When going through my Google alerts today, I came across one for “Phish”, which had little to do with the band and more to do with the state of the record industry and why it’s still bad to be illegally acquiring music. David Steinberg, a huge Deadhead and Phishhead and mathematician/statistician, among other things, writes occasional columns for JamBands.com. In his most recent column, he writes about the demise of the downloading site oink and the lashing back the fans of oink gave. He is not a fan of illegally downloading and found 5 flawed points that are always tossed around when people are arguing in favor of illegal downloading.
Those 5 flawed points (with partial rebuttal):
- Record companies rip off the artists. It’s best to steal the albums and support them more directly.
There is a grain of truth to this. Record companies do engage in creative accounting skills to minimize royalties and have a history of siphoning off as much money as possible. However, the case against the companies does tend to be overstated.- Records should be used as free publicity.
As a practical matter, this plan has limits. If a band started handing out free discs in 1995, they would have had a chance to ride that publicity. When people are downloading hundreds (if not thousands in this age of terabyte hard drives) of artists at a time, it’s less likely that they’re making sure to give everyone a few bucks. If they could afford to do that, they wouldn’t have started downloading in the first place.- Bands should make money by touring.
While concerts are going to have to become a more important part of the music industry, this answer is not the panacea that its proponents think it is. The skills involved in creating a live show are similar but not identical to those used in crafting an album. Phish and the Dead never could quite get the studio to work for them the way that they wanted after all, so it shouldn’t be shocking that some artists are better in the studio.- Record companies are dinosaurs.
There’s no argument about the factual nature of that statement. The major labels have been fighting downloading from the days of Napster. Rather than evolving and finding other models, they’ve been content to try to use the legal system to keep their profits. However, using an antiquated model is not always a bad thing. Baseball teams make plenty of money off of the additional advertisements they’ve smuggled throughout the stadium, but the obsolete 1980s model was a much more pleasant experience.
- Even if it’s wrong, it’s great for the consumer to have infinite free albums.
At least that problem is not likely to be a permanent one. Right now we’re at the turning point. Money is flowing out of the system, but it isn’t actually affecting the budgets to create albums. That’s not sustainable. While there are people who can churn out amazing songs in their spare time after their day jobs, perfecting music takes time and energy. When you buy an album, part of what you’re paying for is the ability to albums to be created; the other models above force musicians to spend their time creating cool t-shirt logos instead of tweaking the lyrics of the second verse.The case against illegal downloads only goes so far. I wish that people would stop or at least just use downloads as a trial, but it’s hard to compete with free. Who has time to worry about the long-term consequences of their actions when they’re busy finding Pitchfork’s top 100 Indie Albums?
I will say that I completely agree with David on this one. There is no valid excusing for illegally downloading and not giving any money to the artists regardless of how much they might get ripped off by their record companies. The fact remains that those record companies do keep them alive to a degree. I suggest anyone who thinks that illegal downloading is a good thing go and read this. It may not change your mind, but you never know. Buy music, do it for the artists.
David’s own website contains a great collection of Phish stats and he runs a blog with other thoughts on music and life at Live Journal.
Even for artists who are not on a major label, who “churn out amazing songs in their spare time”, it still takes time and, if you want to do it right, money. Sure, anyone can record themselves and their guitar in their bedroom at their computer, and overdub some tracks, and throw it up on MySpace. But, if you want it to sound good, you have to get a sound engineer, and maybe a mastering engineer if you really want to do it right (btw - the best sound system I ever heard was in a mastering studio - but I digress).
These things cost money. That money comes out of the band members pockets. It’s not “free promotion” if the band gives the music away. Most bands who try to record an album on their own will likely never make all of that money back (unless they get really lucky). So, even removing the evil record companies from the equation, you should still pay for the music.
The record companies may be in danger of dying out to independent musicians who can distribute their music without having a label, but if people continue to think it’s ethical to get their music for free, those independent musicians will quickly die out as well.