Artists v downloaders
SBS’s Insight program pits musicians against downloaders next week with the question, “Should music be free?”
Knowing how this plays out for independent artists like my brother Tim Levinson (appearing on the show) it’s pretty obvious it’ll won’t be as cut and dried as it’s often presented in the mainstream media.
Insight’s a great forum for frank, open discussion; host Jenny Brockie keeps things on track, and gives every speaker (young and old, those representing powerful interests and the less powerful, different races, sexes and so on) equal space.
This is a debate Insight’s been covering for a while now, and this time they’ve got artists as well as Stephen Peach (ARIA), Peter Coroneos (Internet Industry Association), Rebekah Horne (myspace) and others.
I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes, at best it could unpack some of the complex issues in this problem.
after watching the show last night, it was pretty clear cut as to where the vested interests lay. aria is not keen to explore new models, because they’re well aware that new models generally involve a much more direct link between artist and listener. that excludes the people aria represent - the labels, particularly the larger ones, aria’s stock in trade.
the guy that used to run kazaa has his new business model which puts him in place of the old label system - i.e. taking a cut in the name of ‘distribution’ or whatever you call it under the online system. his big problem seemed bleeding obvious, and was hinted at, but not made explicit - he suggested a model where, when anyone typed in an artist name in whatever p2p software they choose, limewire included in his description, the legal copies available around the world would show up for the downloader to choose from. but the fact remains, why pay even 10c for a track that could be downloaded free elsewhere? surely he isn’t so naive to think that even if all the big p2p software brands were brought in line, some new upstart offering true, unmoderated p2p, would not spring up to take their place, just as they have for the last 10 years?
the subscription model mentioned sounds reasonable enough, but surely the same p2p issue as above will circumvent that fairly quickly?
i think artists just need to get used to the idea that they’re never really going to make money out of mp3s. a few will in the transition, but they will only be the ones with careers built on the old models (radiohead, nin) and that’s only going to last for a very limited time until the dust settles.
why this is seen as dire is understandable, i guess, but isn’t that just because we’ve become used to a model which has had a fairly short shelf life in the grand scheme of things anyway? until recordings took off seriously in the 1920s, no artist had the expectation of living off recordings of their music. so to be a musician professionally, there were lots of other things that needed doing. so artists today just have to get used to the idea of doing what every musician in history, apart from a relatively few in the past 80 years, has done - live off something other than their recordings.
at the very least that means the complaints about the glut of music that cheap, new technologies have allowed musicians to flood the market with, might abate.
a bit of flippancy and a bit of devil’s advocacy mixed in there with mostly serious critique - i’d be interested to see where it gets, though.
adrian
4 Jun 08 at 3:16 pm