p2pnet news | Music:- p2pnet was offline for a short time on Sunday/Monday and a reader wondered if Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America) was behind it.

heh. As if.

Anyway, I wrote, “I’m sure the Big 4 would love to see p2pnet vanish into the sunset, but I very much doubt if they’d ever bother about actively trying to shut me down,” and someone posted, “Don’t flatter yourself. To them, you’re but a flea …”

“You just need to be a flea against injustice,” I posted in response, quoting Marian Wright Edelman.

“Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation,” she said.

Then, “We may all individually be small, but when … Jon, Michael Geist, myself, and a growing number of musicians and music fans all ban together then this seriously threatens the existance of the legacy recording industry,” posted Digital Copyright Canada’s Russell McOrmond.

He also cites a CBC show called Search Engine that’s, “doing a story on this, “and it, “sounds like I might be included in the next episode essentially saying that, ‘If CRIA went out of business, and the Canadian music industry was reclaimed by Canadian composers, performers, and music fans, we would all be better for it’.

Says the CBC site Russell mentions:

Do artists need protection from file-sharing listeners? Do listeners need protection from exploitative artists? Or do both need protection from antiquated laws designed to protect obsolete business models?

The latter was suggested this week on Search Engine by U of Ottawa Law prof Michael Geist; he presented the findings of an Industry Canada study that found that P2P file sharing actually increases CD sales.

This study lends a lot of credibility to what people like Geist have been arguing for years: that file-sharing promotes music, creativity, and commerce. But on-air, Geist warned that Harper’s government is likely to ignore it and introduce backwards copyright-reform anyways.

So- do you buy the study’s findings? Do you share Geist’s pessimism? Have you bought a CD lately? Let us know.

Ironically, the CBC uses the ludicrous (and disgraced) Captain Copyright in the post.

Does every MP3 download represent one person who won’t be buying the CD?

Meanwhile, the CBC site has a number of comments, among them this from dkaph >>>

I’ve been an independent recording artist/producer/composer for the last ten years with an enormous archive of ‘unreleased’ material (close to 300 songs in every genre). Initially, I believed that if you just kept at it and made great music, eventually somebody at a label would recognize talent when it came in the mail and ring up you up and the rest would follow – rockstardom, et al.

The very occasional contract I was offered were for terms I just couldn’t accept – they essentially owned my music and could do with it whatever they wanted for their own gain, with I, the creator, making pennies on royalties and even then mostly through SOCAN/BMI (radio play). Not willing to whore my music, I didn’t sign those contracts. I did play some big shows, with some big names, and it was explained to me very clearly one night by an industry veteran why I would never get a contract that was to my liking:

1. I write a lot of music, and could therefor fulfill the contract (3 album, say) quickly, and having earned name recognition off their investment, could go out and start my own label and keep all the money for myself.

2. I write a lot of different music, and labels generally expect their ‘artists’ to fit into a certain box. A punk band writes punk, a breakbeat producer produces breaks. Period. When under contract (at least the ones I’ve been offered), EVERYTHING I composed while under contract was property of them, and they frankly had no use for my orchestral pieces and my folk music when they’d signed me on as a trance producer.

Basically, they wouldn’t want me ‘wasting my time’ doing stuff that they couldn’t sell. Thing is, I never sit down to ‘write a breaks track’ or write a ‘hiphop track’ … I just start pushing buttons and wrapping things together and the songs write themselves and I’m usually surprised where it ends up in the end.

Labels have no use for that.

Now for the ‘investment’ argument. Defenders of major labels will say that they are entitled to the majority of the proceeds of the music because they made the investment and took the risk and therefor deserve the reward. After all, if they hadn’t done so, the artists wouldn’t be making anything at all, right, so what are they complaining about? Beggars can’t be choosers.

Here are two simple truths:

1. Producing CDs is *CHEAP*.
2. There’s not really much risk.

For the former, let’s remember that when a major label does a release, they publish in the tens of thousands per run, and operate mostly their own equipment and staff. The more you make, the cheaper it is because the materials come in bulk, the machines can run in one bulk dump and minor expenses like glass masters and art films are done only once. Now, as an indie artist I can go to any number of commercial reproduction companies and have a run of 1000 CDs done for about $1/unit. That includes the CD, the cases, the art printing, shrink-wrap, etc.

That’s just at 1,000… and that’s from somebody I don’t even know. Just imagine how little a CD costs the major label that produces literally millions of CDs a year.

Secondly, for the ‘risk’ factor, the so-called ‘venture capitalism’, I would say that the mainstream pimping machine is such a refined process that there is very little if any “risk” involved – for the minimal capital investment in production & distribution, and with the rampant consumerism marketing machine working in over-drive any release is guaranteed to cover any and all expenses associated with putting out a CD. They could release an album full of total garbage meaningless music, with lyrics written in a board room for an artist who was designed by another ‘team’ just down the hall, recorded by another team of session musicians playing music they bought for peanuts, stamp the ‘artists’ name on it and release it and make them a star. Or rather, make themselves even more rich.

The point of all this is and in response to the original question, this entire system is archaic in the context of the digital age. CDs were just the next generation cassette, was just the next generation 8-track, was the next generation LP, each overlapping, each eventually going the way of the laserdisc (except the vinyl record, for reasons we won’t go into here).

To count every MP3 downloaded as a “loss” is to assume that every MP3 downloaded represents one person who won’t be buying the CD, which we all know is complete B.S. Like Denys explained, a huge percentage of MP3 downloads are ‘try-before-you-buy’ listeners (like myself). I’ve been ripped off too many times buying a CD that had one good single and it turned out the rest of the album was trash, but I was suckered by the marketing machine anyway.

To count those downloads as ‘losses’ is pretty self-gratifying… add up all those numbers and whoa! They’d be selling albums like they never have! Or never will.

As for the ‘downloading is stealing’ aspect, I have a very relevant objection to that too:

If you steal my car, that sucks pretty bad, because now I don’t have a car to drive. If you steal my kid’s favorite stuffed toy, that sucks big time, because now he doesn’t have it.

In the realm of digital creations, this idea of theft is irrelevant. Apples and oranges. You can download my MP3 and I still have it. I may not have any money from you, but who says you would have bought my CD anyway?

So they charge “copy levys” on blank CDs and soon ipods. This has always infuriated me, because here I am, independent artists fighting the major labels for a piece of the public’s ear, and I am paying a levy, which trickles back to them, so that I could buy blank CDs and make copies to sell at the local record store? Even as an indie the big labels are getting a cut of my sales! And from a philosophical perspective, consider this: charging a levy assumes that you are going to be doing it. It’s like a tax, or a toll… cross the bridge, pay the toll.

Pay the toll… then you get to cross the bridge, right? Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Or is this more like a piracy fine which assumes that because you *could* pirate with these discs then we’re going to fine you in advance.

Just imagine, you go to buy a new sports car, and when you’re filling out the paperwork there’s a speeding levy. “Well sir, you see, because this car DOES go faster than the speed limit, you COULD speed with it, so we’re going to go ahead and fine you ahead of time.”

All this so that major labels can desperately keep their claws in an industry which no longer needs their system.

In the old days, we needed the recording industry the way it developed – discover the talent, publish it, pimp it, everyone makes money, people’s lives are enhanced by the propagation of the artistic work, sunshine and rainbows.

But we don’t need them anymore. It’s just this saturated environment in which the mediocre rises to the top and is defined by the past sounds from the last round…. how will the new be found?

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 11:37 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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