Now that technology has allowed the distribution of music over the internet, you would think that musicians would want as many people to hear their music as possible. And young musicians certainly deserve to have access to music. There are some things that can only be learned by listening.

David, you can still do this and shorten the life of copyrights. Why not shorten copyright to just Life, or Life +10? Right now, Copyright is Life +70 or 95/120 years (for works of corporate authorship). That’s a little excessive, IMO.

For example: I believe that I should be able to watch television for free, anytime of day or night, as I please. Lots of people record television shows and put them on torrents to be downloaded. The television industry could have freaked out about this and started suing people…but they didn’t. Instead they did the sensible thing and put their shows online, for free, at high quality with a few commercials thrown in. Given the choice of spending an hour downloading a show and risking getting a virus (or someone’s porn *sigh*) instead, or going to fox.com, nbc.com, abc.com, or cbs.com and streaming the show live with a few commercials, I’ll go stream the video from a legitimate source. I’ll watch the commercials, because they’re very brief, which thanks to TIVO means I actually am exposed to more advertising than I would be if watching via traditional means. It’s a practice that is friendly to all involved–the people that make the shows, the people that broadcast them, and the people that watch them. The networks adapted to filesharing…why hasn’t the RIAA? Is music so very different from a television episode? Why aren’t the record labels putting sites online that let you pick a song, any song, add it to your playlist which has a brief commercial every 5 songs that funds the venture? Why prosecute people for millions of dollars when you could simply come up with a new business model that actually works.

The Times, they are a changing…

Music industry needs to catch up.

Piracy on the other hand, IS a sale and thus a potential purchase was definitely stolen. A 3rd party with no right to sell your product has profited. That’s a major distinction.

Do you have any idea how much the Chinese have stolen Microsoft products? To the tune of billions upon billions. The trade deficit might not be so nasty between us if they actually paid for their software. But asia is out of legal reach. Domestics are not. It reminds me of child abuse when the father is angry at some adult but can’t attack them so he goes after his kids/spouse/etc. The RIAA is a slob of a man wearing a gin soaked wifebeater…

I support piracy and file-sharing in all its forms, in the hope that this money-grabbing celebrity-worshipping culture surrounding music is worn away. With an abundance of choice, and shrinking promotion budgets, I’d like to see music become regional once more. People could focus on music close to home, knowing that they could see these acts live.

Music is a fundamental part of human culture, and will never die. All you need is a voice box and an object to bash rhytmically, and you have enjoyable music. As such, any claims of ‘the death of the industry’ are false. All that file-sharing will do is change the ways we access music, and who can profit off of them.

Personally, I think it’s the most basic example of ’supply and demand’. When record companies and radio stations could easily control the supply, the demand for paid music was higher. Finding good, cheap music any other way took a bit of work and commitment, something most people didn’t have. Now that the supply of music is abundant, the value of the music is no longer artificially high. People can now pay what they want. Lo and behold, most people don’t feel the majority of music is worth paying for, because it isn’t.

Artists need to get off their high horse and remember why they got into music (for fun and creative expression, I assume).

Cheers

The idea that “work and reward should go hand in hand” confuses me. Do you mean the work of the artist or the audience?

If you mean the artist, your statement says that someone who does work should expect to be rewarded. What if 30 years ago (pre file sharing) I’m trying to make it as a musician. I spend long hours writing and practicing, but I don’t manage to get anyone to sign me. So I do lots of work for no reward. Very common then.

If you mean the audience, your statement says that someone who receives some sort of reward should expect to do work for it. This is more reasonable, but still has problems. I use firefox and ubuntu linux on my computer. Both are free. I’m getting a good bit of reward. Is this culturally unhealthy?

One could argue the opposite direction: tying music to monetary reward is culturally unhealthy. Juan writes above that salsa music suffers from lots of problems, which mostly boil down to it’s being too commercial: people create music that sells well not music that’s good. This complaint is pretty common across genres. People look to ‘world music’ to find musicians from cultures where the musicians are still somewhat insulated from the forces of mainstream commercial popularity. So are you sure that this is unhealthy?