Used CDs and mp3s

Cafe Society
21

Is this true? I’ve always assumed that with the omnipresence of iTunes and the fact that iTunes makes it easy (even encourages!) you to add songs from your CD to your iTunes folder, that it’s perfectly legal. I would have thought that if it wasn’t, someone would have forced Apple to change its software to prevent (or at least discourage) CD ripping.

Granted, there is a big list of terms and conditions that you have to “agree” to when you install iTunes that I never read. Maybe there’s something about it there.

22

Amen.

23

I think In Winnipeg makes a lot of good points, but I don’t agree with the conclusion of downloading with impunity. That is, I do think they’re hypocrites to some degree for selling the same stuff over and over and not being upset about tape trading when it was neutral or even positive to the major label sales. But now, the major labels and the most popular artists are seeing a decline while the less popular artists and smaller labels are actually seeing huge increases.

In the last 11 years or so since Napster first hit and the digitial music revolution really began, I’ve seen increasing bitching and moaning from the major labels, but a lot of acts that previously wouldn’t have gotten exposure got it. Even with the new model, a lot of major labels are losing a lot of money because they used to have a few singles on an album, then a bunch of fillers and sell the album for full price, even now, on pop albums like that that are full of filler tracks, people will buy the few tracks they like and end up paying less than half of what they would for the whole thing.

The problem is, the industry hasn’t adjusted their business model to cope with the change in technology. What would happen if they focused on releasing a better overall product so people were more interested in purchasing an entire album? What if they focused more on producing a quality live product to encourage people to attend live concerts and buy merchandise there? Instead, they’re using roughly the same business model and pursuing legal avenues to force people to conform.

And this is why less popular artists and smaller labels are doing well because they HAD to focus on a good overal product and on extensive touring schedules because relying on record sales alone didn’t cut it. Moreso, getting additional copies out there increased the exposure of bands so it drew more people to go to shows or want to actually own the CD.
I don’t even have a problem with downloading, as I generally look at that a lot like a free sample or a test drive. Trying to pawn a 30s clip off on me as giving me an idea of what 60-70 minutes of music is an utter failure on so many levels. Either it’s accurate, because the whole album is describably in such a small clip, which means the album is bland and not worth purchasing, or it doesn’t do the album justice, good or bad. The problem I have is with people who download with impunity and no intention to ever contribute anything back. I don’t think you necessarily have to buy a whole album, but if you like an artist and you want them to continue to make music you like, you should do SOMETHING to support them. If that means you steal some of their music, but attend their live shows and possibly buy a shirt, that’s fine in my book. Although, I do think that if you do like it, you really should compensate them for it.

That’s generally how I operate. I have no problem downloading music or finding it free, and I share it freely, but if I like it, even if I’ve already downloaded and heard the entire album, I’ll buy it and I’ll often go to concerts and spend even more money there. But if I download something and don’t like it, I just saved myself a few bucks, but even then I still usually buy something. I don’t like to explicitly delete things I don’t like because I’ve had plenty of instances where I just needed to hear it in a different mood, in which case I like it then, but I sure won’t be actively listening to something I don’t like, so it’s not any different from deleting it.

In either case, I think if music followed more of that sort of business model, we’d see a lot more quality music because people would only be paying for stuff they thought was worth paying for. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it’s that society as a whole is quite ready for. I’d love to be wrong about that, though.

24

Blaster Master, you may not be doing this, but if I had a dollar for every time someone cited *the failure of the record industry business model *as an explanation for why downloading is okay, well, I’d have a lot of dollars. The record industry has indeed fucked up its business model, but then so did Circuit City, and I never went there to swipe CDs. The two are separate issues, and while the major labels made me unwilling to buy much of their music, it’s not like music is a necessity, and it’s not like they still didn’t own the rights to that music.

In any case, small bands and small labels haven’t become necessarily innovative because they’re inherently innovative, they’ve become innovative because downloading forced them to become that way. Not every small band actually wants to tour 270 days a year and have someone pushing the CD/t-shirt booth at every stop, and a band that has produced a kick-ass album really does deserve the right to the money from the product they’ve created.

I don’t disagree with everything people have said. I’ve always hated the you-have-to-buy-this-to-hear-it scheme, which used to mean (when we bought vinyl) that you often paid 70% of your music dollars for utter crap. So I work around that by borrowing CDs from friends or the library, and I buy it if I like it. (one day, however, every label will have figured out how to stream albums while controlling content, and we’ll get to try things before we buy them).

25

It’s pretty common practice now for bands to stream their albums ahead of release so that one can listen to the album in its entirety before spending money on it. A quick glance at the Pitchfork front page shows links to listen to the new Flying Lotus, LCD Soundsystem, and the The National albums. I listened to MGMT’s latest streamed from their website a while before it came out. The latest Gorillaz release was played in its entirety on NPR and then streamed online. Streaming singles is even more common.

So that’s all a step in the right direction. I agree that the 30-second samples on iTunes are ridiculous.

That said, I agree with Maserschmidt that the failure of the recording industry to be anything other than awful is no excuse for downloading music illegally. Nobody is entitled to this stuff.

26

I completely agree, Maserschmidt. The failure of their business model and ethics is not an excuse to throw ethics out the window. I think anyone that does that is just trying to find an excuse to get something for nothing. However, from a pragmatic perspective, I don’t really see what the difference is between borrowing a CD to test drive it or downloading a few tracks to test drive it, provided that, in the end, you buy it if you like it.

I’m also not trying to say that bands should have to tour 9 months out of the year or be pushy with their merchandise to be successful. My point with that was that it’s another way that a band can be marketted and be successful. Right now, it seems that a lot of popular acts produce a bunch of albums, of which maybe a quarter of the tracks are potentially worth listening to and forcing people to buy them. Instead, they could produce fewer, higher quality albums and make up the difference with touring. Personally, I’d rather have a solid album every 2-4 years, and see them live 2-4 times in the same time period (which is how most of my favorite bands seem to operate) than get a crappy album every 6 months to a year or so and seldom see them in a live performance. You get roughly the same amount of quality music, since the former skips all the filler, but you don’t feel ripped off, and you get to have the live experience more often if you want.
I think what I’m trying to say in a long-winded way is not that their crappy business model justifies stealing, but that if they fixed their business model, a lot of the problem would go away. If you’re effectively paying $17 at Best Buy for 10 minutes worth of music, the incentive for stealing goes up because, well, that’s a rip-off. If, on the other hand, you’re paying $12 for a CD (which is roughly what I usually pay) and get 60-70 minutes of quality music, there’s a lot less incentive to steal.

27

I have to confess to a certain degree of inconsistency. I don’t illegally download MP3s, but that’s partly because I hate MP3s and don’t use them except to stream music that I’m largely unfamiliar with (like new albums) from free services and media sources like NPR. I also think that given their quality and attendant legal and practical issues (i.e., you’re buying a license to hear it, not the ownership rights to it per se, plus all the hassles associated with compatibility and transfer issues), digital files are a complete ripoff.

I still buy CDs, but most of them are from the used bins, and it’s generally a lot cheaper to just buy the CD used (and sometimes even new, especially if you can find it at an introductory sale price at a retailer like Best Buy) rather than spring for all the tracks in a digital format, not that anybody does (MP3s are obviously going to be a lot cheaper than the album if all you want is one or two songs). But I’m convinced that people who cherry-pick their MP3s are cheating themselves out of a lot of musical discoveries. It makes me shudder to think of all the great music that I would’ve missed if I’d just skimmed off the top song or two from most of the albums I have now; most of the good music out there fall under the category of “deep tracks”.

A fair percentage of my used discs are stamped (“PROMO COPY – NOT FOR SALE OR DISTRIBUTION…”), but I’ve never let that stop me from buying them, any more than that stopped the disc jockey, radio station programmer or music critic from hocking them to the store.

One tangential issue no one’s mentioned yet is the question of label re-issues, as in digital remasters. No one calls the labels to the carpet for having issued a crappy-sounding product in the first place, but if they wait 20 years or so, someone often figures out they could remaster the album and sell it to a new generation’s worth of consumers, to aging fans on a nostalgia trip, and to the die-hard fans and completists.

I figure that the labels’ remaster sales and my cheating them via the illegal promo copies roughly cancel each other out.