In the battle over file sharing, discussing morality is a simplistic, unproductive starting place.
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"I am an avid music listener, concertgoer, and college radio DJ. My world is music-centric. I've only bought 15 CDs in my lifetime. Yet, my entire iTunes library exceeds 11,000 songs."
With that line, NPR intern Emily White kicked up a shitstorm. Her confession that most of the music she has on her computer and iPod were acquired through means other than forking over cash prompted Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker frontman David Lowery to dissect at great length her ethical failures. His bottom line: you're a thief, dear. Industry critic Bob Lefsetz threw gas on the fire first by titling his response "The David Lowery Screed" (which in Lowery's defense it isn't, if "screed" connotes for you a shrill, irrational, intemperate response as it does for me), then by snowplowing through the thorny questions to reduce the issue to one of power:
Lady Gaga famously told Steve Jobs Ping sucked. Was he so powerful that he could make it successful? No, she was right. She spoke truth to power. Are you speaking truth to power?
That intern David Lowery is beating up on has no power. He’s wasting his time. And you’re high-fiving him as if it all makes a difference. You’re involved in a circle jerk anybody with the chance of making a difference is ignoring.
... and we were off. The Trichordist website that hosted Lowery's piece received so many comments that it had to post arcane rules to weed out the feedback to a manageable 550 posts, while White's post garnered 853 comments at NPR's more robust (I assume) site. One interesting aside (in my mind) on all of this is how the comments on Lowery's page tend to support him, while those on White's are generally sympathetic to her. Do you have to be as inflammatory as Lefsetz to get people to disagree with you when you write express an opinion online? Is the web that much of an echo chamber?
There's an uncomfortable kids-these-days aspect to Lowery's critique, though it's not one confined to his peer group (early 50s) and older. Travis Morrison (early 40s) from The Dismemberment Plan writes:
The aspect that my peers really bonded with, and horrified me, is that Lowery seems to feel that the theft of music is a new phenomenon that is unique to the young people of today. His piece [is] full of things he needs to tell Emily about Emily and her digital klepto peer group. He's pretty qualified to do this because he's taught college for a few years. And man did my peer group eat it up. It was all over my facebook feed. Where did they get this awful new behavior? We never did this!!! Are these the wages of Attachment Parenting??? It really started to mess me up.
Morrison then recounts all the dubious ways he and his friends acquired music over the years including shoplifting. His essay highlights one disingenuous element of Lowery's critique. When Lowery was in his late teens/early 20s, the RIAA pushed the idea that home taping was killing music. There has always been outcry from those who had a financial stake in music toward those who were getting it without paying, but what studies at the time showed was that the people who shared tapes also bought music and one way or another broadened the market for music. They were (and I'd argue still are) the people for whom music is so important that they want to consume more than they can afford, and they want to share those passions. It is through mixtapes from friends that I discovered the Mekons (I've since bought everything I'm aware of on CD), Nick Drake (bought it all) and Yo La Tengo (bought all of it that didn't come to me as promos) for three quick examples. Morrison talks about this dynamic at length, and White worked at a campus radio station, where no doubt playing music helped many bands reach audiences that did pay in one way or another.
Jay Frank at Billboard.biz found studies that suggest that phenomenon remains true today:
Respected blogger Cory Doctorow also noted last month that a summary of over 20 different papers on file trading shows very little impact on sales from file trading. Drew Wilson, the author of the summary, got his results from such "fringe" groups as The Wharton School, The Journal of Law And Economics, and The Journal of Business Ethics.
Frank's point is that it's not the Emily Whites of the world that are taking money out of David Lowery's mouth.
The problem, as noted by Chris Muratore of Nielsen on the previously noted New Music Seminar panel, is that 94% of those releases sold less than 1,000 units. Indicators that I have examined showed those low sales aren't because of people stealing them. They come from too many releases causing most people to not even realize they are out. For example, 80s rocker Lita Ford has a new album that came out yesterday. As of this writing, it's the 91st most popular new release on Rdio. How many of you have the patience or time to sift thru the other 90 releases to get to #91? Let alone decide to even put in the effort to steal it? Whether you were going to listen to it or not, I'd be willing to bet that almost everyone reading this found out that Lita Ford had new music from this paragraph. Stealing it is even further down their priority list.
His example of Lita Ford raises a relevant question: How do you rationally respond to a new Lita Ford release? If not with, "Is she still alive?" then likely with some wariness, even from fans. It has been 33 years since the last good Runaways album (Queens of Noise, and I'm not going to check it out right now to see if I'm being charitable) and 24 years since "Kiss Me Deadly." Odds are, you're going to want to check it out in some way before you drop real money on it. She's not an artist who ever offered a lot to chew on, so a Spotify-like platform is more likely the way people are going to hear her than spend money on iTunes - Lowery's solution.
It's worth remembering that acquiring music wasn't always a gamble. My mother told me about going to record stores that had listening booths in the back so that you could check out a record before you bought it. At that time, stores carried records to help sell the higher-profit record players and stereos that were their real business, and it was a time when the emphasis was on the single in a paper sleeve - something that could be test-driven without any tell-tale signs. When the emphasis shifted to the shrink-wrapped album (which are higher profit items for the companies), a you-break-the-seal-it's-yours mentality kicked in. When you purchased music, you ran the risk of it sucking, and everybody who has ever purchased an album that sucks remembers the mental gymnastics in trying to convince themselves that it doesn't suck. I can't fault White and a generation for finding a way around that conundrum.
At Forbes.com, Leor Galil quotes Lowery's summary of his college students' rationale for not spending money on music: "It’s OK not to pay for music because record companies rip off artists and do not pay artists anything." then Galil writes:
There are countless anecdotes of labels ripping off artists dating back to the days when the blues became the “electric blues,” each one feeding into this concept of “the man” that’s appropriate to rage against when something goes awry. Lowery details the ways in which labels (and, by proxy, the executives) invest in musicians, even without the guarantee that there will be a return on said investment, but when it comes to obtaining music the cultural climate is still stacked against labels—even if it means, as Lowery says, it’s the middle-class “weirdo freak musicians” who end up getting hurt.
Lowery's defense of the industry is one of the thornier elements in this conversation. On one hand, he's right when he points out that artists generally get advances which are paid back through the money that comes via sales, so musicians signed to labels do get paid in a way. And I gather he's right in that if an album tanks and the label drops the artist, the debt's dropped too. Still, I suspect that if we talked to musicians about the pressures and restrictions about how that money should be spent and what costs were charged back to the artists, we'd learn that the advances aren't really the band's money, or at least not money the members could spend as they please. But I'm spitballing on that one and welcome comments from musicians who could clarify this point for me.
But to absolve the labels of their place in the discussion is giving them far too much of a pass. I've argued before that one of the cataclysmic changes in the music business came with the death of the single. At the EMP Pop Conference in Los Angeles in 2011, Chris Molanphy addressed the industry's changing stance regarding the single, a form that always outsold albums. There have always been more people who wanted to own the songs they liked more than they wanted an album of songs by that person, but when singles were discontinued in 1994, if you wanted to own "Stay" by Lisa Loeb, you had to buy the album. Instead of spending $3, you had to spend $15.
This was hardly the first time that the record industry made decisions that were not in music fans' best interests. The introduction of CDs in 1982 as the primary method of getting new music forced fans to buy CD players, which naturally led to them re-buying on CD music they already on vinyl. The death of the single was a significant change, and it's one that the artists benefited from. Not as much as the labels, I'm sure, but more to the point, it made clear the label's relationship with music buyers. They aren't fans; they're something more generic - a market to be exploited. If you take the fans' relationship with the artists out of the equation, then music buyers are simply consumers who logically look for the best deal. The best deal is free, and it's only surprising that Napster didn't emerge before 1999.
Lowery argues against White and fellow file sharers on morality grounds, which is thin ice. I understand it in the abstract, but we all have enough minor infractions on weekly basis that he's asking her and young people to walk a walk that few manage as well as they'd like. Musicians who rail against people sharing instead of buying their music have to ask themselves if everything they released represents the best music they could make. Not the best under the circumstances; the best. Or, were there times when they'd been on tour and didn't have time to write new material but went back in the studio anyway and cut the best album they could make, knowing it was flawed? Were there occasions when tensions between band members turned sessions toxic, and the results show a band that didn't talk to each other? Any experiments that didn't work? Sessions where they were just too fucking high? Any shows where they were too wasted? Where tensions on the bus spilled over on to the stage? Where self-indulgence just couldn't be contained? If bands expected audiences to spend money on music that represented something less than their best, I'm not sure they have much room to complain about morality in this conversation.
Lowery and his supporters make a radical leap that so far has been missed in most of what I've read on this. White writes:
But I didn't illegally download (most) of my songs. A few are, admittedly, from a stint in the 5th grade with the file-sharing program Kazaa. Some are from my family. I've swapped hundreds of mix CDs with friends. My senior prom date took my iPod home once and returned it to me with 15 gigs of Big Star, The Velvet Underground and Yo La Tengo (I owe him one).
During my first semester at college, my music library more than tripled. I spent hours sitting on the floor of my college radio station, ripping music onto my laptop. The walls were lined with hundreds of albums sent by promo companies and labels to our station over the years.
Promo copies are a gray area, but if Lowery is mad at her for her prom date's generosity, then he is asserting that even when you buy music, it's not really yours. You can't do with it what you will. That's a strong statement, and even less of an incentive to buy. If there are onerous rules as to how I can enjoy music I purchase, then I might as well go outlaw.
The future in this argument lies in reestablishing the artist/fan relationship. Fans feel a connection to their favorite artists. Fans think if they met their favorite artists, they'd hit it off because they get each other. Fans want their favorite artists to succeed and want to support them, and there is plenty of evidence so far that this works. As Leor Galil writes at Forbes.com:
Crowd-source funding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo give musicians (as well as other artists) the opportunity to pitch various projects and show potential donors how the money they hope to raise will be used, and artists are encouraged to offer rewards—such as digital or physical copies of an album, t-shirts, concert tickets—for different levels donations. It’s an idea that brings audiences into the creation process in ways that establish strong connections between listeners and musicians, and Kickstarter in particular has become an important tool for many independent and established musicians. Boston singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer recently made headlines when a Kickstarter campaign she put together to help mix, manufacture, and distribute her forthcoming solo album received more than a million dollars in donations.
At the arena level, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have reached out directly to their fans successfully, and at the grass roots level, the process has worked as well. Threadhead Records, for example, has helped fund recordings for a number of New Orleans artists who would have struggled to squirrel away enough money to record albums. Those supporters have proven to be a pretty durable live audience as well for the artists they finance.
Singer Dayna Kurtz actually enjoys the relationship that comes from having the audience contribute to her recording life:
“One of my favorite outcomes of how heinous the music business has become is fan fundraising,” she says. She’s used Kickstarter but found its all-or-nothing model too nerve-wracking. Instead, she has dedicated part of her website to fundraising. “At a time when people are less connected than ever to more shit, people feel connected to the people who make the music in a way that they hadn’t before.” She gets fans writing and telling her what her music has meant to them and the occasions when it’s been played–at weddings, birthdays, even births.
“It’s a thing that you think would make your head get big, but it’s actually really humbling. You feel like when you’re a musician, it’s a very selfish thing to do. You get applauded every day at work. Then you have people tell you that you’re part of these important moments in their lives and I feel like I’m of use, like I serve a purpose in the community. It made me feel more responsible.”
It's easy for this conversation to spin in generational circles with a lot of self-serving moralizing on one side and equally self-serving "they just don't get it" on the other. Neither is productive, but one place where Kurtz and Lowery come together is in the vision of a future in the rubble. Lowery observes that labels these days are often the artists themselves or smaller, artist-friendly organizations, and that they're not the monoliths of old. Everybody - artists and fans - are living through the conditions created by those monoliths, but as smaller organizations find ways to activate and connect to the people who love the music they put out, a financially viable, non-abusive future is possible.
Your Spilt Milk
The other I asked my 18 year old step-son (who is an aspiring musician) how he and his friends got music, and if they ever bought it. His reply was that most of his friends thought the idea of paying for music was laughable. (To his credit, he bought a CD at a show last night). I asked how his friends thought musicians were supposed to keep making music, and he said that was never even a thought, much less a topic of conversation.
I imagine that most of "those darn kids" don't even understand why we are having this conversation, much less what the point of the conversation is.
The question of how the musicians are supposed to keep making music is an interesting one. I wonder when it happened that we got the idea that being a musician could be a full-time job, and that music sales should be a major part of that income. I haven't studied this enough to do more than spitball here, but I'm pretty some of the old R&B guys had jobs (or had the off and on), and the majority of their income came from playing live. I'm not making light of your observation, but I wonder if we need to broaden the conversation a bit to reconsider some of the assumptions we make regarding the sort of lives and incomes musicians should be able to reasonably expect.
You aren't making light of my point, you are clarifying it. The idea that we are entitled to a mechanism that allows us to make a living from our artistic pursuits should be questioned.Don't get me wrong, I have loved the points in my life where I have done nothing but play music, and made a decent living from it, but that was all based on people hiring me to do what *they* wanted me to do. It was never based on my own artistic pursuits. I'm not advocating that we do it for free, but we do have to do it within the culture in which we currently live. And that culture is ot readily inclined to pay for recorded music.
Dave Allen enters the fray with "The internet could not care less about your mediocre band." http://www.north.com/latest/the-internet-could-care-less-about-your-medi...
The whole question of whether being a musician or an artist ought to be a full-time position or a career - a curator of the Corning Museum of Glass brought that up many years ago about glass artists. Sure, being a musician or artist full-time is only available to a few, most of whom have worked their butts off to get there, but it isn't unreasonable for people to aspire to doing that. It's just going to be a hard row to hoe like it always has been.
My mother asked me how musicians were going to make a living if CDs or music downloads weren't happening as much as they used to. I said live shows were going to be the main way of doing things - which gets back to that relationship between the musician and the fan. There are more ways than ever to establish that relationship - but musicians do have to meet people halfway. Same as it ever was, but the whole middle muddle of music industry between musician and fan is in flux.
how lovely to be quoted in such a well thought out and (finally!) non-snarky or insulting response to all this hubbub. thank you. i do want to put out there that though fan fundraising has been spiritually rewarding, it has in no way, shape or form replaced my (roughly) 20- 30k fans (who, judging by my crowds on tour in europe - are still there) that USED to buy my records 10 years ago - only about 10-20% do now. (spotify owns europe more than it does america). one look at only a couple of popular pirate sites shows my last record having been illegally downloaded just over 50,000 times. amount sold, legal downloads and physical cds? just under 2000. i'm not, nor was i ever lita ford. the most records i've ever sold was 30k. most critics over there seem to agree that my work is as strong or stronger (or at least as interesting) as it was back in those crazy rock star days of yore when i took home roughly the salary of a mid-career kindergarten teacher. i'm really hoping to not have to quit, quite honestly - i'm deeply in debt going back 2 records, and that looks unlikely to change outside of some random lightning bolt of luck - a highly paid ad or movie synch or a big pop artist making a hit from one of my songs.
food for thought - if the math that applies now - count on only 20% (MAYBE 30% in the states) of your actual following paying for records or legal downloads - applied to SO many of the artists that musicians and music writers agree as being important and influential (big star, husker du, irma thomas, need i go on?) they wouldn't have lasted more than one or 2 records themselves, nor would any of those great storefront labels with the possible exception of chess, motown, stax and sun. the music business may run on hits, but art sometimes requires misses. the fact that financially marginal cult favorites like malcolm holcombe, ron sexsmith, or yes, myself - may have to get day jobs in the next couple of years feels tragic at the moment. i may not be able to change it, the call put out by lowery's critics to 'adapt or die' feels useless to me - i'm not a kid banging out beats on a mac, nor am i an obsessive tweeter, agitator or cultural lightning rod. i make soulful, elegant, and occasionally challenging records (on 2 inch tape because it sounds luscious) for a literate, discriminating, deep-feeling sort of music fan. i write a catchy song in an old fashioned way now and then, but i've never set out to be the kind of artist that appeals to millions, or even hundreds of thousands. i don't think i'd even know how to try. so my response to dave allen, and a little bit to bob lefsetz as well, is - fuck you, i'll never be mediocre.. if i was i'd probably have more fans by now.
Dayna - I'd forgotten your thoughts on Spotify from our conversation; thanks for adding them here so that I don't misrepresent you.
The more I've thought about this, the more I think the weakness of Lowery's argument is the degree to which he lets the labels off the hook. Ultimately, it's the label selling the albums, not the artists. It's the label that sets the price and as much as it can, the schedule. I remember when a label - Virgin, maybe? - released the first Rolling Stones album on the label and charged $17.99 for it, which was two dollars more expensive than any other CD at the time. The label justified this by saying that they were rock royalty, so their music should cost more, but all that raised price did was establish the price the market would bear, and soon all CDs were $17.99. In the early 2000s, price was found to have a strong bearing on sales, and albums by Franz Ferdinand and Sahara Hotnights were briefly hot when they were racked by the counter at Tower Records and sold for $9.99. The labels created the adversarial relationship with music buyers (what other industry has sued its own customers?), and the damage was so severe that it has affected not only artists who were on those labels and were represented by them, but those who are unaffiliated with major labels as well.
Well said Dayna.I'll go along with the idea that the labels created this mess, but in today's environment, as often as not, the artist is the label. So really the issue becomes less "can the artist make a living from this" than "can the artist afford to make another record from this."
It is a beautiful thing to have a space like MySpiltMilk to read and participate in thoughtful conversations about music, more specifically New Orleans-centric music. I've enjoyed reading this in much the same way I relish Back of Town's commentary on Treme episodes. Just as in that blog, when even David Simon sometimes chimes in on the conversation, having an artist like Dayna Kurtz share her thoughts adds significant artist perspective to the conversation.
As an avid music fan who moved to New Orleans to be part of the live music scene, and who decades later still goes to numerous lives shows and "consumes" recorded music daily, I embrace the reality that with the shift to digital files and now streaming sites like Spotify, that is the world in which we now live and we are not going back. With the sometime exception of friends' CDs, I now rarely buy physical media and almost exclusively rely on my purchased premium subscriptions to Spotify and Sirius Radio, some internet radio like Radio Paradise and, of course, WWOZ for my musical exploration and daily listening.
Thanks to Spotify, when an artist like Dayna Kurtz with whom I was unfamiliar prior to this column and forum, suddenly appears on my radar, I am able to immediately and without additional expense check out her music. Sans online access, that just wouldn't happen. Having checked her out, if she now plays a live show in town, I am much more apt to go see her and pay a cover charge. The convenient and inexpensive access to an almost limitless universe of music, while it may make it tougher for artists to sell their recordings, certainly opens up an artist's reach to potential fans like me anywhere in the world, who will happily pay to hear a talented artist perform live.
re: live shows: i don't believe i've ever turned a profit on a band tour. the only times i ever broke even were the years when i was selling a lot of cds after the shows. the bands that make money on the road, in these days of diminishing guarantees and increasing pay-to-play venues, are few and far between. some jam bands do all right, they sell a lot of t-shirts and the like to their fans - who tend to be serious live music junkies. this may be temporarily worse than it's going to be - it seems we just got hit on all sides in the last couple years - the shocking increase in piracy, the mounting dominance of spotify where the artist needs to be streamed 1 million times to make a hundred bucks, AND the shit economy - which means that people aren't going out to clubs as much as they used to, and the clubs are tightening up, lowering guarantees, or just downright shutting down. the competition for gigs right now is pretty intense and if you're not a room filler, you're not getting the gig - they can't afford to take the risk. but most bands lose money or barely break even on the road - unless they're kids who crash at friends houses piled up on the floor together and have a shitload of young t-shirt buying fans. and even then the 80 bucks a day plus in gas money for a van kills em. my band of middle aged pros with kids and mortgages is unfortunately not down with the whole sleeping on the floor thing and need to be paid according to their experience and playing abilities, which are extensive. don't get me wrong - i LOVE touring, and have spent my whole completely independent, mostly uninsured, no savings, no security career -nearly 2 decades-on the road, 'meeting my fans in the middle' as liprap put it, for love. but cd sales were the only thing that kept that boat afloat, even as a solo artist. so many of us, even people much bigger than me, were barely scraping together a living BEFORE the biz and the economy crashed. we do it cause it feels wrong NOT to do it. i love it so much i've been willing to do it for nothing or less for a while now, and am probably willing to do it part time alongside a day job. though it requires a lot of energy to write, record and tour - not to mention book, manage and promote. i'm exhausted at this point. it's not quite analogous to glassblowing, i don't think, just because of the sheer amount of shitslog one must go thru for that 2 hours on the stage, 2 or 5 times a week. so the fact that people who don't buy records they love (i have nothing against sampling the wares) justify this because they once or twice bought a ticket to see the band are ALSO part of the problem - and it's time THEY met US in the middle too. i think it IS a moral issue - that if musicians just come out and say to these fans - 'i'm having a hard time paying rent/the band/my studio bills, y'all need to please buy some records if you don't like the idea of me not making new music anymore' maybe fans WILL start to make the ethical decision to keep us going, and to urge their friends who went apeshit over that awesome song they played at their last party to buy the record instead of mindlessly loading it into their hard drive. just because it's EASIER to steal music than clothes or wine or a myriad of other things that require this much investment of time, money and expertise doesn't make it right. i refuse to take it lying down. ps - thanks for checking it out @jon! @alex - the labels have always been pretty irrelevant to me personally, though they tortured me with their flattery and indecision every few years when there was a random chick-signing frenzy. but yes, they fucked up at every turn and totally deserve to die go the way all dinosaurs go. and i miss them. i wish it was 1975 and i was given a 6 month lockout, generous tour support, a big pile of cocaine and told to go make art. those were the fuckin days. i'd still be fucked, but think of the parties.
I think (or maybe I hope) that we're collectively in the process of working out some new models for adults who make music for adults. Just as baby boomers are the first generation that didn't give up their music when they reached adulthood, there's a substantial cadre of meaningful, mature artists who are in the process of trying to figure out how to make a living when the shortcuts available to younger artists (sleep on floors, in strange beds, etc.) no longer hold much appeal. A club like Chickie Wah Wah suggests there's hope by booking interesting bands to play at an audience-friendly hour - and to stay committed to both the style of music and the start time. I'm sure there aren't enough CWWs around the country, nor are there enough people at the gigs to make the whole program sustainable, but it's a starting place.
house concerts help fill the gap a LOT these days- they're the only gigs i make any money at anymore. i know some artists who don't even bother booking clubs anymore at all. and that's been lovely too - for audiences and artists. but the scene is almost entirely folk singer-songwriters, so it's mostly solo gigs and i barely squeak by fitting in the world. but man, it's a life saver. and a much more pleasant way for a certian sort of middle aged music fan to spend and evening than a grotty old SRO rock club. on the downside - my friends who play only house concerts aren't known much outside that world, it's a closed loop. and some of them are fantastic. jack williams, for instance. there's only a handful of listening rooms left he'll bother to grace with his presence cause he was so tired of being treated like shit and making nothing. and he's brilliant, he's in his 60's and nobody knows his name. (he sang a duet w/me on the last record - that's him playing guitar, one take, while singing). http://daynakurtz.bandcamp.com/track/call-me-darling
From the Village Voice Blogs:
All Of The Arguments About Digital Music, Summarized
By Mike Barthel Mon., Jun. 25 2012 at 1:00 PM
Categories: Arguing On The Internet, Lists, Mike Barthel, Spotify, The Internet
Piracy is theft.
Piracy isn't theft because nothing physical is being stolen.
You are taking money out of the hands of artists.
Artists were already being ripped off by labels.
Artists can make the money back by touring.
Kickstarter.
Here is a bulleted list of numbers showing how much it costs to be a working musician compared with how much you get for touring.
By reducing the economic incentives for producing music, you are reducing the number of people who become musicians, and thus the quality of music overall.
Remixes, mash-ups, and other forms of sampling show how digital music is encouraging creativity.
The music industry is stifling creativity by filing copyright violation notices on remixers, mash-uppers, and samplers.
The music industry is unjustly harassing downloaders, levying fines far in excess of actual damages.
By exposing people to more music, freely-available digital music prompts more people to buy music.
Music sales have dropped dramatically since the introduction of MP3s.
Music sales have dropped because music got worse.
Music sales were always inflated by the introduction of overpriced new formats and albums padded with filler.
It doesn't cost anything to make music now, so it shouldn't cost anything to buy music.
Here is a bulleted list of numbers showing how much it costs to make music.
Music should be free.
It's already free on the radio.
People have been stealing music for a long time.
Artists don't deserve to make a living making music.
Musicians should just be happy to be making music and shouldn't worry about making money from it.
Big tech corporations are encouraging "free culture" and are the ones profiting from music now.
Copyright laws are unrealistic and designed to benefit big corporations.
Copyright laws, accurately designed, can protect creators and encourage creativity.
It's easier to pirate music than to buy it.
No it's not.
The record industry needs to develop a better business model.
Innovation.
Why can't I just pay for one streaming service with all of the music in the world.
Only hopelessly backwards artists and labels don't sign with streaming services.
Streaming services pay almost nothing per play, making such agreements basically worthless.
If you have money and love music you should be willing to pay money for it.
The Internet has made it possible for artists to develop their careers independent of labels, and I support those artists.
I don't want to have to deal with an evil record company.
Record companies socialize the costs of launching new artists, allowing successful ones to subsidize riskier unproven artists.
The only musicians that can be successful as independent artists already have label-grown existing fanbases.
It is economically rational for me to pay as little money for a desired commodity as possible, so the existence of pirate-able music demands, by market logic, that I download it.
Fuck you.
Fuck you.
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