of my money (and, in my opinion, worth far more than I pay). Notably, I will buy anything done by the likes of Steven Wilson, Trent Reznor, Jenny Lewis, and MJK. It doesn't matter if it's a new group or a solo album. It doesn't matter if I haven't heard a single song. Some bands like Dredg are guaranteed buys -- again, even if I haven't heard a single song.
I know the artist doesn't get very much of album sales, especially digital ones, so I will buy directly from them (FLAC helps, too) where possible. Music -- popular music, anyway -- has been commoditized and watered down to the point that it really isn't worth buying. I "pirated" the latest Pearl Jam album because I was reasonably sure it was going to be a disaster (apart from the one catchy single) and I was vindicated in that notion. If I had bought it, where would I return my MP3s to?
I have never believed music isn't worth paying for. I don't even know how I would live without the ability to listen to music nearly constantly. I am very cognizant when I'm without it for even a day. This viewpoint wasn't cultivated by manufactured, commodity sound. It was born from the work of amazingly talented individuals who have the ability to take words and sound and shape them into something that has more meaning than either could achieve alone. How isn't that worth paying for... when it transcends?
Now, the internet has magnified this even further. An incredibly narrow band of artists are currently being compensated in any way (live performance, merch, cds), and this trend appears to be continuing. In general, the life of a performing musician pretty much sucks. Take a blog post by David Byrne I found on here awhile ago http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2009/08/080809-edinburgh-so-ho... . He's working pretty damn hard, and he's famous!
I'm not saying that file sharing is inherently wrong, I'm just saying deep down, we know there's a system that will rise out of this that will undoubtedly be regulated. I'd rather be having that discussion, than saying 'oh, I wouldn't have paid for that'
...we know there's a system that will rise out of this that will undoubtedly be regulated.
That sounds wonderful -- because we all know how much regulation fosters innovation! I'd rather never have that discussion. I guess I don't understand what you're advocating in general. Music has been an integral part of society since caveman days; just because record labels found a way to get fat by extorting consumers and artists alike doesn't mean people have some god-given right to be paid for their self-expression (but often times they deserve it.)
You're also right that sometimes they deserve to be paid. It is my intuition that the free market works against supporting the largest number of musicians. It may work to reward the best, but to me, that doesn't foster innovation (since musicians rarely look at the payoff in terms of money--probably fame). Certain acts are always going to be very famous, but there probably is a lot of room for diversity.
The optimal strategy for creativity/diversity would be to provide a (minimal) amount of reimbursement for attempting to create music. This would not only bring music creation back to the masses (where it probably should be) but could also provide an incentive for creative people to put work out and also buy dinner.
I'd go for a system that enforced a payment based upon a baseline # of listens on pandora, last.fm or youtube.
Culture has shifted. Once people marveled at how they could listen to a recording of a singer so it was just like having them perform in their own house! They placed a large value on that. They were happy to pay to buy the latest album.
As things have moved on, people just place far less value on being able to have the ability to listen to particular songs on demand, and expect it to either be free, or nearly free.
After all, selling musical recordings is a pretty recent fad. It's not like some age old industry is being killed here.
In some ways it's similar to the ringtone fad. In the late 90s ringtones were massive and people were willing to pay a few pounds for each ringtone. Few years later and people aren't prepared to do that anymore.
It seems like the new model will just be 'Give away recorded music to promote live shows'.
That's fine. I don't think anyone wants to deny consumers their right to decide the amount they want to buy for. What people disagree on is whether you should then get it, if you're not willing to pay the price for it.
> After all, selling musical recordings is a pretty recent fad. It's not like some age old industry is being killed here.
That isn't relevant, of course. Age doesn't say anything about the quality of an industry. Some very old industries have died (deservedly), while very young industries are thriving deservedly.
> In some ways it's similar to the ringtone fad. In the late 90s ringtones were massive and people were willing to pay a few pounds for each ringtone. Few years later and people aren't prepared to do that anymore.
Wow, the UK must be way ahead of the rest of Europe! :-) It's still a big fad here. Not a few pounds, but about a euro or so...
The reason we expect music to be free, or nearly free, now is because of filesharing. If Napster and its spiritual descendants had never existed, people would still be buying music more or less like it was 1999.
It helps that I don't listen to much top 40 stuff, obviously. But as a one-time DJ with a music budget of $500/month, and one with a self-imposed prior ownership test for what I download, thumbs down to your complaints.
No. I'm just saying it means less money for the music industry, which is not contingent on whether or not I feel guilty.
>I don't - the only music I've ever downloaded is stuff I've already bought on vinyl or CD, in some cases multiple times, and lost via lending/ moving house/ abandoned storage etc., or which is unavailable due to being out of print. And have you ever tried taking a crackly LP, snapped tape or delaminated CD back to the store for replacement?
That's nice, but do you really doubt that many or most filesharers are skinflint pirates like me?
If the total amount of money going to shows has not increased, then artists are just having to compete harder for a slice of the same (or smaller) pie by giving away something that they used to be able to charge for to promote themselves. It may be the rational thing for an artist to choose to do now, but the overall situation is worse for them than it was back then. It's sort of analogous to how investing in capital goods for a commodity business like textiles ends up benefiting the customer, not the producer (though other producers have to invest too or they are crushed).
Sometime between stints at rehab about 10 years ago Courtney Love suggested downloads + tips as a substitute for the record industry as we know it. http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print....
If there had been an free itunes-like service that made it convenient to tip, I would have gone for that (I use the past tense because I'm old and busy now and haven't listened to much new music lately).
Short answer - it's negative.
But this is brilliant. The amount of effort that must have gone into making something like this... Timing the typing and speaking to the rhythm. It helps that I disagree with the modern state of IP.
I hope it goes viral. Dear Lily, why you being so silly...
It's not my blog and I'm pretty sure the bloke running it isn't raking in the cash from piles of adverts, so it's hardly spam...
Don't submit where you found something, submit what you found. If you consider your link important, just post it as a comment.
Artists need to be paid just like everyone else. The fact that they get paid so much more money than most of the rest of us do is irrelevant. It doesn't mean we are entitled to steal from them. If you are pirating music then you are cheating the artist. And if you enjoy the song why steal it? I mean you can probably buy it off iTunes for 99 cents to a $1.29
That said, I must admit that I enjoyed Dan Bull's song. It is funny, but I don't think that pirating is funny.
We can't force everybody to go open source, and we certainly shouldn't complain when other people complain about getting their work stolen and distributed without getting any benefit from it.
It depends whether you think the ends justify the means.
Since the iTunes Music Store started up, I've run a clean ship, but back in the Napster days I got into some bands I would never have got into if I had to buy their CD. I've then gone to gigs of some of these bands, recommended their music to others, and, ultimately, they got more money from my actions than if I had to pay to buy their album (which I wouldn't have bothered with).
Markets are complicated. It can't be proven that Lily Allen would have any more money now if piracy were non-existent (or vice versa, admittedly). I think the power effect of social markets comes into play - it makes more sense for her to have significantly more fans making her less cash per capita than to have a smaller fanbase that doesn't engage in piracy.
Either way, I know I've gotten into bands (and then given those bands money in some way directly or indirectly) via unconventional means before. If those avenues hadn't been available (and now I just use Spotify - no need for piracy!) I'd probably have stuck to the 10 or so bands I like and given more money to them instead.
Spotify is partially owned by big record labels such as Sony BMG (5.8%), Universal Music (4.8%), Warner Music (3.8%) and EMI (1.9%), altogether 16.3%.
Did you know that iTunes store does not exist in many places outside America?
Half way through Dan Bull implied that he took the background score from one of Lily's songs. He did, but he never properly gave credit at the end of the clip. And that's just not cool. Even if you think that music should be in the public domain (like I believe all university papers should be) you still must never use something without giving credit where it's due.
It only took 20 seconds to Google, but still. The original song is "22" from the album "It's Not Me, It's You".
Do you really need to give credit for that? (I know legally the answer is likely yes, but I don't think it should be).
Imagine if we had to give credit for each 4 lines of code that had already been used by someone else :/
Or a painter who had to give credit for a certain way of drawing a beard.
- 4 chords - a drum beat - a $5,000 microphone to record the guitar so it sounds like that - a $3000 keyboard to make the piano sound like that - $10,000 in drum gear to get them to sound that way
etc. etc. etc.
I symapathize with people who want credit for samples. A lot of work and money goes into making pop music pop the way it does.
Not only do I like his argument on copyright, I think it's also best deconstruction of the pop music business I've heard in a long, long time.
Well, he didn't.
I totally disagree with you. The foundations of modern pop music are built on sampling the music of ages past. Much of what we enjoy today literally would not exist without the unfettered use of samples. We can't just say "nope, not any more."