The Man Can Bust Our Music

According to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, online music downloads have gone down, down, down to a burning ring of fire over the past six months. In May, 29 percent of adults said they downloaded music (legally or illegally), a figure that stood at 14 percent in December.

The study doesn't differentiate between legal and illegal downloads but its authors suggest that record-industry lawsuits aimed at illegal downloaders and other measures account for a good chunk of the drop-off, even as legal services ranging from ITunes to Napster got up and running.

Here's an account of the study (which I haven't read) in the Dallas Morning News(reg. required).

Whatever else is going on, one thing is clear: the amount of downloads at sites such as Kazaa still dwarfs the number at the licensed sites.

Comments

[dhex]

st.mack...actually depends on the group. some groups make a lot more touring than they do from record sales. but what you said is mostly true for larger scale label and artist ventures.

[s.m. koppelman]

Before the mid 19th century, when mass-market sheet music and piano roll sales created a "music industry" in which selling widgets and collecting royalties became sources of income, there was still plenty of music being made. People played fiddles and lutes and whistles and whatever around the kitchen table and the campfire. Some made money at it playing in party bands. Traveling musicians and buskers could earn a modest income. Other professionals played in theaters and traveling shows, and still others earned money through composing pieces on commission.

The music industry as we've come to know it in the last century and a half is a fairly new development. Music isn't. It came into being because printing sheet music, producing piano rolls, and later, manufacruring cylinders and discs and tapes was expensive and required costly equipment. The only entities that could afford do it were serious businesses, so the business models they created around copyright, publishing rights and manufacturing a physical product were viable. It was easy to use copyright to protect your interests because serious piracy required serious capital. Piracy that impacted the industry generally came from big operations run by organized crime . Cracking down was the relatively simple matter of radiing factories and warehouses and stopping big trucks full of bootlegs.

Now the "music industry" is unnecessary. Anyone can produce a flawless CD for about forty cents at home. Maintaining the industry in its current state is simply propping up an old cartel out of a misguided sense that it's the rightful gatekeeper to music distribution.

We're not rushing to ban or tax the hell out of digital cameras because Kodak and Polariod are suffering. They haven't asked government to do so, and they'd be laughed out of town if they did.

The record industry is obsolete. It's time for all those people to find another line of work. Musicians will keep making music. They just won't have an easy time making money from selling recordings. We had music for thousands of years before Edison's wax cylinders, and the inevitable end of the music industry -- pay-per-track download sites included -- won't put a stop to it. It may signal an end to the top-down star system, though, and a return to local and personal musicmaking.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Whether or not people are downloading more often, I think the more important question that they're not addressing is, are people actually buying any more music? I suspect that with all the downloading a lot of people have gotten away from the urge to go down to the record store & buy 3 or 4 CDs on spec.

I used to be one of those people, but I'd say that I now get about half of my musical entertainment from internet radio sites. I don't conceptually have any problem with paying for music online, but I think the price needs to go way down from a dollar a pop before I'll feel any great urge to sign up with iTunes or whoever else might come along in that biz.

[Kevin Carson]

s.m. koppelman,

Your last comment was one of the best summaries of the situation I've ever seen. Check out also Gary North, "Don't Invest in Copyright-Protected Companies," Nov. 5, 2003, http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north224.html

[ed]

"I've overpaid for enough CDs in my lifetime that I'm not going to lose much sleep over record companies tightening their belts."

rst:
If you bought the music, you did it voluntarily, of your own free will. As for the recording industry's inability to see into the future, well, who can?

I personaly can't justify eating stolen beef after "overpaying" for hamburgers all these years.

dhex: free minds, markets AND threads. Kudos.

[Gordon Shumway]

ed,

Maybe you can't justify knocking over the local burger king, but if you pay for a prize steer (CD) and take it home and clone it (copy it onto blank CDs on your comp) then sell those cattle or just give the steaks away, no one will come bitching that they own the DNA sequence (music) that made that cattle (CD) desirable over others. So tell me, do you feel like a criminal when you buy cloned Black Angus steak from the supermarket at a fraction of what it used to cost? Why not, some one used to make more money per pound on it before, selling it one sterile head at a time.

[rst]

As for the recording industry's inability to see into the future, well, who can?

As it is also of my free will that industry gripes are not blowing up my skirt, anymore than would a paper industry group complaining about emissions and deforestation restrictions, i.e., the industry on its merits doesn't engender any tremendous amount of pity on my part. In the beginning, I wasn't given a choice to pay a lower price for CDs, because the poor industry had a price fixing scheme. So now that the shoe's on the other ear I'm supposed to cry? Boo hoo.

If you're any good, and if after hanging onto your work for a few years while you languished in a dead end contract the industry finally squeezed it out to sync with some product or movie release, and the marketing campaign is powerful enough to hit the target demographic (or folks really liked the movie), you'll sell in stores. People are stupid like that, they'll buy what you put on their plates. You won't sell as much as you could without the internet black market, but the industry knew that market was coming and did nothing about it. Not their fault that it exists, but definitely their fault that it has the impact it has. If you can't work around the black market and stay in business, then you're in the wrong business.

[Phil]

Suck the profit out of the music industry and all you'll have left is crappily produced garage band shit music - but it will be available for free downloading.

Quick, people -- run out and support the record industry, so they can continue to supply us with the artistic might of 50 Cent and Britney! Seriously, though, artists don't spring up fully developed out of gopher holes. Every band was a shitty local band at some point, and the record industry didn't make them good, they made them well-known. Bands become good not because they are on Warner Bros., but because they are dedicated artists who stick to their craft.

Live shows, beyond bar bands and dhex playing at the FTH party, are marketing events. The primary prupose of a concert tour is to generate record sales.

Record sales make money for the label. Tours and concerts -- and radio airplay -- make money for the artists.

As for myself, since I got hooked up with iTunes, I've purchased more music in the last four months than I did the eight months previous.

[s.m. koppelman]

The opening sentence probably should read more like this:

"According to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the number of people willing to admit to a stranger that they download music illegally a few months after the RIAA started suing individual consumers has gone down, down, down like a burning ring of fire..."

I haven't read the study but this reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (no password required) has. Apparently, the stats are based on people asked if they download music. I'm sure they're all being honest.

[Todd Fletcher]

I can say I definitely that I don't download as much as I used to. But that's because I already downloaded every music file on the internet.

[AJMB]

rst: So if the public is overpaying for their automobiles, fuel, name your consumer product, please tell me how long I have to wait befor I can feel justified in stealing an '04 Passat, diesel to run it, that new plasma T.V.? Just curious.

[speedwell]

Wonder what music sales have been doing in the same period of time. Just wondering.

[Gordon Shumway]

I quit illegally downloading music almost entirely after the lawsuit business. Now I just have my much more computer saavy friend do it for me. He's been lesser known anonymous servers and private house parties since long before the lawsuits. I help him sort his ill-gotten gains after some of the swap parties (he usually returns from a weekend gathering with 80-160 gigs of music, software, movies, games, porn, etc.). He gets me virtually any song I ask for and throws in copies of any movie I want as well.

I didn't purchase a single CD in 2003 and don't plan to in 2004 either, I spent my music money on seeing live shows. My DVD purchases are down considerably from early 2003 as well. Tweedle dum is dying and dragging tweedle dee with it. I really don't care. Many call me a crook, but so are you if you go to the bathroom or kitchen or channel surf during TV commercials.

[rst]

You can't beat free. Bad for the market perhaps, but c'est la vie. The music industry had the opportunity to engage the online music market, they chose not to. They put themselves in this situation, and there is no recourse for them now. Downloading will continue as an entrenched part of the internet lore and will suck at their profits for years to come.

Ha ha.

[rst]

so are you if you go to the bathroom or kitchen or channel surf during TV commercials.

Yeah I wonder how long it will take before some ponytailed 'net marketing weenie-turned-CEO of a flash-in-the-pan banner agency claims that people who are using popup blockers are stealing the internet.

[D Lusional]

rst,

People like you who cheer about sucking the profits out of an industry are idiots. Just why do you think people go into any business - the music business included? They do it for the profit.

Anyone who tells you they went into the music business for the love of the music is either trying to rationalize their own lack of success - or is already sitting on pile of cash.

Suck the profit out of the music industry and all you'll have left is crappily produced garage band shit music - but it will be available for free downloading.

[rst]

They do it for the profit.

And what do I do it for? I have no motivation to push the profit envelope for others. I am out for my enjoyment -- my entertainment even -- so take your ad hominem and stick it. I've overpaid for enough CDs in my lifetime that I'm not going to lose much sleep over record companies tightening their belts. They're not going anywhere, regardless of the S.O.S. they've been pitching to the country for the past couple of years. Like I said, they had the opportunity to engage this market and they failed to do so. How much pity am I supposed to have now?

[rst]

Suck the profit out of the music industry and all you'll have left is crappily produced garage band shit music

Fail to provide for the demand and all you'll have left is a company that's producing things fewer and fewer people want. Basic economics.

[HL]

"and all you'll have left is crappily produced garage band shit music "

Which is what most pop music has been for the last, oh, FIFTY YEARS!

[D Lusional]

If the demand is that an industry provide its product for free, it's no surprise that it is not being met.

[Chuck Divine]

D_Lusional,

Know any artists? Yes, a few artists do get rich. Most do not. Most don't even make a living at it. Financially, I've lost money for several years now. I do my art for other benefits. Feel free to check out my art at
Chuck Divine's SF Art.

To get quality music once required a significant industrial apparatus unless you went to a live concert (not an inexpensive thing itself). Now, because of technological advance, it's possible to produce quality recordings with a relatively low investment. That's what's killing the RIAA. Well, that and really boring recordings.

[dhex]

and pricing. and the lack of a consistent fanbase.

then again, these things are hurting smaller labels as well - the shit garage bands mentioned earlier - and have severely lessened the available profits.

yet people still go to shows where there is no profit motive. is it possible that there are other motivations for human behavior than monetary gain?

speaking of which, i'll be playing at remote lounge in the downstairs video projection area this wednesday night for their monthly FTH party. http://www.fthnyc.com

for FREE! 🙂

heh, sorry, couldn't resist...

[StMack]

Live shows, beyond bar bands and dhex playing at the FTH party, are marketing events. The primary prupose of a concert tour is to generate record sales. Making money off the show comes a distant third behind wild sex with teenage groupies.

[rst]

If the demand is that an industry provide its product for free, it's no surprise that it is not being met.

That is not the demand, although for any product that is in demand there will always be a black market, that's just the way it goes; caveat venditor. Reality check, the internet did not create piracy.

Higher quality alternatives (MP3 is an old, low quality compression technique meant to be used as the soundtrack to MPEG-1/2 video files) were available to the industry before the Napster kid even took his SATs. That the music is free is a huge ancillary benefit to the bigger payoff, that the music is there and "now", no store or hassle required. The "freebie benefit" could have been easily mitigated had the industry actually engaged its competition on its competition's grounds. Maybe not streaming at first, but certainly downloads, and better than MP3. The industry saw it as piracy and nothing more (and it is for that lack of vision that they now suffer). Apparently you feel the same way. And you called me an idiot.

Anyone who tells you they went into the music business for the love of the music...

Heads up: there is more to music than what the music entertainment industry sells you.

[thoreau]

I used to support legal efforts to clamp down on file sharing. My mind didn't change because of somebody persuading me that we all have a "right" to free copies of the fruits of another person's creativity. Rather, I concluded that technology has made it impossible to legally defend a musician's intellectual property right without draconian measures.

Let's compare digital media with analog media:

Digital media is easy to reproduce with perfect or near-perfect accuracy. Analog media inevitably suffers at least a little degradation when copied, and the copying process takes more time.

Now, a book is a form of digital media in some sense (the information is contained in discrete characters rather than a continuously-varying parameter like magnetization on a tape or depth of the groove on a record). In principle one could copy a book (minus the pictures) with perfect fidelity simply by retyping it, or by producing a plate for a printing press rather than just sitting at a type-writer. But the process is slow (the typing or the preparation of the press will take a human going one character at a time if the material is being copied from a printed book rather than a computer file), and if I want to make large quantities (especially with the same original quality of a book, as opposed to some amateur print job) I need expensive equipment.

With electronic digital media, on the other hand, the copying and distribution process is much faster and cheaper.

The conclusion is that digital electronic media as a form of intellectual property is inherently insecure, and if it is to be protected we'll need to have Orin Hatch write a virus that destroys your computer when you illegally download copyrighted material. Or we'll need to herd countless file sharers into court. Or some other cumbersome task.

You might say that property rights are property rights, and that's that. OK, but for most forms of property rights the owner has at least some ability to defend it himself (e.g. build a fence, buy a gun, get a pit bull, install alarms, etc.). The owner can assume a certain amount of responsibility for preventing theft, and the number of people who will actually violate those property rights is relatively small (quick show of hands, how many people here have robbed a bank?). The task for the state is therefore reactive rather than pro-active.

With file-sharing, however, the intellectual property is so inherently insecure that constant intervention by the state (be it through law enforcement interdictions or lawsuits or whatever) is necessary. I view the state as something to resort to when things go wrong, not as something to be invoked constantly to keep an enterprise in motion.

So, basically, although I actually do sympathize with musicians to some extent, new technology has made it so that their old business model can only continue with constant state protection rather than the state as an insurance plan when somebody is undaunted by the measures musicians take to protect themselves.

So, the music industry needs a new business model. I don't know what it should be, I just know that the old model requires constant state intervention to survive against new technology.

For those who still aren't convinced, suppose that I owned property in the middle of a busy city block. Say that I had no fence or walls around my merchandise, no employees watching my merchandise at night, no alarms or surveillance cameras, etc. Who could blame the cops if they said "Look, we can't stop people from stealing your property if you have absolutely no measures in place to protect yourself. The thefts will be constant. Take some measures to reduce the thefts to a manageable number." I think we'd all agree that I should really take a certain amount of responsibility for protecting my property.

Digital electronic media is equally insecure, and until the industry finds a more secure business model they shouldn't expect state intervention.

[AJMB]

thoreau, as usual, makes a reasoned, well thought out argument. I still cannot get past the notion that theft is still theft, however. Isn't part of a libertarian philosophy a respect for the rights of others? If not, why should others respect yours? I need another doughnut.

[s.m. koppelman]

Respected and esteemed Mr. Carson:

Thanks for pointing out the Gary North piece. Decent stuff, but what's with the guy's free-floating misogyny? Gives me the heebie-jeebies, I tell you.

[AJMB]

Agreed thoreau. rst, I don't think I suggested you said it was justified, I was merely asking you for a threshold where stealing becomes o.k. As you said later, stealing gets you your music, so what do you care. Well, sarcastically of course, I like cars more than music, so where's the line?

[rst]

if the public is overpaying for their automobiles, fuel, name your consumer product, please tell me how long I have to wait befor I can feel justified in stealing an '04 Passat, diesel to run it, that new plasma T.V.? Just curious.

Who said it was justified? Learn to read before you post goddammit. Personally I couldn't care less whether it's right or wrong, it gets me music and that's the important part. What I said was the music industry deserved what they got and they'll get no pity from me on account of the demon they created.

[thoreau]

AJMB-

I fully agree that theft is theft, and I support the notion of intellectual property.

As to respecting the rights of others, here's what I propose: You have a right to demand that the state back you up in defending your property (e.g. if somebody breaks down your door, you have a right to call the cops). You do not have a right to expect the state to assume full responsibility for defending your property (e.g. expect the cops to stand guard around property that is protected by no fence, no wall, no door, no lock, no guard dog, no alarm, no armed owner, etc.).

Digital electronic media is essentially wide open property with zero protection short of what the state provides. The state can be expected to back someone up, but not to do the full job. If the music industry comes up with a more technologically secure business model I'll once again support their IP rights. But, for the moment, it seems that they're lobbying for things like requirements that all computer manufacturers put in safeguards against downloading copyrighted materials. This supports my argument that their current business model will collapse without the constant intervention of the state. (Thankfully those lobbying efforts have apparently failed for now.)

[rst]

(Thankfully those lobbying efforts have apparently failed for now.)

Not really. It's a felony to break into a password protected MS Word document that you created and keep on your own hard drive. It's a felony for me to give you a program that will make it so that PC games you bought and own and never distributed to anyone else won't ask you to put in the CD before you play them. It's the groundwork.

[popup blockers]

Found this link while searching Google, thanks