My intention here is not to shame you or embarrass you. I believe you are already on the side of musicians and artists and you are just grappling with how to do the right thing. I applaud your courage in admitting you do not pay for music, and that you do not want to but you are grappling with the moral implications. I just think that you have been presented with some false choices by what sounds a lot like what we hear from the “Free Culture” adherents.
I must disagree
with the underlying premise of what you have written. Fairly compensating
musicians is not a problem that is up to governments and large corporations to
solve. It is not up to them to make it “convenient” so you don’t behave
unethically. (Besides–is it really that inconvenient to download a song from
iTunes into your iPhone? Is it that hard to type in your password? I think
millions would disagree.)
Rather, fairness
for musicians is a problem that requires each of us to individually look at our
own actions, values and choices and try to anticipate the consequences of our
choices. I would suggest to you that, like so many other policies in our
society, it is up to us individually to put pressure on our governments and
private corporations to act ethically and fairly when it comes to artists
rights. Not the other way around. We cannot wait for these entities to act in
the myriad little transactions that make up an ethical life. I’d suggest to you
that, as a 21-year old adult who wants to work in the music business, it is
especially important for you to come to grips with these very personal ethical
issues.
I’ve been
teaching college students about the economics of the music business at the University
of Georgia for the last two years. Unfortunately for artists, most of them
share your attitude about purchasing music. There is a disconnect between their
personal behavior and a greater social injustice that is occurring. You seem to
have internalized that ripping 11,000 tracks in your iPod compared to your
purchase of 15 CDs in your lifetime feels pretty disproportionate. You also
seem to recognize that you are not just ripping off the record labels but you
are directly ripping off the artist and songwriters whose music you “don’t
buy”. It doesn’t really matter that you didn’t take these tracks from a
file-sharing site. That may seem like a neat dodge, but I’d suggest to you that
from the artist’s point of view, it’s kind of irrelevant.
Now, my students
typically justify their own disproportionate choices in one of two ways. I’m
not trying to set up a “strawman”, but I do have a lot of anecdotal experience
with this. “It’s OK not to pay for
music because record companies rip off artists and do not pay artists
anything.” In the vast majority of cases, this is not true. There have been
some highly publicized abuses by record labels. But most record contracts
specify royalties and advances to artists. Advances are important to
understand–a prepayment of unearned royalties. Not a debt, more like a bet. The
artist only has to “repay” (or “recoup”) the advance from record sales. If
there are no or insufficient record sales, the advance is written off by the
record company. So it’s false to say that record companies don’t pay artists.
Most of the time they not only pay artists, but they make bets on artists. And
it should go without saying that the bets will get smaller and fewer the more
unrecouped advances are paid by labels.
Secondly, by
law the record label must pay songwriters (who may also be artists)
something called a “mechanical royalty” for sales of CDs or downloads of the
song. This is paid regardless of whether a record is recouped or not. The rate
is predetermined, and the license is compulsory. Meaning that the file sharing
sites could get the same license if they wanted to, at least for the songs.
They don’t. They don’t wanna pay artists.
Also, you must
consider the fact that the vast majority of artists are releasing albums
independently and there is not a “real” record company. Usually just an imprint
owned by the artist. In the vast majority of cases you are taking money
directly from the artist. How does one know which labels are artist owned? It’s
not always clear. But even in the case of corporate record labels, shouldn’t
they be rewarded for the bets they make that provides you with recordings you
enjoy? It’s not like the money goes into a giant bonfire in the middle of the
woods while satanic priests conduct black masses and animal sacrifices. Usually
some of that money flows back to artists, engineers and people like you who
graduate from college and get jobs in the industry. And record labels also give
your college radio stations all those CDs you play.
Artists can
make money on the road (or its variant “Artists are rich”). The average income of a musician that
files taxes is something like 35k a year w/o benefits. The vast majority of
artists do not make significant money on the road. Until recently, most touring
activity was a money losing operation. The idea was the artists would make up
the loss through recorded music sales. This has been reversed by the financial
logic of file-sharing and streaming. You now tour to support making albums if
you are very, very lucky. Otherwise, you pay for making albums out of your own
pocket. Only the very top tier of musicians make ANY money on the road. And
only the 1% of the 1% makes significant money on the road. (For now.)
Over the last 12
years I’ve watched revenue flowing to artists collapse.Recorded music revenue is down 64% since 1999.
Per capita
spending on music is 47% lower than it was in 1973!!
The number of
professional musicians has fallen 25% since 2000.
Of the 75,000
albums released in 2010 only 2,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. Only 1,000 sold
more than 10,000 copies. Without going into details, 10,000 albums is about the
point where independent artists begin to go into the black on professional
album production, marketing and promotion.
On a personal
level, I have witnessed the impoverishment of many critically acclaimed but
marginally commercial artists. In particular, two dear friends: Mark Linkous
(Sparklehorse) and Vic Chestnutt. Both of these artists, despite growing global
popularity, saw their incomes collapse in the last decade. There is no other
explanation except for the fact that “fans” made the unethical choice to take
their music without compensating these artists.
Shortly before
Christmas 2009, Vic took his life. He was my neighbor, and I was there as they
put him in the ambulance. On March 6th, 2010, Mark Linkous shot himself in the
heart. Anybody who knew either of these musicians will tell you that the pair
suffered from addiction and depression. They will also tell you their situation
was worsened by their financial situation. Vic was deeply in debt to hospitals
and, at the time, was publicly complaining about losing his home. Mark was
living in abject squalor in his remote studio in the Smokey Mountains without
adequate access to the mental health care he so desperately needed.
I present these
two stories to you not because I’m pointing fingers or want to shame you. I
just want to illustrate that “small” personal decisions have very real consequences,
particularly when millions of people make the decision not to compensate
artists they supposedly “love”. And it is up to us individually to examine the
consequences of our actions. It is not up to governments or corporations to
make us choose to behave ethically. We have to do that ourselves.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Now, having said
all that, I also deeply empathize with your generation. You have grown up in a
time when technological and commercial interests are attempting to change our
principles and morality. Rather than using our morality and principles to guide
us through technological change, there are those asking us to change our
morality and principles to fit the technological change–if a machine can do
something, it ought to be done. Although it is the premise of every “machines
gone wild” story since Jules Verne or Fritz Lang, this is exactly backwards.
Sadly, I see the effects of this thinking with many of my students.
These
technological and commercial interests have largely exerted this pressure
through the Free Culture movement, which is funded by a handful of large tech
corporations and their foundations in the US, Canada, Europe and other countries.*
Your letter clearly shows that you sense that something is deeply wrong, but
you don’t put your finger on it. I want to commend you for doing this. I also
want to enlist you in the fight to correct this outrage. Let me try to show you
exactly what is wrong. What it is you can’t put your finger on.
The fundamental
shift in principals and morality is about who gets to control and exploit the
work of an artist. The accepted norm for hundreds of years of western
civilization is the artist exclusively has the right to exploit and control
his/her work for a period of time. (Since the works that are almost invariably
the subject of these discussions are popular culture of one type or another,
the duration of the copyright term is pretty much irrelevant for an ethical
discussion.) By allowing the artist to treat his/her work as actual property,
the artist can decide how to monetize his or her work. This system has worked
very well for fans and artists. Now we are being asked to undo this not because
we think this is a bad or unfair way to compensate artists but simply because
it is technologically possible for corporations or individuals to exploit
artists work without their permission on a massive scale and globally. We are
being asked to continue to let these companies violate the law without being
punished or prosecuted. We are being asked to change our morality and
principals to match what I think are immoral and unethical business models.
Who are these
companies? They are sites like The Pirate Bay, or Kim Dotcom and Megaupload.
They are “legitimate” companies like Google that serve ads to these
sites through AdChoices and Doubleclick. They are companies like Grooveshark that operate
streaming sites without permission from artists and over the objections of the artist,
much less payment of royalties lawfully set by the artist. They are the venture
capitalists that raise money for these sites. They are the hardware makers that
sell racks of servers to these companies. And so on and so on.
What the
corporate backed Free Culture movement is asking us to do is analogous to
changing our morality and principles to allow the equivalent of looting. Say
there is a neighborhood in your local big city. Let’s call it The ‘Net. In this
neighborhood there are record stores. Because of some antiquated laws, The ‘Net
was never assigned a police force. So in this neighborhood people simply loot
all the products from the shelves of the record store. People know it’s wrong,
but they do it because they know they will rarely be punished for doing so.
What the commercial Free Culture movement (see the “hybrid economy”) is saying
is that instead of putting a police force in this neighborhood we should simply
change our values and morality to accept this behavior. We should change our
morality and ethics to accept looting because it is simply possible to get away
with it. And nothing says freedom like getting away with it, right?
But it’s worse
than that. It turns out that Verizon, AT&T, Charter etc etc are charging a
toll to get into this neighborhood to get the free stuff. Further, companies
like Google are selling maps (search results) that tell you where the stuff is
that you want to loot. Companies like Megavideo are charging for a high speed
looting service (premium accounts for faster downloads). Google is also selling
ads in this neighborhood and sharing the revenue with everyone except the people
who make the stuff being looted. Further, in order to loot you need to have a
$1,000 dollar laptop, a $500 dollar iPhone or $400 Samsumg tablet. It turns out
the supposedly “free” stuff really isn’t free. In fact it’s an expensive way to get “free”
music. (Like most claimed “disruptive
innovations”it turns out expensive subsidies exist elsewhere.) Companies are actually making money
from this looting activity. These companies only make money if you change your
principles and morality! And none of that money goes to the artists!
And believe it or
not this is where the problem with Spotify starts. The internet is full of
stories from artists detailing just how little they receive from Spotify. I
shan’t repeat them here. They are epic. Spotify does not exist in a vacuum. The
reason they can get away with paying so little to artists is because the
alternative is The ‘Net where people have already purchased all the gear they
need to loot those songs for free. Now while something like Spotify may
be a solution for how to compensate artists fairly in the future, it is not a
fair system now. As long as the consumer makes the unethical choice to support
the looters, Spotify will not have to compensate artists fairly. There is
simply no market pressure. Yet Spotify’s CEO is the 10th richest man in the UK
music industry ahead of all but one artist on his service.
++++++++++++++++++
So let’s go back
and look at what it would have cost you to ethically and legally support the
artists.
And I’m gonna
give you a break. I’m not gonna even factor in the record company share. Let’s
just pretend for your sake the record company isn’t simply the artist’s imprint
and all record labels are evil and don’t deserve any money. Let’s just make the
calculation based on exactly what the artist should make. First, the mechanical
royalty to the songwriters. This is generally the artist. The royalty that is
supposed to be paid by law is 9.1 cents a song for every download or copy. So
that is $1,001 for all 11,000 of your songs. Now let’s suppose the artist has
an average 15% royalty rate. This is calculated at wholesale value. Trust me,
but this comes to 10.35 cents a song or $1,138.50. So to ethically and morally
“get right” with the artists you would need to pay $2,139.50.
As a college
student I’m sure this seems like a staggering sum of money. And in a way, it
is. At least until you consider that you probably accumulated all these songs
over a period of 10 years (5th grade). Sot that’s $17.82 dollars a month.
Considering you are in your prime music buying years, you admit your life is
“music centric” and you are a DJ, that $18 dollars a month sounds like a
bargain. Certainly much much less than what I spent each month on music during
the 4 years I was a college radio DJ.
Let’s look at
other things you (or your parents) might pay for each month and compare.
Smart phone with
data plan: $40-100 a month.
High speed
internet access: $30-60 dollars a month. Wait, but you use the university
network? Well, buried in your student fees or tuition you are being charged a
fee on the upper end of that scale.
Tuition at
American University, Washington DC (excluding fees, room and board and books):
$2,086 a month.
Car insurance or
Metro card? $100 a month?
Or simply look at
the value of the web appliances you use to enjoy music:
$2,139.50 = 1
smart phone + 1 full size ipod + 1 macbook.
Why do you pay
real money for this other stuff but not music?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The existential
questions that your generation gets to answer are these:Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself?
Why are we
willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed
internet access but not the music itself?
Why do we gladly
give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not
the companies and individuals who create and sell music?This is a bit of hyperbole to emphasize the point. But it’s as if:
Networks: Giant mega corporations. Cool! Have some money!
Hardware:
Giant mega corporations. Cool! Have some money!
Artists: 99.9
% lower middle class. Screw you, you greedy bastards!
Congratulations,
your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it
to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians!
I am genuinely
stunned by this. Since you appear to love first generation Indie Rock, and as a
founding member of a first generation Indie Rock band I am now legally
obligated to issue this order: kids, lawn, vacate.
You are doing it
wrong.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Emily, I know you
are not exactly saying what I’ve illustrated above. You’ve unfortunately
stumbled into the middle of a giant philosophical fight between artists and
powerful commercial interests. To your benefit, it is clear you are trying to
answer those existential questions posed to your generation. And in your heart,
you grasp the contradiction. But I have to take issue with the following
statement:
As I’ve grown
up, I’ve come to realize the gravity of what file-sharing means to the
musicians I love. I can’t support them with concert tickets and t-shirts alone.
But I honestly don’t think my peers and I will ever pay for albums. I do think
we will pay for convenience.
I’m sorry, but
what is inconvenient about iTunes and, say, iTunes match (that lets you stream
all your music to all your devices) aside from having to pay? Same with Pandora
premium, MOG and a host of other legitimate services. I can’t imagine that any
other legal music service that is gonna be simpler than these to use. Isn’t
convenience already here!
Ultimately there
are three “inconvenient” things that MUST happen for any legal service:1.create an account and provide a payment method (once)
2.enter your password.
3. Pay for music.
So what you are
really saying is that you won’t do these three things. This is too
inconvenient. And I would guess that the most inconvenient part is….step 3.
That’s fine. But
then you must live with the moral and ethical choice that you are making to not
pay artists. And artists won’t be paid. And it won’t be the fault of some far
away evil corporation. You “and your peers” ultimately bear this
responsibility.
You may also find
that this ultimately hinders your hopes of finding a job in the music industry.
Unless you’re planning on working for free. Or unless you think Google is in
the music industry–which it is not.
I also find all
this sort of sad. Many in your generation are willing to pay a little extra to
buy “fair trade” coffee that insures the workers that harvested the coffee were
paid fairly. Many in your generation will pay a little more to buy clothing and
shoes from manufacturers that certify they don’t use sweatshops. Many in your
generation pressured Apple to examine working conditions at Foxconn in China.
Your generation is largely responsible for the recent cultural changes that has
given more equality to same sex couples. On nearly every count your generation
is much more ethical and fair than my generation. Except for one thing. Artist
rights.
+++++++++++++++++++++
At the start of
this I did say that I hoped to convert you to actively helping musicians and
artists. That ultimately someone like you, someone so passionately involved in
music is the best ally that musicians could have. Let me humbly suggest a few
things:
First, you could
legally buy music from artists. The best way to insure the money goes to
artists? Buy it directly from their website or at their live shows. But if you
can’t do that, there is a wide range of services and sites that will allow you
to do this conveniently. Encourage your “peers” to also do this.
Second, actively
“call out” those that profit by exploiting artists without compensation. File
sharing sites are supported by corporate web advertising. Call corporations out
by giving specific examples. For instance, say your favorite artist is Yo La
Tengo. If you search at Google “free mp3 download Yo La Tengo” you will come up
with various sites that offer illegal downloads of Yo La Tengo songs. I clicked
on a link to the site www.beemp3.com where I found You La Tengo’s entire
masterpiece album I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass.
I also found an
ad for Geico Insurance which appeared to have been serviced to the site by “Ads
by Google”. You won’t get any response by writing a file sharing site. They
already know what they are doing is wrong. However Geico might be interested in
this. And technically, Google’s policy is to not support piracy sites, however
it seems to be rarely enforced. The best way to write any large corporation is
to search for the “investor’s relations” page. For some reason there is always
a human being on the other end of that contact form. You could also
write your Congressman and Senator and suggest they come up with some way to
divert the flow of advertising money back to the artists.
And on that
matter of the $2,139.50 you owe to artists? Why not donate something to a
charity that helps artists. Consider this your penance. In fact I’ll make a
deal with you. For every dollar you personally donate I’ll match it up to $500.
Here are some suggestions.
Sweet Relief. This organization helps musicians with
medical costs. Vic Chestnutt, who I mentioned earlier, was helped by this
organization. I contributed a track to the Album Sweet Relief II:Gravity of
the situation. www.sweetrelief.org
Music Cares. You can also donate to this charity run by
the NARAS (the Grammys). http://www.grammy.org/musicares/donate
American Heart
Association Memorial Donation. Or since you loved Big Star and Alex Chilton, why not make a donation to
The American Heart Association in Alex Chilton’s name? (Alex died of a heart
attack) https://donate.americanheart.org/ecommerce/donation/acknowledgement_info.jsp?campaignId=&site=Heart&itemId=prod20007
I’m open to
suggestions on this. I sincerely wish you
luck in your career in the music business and hope this has been enlightening
in some small way.
David Lowery
Article: http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/
I Never Owned
Any Music To Begin With
(By Emily White,
NPR- All Things Considered blog, June 16, 2012)
A few days before
my internship at All Songs Considered started, Bob Boilen posted an article
titled "I Just Deleted All
My Music" on this
blog. The post is about entrusting his huge personal music library to the
cloud. Though this seemed like a bold step to many people who responded to the
article, to me, it didn't seem so bold at all.
I never went through the transition from physical to digital. I'm almost
21 and since I first began to love music I've been spoiled by the Internet. I am an avid music-listener, concert-goer,
and college radio DJ. My world is music-centric. I've only bought 15 CDs in my
lifetime. Yet, my entire iTunes library exceeds 11,000 songs. I wish I could say I miss album packaging and
liner notes and rue the decline in album sales the digital world has caused.
But the truth is, I've never supported physical music as a consumer. As
monumental a role as musicians and albums have played in my life, I've never
invested money in them aside from concert tickets and t-shirts.
But I didn't
illegally download (most) of my songs. A few are, admittedly, from a stint in
the 5th grade with the file-sharing program Kazaa. Some are from my family. I've swapped hundreds of mix CDs with
friends. My senior prom date took my iPod home once and returned it to me with
15 gigs of Big Star, The Velvet
Underground and Yo La Tengo (I owe him one).
During my first semester at college, my music library more then tripled.
I spent hours sitting on the floor of my college radio
station, ripping music
onto my laptop. The walls were lined with hundreds of albums sent by promo
companies and labels to our station over the years.
All of those CDs
are gone. My station's library is completely digital now and so is my listening
experience. If my laptop died and my
hard-drive disappeared tomorrow, I would certainly mourn the loss of my 100+
playlists, particularly the archives of all my college radio shows. But I'd
also be able to re-build my "library" fairly easily. If I wanted to
listen to something I didn't already have in my patchwork collection, I could
stream it on Spotify. As I've grown up,
I've come to realize the gravity of what file-sharing means to the musicians I
love. I can't support them with concert tickets and t-shirts alone. But I
honestly don't think my peers and I will ever pay for albums. I do think we
will pay for convenience.
What I want is
one massive Spotify-like catalog of music that will sync to my phone and
various home entertainment devices. With this new universal database, everyone
would have convenient access to everything that has ever been recorded and performance
royalties would be distributed based on play counts (hopefully with more money going
back to the artist than
the present model). All I require is the ability to listen to what I want, when
I want and how I want it. Is that too much to ask?
Emily White is
this summer's All Songs Considered intern. She is a senior at American
University in Washington D.C. and the General Manager of WVAU.
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