I am with Chris McConnell. A lot of free content arguments are against some of the most fundamental principles of free market economy, namely voluntary transaction and division of labor.

When the creators made a song non-free, you may criticize they are stupid or evil (or compare them with the visionaries who distribute songs for free) but should pay to have his/her song. When your girlfriend says ‘I don’t want to have sex until we get married’, you may complain that she is old-fashioned or leave her but don’t force sex. The free society is built upon voluntary transaction.

If musicians voluntarily seek help from others, whether they are large labels or an individual song writer, that’s called division of labor, another reason why free market society became much more affluent. You are free to call labels evil, but if they had no value the musicians would have bypassed them to begin with. I think fairer description of lables is they have an outdated business model. The musicians may not need partners as much as before, or need new kinds of them, but it is true that there are more than just performing music in music creation.

Right now my blog seems devoted almost to countering freeconomics arguments, but most relevant for this one may be:
- http://slowblogger.com/2008/02.....s-not.html (and the follow-up posts)
- http://slowblogger.com/2008/03.....ll-in.html

They sell online music and music players for free

Arrington’s support for DRM protected music makes no sense.

We,as constituent parts of the music industry, seldom agree but when we do as on the payment for format shifting then music consumers should at least pay some attention to our views and not misrepresent them.
There is already an “I-Pod” tax in 25 European countries. The proceeds are distributed in 25 different ways - some are good, some are less so but they should all be transparent and fair. And it would be better if they were the same. And they should reward the creators in all parts of the chain. We are totally aware that those parts of the chain are rapidly changing.
We are proposing a license so that the people whose creativity effectively sells music carriers are rewarded in some way. The latter is surely not an issue?
The radicals who proclaim that the music industry have been slow to embrace the net are often right but we are now in a situation where all music is free and yet people who manufacture devices to facilitate that are making billions of dollars from our creativity. Again is that fair?
Sure there is some promotional value from having total distribution of free music BUT what about the non performing artists. Do they just sit in pernury and starve?
Should Kate Bush just make one copy of her album that has taken her 7 years to make, post it on the net and watch everyone share it? Who pays the session players? And the songwriters?
When you sit on a train or a bus and pick up a discarded newspaper that was either paid for or a free sheet funded by advertising do you enjoy reading it? Doesn’t it have a value? Doesn’t music obtained for free have a value as well?
In many ways the whole format shifting debate is an anachronism. It is technically illegal to format shift but that has never been enforced by a copyright owner. All this does is give some of the value reflected in an I-Pod full up with shifted music back to the creators.
In the immortal words of Peter Gabriel - “the same process that stops me earning another dollar from Sledgehammer is the process that stops a starving musician in Mali making a living”. This is far from being about the RIAA and fat cats.
Jon Webster CEO MMF representing artists and their managers.

This is a rather cute idea, but if I did that for the last album I bought that I really liked - say, Nightwish’s ‘Dark Passion Play’ - there’s no question that although I’d much rather see the lead guitarist and main songwriter get more than the record company would give him, I’d also have to work out how much to give the other band members - and the orchestra they hired - and the choir - and the producers who turn what could have been a hideous cacophony into the beautiful album that actually got made.

Screw it, I’ll pay my £10 and let the record company sort out the divvying (according to whatever contracts the various artists signed of their own free will). Which is kind of one of their genuine raison d’etres.

Paying for a CD, ripping it, and uploading the songs to a P2P site is EXACTLY the same as cutting and pasting every TechCrunch blog post into my own blog. I never said I’d claim authorship on a new blog–I’d just simply steal the content. This act would take Michael’s ownership rights and revenue streams away the guy who earned it.

There is simply no defense for stealing music. I understand it happens… a lot. I also understand the music industry has been glacially slow to adopt change. Even if I accept the record labels are evil and deserve to be put out of business, it still doesn’t justify the theft of IP.

As for corporate espionage, I think you’re making my point. I wasn’t talking about taking a mere portion of someone’s overall product, but the entire thing! Automakers certainly need to be on the lookout for corporate espionage resulting in lost trade secrets, but has there ever been a case of an entire car design being stolen and re-purposed, resulting in a loss of sales to the rightful owner of the design? The physical production of goods provides a barrier to entry. Admittedly, China isn’t helping with their mass production of pirated CDs and DVDs, but the point is still that it takes an awful lot to completely steal a physical product and offer it as your own.

But everyone on the Internet can steal music. I’ve read all 49 comments, and I’ve not seen a single post that provides a sound business model for music distribution. As I said, even if we eliminated record labels tomorrow, musicians will still require middlemen to finance, sell, distribute, and promote their music.

Advertising has never proven to be a financially viable revenue model to permit for access to free downloadable music. A band can certainly offer tracks or entire CDs for free to promote themselves, but there isn’t any way to turn free music into a profitable model for musicians. And if Internet users continue to share music as they have, it really won’t matter what musician’s charge or how they generate money–it’ll still not be sufficient.

I believe that if we agree composers, musicians, producers, studio techs, and others deserve to be paid (like you and I are paid by our employers), it’s going to take more than us shaking our fists at record labels and stealing IP to make a real change. We’re going to need to develop a competitive model that prevents or otherwise discourages the kind of widespread theft that is continuing to threaten the rewards for artists.

I didn’t bring up infringement (that’s the word you were looking for when you used “theft”), but for entertainment value, I’ll humor you.

Saying car manufacturers don’t struggle with IP “on the Internet” doesn’t make sense. Of course they do. Industrial espionage is easier than ever in the electronic age.

Your question about bloggers is even better: Find a new argument. It only works when you add an irrelevant dimension by making the statement: “If someone simply cut and paste every single blog post into their own blog…” which isn’t the case with songs. No one copies a song, puts it on their site, and claims it’s their song, and that’s not what the RIAAs of the world are complaining about. You’ve taken distribution and changed it into claiming authorship. Not the same.

Oh, and hey Mister Pessimist Pants, stop telling other people what will or won’t work. Music has always been the tool of the marketer; I fail to see how the Internet changes that inherent fact. Adapt or die.

The Internet is an exceptionally efficient distribution system, and social networks provide far more cost effective publicity and promotion than old style record label publicity departments. Most artists don’t receive any meaningful compensation from their retail recordings anyway - the primary benefit is the promotional effect on ticket sales to live performances.

The Internet also offers a solution to compensating artists without requiring the legacy record labels as abusive gatekeepers. A modified form of dutch auction allows artists to be compensated directly by consumers at the time they finish creating it - without requiring an extended copyright monoply period. The auction purchases the release of certain rights to the public domain. Bidders get advanced possession and enhanced value copies of the auctioned recorded performance - and can then recoup their bid cost by selling copies of their copy - which in turn seeds the public domain distribution of their recording, transforming what is now the problem of music piracy into a valuable low cost marketing and promotion. This also allows creators to retain greater long term rights to their creations than is typical with the “all rights belong to the record label” contracts that the labels have been able to use their control of the market to demand from creators.

There is a business model where mass-distribution is rewarded.

But first consumers must be assigned the appropriate rights of ownership in order to rectify the trade imbalance.

Who owns your citizen ID?

You think you do?

Hmm…

Your idea won’t work. You assume sites can make enough money off of advertising to be able to give away music and pay a publisher/artist/composer/whatever. The pennies site operators make off of ad impressions isn’t enough to compensate the site operator and the p/a/c/w. Plus, if people continue to repost songs to P2P sites as they’re doing today, the revenue is lost just as it is today.

BTW, it isn’t ironic at all that the “creative” community struggles with the Internet while others do not. Creative work is so much easier to steal!

Why would someone who manufactures cars struggle with IP theft on the Internet? Even if someone stole an auto style, the thief still needs the production means to produce a physical product. But for movie makers and musicians, every person on the Internet has the means to steal and distribute their product (and many do).

Whenever bloggers complain about record labels or the RIAA (neither of whom I think are very smart), I always ask a simple question: If someone simply cut and paste every single blog post into their own blog and earned money from advertising, would you be fine with it? Or, what every bit of your content was taken and posted somewhere without the advertising, so that people could get your wisdom and insights without all the ads around it?

Of course, no blogger wants their content stolen in this manner, but for some reason when it comes to music, our hatred of record labels causes us to feel that this sort of IP theft is just fine.

Why was the Civil War fought?

The winners wanted to turn the economic unit known as a plantation into the economic unit known as an employee. It is far more efficient to make your workers buy their own food, clothing and home. Thus the transition from enslavement to employment. Dont let the human rights issue confuse you.

So now we have this global marketplace that is distributable to your hands, to your homes, to your person… wherever you might be. You are no longer bound by geographical considerations. So who owns your connection to the marketplace?

What rights of ownership do service provides have on a globally distributed digital network?

What rights of ownership does a baby have at the moment of birth?

Who or what owns my identity, and more importantly, who or what gets to profit from the use of my identity in all market transactions?

The irony of the “music problem” is that musicians have always wanted what consumers of music now want. To be valued in the transaction. Musicians and fans of music are 50-50 partners in every scenario where the value of music is translatable. Its just that the Labels have skewed the formula so much that no intelligent conversation has been able to take place between these two user groups. Hek, Napster had a chance of revolutionizing global commerce… until the lawyer stepped in to run the company into the ground.

You want to fight for something Joe musician…? Fight for your rights to own your own identity in the marketplace from the moment of your birth. Fight to make every entity that wants to service your identity fight for the right to “service” your identity as a privately owned commodity.

Until then… welcome to the world wide welfare system.

Your mere participation in the socio-economic system has value. You want to create change? Stop buying tools and files that see you as a consumer only. Demand to be regarded as the owner of your marketplace. Thats when the transactional formula will begin to work as it should.

And not one moment before.

I find it ironic that anyone can figure out how to make money using the internet except the “creative” community.

“Just send money directly to the artist instead” is simply ridiculous. It sounds good, but no one does it, amd even if we did, this act would not direct money to other people in the music food chain who contribute to a record.

I get tired of the constant complaining and moaning from people who want to support the theft of IP. On this blog, you can sell advertising and sponsorship to support your efforts; are you suggesting songs be interrupted for advertising? (That would, in fact, be one way of making sure the artists is compensated, even if the CD is ripped and offered for free online.) Or do you have any ideas how to make music work in a world where people can buy one CD and distribute the music for free to hundred (thousands, millions) of others?

Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want approach was interesting but completely unviable for the entire industry.

I’m not suggesting record companies are good or even a viable business model moving forward, but NO ONE ever suggests a music distribution model that is reasonable. We talk about eliminating the middle men and going direct from musician to listener, but there’s ALWAYS a middle men unless musicians are going to learn web development, ecommerce programming, and the like. And they’d also have to become accountants and financiers, raising capital to record albums, pay for studio and production time on their own dime, with the hope of earning money back from direct sales.

But here’s the thing that gets lost whenever I read people suggesting a world without record label middlemen: even if we eliminated the middle men and musicians started selling music directly to consumers, that still wouldn’t stop the problems of piracy! If people are going to share music freely, it won’t matter whether the music was initially stolen from a record company or a musician–the result is still the same: A decrease in the flow of cash to composers, performers, studio techs, producers, studios, instrument makers, and others who are required to produce the music that is valued (and stolen.)

Someone please suggest a viable alternative that considers how artists and those who support artists can be compensated when their intellectual property is being stolen, and I’m all ears.

Recently I went to a Sons and Daughters show here in Cologne. I had downloaded the CD already, and it’s a great new album (http://www.sonsanddaughtersloveyou.com), but wanted to pay them for it. Thankfully after the show some of them were selling CDs, I gave the guitarist 15 Euro and told him I’d downloaded the album. He was delighted.

I’d like to see more artists add Paypal links to their webpages, or even allow for donations at the show (”already downloaded the music? how about giving us a few bucks for it… we accept cash and CC…”)

The music labels are NOT there to “help” musicians earn a living. They exist for the purpose of commercializing a product and marketing it to the masses.

As a web programmer, I am constantly having to market myself, network, find clients, and so on. You are suggesting that musicians shouldn’t have to do that. But where does that end? What about film writers? Directors? Graphic Designers?

If you can’t deal with the business, then you can’t make a living. That’s the way it is in other industries, why should music be any different?

And before you accuse me of having an outside view, let me add that I have been a musician for over 35 years. I know the industry - and I can say from experience that it takes more than just talent to get to the top. It also takes -gasp- BUSINESS acumen.

What Mike is suggesting is a change in the way musicians market themselves. Today, they have to market themselves to the labels, so they can get a recording contract, so the labels can sell them to the public. What’s wrong with eliminating the middleman and having the musician market directly to the public? That way, they get to keep more of what they earn. And they’re still doing what they’ve always had to do - marketing themselves. But now it’s directly to the consumer. Frankly, it gives the little guy a better chance to make it, with the labels out of the picture. I, for one, welcome the change.

I’m currently researching for a book designed to help indie-artists navigate this transition and go forward. What models will exist and flourish in the future is debatable, I believe that artists (with or without managers) should really concentrate on building a brand grass roots style and going direct to customers.

Creative cost-effective marketing, creating a must-see live show, a focus on merchandising, aggressively pursuing licensing opportunities, working with appropriate corporate sponsors (e.g A hippie artist co-branded with an electric or hybrid car may work great for both) are ways artists can create income around their music.

Artists were forced into being more entrepreneurial even before Napster. Since recording and marketing costs were disgustingly huge, artists had to sell several million units to see any money back (directly from recorded music) from major labels.

It can be argued that labels created the awareness and demand that allowed artists to make money on merch and through the live show (thus the 360 deal we see now).

The internet has leveled the playing field, created much more competition for people’s attention, but I still believe great music will find a way. Great and business savvy artists will find a way to make a prosperous career.

That was long-winded. Hopefully it makes sense.

Cheers,

Hoover

http://NewRockstarPhilosophy.com

Regardless of if you think stealing the music is wrong, is it acceptable to punish all of your customers for a handful (or in this case a really big handful) of violations? When did businesses start operating like the government?