The last few days have seen another battle in the war over filesharing and the future of the music industry. One one side is a group of recording artists including Lily Allen, Elton John and James Blunt, and on the other side a group of recording artists including members of Radiohead and Pink Floyd as well as Allen's rival in estuary pop Kate Nash and long-time activist Billy Bragg (Guardian). Trade body UK Music and business secretary Peter Mandelson want a three-strikes-and-you-lose-your-internet policy for people breaching copyright online (Guardian; The Register). The Featured Artists Collection (FAC), whose directors include Bragg, Nash, Nick Mason (Pink Floyd), and Ed O'Brien (Radiohead), believe this is too severe a punishment, although they oppose copyright violation.
Lily Allen set up a blog called It's Not Alright (which some critics reckoned was a pun on her first album Alright, Still) to promote UK Music's point of view, which received support from people such as rapper Tinchy Stryder to criticise the Featured Artists Coalition. "They do sell-out arena tours and have the biggest Ferrari collections in the world", Allen complained (alluding to Nick Mason's hobby) while Stryder lambasted the FAC: "These guys have probably never even been on a computer/iPod/mobile phone LET ALONE the internet LOL, so I don't know how they're so sure!!" (BBC) Bragg had already led a campaign to change MySpace's terms of service which he felt were ripping off artists (New York Times) but Allen and others were newer to this kind of thing, and she shut her blog down a few days later. She announced by Twitter that she was giving up the fight amid accusations she had illegally distributed copyright material online (Guardian; TechDirt). The next stage will be a summit between UK Music and the FAC to try and find a common position.
The FAC is an organisation of British "featured artists", those people whose names appear on record covers (as distinct from session players, etc). As well as high-profile members of Blur, Radiohead, Travis, and the Futureheads, its committee includes members of smaller bands like The Young Punx and the Fire Escapes and rapper Master Shortie. The organisation was founded with the belief that "music artists should control their destiny" (FAC website), a theme raised in the past by the likes of Prince and George Michael. They campaign for artists to have greater rights over record companies, including giving artists ownership of recordings and improving the contracts recording artists sign. They also recognise the disruptive nature of the internet, MP3s, filesharing, etc, on music revenues, and seem to be pursuing a policy of enlightened self-interest to maximise their income in the face of technological changes.
CD sales have been falling in recent years; album sales including downloads dropped 3.2% from 2007 to 2008 (Guardian). On the other hand, due to downloads singles sales are booming (Guardian) - though a 79p single download bring less profit than a £10 album.
There are many factors involved - music is now available for free (with advertisements) from Spotify and YouTube. There are far more radio stations than 20 years ago, although not always with a corresponding increase in variety. Illegal downloading may play a part in falling album sales, but some studies have found it has no effect or even increases sales (Washington Post; Industry Canada); they allow people to preview music which they may still purchase. Legal downloads mean that people can buy their favourite tracks rather than purchase the whole album as well as allowing them to try a couple of tracks before they buy the whole album. More power for consumers often means lower profits for business - although this isn't necessarily the case if consumer power gives them more confidence to buy.
Some musicians have tackled downloading by making CDs more desirable, with de luxe packaging, booklets, DVDs, MP3s, and other gimmicks. Both Pink Floyd and Radiohead have tried that in the past, but the most famous example is Josh Freeze who offered a range of deals for buyers of his album; for $50 they got a thank-you call, and other packages included miniature golf, having a song written about you, and hanging out with him for a week (only $20,000). This is probably not something every musician should do.
Recent events such as the takeover of EMI by private equity group Terra Firma (BBC) have placed the industry under financial pressures from investors at the same time as revenues are under threat from the internet. This is already leading to cost-cutting at EMI. It may be that we will see a lasting change in recording industry practices, which traditionally worked on a slightly bizarre model where new artists get large advances on signing but must pay for their own recording fees, recouped by the label retaining royalties (see Wikipedia; in contrast, film directors or actors are typically paid a fee plus residual payments and sometimes a share of profits, and do not have to pay the cost of film production, but benefit less if the film is an unexpected success). The FAC wants a better deal for artists; record labels would doubtless like to reduce spending; Lily Allen argues that record company investment is necessary for developing talents.
The result of all this is emotive language: while home taping may not have "killed" music in the 80s, downloaders are called "pirates" (ironically in view of the rise in real piracy on the ocean) and "thieves", although downloading is legally different to stealing. Even the term "illegal downloading" may be an overstatement: small-scale downloading or copying for private use is not a criminal offence; only if it is commercial or on a large enough scale to affect the owner of the copyright is it a criminal offence under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which applies in Scotland and England. Otherwise it is a civil matter, like other infringements of property rights, and the most the copier will face under English law is to surrender the material, pay compensation for quantifiable financial losses, and pay the costs of the suit.
How artists and record labels should be compensated in the event of declining music sales is a complex issue. In the past, musicians have had to deal with the introduction of recording and the early recording industry was unnerved by the growth of radio, both of which threatened business models and earnings; more recently we have seen singles become by the 1990s loss-making advertising for an album rather than sources of profit, and the internet offering a way of distributing music at almost no cost. One way out is for artists to not rely on major record labels but to self-distribute or partner with independent labels; this is probably more viable if you are already famous or willing to spend years building a fanbase. The internet circumvents the necessity for shops and distributing physical objects; you can sell worldwide with minimal overheads - other than the cost of recording the music in the first place.
Only a small fraction of artists actually make a living from record sales, and the changes proposed by Lily Allen will not affect that. Most musicians must rely multiple sources of income. Ticket sales are reckoned a panacea by some, but not all artists choose to perform or are able to, due e.g. to their reliance on studio techniques or large numbers of musicians, or family commitments, and smaller bands may make little money. Other sources of income are fees for radio plays, songwriting royalties, revenue from services such as Spotify which provide small fees for each play of a track, and licencing music to advertising and films. Many musicians will object to advertising (even if they are asked) and other methods bring in small sums of money: while a musician may get 10-15% of a 79p iTunes download (Guardian), comparable to the percentage for a CD royalty, payments from a Spotify are tiny.
Some people have questioned Spotify's business plan: in August 2009 with half a million British users it had UK "advertising income of £82,000 and just 17,000 UK users signing up to pay £120 a year for Spotify Premium" (The Guardian); The Register suggested in June that it receives income of 14p per user per month. Nobody wants to pay for the premium service, and the advertising that non-premium users hear brings in negligible income (advertisers are limited to a few record labels - who as they part-own Spotify may get cheap rates - and some public-sector bodies).
In the past a number of governments imposed a tax on blank tapes to pay recording artists and record labels for revenue allegedly lost due to home taping. In the digital age there have been similar plans suggested. These range from a tax on MP3 players or the internet, to the currently popular ideas of licencing file-sharing so that for a monthly payment people can share all files - this mirrors the current licences for public performance of music. ISP PlayLouder offered this facility without a large takeup; more recently Virgin Media has reportedly considered and rejected it (Guardian).
Also open to musicians are the traditional methods of income for practitioners of other arts: teaching, working second jobs, relying on parental or spousal wealth, etc. In some art forms such as poetry and literary fiction there is little money to make; most well-known poets are simultaneously employed as academics, many young artists teach, while many authors and playwrights make ends meet with reviewing, journalism, teaching creative writing, and other sources of income. Such secondary jobs have advantages in keeping the artist in contact with the world, but can pose a significant drain on time and energy, and for musicians would interfere with touring.
Encouraging people to buy music is another tactic to increase sales. In the 1980s the music industry claimed "home taping is killing music". Recently the motion picture industry has tried various advertising strategies to encourage people into cinemas and away from pirated and illegally downloaded movies. These advertisements ranged from the "Knock-off Nigel" theme in which buyers of pirated movies are ridiculed as skinflints and meanies, to a series based on blockbusters like The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe and Fantastic Four which compared the experience of cinema-going with big screens and booming sound systems to the experience of watching bad-quality pirate movies, to the most recent series in which celebrities such as actor Martin Freeman thank audiences for supporting the British Film Industry.
Billy Bragg has suggested that the music industry wants ISPs to take action against infringers rather than pursuing them through court (which is the remedy mandated under existing copyright law) because the music industry does not want to seem the bad guys - when the RIAA in the USA started pursuing filesharers through the courts there was a massive reaction, much of it negative. The British film industry has been trying to show itself in a good light. The record industry may have a similar goal, but seems to have no idea about PR.
Already many people in cult or up-and-coming bands have to work to support their music. It's not as bad as in poetry where (except for the independently-wealthy Frederick Seidel who writes verse about expensive motorcycles - much as many wealthy rock stars do) nobody is rich, or in classical music where state funding and corporate sponsorship are the norm. Whether we want state funding of pop music is another question (arguably Britain had it in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to generous unemployment benefits and subsidised student unions).
Most people enjoy music, and most people seem willing to pay for it in some way or another, whether by CD purchase, download, live, listening to commercial radio, some other even more esoteric delivery mechanism, or just by spending hours hunting for illegal downloads. While the FAC are seriously asking how recording artists can maximise their incomes, the one question nobody seems to be asking is what method is best for the consumer.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment