Shiver Me Timbers
Remember clause 17 of the Digital Economy Act? Probably not. Boring stuff isn’t it?
That’s the one which would allow the British Phonographic Industry – no wonder they go by the acronym of the BPI – to ask a friendly Minister to block access to ‘pirate websites’ which allow people to download music free of charge.
Just watch it take a step closer…
The value of illegally downloaded music in the U.K. will be worth 1 billion pounds this year, as the practice proliferates and slows growth of the digital music market.
An estimated 7.7 million U.K. Internet users illegally download music on a regular basis, meaning musicians, songwriters and music companies receive no payments, according to the Digital Music Nation 2010 report from the BPI trade organization.
Though the U.K. boasts 67 legal online music services, more than any other country, there is no effective deterrent to obtaining music illegally, BPI said. The music industry is lobbying government to implement the Digital Economy Act, passed earlier this year and designed to curb illegal file sharing by requiring Internet service providers to block some users.
The report claims that the retail value of the illegally downloaded material is £984 million and that 28% of the UK online populations are busy illegally downloading….
‘To find that 76 per cent of downloads are illegal is shocking’ said Geoff Taylor, the Chief Executive of the BPI. ‘Despite the progress of the legal market and the high awareness of legal services illegal downloading is not decreasing.’
He added:
‘It is a parasite that threatens to deprive a generation of talented young people of their chance to make a career in music, and is holding back investment in the burgeoning digital entertainment sector.’
But, but, but – those talented young people can still make a career in music – they just won’t be able to support an army of Chief Executives getting rich on their talent, they’ll be playing in pubs and clubs and earning a wage for it…..
December 19, 2010 at 12:25
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“So why shouldn’t hippies be burned?”
Sorry – meant to write, “Bad tempered bugger, with a chip on your
shoulder”.
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December 18, 2010 at 14:19
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“So why shouldn’t hippies be burned?”
Bad tempered bugger aren’t you. You need to dance to some Dead shows…
- December 18, 2010 at 01:07
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Oh yeah, the Good Ol’ Grateful Dead with their ever-changing performances,
AKA “Which of the many bum notes available will Garcia be hitting tonight”.
The Dead have had their moments but there is more than a little of the
emperors new clothes about their “fantastic soaring improvisational genius”
etc.
A lot of this smells like nasty old socialist envy – “I can’t do it that
way, why should you”. Can I be the first to posit the notion that engineers
should be paid nothing for their work – merely commission on every use of it.
No use, no pay, even if they took a year, decade whatever, to design it. No
patents, no intellectual propery cobblers, nothing.
Libertarians so long as it’s someone else’s work, whining old shitbags when
someone comes for yours.
- December 17, 2010 at 23:55
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Is somebody gonna do something about this twat? i don’t care how many
bottles of scotch he’s imbibed and is rabidly screaming his shite in his
rambling inappropriate fashion, he’s getting fucking tiresome.
Anna, please don’t let the twats all in again.
- December 18, 2010 at 00:23
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Sorry, forgot to specify I refer to the plonkerage implying that
hippie-burning is a good thing and going overboard in comment after
comment.
- December 17, 2010 at 23:47
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Presumably the engineer who posted above would expect to be paid rather
more than the price of a couple of stamps for his work. The royalty system may
indeed be awful in many ways but in one small way it seems good – the producer
of the work only gets paid when someone actually decides they want to pay for
that persons work. Doesn’t seem too unfair.
They get paid again and again because each time the C.D.sells, it doesn’t
pull in much, as everybody knows. If a single CD sale / download went for
thousands then I dare say musicians wouldn’t be so het up about getting paid
over and over again. Sorry to be rude, but that point is surely mind-numbingly
obvious.
As for the “get paid by playing live” argument – well, fair enough. It’s up
to the artist to choose what they want to sell and the general public to
decide what they want to buy. If I took upon myself the right to remove all
the door takings every time one of these live acts played, on the grounds that
I find it distasteful in some way, thus depriving the artist of their income
and the audience of their right to contribute, I reckon the artists might get
a bit arsey about it. If the Police where unable to put a stop to it, would it
be OK – no bother, merely a demonstration that it’s time to move on, find a
new model? Possibly so.
Let’s get one thing straight though – this whole thing has come about
because it’s piss-easy to grab what you want and pay nothing for it when it
comes to digitally presented music. It is nothing to do with some sort of
honourable response to the inadequacies of the previous system, nor is it some
kind of considered political reaction. It’s just good old grubby something for
nothing.
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December 17, 2010 at 19:04
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Hippiedom was more complex and more vital than most remember. The ideas and
research it brought to the forefront were such, too, and they haven’t gone
away, just somewhat out of the public eye. I applaud the Libertarian views
expressed on here, despite the few planks trying to sabotage things.
I invite prople to read this interesting essay:
http://scarletimprint.blogspot.com/2010/12/house-of-god.html
- December 17, 2010 at 18:06
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And isn’t this woeful stuff about how “none of it goes to the artist
anyway, we’re just socking it the to maaan” shite just the usual load of hippy
tosh where everything should be really free, baby, so long it’s not mine,
yeah, man.
I mean, how about we have a system whereby CDs still cost a tenner or
twelve quid or whatever but all of it goes to the artist. So the noble
downloaders get to deprive the evil executives but pay the artist. Or do they
just download it anyway, as the motive is 100% tight-fistedness and absolutely
S.F.A. to do with high-minded morality.
- December 17, 2010 at 17:58
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By the way, Bob Weir, Grateful Dead person, had – the last time I looked –
severely restricted access to the best quality recordings of their concerts as
he didn’t like the mass consumption of same made possible be the advent of the
internet and wanted to set up a system to sell them instead. And has done so.
I think.
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December 18, 2010 at 14:18
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Almost all the soundboards from Dead shows are circulating – they are
just not available on archive.org. Add to that the many audience recordings,
and there are few shows that they played that are not available. Now they
sell live CD from shows – Furthur, the latest incarnation of the Dead, with
Phil Lesh, and RatDog, his other dead based band. Indeed, they were one of
the very first bands to do this – you can walk into the show, pay your (very
reasonable $$$$), and get the show on CD at the end. Or download it
later.
- December 17, 2010 at 17:55
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Perhaps if the music in question is so poor in quality people might
actually find themselves able to do without it. Simple equation – good enough
to listen to and enjoy, good enough to pay for. Doesn’t seem too obscene.
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December 17, 2010 at 13:46
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Thank you ma’am. Sites where you can legally download lots of music
include
http://bt.etree.org/
http://www.archive.org/details/etree
Hundreds of bands on the latter who have formally approved of their shows
being taped and circulated.
A problem for many “artists” (Think Lily Allen, always bitching about this)
is that they cannot follow this model. Their live shows are crap, and they
play the same set every night on a tour. The Dead on the other hand could play
three nights at one theatre and not repeat a song. Lily Allen live is just not
good enough to operate in the same way. Hence the bitching. Just not good
enough!
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December 17, 2010 at 10:32
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The Grateful Dead condone both the downloading of their live shows (some
2000 recorded over the years), and those of their associated bands continuing
after the death of Jerry Garcia. Not only tat, they encouraged the taping of
their shows, so much so that Taper’s tickets were sold which allowed you a
place near the soundboard.
They continue to sell vast amounts of their “formal” releases. Indeed, a
number of papers in the US have had article on the “business model” of the
Grateful Dead. Remember – these guys were hippies. Still are hippies.
Google “GRATEFUL DEAD” BUSINESS MODEL and you will see what I mean.
Here’s the first entry
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/management-secrets-of-the-grateful-dead/7918/
The Grateful Dead Archive, scheduled to open soon at the University of
California at Santa Cruz, will be a mecca for academics of all stripes: from
ethnomusicologists to philosophers, sociologists to historians. But the
biggest beneficiaries may prove to be business scholars and management
theorists, who are discovering that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the
way they created “customer value,” promoted social networking, and did
strategic business planning.
….
Much of the talk about “Internet business models” presupposes that they are
blindingly new and different. But the connection between the Internet and the
Dead’s business model was made 15 years ago by the band’s lyricist, John Perry
Barlow, who became an Internet guru. Writing in Wired in 1994, Barlow posited
that in the information economy, “the best way to raise demand for your
product is to give it away.” As Barlow explained to me: “What people today are
beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then—the important
correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value.
Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it
becomes. In the physical world, that works beautifully. But we couldn’t
regulate [taping at] our shows, and you can’t online. The Internet doesn’t
behave that way. But here’s the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people,
and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as
a creator is dramatically enhanced. That was the value proposition with the
Dead.” The Dead thrived for decades, in good times and bad. In a recession,
Barnes says, strategic improvisation is more important then ever. “If you’re
going to survive this economic downturn, you better be able to turn on a
dime,” he says. “The Dead were exemplars.” It can be only a matter of time
until Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead or some similar title is flying
off the shelves of airport bookstores everywhere.
Hippies, eh?
- December 17, 2010 at
10:56
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December 17, 2010 at 08:17
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Spot on – live music might encourage me out more.
- December 16, 2010 at 22:46
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lenko, almost all the money people pay for CDs does not go to the artists.
Out of say £15 for a CD, the artists might get say 50p. The rest goes to the
music business. That was fair enough when the music business added value by
producing a physical CD, distributing it, marketing it and so on. But with a
digital download, the cost of those things is virtually nil. The music
business is adding very little value.
If people had to pay say 80p for a downloaded album, with 50p going to the
artist, and 30p to the industry, that might be a fair reflection of the value
they are adding. At those prices, I reckon a lot more people would pay.
Instead the music industry is still trying to charge the same for a download
as they do for a CD. Those rip-off prices are the reason they get few
takers.
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December 17, 2010 at 09:50
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Appreciate your point, but it is still THEFT from the artist. You can
argue as much as you like, but the fact is that the artist/s DO get
something out of it. It may not be a fair proprtion, but illegal downloading
deprives them of what little they would have got.
I moan about having to share royalties with my publishers, who do
bugger-all, and are genrally useless. But at least I get something.
Christ, I hope I’m not agreeing with Mandelbum in this. But even he is
bound to be right on some occasions.
- December 21, 2010 at 07:31
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lenko, whatever little they make from record sales goes into PR, and
the internet can give you all the PR you need for free. I don’t think you
see the how much the internet can do to help new artists get on their
feet.
When you are looking for gigs(where all their income comes from
basically) you want your music to reach the maximum number of people, and
let’s face it you’re not gonna get there by record sales alone. Isn’t the
revenue they generate from the extra exposure worth that 50p they make
from the record?
- December 16, 2010 at 21:30
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The name of the organisation – the “British Phonographic Industry” – tells
you all you need to know about their grasp of modern technologies and the
business opportunities that abound from using them to your advantage.
The only reason we have this irrelevant and counterproductive piece of
legal tripe is that Lord Fondlebum of Fey was given a nice time on a big yacht
by some overpaid music industry executive who was scared to death that his
supply of coke would dry up if he had to run an ethical business and pay
artists their fair share of the takings.
New bands will ignore it and make their own way in the world. The music
business in its current form signed its own death warrant in this act.
- December 16, 2010 at 18:21
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I note that when all this PR bilge is is pumped out , the cheating of, and
stealing from rights holders by the record companies and “rights management”
outfits gets no mention – at all…
- December 16, 2010 at 16:43
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Anna – Your last paragraph is spot on. There are so many talented musicians
out there, a world away from the synthetic ‘music’ business and we are pleased
to buy our CDs from them direct at the venue. At many gigs, we have been
actively encouraged to copy the CDs to freely distribute to friends, all in
the name of boosting live audiences.
Some even give their recordings away: for example, treat yourself to a free
album from the lovely Martha Tilston at http://www.pondlifestudios.com/detail.asp?id=18 and then go
to one of her gigs to buy the others. She’s doing a session on the Bob Harris
show this weekend as well – good musicians don’t need the ‘support’ of the
‘music’ business to gain recognition.
- December 16, 2010 at 16:09
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Downloading music is a very poor alternative to owning a CD or LP.
Your
electronic copy it has no residual value – at least you can get some of your
money back by selling a real object. Also if you choose your purchases well
and look after them you can even make a profit on the deal – and don’t get me
started on the sound quality of MP3s.
- December 16, 2010 at 16:01
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As you quote “‘It is a parasite that threatens to deprive a generation of
talented young people of their chance to make a career in music, and is
holding back investment in the burgeoning digital entertainment sector.’”
It’s not the young people who get the money from record sales etc., ie.
royalties. It’s the production company who gets it and they keep most of the
money, and you say it goes to the head honchos such as Simon Cowell. Very
little goes to the actual performing artists. The only time the artists get
any sizeable proportion of the money is from live performances and personal
apperances etc.
Now if the production companies actually changed their business practises
they might actually be doing even better. They’re just so fixated on their
business model that they daren’t change. Just like any other business in the
past which has had to change to cope with changing society, technology,
materials, products, fashions the music business needs to change to, or like
many other businesses that haven’t managed to adapt – go out of business.
- December
16, 2010 at 15:58
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These idiots appear to be missing the crucial role that the internet is now
playing in providing new artists with a platform, where they can sell their
own products at a price they choose and without interference.
- December 16, 2010 at 15:28
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Or are these just made up figures mindlessly peddled by the press – where’s
the substantive evidence to be challenged and proved or not?
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December 16, 2010 at 21:56
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It doesn’t matter what the total is, or whether it’s fictitious or not.
The damage is done down at the bottom, to individual artists, etc. I am not
personally affected by this, being a hopeless musician, but if I knew that I
had lost (say) £100 over a year, I would be livid.
I’m a playwright. Two years ago I found out by accident that two of my
plays had been performed and produced by a youth group, without a penny
being paid in royalties. It came to less than the £100 above. It took a lot
of chasing to get the guilty parties to cough up. They couldn’t see why they
should be made to pay for my work.
I wanted to string them up, but there was a bye-law against it.
- December 16, 2010 at 15:27
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The BPI has no idea about the net. For starters, all Linux software
distributions are available via P2P. Have they discounted those downloads? I
doubt it – it makes their figures look ridiculous.
Another thing they don’t seem to get is the idea that each download is NOT
a lost sale – with a lot of the kids if they didn’t download it they wouldn’t
buy it.
As Anna’s last paragraph says, the tech savy youngsters are giving the
piggies the finger and making money they wouldn’t otherwise – more power to
them.
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December 16, 2010 at 21:48
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Ivan…
“Another thing they don’t seem to get is the idea that each download is
NOT a lost sale – with a lot of the kids if they didn’t download it they
wouldn’t buy it”
Just like off-line, then. If they didn’t shop-lift it, they wouldn’t buy
it.
Some poor bastard was hoping to make a penny or so by song-writing, or
producing music, but now is DEPRIVED of that honest penny by acne-ridden
teenagers downloading the bloody stuff for free.
This is called STEALING.
- December 16, 2010 at 22:56
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You are correct lenko, but it doesn’t change the fact that most teens
wouldn’t spend the money hence they are NOT lost sales – they would never
have been a sale in the first place.
I don’t condone the downloading of music – to me most of it is complete
trash and worth downloading anyway.
Yes I use P2P to down and upload Linux distributions and large files
between a set of clients – saves my bandwidth.
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December 17, 2010 at 09:45
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Ivan –
” but it doesn’t change the fact that most teens wouldn’t spend the
money hence they are NOT lost sales “.
So you done the survey, have you? And so are able to state
authoritatively that MOST teens…etc etc. I don’t remember you standing
on a corner round my way, with your clip board. I don’t remember you
doing the survey on-line.
IMO, this is straight out of your own head, and you have no facts to
base it on. Much like our very own government.
And it is still called STEALING.
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December 17, 2010 at 13:06
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lenko, I am an engineer that designs equipment for clients. When I
have finished the design I hand it over to the client and get paid for
it. I do not get another payment each time the client uses that design
– nor do I expect one.
Then, why should all the ‘artists’ expect
payment every time, are they any different to everyone else that earns
their crust by working? If they want that then they should get out and
perform for the public and earn that payment.
- December
16, 2010 at 15:17
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Frankly I never download anything that I would have been prepared to pay
for anyway, so there is no loss of revenue.
28% is a sizeable minority to disagree with you. Add in the people who
simply don’t car and you probably don’t have a mandate.
As a former professional musician, I can honestly say it doesn’t bother me.
We make enough money in the first place, so the tiny bit more this would
produce is pretty much irrelevant. Stop the 28% from downoading and I doubt it
would up our income by more than 2 or 3 percent.
- December 16, 2010 at 14:45
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Exactly so. Yet these media companies still don’t seem to ‘get’ the web.
It’s one of the easiest ways of keeping your back catalogue active and
selling.
- December 16,
2010 at 14:40
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I find the assumption that 100% of the illegal downloads are considered a
full-cost ‘loss’ of income for these companies a bit of a stretch, since I’m
not at all sure that 100% of those downloading illegally would purchase the
music if they were unable to download the crap that most of today’s bands are
churning out.
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