To a Mother Concerned About File-Sharing
MusicianWages.com, Music Careers at About.com and KnowtheMusicBiz.com have organized a group blogging event for today, April 16th. The event is based around a concerned mother’s situation regard her son’s downloading of songs through file sharing. Music blogger, like myself are encouraged to write a post addressing the concerns of this woman nammed Valerie. Here’s the comment by Valerie followed by my response:
I have a teenage son who tells me his pirating music is no big deal. Since he is a musician himself, I point out to him that someday that’s going to be his money people are stealing. But he remains unphased.
He tells me the record sales make money for the record label, not the artist. He says that the artists make all their money from touring and live concerts. He thinks the pirated music promotes the concerts and therefore helps the artist make more money. I still don’t allow pirating in my house.
But tell me what you think - as artists out there having your work “shared,” are you just glad to have it being enjoyed, or does it bother you? Admittedly, he is stealing music that is recorded by major record labels, so maybe its different than the independent musician working for his living. But I’d still like to hear what you think.
Thanks,
Valerie
The good new is, you’re right. The bad news is, you’re wrong.
You’re right in that your son shouldn’t share music and make himself prone to getting sued by the RIAA. It seems that in going after file sharers, the record industry has created an income stream. By taking part in file sharing, your son would be liable to pay thousands of dollars in a settlement fees to support an obsolete industry.
It sucks but it’s true.
Your son, however, is completely correct in his assertion that he is not stealing from the artist. The truth is that the record industry has been milking the artist since it began.
The business end of the record industry essentially exists for manufacturing and distribution and that’s it. The artist creates a product and handles most of the real heavy lifting as far as making a salable product. Once that’s done, the rest of the industry takes it, packages it and sends it to the world for a profit. Once they’ve done that, they begin to collect the proceeds; but the money that comes in doesn’t get split up just yet. In fact, the initial sales of the record never really make it to the artist because the record company usually turns to the artist to recoup the costs of producing and promoting the record.
Now the term “piracy” assumes that there’s a monetary component to downloading music. While it is true that this material is copyrighted intellectual property, your son has neither paid for it nor is he profiting from it. If he were taking this same music, burning it to a CD and selling it, or heavily sampling it, or somehow reproducing it and calling it his own that would be piracy, bootlegging or violating a copyright. He is simply sharing the music, which is where some of the controversy comes in.
Labels argue that this sharing eats into their bottom line. While it may true to some small extent, chances are that a track downloaded from a file sharing or torrent site would not have been otherwise bought by the person doing the downloading. It’s simple math really; the typical file sharer might download several thousand songs, the majority of which they would probably never have purchased due to how much it would cost. A typical downloader might download an entire album that contains one song that they know or like just to see if they’d be into the rest of the album.
Back in the day, before I owned an iPod and could sample and buy individual songs on iTunes, I bought countless CDs because I got into one or two songs and wanted to check out the band. Sometimes it was worth it and sometimes it wasn’t. The thing is, I couldn’t afford to do this with every song that I liked and I had to pick and choose the albums that I bought. Often, I tried to get recommendations from friends or I’d keep my ears open for other tracks from the album (it helped when record stores started adding open listening stations). While I bought a fair amount of music, I couldn’t afford to buy it all – and since I go to live shows as often as I can, would it have benefitted some bands if I could have given them a chance in my record collection?
Many bands are experimenting with various models that include providing free downloads of their album. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails released his album, The Slip as a free download with a collectable version
So to sum it up, you shouldn’t let your son download music on peer-to-peer networks for the simple reason that he might get sued, he’s not really “stealing” from any artists, the music that gets downloaded usually doesn’t get bought and the industry will probably end up giving the music away in the long run. I hope that clears up the situation as it currently stands.
… And may your son have widespread demand for his music be his largest problem.
