Says “content needs to be worth something if anybody is going to care about it,” and that “free content will ultimately resemble, well, free content.”
Last I week I mentioned how U2 frontman Bono had amazingly cited our fight against child pornography and China’s success in suppressing online dissent as examples that filtering content, specifically copyrighted material, is possible.
Added to his rant was a criticism of ISPs whom he says have gotten rich from P2P, that they’re “swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.”
UK ISP Talk Talk, that country’s largest broadband provider, later responded by calling Bono “seriously misguided.”
It countered that not only does P2P “incur some marginal cost due to the extra bandwidth required,” but that it’s quite amazing that a comparison would be made between the “need to protect minors from the evils of child pornography with the need to protect copyright owners.”
Now Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, who readily admits that he’s “not up to speed on having ISPs regulate copyrighted material,” has written an article in the alternative newspaper Seattle Weekly defending Bono’s stance on illegal file-sharing.
“Content needs to be worth something if anybody is going to care about it,” he writes. “Free content will ultimately resemble, well, free content.”
Apparently there’s a lot more than just the world of ISPs that Novoselic is unaware of. Not only are content filters easily circumventable, but people will always support artists given the opportunity.
Even if an album is given away for free fans will still attend an artist’s concert, buy his merchandise, and perhaps even buy a limited edition CD or two. It’s not as cut and dry as Novoselic makes it. He wrongly assumes that if we don’t fight P2P everything will become free and artists will no longer have a source of revenue.
Countering such a claim is study after study concluding that P2P actually increases music consumption. One study in fact, “Consumer Culture in Times of Crisis,” conductEd by the BI Norwegian School of Management, the second largest business school in all of Europe, found that file-sharers actually buy 10 times as much music as they download for free.
So much for fears that content will become free.
Fans recognize that artists need revenue in order to continue producing the music they love, it’s up to artists to convince them of carrying out that voluntary transaction.
As Techdirt’s Michael Masnick has argued before, it’s nonsensical for artists to think to “think that there is some sort of obligation to buy.”
Connect With Fans (CwF) + Reason To Buy (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$)
That’s the real business model, not one that tries to force fans to buy music with threats of fines or jail time.
Stay tuned.
What a mushroom, this Krist. Get a life dude… or take shot gun from Curt Cobain and shot yourself in stupid brain. It’s 21st century… if it’s not free don’t need it. Get it?? What part of free you don’t understand????? Only scared a$$holes are buying CD/DVD’s. Many people didn’t purchase CD for more than a decade… hellooooooo!!!!!!!
Thanks for sticking up Krist Novoselic, I’ll start nailing you back in by seeding your work now, along with Bono’s.
Did none of these artists see that Metallica film and how the whole Napster episode cost them dearly?
Once U2 splits up after separating from Bono’s remarks, we’ll see just how much anyone cares about what he has to say. As for Krist, free content is still ART, and all ART is to be enjoyed by the masses.
Pissy because the golden goose died years ago. The only way this twit can make any money is from stuff he was a part of years ago.
Sorry but he offered NOTHING innovative to the band, almost any bassist could have done the job he did.
You should be paying us fucktard!
Maybe the problem is he hasn’t had a hit record in over 20 years lol. Bands make most of their money from touring, so if you suck and no one shows up, don’t blame P2P.
I think it’s funny that there still are so many artists that thinks it’s ok to work a couple of weeks, maybe a month, writing and recording a record and then expect to be able to sit on their asses for the rest of their life.
Can you fill stadium after stadium where people pay to see you live, fine, then you can have your “reasonable” wage of a few millions (it’s not like your music gets better if you get 300.000 or 20.000.000?).
I think it’s funny that it’s just for the last 50 years or so that music was just about the money and not about the music. Hopefully the moneymakers and moneygrabbers will be fewer and fewer and the real artists that are in it for the music will shine again.
worse still is that in many places theyre working to extend their copyright protection from 50 to 70 yrs that way they can still afford cigarettes at 75yo I guess
So some report in a Norwegial college suggests P2P is propping up the music industry !
This is only re-stating the findings of te Harvard study of about 8 years ago !
The only thing propping up the music industry is P2P customers, yet all they do is keep whinging.
Why don’t we go along with what they say, i.e. end P2P, and let this industry die the death it so richly deserves.
p.s. if Bono wants to know how much people respect him and what he has to say, then he should start watching south-park !
Good to know we can look forward to more ignorant famous people with no technical qualifications speaking out on issues they don’t understand. Christ. Makes me happy not to have cable TV in the house.
Indeed, just another has-been artist who blames his fans for all of his problems all the while not really having half a clue about the issues he preaches about.
Yet another artist fallen victim to the propaganda of the “middleman”.
See, Big4 brainwashes artists just as much as they brainwash/bribe legislators.
The only friggin industry that was raising increasing profits in the most disastrous economic year since the great depression, yet these poor fellas think they’re on the verge of financial breakdown.
Newsflash Krist: That new Veyron your label handler just afforded himself hurts you much more than people enjoying your music “before” paying up instead of only after.
This coming from a band that was known for their anti corporate ideal. This was the band that promoted cheap plaid shirts as a style because it was cheap. This band was pissed off when that style became popular and people were being ripped off for cheap clothing. Part of me now wonders if that was not just a marketing image ploy or maybe it was Cobain that gave that view, and it died with him. Either way the bassist has lost roots with his band with this message. It is a sad detour from the bands message to push economic drives as the inspiration for musical aspirations.
That sounds like saying that to make something artificially scarce will make it more valuable. Maybe there’s some sense of pride in going out and buying a CD, I took a step, put my money down, I’m a believer. It’s like the Beatles box set, a legend that you’d want to own because it was years in the making and special. It’s a way to be a part of the Beatles. You could see it that way.
What if the real value of music isn’t based on how much you spent for it?
If you feel something about Nirvana Bassist’s music, then it will be part of your life. How does the price of his album have anything to do with its value to the listener?
I was reading a story about Weird Al where he said that it’s harder to make a parody record these days, because we’re not all tuned to the same channel any more. He said that the days where MTV was a like a national radio station and everyone knew the songs and they stayed on the charts for a long time are gone. Now we don’t have that national experience, and songs go up the charts and leave quickly.
It seems like now that the music fans have more control they can find and listen to what they want, and not be spoon fed music by the media, but that’s just change, and the inconvenient truth is that file sharing is more just a symptom of changing times.
“Content needs to be worth something if anybody is going to care about it,” he writes. “Free content will ultimately resemble, well, free content.”
Pretentious fuckwit. There’s plenty of good, legal, free music out there. Stuff that people like despite it not coming from the recording industry or the bigshot musicians.
People need to get with the times…
“if we don’t fight P2P everything will become free and artists will no longer have a source of revenue”
I think what you meant to say was:
“if we don’t fight P2P everything will become free and artists will no longer have a way to pay for cocaine.”