Download Uproar: Recording industry says illegal to transfer music

[Noj]

There's less compelling current music right now than ever in the pop and rock departments. I don't believe it is a matter of taste, I believe that is a statement of fact since I am a fan of pop and rock and consider myself open to new music. It's hasty to attribute the decline in cd sales solely to illegal file sharing when it has been accompanied by a plunge in creativity.

On the other side of the coin, Jon and Chuck surely don't expect their releases to go platinum as their target audience is much smaller. With that in mind, the people who enjoy the music Jon and Chuck put out there need to understand how they are biting the hand that feeds them by downloading such releases illegally. The small arthouse outfits like Jon's and Chuck's must be supported financially!

[Jazzmoose]

Damn, I'm still thinking about that yak meat...

[RDK]

I'm sure there are others out there, but most of the blogs I've seen that offer downloads do so only of LP-sourced or otherwise oop material - and they are sensitive to material that's still widely available. That doesn't technically change anything, of course, but it does seem much less harmful and it's been my (personal) experience that the exposure to new artists and albums leads to future purchases of in-print material (or actually paying to see an artist live, which while swell admittedly doesn't directly help the record producer).

I obviously don't believe that the public has some sort of inalienable "right" to hear everything, in print or not, but that's also a rather disingenuous position to take in a forum of jazz obsessives who routinely seek out every note ever recorded by their favorite musicians. To call an album a "classic" and then keep it oop (for whatever reason) for decades is going to result in an increased demand for it - and if the only way of acquiring it is through the the active "trading" of it, well that, rightly or wrongly, is what's gonna happen.

As others have said about file-sharing, you can't unring a bell; the practice is here to stay. I do agree that it's wrong for file-sharing sites to host lossless files of new releases (and I know it's especially harmful to independent labels), but I can see a promotional benefit in offering mp3s to entice a new listener and potential purchaser.

[GA Russell]

I don't know to what extent a record company is motivated by the desire to minimize illegal downloading, as opposed to maximizing its sales. For example, I doubt that Michael Buble has been the victim of much illegal downloading. So record companies concerned about illegal downloading should concentrate on music whose audience doesn't do that sort of thing.

But if maximizing sales is the goal, than illegal downloading should be considered on a par with taping off the radio. There are going to be some people who enjoy the product without paying for it. But as I have said, it's not clear to me that they would have paid for it under any circumstance. So in regard to those people, who cares?

The market for a record company has always been the people who are willing to purchase the record. The American and world populations are bigger than ever. If the number of people who are willing to buy a record is likely to be too small for the record to break even, then maybe that record shouldn't be issued by a record company that wants to see all of its issues pay for themselves.

[Christiern]

Check this out.

[GA Russell]

Good for a laugh Chris!

[jon abbey]

There's less compelling current music right now than ever in the pop and rock departments. I don't believe it is a matter of taste, I believe that is a statement of fact since I am a fan of pop and rock and consider myself open to new music. It's hasty to attribute the decline in cd sales solely to illegal file sharing when it has been accompanied by a plunge in creativity.

further to this, and touching on a different facet, there's an interesting piece in a recent Rolling Stone here:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/177...f_high_fidelity

this isn't news to anyone paying close attention, but when you've experienced shelling out $15 for a CD that sounds decidedly worse than the 192 MP3 of that same CD that you've been playing quite a bit (Paul Wall's The People's Champ, if anyone cares), it's a pretty strong discouragement against shelling out $15 the next time around. I don't think these issues are too prevalent yet if we're only talking about the jazz/improv world, but it's yet another factor to consider when discussing illegal file-sharing in general.

[paul secor]

With all of the rationalizations for illegal file sharing - CDs are overpriced, oop material should be available, shared files create a market for live performances, etc. - isn't the bottom line that a lot of folks want to hear music but just don't want to pay for it?

[jon abbey]

that's certainly a big factor, although I'd guess that a major percentage of people in that category don't have the money to buy too much anyway. but the point is that we all know that, I'm trying to add a bit of nuance to the discussion.

[Jim Alfredson]

Interesting perspective from Trent Reznor of NIN:

It's a strange time to be an artist in the recording business. It's pretty easy to see what NOT to do these days, but less obvious to know what's right. As I find myself free from the bloated bureaucracy of major labels, finally able to do whatever I want... well, what is that? What is the "right" way to release records, treat your music and your audience with respect and attempt to make a living as well? I have a number of musician friends who are either in a similar situation or feel they soon will be, and it's a real source of anxiety and uncertainty.

I'd like to share my experience releasing Saul Williams' "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust" and what I've learned from the process. Perhaps by revealing of all our data - our "dirty laundry" - we can contribute to a better solution.

A quick history: Saul makes a great record that I produce. We can't find the right home at a major label. We decide to release it ourselves, digitally. Saul does not have limitless financial resources so we shop around for a company that can fulfill our needs. We choose Musicane because they are competent and are willing to adapt to what we want. The results are here:

We offer the entire record free (as in totally free to the visitor - we pay bandwidth costs) as 192 MP3s, or for $5 you can choose higher fidelity versions and feel good about supporting the artist directly. We offer all major CCs and PayPal as payment options.

Here's what I was thinking: Fans are interested in music as soon as it's available (that's a good thing, remember) and usually that's a leak from the label's manufacturing plants. Offering the record digitally as its first appearance in the marketplace eliminates that problem. I thought if you offered the whole record free at reasonable quality - no strings attached - and offered a hassle free way to show support that clearly goes straight to the artists who made it at an unquestionably low price people would "do the right thing". I know, I know...

Well, now I DO know and you will too.

Saul's previous record was released in 2004 and has sold 33,897 copies.

As of 1/2/08,

154,449 people chose to download Saul's new record.

28,322 of those people chose to pay $5 for it, meaning:

18.3% chose to pay.

Of those paying,

3220 chose 192kbps MP3

19,764 chose 320kbps MP3

5338 chose FLAC

Keep in mind not one cent was spent on marketing this record. The only marketing was Saul and myself talking as loudly as we could to anybody that would listen.

If 33,897 people went out and bought Saul's last record 3 years ago (when more people bought CDs) and over 150K - five times as many - sought out this new record, that's great - right?

I have to assume the people knowing about this project must either be primarily Saul or NIN fans, as there was very little media coverage outside our direct influence. If that assumption is correct - that most of the people that chose to download Saul's record came from his or my own fan-base - is it good news that less than one in five feel it was worth $5? I'm not sure what I was expecting but that percentage - primarily from fans - seems disheartening.

Add to that: we spent too much (correction, I spent too much) making the record utilizing an A-list team and studio, Musicane fees, an old publishing deal, sample clearance fees, paying to give the record away (bandwidth costs), and nobody's getting rich off this project.

But... Saul's music is in more peoples' iPods than ever before and people are interested in him. He'll be touring throughout the year and we will continue to get the word out however we can.

So - if you're an artist looking to utilize this method of distribution, make of these figures what you will and hopefully this info is enlightening.

Best,

TR

source

The results pretty much correlate with the Radiohead experiment. If you give people a choice to get something for free or pay for a slightly better version, most will opt for free. No big surprise there.

[jon abbey]

that's hardly the only conclusion to take from that (pretty interesting) example.

look at the raw numbers (33,897 for the previous record, 28,322 choosing to pay for this one even though it's not a physical object), and you can make an educated guess that most of those choosing the free DL would probably just ignore this music entirely if it wasn't free. maybe some of those would purchase a physical object if it was available (again, there's resale value here, I've made thousands of dollars in the last few years selling OOP CDs from my collection on eBay, probably over $20 on average), maybe some of them will buy his next record, maybe some will go to his concerts and buy CDs or merchandise there. I personally have yet to pay for a DL, I'll either DL something for free or buy the CD (sometimes the first, then the second), I'm not paying for electronic files, at least as of now.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

The other thing you could make of it, were the data present, which, despite Reznor's assertion that he's

revealing of all our data - our "dirty laundry"

, they aren't, is:

out of the sales of the previous album, how much came back to Reznor and the singer after costs were paid? And

out of the $5 sales of the DL, how much came back to Reznor and the singer after costs were paid?

He implies he spent too much and didn't make a profit on the DL. Whose fault is that?

MG

[RDK]

Also, as an artist, there must be some satisfaction - aside from monetary - that nearly five times as many people are listening to your music.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Also, as an artist, there must be some satisfaction - aside from monetary - that nearly five times as many people are listening to your music.

Not necessarily - the article assumes that these people were all fans anyway, or they couldn't have got to hear about it. If they were fans, they probably heard their friends' copies - and copied them (?)

MG

[paul secor]

that's certainly a big factor, although I'd guess that a major percentage of people in that category don't have the money to buy too much anyway.

Don't know that I agree with that. I know a fair number of young people who have as much or more money as I had when I was in college in in my early 20's. Most of them choose to spend their money on things other than music - probably because they can get music for free.

Don't know if it's so, but I feel that something that doesn't cost anything means less to people than something they have to pay for. Perhaps that's at least part of the reason that music doesn't seem to be as important to young people today as it was in the past.

[Free For All]

I know a fair number of young people who have as much or more money as I had when I was in college in in my early 20's. Most of them choose to spend their money on things other than music - probably because they can get music for free.

Don't know if it's so, but I feel that something that doesn't cost anything means less to people than something they have to pay for. Perhaps that's at least part of the reason that music doesn't seem to be as important to young people today as it was in the past.

I've worked with a lot of mostly college-age students over the years, and I've discovered a couple things in recent times:

1) They are downloading music constantly and not buying many CDs anymore. When I ask them about this, they act all sheepish and say that they plan to purchase a CD copy of things that they like, but I know that most of the time this isn't happening. I don't let them burn my CDs, but I know they just go elsewhere and seldom pay much if anything, and most of the time it's not because they're broke. The other big problem I've noticed is that, because they are downloading, they aren't getting all of the info about the recording (personnel, dates etc.) and therefore aren't learning as much from their listening as they should. An important point of learning to listen is to be able to recognize specific players and their stylistic nuances. There certainly are resources to obtain this information, but I usually have to hound them to do it. The better students are pretty good about this, but many of the mid-level students really don't seem to "get it".

2) They tend not to appreciate things as much when they're free. For me, this applies also to private lessons taught outside of my school load- students pay attention and prepare much better when they are paying for a lesson. I used to frequently teach for free, thinking I was providing a service, but I found that there was much less progress and it ended up frequently as a waste of time for all involved. I do, however, still give free lessons on occasion when I know the student is broke but genuinely interested, or a potential student is visiting campus.

As far as free music downloading, I agree with Paul that this is leading to an overall decline in interest.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

that's certainly a big factor, although I'd guess that a major percentage of people in that category don't have the money to buy too much anyway.

Don't know that I agree with that. I know a fair number of young people who have as much or more money as I had when I was in college in in my early 20's. Most of them choose to spend their money on things other than music - probably because they can get music for free.

Hm, but do they have as much money as you do now?

In the days when I was poor, I DID tape lots of LPs off friends. As I became better off, I bought them all.

Don't know if it's so, but I feel that something that doesn't cost anything means less to people than something they have to pay for. Perhaps that's at least part of the reason that music doesn't seem to be as important to young people today as it was in the past.

I don't know if it's so, either - nor the reverse. But music on the radio is free (at least at the point of delivery) and I doubt whether that fact led to music being devalued by the several generations who have grown up in the radio age. I suspect that there are people who are really into music - us lot for example - and a whole lot more who just like it; and probably those proportions don't change much from one generation to another.

My feeling is that a young person's ipod is much like a transistor radio was in the sixties. You carried it around everywhere, annoying people as much as you could. Ipods seem very frequently to be used in the same way as a tranny: putting your tunes on random shuffle seems to me not unlike listening to pop radio, where you hear the same songs repeated every so often, until the record goes off the chart, when it's replaced with something else. Viewed in that light, perhaps it's not too difficult to see why someone wouldn't want to pay.

And perhaps this is "normal". In the period up to the late sixties, the single (78 or 45) was the unit of music. In the late sixties, an even more prosperous youth (than the generation before) found that LPs were the thing, with the development of Rock. But that paradigm itself seems to be changing and people are now more concerned with individual tracks/songs. This certainly seems to be reflected in the CDs issued of modern dance music, which are more like various artists compilations - but put together out of new, not recycled, material. So, is it possible that people are merely returning to a more normal view of music as individual performances, and that the album thing was a brief oddity.

I wonder if someone like Noj could contribute some ideas along this line.

MG

[Noj]

I've always been more of a "song" guy than an "album" guy. Creating my own compilations of my favorite songs is an activity I've been doing for my entire listening life. Why wait for the favorite song when every song can be a favorite? Now I have the iPod and I can make playlists of my favorites which are days long.

I don't know if it's so, either - nor the reverse. But music on the radio is free (at least at the point of delivery) and I doubt whether that fact led to music being devalued by the several generations who have grown up in the radio age. I suspect that there are people who are really into music - us lot for example - and a whole lot more who just like it; and probably those proportions don't change much from one generation to another.

I agree with this statement 100%. I notice music really isn't that important to most people I come across.

Most people focus on a single genre of music--it's all they like and they don't want to hear anything else.

I still value the object. I love having a cd and all the nicely printed liners and artwork. Most people I meet only have a small amount of cds and they barely care about them at all. They lose the jewel cases and leave their cds in a stack on a messy shelf next to ashtrays and sticky with spilled soda, or falling haphazardly in between the seats of their cars, the cd surfaces appearing as though playfully skipped across a gravel driveway. Meanwhile I have thousands of cds cared for like precious jewels, never ruined by the elements. My own little library.

I've used legitimate and illegitimate downloads to gain knowledge, but to me they have the value of recorded cassettes--it's as if I don't actually have that recording yet. I need the cd or the album in order for it to "count" in my collection.

Edited January 4, 2008 by Noj

[paul secor]

that's certainly a big factor, although I'd guess that a major percentage of people in that category don't have the money to buy too much anyway.

Don't know that I agree with that. I know a fair number of young people who have as much or more money as I had when I was in college in in my early 20's. Most of them choose to spend their money on things other than music - probably because they can get music for free.

Hm, but do they have as much money as you do now?

In the days when I was poor, I DID tape lots of LPs off friends. As I became better off, I bought them all.

MG

They probably don't have as much money as I do now, but I did buy records back when I didn't have much money.

[paul secor]

Don't know if it's so, but I feel that something that doesn't cost anything means less to people than something they have to pay for. Perhaps that's at least part of the reason that music doesn't seem to be as important to young people today as it was in the past.

I don't know if it's so, either - nor the reverse. But music on the radio is free (at least at the point of delivery) and I doubt whether that fact led to music being devalued by the several generations who have grown up in the radio age. I suspect that there are people who are really into music - us lot for example - and a whole lot more who just like it; and probably those proportions don't change much from one generation to another.

My feeling is that a young person's ipod is much like a transistor radio was in the sixties. You carried it around everywhere, annoying people as much as you could. Ipods seem very frequently to be used in the same way as a tranny: putting your tunes on random shuffle seems to me not unlike listening to pop radio, where you hear the same songs repeated every so often, until the record goes off the chart, when it's replaced with something else. Viewed in that light, perhaps it's not too difficult to see why someone wouldn't want to pay.

And perhaps this is "normal". In the period up to the late sixties, the single (78 or 45) was the unit of music. In the late sixties, an even more prosperous youth (than the generation before) found that LPs were the thing, with the development of Rock. But that paradigm itself seems to be changing and people are now more concerned with individual tracks/songs. This certainly seems to be reflected in the CDs issued of modern dance music, which are more like various artists compilations - but put together out of new, not recycled, material. So, is it possible that people are merely returning to a more normal view of music as individual performances, and that the album thing was a brief oddity.

I wonder if someone like Noj could contribute some ideas along this line.

MG

You make some good points, especially about the radio, but I feel that what you're talking about is pop music. 78's and 45's weren't the unit of music for jazz or classical music - at least not in the 50's and 60's. And, at least in my listening time, you couldn't hear a lot of jazz on the radio, and what was there was limited in scope. You had to buy the LPs if you wanted to hear the music.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Hm, let's go a bit further. The business of the record business is to supply the public with the music it wants; not music it doesn't want.

Suppose the album paradgm is over or running down, in terms of popular music (though it's still probably useful for classical music and jazz and some other kinds of stuff). Suppose record companies in the pop business - basically the majors and some R&B oriented firms - stop making albums and just concentrate on singles, and one-sided singles if we're now talking downloads. In that situation, costs fall terrifically (though there may well be a small premium for good songwriters - the new Cole Porters etc so to speak). Do costs fall sufficiently to enable those companies to make profits by selling downloads at a price that no one would mind paying? Suppose they were charged at 10c, but you could get ten million 10c, which could be more profitable than selling half a million 75 minute CDs? Could that be a future?

On the other hand, what of the collection costs of that 10c? Is there a system in existence which would allow ten million 10c to be collected without each transaction costing a dollar or whatever? Could there ever be such a system? And how could kids of, say 10-15 years be part of it?

MG

[RDK]

I still value the object. I love having a cd and all the nicely printed liners and artwork. Most people I meet only have a small amount of cds and they barely care about them at all. They lose the jewel cases and leave their cds in a stack on a messy shelf next to ashtrays and sticky with spilled soda, or falling haphazardly in between the seats of their cars, the cd surfaces appearing as though playfully skipped across a gravel driveway. Meanwhile I have thousands of cds cared for like precious jewels, never ruined by the elements. My own little library.

I've used legitimate and illegitimate downloads to gain knowledge, but to me they have the value of recorded cassettes--it's as if I don't actually have that recording yet. I need the cd or the album in order for it to "count" in my collection.

Could have written most of this post myself.

As "example," I've been a member of emusic for years now, going back to the unlimited days, where I downloaded 100s of OJCs. But lately I've been buying dozens of my favorite OJCs just to ensure that I have a "hard" copy before they disappear completely. As much as I'd like to think that only the musical content matters, it's the package as a whole that often makes the album: the cover, the liners, the recording info, etc.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I feel that what you're talking about is pop music.

Yes - that's where the industry has to break through the present system, not jazz or classical music - or a few other types of music. Changing THAT ethos seems to me the key point. If that CAN be done, then the major element of incentive for the illegal download system is likely to collapse, with consequent impacts on other types of music.

Basically, Chuck's feeling that the RIAA, which stands mainly for the majors, is the only game in town for him, is right. Because they're the only firms in the pop music business with the clout to possibly do it.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

They probably don't have as much money as I do now, but I did buy records back when I didn't have much money.

Yes, and so did I

MG

[Jazzmoose]

The other big problem I've noticed is that, because they are downloading, they aren't getting all of the info about the recording (personnel, dates etc.) and therefore aren't learning as much from their listening as they should. An important point of learning to listen is to be able to recognize specific players and their stylistic nuances. There certainly are resources to obtain this information, but I usually have to hound them to do it. The better students are pretty good about this, but many of the mid-level students really don't seem to "get it".

This is just a guess on my part, but I have a feeling that the percentage of real "listeners" is much lower among those who download and never buy than among those who actually shell out for the music. That's one of the reasons they don't consider paying for music to be a good use of their money: they don't see music as something rewarding, but as just a soundtrack for their other activities. Again, I have no evidence; this is just a guess.