Inevitability vs. Grokster

[snow lizard]

This is inspired by a recent .blog entry. At first, I started to write an editorial (much longer than this) and earlier I was working on a really dumb recording to try and capture the most primordeal elements of my thoughts on this subject in song. What follows here is probably more concise, certainly more focused and loosely centered around court activities involving P2P file sharing programs.

I've been thinking about this type of scenario for a while now. I think people are already on the path to make digital file distribution of songs legal, and provide payment to the publisher. Since you're probably your own publisher in an independant scenario, I'm led to believe that you can earn around 60 cents per song download on most of the popular digital storefronts like iTunes, Napster, et cetera. The popularity of these services is growing. I've read comments from a couple of people on CDBaby.net that have said that these services boosted their income and CD sales by a lot, and others that say they've been waiting for 6 months with very little action. My guess is that it takes a while to get listed on these services.

Since Grokster is one of those P2P dealies where the artist doesn't get paid, what it works out to is more exposure for the independant folks like yourself. Word of mouth. There's cases being made that the opportunity to sample music for free is an appealing thing to consumers. They'll buy it or not after they check it out. P2P in general seems to be less popular these days.

There's speculation that MGM wants to establish a precident for being able to pursue file swappers of all kinds - copying music from friends or family, trading online via email and instant message programs, or ripping CDs from the library. The courts have an interesting challenge - do they restrict consumer rights to the point where copyright infringement now becomes viciously enforced? Companies like MGM and RIAA have been trying to do away with things like tape decks and VCRs for decades. Do they restrict artist rights to the point where Kazaa and Morpheus and Grokster can trade copies of your music without paying you? If everyone stops paying for songs, there won't be any songwriters.

If someone hears a tune they like and shares it with other folks, it has the effect of increasing your audience, but making quality recordings is not free. The idea of the big record companies is a little too "Big Brother" for me, while the idea of not paying for your favorite music is just plain dumb. I think the solution is somewhere in the middle, and there are already a bunch of third parties trying to get on with improving the digital marketplace for artists and consumers.

One thing that impresses me a lot is how so many more independant artists are becoming more successful, while the major companies are choking in mid-lipsync.

I don't know what the outcome of these court cases will be, but it's an interesting thing to watch.


sl

[Yogi]

I voted to try to answer the question you posed: what is my favorite way to "check out" new music, rather than actually how do I acquire the music once I've checked it out. I've probably discovered and paid for more new music via hearing songs on a couple Internet radio stations and services like Launch.com than from any other method - but honestly, I still "check out" most new music based on the recommendations of others whose opinions I respect.

When I *buy* music online, I still buy CD's if at all possible and convenient for me (some band's internet purchasing paradigms are NOT very convenient). I have an iPod, so all of my "paid for" downloads have been through the iTunes store (except for a few Steve Vai tunes that he has made available lately). I spent over $500 at the iTunes store in 2004.

I don't make albums the way I do expecting to make back the investment I make in them right away - but I'd be lying if I don't hold out the hope of recouping that money "someday." If I suddenly had no way of "possibly" earning any income at all from recordings, and artists were expected to have their entire catalogs available for free, I'd have to radically re-shuffle my priorities and way of working on things.

[Lizzy]

I can't vote for only one of those choices.

I do check out music on artist's websites, but unfortunately very few of the independent ones are actually worth listening to more than once.

I have never bought a download at iTunes or anywhere else. But I have a good reason....I work for a digital download service and not only do I have keys to the CD library, I also have a free account for our subscription service (a choice absent from your poll) for work purposes. It also gets used for pleasure....such as listening to every single Frank Zappa album in all its xylophone glory or that funk song somebody recommended on a bass forum. With the subscription, I have access to literally a million tracks, all searchable and downloadable to my computer. I can't burn them to a CD, but then I wouldn't photocopy a library book either... Although I admit to ripping from CD a few things here and there to take home. I consider it a job perk, just like I got promos and discounts working in a record store. I've discovered a number of great things just by popping in an interesting looking CD that happened to be on my desk.

I am guilty of downloading a few songs via P2P, but not much. Not much need to really, and we have dialup at home so it isn't terribly convenient. Some years ago I downloaded some bootlegs, and other rare things you can't even buy if they were in a store. I've grabbed a few songs I needed to learn for a blues gig, and finding them on Kazaa was the quickest (not to mention cheapest) way to do it in time for rehearsal. I still buy CDs though, because there are plenty of things I need to have in my physical library which is still important to me. However, nowadays I rip them immediately and listen off my computer or iPod rather than sitting on my couch in front of the stereo.

I watch the news unfolding on all things regarding digital music. There's something new every day, and this case will be quite interesting. By the way, P2P use continues to rise according to reports I've been reading in the last year. Paid downloads are happening, but it is a fraction of the total music sales (which are on the decline in the US). Oddly, people are happily paying $2 or more for ringtones for their cell phone, go figure. And McDonald's is offering rap stars a payoff to drop a lyric about Big Macs into their songs. Yep, product placement, coming soon to your radio airwaves.

Uh, what was the question?

[snow lizard]

Internet radio has been the biggest catalyst for me to order CDs lately as well. Recommendations from people hold a lot of weight, but hearing is believing. FM radio around here can't come close to some of the things happening on the internet, so it's nice to have some exposure to new music that I can dig.

I have yet to pay for a song download, but I buy most of my stuff these days from online retail stores. I still like CDs as fetish objects. Artwork - liner notes - fidelity - the longetivity of a disc stamped from a master as opposed to something burned onto a CD-R or stored on a hard drive. It'd be a sad thing if hard copies of music were phased out of existance.

[snow lizard]

[Andre]

It seems to me that there are two issues here: there's the impact of P2P, and there's the issue of earning back and/or making a profit out of the expense of producing a record.

First of all, just as the Salon article used the Grokster case as a jumping-off point to examine the larger issue of the Internet and the tech industry, I think file-sharing needs to be used as a gateway towards examining the relationship between music and the internet. In other words, "The Big Picture," y'all.

So when looking at the disadvantages of online proliferation - unauthorized file-sharing, rampant piracy, and the like - we also need to look at the upshots:

- unprecedented promotional possibilities on practically no budget, via the web and email,

- the ability for artists to offer their music as either downloads or streams in order to be heard, without any reliance on mainstream or standard media,

- being able to sell CDs online, either on one's own or through an independent site like CD Baby, and net a much, much larger per-item-sold amount than would ever be possible on a "real" label,

- the ability to get into Itunes and other pay-download sites via CD Baby's digital distribution, for the cost of $35 per album distributed thusly (as opposed to $1,000 or more to mass-produce copies of one album as physical CD's).

While there's no question that unauthorized file swapping can be a serious drag for those whose work is being P2P'd about, there's also no question that it's part of an overall paradigm shift that makes it much, much easier to generate income as an independent musician. Even if people do end up spending less money on recorded music overall, there's still never been a better time for a musician to grab a biggier piece of that pie for themselves.

That's the first issue. The second issue, as far as making a profit from a recording, is actually a lot simpler than it tends to be made out to be. The basic issue for any aspiring business is this: if your income exceeds your expenses, you've got a business. If your expenses exceed your income, then you've either got to change your business plan, or resign yourself to a hobby and generate your income some other way.

For some reason, this basic type of thinking seems much more pronounced in the film industry than in the music industry - the constraints of basic financial reality seem to be a much more fundamental part of the basic decision-making process where creative judgements are concerned. Maybe because the overall cost of film making is much higher than record making... Or maybe because films involve so many more people in the process of creation, and so consequently movie makers have more employees to pay and more investors to answer to, which makes "the bottom line" a much more pressing issue.

If making back money on an album's sales is important, then a person needs to apply a bit of critical thinking and planning to their recording activities. That doesn't mean cynically pandering their every overdub to the lowest common denominator mainstream trend of the moment - it simply means asking themselves a few very basic questions, and applying some real-world parameters to what they do. This might mean any number of things:

- maybe most importantly: having enough of a professional game plan so that you have a clear sense of what role you're looking at a recording serving in the grand scheme of your work, and a good sense of how that role is going to benefit your ability to bring in money in the long run;

- doing enough pre-production that you know, with a reasonable amount of certainty, which songs are going to be on the final release, and what form those tunes are most likely to take, so that you don't spend time, energy, and money on recordings that will prove to be musical/financial dead-ends;

- doing enough rehearsal and practice ahead of time so that you're ready and able to deliver a keeper take when you get to the studio, and time/money doesn't have to be inordinately spent on work that could just as well be done outside the studio instead;

- similarly, investing in a home-recording rig where various kinds of overdubs can be tracked, so that you can track in a more relaxed, experimental, exploratory capacity, without having that sort of undertaking cut into the time-based costs of studio rental;

- establishing some kind of realistic budget for both money invested and time spent, as a "reality check" to keep the recording process reasonably on track. I know Zappa used to set up album budgets and schedules even when he was recording in his home studio, specifically because he wanted to resist the tendency to shower endless amounts of time and expenditure on recordings.

- Last and definitely not least: understanding that recording an album is merely a first step, and that to truly try and realize an album's earnings potential, that album needs to be promoted (i.e. sent out for reviews, radio play, and/or media licensing) and the fruits of that promotion need to be treated as important things (which means that cool coverage or reviews are pretty meaningless if potential customers aren't able to read whatever reviews or coverage a product might have earned.)

A lot of this probably looks like it's taking a lot of the fun out of making an album. For a lot of musicians, the whole point of making recordings is to have fun, be relaxed, spend as much time and money as they feel like, pursue any number of flights of fancy while the studio clock is running, amd then see what they have after however many months, weeks, or years they may have spent puttering away at their projects.

I can relate to that a lot. It reminds me of a different part of that very same Salon article that Shawn mentioned: the part where the author is reflecting on his attatchment to the superficial aspects of music collecting - the album covers, the turntable, the vinyl noise, the fetishization of the physical artifact. Yet his ultimate conclusion (as I understood it, anyway) was that these things are NOT the same things as the music itself - they're trappings of the music, and they can play an important part in the way listeners connect with the music... but the music itself ultimately exists independently of these trappings, and divorcing onesself from those trappings does not necessarily mean that the music itself is being rendered impotent.

So - while it's certainly far from a perfect analogy - I think that idea can be applied to the process of making a record. Imposing even some of the restrictions or rules that I mentioned above might make the record-making process less fun or enjoyable for people, particularly if it removes some of the trappings and routines that a recording artist might have developed an affection for. But it can also make the album-making process more efficient, less meandering, more focused, and - crucially, for the purposes of this thread - get more releasable music finished, in a shorter amount of time, for a smaller overall investment.

And just as the author of the Salon editorial was amazed to find that ripping a vinyl record to digital could actually improve some aspects of the listening experience - removing annoying pops, and the like - so too can a certain amount of "serious" recording rules possibly make the whole thing less of an enormous, time-consuming burden, and more of a regular, routine way of doing business. It's all ultimately a very personal issue that any musician needs to deal with themselves, and everyone will have their own answer.

For me, I'm infinitely more interested in making a finished record than I am in the outermost trappings of record-making. I'm much more interested in finding out how to make recordings in a way that minimizes the amount of time and money I have to spend on the recording process - not just so that I have a smaller investment to recoup from a CD release, but so that I can spend less time in front of a computer with a mouse in my hand, and more time in front of an audience with a guitar in my hand (and finished CDs at a merch table).

Ah well....

--Andre LaFosse
http://www.altruistmusic.com

[snow lizard]

Well spoken, Andre.