The Big Music (RIAA) labels make their fortunes by promoting and marketing artists who usually only pocket a few percent of album sales. Their control over the distribution channels has given them a great deal of power, but the Internet is taking this monopoly away bit by bit. Today, independent artists and labels can easily reach millions of customers, something unimaginable only a decade ago.

That said, the advancement of the Internet has also brought in new threats. Apple. for example, is taking a big chunk of the revenue music generates online and their growing power is frustrating artists more and more. Musicians are forced to cut up songs because Apple deems them too long, and track listings are shuffled by mistake without an option for the artist to restore his art.

One of the first musicians who revolted publicly against Apple was Benn Jordan aka The Flashbulb, who found his album on iTunes in early 2008 without being aware or paid for it. In a counter move Jordan decided to share all his music on BitTorrent for free, which turned out to be one of the best business decisions he has made in his career.

On Christmas eve, where sharing is on the minds of millions of people, we sit down with Benn to talk about what has happened in the past three years. How did he fare financially? Has his opinion towards Apple or the RIAA labels changed? Where does he think the music industry is heading?

TF: You first published your music for free on BitTorrent nearly three years ago. Could you take us back to that moment and explain why you took this decision?

Jordan: I just figured that if someone was going to upload my new album to these sites, it may as well be me. I can make sure the rip is a good one and I can personalize it with a message. It wasn’t marketing or anything political at first either. Trent Reznor and some other big names released stuff in a similar fashion a few months later and the same crowd applauded, but I felt like it was more about marketing.

TF: How has this decision changed your stance toward “piracy”?

Jordan: It oddly put me in a hot seat for a bit and for a limited time, made me an pseudo expert in a field of study that doesn’t really exist yet. Again, this was all undeserved and weird. Music piracy is still a huge issue and people want answers, but they’re not sure who to ask.

I’m grateful now because it made me think, generally, file trading is just a peephole to a much larger picture. Copyright, in its current state, holds information at ransom for monetary value. While in music it can stifle culture and art, with literature and education it can be nothing more than a weapon of class warfare.

TF: How are you doing financially compared to three years ago? Have you benefited from giving away your music?

Jordan: In this particular case, yes. It expanded the amount of people who pirate my music, therefore it has expanded those who bought CDs, donated to me, or came out to shows. Another interesting thing is that it wound up in some licensing company’s hands that I’ve never worked with before, and got me additional placement in TV/film/etc, which is a good portion of my income.

TF: What are your thoughts on the big labels. Are they good or bad for the majority of artists?

Jordan: I have to be honest. Big labels that aren’t being innovative are little more than delusional laughing stocks at this point. Their numbers get worse and worse, and they push the artists to do dumber and dumber stunts to try and stay on top of things.

The shows and festivals they book are sponsored by 8 different alcoholic beverages and 10 different energy drinks, and they just punish their customers while validating their own demise. I’m not worried about them and neither should you. Its a dozen senior citizens trying to stop a stampede of fresh culture. Good luck boys.

TF: And what about Apple?

Jordan: Apple, love or hate their products, is fucking scary. On one hand, hats off. They’re business and marketing geniuses. On the other hand, they might single handedly be the worst thing that has happened to entertainment media in the last 3 years. The major record industry collapsing should also mean that artists are more free to do what they want.

For example, iTunes completely screwed up the track listing of my last album Arboreal. Their network is so influential that over half of the people who have bought the CD from my label now have botched track titles on their mp3 players. Apple doesn’t have ANY accessible artist support to deal with things like this.

They reject my cover art if I don’t have my name and the title in bold. If I want to sell a 30 minute long track (Louisiana Mourning, for example), they require me to split it up into a bunch of separate tracks. Their distribution system is so unorganized that artists have to pay business like Tunecore upwards of $40 per album (and annual fees) to do Apple’s job for them.

Again, its genius on the business side. But they’ve wedged themselves in so well that now, if I don’t have an album on iTunes (under their insane rules and lack of support), a large portion of my listeners simply won’t know how to put my music on their iPods/iPhones.

I know I sound preachy, but think about it, how is that any better than what existed 15 years ago? I still maintain that I’d rather have my stuff “illegally” downloaded than have to go down that path.

TF: What advise do you have for artists who consider giving away their music?

Jordan: That being a “consideration” is always funny to me. You either release it knowing it will be distributed for free or you keep it locked up on your hard drive. If the last decade has taught us anything, it is that no amount of bitching, threatening, lobbying, suing, or file protecting is going to stop information from being spread to those who want it.

The way I look at it is, if hundreds of thousands of people are downloading my album, I’m contributing to culture and my music will likely outlive me. Money is pretty insignificant in the face of immortality.

TF: What changes in the industry would you like to see in the coming years?

Jordan: It makes me nervous because I feel like we’re at a really big crossroad. We’re facing three big issues at the same time that are eventually going to be connected: Net-neutrality, free speech, and piracy/copyright laws. We need to make a bigger deal about it because we don’t want information to be controlled by an entity that only exists for its investors.

We don’t want a situation where if Amazon refuses to carry a book, nobody will be able to read it. Or if iTunes refuses to carry an unabridged album, nobody will be able to hear it. Most importantly, we don’t want poor people to continue being less educated than wealthy people because of the illusion created that information has a monetary value. News, history, media, and culture is made by everyone, and it is intolerable to me that we allow the messengers to hold it from us at such a high price, whether monetarily or contextually .

Now’s the time to get involved.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

An established, but outraged musician has decided to shun conventional distribution methods by following other recent initiatives (such as Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ promotion) by making his latest album available for free download. It’s available on BitTorrent on sites like The Pirate Bay, with so-called ‘OiNK replacement’ site, What.cd, providing the album on ‘free leech’ to encourage more downloads.

TorrentFreak caught up with Benn Jordan who told us he’s not just disillusioned, he’s ‘outraged’ that iTunes is selling his work without permission and seemingly keeping all the money.

TF: Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your musical journey.

Benn: I’m Benn and I’m 29 years old. I started playing classical guitar when I was about 5, and since then, all I’ve wanted to do with my life was make music. Now 20-some odd years later, I feel lucky to tell you that I make music for a living. I’ve been releasing albums for about 14 years on various indy labels, and in the last 5 years I’ve also been composing for television, film, and ads. Music has allowed me to travel the world, meet thousands of wonderful people, and express myself through my work. It seems impossible to me that I’m on this planet for any other reason than writing music.

My label, on the other hand, doesn’t have a complex or radical plan. Our goal is to simply compensate our artists as much as possible, and that includes utilizing the “digital revolution” to our advantage, instead of punishing our artists by punishing their fans.

TF: Tell us a little about your dealings with labels and ‘the industry’ and why you became disillusioned.

Benn: Luckily, my record contracts were always negotiated well. Once things started moving with small labels I was approached by some larger ones, but there was always some seedy stipulation that prevented me from ever signing.

Still, with a 50/50 contract, I’d be selling 2,000 albums and would get $250 for it somehow. Many people that i’d meet at my shows would say that they bought my music on iTunes, yet I’ve never signed any sort of agreement allowing iTunes to host my music, and I’ve certainly never seen a dime of money for my albums hosted there.
So I started investigating the numbers from the label, which led me to some shocking revelations about how little the artist and label was getting in comparison to the retailers. When I got around to asking about iTunes, the owner of Sublight Records pleaded with me to “leave it be”. Everyone else made an extraordinary effort to ignore my calls and emails.

When I finally got a hold of the digital distributor (I must note that “digital distributor” is the most pathetic job title I’ve ever heard), I was told that once the files are in the iTunes system, it literally couldn’t be removed or taken down for a year. So, either Apple has created a self-aware doomsday machine that cannot be stopped or reasoned with, or everyone involved is just enjoying the gravy train of ripping off artists like myself and using Apple’s backbone of attorneys as an intimidation factor.

Even after having a lawyer working for me on this matter, this is the one and only response we’ve EVER been able to get from Apple:

Dear Benn,
I understand that you are writing to the iTunes Store because you are upset about finding your own album “The Flashlight” and some of your other album as well on the iTunes Store, and that you feel that you are owned
royalties for this music that his being purchased. I am sorry that you have to found this upsetting. My name is Wendy, and I would be happy to link you to right people to talk to about this issue

So, who’s the pirate I should go after? A kid who downloads my album because it isn’t available in non-DRM format and costs $30 on Amazon? Or a huge multi-billion dollar corporation that has been selling thousands of dollars worth of my music and not even acknowledging it?

I’m not disillusioned, I’m outraged, and anyone who ever spent a dime on buying music through these distribution methods should be outraged too. Here we are pleading with people to not steal music, and then we hand them dog shit when they go out of their way to buy it.

TF: You were a member of OiNK. Could you tell us a bit about your time there and how you used the site?

Benn: OiNK was an amazing network. As an avid-collector of ultra-rare old jazz records, I’ll tell you right now that it was the most complete and diverse library of music the world has ever seen. I filled some requests by uploading some of my rarer albums there. Eventually I started being harassed by someone on the network who was sending screen grabs of my seed lists to record labels. Upon complaining, a moderator simply removed my ability to communicate with anyone on the network or post comments on torrents. I can understand the paranoia and strictness.

I guess I just sort of laughed it off and stopped using it. When Oink went down, the only thing that surprised me was that the servers weren’t hidden in some weird country.

TF: Could you tell us more about the support you’re getting from one of the so-called ‘OiNK replacement’ sites, ‘What.cd’ ?

Benn: It was really a fresh breath of air for What.cd to promote the idea of artists having involvement with their own torrents. Not only does it benefit the artist to no end, but I can’t imagine that any court in the world would be able to pin someone on copyright infringement for a torrent the copyright holder created.

TF: Aside from uploading your own albums, at times you took an anti-piracy stance at OiNK, why the big change of heart?

Benn: I don’t think my stance has changed all that much. It’d be a great PR move to say that I’m pro-piracy, but I’d be lying. I keep seeing these internet news stories saying things like “The Flashbulb Promotes Piracy”. It is totally out of control. How could I be promoting piracy if I’m uploading my own material with a “buy it if you like it” message in the torrent?

What I’m promoting is the artist’s freedom to choose what can and can’t be done with his/her music, and more importantly, the listener’s freedom to do what he/she wants with their own computer, MP3 player, or internet connection.

After a journey through miles and miles of bullshit in this industry, you learn one thing: If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. Whether you’re downloading my music to check it out, to accompany the CD, or even pirating it…I want you to have a version/rip of it that I’ve listened to and approved of.

TF: You say you’re not pro-piracy yet you downloaded stuff from OiNK and also What.cd. One position seems to conflict the other. How do you explain this?

Benn: In my case I think that visible list of downloads strengthens my point. Most of those downloads are actually albums I already own (much easier to download than to record an entire vinyl album), albums I previewed but didn’t like, or albums I simply cannot find available in a suitable DRM-free format (including CD). Some of the software, like the TomTom DVD on my list, is actually impossible to technically “pirate” because you can’t buy a US TomTom GPS unit without the software. The thing is, when a tracker gets busted, the companies count these towards their losses.

So, my new album currently has 6381 downloads at the time of this interview on what.cd alone. Using that deceitful equation, my losses are over $100,000. If I wanted to, I could subtract those losses from my profit and completely get out of paying any income taxes. It makes sense from an evil, corporate, criminal-minded standpoint, right?

Beyond that, iTunes and other services simply are not acceptable to me. No company will have any control over a product that I legally own after I buy it, period.

Oink was the biggest music library in the world. People didn’t use it because they were criminals, people used it because it was literally better than any service you could pay for. It was the stubborn behavior of the record labels, artists, and government that wouldn’t allow that music library to have a cash register at the front door.

The thing RIAA is scared of is that their billion dollar backbone can no longer shelter people from exploring music themselves. Their business plan had evolved into telling the world what they will want to listen to and buy, and now they’ll have to actually compete with talented artists again. As the people regain control of the market, music will be judged by it’s content again and will be subjected to it’s own Darwinism. It is a very interesting time for the music industry…and since my entire life is devoted to making music, bring it on. I hope that this situation with my new record proves to other labels and artists that giving people exactly what they want is the smartest way to conduct any business.

TF: How do you feel about people being heavily punished for sharing music?

Benn: Obviously, the last thing I would want is anyone to be fined or imprisoned for listening to my music. Another feature of uploading my own torrent is that it creates a little legal nesting area on a network otherwise deemed illegal by most governments and RIAA. When someone else uploads a torrent of my music, it is without my approval…on the other end of things, and more importantly, when someone raids an admin’s apartment…no police officer is asking me if I want to press charges.

TF: What happens when people donate?

Benn: If you decide that you like the album, you’ll have the option of donating directly to the artist. If you decide that you’d like a CD, you’ll be able to order it directly from my label. I’ve even hired my mother to run our shipping department since she’s the most obsessive-compulsive-perfectionist office worker that I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Finally, every detail of my album’s content, release, and business is done exactly the way I want it to be done. I hope other artists realize how liberating and profitable it is compared to the distribution system we’ve all become so accustomed to.

TF: Radiohead did really quite well after they offered ‘In Rainbows’ online for free. You’re a few days into this experiment – how is it going for you?

Benn: My donations have a way to go before they match the numbers from CD pre-orders, but I’m still crossing my fingers. In a week or so I plan to release a detailed statistical report. For some reason I really like making pie charts.

TF: I’ve listened to the album – Soundtrack To A Vacant Life – and I really enjoyed it. Could you tell us some more about it?

Benn: It was 2 years in the making, and is conceptually me attempting to write the soundtrack to my own life. Of course this means that it is much more cinematic than electronic, and the songs all connect chronologically. Those who have heard my previous albums can expect this one to be a lot more melodic, tame, and instrumental. Suggested listening is with a decent pair of headphones from start to finish.

TF: I have some, I’ll try that later. Thanks for your time.

Benn Jordan’s blog can be found here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.