Geez, kanicbird, everything does NOT have to be about freakin’ God. Give it a rest, already.
It’s certainly true that major labels have screwed the artists for years. To be honest I have less concern for giant labels and artists who have already made their millions than I do those who are still struggling, even though ethically speaking it’s the same. You can’t justify it by saying “Hey they probably screwed some people so now I’ll screw them” Imagine a new artist who releases an album or a songwriter who gets a cut on a major label. That new artist is measured by how much they sell. If they are popular and half their sales are lost to illegal copies the label may decide to drop them , when in reality thier sales should have been much better.
The songwriter gets paid a few pennies per sale, but if a CD sells 500,000 or a million that’s a lot of pennies. Losing half of that is a significant loss to a struggling songwriter who may or may not get another serious cut.
The problem is that the mindset that it’s perfectly fine to just copy a CD you want rather than buy it is so pervasive that it doesn’t just affect the major labels. Earlier in the thread I spoke of a friend who worked hard to launch a series of CDs with a celtic theme. She never made a living off this effort but made significant money that’s pretty helpful to the average middle class American The problem is that after selling a certain amount of CDs she lost so many sales to copies that it wasn’t worth pursuing another CD. Hell, my own brother called me to happily tell me how people liked all the copies he had made of my CD. While it’s nice to know people enjoyed the music it would have been nice for him to tell them how they could buy one. The point is, the general mindset that it’s fine to give away someone elses work when it comes to music does have serious effects on struggling hopefull artists.
Maybe it’s the personal dynamic. You have a CD you like and play it for someone or whatever and they say “Hey that’s great, I like it” and the response is an knee jerk, “Well I’ll make you a copy” because , as we all know, it’s a perfectly fine and friendly thing to do.
I’m suggesting we try to think of the artists, or even the labels, who are affected as real people who deserve to be paid for thier work. So instead of “I’ll make you a copy” you can tell them, “I know where you can buy a copy” or buy them a copy yourself. While my brother copied my CDs at least several of my sisters either bought some for freinds or told their freinds they could buy them. It was only a few dollars but t sure came in handy and I can tell you that it feels good to actually get paid for your efforts.
You said you downloaded some free music and were spending more on a ticket, as if one justified the other. If that free music was offered by the rightfull owners then disregard my post. If it wasn’t then my point stands.
The person who owns the work has every right to decide how to promote it. If they want to give away music to promote a tour great. That’s thier choice and maybe it’s brilliant marketing. That doesn’t make it okay for you or anyone else to take what’s not being offered for free. I checked out nin.com, thanks. Again, it’s a totally different thing when the artists and/or label decide to give music away. It’s thier product and their choice. How do you suppose Costco and grocers would respond if you decided to create your own free samples of their products without their approval? See the difference?
and Lady GaGa? Really? I guess that’s the wonderful mystery of music. Different people like different things.
I hope it’s clear now that the discussion here isn’t about any downloaded music being bad. Nobody is making that argument. It’s specifically about people downloading and copying copyrighted material without the permission of the people who own that material.
I do feel pretty loving when I’m hanging out, getting high , and making music with friends.
I think you need to reconsider your thoughts about people’s heavenly gifts. It’s not really in line with the NT.
The point is that’s not your judgement call to make. The artist decdes, {of course through prayer and meditation we hope} what to get paid for and what to give away as a gift to humanity. So, per this discussion, some other people taking that artists work, that they offer for sale, without asking them is unethical
You made some strange suggestion that all music should free as a gift to humanity which IMO is just ludicrious. Regardless of your opinions on RIAA, people downloading or copying the work of others and taking it without paying for it , without permission and appraoval of the owners of that work, is wrong, and widely practiced.
Is that your expert opinion?
Seriously???
I thought it would be far, far, far more than this - maybe 6 or 7 euro from a 15 euro cd.
Now that I know better, I’m definitely pirating all my music from now on!
I agree that the big labels are about exploiting artists rather than promoting them. I agree that the digital era should give us more and better choices about which songs we pay for. In my day I waited for the greatest hits CDs and Tapes {that’s right, tapes} because I didn’t want to spend money on a bunch of songs I didn’t like. It’s great if that the digital era is changing the marketplace as long as the artists and labels are a part of the exchange of money for product. If CD sales drop because they are overpriced and people aren’t buying them that’s fine.If you’re saying , if CDs were $5 we wouldn’t copy them then you know copying them is wrong and are using the price to justify it. btw, you don’t get to decide what price things ought to be. You do decide what price you’re willing to pay and companies can decide if they can profit at certain prices. That’s how the merchant consumer relationship works. If more people are buying single songs or looking for subscription services that give you better choices, great! That’s people doing business , consumer and merchant. That’s not what I’m objecting to. If Sony records are assholes to thier artists that does not justify stealing a product they offer for sale. That’s like saying Wal Mart treats their employees like crap so I’m justified in shoplifting.
If you’d rather support your local bands and independent labels because Sony sucks I’ll be the first to praise you. I’m talking about the basic principle and how it has so permeated our mindset that it now does hurt your small local bands and independent labels because too many people are convinced that it’s fine to copy and why should they pay if they don’t have to.
So you go out and hear a local band and have a good time and buy their CD. Do you copy it for friends or encourage them to help support the band by buying a CD and going to a show?
I’m suggesting we need to get away from the mindset that copying digital work is no big deal and not really wrong, because it’s incorrect and, whether we admit it or not, it does result in people not getting paid for thier work. Especially as it soaks into our minds and more and more people just shrug and do it.
I assume that’s a bad joke. I don’t know what the standards are in Eurpoe but here it’s pennies per song but consider this, and remember we’re talking about the songariter not the artist singing the song. Sometimes they’re the same person but often they are not.
On a CD there might be 10 to 15 songs and maybe 10 to 15 writers as well. Usually more since most songs have more than one writers but no matter.
They have to pay each writer a fee for each CD sold, plus the artist, plus the label etc. The label laid out all the money for recording, hired the producer and musicians and studio, paid for the promo etc.
So, record stores order 100,000 copies of a CD and each of those ten writers might get $8000 for that run. 8 cents per song they wrote. Not a living but nothing to sneeze at. If the CD continues to sell they get paid again, usually quarterly. What is it if a CD sells a million units? The writer who has one song on that CD gets $80,000. Now that’s an income. That’s just CD sales. There’s also performance royalties for the writers. Everytime a song is played on some radio station you make a little money. If a song is a hit that adds up. Your song makes it in a Movie or TV show. You get paid again. I know the guy who wrote and preformed Magnet and Steel. He’s not well to do but he sure is happy every time some period movie or TV show decides to use his song.
I have a friend in town who co wrote a hit decades ago. It was recorded several times by several artist and he makes a middle class income just off the royalties of that one song. That doesn’t even consider his other work.
All this to say, if 100,000 or more sales are lost to illegal copys that’s serious money to the songwriter regardless of whether the label are pricks or not.
Interesting article MOIDALZIE. I’m gonna quote a bit of it here.
Steve Albini is an independent and corporate rock record producer most widely known for having produced Nirvana’s “In Utero”.
Here he describes the first year of a band’s contract with a major record label. They sold 1/4 million copies of their album.
*Advance: 250,000
Manager's cut: 37,500
Legal fees: 10,000
Recording Budget: 150,000
Producer’s advance: 50,000
Studio fee: 52,500
Drum Amp, Mic and Phase “Doctors”: 3,000
Recording tape: 8,000
Equipment rental: 5,000
Cartage and Transportation: 5,000
Lodgings while in studio: 10,000
Catering: 3,000
Mastering: 10,000
Tape copies, reference CDs, shipping tapes, misc. expenses: 2,000
Video budget: 30,000
Cameras: 8,000
Crew: 5,000
Processing and transfers: 3,000
Off-line: 2,000
On-line editing: 3,000
Catering: 1,000
Stage and construction: 3,000
Copies, couriers, transportation: 2,000
Director's fee: 3,000
Album Artwork: 5,000
Promotional photo shoot and duplication: 2,000
Band fund: 15,000
New fancy professional drum kit: 5,000
New fancy professional guitars [2]: 3,000
New fancy professional guitar amp rigs [2]: 4,000
New fancy potato-shaped bass guitar: 1,000
New fancy rack of lights bass amp: 1,000
Rehearsal space rental: 500
Big blowout party for their friends: 500
Tour expense [5 weeks]: 50,875
Bus: 25,000
Crew [3]: 7,500
Food and per diems: 7,875
Fuel: 3,000
Consumable supplies: 3,500
Wardrobe: 1,000
Promotion: 3,000
Tour gross income: 50,000
Agent's cut: 7,500
Manager’s cut: 7,500
Merchandising advance: 20,000
Manager’s cut: 3,000
Lawyer's fee: 1,000
Publishing advance: 20,000
Manager's cut: 3,000
Lawyer’s fee: $ 1,000
Record sales: 250,000 @ $12 =
3,000,000
Gross retail revenue Royalty: [13% of 90% of retail]:
351,000
Less advance: $ 250,000
Producer’s points: [3% less 50,000 advance]:
40,000
Promotional budget: 25,000
Recoupable buyout from previous label: 50,000
Net royalty: $ -14,000
Record company income:
Record wholesale price: $6.50 x 250,000 =
1,625,000 gross income
Artist Royalties: 351,000
Deficit from royalties: $ 14,000
Manufacturing, packaging and distribution: @ 2.20 per record: 550,000
Gross profit: $ 7l0,000
The Balance Sheet: This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game.
Record company: 710,000
Producer: 90,000
Manager: 51,000
Studio: 52,500
Previous label: 50,000
Agent: 7,500
Lawyer: 12,000
Band member net income each: 4031.25*
Interesting link. Thanks for posting it. I’ve heard all kinds of horror stories about the recording industry being heartless and cutthroat. I’ve heard of an artist being signed just to keep them from competing with an artist the label already has. So, the label ties them up in a contract but never really promotes them, and never intended to. Labels will even bootleg their own product to avoid paying royalties.
John Fogerty of CCR got sued because his song, Old Man Down the road, sounded too much like his other song, Born On the Bayou, which he did not own.
for the purpose of this duscussion, none of that justifies or excuses illegal copies.
If you believe they suck that bad then go support your local bands and artists and don’t buy their product.
The problem with stopping piracy by trying to convince people not to pirate because pirating is unethical, is it won’t work.
Nowadays people only need to pay for music if they feel like it. So when you pay $14 for a CD, it’s essentially a donation, because you could very easily get a free copy of the music on that CD. If paying for music is a donation, you could just as easily as people to send the artists a tip if they liked the music they downloaded. If you argue that people are greedy assholes who won’t bother to tip artists they like, well, then they sure aren’t going to pay for CDs either. And tipping the artist directly means they actually get the money, rather than the pennies they currently get from CD sales. If people won’t tip voluntarily, why would they pay for CDs voluntarily? It might make them unethical jerks, but how are you going to convince them to stop?
The situation we face a classic tragedy of the commons. No one wants to pay for something they could get for free, yet everyone has an interest in the continued production of new creative works. Moral exhortation won’t work to stop the overgrazing of the commons, and neither will it work against piracy. It’s asking people not to pick up $20 bills lying in the streets, because that money belongs to someone else. Except even if you convince a lot of people not to pick up the money, there will be plenty that will, and pretty soon all the money is gone and the true owners are screwed anyway.
So therefore you need some other solution. Really moving to an above-board tipping system is one solution and/or an all you can eat flat monthly fee for unlimited access to everything. The advantages of a really open system that doesn’t charge the end user extra money, is that you can use a centralized system that can track usage, and has an interface that allows easy follow-on purchases. As you’re listening to the latest track, there’s a display that says “Click here to purchase the band’s t-shirt. Click here to tip the band. Click here to purchase concert tickets. Click here to pay for the singer to personally come over to your house and give you a blowjob.” And so on. Most people won’t click those buttons, but a few will, and it would likely (I’m guessing of course) pay them a lot more than what they used to get from their tiny slice of CD sales. I mean, music has been given away free since the dawn of recorded music, and somehow it didn’t kill the infant music industry. This is more of the same.
We want to advance the useful arts and sciences, we want artists to continue to create, right? But the current copyright regime and the current technological system guarantees us a tragedy of the commons, which means we get the worst of both worlds, we kill future innovation but don’t get the old stuff either.
I think it does justify it, to an extent. You keep making the mistake of assuming that a download of an album displaces a sale of that album. I think the notion that the demand for something that is “free” will vastly outstrip the demand for something that has even a nominal price attached is uncontroversial. If an artist isn’t seeing much from the sale of an album anyway, then increased exposure benefits them. The costs of pirating falls on the record companies. All this means is that artists (and labels, if they want to continue to exist) have to figure out a new way of doing business.
Ok. Do you ever believe illegal action is justified? Under any circumstances? Or do your morals coincide exactly with what the law is?
Another question: suppose in Durka-Durkastan there are no laws against copying music. Do you think it is wrong for the Durka-Durkastanis to copy music?
As I’ve explained, as the mindset becomes the norm, pirating doesn’t just fall on the record companies. That said, I realize that people get a lot of music for free that they wouldn’t buy anyway. I also see the benifits of getting your music to circulate and be heard by more people. There are new ways of doing business and getting just the songs you want rather than the whole CD or a subscription service that makes each song less exspensive. The problem, as I’ve explained is the mindset of music should be free and paying for music in general is not nessecary, and it’s all good. It isn’t and people should be aware of it and consider it.
What intrigues me is how the justification works. Even now you claim it is justified and somehow it’s the fault of the people you’re stealing from because they’re not nice anyway.
Compare it to shoplifting. If you shoplift something you never would have paid for is it not really shoplifting? Hey, it was there , the opportunity presented itself, so I took it. Fine. But lets not pretend it’s not shoplifting, and lets not whine about the consequences of getting caught and try to blame the store.
I’ll give you an example from retail. Years ago, stores created very liberal return policies. Satisfaction guarenteed. 30 days or more to return it if you don’t like it.
Some realized they could use this to rent for free. Buy something you want to use but have no real intention of keeping, use it for a while , return it for a full refund. Gosh how clever. Never mind that it costs the store something. Over time as the practice became more and more accpeted by more people it began to take a serious bite out of profit and stores noticed crertain merchandise were targets. They responded by changing their return policies. I was at Circuit City when some college kids tried to return a laptop they bought just for a term paper. They were sooooo mad over the restocking fee they had to pay. And yet they didn’t seem to mind screwing the store when they bought the thing. So, now , the dishonesty of a portion of consumers has affected other consumers.
The point is that mindsets that permeate a society telling them that certain dishonest practices are okay and really don’t hurt anyone, do have real world effects and consequences and real people sometimes get hurt and suffer real loss from that jusitified dishonesty.
I have no illusions about stopping the practice. I just hope people will be somewhat consci0ous of the other real people involved and when the opportunity presents itself, support a musician or artist rather than take their work for free just because you can.
Think of your own work or someone else that you know personaly and imagine how it would feel to work and not get paid, because someone decided they ought to have your work for free.
But it’s not like shoplifting. It’s more like sneaking into a half-full cinema.
This is an irrelevant tangent but no. There are cases , say the civil rights iisues, where the law is wrong and we have to work to change it. Hey, if people were copying music and then sending money directly to the artists because they thought the labels were screwing the I’d respond differently. But that doesn’t happen much does it? My objection is to the mindset and practice of taking someone else’s work without thier permission or compensation, and then trying to justify it as okay.
I kinda like the petty shoplifting example. Can you tell me why it isn’t just like petty shoplifting?
It isn’t just the act of copying I object to, or even the law itself. It’s the idea of convincing yourself that taking a product for free , something that someone is offering for sale, is okay. It can be unethical even if it’s not prosecutable. Like the pevious example of comedians stealing other comedians jokes.
Try this on, A band is working hard and manages to release a CD only to discover somebody is making a lot of copies and passing them out under the justification of “free publicity” If the band asks the copier to cease and desist , should that person stop now that the artist has told them not to give it away? If he doesn’t and the band decides to kick his ass and destroy his computer are they justified?
and then taking the movie home with you, and passing it out to a few friends. Pretty significant difference huh?
That isn’t what I said at all. I said the business model of the record companies benefits the record companies, screws the average artist, and limits the choice of the consumer. It has nothing to with them not being nice, it has everything to do with them being bad business people.
I’ll go back to my Tivo example. The current model of television is that advertisers pay for commercials, which provides the funding for television programming, which viewers watch and enjoy. Tivo lets the viewers skip the commercials, which means the advertisers aren’t getting their money’s worth. Is the solution to ban Tivo, or is the solution to make the advertisers and networks work within the new paradigm that Tivo has created?
Okay, retailers started offering liberal return policies to attract customers. Some customers took advantage of the policies. Retailers would later change their policies for what I imagine are a variety of reasons (you’ve assumed it’s because the policies were costing them too much money; do you have any proof of that?).
My question to you is: so what? Retailers enacted customer-friendly policies and later modified or eliminated them. Happens all the time. It’s part of competition. Are the people who took advantage of such policies supposed to feel some kind of moral anguish?
Oddly enough there are people who don’t pirate precisely because it’s unethical. I think we need to continue to remind people that it is unethical and dishonest and challange their justification. It won’t work for some but may for others.
That’s what the OP is about. Someone got prosecuted. I also would like to point out that widespread piracy has effects on the marketplace in general. It may force companies to offer better products and more cheaper choices, but it will also likley limit choices or cause things like “you pay for a song but can only play it on select devices” Merchants facing significant losses have to respond and the responses aren’t always improvements.
one more false analogy. The difference is in this case you knbow who the 20 belongs to and how to get it to them. The other thing is your personal ethics. Shake of the idea that because someone else is unethical it’s okay for you to be. Take it a step further and remind them it’s unethical. Try to reverse the mindset that encourages dishonesty rather than encourage it by participating.
Um,… I think I already mentioned that people actually get paid for airplay. It also generates money in many other ways. Radio stations have been an important part of the music industry. That’s a big part of how the public becomes aware of a new artist, and once again, it’s an agreed upon arrangement between artist, label, and radio station. It’s more like giving the public a free sample.
And the aboveboard thing. We already have one of those.
I couldn’t help but notice how you ignored my link about copyright law.
That’s why the very simple concept of , pay for the product you want, works so very well and the bullshit justification doesn’t.
Fair enough. You don’t have to do business with them if they suck. That doesn’t doesn’t justify taking their product for free.
It hasn’t changed that much. Consumers always had the choice to not watch a commercial. Now they just have a new way to avoid them. When consumers tell advertisers , perhaps because of changing technolgy, that commercials are no longer affective, things will change. You’ll notice Tivo has it’s limits and you’re not allowed to keep everything you download indefinately, or make extra copies for your friends.
Large companies are usually slow in responding to a changing market and customer demands. That’s leaves room for a young innovative company to come in and establish a new improved business model. So, paying a per song fee or per subscription fee is a great alternative to CDs. That’s how business works and it’s fine.
Give those new companies your money and the big bad labels will be forced to change. Give nobody your money and you get different results.
Look, all these scnarios , comparisons , and examples don’t amount to much. IMO the bottom line is a very simple principle that we as a society are better off remembering and keeping. Pay people a fair rate for thier labour , rather than justify taking thier work for free.
I worked in retail a long time and saw the customers pull their hijinks and was there when policies changed and heard the explanation of why. If you’d rather not take my word for it that’s okay.
That’s up to them. It’s just a less attractive part of our humanity that we somehow justify dishonest actions. Policies weren’t changed because of competition but because of the % of dishonest acts rising to a point where it had to be addressed. The point is that dishonesty and the justfcation really does have real world consequences for other people.
Loss is figured into the overall operating costs of any business. Prices are calculated accordingly. People complaining about the high price of CDs ought to keep that in mind. The people in retail who didn’t mind screwing the store were the ones who bitched the loudest when the policies became less customer friendly.
Hey, if that’s just part of the human dynamics of sharing a society that’s what it is. Let’s just call it what it is so we know what choices we’re making and what kind of society we want to have.