Grappling with the ‘Culture of Free’ in Napster’s Aftermath
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
People are making money, it's just not the artists
This has less to do with a "Culture of Free" and more to do with predatory business practices
Big corps who rant about pirates are nothing more than just hypocrites (as in the worst offenders).
I feel like Bandcamp (and iTunes) have a much better profit model. Offer full length samples so you know exactly what you are getting, and then charge 25-50 cents per track with 90% of it going to the creator. Despite the higher prices to the consumer, the cost feels a lot more justifiable in my mind. I've spent over $50 a month on Bandcamp before, whereas I can't see myself purchasing a music streaming service for anywhere near that cost.
I pay $12 a month and only listen to one record three times through on that month. You'd expect the artist(s) of the record to get my $12 minus a service fee, but what I'm sure happens is the artist(s) only get the price per play x 3 and Spotify pocket the rest.
Subscription models are a huge boon for this reason, but the inequitable split might change artists' minds about these sub services.
I tend to listen to a small subset of music over and over, the artists should be getting close to that $12/month cost in my opinion.
I think companies like Spotify end up spending 60-70% of that $12 on paying license fees, which include per-play amounts that eventually end up with the artists. And the structure of those deals is such that the groups with the biggest licensing deals get most of your $12, even if you didn't listen to music from that particular artist.
I agree that it's not what you (or I) want, but it does make sense from the perspective of the largest parties involved in these negotiations.
I think your point is pretty valid though, if I listen to 6 hours a day I am contributing way more towards band payouts than someone who listens to a few songs a day, even though I am putting in the same amount. The direct connection could actually encourage people to subscribe, have a page showing your contributions to each band you listen to.
If the environment allows competition between distribution channels and artists are able to negotiate, artist compensation has the possibility to inch higher over time.
Case in point: Taylor Swift and Spotify. Regardless of whether her business model ultimately yields the highest return, at least she is not being compelled to distribute her material via Spotify.
My point being that it is a matter of scarcity - or the lack thereof. Music, to some degree, doesn't age. Regardless of what new pop album is due out in the near future, we will still listen to Louis Armstrong sing "What a Wonderful World" as it nears it's 50th anniversary.
Any newly produced music is competition with the back-catalog of all music ever recorded. And there is only so much time during the day one can spend listening to music, so individual "consumption" isn't going to change much as time goes one.
The only real future for professional musicians is ticket sales for live performances and licensing their songs for uses in other media (movies, commercials, "hasn't been thought of yet")
My two cents: indie artists should take a page from startup founders and get scrappy with easy access to affordable software and marketing/engagement tools. It's certainly doable, but requires a bit of a behavioral change. Musicians want to write/record/play music, not run a business. But they have to start embracing it or they'll continue to be dependent on major label-like overlords.
PS - go watch "Artifact" on Netflix as soon as possible. It's a riveting documentary on a signed band fighting a major label who, in turn, sued them for $30mm.
Maybe donation links work for some, and of course creators should have the freedom to pursue that avenue, along with the freedom to pursue others.
Before Kickstarter existed, I once donated a substantial sum (for me) to a local musician who I was a big fan of and whose albums I had listened to countless times. Fast-forward several years, and now one of the ways this creator funds her work is through Kickstarter.
I'm glad that we seem to have made it through an analogous phase in the history of internet distribution without artists being frozen out.
What I've been surprised by on previous HN commenting threads on this topic is how harsh people tend to be on the content creators' side of the balance sheet. People really despise pay walls and other existing attempts for creators to make money (you want all the songs in the world for $5 and not $10, REALLY??). As a creator myself, a scientist who publishes in academic journals, I desperately want to find new ways to help me and my colleagues monetize our works (Edit: by "monetize" I mean fundraise, NOT profit).
I'm pretty sure direct consumer-to-creator payments are part of the solution, but that solution isn't exactly lighting the world on fire like Napster did.
What's wrong with profiting from science?
I think a lot of people have this, to me incomprehensible, state of mind where they feel like things that don't matter much in the grand scheme of things (InstaSnapWhatsYo) are entitled to make lots of money, but it's morally objectionable to make money on things that matter (science, journalism, etc). That creates perverse social incentives: people who are brilliant but not particularly selfless have every incentive to spend their talents on things that don't matter, instead of things that do.
I see two major halves to this.
First: No one cares if InstaSnapWhatsYo goes bankrupt, and if they do, Jan Systrom (founder of ISWY) doesn't make a heartstrings appeal that he's entitled to make money. Live by the market, die by the market, all in the game, y'all, etc. But Lars Ulrich thinks he's _entitled_ to sell 50 million records (emphasis on "sell", as opposed to "give away"), and EMI thinks they're entitled to their cut of the same. So the claims of Ulrich and EMI earn a degree of legitimate skepticism: this thing you're saying is "fair" and "just" in return for your social contribution, we can't help but notice that it's making you very very rich. My point here is that if you're nothing but a mercenary, it's hard to knock you for being a mercenary; if you're claiming social value and also have a vested interest, then this tension gets you some sharp looks. Some of that is legitimate, some of it is just sloppy thinking.
(Aside: imo, this is the same type of sloppy thinking that claims that hypocrisy is a the one true sin; if Dahmer calls Manson a bad person, Dahmer is right, hypocrite or not.)
Second: Science in particular has another problem, and that is the questionable social value of each individual scientist. Read 40 randomly selected peer-reviewed journal publications, and you're going to read a lot of useless garbage. And yet the authors of the garbage are still getting paid, and they might be making above-median wages for an American (not above-median wages for an American with 10 years of education who works 60-hour weeks, but still). I'm a pretty big fan of the net output of science, and academia generally, and think that we should increase our social expenditure on science, but I can see a rational reason for people to be suspicious of requests from scientists to increase science funding.
Sort of accidentally, I note that the entire preceding paragraph also applies to your other example of things that matter, journalism. Every sentence, except the "10 years of education".
There's nothing entitled about expecting the government to keep people from taking things from you. There is nothing obsolete about business models that rely on the government protecting you from that kind of violation.
I mean, the freaking word "title" is right in the middle of "entitlement" for crying out loud. You can argue property law is the best of a set of bad options, but it is far from just, and it is absolutely, literally, about entitlement.
Grad students? Clearly from my "10 years of education and 60 hours weeks" I wasn't primarily referring to grad students. However... in my understanding standard US grad student stipends are usually over $20k, plus a tuition waiver, for 8 or 9 months of work. That sounds like it's more than $30k/year (pro-rated).
Many authors are not students. NSRA stipends for post-docs are $40k-$55k. Obviously tenure-track positions do somewhere between a little and a lot better than that.
I think it's clear that the main catch in "above-median wage" is it's only above-median if the reference class ignores educational attainment. Median wages for people with graduate degrees are substantially higher.
As someone who makes my living off writing open source software, I am highly aware of the challenges in finding tenable business models when distribution is free. The particular model which works for me was to become an employee of a company which uses my software. There are other possibilities, such as consulting; it's important that we continue to experiment.
Like you, I see creators in other realms as my colleagues and wish them every success.
I think that's theoretical more powerful in terms of building a community on the site, but it is slow-going so far.
Looking at your main page it seems disjointed.
You mentioned that this lets people publish and get paid, but I'm getting mixed messages of 'fund things here' vs 'publish here and get paid!'
Maybe this could be clearer? (eg. "Support content you love!" "Be rewarded for your creations!" as separate pages?)
Yeah you can publish and fund on the Onarbor site. Currently as I scientist, I have to write papers and then separately write grant applications. This is duplication of effort and a complete waste of many people's time. Onarbor's solution is to combine publishing and funding.
I think the problem people have is that this is user behavior that no other site (to my knowledge) on the internet has. People like Peter Thiel say it is good to do something that nobody else is doing. But the fear I'm having is that people will never get it.
A better solution is just to funnel money in to sciences through public funding mechanisms and telling you that the papers and results - free, and readily accessible to the public - are the deliverable we expect for that money.
Let me ask you this: why do you think you need to get money from the paper or results when as a scientist, you're already being paid for your work through other channels?
On the other, lots of hate for big corporations and further complaining when jobs go away (one of the direct results of the free culture). The ability to make a living online makes it so you don't ever have to work for a large corporation. The ultimate freedom.
I know plenty of independent artists that can't really make a living with music anymore because albums are now essentially worthless. Many of these people are now forced to sell out to big corporate record labels (and then, the same people that created this environment call them "sellouts").
> when jobs go away (one of the direct results of the free culture).
This doesn't make any sense. If people are spending less money on one thing, they are spending more money on something else. If I pirate all my music, maybe I have an extra $100/year to go out to dinner, "creating jobs" (although I am loath to use that misleading phrase) in the culinary industry. In reality, of course, those $100 are spread across a whole bunch of areas of spending, but the aggregate effect is the same.
I generally want indie content to get a large user audience, I don't want the "buggy whips" people ostensibly are interested in to gain as much of a user audience, that is, things like, Anaconda, Wrecking Ball, Blurred Lines are supposedly what people want, I'd rather they not.
A friend of mine who had been playing the viola since age 6, took his craft extremely seriously, and played for about 10 years with an orchestra, recently decided he was done with it, he's not able to pay his bills. He's one of the nicest guys I know, it was depressing to see him finally resign. While our industry is rebuked for sexism, we see Eminem succeed again and again by repeatedly talking about raping, assaulting women in his songs, it's kind of disgusting really that this has sort of become his trademark marketing and branding strategy[1]. It bugs me that beautiful art perfected over generations is lost and left aside to shit made by producers with commercialization more on top of their mind.
I want to see the music industry to really just come to its knees (when I mean music industry, I actually really mean just the big record labels). I want it to become an unprofitable business, where it doesn't have much of a value, because that might be the last thing that deters record companies to stop making stuff that's formulaic and trite, using cheap misogynistic tricks and so on. Maybe then we can get back to having a piano or a guitar in the house, and making music ourselves, with friends and families.
[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/11/12...
But people don't want indie content
Absolutely not true.
As a society we no longer have to waste huge amounts of resources to make physical copies of information and deliver them around the world. This is an enormous benefit to society. It's staggering. All that wasted resources and time are now available to be used more productively. It shows you who welcomes progress and who only pays it lip service.
I really really hope we find a killer alternative energy source and infrastructure before I die. I will get to laugh my ass off at the insane fact distortion that arises. The loud arguments against these awful crimes against the noble oilmen and brave tanker captains who are struggling. How, oh how, will the pious House of Saud control their rebellious slave worker population with their income being stolen from them by this entitled Culture of Free!
Which is precisely why your energy analogy is inapposite. The Saudis didn't invent oil--they just trade in its scarcity. But digital technology doesn't address the scarcity of information and original content. Someone still has to create the first copy, and as ever, that's the hard part.
In terms of costs to the consumer, a tiny fraction of a penny went to the person generating the information anyway, if they sued to get it. Once a song was recorded they traded in it's scarcity, just like oil. And now that scarcity is completely artificial.
It makes no sense to pay 99% of the cost of purchased music to a facilitator who prints CDs, vets musicians, and markets them. The internet makes the last one easier and the first two obsolete.
First of all, getting people to create music and want to show it off is not hard, stopping them from doing so is hard. It has never been hard. What was hard was trying to get massively rich off of popular music.
Do you really think that this massively stupid and inefficient system, hated by consumers and artists must be protected just to avoid figuring out a new way to pay artists? Artists are still making a good living these days, just more from endorsements, live shows and merch than sales of music. So that's not in danger. It's easier for beginner or smaller acts to get ahead and make a living now.
Sure, some artists who would be rich under the old system won't be under another system, and vice versa. But in aggregate there is only one loser - the record company middlemen.
This seems so obvious to me. Especially now, when it's already happening and plenty of people are "creating the first copy" undeterred, right now it looks like maybe there will be more successful artists but fewer mega-rich artists due to less of hit based business but that might change as the new way of doing things grows, websites are now an extreme hit based business and didn't start out that way.
There's a good case to be made that rising amateur quality drives larger and larger mega-blockbusters.
Mostly look at the word "now". At what time did musicians not need to "sell out" to "big corporate" record labels?
As workers we want as much pay as we can for as little effort as we can, while as consumers we want as much goods as we can for as little expense as we can.
Games tend, on average, to be on average about the size of a whole, uncompressed CD. Roughly 700 MB.
That means the first challenge is actually getting the thing to me. For a while i had two options: Either i could go out into the store, and buy it there (spending 2 hours + cash), or if they didn't have it, order it and come back later (another 2 hours). Or i could torrent it at home, spending no cash and 2 hours waiting for the download to complete while i do other things; and live with the possible risk of a letter from my ISP.
So now i have the thing. The next challenge is to get it on the computer and running. With the store-bought medium i have to hope that it is physically sound, and i need to ensure it stays that way; I also have to hope that my drive is compatible with their copy protection; and to add insult to injury, i need to keep the disc in my drive to play it, meaning i have to handle the things a lot, and have my drive uselessly make noise. With the torrent, i unpack it and install it, maybe needing to spend an extra 5 minutes to find the right crack; and live with the risk of contracting malware.
And the last issue: Software updates. This time the two options are almost the same: Find the latest update, download and install it. Torrent updates come with a risk of malware again.
Now, when i was young specifically the first and second thing led me to pirate most of the games i got. Not because i didn't want to spend the cash; but because i didn't want to spend cash, just to have to spend my own time to get the thing and live with the constant annoyance of keeping the right disc in my drive, constantly rotating.
This is especially borne out in current times. Steam is now here and while the prices are similar to physical game sales (the value of my steam library is estimated at $7000), i gladly and happily spend the money for it, since Steam solves these problems:
1. Games are downloadable.
2. The copy protection is either my online status, or a specific steam token. (In practice i've never not been able to access the games.)
3. Updates come automatically.
4. As long as Steam doesn't crash and burn, i'll be able to access the things i bought in perpetuity without needing to cat herd a gaggle of physical storages.
The "culture of free" doesn't revolve around free. There is a cost in any "free". Usually the risk of legal action or malware.
The "culture of free" is winning because people hoping to make money fail to provide solutions that actually address customers' needs. Steam has recognized and solved that issue. In the music industry things like Google Play Music, Spotify, etc. are starting to solve it.
P.S Most modern games requires GBs rather than an old-fashioned 700MB CD. For example, Far Cry 4 requires 28GB of disk space to be installed.
"Most" is a massive exxageration. Origin is a small sampling of all that's on the market.
> 2.
Steam has solved this, and so has Google Play Music: Cached authorization. I'm not entirely sure how they do it, but on both services i've been able to access the games and music even when i was entirely without service for long periods of time.
Plus, there's always GoG.
> P.S
I said on average. Even in this day and age you'll have games that are around 50 MB and less.
Maybe you need to stop focusing on AAA titles so much. :)