Bono responds to recent comments by Paul McGuiness, their band manager, in which he said Radiohead’s “In Rainbows ” plan “backfired” and that ISPs are unfairly profiting from illegal file-sharing.
The UK’s New Musical Express (NME), a popular music magazine published weekly since March 1952, has received a letter from U2’s frontman Bono that reportedly comments on recent statements by their band manager, Paul McGuiness.
The first statement concerns McGuiness’s criticism of Radiohead’s pay-what-you-like approach that allowed fans to do just that to download a copy of their recent album “In Rainbows.”
“We should all be aware that Radiohead’s honesty box release of their album to some extent backfired,” he McGuiness said a few weeks ago in an interview with BBC’s 6 Music. “Even though it was available on their own website for no money at all, if that was what you preferred to pay – 60 to 70 per cent of the people who downloaded the record stole it anyway even though it was available for free.”
In the letter Bono is quick to disavow these comments:
I wanted to set the record straight on behalf of the members of U2 on comments made to the BBC by our much-loved and valued manager, Paul McGuinness, regarding Radiohead’s decision to make the music of ‘In Rainbows’ available as a download, using the ‘honesty box’ idea for payment.
We agree with our manager that this is a head-scratching and worrisome time for many musicians who, unlike ourselves, are depending on royalty or publishing cheques to pay the rent (particularly songwriters). We also agree that it is disturbing to see internet service providers and technology companies profit from the so-called ‘disintermediation’ of the music business when so many music lovers are losing their jobs. And while there is no doubt that it’s extremely difficult for a new artist to get the kind of investment on which U2 depended in the first few wobbly years of recording, we disagree with Paul’s assessment of Radiohead’s release as “having backfired to a certain extent.” We think they were courageous and imaginative in trying to figure out some new relationship with their audience. Such imagination and courage are in short supply right now…they’re a sacred talent and we feel blessed to be around at the same time.
With respect,
Bono
Now it’s nice to know that Bono and company think that Radiohead was “courageous and imaginative,” but as usual the devil is in the details. If you read closely he also says that he(they) are “disturbed to see ISPs and technology companies profit from the so-called ‘disintermediation’ of the music business when so many music lovers are losing their jobs.”
Say what? It’s essentially what McGuiness said verbatim almost a month ago in a speech to a Music Matters confab in Hong Kong.
“Where has all the [music industry] money gone?” McGuiness asked the audience.
“The answer is that it has gone to corporations – cable operators, ISPs, device manufacturers, P2P software companies – companies that have used music to drive vast revenues from broadband subscriptions and from advertising,” he added.”They would argue they have been neutral bystanders to the spectacular devaluation of music and the consequent turmoil in the music business; I don’t believe that is true – they turned their heads the other way, watched their subscriptions grow, and profited handsomely.”
McGuiness then claimed 80% of Internet traffic was P2P-related, a curious figure since even anti-P2P company Sandvine claims only 44% of traffic, in North America at least, is P2P-related. Others even peg video streaming as the largest consumer of bandwidth.
Either way, he essentially argued that since illegal file-sharing makes up a majority of bandwidth consumption (untrue) then ISPs are profiting from their network activity and should be held responsible. He also thinks the same about technology companies, like portable media players manufacturers for example, since studies also say a majority of their content was obtained illegally.
U2 apparently agrees with these contentions
“We also agree that it is disturbing to see ISPs and technology companies profit from the so-called ‘disintermediation’ of the music business when so many music lovers are losing their jobs,” he wrote.
So the solution is —- ? A mandatory licensing fee – a music tax – no doubt where, in the words of McGuiness again, ISPs have a “…real commercial partnership with the music business in which they fairly share their revenues.”
Maybe U2 doesn’t deserve to call anybody “imaginative” if the best idea they have for saving the music industry and getting “music lovers” their jobs back is to make everybody pay irregardless of whether they are “music lovers” themselves.
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If U2 thinks it’s disturbing to see ISPs ‘profitting handsomly’ from all of this what about record labels who profit off the backs of artists leaving them with hardly enough money to pay the rent? They make millions and watch their sales grow while artists are left without the tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars that are being made on record sales.
I would argue to U2 that the key difference between ISPs and record labels is at least ISPs won’t discriminate against the “unprofitable” (more often than not AKA where the real talent went)
If it weren’t for the internet I would never have been an artist myself so tell me again how musicians are losing out in all of this.
Musicians make more money from concerts..So how is downloading music affecting them?