Reflections On the Less-Cool Effects of Filesharing 458
surpeis writes "This snub is an attempt to point the finger at something I feel has been widely ignored in the ever-lasting debate surrounding (illegal) filesharing, now again brought in the spotlight by the Pirate Bay trial. I should state that I am slightly biased, as I have been running my own indie label for some years, spanning about 30 releases. It's now history, but it was not filesharing that got the best of us, just for the record." (surpeis's argument continues below.)
I try as far as humanly possible to view the debate from all angles, and before entering the music biz myself, I was a strong believer in Internet as the driving force to develop new markets. Since then life has taught me a lot, and as said I will try to share one of my major concerns in this (hopefully) short snub.My observation is based on a lot of trying and failing, as well as being a moderate user of filesharing myself — mainly to check out stuff I read about but cannot get my hands on in the local store back here in Norway.
My concern is about this argument, which has been seen in most any debate about this subject for the last 10 years, usually formulated roughly as below:
"Filesharing will provide massive marketing to new artists, and drive forward a new and more dynamic music market."
I beg to differ.
One thing that has become more and more obvious to me is that the power of the market more than ever is still safely held by the biggest corporations in the music biz. I will try to explain why.
If we use TPB as an example, they have about 10M visitors per day, which gives us a good base for pulling out stats. If you look at their Top100 list at any given time, you will find exactly 0.00% artists that are not (major) label signed. This might not be very surprising, as TPB naturally would reflect the music market in general.
But if one starts thinking about it, it has the ironic effect that TPB is a driving force of consolidating the market power of the major labels rather than driving forward any new music. The conclusion has to be that "pirates" are just as little resistant to the major label marketing as any other person. Even though there are thousands and thousands of artists out there that want their music to be shared and listened to, they are widely and effectively ignored by the masses. In fact, one might say that TPB and the likes are countering the development of new markets, simply because the gap between the heavily marketed music and 'the others' is wider than ever, when the bare naked truth about peoples taste in music is put into such a system.
This puts a heavy responsibility on the pirates, one that I don't think they are aware of nor able to handle. The day we find the top crop of the aforementioned artists that are actually free to share on the top 100 list, we have a winner. Until then the only thing that we will see "die" is the small indies that cannot benefit from heavy marketing. Thus, more market power is given to the major labels, and all of us reading this will be dead and buried long before they stop making a reasonable income from selling oldies and goldies, radio play, publishing, etc.
The actual 'mystery' is why the major labels don't see this themselves, and continues to take services like TPB to court. They are, and I'm pretty sure about this, the actual winners in the ongoing war. The price paid is extending the status quo when it comes to growing new markets.
So, ladies and gentlenerds: Are we really driving forth the music scene of the future? Or are we actually turning into useful idiots keeping the arch-enemy strong and healthy while the suppliers of correctives (indies, free music) are effectively kept out of the loop? What could possibly be done (technically or socially) to provoke changes to this and hit the major labels where it actually hurts?"
I see filesharing as a New World Order (Score:5, Interesting)
I truthfully don't care about music. What I care about is when textbooks start becoming free. It will be a revolution in education. This will be especially the case when people write things like,"The comprehensive guide to calculus as to be learned by anyone who knows how to count" The computer means it can be an advanced and interactive media session. The free distribution will mean anyone can have it in their hands.
People will still try and discover new things even if they can't get paid for the information directly.
Good points. (Score:5, Interesting)
However, you make the assumption that all 10M people reading here are actively polling right now from any one of those torrents. You'd be mistaken.
Some of my favorites exist from back in the '20s when rip roaring jazz was abound everywhere. We see avant jazz go all the way up to present, with other counties spawning jazz musicians. Classical has mostly stagnated, but those who like those "stuffy sounds", that music has existed from the 1700's when the Church commissioned those pieces to begin with. We really start to get to the heyday of music, from the rock era starting in the 60's to the 70's. And we all know the groups that came from that time.
Now, if my numbers are correct, nearly every work published since 1/1/1922 is under full copyright protection. So... most "popular musics" are covered by somebody's copyright. And it turns out, if the record companies didn't own it, they bought it or sued for it. Big surprise.
Of course, you have indies and such, but they really dont matter (sorry). Yeah, if they organized into a force to fight against the ilk of the RIAA, they might have a chance, but then they would turn in to what they hated and originally fought against.
If you havent realized it already, but copyright is really useless in its present form.
*said while listening to music from ocremix.org , a free music site in dedication to remixing game music.
Re:Flawed premise (Score:5, Interesting)
The essay is implicitly assuming that the most popular artists are popular because they're signed to a major label. The argument seems to be that the all-too-common claims that filesharing is good for the independent artists are bunk; filesharing has done nothing to break the hold of the major labels on the promotion and marketing of musical acts. As long as they can hold on to those, they will survive, and eventually they will figure out how to take advantage of the internet to make loads of money.
In the end, we'll have advertisements embedded into the hit singles, as part of the music and lyrics.
Re:Filesharing as advertising... (Score:5, Interesting)
And some bands get it. I bought tickets to the upcoming No Doubt show here, and they (unexpectedly) e-mailed me a link and code I could use to download their entire catalog as DRM-free 256Kbps MP3s. Nice.
Re:Evidence please? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hello, and thanx for your post.
First: It is not a claim, its a _reflection_
It is of course not possible to supply hard evidence on something that "didnt happen".
But its a fact that in my 15+ years as a net and music junkie, I still have not seen one single artist that actually made a career this way. I guess it could be different in f.i. the USA, where there is alot more mobility and a far larger audience.
One thing that is hard to come around is the fact that the music biz is profit driven. If there really was a vivid indipendent scene that was growing up by the means of filesharing, we would have seen attempts to control it a long time ago.
TBH i dont think the music industry has reflected much around this, as they really, really think that a file downloaded is a sale lost. I WANT to see a new and revised music scene grow forth, but the above mentioned tendency to follow the marketing of themajor labels is in my humble opinion a major problem to actually see this happen.
My attempts to bring it into the debate in the music biz has partly been striked down upon, as the major industry still has a utopian dream of making the "new world" fit into their old and geographically oriented systems. The problem seems to be that us filesharers seem to lack the fantasy, drive or conciousness to make it happen as well.
Re:Evidence please? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, if he's using the TPB top 100 as a barometer for what's "Hip", then why doesnt he add a crapload of clients to upload, and then forge upload and download stats to push himself to top 100.
You know, if you're on a LAN and have BT clients, you could share via the LAN and have it count towards ratio ;)
And it would be one hell of a "What The Hell is that Group??" (begins download). Cause, I check out what's the buzz on general top 100, music top 100, and movie top 100 all the time.
Dude... (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me tell you a little secret, bittorrent communities (especially TPB) are a horrible place to spread a concept. They are very loosely knit, with very few members or even users frequenting the forums and discussing things. No discussion means no recommendations from other users. No recommendations means your word is never spread. How is someone supposed to glean a band out of thin air, try every new music torrent that is posted? Filesharing is an extremely effective method in other areas though. I have been an active user on Soulseek for probably 5 years, and participate in several different music communities there. Nothing else in my life has influenced my taste more than the people I've met in the chatrooms there. And I'll just tell you right now that I'm about as far off the mainstream track as you can get.
Just do it better.
Re:That's one more reason for limit copyright term (Score:1, Interesting)
... they do tend to support plenty of new, popular music.
Most new music is not popular. Familiarity breeds interest. Exposure creates markets for new sounds. With enough repetition, people can learn to like any kind of garbage. Witness the popularity of Rap for instance.
Re:What about private trackers? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem as I see it that convicting a tracker is the wrong thing. That may bring a precedent that also other trackers and search engines can be brought to court and convicted.
And even though the tracker in question is focused on copyrighted material it wouldn't really be a problem if it linked to sites where you could have purchased the music.
But this just indicates that the rigidity of the music industry prevails and they try to defend it with all means.
As for odd and unusual music - that's the failure of many trackers. Top lists may only provide a list of the most popular music since it has been played on the radio, not a list of the best music.
I have realized that even CD-shops on the net are contributing to the fail of the music industry since it's hard to get the music you want even there. So what's the alternative? A torrent download of a MP3 that is hopefully not too crappy.
Essentially - the music industry is rotting from within by not selling what people wants and pricing the available music wrong.
This still leaves us with the singular bands that wants to provide their music without a label or on a very narrow label. What's needed is some way to spread the music that they provide. Just having a site on the net isn't enough - you need a directory and a way to preview the music. Online Flash players and low-quality MP3:s could do that.
Re:Filesharing as advertising... (Score:2, Interesting)
Or
1. People find out about your band.
2. People search for that band on TPB.
3. People find that the only file from the band has 1 seeder transferring at 5 kb/s.
4. People give up and go download the latest Nickleback album with 1000 seeders.
P2P inherently favors the most popular media by making accessibility depend on popularity.
Re:Flawed premise (Score:5, Interesting)
Already available: Just talk to your fine friends at http://klugeragency.com/ [klugeragency.com] (warning flash, music, and a black hole of tastelessness). See this [wired.com] for the hilarious incident where Kluger contacted the anti-advertising agency in what was, shall we say, a lapse in judgment.
Re:A poor argument. (Score:3, Interesting)
THanks for posting.
I realise that its impossible to bring solid "evidence" to what is happening, and at what price it comes. I could write a book about it, but I wanted to keep it short to make my point. Not more, not less.
Im probably an idiot to try to post the "reader's Digest" version inside the temple of nerds, but hopefully I can start some refelctions that can contribute to the future market being brn.
That sais I know that your arguments are 100% valid. The problem is that I (and this is MY personal view) am afraid that the major labels will be stronger than ever, while all the other markets will be, as you point out, niches. The stuff in between, the indies, will struggle in such a market because they (again in my humble opinion) dont have the resources to profit as easily from global market opportunities as the major labels.
Anyways, thanks for posting good and valid arguments, I will definitely store them for future use..
Re:Flawed premise (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly right, IMO. I've shared music of bands that have been defunct for 5-10 years, and get a bunch of downloads. I've ended up talking to some of these downloaders, and they typically buy whatever they can, but there's not much.
TPB may not list them in the top 100, but I'm helping clear merch for bands that don't even play anymore. It also turns people on to the bands they're now in, since I try to mention those as well.
Yeah, there's a lot of pirates, but there's also good uses for P2P that may technically break copyright. In most cases I can't find the people with the copyrights, in others they just don't care anymore.
P2P seems to be one of the best ways to archive music in multiple sites that exists. Many of the recordings I've shared are masters, and nobody but me had a copy until P2P. I like to think that they're much more likely to survive with 50 people having digital copies than one.
Re:Dude... (Score:2, Interesting)
Hey and thanks for posting.
There's probably alot passing me by, unfortunately I only have one life to spend on all the cool stuff on the net...
I will note down your thoughts about BT-communities. My point was not to nail TPB to the wall though, just to argue that there is seemingly no measurable effect on what music the net community listens to compared to the "ordinary" market.
Anyways, Im not at all afriad to say I might be wrong on some of this. On the other hand I see indies dying like flies, while I don't see any other damage to the major biz than some scratches in the paint. And it confuses me and makes me concerned.
Re:Filesharing as advertising... (Score:1, Interesting)
I am starting to get tired of this idea that bands make more money by touring and merchandise. 1) I have never seen actual numbers supporting this claim, but a lot of numbers showing the exact opposite. 2) What about when a band retires and does not want to tour, how does this model work then?
Also, Music != Business (Score:3, Interesting)
Let us also remember that Music is not at all the same thing as The "Music" Business. I have read a bit of history, and it seems that there was music, nay MUSIC, before there was copyright law, and long before there were copyright brokers.
I am having the musical time of my life listening to Canon Rock on YouTube, to the entire line of Magnatune CC-licensed music (http://www.magnatune.com/), for which I paid a flat fee to download past, present, and future selections, local live concerts, all sorts of things on Internet Archive, some Nine Inch Nails, and nothing touched by RIAA.
Oh, and singing.
"Living in the heart of music,"
Argh. This time with paragraphing (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry. Bouncy three year-old on my arm when I clicked "Submit".
The phenomenon described in the article saddens me, but it is supported by theory. I have worried about this based on my limited reading about network theory. The popularity of a cultural work is largely a result not of any inherent qualities of the work itself, but of of the activities of the audience. If I like a piece of music, I am likely to tell my friends. They tell their friends, and so on and so on. (This is preferential attachment in a scale-free network.) So you end up with a small number of hits and a large number of also-rans. This is a power law distribution with its long tail. It explains why success in hit-driven fields is so unpredictable: much of the value doesn't come from the original work.
The thing is, the easier it is for the audience to communicate among themselves (whether to talk about the work, or to actually distribute it), the larger the effect can be. When distribution and communication become easier, this enables the further concentration of attention on the hits. That seems to be the phenomenon described here. Someone else perhaps can comment on reasons this might not happen. I certainly find I read more widely as a result of blogs and the Internet, so it's not necessarily all bad.
Another consequence of this argument is that copyright is unjust. Popularity is not just an arbitrary metric. It actually reflects real value being created. As people listen to a piece of music, for example, they increase its cultural significance. They associate it with events in their lives. They attach meaning to it. They reinterpret it. When a creative work becomes a hit it is transformed, acquiring significance and meaning and value it didn't have before. Think of the tune to the American national anthem for example: it was once just a drinking song. Here in Canada we can see this clearly with the old theme to Hockey Night in Canada. Over the years people came to see it as the soundtrack to their lives.
Well, copyright reserves the profits from and control over a hit for its authors. Nix that: typically it reserves them for a few big media companies. Regardless though, the audience who created so much of that value - indeed in many cases the vast majority of that value - are locked out. The rightsholders free-ride on the effort of others, while those others are not permitted to transmit the meanings and value they gave to the work. From that perspective, one approach might be to open up those hits to reinterpretation by others (i.e. derivative works). Then instead of being locked out by the structure of the network, indie artists can be part of it (and leverage it for their own works). And in fact we are seeing a lot of this with remixes - creativity that copyright places outside the law.
Re:Filesharing as advertising... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Flawed premise (Score:5, Interesting)
TPB may not list them in the top 100
I'm not sure TPB's top 100 is a good list to track distribution of independent and net-savvy bands either way; if they're distributing freely via their own site, or have their works easily available through sites like e-music, it'll quickly skew the statistics. For many unsigned bands or their fans, there may simply not be any need to involve TPB.
The statistics on last.fm are a bit more interesting then, and the post-Radiohead net release charts were amusing, as they were rather, eh, dominated by Radiohead.
In the end tho, marketing is still efficient, and channel control even more so. As long as the big labels retain the financial muscle to heavily influence most mainstream media outlets, they'll dominate the top lists.
Hopefully they'll lose that muscle through a combination of factors. On one end from the loss of ROI on overmarketing as p2p copying undermines it, and on the other as the importance of media outlets becomes fractured into personalized and socialized networks driven by the taste of at least a few more individuals.
Unfortunately it's going to take a while for the labels die. And until their control begins to slip the game will remain rigged..
Re:Flawed premise (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about private trackers? (Score:3, Interesting)
I was told that Napstar had something like "People who liked this also downloaded that" (just like Amazon and I would guess last.fm and the likes too). With a tool like this it is easy to find new music. TPB and similar trackers/torrent search engines don't have anything like this - you have to know what you are looking for or alternatively, digg through the list of available torrents and download more or less blindly.
Personally, I think the best advertisement unknown bands can have is a web page with some songs on it. If I see a concert advertised at one of the clubs I usually go to, and I don't know the bands, I always search on-line if I can find a song or two to check out if I should go to see the show. And when I go to the show, it's quite likely, that I even by a CD or a Record I if I really like the music.
Well, if we want to trade anecdotes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Flawed premise (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to be popular, make yourself notable AND easy to get.
I concur. Now, onwards to shameless self promotion! Or rather, I don't know if I'm notable, but "easy to get" seems accurate. :P
You can download my first feature off of LegalTorrents: Seven Dead Men [legaltorrents.com].
Hope you enjoy.
Re:Evidence please? (Score:4, Interesting)
Any evidence of those wild speculations of yours? And bandwidth does cost money in the real world.
It's a common response from the file-sharing community, big business is killing music and the cure is for artists to give up working for the man and embrace the new internet economy. Trouble is, the basics of this new economy is for artists to give their music away for free and condemn them for trying to earn a living.
The sad thing is, there are so many people who have gotten used to downloading music for free that they've come to see it as an entitlement. And they'll fight tooth and nail to keep their place at the torrent teat...
Meh (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Flawed premise (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure TPB's top 100 is a good list to track distribution of independent and net-savvy bands either way...
It's not. 100 out of how many torrents? 10,000? 50,000? 250,000 torrents? Can we ever really know.
The point was that recordings that could otherwise easily be lost are preserved 50 times instead of once. Imagine if through the history of humans we had a chance to have 30 to 250 times the number of archivists just because of an internet service.
Some may abuse it, but there's a valid cultural reason to allow public trackers. I can't afford to host one.
Re:let me guess... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Filesharing as advertising... (Score:3, Interesting)
In olden times, it was called retirement. Either your work now pays well
enough now to save for it, or your employer sets up a pension. Employers
decided they don't like spending money for pensions, so it is all up to us
to carefully chose the investments that won't lose our life savings.
Musicians used to be able to create an income stream from royalties, if they
had a big enough following. Real estate investors can collect rents.
Small business owners can sell the business they've grown over the years.
Music may become something people only do because they love it and keep a day
job to pay the bills.
Maybe the new paradigm is work 'till you drop and die in debt.
Re:Flawed premise (Score:3, Interesting)
See this [wired.com] for the hilarious incident where Kluger contacted the anti-advertising agency in what was, shall we say, a lapse in judgment.
It was certainly a lapse in judgment, but actually I don't see a problem whatsoever with that model of advertising in principle. It's how performing artists got started in the first place. Paying an artist to promote you -- art on commission -- think of praise poems. Here's a small sample from an ancient Greek poet, Pindar, in a poem commissioned to celebrate someone's victory at the Olympian games:
... Know this, son of Archestratos:
it is because of your boxing, Hagesidamos,
that as an ornament to your golden olive garland
I shall cry aloud sweet songs,
celebrating the race of the western Lokrians.
And now, party on! I'll guarantee,
Muses, that he will return home to a people who are not hostile to visitors,
not oblivious to fine things,
but they possess the height of wisdom, and skill in the spear.
For neither the fiery fox
nor loud-roaring lions would go and change their own innate character.
Now, this was probably commissioned by the athlete's native city, rather than his family: Pindar spends more time advertising the city than the athlete. And now? Pindar's victory odes are now among the most highly regarded poetry of all time (not widely read, though, since he's pretty hard going, and he does a lot of very fancy stuff with rhythm and pacing that don't come across in translation).
As an advertising model, I really have no problem with it. There's a safety measure built in: the advertiser isn't the one deciding how to do the advertising. That's the artist's job. I reckon that -- within limits -- it's a perfectly decent and moral way for an artist to make a living.
Re:Flawed premise (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly what I'm talking about up above. Bit-track (new verb :) those indies on an indie-ONLY tracker so the signal to noise ratio won't drown them out. Who would ever find your film on TPB? No one, since they'd have to hit it by sheer chance. Who would find it on an indie-only site? Well, at least there you've got a fair chance to be seen.
BTW you might want to put the link in your sig so it gets seen more often. That's where I found my fave internet radio -- in someone's sig.
Geeze, I think everyone is missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
The article kind of muffed it's key point I think, but it's there if you read it carefully. Let me try to restate it.
1) First, suppose there were no way for anyone to get major lable music for free. Piratebay provides this service.
2) Now in such a world, an indie label could establish new artisits simply by giviving away free music. People like free, so it would get downloaded and played.
3) Of course Indie lables sometime do that now, so why are not people gorging on it? The reason is, they can also get free mainstream music from pirate bay, which being lazy and suceptible to marketing and peer pressure they prefer when all else is equal.
Thus the author's thesis is simply that free mainstream music is choking the market and denying the indies an avenue to distinguish themselves. He would prefer that "all else" not be equal. That one were instead choosing between taking a risk on free aural adventures he was offering or the non-free but shiny comfortable mainstream music.
His problem is that because prirate bay is actually something only adventureous people do, that it's sort of actually one more obstacle for these folks on their way to other adventures in free music.
Another way to put this is that, if indie music is free one might think it is not worth as much as music that you have to pay for (but can get free by pirating it).
His thesis is logical. It only goes wrong at the close where he wonders why the record labels chase the pirates. The point is they can't make it easy to get it for free. Just easy enough to satisfy the hard core folks and further advertise their wares, but not so easy that everyone stops buying music.
Re:Flawed premise (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as the top100 lists are concerned, you have to remember that most pirates are tourists. They hop on briefly to download the latest hit album that 'omg their BFF like totally recommends.' So trying to use TPB's top100 list as a metric for success is just going to lead to total disappointment.
Some indy bands have jumped the filesharing wagon and are seeding their own music out there. Battlelore immediately springs to mind as someone who's doing it, and doing it successfully. They give you the entire album and put into a couple of the tracks a "you're listening to Battlelore's new album *insertnamehere*" message. You get to demo the entire album, they get free marketing, extra sales and fans, and everyone goes home happy.
(sidenote: Do check out Battlelore, they're all sorts of win)
Re:One variable that hasn't been accounted for (Score:3, Interesting)
Well I disagree with basically everything ye have said, and what the original editor has said. Back before 2000, music developed amnesia. People would listen to whatever was on the radio, which was typically skewed towards today's new releases and anything "pre=today" would be quickly forgotten. But now I notice with file-sharing that people are doing more exploring, such as downloading the "Billboard Top 100, 1950-2008" and similar files from piratebay to explore past genres. Once obscure artists are becoming discovered again.
I've read numerous articles from singers and novelists that their old unpublished works are becoming "discovered" again, due to file-sharing, and after years of neglect they are starting to receive royalty checks thanks to boosted sales.
So yes file-sharing has made an impact. It helps widen our view beyond just Top 40 or Today's Alternative radio.