Tuesday
Jun222010
June 22, 2010 Why You Should Pay For Music
Let’s get one thing straight: I love free music. If a musician decides to give away an album, I’m the first to download it. I am against the RIAA lawsuits that sue people for sharing music. Rather than scaring people into buying music, I advocate a culture in which people actually want to spend money on music, because they understand the positive repercussions it has on the medium of recorded music, and the lives of the artists that produce it. What I hope to do in the following paragraphs is persuade you that not only does paying for music benefit that artist you claim to support, but also benefits you, the listener.
I’m not going to make a legal argument. It may be valid but just isn’t relevant in practice. A law is only as effective as the means by which you can enforce it. And, unless something crazy happens in the world of Internet regulation, no one will be able to forcibly stop people from sharing music. After all, if there was no bouncer outside a concert venue, we could expect to see ticket sales plummet just as fast as CD sales. The problem is that many people just don’t value music in a meaningful way. What do I mean by that? Well, I understand perfectly well that people value music in the sense that they enjoy it, and love rocking out on their iPod. However, they don’t value it in the sense that they will willingly fork over $1 for a song, thus helping the artist who made it continue to produce awesome music. If I’m going to convince you to buy your next record, it’s not going to happen by scaring you with abstract arguments about copyright law.
I used to illegally download in high school. I remember when Napster first came out. It was incredible. It was fast, free, and delivered on-demand music; what could be bad about that? I can say, in all honestly, I did not once think about how it could negatively impact a musician, until I saw first-hand what it was doing.
After high school, I went to NYU, hoping to become a recording engineer. At the same time, I began to record my own music, in the hope of someday making a living from it. In an effort to get a grander perspective on the business I longed to enter, I got an internship at an indie record label. There I saw artists, with sizable fan-bases, question whether they could record another album. The demand was there, but the audience was not paying for the product they claimed to love so much. This directly translated to artists not recording albums, plain and simple. Instead, they embarked on relentless tours, leaving little to no time for writing new material and recording it.
During this time I also started to look for work in recording studios. There, I saw an effect of file sharing that was not immediately obvious. Musicians could no longer afford to pay recording engineers (amazing artists in their own right). As music sales continued to decline, studios all over New York City were shutting their doors. And it wasn’t just the big time Hit Factory places; small independently run studios were going under as well. It wasn’t that they were creating inferior products. It was a direct result of people not paying for music. This led to a decline in the quality of recorded music, at least when talking about independent artists who don’t have a 1 million dollar advance to burn through.
As I saw this going on around me, I stopped to think. If I want to be an audio engineer at a studio, how can I download music illegally? It would be utterly hypocritical of me to download an album for nothing, and at the same time hope that someone else would buy one I worked on. I realized that if I wanted things to change, I would have to start by doing it myself. Hands down, the best way to support your favorite artist is financially. Of course, telling your friends about songs and re-tweeting alerts helps, but it does not necessarily enable artists to produce moremusic. At the end of the day, what good is a fan who tells 1,000 friends about your album if none of them actually buy it? Sure, those people might go see the band live, but concerts and recordings have totally different budgets and costs. When you go see a live show, it doesn’t make up for the record you ripped off LimeWire. Your ticket price pays the roadies, the sound guys, the tour manager, the gas bills, the van insurance, and maybe, if they’re lucky, the band. That form of logic reduces recorded music to a PR Tool, aimed at promoting the sale of tickets and t-shirts. And what does that say for recorded music as a medium? Will recorded music be reduced to the importance of a T-shirt, used to promote a live show? Recorded music provides a listening experience that is unique and rewarding in its own right, and listeners should strive to preserve that. Fans should respect the wishes of the artist. If a musician asks that you pay for an album, you should respect the time and effort that went into its creation, and pay for it.
Perhaps people don’t really care about how artists make their living. But there are positive repercussions for the listener. First, I guarantee you, it will make the listening experience more rewarding. You will have a recording whose quality matches what the artist intended. You will listen closer. Just like you would savor the taste of an expensive bottle of wine, you’ll savor the sounds of that record you bought. After all, good music is not meant to be “chugged”. Buying a record will also make it easier for that artist to produce another one, meaning you get a kick-ass sounding follow-up to that record you just sipped slowly with some cheese and crackers. It is, in essence, a “win/win”.
Don’t believe me? Try it out. Wait for the release date, like you would a souffle coming from the kitchen. When it arrives, set aside some time to put it on. You can end the listening session with the comforting feeling that you are enabling the artist you love to continue to create beautiful music, that you will be able to tweet about in the very near future.
At the end of the day, it’s really a moral argument. Unfortunately in the music world, as with life in general, the moral road is not always the easiest route to take. As Plato said, “[Music] gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” In this sense, it is almost as important as the air we breathe. I urge you to meditate on this. How much does music mean to you? How does it positively affect your life? Hopefully many of you will come to the conclusion that while you may not have a fat bank account, ten dollars for a record you will play 100 times is a damn good deal.
Courtesy of SoundCtrl.com, a network of digital media professional who are focused on advancing the music industry through the power of the social web.
Jon Sheldrick is an audio engineer with MuseAmi, and also leads a group called Fatty Acid. You can listen to his music (and download some things for free!) @ fattyacid.bandcamp.com.
Reader Comments (58)
Musicians, make as many people pay as possible - seems simple, really.
It's easy enough to hear a 'radio' version online or even on the radio to see if you like a track. I sometimes think there is a masochistic tendency amongst interweb music warriors - the moral arguments are irrelevant. As a musician you will be ripped off by EVERYONE, from promoters to labels to TV companies to radio stations to lawyers... you need to grab every last penny. If that means you give some away as a taster or special reward for visiting your .com, fine.
But be sensible - no one has found the mysterious monetizing grail because there isn't one. Just charge what ever you can get away with while you can.
I worked for a major record label just before the creation of Napster. I worked in the Production department. We were in charge of the creation of the CD's from the artwork to the masters to the distribution. I loved every minute of it & it was a great place to work. Then came Napster. And a staff of 100+ employees dwindled down to a skeleton crew of under thirty & one of the biggest labels in the world became a distributed label. I was layed-off along with about 1,000 employees world wide. I would give anything to work in the music industry again. But this time playing the music. The way things are right now though, the industry is nearly catatonic so i'm afraid that's one dream that wont be made reality. To this day, if i like an album or artist, I will buy it. I create playlists online to promote artists. Thank you for the article. Many have the wrong idea of what the consequences of this is & what's ultimately at stake. I will do my part by re-posting this. I hope that others will do the same.
I'm a late to this conversation. I am curious if any of you who think music should be free walk into a store, find something you like... and walk out of the store without paying?
Musicians would rather sell their music than have to come up with cheap t-shirts and stupid merchandise for you to buy in order to make a living. Musicians are forced to sell "Stuff" in order to make a living now because no one thinks their their music is worth paying for. Wouldn't you like to support a musician financially by buying their music rather than a t-shirt or key chain? That "stuff" costs money to make. Leading the musician to make a larger investment in merchandise in hopes that they will sell enough to cover the cost and make a profit. Wouldn't you rather they get paid for their music so they can just concentrate on writing, recording and putting out more great music? I just question why people think paying for a T-shirt with the artists name has more value than their music that they actually created and recorded themselves?
I don't care what decade it is. Free music does not necessarily lead to more music sales or ticket sales, I have been working with a musician that has been touring and putting out albums for 20 years, he has songs in movies (which his former record label makes all the money from the downloads of said songs). He is an extraordinary writer and performer, he is well respected. We have been giving music away like crazy, and I know for a fact that people are getting one of his best known songs for free from someone on youtube that sends it to people if you send an email address. The video has been watched over 250,000 times. Statistically the sales just do not add up to the amount of music people are getting for free.
I consider myself a pretty progressive thinker when it comes to how the music industry works in 2010. I support my artists (and I repeat... ARTISTS) in a very knowledgeable, educated, outside of the box way of thinking. But this will always remain mind boggling to me as to why people feel entitled to free music.
Although I agree with the vast majority of the post, music in particular should not be made for profit. The greatest musicians in the past that created works considered to be God tier and unmatched by anything which can be composed today were by people who were paid only modestly for their efforts compared to how it is now.
Without a doubt, paying for music isn't about contributing to the artist but buying into the game of monopoly which is actually, for the most part ruining music.
......but spending ten dollars on an album that you play once and realise you don't like and will never play again?? The deal doesn't seem so great to me now.
The last statement is based on the fact that everything you'll buy you'll love which is far from true. Without tha ability to download music I wouldn't have discovered a lot of the music I love today and I'd probably have a lot of expensive coasters laying around the place.
Having said that its a good piece though.
It's 2011 and the debate is still on everyone's mind. What is fair? How are different generations interacting with Internet? What are the alternatives for the future? We all agree that the artist is a creator and that we must find a way to incentivate that effort to keep them comming. Napster was the beginning of a different era, and probably the Odd Future is for those who will be able to make it happen without the classical industries... and maybe, if they feel like it, they might join the show. Will the future be like the past? Impossilbe. The adaptation process of the music industry will leave some behind, but there's great potencial for a win win situation.
Spotify is a possibility but there will be much more in the future. Here's an example from Juan Manuel Freire, who thinks it's a bargain what you can have for a full acces account compared to what he used to crave for in the past.
http://playgroundmag.net/columnas/21622-vs-the-pop-world-
I agree that there must be a co-responsability between users and creators, but the answer will not come from everyone adapting to what one industry needs. We need to be able to generate a social concience of the change that we have in front of us, at the local level, starting from us, and define a way in which we can relate with an interconnected market of people interested in engaging with each others creation, project, iniciative, campaign.
Personally we believe that we can come up with a fair deal for all of us, where you, and me, are the incentivators of those things that add some value to our lives, and therefore, we give, freely. How much? Whatever it's worth to you at the micro level: uno cent.
Call me a dreamer, but we believe we could create a open society that believes in the value of creators and those willing to support them.
Well i dnt steal music. I rip the audio from videos and save them. Thats not against the law. Its a win-win. I dnt have to pay and im not stealing just saving.
Hi Jon, would you mind me copy-pasting this article on my website? I'll add your link of course. Just think that the more people read this the better.