Music Industry Angry Over Piracy from...1897?

Music Industry Angry Over Piracy from…1897?

Looks like the music industry has been battling the problem for over a century now.

An article from the June 13th, 1897 edition of the NY Times gives a curious backstory to the problems currently facing the music industry. Some would argue that piracy is a contemporary problem whose only solution is increased legislation, but “Music Pirates in Canada” proves that simply meeting the demands of the customers is a better way to compete.

The article says the way it worked is that a local newspaper would publish a list of available music. Readers could then buy an album for 2 to 5 cents, instead of 20 to 40 cents, which the pirate then mails to the buyer with the newspaper getting half of the money for advertising. You could pick and choose albums while reading the morning paper without having to go to a record store.

Pretty ingenious right? It seems to almost be an early method of bypassing traditional distribution channels, a la brick and mortar stores, and instead create a sort of pseudo customer direct kind of business model.

It also seems to be an early harbinger for how the music industry must compete with piracy. The article blames “Canadian pirates” for a 50% drop in music sales, just as file-sharing has been blamed for a similar decline in current music sales. Rather than adapt its business model and offer music via mail at reduced rates it too chose to pursue those responsible, though with far less damaging consequences obviously.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

[Hat Tip]

Jared Moya
I've been interested in P2P since the early, high-flying days of Napster and KaZaA. I believe that analog copyright laws are ill-suited to the digital age, and that art and culture shouldn't be subject to the whims of international entertainment industry conglomerates. Twitter | Google Plus

Just a niggling point in the name of accuracy; I believe that what was being pirated in 1897 and described in the article was sheet music, not records. Remember, a hundred years ago many more people played musical instruments and the music for popular songs was a real commodity -- before radio and before the popularity of phonographs, "talking machines," "gramophones" and the like. But a fascinating article nonetheless!

share flag

spam
offensive
disagree
off topic

pepe gomez

music piracy??,i recorded 5 albums,starting in 1975,sold 300,000 copies,was re-released in 2000 and still selling and i haven't seen a penny yet,play it,produced it,wrote the songs,sang them,copyrighted by ascap(the original pirates) on abc dunhill,and mercury records,and someone is talking about 2-4 cents,gimme a break,what happened to the good music lawyers? oh yeah they work for the pirates!!

DrewWilson

It's things like that that have me going unsigned in my musical endeavors. I don't look at the major record labels, get glazy eyes and scream, "Please, pick me! Pick me!" I look at the major record labels and say, "Not a f**king chance. I want to retain some rights like the ability to make money off of my own music thank you." It's sad knowing that I'm probably still in a minority for indie artists though.

open_universe

Too funny. Just too funny. Good thing you didn't discover this around April 1, no one would have believed you. You're SURE this article is legit, yes?

Brian

They claimed that sales were down 50%!!! Nonsense. That's the same kind of absurd lie they're telling today. Popular artists are still getting rich, even the ones that choose to make their money without focusing on the traditional sale of records. Anybody also notice the sheer volume of sales through iTunes? Sorry if we're not buying the 11 songs that suck, but if you let me buy the one good one, I'm going to.

alonzo gonzo

Still getting rich? Ever heard of Modest Mouse? If they had come out in the early nineties when people still bought records, they might have sold a million like Janes Addiction instead of a measly 200,000. They are just as popular, if not more so, people just download instead of buy. There are currently half as many venues to play in in the US as there were 20 years ago. This is a FACT. The pay is the same as it was thirty years ago. This is a FACT. The music industry as a whole is HALF the size it was ten years ago. That is a FACT. Look it up! You can support piracy for ideological reasons if you want to, but don't kid yourself about what it does to musicians.

aikanae

Nope, nothing's changed. -- John Philips Sousa, 1906, The Menace of Mechanical Music http://www.phonozoic.net/n0155.htm "For the life of me I am puzzled to know why the powerful corporations controlling these playing and talking machines are so totally blind to the moral and ethical questions involved. Could anything be more blamable, as a matter of principle, than to take an artist’s composition, reproduce it a thousandfold on their machines, and deny him all participation in the large financial returns, by hiding back of the diaphanous pretense that in the guise of a disk or roll, his composition is not his property? "Do they not realize that if the accredited composers, who have come into vogue by reason of merit and labor, are refused a just reward for their efforts, a condition is almost sure to arise where all incentive to further creative work is lacking, and compositions will no longer flow from their pens; or where they will be compelled to refrain from publishing their compositions at all, and control them in manuscript? What, then, of the playing and talking machines?”

Souza's complaints were resolved when the government created the 'mechanical' rights and composers started getting payed for recorded and broadcast music. Thay still do, if the music is bought and paid for. Pepe, if you sold 300,000 records then you know all about it, if you wrote the material yourself then you will have about 300,000 dollars in publishing royalties to show for it, as mandated by copyright law. Unless you were dumb and unusual and signed all your publishing away.

Music Industry Angry Over Piracy from…1897?

Looks like the music industry has been battling the problem for over a century now.

Related Stories

Recommended Software