How Pirates Will Change The Entertainment Industry
Written by Matt Mason on January 19, 2008The Internet is in its infancy. Electronic information still travels along copper wires left over from the industrial revolution, but the information age is about to hit puberty. Fiber optic cables are sprouting in unexpected places. The piracy and chaos we are collectively experiencing is growing pains.
For a few awkward years, the situation is only going to get worse. But soon enough the labels, studios and every other paranoid media owner will have to stop acting like petulant teenagers. The time has come to address piracy with some real, sustainable solutions that consumers will support. The time has come for the entertainment industry to grow up.
ACT I: THE SET-UP
Current system is shot to hell. Heads buried firmly in sand.
A few months ago, the writer and NYU professor Clay Shirky told me he thought DRM was a “nostalgic” idea. Nostalgic is the best adjective I’ve heard to describe how most large entertainment companies think about controlling their content in a digital era. Big media continue to view the situation through rose-tinted spectacles while consumers see red. When being a pirate is the easiest way for people to access the content they want in the format they want it in, then something has gone very, very wrong.
There isn’t a moral defense for stealing in most cases. But there isn’t a moral defense for invading people’s privacy and imposing draconian laws to protect outdated, crumbling business models either. Music and movie piracy is rampant because over the last ten years, the market has utterly failed to provide a wide range of preferable legitimate solutions. If this continues as bandwidth increases and download speeds accelerate, the entertainment industry will be left in ruins. Many think that needs to happen for new business models to form. I think those currently in power simply need to grow a set and confront the reality of the situation.
So far the search for new revenue streams by the big labels and studios has only turned up one that they seem to be comfortable with: the legal department. It’s impossibly difficult and expensive for the average consumer to use music legally in podcasts, on websites, in remixes, or in public speeches for example. But if you do decide to use music illegally, it’s entirely possible that a huge team of lawyers will come at you like a troop of rabid spider-monkeys. Instead of looking at real solutions, all the labels seem to be doing is exacerbating their problems.
Pretending the current laws or legitimate options for consuming movies and music online are in some way going to stop piracy from turning the entire entertainment business into a giant anarchic swap-meet is like pretending recycling plastic water bottles will single-handedly end global warming. The problem is the entertainment business doesn’t recognize the giant anarchic swap-meet for what it really is; a great way for them to make a ton of money.
ACT II: CONFRONTATION
Licenses replace sales. Labels accept reality, or die.
CD sales are in freefall, (the arrival of the Mac Book Air this week was perhaps the final death knell for the format) and the legal department is clearly not a viable long-term revenue stream. A more efficient way to monetize how we consume music online (and other goods with zero marginal production costs) is not to think about monetizing them in terms of sales, but instead in terms of licenses.
This is already beginning to happen. Deals like the “Comes With Music” partnership struck between Universal and Nokia last month may feel like “one step forward, two steps back”, but at least we’re finally heading in the right direction. And the fact that all the majors are starting to work with legitimate file-sharing models like iMeem is encouraging.
The solution we are slowly moving towards is a voluntary collective license for music, which consumers could choose to pay, or not. It needs to work all over the world. National boundaries don’t apply to this kind of information anymore. To pretend they do is as nostalgic a notion as DRM.
Organizations such as ASCAP or the BMI could fulfill this role. This system wouldn’t be a tax; there would be no cap on the amount of money an artist or label could earn, innovation would not be stifled. Bennet Lincoff wrote a paper this time last year which I believe could be the answer. The EFF is also supportive of a similar solution, which they outlined in a 2004 paper:
“The concept is simple: the music industry forms a collecting society, which then offers file-sharing music fans the opportunity to “get legit” in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, say $5 per month. So long as they pay, the fans are free to keep doing what they are going to do anyway—share the music they love using whatever software they like on whatever computer platform they prefer—without fear of lawsuits. The money collected gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of their music.
“In exchange, file-sharing music fans will be free to download whatever they like, using whatever software works best for them. The more people share, the more money goes to rights-holders. The more competition in applications, the more rapid the innovation and improvement. The more freedom to fans to publish what they care about, the deeper the catalog.”
Under this system, the internet would work exactly as broadcast radio does. As the EFF proposal points out, “songwriters originally viewed radio exactly the way the music industry today views KaZaA users—as pirates. After trying to sue radio out of existence, the songwriters ultimately got together to form ASCAP (and later BMI and SESAC). Radio stations interested in broadcasting music stepped up, paid a fee, and in return got to play whatever music they liked, using whatever equipment worked best.”
We have a system where infringement by many pirates affects the ability of rights holders to license music legally to the few media companies that can afford it. What we need is a model where infringement by a few pirates will not affect the ability for rights holders to license music to the many law abiding broadcasters who want to use it.
Sure, there is good money in making it very difficult to license music, and charging a few people a lot for the privilege. But it’s likely there is a lot more money in making it very easy to license music to a lot of people for very little.
This wouldn’t just allow individual users to share songs legally - it would create new opportunities for a lot of sites to start selling music, which is a good thing. The entertainment industry has made it very clear it would prefer not to be beholden to a small handful of stores like iTunes, an anti-competitive situation which isn’t great for consumers either. It’s a monumental task, but it would create jobs and wealth and probably a lot of opportunities we can’t even see yet.
ACT III: RESOLUTION
A viable entertainment industry unfolds. New revenue streams spring forth.
The truth is we still need middlemen in the entertainment business. It’s just they stopped doing their jobs properly, so we decided to stop paying them. But if the industry embraces the way millions of people have been consuming their products for the last decade, there will be no longer be a reason for consumers to defend piracy. There will be more money for artists. There will be more commercial opportunities to distribute wider varieties of content. Publishing will grow. There will be a larger entertainment industry with more revenue streams, making more money than it does now. Once the benefits of sharing content in a more liberal fashion are widely understood, our definition of fair use will likely change as well, meaning a wealth of new non-profit driven content and culture will be created at the same time. I think that definition will look something like Tim Wu’s: “It is time to recognize a simpler principle for fair use: work that adds to the value of the original, as opposed to substituting for the original, is fair use. In my view that’s a principle already behind the traditional lines.”
Confronting the reality of where the traditional lines really are, and where the new ones have been drawn by the consumers (the people who really make the rules) is the only long-term solution to the pirate’s dilemma the entertainment industry faces. It is, in this instance, the only way the industry will ever stop piracy. It is the right thing to do, and it will force the rest of us to start doing the right thing too. When the entertainment industry decides to grow up about file sharing, the rest of us will have no choice but to do the same.
For those who are interested, my book: “The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism” is out now through Free Press, and probably soon on a BitTorrent tracker near you ;).
Previously: European Politicians Launch Pro-Filesharing Campaign
Next: Music Industry Got An Injunction Against Rapidshare in 2007, Site Not Shut Down
76 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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If we agree to pay to the music industry (not the artists) for providing absolutely no service it’ll be the crowning glory of capitalism. The major record labels no longer engage in music distribution but in the restriction of distribution.
The introduction of such a fee is like paying someone not to bully you. Never before will it be so apparent that the people on the top do nothing.
…But I’m not worried, because there are so many problems with a flat rate fee that I don’t think it’ll be introduced, unless it’s done on the sly, and even then it probably won’t last.
… there should be some model of payment though. I think at the moment the best possible model would be voluntary payment straight to the artists. Even if only 1/5th of people pay by cutting out the middle man the bands are still making far more money than they would have anyway. I think such a model would grow in effectiveness over time if it became the norm.
Also I don’t think a live shows/merchandise only model is plausible, because artists should not be forced to play live. Many artists dislike playing live, and they should still be rewarded for great studio work.
If the large content suppliers are looking for ways to give people what they want all they have to do is ask. A plan I thought up whilst eating my lunch one day is as follows:
We acquire licenses to run software (the physical media is not what we are paying for). iTunes appears to be trying to do the same for music/video. Now the concept of not physically owning the film/album is something that is increasingly irrelevant. CD’s are cool but once you have 500 of the damn things to store/move it gets silly. Suppose the content creators create and sell licenses to access a given piece of entertainment. You get access to that media in all the existing formats (so tape, cd, mp3 or vhs, dvd, bluray at the moment). You pay the same or less than you would to buy it in the stores. But instead of running on a digital tread mill where your purchase becomes useless the next time there is a change in the underlying technology you have the ability to pay a percentage fee of your media collection to upgrade the license and acquire it in the next format. No need to buy a new disk in the right format as there is no disk just download at your convenience. The incentive then becomes to create better and better technology to experience the media as the content creators can pump you for more cash.
The downside is that I dont think the content creators could cooperate enough to make a scheme like this universal. Why bother innovating when you can litigate…
A system like that would be awesome to raise the standard for the average person, definitely.
We get our culture this way. Fair is fair, although people who want to circumvent such a system will always be around.
Fuck those. It’d still be good so the average man doesn’t have to worry about becoming a scapegoat. And let’s not forget that leechers are not just the pirates, but the proprietors.
People will always pirate, as you say. The content creators need to realise that the vast majority of people do not pirate because they cannot afford to buy the media- It’s a case of convenience. People who cannot afford to buy the media can and will pirate but until there is a 3rd option of a future proof means to legitimately buying media every potential customer they have has no reason not to pirate.
At Bong Wizard:
“For everyone I know, the thousands of miles that seperate (sic) them and that gang of lawyers gives them enough security that they are gonna keep “pirating” until the day they die.”
That maybe the case for everyone you know, but you are the minority here. Most people don’t download to ‘show that they are better than someone else.’ It’s not about vandalism or some cause to your average kid filling up their iPod. Most people do it because it’s the most convenient way to get music, or because they think $0.99 is too expensive for an mp3 file. If the labels come down in price and make it just as easy to share legit music, most of us wouldn’t steal, and piracy would be less of a problem. But I agree, it’s never going to go away completely, it never has.
“The structure you’ve suggested will work great at first, but just like the structure of today, eventually record labels will start raping us for license fees and hunting down people who don’t pay them.”
Do radio stations do this? Does cable TV? Not on a large scale in the US or Europe (although cable networks do this in some parts of the Caribbean for example, because so many people pirate it – but that’s because legit cable is too expensive for most people there. Piracy is a sign of an inefficient system). Licenses work better in the long term than anarchy – and like you say, history repeats itself. At the birth of the record industry, Hollywood, cable TV, radio – there was piracy, anarchy and chaos at the beginnings of each – and in each case society eventually worked out a system that most people thought was fair and were willing to abide by. It will happen again with file sharing. And when it stops being fair – or when some new disruptive technology comes along, there will be more piracy. In fact if the current situation isn’t eventually legitimized and monetized, it will be the first time in history it has happened.
At What A Dipshit Idea:
“The fact of the matter is, NOBODY is going to pay for something if they can get it free… If you or anyone else thinks that someone is going to pay for something when they can get it free then you’re on the pipe homeboy”
Right. Then explain to me why the bottled water industry in the US is worth over $8 billion dollars. Bottled water is sold for between 240 and 10,000 times the cost of water that comes out of our taps, which is some of the cleanest in the world, and exactly the same in almost every way. Nevertheless, there are water sommeliers at some fine restaurants to advise us on what kind of water we should enjoy with our meals. That’s a lot of crack heads, homeboy.
People are irrational by nature, and more than willing to pay for many types of goods and services they can get for free if there is a good story/brand behind them that conveys social status, or if that good or service is in some way more convenient than the free option. I think a lot of people would pay $5 a month to support the artists they liked, especially if the record industry was smart enough to make people feel good about supporting artists rather than treating all music consumers as potential criminals.
A lot more would do it if it was more convenient and easy to use than torrents. This whole thing hasn’t been a technological disaster for the music industry – the real problem is it was a missed opportunity that turned into a PR disaster.
At Cain:
I was referring to the idea that the only way to effectively monitor all piracy would be to monitor every PC and every user, which is draconian, and something the entertainment industry would like to do if it could. I wholeheartedly believe in property rights, intellectual property rights and I believe all people should be compensated for their work. But I also believe in privacy laws and free speech, both of which are constantly being violated by people using copyright law to get stuff the don’t like taken down and spy on consumers in ways they’ve never been allowed to do before. The laws congress wants to impose on file-sharers are unreasonable at best and unconstitutional at worst. I suggest you take a look at the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007.
At b:
Your proposal is not quite the butt-kicker you think it is because:
1. To only measure streaming will not give you an accurate picture of the music people are consuming, because most of us are listening to mp3s we’ve downloaded, which is much more convenient than streaming. Sure, it’s going to be very hard to monetize/legitimize the current situation, but it’s impossible to change consumer behavior at this point from downloading to streaming. That will just lead to even more piracy. It might change in time, but in the meantime here’s a better idea: measure both.
2. The idea of having this happen through one site is terrible. Right now we have the music industry existing, for the most part, because of five big companies. You think it will get better under one big company? Come on. What we need is a license system that works in the free market and allows many companies to compete at the same level – this will keep prices low and ensure efficiency. I do like the idea of streaming counting towards royalties as well as downloads though.
3. Read the two links I included to the EFF’s solution and Bennet Lincoff’s. We could measure this accurately and ensure artists were recognized, probably better than we’ve ever been able to. Users who sign up to such services could choose to have their listening/downloading habits tracked (but ensure that only these habits were tracked), so the artists they like get paid royalties. Less money would go to artists you don’t like because there would be no radio station payola, and less industry politics between fans and artists. The music industry would be more democratic than it has ever been. I don’t understand why people think this would be so hard. We put a man on the moon people - we can come up with a new ratings/measurement system similar to ones we have previously come up with. Companies like Big Champagne are in fact already doing this on a small scale. The only reason we haven’t done so on a large scale is because government and the industry won’t get behind the idea.
At oneplusone:
Why don’t musicians have the same right to earn a living as everyone else? Talented people in any field have the right to make money from what they do – to say they don’t mean talent isn’t worth anything.
I’m sorry you have to have a day job and a neck problem, I think it would be better if you could earn money from your music (I haven’t heard your music, so I’m not sure what the problem really is here). It’s great that we can all make stuff on Fruityloops, but I’m glad we have a choice between that and music that costs a lot of time, money, manpower and effort to create, even though music made without big budgets is often better.
Piracy is a good idea when the free market isn’t doing its job. But if you really think money should never change hands for any kind of creative work, or indeed work, I’m sure there’s a commune in Vermont that would be happy to have you.
At qm2003:
“Music CDs, Movie DVDs and computer games are FREE PROMOTIONAL TOOLS to get people into concerts, cinemas or online games where they MIGHT spend SOME money. But only if you offer QUALITY.”
They can be, sure, but this isn’t a great way to make movies, games and music (games and music especially) that require a lot of investment. Hollywood is making money despite rampant piracy, but that doesn’t mean the money made from rampant piracy shouldn’t go back to the studios, it just means the studios should lower their DVD prices.
At #23:
I don’t think plastic discs of any kind will disappear altogether (I still buy vinyl – totally agree with you about sound quality. Sales of that doubled last year in the UK) but I do think the CD will stop being the way most people consume music – they only account for 25% of all the money the music industry makes at present, this figure is dropping every year, while mp3 quality and download speeds are improving. The Mac Book Air isn’t the reason – it’s just a sign of the times. It’s a bad idea to bring up ‘Discmans’ when making this argument – I can’t remember the last time I saw one of those.
Consumers want entertainment on demand and until we get it we will continue to pirate entertainment.
ha ha! this rocks! FCK YOU RIAA! he should have posted bittorrent, emule, limewire links in every page. oh… and a picture with a naked lady.. now that would be the best thing ever.
this article is so naive… It comes from the right feelings, but the “solutions” provided are so unpractical… impossible to actually implement…
“voluntary tax” has got to be the biggest oxymoron I’ve since since “President George Bush”… A flat $5 for everyone in the world? You realize some people would rather get food for their family than download music from a computer they’ll never have with those $5 do you?
That’s just one of the most flagrant flaws from the countless other ones in this article…
The music industry is dead, it will not adapt. They don’t care about the music, never did. In “music industry” another oxymoron… the only word that counts is “industry.” What we’re witnessing is not the fight between pirates and the RIAA, it’s a fight between Music, and Industry. Thankfully, music’s been around for a few more thousands of years than the “industry” so the outcome is clear.
As long as we can sing in the shower, they won’t stop the revolution.
They can get themselves a new job, or die, I couldn’t care less. They screwed consumers and artists alike for long enough to deserve NO compassion.
@Matt
‘Right. Then explain to me why the bottled water industry in the US is worth over $8 billion dollars. Bottled water is sold for between 240 and 10,000 times the cost of water that comes out of our taps, which is some of the cleanest in the world, and exactly the same in almost every way.’
Except that if I walked into a store and was given a choice whether to pay $1 for a bottle of water or get it for free, I’d take free every time. The reason why most people buy bottled water is because in a lot of cases, it is more convenient to hit 7-11 while out and about than to drive around looking for a water fountain. But this is not exactly the same thing as voluntarily paying for something I could get for free. I’m not offered a choice whether to pay for the water or not when I walk up to the counter with it.
‘I think a lot of people would pay $5 a month to support the artists they liked, especially if the record industry was smart enough to make people feel good about supporting artists rather than treating all music consumers as potential criminals.’
I think you greatly overestimate the goodness of mankind :) If you said to me, “You can either download this song and pay for it or download it for free”, there’s no way hell I”m going to pay for it.. EVER! A couple of other commenters have chimed in with similar thoughts, so you know it’s not just me.
You can call me a greedy and heartless bastard if you want, and you’d probably be right. But any system that relies on the kindness of people’s hearts in order to succeed is apt to fail every single time. I’m not saying that some people wouldn’t choose to pay, but I believe the majority would not.
@ Wack:
It’s not a voluntary tax - it’s a license, a free market solution. Do you think paying for HBO is an involuntary tax as well? Those poor HBO subscribers! Smash the system!
You’re right, it probably wouldn’t be flat all over the world, there would be some market separation I’m sure, and rightly so (and I’m not sure how well this would work in say China for example), but it would certainly work in the west. The point is if we decide to use the market rather than the courts to fix this problem, we probably will.
The music industry isn’t dead, the plastic disc industry is dead. Live music is in rude health. Merchandising is making money, as are ringtones, mp3 sales and almost every other aspect of the music business. Most people value music, and the artists who make it, and will gladly pay them. They just don’t want to buy plastic discs from the plastic disc industry anymore.
@ Darius - Look at some of the literature on the bottled water industry. You’re totally wrong about why this works. If you live in the west, you DO have this choice. Yet a bottled water market persists.
People buy stories, statements and experiences rather than products, I know that sounds like ad-industry talk, but we have an ad industry because it happens to be true.
We pay for cable. Radio is ad-supported or we pay for it in some cases. The problem with music is the system changed, and the old price is wrong.
I don’t see any reason why this model can’t be introduced if the music industry changes the story it is selling, and it’s price, and makes free legal music convenient the way you rightly point out bottled water is convenient.
“…like iTunes, an anti-competitive situation which isn’t great for consumers either.”
hahahahaha
@ Matt Mason
At oneplusone:
Why don’t musicians have the same right to earn a living as everyone else? Talented people in any field have the right to make money from what they do – to say they don’t mean talent isn’t worth anything.
I’m sorry you have to have a day job and a neck problem, I think it would be better if you could earn money from your music (I haven’t heard your music, so I’m not sure what the problem really is here). It’s great that we can all make stuff on Fruityloops, but I’m glad we have a choice between that and music that costs a lot of time, money, manpower and effort to create, even though music made without big budgets is often better.
Piracy is a good idea when the free market isn’t doing its job. But if you really think money should never change hands for any kind of creative work, or indeed work, I’m sure there’s a commune in Vermont that would be happy to have you.
******************************
I agree, but the model as it exists is one of whining. I just quit paying. I don’t have a problem with working. It has to be done. It keeps me grounded. Keeps me real, so to speak.
Music is awesome. Nut it isn’t the end-all, be-all. If other artists want to make their daily bread from it, so be it. I don’t have a problem with their trying. Just don’t bitch about piracy and theft after the fact. Too many factors are at play to be able to pin it on filesharers.
Musicians can be an elitist bunch. I am willing to bring ‘em down a peg or two when it’s required. (And, yes, that’s when I perceive they need it.) That time is now. I’m sorry.
@ oneplusone:
All artists can be an elitist bunch, as can accountants and ant-farmers, that alone is not a good excuse for stealing. And they are coming down a peg or two. Look at what happened this summer with Radiohead, Madonna and others leaving the majors. This is the watershed moment. Musicians are listening to fans even if the labels are not.
There are two kinds of pirates, those who do something good for society (even if unintentionally) and those who do not. Pirates create debate about what is right, and what is wrong, and when the pirates are doing something useful, eventually it becomes legitimized.
This process is inevitable, and I hope that it means artists like yourself will have more opportunities to make a living by doing what you love, and fans will be able to support you at a price that’s right. If we can get to this point, there will no longer be a good excuse for piracy.
I’d like to add my 2 cents.
At this moment, I’m listening to a streaming radio station from San Francisco, CA. It happens to be the only independently owned and operated station in the area. It also happens to play the best music, in my personal opinion. Would I pay them $5 per month?
Yes.
Why would I pay this? Understand I’m living on disability income, and living in one of the more expensive cities in the US, so it’s not like I just have money to burn, after all I could just pirate the MP3s off of BitTorrent.
I’d pay it because I enjoy the music and want to support the artists. Like everyone else, the artists have to pay their rent and food bills too.
If I’d pay $5 per month, would I pay $10? (Let’s assume for a moment that whatever agency that collected the fees got greedy..) - Most likely not. Why? Because although I like the music, I don’t like it *that* much, especially when i can just pirate it inside of 5 minutes at my keyboard.
I think artists deserve support from their fans, but I do believe their should be a system in place where they get slapped down if they get too greedy and start to try to artificially limit the supply of music if we don’t pay fees that are out of line.
Anyone have thoughts on this comment?
[quote comment="267713"]“The solution we are slowly moving towards is a voluntary collective license for music, which consumers could choose to pay, or not. … The money collected gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of their music.”
This won’t work, Matt.
1. How do you accurately measure popularity? So much music is shared over private file transfers between friends. And soon a lot of that will be encrypted.
2. Even if you measure popularity accurately, it won’t seem fair. If I’m listening to Cordell Klier, Manufactura, and Black Lung, why should my five bucks a month enrich Britney Spears and Linkin Park instead? Why pitch in when most of it goes to artists I don’t like?
Here’s what I’ve suggested before and suggest again. A Last.fm-like site (Last.fm itself probably doesn’t have the balls to do this) tracks your listening habits, gives recommendations and so on. You can “subscribe” to the site at a monthly price you choose ($2, $50, whatever), and half that money goes to artists based on how much YOU listen to them in that month.
This kicks your proposal’s ass because:
1. Measures actual LISTENING, not how many people have a copy of the music. I’ve both downloaded and bought so much shit I never play.
2. My money only goes to artists I LIKE. Not artists the majority like, that are marketed well, or whatever the fuck.
3. Artists whose fans care do well. As for artists who only get listened to because they’re there? They suffer. Rightly fucking so.
To make it even better, have the Last.fm-clone site offer torrent downloads too. Only tracks their users are legally allowed to share count towards the artist payments. This isn’t necessary for the idea to work, but it would free the music even faster.
Could this actually happen? Yes. There’s tons of netlabel music that’s legal to share already. If this existed, I would sign up today.[/quote]
Check out Yahoo! Music Jukebox; its a pay-to-rent/discover service.
You pay them money, and they stream you music that either a) you have already indicated you like, or b) their software and other consumers with similar interests recommend.
Then you just listen non-stop to new and good music.
They also let you rate each song you listen to, so they can further refine their search for music you might like.
I’d listen to it, but it used to be free, and it used to be available to Canadians; now it is neither.
But maybe they stuck with the concept they had when it Was free?
#5, with all due respect, this is a flawed analogy. The online world is concerned with content that costs virtually nothing to reproduce. Of course a brick and mortar store would get cleaned out if they gave their products away for free!
I’d pay. Right now I buy a CD, rip it to my laptop and almost never open the box again.
Alternatively I can download the tracks I like and have the music ready to transfer to my phone/mp3 plater in half the time…cutting out on packaging and the effort it takes to persuade parents to give me a lift or catch the train. Downloading is the future…the entertainment industry must accept this.
I like the idea of a ‘music license’ which you could pay every month, say $5 every year for $50 and a five year license could cost $200…either way they’d make more money.
CD’s are dying-go in any music shop and the shelves are mostly full.
I’d pay. Right now I buy a CD, rip it to my laptop and almost never open the box again.
Alternatively I can download the tracks I like and have the music ready to transfer to my phone/mp3 player in half the time…cutting out on packaging and the effort it takes to persuade parents to give me a lift or catch the train. Downloading is the future…the entertainment industry must accept this.
I like the idea of a ‘music license’ which you could pay every month, say $5 every year for $50 and a five year license could cost $200…either way they’d make more money.
Cd’s are dying-go in any music shop and the shelves are mostly full.
I believe the way the PRS collects royalties for performance of music in public places such as pubs is a licence fee that is divied up amongst the most popular artists. I recall hearing that artists are dissatisfied with the fairness of this system. I wonder if anyone else here has heard the same thing. It would certainly be an important example of whether blanket licensing can work in the way this article discusses.
In terms of piracy I have a few friends working in the professional music industry. They have many years of experience and extensive skills in the production and engineering of music, some of which includes classical music. Most of these guys earn poor salaries for what they do but without their contribution many movies, great albums and singles probably wouldn’t happen. I wonder if music technology can make it all appear too easy. I suspect some music genres would fair better than others in a world where there isn’t enough money changing hands to employ the teams of people needed to produce it. I suspect quality would also deteriorate.
Overall, I like your sentiment here. Most of your points ring true. Piracy is morally indefensible (although, after making that statement, you spend way too much time explaining and justifying it). Music (without DRM and with higher quality) should be available in the easiest possible manner. But that’s not our biggest problem. Our biggest problem the lack of conscience involved with the pirates. There is a segment of people who will start paying, if a license program should become an option. But, there will never be wide compliance without a crackdown on privacy. I’m not saying I want it. But the pirates make it necessarily. And yes, it’s an unwieldy beast. But it’s a-comin’…because Shawn Fanning taught everyone that it was OK to steal, “just because you can”. It’s gonna take another generation to repair the damaged consciences. But, I applaud you for trying to come up with an option…and I think this is more realistic than most of the others do. It’s just that there will not just be a small remnant stealing once it’s in place…there’s a HUGE segment who will continue to steal.
[quote comment="268110"]At b:
Your proposal is not quite the butt-kicker you think it is because:
1. To only measure streaming will not give you an accurate picture of the music people are consuming, because most of us are listening to mp3s we’ve downloaded, which is much more convenient than streaming.[/quote]
Last.fm consists of plugins for various media players. You install them and it counts every song play from your hard drive. As long as you’re listening on a computer (or in some cases, an iPod… it’s possible to get it to track that too), it counts.
[quote]2. The idea of having this happen through one site is terrible. Right now we have the music industry existing, for the most part, because of five big companies. You think it will get better under one big company? Come on.[/quote]
True enough, but is that any worse than one royalty pool managed by one agency, as you are suggesting? The network effect would be the only barrier to competition for this service, and that problem is not the least bit unique to my suggestion — (ask any Facebook user who has friends on Myspace etc).
[quote]Users who sign up to such services could choose to have their listening/downloading habits tracked (but ensure that only these habits were tracked),[/quote]
This sounds like Last.fm, so again, you’re not quite clear on what it does. It’s already been done!
We are more or less in agreement except that you think my $5 should be distributed based on the most popular artists globally. I think it would be much easier to justify signing up if my $5 is distributed based on MY favorite artists.
I just hope that after the month expires, the files will still be there and playable.
Looks very interesting. Will read later.
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