Says that piracy is only distribution for financial gain, and that file-sharing is actually a “technological advantage that you can leverage to your own ends.”
Independent music business online expert Andrew Dubber has written an excellent article that dispels some of the myths about piracy and file-sharing. He argues that both, despite what major record labels say, bear little resemblance to one another or “what words actually mean.”
Firstly, he observes that piracy is when somebody manufactures CDs, distributes, and then sells them for a profit, “which is bad and wrong.”
Unless your a big name act like U2 he says there’s little incentive for a pirate to set up shop and mass produce copies of your CDs.
Secondly, he takes aim at the idea of the so-called “Lost Sale” that major record labels incessantly use as a reason for its fight against P2P.
“From the artist and label perspective, it’s the sense of indignation that all of these people now have my music – and they didn’t give me any money for it,” he writes. “I worked ‘hard and invested all this money, and they’re just stealing it from me.”
Dubber says it’s a logical reaction, but that it doesn’t help an artist for 3 simple reasons:
1) Copying, as I’ve mentioned before, just happens online. You can’t legislate against it, prevent it by technical means nor force people to behave in ways that you would like them to. If you’re going to make recorded music, you have to be aware that you live in a world where this is what goes on. Refusing to accept that on principled grounds will only lead to stress and illness, and the unhelpful belief that every music consumer is a criminal.
2) The fluidity with which your music can pass from hand to hand is not an impediment to your success, but a technological advantage that you can leverage to your own ends. The overwhelming cry from the independent musician twenty years ago was ‘How can I just get my music out there?’ Problem solved. Now what are you going to do?
3) There are several phases to music that I characterise as Composition, Production, Distribution, Promotion and Consumption. All of those links in the chain are very important. I would suggest that if a technology is not cutting it for you in one part of the chain, it’s sensible to move it to another part of that same chain. That is to say, if you want mp3s to be the way that you profitably distribute music but the results are unsatisfying because of unauthorised copying, then redeploy mp3s to be the way that you profitably promote your music instead.
I think the second observation is the most important. For a long time artists complained that record labels were the gatekeepers to music fans, and that without them there was no way you could hope to ever put your album out there for people to listen to.
The Internet changed all that and now artists are truly in control of their music. The record labels now need artists rather than the other way around.
He says that trying to fight illegal file-sharing is really just a waste of time that could be better be spent on other things, and that in fact it can be used to you advantage in several ways.
He writes:
1) People who share your music are recommending you to people who respect their taste and opinion;
2) The vast majority of people who have unauthorised copies of your music would not have ordinarily paid for it anyway;
3) Do you really want for people who cannot afford your music to be prevented from ever hearing it?
Exactly. I’ve argued all three of these points for years, as have many others.
I know of people with more than 300GB of music and I’m positive they wouldn’t have bought it all otherwise, and as an artist would you really prefer that nobody listens to your work without paying?
I’d even offer the numerous studies that P2P actually increases music consumption.
Dubber says artists have two choices: stop making music, or “accept that this is the world in which we live.”
He’s right, and it’s sadly a simple logical conclusion.
Stay tuned.
jared@zeropaid.com
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The record labels know this. They’ve known it for some time now. This is why they reists it and try to throw a lot of FUD into the news channels. They know they are losing (If not already lost) their grip on artists.
It’s all about who can win the propaganda war now.