Kniteforce Revolution

In Defense Of Filesharing

Sep 28, 05:02 PM

In defense of file sharing.

Lets be clear right from the start. File sharing is illegal. I don’t suggest anyone breaks any law, and if you decide to do so, thats your risk and your responsibility. Whatever justification you use is irrelevant to the law. Even if your justifications are correct.
File sharing is a touchy subject. In many ways it is the most divisive of topics within the music industry, and it concerns everyone involved from label owner to casual listener. Everyone has an opinion, and you can go onto any music website forum and pull up a great deal of very passionate back and forth between people, some of it increasingly angry, much of it subjective, and most of it based on incorrect assumptions.

The first assumption that needs to be dealt with is that everything should stay the same as it has for the last 100 years or so. All the money makers in this business start from this position, and they do so because it is what they are used to, what they expect. It’s not an unfair assumption, because most of us got into this industry following the same formula that had been in place for a very long time and don’t know any different. This is the old formula:-

The artist makes a piece of music.

With a little luck and a lot of effort, the artist makes a deal with a record label who pays an advance fee once a contract is signed.

The record label presses the Vinyl / CD, perhaps does some promotion for the release, and also licenses the music to compilation albums and TV if possible.

The record label sells the Vinyl / CD to a Distributor.

The distributor sells to the record stores.

People buy the record.

The money filters through the record store, the distributor, and the record label, until eventually, the artist gets paid for sales of the record.

The artists actually sustains a great many people in the food chain and until recently, all these people were necessary.

Not anymore. The internet has changed all that, and it has done so quickly, with no mercy for those who cant keep up.

Firstly, it gave the artist the ability to advertise to the whole world without a record label. It happened gradually over the last few years, until now you have Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, artists personal websites…a wide variety of ways you can promote your own material. Add to that the cheaper and better cameras, and YouTube, and you can make and play your own video for your music.

This took away a small slice of the record labels power. An artist had control over his own promotion, no longer needing the record labels permission and finances for promotion.
More devastating was the rise and rise of the MP3 format. This enabled high quality music to be saved as a computer file, which could then be burned to a CD. Coupled with the CD mixer or mixing on laptops, and the freedom was there to grab a track and play it the same night. This allowed the artist to test his music live, change it after testing, and give it to other artists easily. Another blow to the record labels control.

But the real killer was broadband, and the ability to share large files quickly. This simply broke the old formula. Artists thought “What do I need a record label for? I can make the music, promote it, and sell it online myself through my website. I don’t need to press a record, I don’t need to sign my musics rights to anyone, and I can do what I like without restrictions!”

Which is true. Except that in the end, this is actually still the same formula as before, except that the artist becomes the record label, the distributor and the record store.
And the problem with the old formula remains the same – it ignores the fundamental changes in the industry, especially the ability to share files easily, making music easy to steal.

Because of the lack of physical product, stealing music online is relatively risk free. There’s no need to sneak into HMV and stuff a CD in your pocket, avoiding security and police etc etc. The risk of getting caught is hugely diminished online.

And it is that lack of risk, which makes file sharing so common.

Picture two supermarkets side by side. One has staff and security, the other has neither. Both are fully stocked at all times. Which one would you get your food from? We all like to say we would pay for it, but I think most of us would go to the staff-free one and take what we want. The first time we might feel guilty, but pretty soon it would be the normal option.
This is what is happening with music. Most people are taking what they want for free. Some are going to the other supermarket and paying, and some people still buy the CD or Vinyl, of course. However, more and more are taking the free option.

I want to stress again that it is illegal to do this. However, a law that is not enforced rapidly gets ignored. And the law against file sharing is simply impossible to enforce. The internet is worldwide, and each country has its own laws and very few people to police them, so thats a problem right away. And the technology for sharing files is constantly developing making it harder and harder to track who is doing what. Which is another gigantic problem. Simply put, the millions of pounds and dollars record labels have spent over the last few years to stop file sharing has achieved exactly nothing.

So what to do? I don’t have THE answer, only MY answer, and its worked out pretty well for me so far.

Firstly, I took a step back and accepted that file sharing is here to stay, and I am never going to be able to stop it. This fundamental change in the way music is used and shared by people has destroyed the old formula, and to cling to it is to cling to certain and inevitable failure. Part of the old formula was that the artist would tour to promote the sales of his music. The new rules reversed that. Now, the music promotes the artists live act. The profit in selling music is diminishing, but the live act cannot be copied and shared. The big pop acts already know this – its no coincidence that concert tickets have risen sky high. Or that suddenly EVERYONE is touring, even bands that broke up years ago. Its not the same amount of money as would have been made selling records, and its much less for Luna-C than for Madonna, but those days of earning huge amounts by selling records are done. Cry about it if you like, but thats the truth, and its not coming back.

Accept this change, and a way forward follows from that.

So the music is promotional now? Then why are you selling it? You don’t sell the advert, you sell the product. I am no longer selling Luna-C’s music, I am selling Luna-C. The music remains vitally important, but it functions differently. On recognizing that, I decided that I would give away my music for free. It scared the hell out of me to do it, but in truth, MP3 sales were weak. I think this is because people could get them for free, and chose to do so. I knew I would lose some money this way, but regarded it as an acceptable risk. I put my entire catalogue online for free, and almost as an afterthought, I added a donate button to my website. Because the truth is people DO want to pay the artist for the music, they just view payment as a choice, not an obligation. It shows appreciation. And they know the money is going directly to the artist, not all the other people that feed off of the artist.

The result was that in the first few months I received more money in donations that I had in two years of selling MP3s online, and I got more Dj work, and the traffic to the site is enormous.

It allows people to share my music for free if they wish. It was what they were doing anyway, but now they can do so without the guilt, and can pay me for it if they choose.
I am by no means the originator of this idea – Radiohead had already released an album where people could pay what they thought was a fair price, instead of charging directly for it. Nine Inch Nails had given away an entire album for free too.My point is the change in the industry is a good thing, you just have to view it from a different perspective. I think that in the future, you will see major artists release music for free. You will go to a website (which will no doubt force you to look at adverts before you can download the track) and the money will be made that way, and through touring. Others will choose the donation method. And other ways to earn without charging directly for the music will be invented to, I have no doubt of that. I am equally sure that trying to fight file sharing is a pointless waste of time. You might as well try to empty a lake with a spoon, or solve a math problem with a rubber band. The future is uncertain – it always has been. But it also has unlimited possibilities. All it takes is to look at it in a new light, to see what could be, rather than mourn what is past. The freedom my new formula has given me is wonderful – I no longer have any of the pressures I used to have, to make music of a certain type, by a certain date, and then the worry of how well it sells or if the distributer is going bankrupt or any of that crap. I certainly don’t worry about file sharing – that works in my favour. Instead I have a new enthusiasm for making music, and for pushing my own boundaries. Its a risky course, and I am the first to admit it could fail horribly. So far though, it has been the best decision I have made in a long while. And I believe it is the future.

But of course, I could be wrong.

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