Swedish Artists Want to Legalize Filesharing
Written by Ernesto on April 01, 2008A recent survey among Swedish musicians has found that 38% of the artists want filesharing to be be legalized. The artists argue that sharing their files on p2p-networks could promote their work, especially in the early stages of their career.
There is a difference in age when it comes to the outcome of the survey, which was conducted by Sydsvenskan. Older artists who have been around for some years, long before filesharing even existed, tend to be more critical, saying they’ve lost 80% of their sales with no increase in revenue from another sources.
Younger artists that broke through in the era of filesharing are more positive and see it as something that actually helps their career. One of the artists said: “Where I am now, filesharing is positive and makes good PR. If I were to get bigger, I believe it would affect me negatively.”
There are older artists who think that filesharing could benefit them, one of them noted: “You can look upon filesharing as a way of promotion, a way of putting new stuff out there.”
One of the Swedish artists who definitely profited from file-sharing is the Swedish glam rock band “Lamont”. The band was featured on on The Pirate Bay frontpage last year. Not without success, over 100,000 people downloaded their album in less than 24 hours, numbers that other artists can only dream of.
At the time Brokep told TorrentFreak that they love to support bands who are willing to share their music using BitTorrent. And indeed, a little later The Pirate Bay supported Familjen, which resulted in a Grammy win for the band.
Perhaps these might be two extreme examples, but there is ample evidence that most artists actually profit from filesharing, even without The Pirate Bay.
The survey further found, and this might also come as a shock to the record labels, that a majority of the artists, 59%, admit to having downloaded copyrighted music themselves.
Although nearly half of the respondents had a favorable opinion towards filesharing, 58% of the artists still think that that sharing copyrighted material should be illegal.
One of the artists was rooting for a pirate crackdown, as he said: “My wish is that the punishment will be harder and that it will become easier to catch filesharers. I think all musicians should go to parliament and grab those politicians.”
The survey further showed that a majority of the participants in the survey are angry at the record companies. One of the musicians said: “For 50 years, the sole purpose of record companies has been trying to grab as much money away from the artists as possible. Now, suddenly they’ve become some kind of interest group for the artists and that’s not true.”
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[quote]No where does it say “MOST” artists, just ‘artists’ meaning more then one.
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They say “swedish artists” like it’s the artists as a whole, or majority.
If they wanted to say that it was just a few, they should have said “some swedish artists”.
[quote comment="327562"][quote]No where does it say “MOST” artists, just ‘artists’ meaning more then one.
[/quote]
They say “Swedish artists” like it’s the artists as a whole, or majority.
If they wanted to say that it was just a few, they should have said “some Swedish artists”.[/quote]
But saying “some Sweedish artists” makes for a clumsy sounding headline. Headlines gotta conserve space, so they don’t go into that much detail. The headline “Sweedish artists” lets you know that some group of Swedish artists of considerable size and influence support filesharing, and then you are supposed to read the article to find out how much.
It seems that many musos are so dumb they think music sharing should be banned even though it’s ok to download it, or at least for them. Self-centred and short-sighted?
Wow. I felt like I was reading an article by the Iraqi Information Minister.
If only 38% support it, than the story is that the majority of Swedish artists do NOT want to legalize filesharing. I suspect that artists in other countries are even less happy with it.
Also, %59 may have downloaded in the past. That does not mean that they still do it. Many people used Napster, back in the old days, but have since moved on to iTunes or something else.
Mork Mork Mork.
I am a debut artist who’s just recorded one of the most expensive debut albums in recent history.
Like the artists mentioned in this article, we have just released my debut album as a FREE HQ Mp3 download.
It was a tough decision for us to make because of the vast amounts spent on the album. We had two of the biggest record producers in the world work on it…. at Peter Gabriel’s Realworld studio and at Abbey Road studio in london.
Despite all that, we recognise the massive potential the internet and free albums in particular offers. We launched last friday and have already had 1000’s of DL’s all over the world.
We are hoping that people like the album enough to come to a show, which is where hopefully my bread and butter will come from.
Come over and download for free.. it takes 2 minutes to DL because we have a dedicated server.
http://www.jackrubinacci.com
Thanks
Jack
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