Filesharing Rant 3.0

I try to see the artists' plight when they go on misinformed rants about how illegal downloading is destroying the music industry but I'm starting to see new reasons why they're wrong.

First, the claim that illegal downloading is hurting the music industry is false.  It may be hurting overall ALBUM sales but it's definitely not hurting the industry.  Buying a $.99 single on iTunes just doesn't provide the same income as an entire $12 album with 8 filler songs.  I would argue that legal sales of digital singles have done FAR more to hurt album sales than pirating ever will.  The people buying $.99 singles are the same ones who used to buy $12 albums.  The people downloading albums now are the same ones who used to copy their friends' cassettes.  And, as I've stated before, illegally downloading an album can, and does, lead to new ticket buyers, t-shirt purchasers, and, yes, even future single/album buyers.

Second, the music industry was built on impossibly inflated prices and unsustainable excess.  The old model of "release an album > sell millions(?) of copies > stop producing anything and live off the profits for years and years" sounds a little silly when you try to apply it to other professions.  I can't set-up and mail-out 20 computers in a week and then say "You know what?  I had a pretty good week.  I think I'll not come into work for a few months.  Just keep sending the royalty checks for my groundbreaking work to my home address."  That's ridiculous.

Artists should get paid for their work.  But don't expect us to make you a millionaire because you bought a thesaurus and auto-tune.  From my perspective, as a non-millionaire/aspiring professional musician, I would think that touring should make up the majority of profit for a band.

Also, let's talk about the lawsuits.

I'm going to start by saying that the RIAA is one small step away from the mafia.  They will attack 12-year-old girls and repeatedly wrongly accuse others.  They have a history of "sue first, then find actual evidence".  And now it seems that even when they win a judgement against known infringers they will be keeping the settlement money rather than sharing it with the artists they supposedly represent.

It is unfortunate that great new artists may be cut early, or not signed at all, because of lackluster album sales. But here's to hoping this will lead to a new breed of artists utilizing the very digital structure that took down the media conglomerates to start a "creation > self-distibution > self-promotion > profit" model for success.  And then maybe we can cut out the money-grubbing, exploitative loan sharks and pimps that permeate throughout the music industry.

The Ridiculousness of the RIAA

I just read yet another article about how file-sharing is destroying music and movies.  This gem of a quote came from the walking.....well....there's really no concise word for hypocritical, ego-maniacal, over-hyped, self-important, blow-hard, douchebag....I guess I'll just call him by his name (which I'm sure is his real name) Bono.  I would rather listen to Bozo sing Bavarian creme pie opera for about four days straight before I would voluntarily listen to Bono spout his earth-shattering revelations about saving the world.

He claims that file-sharing hurts the creators and gives huge profits to the ISPs.  Did I miss a part of the conversation where people were paying their ISPs for the music they were illegally downloading?  How does someone downloading, say, a U2 album, turn into profit for the ISP?  That part of the statement is ludicrous (not Ludacris.  I'm sure he's one of the affected artists).  But the portion about artists being hurt is more debatable.  I understand that it would be taking the MASSIVE 5-10% per CD profit that they might see, eventually.  But that's not the only way artists make money.

Let's do the math.  You buy a CD for $15.  Crazy price, but roll with me.  Let's say the artist gets 10%.  That's $1.50.....before taxes and God knows what else. (Check out this blog post by Steve Albini, the producer for Nirvana's In Utero album.  10% is probably being super generous unless they've already sold a ton of copies.)   Multiply that by 1 Million downloads, and subtract the taxes, and you're right around $1 Million being supposedly taken from them.  But suppose that 10% of these people really enjoy the music and want to support the artist.  That's 100,000 people.  Some of them may use P2P as an on-demand radio; scanning through albums to see if they like it and then heading to Best Buy or iTunes to buy the album.  We'll get to these people in a moment.  But let's say they don't even do that.  Let's say they go with the "Screw them.  I already have the music.  Why would a pay for it again?" mantra.  What happens when the person wants to see the artist live?  Or have a great concert t-shirt?  Are they going to be able to log onto The Pirate Bay and download a ticket?  Absolutely not.  Let's get back to the 100,000 on-demand radio people.  Of the 100,000 file-sharers, let's say 1% actually go see the artist live.  I'm assuming tickets would be around $30.  (Way, WAY, low for some artists, I know.)  That would be $30,000.  Not a ton of money but's it's $30,000 more than they would have seen if that evil, malicious file-sharing scum hadn't illegally obtained the music.

Let's back up for just a second.  The music and movie industry likes to pretend that every illegal download equals one less sale.  Get real.  You're telling me that someone who downloads the entire U2 discography (I'm sticking with the metaphor here) would have bought all 12 "mind-expanding" masterpieces?  I think not.  More than likely it robbed them of four or five of their most popular songs from iTunes.  So rather than robbing the artist of $180 per discography (12 albums at $15 a piece), they're realistically losing about five bucks.

I don't want to sound like someone who doesn't care about the artist.  As a musician myself, I think about these things quite often.  Ideally, each artist would be well compensated for their art.  But if I had to choose between getting screwed out of money by a huge conglomerate-style record company and having someone who might actually care about the music getting it illegally, I would honestly take the latter.  If we take one last look at the math we'll see that the artist could actually come out better that way.  1,000 album sales might net the artist $80 or so.  But if two people, out of 1,000 illegal downloads, buy $30 concert tickets for them and a friend, that's $120.  Probably a net of $100, maybe $110.

Obviously, the record company might not want to finance the recording of another album if the artist didn't bring them money.  But if a band became popular through this newest iteration of bootleg cassette tapes then they would make plenty of money for the record company through other means.  I'm obviously speaking in ideals here.  But I honestly don't see this as a huge erosion of the music industry.  If anything else, the record companies have spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to shove the next big thing down our throat, whether we want it or not.  Is it any wonder that album sales are down when the Black Eyed Peas won THREE Grammies this year?  THREE?  What a joke.

I guess what I'm trying to say is:  The sky is not falling.  The bottom has not fallen out of the music sales barrel.  Pirates are not ruining the music industry.

Support the artists, give us better music, and give us more opportunities to legally obtain that music.  This is my request for the music industry.

I eagerly await your unified and unanimous response.

Love, Andy