Tuesday, May 13, 2008

More on Music Piracy...

I thought since I have the chance to I'd go a little further on my views about music "piracy".

The reality for many musicians, and creators for that matter, is that it is not people stealing their work that deprives them of an income but the fact that no-one knows of their work. Obscurity is the enemy of the artist. I need not preach to students of virtual cultures as to how online communities can provide incredible marketing opportunities for artists, artists who are prepared to "give away" some of their content in the hope that they will be able to reap the rewards for doing so. After all, the very reason that we have copyright law is to protect the right of the artist to do what she or he wishes with their music, that is to control the uses.

The growing evidence that giving away work improves your viability can be seen across many genres. Cory Doctorow, online journalist and science fiction author, released his book “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” under a Creative Commons licence. Doctorow already had a following so within the first twenty-four hours over 30,000 copies were downloaded. According to Doctorow “I’ve given away more than half a million digital copies of my award- winning first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and that sucker has blown through five print editions (yee-HAW!), so I’m not worried that giving away books is hurting my sales.”

The use of the word piracy itself presumes a sense of illegality. As I've referred to in an earlier post there are varied ways that people share music online and they are not all illegal. The debate over online music sharing has been co-opted by people with vested interests and has resulted in a, sometimes less than logical, assumption that all sharing and copying of music is criminal.



These types of emotive arguments have long been used in the fight against piracy but I am yet to be convinced that it is illegal downloading that is hurting the industry. As Lessig points out, even if we agree with the RIAA that the decline in CD sales is due to online sharing, how can it be explained that

"[i]n the same period that the RIAA estimates that 803 billion CDs were sold, the RIAA estimates that 2.1 billion CDs were downloaded for free. Thus, although 2.6 times the total number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, sales revenue fell by just 6.7 percent"
(2004, p. 71).

I think that the explanation for this figure is that not all types of downloading hurts the music industry. In fact the more music fans there are the bigger market share the music industry has to sell to. It's more a case of give and takes as far as I'm concerned. And I doubt that, while the major music companies continue to have signed artists in the top of the charts, any record company executive will find themselves in the dole queue. Unfortunately it's an age old problem; our musicians, even some of the most popular, seem to find themselves in exactly this position.

I firmly see the way of the future as a new music industry that encourages and allows musicians to tailor individual business models that make the best use of new technologies rather than blindly labelling all online sharing as "piracy".

If you're an interested party (i.e. a musician) I recommend that you check out the following resources:

Lessig, L. 2004. Free Culture. Penguin Group: New York.
The full book is available online under a Creative Commons Licence.

Simpson, S. (2006) Music Business: A Musicians Guide to the Australian Music Industry.

This book is also available in full online.

1 comment:

sophielangton said...

This entry represents the true reality of the global music industry. Industry predictions highlight the increasing financial success of the music industry, estimating the worldwide market to be worth an estimated US$8.9 billion by 2010, thus demonstrating the continued and thriving success of an industry, supposedly plagued and damaged by music piracy.

Your article highlights the key characteristics and importance of music 'piracy' for artists. Above and beyond all else for most musicians is exposure and audience, which comes with music piracy. It is once these are established and achieved that then the musician/band can seek financial gain through other outlets such as merch sales and concert attendance. In fact artists openly embrace file sharing, if it means exposure, and your blog accurately identifies this belief.

And it poses the question; if both the users and content producers can embrace music piracy then why can't everyone else?