UPC victory in piracy case

krd wrote: »

Well? Have you been downloading the whole internet? I know people who've tried.

I think when it does go legit, it will be a much better situation for everyone. Instead of watching crappy hand cam copies of movies, you'll get to see the high quality version. You'll have to pay for it. But it will be worth your while.

jill_valentine wrote: »

First off, you want to put that 'tude back in the box.

Second, I'm not defending illegal downloading as an act itself. Nor am I condemning it, it's just the reality and it's far more complicated than either extreme would have you believe. I'm telling you, whether you like it or not, that it is not going to go away. For better or worse, it now defines the musical landscape and the only way to deal with it is to adapt. Getting narky because it doesn't suit you isn't going to make you more right.

Thirdly, don't patronise me by lecturing me on the ins and outs of the music industry as if I were some sort of space alien who wandered into this conversation without prior knowledge of anything. You tell me about how much music instruments cost - who paid for them before? People still bought their own guitars with the hopes that they'd someday do something with them. As I cited previously, even of the tiny fraction of lucky gits who managed to get a label deal on the strength of that stuff, 97% of them earned 600 dollars or less per year from the arrangement. And that's without wandering into the various pitfalls of being indentured to a particular label by advances etc.

While you're telling me about all the money those instruments cost, you neglect to mention that it's actually far cheaper to record now than it has been at any time in history. The fifteen thousand dollar minimum it used to cost just to hire a studio, engineer and producer is no longer necessarily a factor, and a clever viral idea can trump the entire marketing infrastructure of an established label's marketing department if it takes off.

Now, as for Pitchfork... Many, if not most of the music blogs I use are technically illegally sharing those files - as Pitchfork did before it had developed a name for itself, if I recall correctly. These blogs, which become the definitive tastemakers and platforms for new bands to be discovered, coast along illegally until they get so big that they have to go legit, just like the pirate radio stations of yore. Many music bloggers are musicians in their own right, by the way, something that tends to be weirdly overlooked. It's also generally through illegal downloading that many of the site reviewers acquire the music they review in the first place, at least to begin with. These are the little nuances that make this a far more complicated discussion than many are willing to admit. Failing to acknowledge the implications of internet exchange produces situations like that we saw earlier this year when IMRO advised a number of it's own members that they had no right to distribute their own music without paying for IMRO's permission first. But leave all that aside for a moment.

The fact is that I, and I daresay most folks of my demographic, discover most of my music from my peers. They put the Pee in P2P. Via forums much like this one, we discover and recommend music to each other and exchange albums under the table, and in doing so keep each other informed and engaged. Music blogs are an important element of that, but not the primary part of it. I abandoned radio years ago, and AFAIK, there are all of two Irish music television shows on at the minute, buried in the far end of the schedules. I hear far more music through my friends than I do through any other outlet, not just because it's free but because I trust their judgement and we have similar tastes. All of that is an illegal exchange, but without it I would end up spending far less on music than I do. I wouldn't follow up on acts, I wouldn't buy the records I do, I wouldn't go to the shows I go to, and I wouldn't be sitting here wearing a sixty dollar American Apparel hoody for a band that to my knowledge have only played this country once.

Again, let me stress this - I don't blame the old label system for all the ills of music, nor do I labour under any illusions about how "minted" anybody is; but the music industry needs to stop pretending that filesharing is the end of the world, or spending so much of their increasingly precious resources on hunting down the messengers.

The big labels failed to adapt, and it's mortally hurting them. Smaller labels and acts are in a far better position to take advantage of the lay of the land now, but people who intend to keep working in music need to come to terms with the following things:

1) You're not going to reverse the trend. You need to think of creative ways to generate income from your music. This includes live shows, merchandising, licensing, enhanced digital downloads like the example I've previously mentioned etc. There is no longer a direct correlation between the "price" and the "value" of music, it's a far more complex relationship.

2) You need to find ways to encourage people to buy directly from you, rather than ways to punish them for doing otherwise. You can't fight the entire internet. If you want them to buy a physical product, then give them something worth owning. If you want them to buy a digital product, take advantage of the format and do something cool with it. Neither of these have to be costly, they just have to be clever.

3) It is possible to do all of these things. Not every act or label will make it, but there's never been a time when every act or label would. There has always been an element of risk in the music industry; all that's happened is that the nature of that has changed, and the point in your career where it applies.