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HOMEOFMUSIC, DIGITAL ETHICS, AND THE FUTURE OF MUSIC.
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Hello! Firstly, let me thank you for checking out this page. It is the first draft of what is essentially a mission statement for Homeofmusic. Some of it discusses issues that don't directly have anything to do with the site, but it's all important and relevant to understanding the bigger picture and what role Homeofmusic has within the entire Digital Music Debate.
I ask that you please take notes on anything you don't understand, or anything you feel strongly for or even against. Write it down while you read or you'll forget ... TRUST ME ... lol. When you're done, please share your views and comments in the forum, as well as with other people you know. I definitely encourage and would appreciate it if you sent this link to any of you friends who you think would be interested in this topic.
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HOMEOFMUSIC
MISSION
STATEMENT
2004Jan10
(FIRST DRAFT)
HOMEOFMUSIC,
DIGITAL ETHICS,
AND THE FUTURE
OF MUSIC
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HOMEOFMUSIC, DIGITAL ETHICS,
AND THE FUTURE OF MUSIC.
(Tentative title)
0- Introduction
1- Future of Music and Digital Information
2- How Homeofmusic Fits Into The Big Picture
2.1- About the Music
2.2- About the Community
2.3- About Communication
2.4- About Digital Ethics
3- How You Can Help
3.1- Help in the Fight For Our Digital Rights
3.2- Help The Artists and The Music
3.3- Help The Homeofmusic Community
0- Introduction:
Hello, my name is DJ RRebel. With a significant amount of help from volunteers, I run and operate an on-line community and website called homeofmusic.com, one of the largest of many DJ and Club Music (also known as House and Trance and Electronica) sites and communities on the Internet devoted to DJs and music fans. The purpose of this text is to help make people understand the many reasons as to why this site and community, as well as the many other similar communities out there, are both needed and important, and how they fit into the big picture of the so called mp3 or digital music debate.
The main goals of homeofmusic.com, is to fight for and bring awareness to our digital rights, to help promote good music, and to create a strong community and bring people together from around the world !!!
The following text is divided up into three parts. The first part is devoted to the current problems in the music industry and the many other factors that are influencing the future of music. The second part is more specific to the Homeofmusic site and community itself, and how it fits into the big picture. The third section details some of the many things you can do yourself to help ensure a better future for music.
That was the short and sweet version, what follows, is the ever important details, which I hope will give each and everyone of you a new appreciation to Homeofmusic as a community and help you understand where it fits in the big picture of great digital ethics debate. A lot of it may seem very passionate and over dramatized, and I may repeat a couple of important points, but it's all in the hopes of educating people and inspiring people (including YOU) to start participating and taking a more active role in the future.
Even if you don't agree with our methods, ideals or theories, I do ask that before you jump to any conclusions, that you at least read this text with an open mind. It definitely does not represent what everyone thinks, but I do think most people in the great overall digital music community does hold many if not most of the thoughts expressed here to heart, it's just that most people haven't really had the means to express themselves on a scale that they felt would make any difference.
Different parts of this text will apply to some people and not to others. Some will agree with parts and not other parts. Many of these thoughts don't even really apply to Homeofmusic itself, but I discuss them anyways as they are important. Even though we may not all see the exact same ideals for the future, it's important that we all understand the need to compromise and find unified goals and objectives so that we can see things move in the right direction, even if slowly, rather than seeing no change at all because we've wasted all our time fighting each other over the small details.
I don't want to impose my ideals on everyone, even I'll admit that all my ideas aren't perfect, and even though I've been in the middle of this debate for years and have done a significant amount of research and have had a lot of first hand experience, I don't even think I have enough information to create a perfect solution. So although I don't claim to have the perfect solution, over the years, I've been able to collect enough information to get a significant grasp of the overall big picture. But the actual reason for this text, is not to convert you all to think exactly as I do on the issues, but simply to get people thinking, to get people educated on what is going on, and hopefully push people from just reading and watching others making things happen, to actually getting involved themselves, and instead of complaining about the way things are, actually doing something however small towards making things better.
I have no problems debating my ideas, and fully respect people who are against what I stand for, whatever the subject of debate ... I respect them, so long as they have taken the time to educate themselves on the subject and shown the respect to have at least tried to understand my point of view before condoning it. Too often people don't take their time to understand what it is they are up against before attacking it ... sometimes instead of fighting, both sides could probably work together to find a third alternative, that even if not perfect, would be far better than current situation, or either of the two alternatives fought for by each side.
I've been drafting and making notes for this 'Mission Statement', or 'Digital Rights Manifesto' ever since I started the site back in 1999. I'll be the first to admit that when I started the site, I didn't fully understand the big picture, I just loved club music, and loved sharing it with others while getting to meet new friends from all over the world. It's taken almost 5 years for me to really get a good grasp of the overall significance of a site like Homeofmusic and the many others all over the Internet. This text is as much for people on my side of the Great Digital Rights Debate as those opposed to my views, in hopes that it will help us all get closer to fair and just compromises and solutions.
Anyhow, enough with the dramatic preamble ... lol ... let's get to the heart of the matter:
1- The Future of Music and Digital Information
There are three major issues that are currently heavily affecting and influencing the music industry and music itself.
The first issue, is the plain and simple overpricing currently found in the music industry as a whole. Instead of paying for music, we find most of the money from our musical purchases going to fund the marketing campaigns of a few elite artists. Campaigns which have very little to do with music, and more to do with making the rich media and content owners even richer than they already are. It's not all bad, but it's far from good, and significant changes are inevitable.
The second issue, is the complexity of current and proposed laws on copyright, patents and intellectual property, as well as the power struggle between the following four groups: [1] the powerful media giants (including big music labels), [2] the politicians and legal system, [3] the artists and [4] the end consumer (and music fans). The relationships between these four groups are so complex with such vast implications and both obvious and hidden motives, that it's impossible to discuss and dissect them all. But I do hope to bring to light some of the more important and relevant points in this text. It is very important that we understand the relationships between all groups, as compromises will be needed from all four sides if we are to succeed in finding workable compromises.
The third and final main issue, is wide range of issues (both good possibilities and potential problems) that technology is presenting to humanity that we must all address and deal with in a careful and responsible manner. Although not even obvious to most, these changes delve deeply into our social beliefs and personal values, and are giving us options never possible in the past. They are vastly deeper, more far reaching and significant than simply music itself, but music is extremely important, because it is one of the first significant older institutions that technology has changed to the extent where we can no longer make comparisons with the past, things have changed too much, we shouldn't completely forget the past, but we now need to look ahead and make decisions that will successfully apply to the future.
These three issues are all extremely complex, but they also have converged and are now intrinsically linked. They heavily affect and influence each other. At the start, I wanted to have this section divided into separate meaningful sub-sections, but as I wrote more and more of it, the more the lines of separation between the issues faded, which has lead to this entire section being grouped together without separating the issues in any significant way.
Anyhow, let's at least start with the first issue. Large music labels have quietly amassed monstrous amounts power over the last few decades. They have slowly been charging us more and more over inflated prices and at the same time mobilizing and forming special interest groups like the RIAA. They have grown massive, but very little of that significant growth can be attributed to the actual music. We seem to now be at a crossroads, where the control of media controlled power and the freedoms of technology are set to collide. But in actual fact, the collision has already begun, with the result in the big labels slowly starting to become less powerful, on their long journey ahead in becoming even more and more obsolete, for the very simple and basic reason that they rely significantly more on good marketing and hardly at all on good music. The only thing they really do with substantial distinction over smaller labels and independent artists is market music which is extremely different from making music.
These media giants have succeeded and grown to such superpowers due to the unfortunate fact, that over the last several decades, very little of the success the superstar artists has to do with quality of their music itself as compared to the effects powerful marketing campaigns done by the Big 5 music labels for their artists. So in effect, rather than being the superpowers of the music industry as they would like us to believe, they are in fact superpowers of the marketing industry.
The Big 5 have marketing 'systems' so deeply entrenched, that it has become accepted as second nature when it shouldn't be acceptable. Radio stations play songs marked by big record companies as a hit because it would mean less cooperation and marketing support from these massive powerhouses if they don't. TV and Radio report all their press releases because they buy commercial time and are good clients. Music stores sell what they are given, because it's too easy not to do any real research and marketing of their own. It's cheaper and more cost-efficient to just ride the wind of what the labels have done in terms of marketing, and then just do the absolute minimum themselves more to distinguish themselves from other stores rather than promote any specific non-mainstream product. The relationships between the labels and the rest of the media outlets from TV to radio to record stores are infinitely more complex than what I've described here. It's not all bad, and I doubt anyone involved actually has any real evil motives. Most of it is simply due to the fact it's easier to market an artist's image than musical notes. We are a society that needs acceptance, and the marketing strategies of the big labels are helping us to be cool if we associate ourselves with artists who are cool. It's all part of a vicious circle where nobody and everybody is to blame at the same time.
These marketing strategies are not the most unethical thing in the world, as some will say it's just capitalism at an extreme. But it is a problem in that these powerhouse marketing strategies, along with special interest laws and regulation pushed through by the power and money of the Big 5, the RIAA and similar institutions combine for an end result that does not protect music and the artists, but simply ends up protecting profits. The effects of all this are so big and powerful that until now they overwhelmed and totally overpowered what should be the natural order of supply and demand of music.
On a side note, there is also the social cost of exposing our youth to shock-value marketing techniques used by the bigger labels and stars. They send messages targeted through top 40 music and the marketing of such music are just campaigns aimed at today’s youth. The messages of confrontation, rebellion and sex far overshadow the messages of understanding, responsibility and the simple love of the music itself. Gradually over time, our ethical standards are dropping, and although the ethics of marketing is a totally different subject, it's something to think about. When the big labels are starting to use these techniques as standard practices, then it shows beyond a doubt that they care more about profit than the music or even being responsible corporations.
Although it's very important to note that we are just as much to blame as the record labels. By watching and reading all the gossip shows and magazines, we only further encourage these sorts of marketing tactics. These people are not gods, they are people like you and me. Some are good, and some are bad. We should respect them for the music they make, and not necessarily for the people they are, unless they've actually gone out of their way to do things to positively affect society. Such as we should admire Bono (of U2) the musician and artist for his music, this does not make him a role model. Separately, however, he should be a role model as a person because of the massive amounts of work he does for the poor and the fight against aids. Unless musical artists strongly promote positive messages in their songs, we need to be very careful to let them gain the status of hero or role-model. Yet the big labels continue marketing practices that promote many undeserving artists as heroes to today’s youth.
It's true that some stars (artists and actors) can be heroes. But media marketing tends to concentrate our attention on the superficial and shocking stories. We as a society are letting this happen. For example, when most people are asked what they think of Angelina Jolie, most will say that they think she is very pretty. When instead, a more relevant answer to who she actually is and how she should be thought about, is that she's heavily involved with the United Nations in trying to help children and involved in the fight against landmines, or one could also comment on her actual skills as an actress. Using her as an example demonstrates how we as a society hold our values. It's a dangerous prospect in finding most of the modern world more interested in gossip about Michael Jackson than the situation in the Middle East.
It totally disgusts me recently, to see people marching on the streets in defense of Michael Jackson. Why are people vigorously defending him? And at the same time, why are people vigorously saying he's guilty? Both sides are equally wrong in their judgment. The facts and evidence of his case have not even been made public yet, so why are people rushing to make judgment? This is a dangerous trend that is growing more because we are more interested in shocking stories and gossip than we are on the real news and hard facts. The music industry is only one of many to harness and exploit this fact. It's time we the people start to judge music and artists on the quality of the music itself.
Some might argue that it is no longer about the music, and that it is turned into general entertainment, and that prices have been over inflated to help pay for this sort of entertainment. Yes, some of it can be fun in moderation, although it has passed far beyond that point, we need to be weary of the effect it has on our youth, but more importantly and back to the topic at hand, it shouldn't be used as justification for increasing the price of the actual music.
The problem, is that it's dug so deep in every aspect of music marketing and distribution, that it's virtually impossible for any relatively small group (who truly have the music and the artists in mind) to overcome. It would mean facing and beating a multi-billion dollar industry, as well as many deeply entrenched politicians who have no clue how the music industry actually works who get a lot of money for keeping things the way they are or even making things worse. The only hope for it to end, is the inevitable total collapse of the entire system, which, until recently, seemed like an impossibility. But as you will soon realize by reading this text to the end, in fact, we are all part of this eventual downfall to this unnatural status quo found in the music industry, and whether you know it or not, through technology and the internet, we are all a part of the eventual liberation and rebirth of the music industry.
Recently, there's been talk of proposed mergers between some of what is known as 'the big five' music labels of the world (Universal, Sony, Bertelsmann, EMI and Warner combine for about a 75% market share), I couldn't believe it when I heard about these mergers, as they represent a huge short term danger to the end consumer like you and me. But it is one of their many steps of desperation on the way to the long term truth of the matter ... that it is only a matter of time before they are obsolete in their current form. So this is actually the natural progression from the "Big Five" ... to the "Big Three" ... and then eventually to the "BIG ZERO" !!!
This collapse will mean an eventual victory for end of the line music consumers like you and me as well as for the real artists at the front end who bring us the music. It will be a big squeeze brought about by the power of the Internet on many fronts bringing the artists closer to their potential audiences than ever before. The only big losers, will be the big labels who care more about profit than the music, and of course, some of the artists who rely more on the marketing of the big labels than their own good music creating skills (who can blame them at this point ... it's just a sad fact of life .. we are almost as much to blame for letting it get to the point it's at today).
It may still be a long ways off yet, but it is coming. The internet is still extremely young, but the greatest power of the internet, ironically, is that it deregulates power ... as the internet grows, there will be more and more artists that totally skip the labels because they will promote themselves through the internet ... artists will finally get exposure if they are actually good ... not as it is now, where artists get famous if they fit the right profile and package that the Big 5 like to feed to their world of marketing that concentrates very little on the actual quality of the music.
It's not to say that a lot of the stuff the Big 5 present isn't good ... in fact, most of it probably is ... but it isn't natural ... people are force feed stuff through the top 40 radio waves until they subliminally start to like what is being fed to them. Kids are influenced heavily into thinking certain singers or groups are cool by the media, who in turn are heavily influenced by the big 5. And why should the media do anything else, it's a perfect system, the media feeds gossip to the masses, which in turn makes big label artists more popular, which in turn sells more TV commercials or magazine ads because people want more and more gossip. Again, we are equally to blame for all this as the media, for they wouldn't run such idiotic gossip shows or magazines if people didn't read or watch them.
I'm not saying any type of music is better than any other (well not officially ... lol), but I think it's about time we let music be truly free and evolve in a much freer manner than it has over the last several decades where it has been rigidly shaped by a few rather than lightly influenced by the masses.
For the short term, these proposed mega-mergers will mean more control for even fewer people ... which is VERY bad, which is why I hope they don't pass regulatory approval in the various jurisdictions ... but the good news from this, is that they are starting to feel the pressure of the internet working against them, and they are finally starting to get a bit desperate.
They made a huge mistake at the dawn of the internet, when they chose to fight against technology rather than work with technology. That was the pivotal point where their fate rested. They made the wrong choice, and now it's virtually too little too late so to speak.
If they had played their cards right, people would have gotten used to paying for tunes at the vastly overpriced rate of $1 per tune. But they chose to be greedy, and the consequences, is that the value of music has declined ... it's not to say music has gotten any worse ... in fact, in the long term it will get much better because there will be many many times more people entering the music business, it's just that the ones who will be successful, are the ones willing to take a fairer share of the pie. Those seeking to be too greedy will simply be undercut by those who are willing to do the same sort of thing for cheaper. That is the true nature of deregulation and a free market ... the true nature of the internet. One of the biggest problems for the labels in all of this, is that we are currently paying more for marketing than for the music itself. This is a fact most people have been unaware of, but the Internet is beginning to bring out the reality and truth of the matter by showing that there are countless artists willing to share good quality music for free. Admittedly not all of it is good, and currently, even I'd agree that in commercial music, proportionately speaking, the music brought out by the big 5 is more good than bad when compared to internet only based artists. However, if you see things this way, you have totally missed the point of the internet. The point of all this, is that there is a significant amount of quantity emerging from the internet, and even as a percentage, because of funding, the big labels produce more quality tunes for now, in the days, months and years ahead, the lead of overall quality tunes will vanish and be inverted at ever increasing rate as more and more of these new internet artists become successful through touring, giving live shows and getting sponsorship without the help of the big labels, the big labels will lose more and more of their leverage on current artists who until now could only make it big with their help.
We are far from a fair and ideal balance point now ... but it is only a matter of time before the big labels will be as obsolete as a 1 meg hard drive ... be it 3 years, 7 years or even 15 years ... it WILL happen. The only thing that can stand in the way is if politicians are influenced by the "donations" of the big powerful players in this game, and if they then pass laws that keep the power in the hands of the few who have always had it.
In reality, this part of the problem is more an outcome of the basic problem in politics that has been going on for ages longer than the corruption in the music industry. Special interest groups (like the RIAA) are more motivated by things that directly affect them, so even if they represent a small minority, their interests get attended to because they have mobilized and gotten funding to make donations to political leaders who only hear their case. The opposite side of an issue, even if usually best for the majority, doesn't affect people on that side enough, so they don't mobilize or get organized enough, and therefore have no significant voice for politicians to hear their point of view.
Think about it ... all of you may be unhappy with many of the laws you see out there ... maybe they have some justification in them, but chances are you are not 100% happy with them because they go too far or not far enough. But how many of you have gotten people together to rally against certain things ... how many of you have written your members of parliament ... the answer is very few or even none ... and the sad thing is ... that even if you did ... it would take an incredibly huge number of you to even come close to offsetting the influence of special interest groups like the RIAA and similar groups.
So on the other side, even if music deregulation is actually in the better interest of the vast VAST majority of people, it isn't the major concern of ordinary people like you and me, since people aren't angry enough about the current situation to actually do anything significant or start an organized resistance ... so we just let whatever happens happen, because the change doesn't affect us enough to actually get up and take action in any significant way. But if any certain law, government or institution is left unchecked and unopposed for too long, chances increase that we end up with laws and situations put in place that only serve to benefit a few, and probably at the expense of the many. When in effect, the best solution would be some sort of compromise, but not at the extreme proposed by only one powerful side.
In this case of digital ethics and the mp3 debate, the compromise should be set much closer to the liberated point of view, because the powerful media influences have pushed and manipulated the status quo for so long, that the fair balance point has past well beyond the middle ground. At the end of the day though, is the hope that politicians see past everything and make fair and just laws and decisions ... but more and more we see politicians that vote and make decisions based on if it will get them re-elected or get them a lot of donation, rather than make a decision that they feel is the best solution for all.
So what does the future hold? Being in the Electronica genre of Club Music (House and Trance) is an absolute bizarre yet significantly important situation. Because on a relative scale to 'commercial' music, its market share is rather insignificant, and a very limited number of artists can even make a living simply out of music distribution alone. It’s a genre that exists largely (but not entirely and not enough) outside the influence of the Big 5. Mainly because there simply isn't enough profit in it for them to care at this point. So looking at the Electronica industry at as a whole can give us a bit of an idea of some of the possibilities of a world without money hungry companies influencing our music.
In the years of running this site, back in the days when music was available directly as downloads from the pages here, I've only ONCE received a request to remove a track. The irony is, that it wasn't even by the artist him/herself ... it was a track of one of the bigger club music artists that actually had a record out on a BMG label. The contact that I got, was by a BMG executive (unofficially) asking me kindly if I could please remove a particular song because it wasn't going to be released for another 2 weeks in some places. He continued on to say I was doing a good job, and that I should feel free to put it back on the site once it was released. So even back in 1999, a Big 5 music executive saw the value in free music distribution towards marketing a smaller artist (the artist is big in the club music scene, but of course very small in the overall music market, and thereby a small artist for BMG).
As a counter point to that, I have received dozens of e-mails from actual artists ... mostly smaller ones in terms of popularity, but also from the occasional big name, actually thanking me for the hard work and in helping to promote them and their music. I even also get several artists who have actually submitted their work directly to me for the sole purpose of sharing directly with the homeofmusic community.
Why would they do this you ask? Even if their market share is so small, wouldn't they want some form of compensation? And the answer to that, is where the complete picture of deregulation becomes clear. The deregulation of music itself is only one part of increasing the overall income artists make. By distributing their music for free (or even extremely cheaply), they vastly increase their overall popularity, which increases their market share in total revenues.
These revenues include greater royalties and more merchandising among other things. But much more significant, is the difference in their live performances. Even a small jump in popularity can see them get a significant increase in the rates they can charge to perform.
Let's say a good Electronica artist might make $10000 with a well selling 12inch. Even if they give their mixes away on the web for free, that $10000 does NOT go to zero, in fact, even with the big labels, they only claim drops of a few percentage points. But for arguments sake, as an extreme example, let's just say that the artist only pockets $5000 (I think it would be more like $8000 in the worst situations, and most likely almost always much more than the original $10000, because even if the percentage of their fans who buy their music goes down, their overall fan base goes up much more proportionally).
So where they profit now, is the fact that instead of getting $1000 a night for the occasional performance, they will now be able to fill bigger venues and more often, so instead of making $1000 a night, they can ask for $2000, $3000 or even more, and also be able to perform more often. In extreme cases, in music sales, they may have lost $2000 ($10000 - $8000) or even $5000 ($10000 - $5000) for a record as described in the previous paragraph, but as they get more and more popular, they will be able to make that money back in just 2 or 3 live performances, and then all other performances make them much more overall profit than if they weren't promoted by MP3s.
But again, since most Electronica artists currently have very little overall global music market share, they will most almost definitely actually get an increase in direct music sales because of the growth in their fan base from exposure to their music vastly overshadows the decrease in percentage of people who buy their music. So even if the number of fans per 100 who buy their music goes down, a smaller artist can have their popularity go up by scales of a hundred times and probably much more. So even on the ridiculously extreme example of if there is a drop from 50% of fans who buy their music to 5%. 5% of 100,000 (5000 units) is much better than 50% of 1,000 (500 units).
The ultimate key of course ... is good music ... many artists claim their overall income might be decreasing ... but the thing about deregulation, is that it also brings out the truth ... if you can't succeed in a deregulated market ... then the only thing that means is that you are not good enough to succeed in a fair market, and you should step aside and make room for someone who is good enough. Well actually ... deregulation will most likely force bad artists aside rather than ask them nicely ... lol. Even more likely, is that it will just level the playing field and make it easier for good music to thrive.
The chaos we've seen over the last few years is only the beginning, there's a lot more weirdness and unpredictability ahead. There is a massive amount of money up for grabs in the music industry. Just in direct music sales alone there is 30 billion dollars a year. And then probably (I can only guess) at least that amount or more in merchandising, royalties, sponsorships, endorsements and performances, bringing us to something in the ballpark of $50 to $100 billion dollars a year and probably mush more. Deregulation will not change that total amount significantly ... but it will significantly increase the number of people who can make a living from it. In the end, Madonna might make $10 million instead $40 million a year, but that will mean that 100 artists will make an extra $100,000 a year, AND 1000 artists will make $10,000 a year more, AND 10,000 artists will make an extra $1000 to pay for their hobby.
Do the math, 100 x $100,000 = $10 million, 1000 x $10,000 = $10 million, 10,000 x $1000 = $10 million, with the three combining for a total of $30 million. So Madonna may be losing $30 million a year, but 11,100 people are now happy at the cost of one who is already and still will be richer than she deserves.
I for one, am totally disgusted at the fact we live in a society where a Brittany Spears, EmInEm and even Madonna and other artists makes literally hundreds, if not thousands of times more than someone working to fight Cancer or AIDS, or a police officer / fireman / military person, who put their LIVES on the line each and every day just to ensure our basic fundamental rights and our freedoms, as well as school teachers who need to be a lot more creative than most artists in educating our young. Now, significantly more than any other time in history we are getting a chance to change things significantly for the better. To put things back in balance, to make things a little more fair, to move things in the direction so each person on this planet is given more of an equal opportunity than ever before.
This will not happen overnight, and there is a lot more work ahead than behind us, but we are now at a junction in the road with two possible paths ahead. At the end of one path, is a society where information is hoarded and there are the few very rich and the many very poor, and at the end of the other path, is a world where information is shared more than ever before, where national boundaries and borders are no longer the divisive lines keeping us all apart (keeping the rich, rich, and the poor, poor), and every person on the planet has a better chance of getting the same chance as everyone else to do what they want to do. I'll admit that it won't let everyone do exactly what they want to do, and that we probably won't even live to see the end of this path. But it will give everyone in the distant future a fairer chance, and make things better only for those who actually work harder. These are the sort of very long terms goals we can thrive for if we start things right. Music is only one small part of it, but music will be responsible for setting many crucially important precedents, as MP3s and music happen to be the first main public controversy in this great digital information debate.
I have nothing against these big name artists, I actually respect their hard work, and I can't blame them for taking money that comes their way. I've dabbed in music production, and know it's not always easy or fun (even if it actually is most of the time), but it's a total vacation of a job compared to any of the jobs I mentioned above. However, we must realize that the content (music) we exchange does have a cost at source, and we must ensure that full-time artist and writer can pay for their supplies, their room and board, their other costs, and have a bit left over to enjoy life. The way things stand now (as they have for decades), many artists don't make enough to be artists full time, while at the same time, other artists make more money than they know what to do with. The internet will not fix the world, and it will not make perfect solutions, but it will move things in the right direction, it will move things into better balance (and I'm not just talking because of mp3's, as the real focus is the exchange of digital information).
The fact of the matter is, the income of big name artists versus their social worth as contributing members of society is not the same scale as other important people in society such as those I named above. Entertainers are indeed a very important part of society, and might even be considered just as important as teachers and police officers, but they are definitely not more important. In the end, if artists made a bit more income to help offset their costs, and the fact they spend a lot of hours on the road, then that's fine and nobody should mind, but not to the point of where it's at today. By spreading and diluting the power within the music industry (and other industries involved in this great digital debate), we are in fact letting more people into industry, which in turn produces more product (music) for society to enjoy, and also serves to make society better as a whole as well.
This brings me to another point, that I personally think Madonna and many other big name artists are great, and have actually done a significant amount of good for the music industry as a whole. But as great and fantastic as they are, there is simply no justification in that they should make hundreds or thousands of times more than a doctor or a teacher or a police officer or a fireman, particularly if it comes at the expense of other artists trying to get a fair piece of the pie who are currently being held back due to lack of exposure and marketing.
The internet will not make the world a perfect place ... even in the music industry ... but it will serve a serious and significant push to moves things in the right direction. The Big 5, the RIAA and related "cartels" are going to have to compromise and adapt significantly or they will perish.
They claim it isn't fair, but just because something that is taken for granted is changed, it does not in any way mean the change is not fair. That may just so happen to be the case a lot of the time, but not in this particular situation. In fact, the truth of the matter is, they are right, things haven't been fair for decades, because of them. They should just be thankful for the time they had. Even though they do put out a significant amount of quality work, they get far too big a portion to justify the smaller (but good) unrepresented artists currently getting so little. The difference in quality between the big and the small is on a vastly smaller scale then the incomes both ends of the spectrum currently receive. Marketing, promotion and distribution through the internet is only now slowly starting to balance the disproportion ... let me warn them now, that there is significantly more change ahead than there is behind us. The big record label's artists can only benefit from a certain amount of marketing before it becomes redundant, boring and counterproductive, so they will not benefit as much from the fact the Internet is driving down the costs of marketing compared to how smaller artists will benefit.
Going back to the Electronica aspect of things, sometimes I actually feel a bit disappointed not to have any real opposition from the big labels and the RIAA against homeofmusic, because I think what I'm doing is right for both the artists and the music fans. I think it's a fight that would have been worth fighting and I would have had no reservations on fighting any of these blindly laid charges made by the RIAA and several other groups that were made against other more commercial sites. It is a fight that needs more people realizing the status quo and the proposed rules/laws DO affect us and more particularly our future and our children’s future. People need to realize that it isn't just about the music, it goes beyond to the very essence of allowing the true freedom and freer flow of information. It is up to us to come up with and support ways that are indeed fair and responsible.
Even I do not think music should necessarily be free, but having it free is far better and fairer than the current situation and would actually be better for most artists as countless smaller artists would begin to rise up and claim a fair share of the total revenues. Anyhow, as a possible compromise, I personally think that a tax based system could potentially be most effective and the tax could be redistributed to make it similar to current royalty systems. Unfortunately, implementing such a system would be near impossible on a global scale, and again leaves power in hands of some institution that controls the whole thing. If it could be done, and a good, fair and secure method of tracking and profit redistribution be put in place, I'd be the first to pay such a tax. But at the moment, it would be virtually impossible to calculate which artists should get what portions and amounts.
Hopefully in the future, such a tax would be possible and its implementation an actual feasibility ... a Digital Information Tax, which would give us access to any form of digital information available on the internet, and in turn would guarantee income for content creators (be it music or anything else). The tax could be a flat tax, but hopefully not, and it could actually be based on income, so that minors, students and poorer people all over the world could have access to the same information, which in turn would lead to the beginning of a true bridge between classes. Because if information is power, then spreading that information out to more and more people and giving more people access to more information and better educations also spreads that power out, and it would make it easier for people to get an education (or a better one) and to prosper afterwards.
Having cheap of free access to information would also go a long way in helping third world nations catch up once they have the infrastructure in place to provide internet access to their population. Just as allowing students and the poor easier access would help them in the short term. These populations cannot afford the current costs and rates for much of these sorts of information (including music), so what is the harm in providing it to them and improving their quality of life and standard of living. The costs of sharing digital information is virtually nil, and they are markets content creators would not be able to sell to anyways since they don't have the disposable income available to them for such purchases. If anything, the long term effects of sharing digital information with the less fortunate would in turn raise the numbers of people who would be able to pay an income based tax, as through raising the quality of education and tools and data available to educators, it will have the long term side effects of actually bringing more people out of poverty which in turn would lead to more people with more than minimal income, which would lead to more people paying a digital information based income tax, which in turn would mean more money for content creators and artists. If implemented properly, it has the potential to be a win-win situation, but the dangers of such a system, is that it is very open to abuse and corruption, particularly in the redistribution of moneys collected, and also in deciding who gets the right to decide what tax rates are charged to which people.
Currently, the Internet seems to be moving towards a pay for access type of framework in more than just music. We are only now starting to see media and content corporations actually beginning to charge fees to access data or news. They give just the right balance of free content, but then hold certain information for paid access. Again, it's not to say they don't have a right to make money on their content, otherwise there's a good chance the content would never have been created in the first place. But with all this technology available to us, I find it hard to believe there can't be a better way. Many of us are partially to blame for this direct charging method, as content providers have lost some income due to advertisement blocker applications, although the internet advertising market has plummeted for many more reasons than that, and it was only a matter of time before advertising revenue could no longer support content. Should we ask our governments to start to sponsor or finance content? In a way, governments already do, in Canada, we have the CBC, in the UK, there's the BBC, plus most governments of the world also finance much publicly available information created in universities and also directly in many government institutions.
Would we as a society, all be able to accept and understand the concept that if we gave permission to our governments to slightly increase taxes for the purpose of saving music and art, that even if it meant paying more taxes, it would also mean our standards of living would increase substantially because such taxes would go towards the creation of more freely available information? The problem in the end, again, would be more in the areas of trust and implementation, which is why some argue that to have a free market system for digital information (as it is now) is the best way to ensure the biggest variety and depth of information possible. Having governments as the only source of information would also worry people on the potential dangers of censorship. Personally, I don't have a perfect answer, it is something that I hope we can all find the answer for together. All I know, is that I fear the way things are going now, just as I also actually fear the fact a lot of people fighting the RIAA and certain laws are fighting a battle they haven't fully thought through yet.
Totally free and uncompensated content, data and information is not a simple and justifiable solution, even if it stands clearly as a better option compared to having a world where many people cannot afford to access certain information and data. Of the two options however, I also don't think the best potential answer lies exactly in the middle. Just like with digital music sales at the moment for pop and mainstream music, I personally don't think it should be completely free, but I think it is more wrong to charge the outrageous fee of $1 a song. I also don't see the best answer being in the middle at 50 cents, I see it more at closer to 10 cents, with the possibility of it being even cheaper or at cost for students and the poor.
Government (tax) funding and sponsorships could go a long way in ensuring content, data and all other sorts of information (including news, reference data and even music) remain affordably accessible to all. On some level, we all have to assume the responsibility of making sure content creators and artists get some form of compensation to ensure they can continue creating and writing. Whether it's on a direct pay for each thing as you go only if you can afford it basis, or on a lowered subscription basis, or on an even lower government tax based system, or something totally different, or some form of combination. It is something we have to think about and begin implementing sooner rather than later before it's too late.
Recently, in Canada, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN for short, which is responsible for collecting royalties for its member artists, as well as collecting royalties for artists who are members of similar organizations around the world that have reciprocal agreements with SOCAN) has actually asked that Internet service providers (ISPs) be charged royalties on the basis that they are responsible for users accessing music.
This is a very dangerous proposition, in that if ISPs are held responsible for the content exchanged and transmitted on their networks, it would mean the end of internet privacy as we know it. It would be similar to saying the phone company is responsible for letting terrorists use their phone network to communicate with each other in planning terrorist attacks. Yes it is true terrorism is bad, but the only way telephone companies could really be held responsible, is if they monitored each and every phone call. Which is not only a total invasion of privacy, but it also would be impossible to implement without it costing impossible amounts of money. In the same way, asking ISPs to be responsible for interpreting the 0's and 1's that pass through their lines is also both an invasion of privacy, and would come at such an astronomical cost that no ISP would even be able to exist.
But just like telephone companies voluntarily help governments fight crime and terrorism by providing authorities with line traces, ISPs can also help governments by offering to collect a digital information tax. Separate from actual access charges, and similar to telephone line fees here in Canada where all long-distance providers have to charge a fixed fee to users to pay for servicing and maintaining the phone lines.
The set amount would not have to be much to be effective, as we shouldn't be looking make artists rich. Our goal should be simply to help the artists do their work, not to help them pay for million dollar homes. They can still buy their million dollar homes, they'll just have to be more effective in harvesting non-digital income sources.
Collecting such a tax would also help ISPs, as it would lead to a much higher total market penetration rate, as more people would log onto the internet to access all the information which would now become clearly legal.
The one danger of setting a fee at the ISP level though, is that overall, even if a fee is relatively small, any raise in cost only serves as a deterrent to those who can barely afford ISP fees to begin with from using the internet. With the most notable being the poor, as well as students. Our much bigger dream of seeing all people of the world have access to digital data and information regardless of income, class or location would be hindered by the implementation of such a fee on an access level. Which is why I've always favored an income tax based approach. But having a separate user fee tax at the ISP level would not be a bad first step, so long as it was separate from the actual ISP charges, and so long as it was clear that the ISPs not be actually held responsible for the actual data transmitted over their lines (even if they do help on a voluntary basis much of the time anyways).
There has also got to be an effective way to control potential abuse of the system. Because if the governments of the world simply started handing out free money, many people would suddenly decide to become artists and produce music, articles or other content for the sole purpose of making money and not offering anything of substance or quality. So on some level, some sort of judgment or merit has to be applied to content and information, which in my opinion would be the hardest part of implementing such a system and why I think we aren't really ready for such a system just yet.
Another potential solution, is to have musicians as government employees, similar to how actors and reporters on the CBC or BBC are government employees. This is also a very complicated potential solution that could be discussed and debated forever. This would also result in increased taxes, but at the end of the day, if we accepted a tax on the same level as what our current expenses are on music, it would mean we would have access to much more music for the same cost, it's just that we would be paying the government in taxes instead of paying a handful of artists. It is also important to note that such a tax could be very minimal and still have a profound effect.
It sounds a bit weird at the moment, because the main thing people think of when they think digital information is music and maybe sometimes movies. But as the internet evolves and grows, this whole battle on digital ethics will go far deeper than simply music. More and more, news, data and information sites are starting to charge membership fees to access information. Although this is the direction this debate is heading in, it is equally, if not even more important than the musical debate itself, as free access to information is crucial in improving education and in stimulating growth in both social and commercial evolution. It's not to say the owners and/or creators/writers of such content should not be compensated, but we need to take an extremely serious look at where this trend is heading, and if intervention and regulations are needed. I think a tax based system might also be a good approach for such digital information, similar to music.
I'll be the first to admit I don't have enough information on this part of the debate to form a solid judgment I'm willing to stand behind 100%, but I bring up this point to demonstrate how all forms of digital information, from news articles to music, are related in some way. The precedents in this first part of the debate on music will have implications that go far beyond and are much deeper than the music industry itself. And even though I don't have a perfect solution, I can say rather clearly that the current path proposed by the RIAA and big labels heads in a very dangerous direction that we need to be extremely cautious of.
There are several other alternatives to a tax based method, but for now, we need to realize $1 a track, as little as it sounds is simply still vastly overpriced. That was about the price of CD based music, which sold for an average of $1 a song (approximately 15 songs for $15). It’s particularly overpriced if fairer alternatives are now readily available to us. I personally believe most quality artists can actually make a good solid and profitable living giving their music away for free. But even if they couldn't, there still is no justification to the prices of music being what it is today.
The cost of downloading even a 10 megabyte file is now about 1cents or less. Plus the standard pop music file is less than 5 megabytes so that makes a transfer cost of well under 1cent. Anyhow, multiply that by 15 songs per CD for 15cents, which is definitely lower than the old costs of transporting a CD along from its place of creation to its final sales point.
But then when you add the cost of manufacturing and packaging, that takes out a significant chunk, as well as the rental costs of a well located musical outlet. Plus add to that the percentage retailers need to add to make a profit for themselves. Already, with those factors, the final price on-line should be more to the tune of well under 50 cents, and that's a conservative overestimate. Out of which maybe 30cents per song goes to actual real costs such as marketing (on big 5 levels), staff and the other legitimate expenses and maybe about 10cents goes back to the artists (the way labels set up the payments to the artists is another issue all together, often borderline criminal, but for arguments sake, we'll say the artist gets an average of 10cents a song even if it's really from 0 to 30 cents depending on the situation and artist).
Finally, the biggest factor is the magnitude of the internet itself. It's somewhat silly to assume you can charge the same rate. Through the internet, if they would have priced it fairly from the start, they could have sold at least 10 times more units and realistically substantially more than that. In fact, if they really cared about the music and the fans, then they should be happy that more people can enjoy their music while at the same time they still can maintain and enjoy the same net profit levels.
So, they see ten times more distribution on the internet, but they want ten times the profit ... they need to sit back and realize that a $100 billion dollar a year industry simply cannot and will not turn into a trillion dollar industry ... it's simply NOT possible. They need to realize that as the magnitude of distribution goes up, their per-unit profit will need to go down. They won't make any more, but they won't lose any more. In the end, should it really matter to them if they make the same profit from selling 1 billion units or 10 billion units? This is the greed that is going to end up finishing them. They're trying to justify making 10 times more money because they are distributing to 10 times more people.
It would probably cost you hundreds of dollars for you to physically deliver a package to another city. But because so many people use national postal systems, they can charge a relatively fair and affordable price to everyone and still make a profit. The same concept works in most aspects and institutions fount throughout society, including taxes and insurance, which are simply the result of a large population pooling finances and resources together to get things done that individuals could not otherwise afford on their own. Let's say your state or province was building a 100 kilometer highway, and the cost of building a highway was 10 million dollars per kilometer, then if your state of province had one million tax payers, you'd expect it to cost each taxpayer about 10 dollars per kilometer times 100 kilometers for a total of 1000 dollars. Now, there is another highway planned on a national level, but this time, 10 times longer at 1000 kilometers. According to the RIAA, each taxpayer would have to pay 10 times more, because obviously, the highway is 10 times longer. But they conveniently forget the fact, that now, instead of just one state or province of taxpayers contributing, it's now an entire nation (with several provinces or states contributing), so the cost per kilometer per person should go down, even if the actual cost of making the highway is the same. In the same sense, because more people will be getting each song, the total cost of production per person will also go down significantly, and the end price of individual songs so also go down for there to be a fair balance.
The technology industry itself also illustrates this concept, in that most products start off rather expensive to help offset production or development costs. But as more and more of the product sells, the product can be sold for less and less due to the fact that volume more than makes up for smaller per unit profit margins. As a result, hardware and software producers are forced to evolve and innovate to prosper. This can be seen the most in markets where competition is strongest. The big record labels are rightfully avoiding this, because it is significantly easier for competition to startup in the music industry than it is to startup in the tech industry. Again, they oppose all this because they cannot possibly have any hope of retaining the massive market share they currently enjoy.
What is fair you ask, firstly, distribution and marketing on the internet is vastly cheaper through the internet, so that 30 cents should be more like 20 cents, then divide that by ten (to compensate for 10 times growth in unit sales) and the actual profit and royalties to the artists by ten as well. So you get 2 cents for expenses, one cent profit for the label, 1 cent to artists and one cent for distribution. That makes 5 cents !!! The irony is ... if they actually did charge 5 cents, they would sell significantly more than 10 times they do one CD. Or if they sold singles at 10 cents (2 for expenses, 1 for artists, 1 for distribution, 6 as profit), then conceivably they would be making 6 times the profits as they would at 5 cents. But they are selling tracks for 99cents. At which price they say they still don't make a profit ... and of course they don't ... because nobody buys it at that outrageous price ... they would actually make more profit if they sold tracks at the 10cent level so people could get 100 tunes a month for a respectable $10.
Another problem with the $1 price tag is the real and serious complaint, is that although it may seem cheap, the current system does not allow people to listen first before buying. Most DJs can do that in record stores and mainstream music shoppers can do it in big music stores. Being able to pre-sample music is a crucial factor for DJs, who can typically go through 20 or more records before finding one suitable for them. Then multiply that by 2 to 6 mixes per record and it would be virtually impossible for any DJ to maintain a strong play-list without going bankrupt. So $1 can add up fast for DJs who want to check out many tracks, even if they will never play most of them.
Also, it's virtually IMPOSIBLE for you to buy all the music you want. Even if by some miracle you were extremely rich, and you could buy as much as you wanted, you'd still have to find it all ... in the land of mp3's, you'll get exposed to more good music than you could ever hope to find in any 10 record stores combined !!! There are things you can find on the internet that you would never be able to buy or even order in conventional or even specialty music stores. Included in that, is a great deal of music whose artists fully endorse and support free sharing and distribution on the internet.
One hidden massive fundamental problem for the big labels, is that some of the current songs they're selling on albums are simply garbage, and nobody would buy them if sold separately. That's simply a reality they need to deal with ... and that's the big labels ultimate Achilles heal in retaining market share. They need all their artists to produce the same number of tunes they do now, but they all have to be great tunes that would be the top one or two on any current album. Mediocrity simply cannot survive in the world of digital distribution. So in effect, the record labels are now paying the price both for greed and for mediocrity, even if it's the greed factor that comes to the forefront of most discussions on the matter. Their ultimate demise will be due to their inability to produce a quantity of quality.
However you view the ethics or morality of this entire debate, in the end, it all comes down to hard numbers and simple math! Math, combined with the end of the illusion of choice! By illusion, I mean that over the years, we've been thinking that we've been given a choice when it comes to buying commercial music. But in fact, for the most part, we've been pretty much forced to buy 13 or 14 songs (tracks on a CD that you could not be bothered with) that we don't want in order to buy the 1 or 2 songs (per CD) that we do want. That is bad enough ... yet it gets much worse. What we are actually paying for at the moment with CDs, is even more than the simple 10+ songs. Without really knowing it, we are also paying for all the other songs that are produced by other bands on the same record label that never make a profit either. If you consider that maybe 1 artist/group is profitable (by the big 5 standards) for every 4 that are not, then when you get a CD for one or two songs, you are actually paying for anywhere between 40 and 80 tunes that you don't care about and don't even want.
So, until now, for every commercial song we bought, we've actually been paying for about 50 songs. Which till now has been acceptable, because in all honesty, we really did not have any choice. Here is where things change. The power of the Internet, by its definition itself is choice, because as you interlink more networks together, the more choice you end up getting. In the internet economy, because of the growing choice of music, it will no longer be viable or feasible for the big 5 music labels to force us to pay for all those other tunes we don't want.
The simple numbers and math is the biggest, yet for some reason also the most hidden reason for their eventual downfall. In order to keep their corporate jobs, they need to maintain the same profitability, so they try to say we're hurting the artists by downloading free music. But they themselves fail to specify and even realize that even the way they use the term 'artist' is misleading. This whole debate and argument is destined to never reach a proper compromise because both sides are using the similar words to justify different things. The RIAA (and similar groups) say they're fighting for the artists, but for them, the only artists they're really talking about, is 'their' artists, including the ones that produce nothing anybody wants to listen to, they need to 'protect' these artists because it is part of how they justify their profitability.
On the other side of the argument, those fighting for cheaper or freer music also say we in favor of the artists, but by the term artists, we're meaning artists who produce quality work that we actually want to listen to. Ultimately, the term 'artists' used by both groups in this debate are rather different. Even those fighting against the RIAA aren't saying all music must be free (even if we strongly believe it would be better for most artists if it was free). We simply do not want laws in place that protect the 95% or more of music that is totally unwanted by the general population (meaning unwanted individual tracks on CDs combined with complete CDs that are total failures).
In the end, if you look at the math, an independent artist only needs to make 5% (or less) of the profit per good song the big 5 labels do in order to make the same profit. Not only that, but smaller artists don't even need to make that much, since they don't have to support a large corporate infrastructure and staff or the millions of dollars spent on advertising each year by the big 5. The internet makes all that infinitely cheaper and more cost efficient. That is the reason the big labels have to be fought, because they are not fighting for the music, they are fighting to maintain a structure of control in which they can profit on the works of 20, 50 or even more songs for every one that is truly successful. I've said it before, the Internet will ultimately present us with so much choice, that less than mediocre songs will not be able to survive. Since the big 5 are structured to work based on a system that uses 95% or more of songs that fall into the mediocre category, they are destined to fall.
Through the choices presented by the power of the internet, eventually, we will choose songs from quality independent artists who will be able to afford to make 95% less profit per track, yet still end up with the same revenue per 'successful' song than the music labels. Compound to that, the fact those artists don't even need to make as much revenue per successful song because of lower costs, then you can start to understand why music is vastly overpriced at the moment, and you'll also begin to understand how an independent artist, with a good quality song, can become much more successful by spreading out their music for free, as if their song is good, their popularity will skyrocket because an exponentially higher number of people will be exposed to their song (because it was freely available for free). Then, because of their popularity, they will make vastly more income and profit from live performances.
This is ultimately why the big 5 are panicking, because through the internet, they are (slowly and just beginning) losing control on what songs are popular. They rely on a system that needs revenue from actual music sales, when a time is coming when new 'quality' artists will be more successful if they give away their music for free, which is something they'd never be able to compete with. So they try to cloud, mix and confuse the issues, when the bottom line is simply the fact that the internet is forcing in a new system of music distribution that completely by-passes their systems of control that we've let them grow over the years and decades.
They've been able to effectively maintain control through the music stores, the radio, music video television AND government, but at this point, there is absolute no way to control the internet. By this, I'm not talking about mp3 sites or p2p applications, I'm talking about the increasing marketing power the internet is giving to newer artists that will slowly see more and more newer artists take more and more market share (in terms of music listened to, not actual music bought) from the big 5 labels. Because whether a song is actually bought for money, or if it is taken for free, the song still has 'market share' in the fact that people can only listen to limited amount of music (there are only 24 hours in a day ... lol).
The numbers and math factor don't even stop there. Not only do the big labels want us to pay for 95% or more of tracks we couldn't care less about, but then they also fail to address the scale and reach of the internet. Through the internet, music can reach an exponentially larger audience, so a good song could be 20 times and probably many more times distributed, so in theory, not only should music be 95% (or more) cheaper, but then because of mass distribution, the song should 1/20th of that smaller amount, which leaves us with an extremely small amount, but the actual fact is, that an independent artist with quality music (that's the important part, it has to be quality to even stand a chance) can actually sell their music for a micro fraction of the cost of current CDs and yet still actually make a profit. However, in the end, it goes even beyond that, because the moment they go a fraction lower and give away their music for free, they gain yet another significant step in popularity, and what they profit in terms of performance and other revenues far and away surpasses anything they would ever get if they charged for music.
Also, looking at the value of music in the world today, when you compare total work-hours spent making music on a CD (including producing the music itself) versus total work-hours for a movie on DVD (including making the movie itself) then add the difference in quality of a CD vs. DVD ... you'll see market pricing of music significantly over inflated, by comparison it is not natural and not a truly free market. There's a good reason why DVD sales are far and away into record levels far beyond video tapes ever reached. Most DVD movies are a good value in terms of price to quality. I personally think they should also be a bit cheaper. I have serious issues with the movie industry as well, but they are actually doing a good job when you compare them to the music industry, as the scale of injustice is totally of the scale within the music industry.
Those who don't or can't make money performing live also need some form of revenue, but they also need to face a reality that music alone does not have the value in terms of a pure commodity as in the past (it never really did, as we have actually been paying for marketing, advertising and corporate profit all this time) ... similar to internet advertising, as with the ease of creating and sharing music, it's absolute value goes down. These artists need to find new aspects of themselves to market in tandem with their music to compliment their income, or simply just create more quality music to make up for any shortfall through sheer growth of overall volume. Many artists also simply produce and share music just for the love of music itself, and do not expect anything in return, which is something that will be happening more and more as technology makes it easier and easier to produce and create quality music. From the words of Sting himself, "Music is its own reward". In the future, it will be impossible for any of the big labels to compete with people who put the love of music before the love of profit.
It's now time for the big music labels to stop taking things for granted and find innovative new ways of generating income. The marketing clout the big 5 record labels maintain is still of monstrous proportions. They need to cultivate more quality music and be more effective at promoting and marketing in new more effective methods. A good example is the new commercial success enjoyed by the (Ozzy) Osbourne family due to their TV show. Their popularity has gone up because of a non-musical factor. Maybe more people are downloading their music for free as a result, but their overall income level has jumped dramatically, as they're generating TV revenue, increased royalties from radio play and sponsorship deals from Pepsi and others. Surprisingly, even in this era of mp3s, they probably now get even more music revenue as well because their fan base that has probably grown more than the proportion of fans who buy their records has declined. In other words, it's better to have 1% of a million (10,000) than 50% of a thousand (500). Those numbers are somewhat dramatic, but I used them more to make a point rather than illustrate the exact situation, as I have no idea what the Osbourne family revenue stands at, but it's safe to say it has increased dramatically.
I'm actually not a big fan of using shock value shows to create marketing power and clout, I just use the Osbourne example to demonstrate that it is possible to creatively gain market share. Shock value marketing can be fun in moderation, but I personally think it's gone a bit too far overall in terms of headline grabbing. However this is a totally different debate for another day. Basically, there are many other things the big labels can do to increase overall income, plus they have the added advantage of knowing all the contacts and still having a significant amount of overall revenue.
Free commercial music (stuff found on top 40 radio) mp3 download sites and even more significantly P2P (peer to peer) networks may have a significantly higher proportion of artists who wouldn't agree to having their music on such sites (as compared to Electronica sites and networks), but even those sites serve a important purpose in this whole transition period. Notice I said higher proportion, as I firmly believe that most artists actually support free sites and p2p networks, although obviously the artists making it rich through the old unfair system do not, but it's very important to note, that so called top 40 artists represent only a very tiny minority of musicians, even in the pop and rock genres.
Anyhow, these commercial music sites and networks actually serve as representation of future artists’ portion of the overall market by lowering the control of big labels so new people can get into the game more easily and fairly. Part of the whole rebalancing in an indirect almost backward way that still get to the end, even if in some cases the means isn't entirely technically legal, it's actually more ethical in its means to an end. It is a very touchy subject, but it's something that has got to be done to fight the raw power and unjust influence the RIAA, the big labels and other special interest groups unfairly have over our politicians and lawmakers. It's like J-walking across a street to save a kid from a burning building. J-walking isn't legal, but in that particular case, it was the ethical thing to do, and in actual fact, the fair and just thing to do, would be to change the law so that it be legal to J-walk if it means saving a life.
It's the same in the current musical realm, except that it's not one kid ... but literally hundreds of thousands of kids ... future potential artists who are facing the real and grave danger of some of these absolutely outrageous proposed laws that have the only purpose of keeping a system in place that allows a small number of people have access to a significantly disproportional large part of the overall music sales income. Some people might get hurt crossing that road to the burning building ... but saving our future is still the right thing to do.
It's actually rather simple as to how the role of the commercial mp3 sites and P2P networks is important to the final objective. They are setting the 'status quo' of music revenue at a lower amount per unit (per track). They essentially devaluate music for lack of a better term. So even if we've been overcharged for years, the average cost per song is being forced down by the numbers that are distributed for free. This is extremely important for when it comes time for final settlements, rules and laws to be drafted and negotiated. If the 'status quo' unit price at that time is high, then the general population will not react when special interest groups succeed in getting restrictive, unfair and unethical laws passed. But the lower the inherent 'value' of music (and digital information), the harder it will be for these greedy special interest groups like the RIAA to pass these laws unopposed and unchecked by the general population. As things stand today, most people have more important things on their minds than the fundamentals of laws relating to the freedom and distribution of Digital Information. Which is sad, but a fact that has existed through the drafting and passing of a shockingly high proportion of copyright and patent laws over the years which have seemed somewhat good in the short term, but extremely destructive for the long term progress of society and humanity as a whole. Nobody knows any better or ever cared because when the laws went into place, they were subtle changes, and even if they weren’t, they were not shocking enough to inspire someone to rebel or protest against. The changes usually aren't even enough to worry most people more than the numerous concerns of day to day life that people face.
With the free distribution of music, the value of music goes does, so even if it seems unfair (and it actually is even in my point of view), it's important to the final goal, that for example, twenty people pays 5 cents a song instead of one at $1. Currently, if one person gets it one song for $1, and also gets 19 for free, it's creating a value for music of 5 cents a song. Which in the long term is what society will subconsciously accept as a approximate fair price. In the end, it might be a bit more or a bit less, I'm simply using those numbers to make a point.
So if the masses put the value of a digital song at about 5cents, then if laws are proposed to help protect a system that supports $1 per song, they will be viewed as so totally outrageous that the casual person (who let all these other laws pass over the decades because they weren't so shocking) will finally get up and say something because raising the cost of something from 5cents to $1 is something most people will actually get up and protest against.
Unfortunately, the real situation is far from this one (where everybody is paying for one song at $1 then getting 19 for free), as most people are falling into two groups, either paying for everything or not paying at all ... and that is a consequence of the big labels taking so long to enter the digital music sales scene. I actually fear they waited so long that they won't even be able to maintain a 5 cent average even if they started charging that amount tomorrow. There's also the hidden cost in traditional music sales of taking the time and effort to go to the music store. The big labels now not only have to battle cheap or free prices, but they also need to beat the convenience of peer to peer networks, which is something that will be extremely difficult to do at such a late stage in this game. It's a consequence of their mistakes from years ago when they rejected technology rather than embrace it. In the end, it's one of those fatal mistakes that will be virtually impossible to make up for.
The strength of the Peer to Peer networks has been so absolutely overwhelming, that nobody could have seriously expected it to be at the scale it is today. Although not expecting any P2P distribution at all would have been just as ridiculous to expect. The big 5 knew what was coming, even if they vigorously deny it. They could have ensured some control and some income, but they chose the all or nothing path instead of choosing the path of compromise. They chose to hedge their bets on what has always worked for them ... which is to lobby for stricter laws and gain tighter control. But guess what ... the Internet is too fast for even their billion dollar layers and lobbyist to keep up with. The all or nothing is now looking more and more like nothing.
In the end though, these P2P networks and mp3 sites are so vitally important in forcing an eventual settlement and compromise. Even if the Big 5 claim to be beaten and battered, these big labels still have a lot of money and power. The eventual effect of mp3 sites and these p2p networks is a force that will oblige the big labels and special interest groups to make concessions and more reasonable demands on politicians, and as a result, we'll see better, fairer and more effective laws created on digital information distribution, instead of some of the insanely rigorous and unfair laws proposed by the RIAA and other groups.
The next few years are absolutely crucial, and the decisions and laws made in even the next 2 or 3 years will have some of the most profound long term effects on future societies, as there is very little that has more cultural influence on society than the way we interact with each other and the way we exchange information and ideas. Do we want a world where a few people get rich because they control a lot, or do we want a freer society where many still have power, but it is drastically more decentralized, and there is a fairer redistribution of wealth, control and power.
The one thing I've heard all my life that has always annoyed the heck out of me (usually because it is used as an excuse to simply give up hope and not bother to fight for change), is the statement "life isn't fair" ... and that's often true, but through the internet and by making sure new restrictive laws aren't passed, and old harmful ones are modified for the better, we CAN level the playing field, and we can make things a little more fair! It will definitely come at some cost to a few rich and powerful, but it will benefit so many more people that truly need it and more importantly deserve it! More importantly than anything else though, is that the people it will effect negatively, will still continue to be very well off.
However, all this being said, all those blindly fighting against the big labels also need to be very careful, as by appearing like they don't ever want to pay for music, even if it is fairly priced, then the big labels will try to use that against us and claim that we are simply irresponsible spoiled brats who are abusing technology. That is why it's important for P2P groups and mp3 sites to maintain a degree of responsibility and make sure they aren't just seen as simple pirates who have no cares for the bigger picture or the world around them. It's a delicate balancing act that could come crashing down on either side depending on how a few key politicians and policy makers view each side.
Unfortunately, most people who use these P2P networks have no idea of the political and social consequences. Most actually don't do it to fight this ethical battle against the big companies and special interest groups, they just do it because it means they have access to a lot of good music they might not have otherwise been able to enjoy. It's somewhat ironic to know that the masses who never knew they are to blame and have been responsible for letting all these changes in the laws go on for so long unchecked and not seriously opposed, are now totally unaware of the fact they're a significant factor in the biggest fight ever against these laws.
The legal decisions taken today, are going to have absolutely profound and marking affects on the future of humanity, and it's very disturbing to see that most people have yet to realize how different the world will be in 50, 100 and particularly even further down the road, all depending on the decisions of a few judges right here and now. The record companies and big corporations want to put a lid on the free flow of information, so they can profit from it forever, and frankly, that's not a legacy I'd like to leave for my would-be children or future generations for that matter, as it will only result in the rich getting richer and an even greater social divide between the classes.
I think it's unfortunate that many p2p users aren't aware of this fact, as it could ultimately be dangerous in that instead of having a good and fair compromise, we end up with total anarchy. We must fight the fight and hopefully win the battle for more and stronger freedoms. When this battle is won, then will come the equally important battle of ensuring the responsible use of the new freedoms. Many people fear the final outcome, and that the anarchy of the P2P networks will be worse than the current situation. Personally, I'm faithful to the ideal that the artists will adapt and evolve and that everybody will be the better for it. People put in between 50 to 100 billion dollars each year into the music business and there's absolutely no reason to think they'll ever stop. Instead of just buying a few CDs a year and going to one concert, maybe they'll go to a few more concerts and buy a bunch of mp3's for 10 or 20cents each. The end result is that for generations, people have been spending their disposable income on entertainment, and the overall state of the economy still has the biggest effect on overall entertainment revenue than any other factor, there's absolutely no reason to think that will ever change now.
The end results of many of these harmful patent laws are equally as harmful as direct overpricing from the big music labels because these laws impede progress by blocking people/groups/companies from perfecting or improving or creating better versions of things already available. In a sense you could say it slows the potential evolution of a product or service. Think about how silly it is that certain people own certain combinations of words and sounds. It's still actually somewhat important to ensure people have motivation to continue making/building/doing things, but the current laws are more than enough, and many would say they go way too far already as it is and need to be scaled back as the balance has swung too far away from the end consumer.
Big companies argue that removing these laws would make for a far worse situation than the current situation. Even I agree that is almost definitely true, and say that people fighting against these laws are crazy because those laws are important to society. But the truth is, contrary to what the RIAA and other groups want you to believe, most people fighting these laws don't want them totally removed ... they just want fair compromises and balances in place and adjustments made that stand to benefit society much more effectively than in their current form. To ask that these laws be totally removed would definitely be as harmful as keeping them, but they do need significant reforms and modifications applied to them in order to make them fairer and make them more beneficial to society as a whole.
So that is the difficult part about it all, that most of these laws have some positive elements and effects. So it's easy to say they are good. But the truth of the matter is, that they could be better if they were changed ... they could be fairer and more open and less restrictive to potential competition. It's basically about finding a fair and just balance between content/copyright/patent owners and potential competition who serve the interest of the end consumer by bringing more competitive prices and better products. Competition also stimulates evolution and progress, as stagnation means certain fiscal and financial death in a field where there is enough competition.
We really need to let our politicians know that these sorts of laws on certain copyrights issues are just ludicrous, totally insane and simply unacceptable, and that they are extremely harmful to society's long term progress and evolution.
That being said though, I personally think certain things should still never be legally broadcast/shared/published openly and total freely, such as 'some' military documents. I don't think you should be able to find out how to make a bomb openly just by looking at the internet for example. That information should be available, but it should at least be shared in a secure way, and not open to just anyone without some sort of logging and tracking. I feel equally as strong that pornography should be much more secure than it is now, so not to be easily accessible to minors. It's not that I have anything against pornography, the only problem I have with it, is that it's too accessible for minors. I feel all pornography should be limited to a .xxx domain or something like that, where it would be easy for parents to block the entire domain, and I feel such a rule should actually be legal and enforced to save our children. More domains could be added based on adult oriented content, or we could have one that is child specific, with the end result not being censorship, but more like a rating system like for movies. Most porn hosts themselves actually agree with these sorts of concepts.
I don't feel the Internet represents the danger to children many people complain about, but I do think the Internet has enough disturbing material on it for me to feel weary of letting children browse unsupervised. Again, it's all about us all being more responsible about the Internet, our laws and the world around us.
We need to look at all current and potential rules and laws with realism and some degree of flexibility. We also need to realize the dangers in drawing rigid lines of acceptability, in that it could lead to censorship. Who would be responsible for saying what is acceptable and what isn't? Those may seem like unimportant parts of the puzzle, but in fact, they are the most important parts. Some rules and laws could be used in extremely positive ways, while at the same time, the exact same rules and laws could be used by another group in extremely negative ways, depending on how the laws are interpreted and enforced. Drafting or changing laws is not some arbitrary thing, it's something that needs to be thought through and implemented very carefully and cautiously.
In the beginning, most of these laws were actually created to protect the end consumer ... but over the decades, they've been twisted and turned due to the influence of heavily funded special interest groups. The end results have a negative effect on our society as a whole on so many fronts. From pharmaceutical to transportation (automotive and others) to telecommunications (which is finally starting to go in the right direction) to utilities (electricity is a good example of deregulation, except that generating new electricity is on a totally different scale to generating new music, because music isn't a limited resource that's relatively difficult and expensive to produce like electricity) to manufacturing to the entertainment industry (big film, TV, radio, newspaper and other media special interest groups are trying to propose laws and do things just as bad and dangerous to society as the RIAA and other big players in the music industry). The difference, and the reason music is first and so dramatic, falls at the pure and simple fact it is one of the most grossly overpriced products out there, and that it has been progressing that way slowly for such a long time that most of us just let it slip bit by bit and took it for a fact of life that music was priced the way it was when it shouldn't have been.
Take the pharmaceutical industry as an example. Pharmaceutical patents seemed good at first, as profits used to be lower, and longer patent durations were needed to make up for research investments. But now demand has grown significantly. The balance is no longer there, as corporate profits have grown exponentially, while at the same time products are becoming less and less affordable. This is all due to several factors, but mainly due to the virtual monopolies created by patents. the biggest danger, is that these changes (bit by bit over time) seem to be taken for granted and are relatively unopposed by the public at large because of lack of information, motivation and organization compared to the massive corporate backing of the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry. Again, it's not that it's all bad, but a new balance is needed to make things fairer for the current day realities, which are very different from the realities at the time many of these old and outdated laws and regulations were created.
The effects of deregulation should be transitional or gradual most of the time, often in favor of owners in the short term because the limitations they had imposed on them (like price regulations) are removed to compensate for the deregulation, and because they already have the infrastructure needed in place, they can take advantage of the removed limitations faster than new owners can get into the game ... in the long term though, deregulation should be good unless it's on a limited resource. This slow transition hasn't happened with music (whether by legal changes or forced by P2P networks in this case) because the product/service in question is drastically overpriced in terms of supply/demand because such a large portion of recent sales is sheer greed, profit or needless marketing expenses, and very little to do with the end cost of the actual music production.
I mentioned a few times that part of this fight included the devaluation of music, which for some who love music, might actually sound weird. But it's not that music isn't valuable ... in effect it's priceless ... it's so important that it needs to be much freer than it is today, not just in price, but in control as well. Like with anything mixed with a power struggle, the lower the number people who share and control something (music in this case), the higher the chance of corruption/greed and just general ignorance/stupidity can affect it for the worse. Music has such a heavy influence and effect on our culture, that it needs to be respected seriously, and it needs our help to grow into what it can potentially become. It can not be held back by 5 big powerful players who have forgotten what music was all about in the first place and whose only interest now, is remaining big, rich and powerful.
Technology has been the instigator in all this change, in that it's brought the start of the ultimate equalizer, the Internet. But it goes beyond, in also helping to create an influx of new artists who are crucial for the success in this deregulation! Through computers, it is becoming increasingly easier to produce, create, market, promote and distribute good music, and as technology progresses, the doors will open to even more potential artists and ultimately, there will be more and more changes and options for consumers and artists alike.
Ultimately, in the end, the Big 5 are scared and in trouble, not because the cost of music has gone down. In a sense, yes I've been saying that throughout this text, but the reality is, that as sappy as it sounds, music is from the heart and soul of artists, there isn't anything that can be considered freer. Again, to quote Sting, 'music is its own reward'. Why the Big 5 need to be scared, is because the reality is coming, where music is no longer a shinny piece of plastic (a CD) in a nice package that they can market for vast amounts of money above its actual value. We'll soon hopefully see a future where music will be about music, it won't be stupid artists doing or saying stupid things for publicity, it will be about artists who truly care for their work, about artists who are creative and imaginative, who will bring us sounds that we've never heard before. Everybody is different, and with the multitudes of new artists who come into the scene, instead of you trying to find a type of music that best suits you, there will be music that 'exactly' suits you.
It's not that music isn't good now. But the Big 5 don't make as much money from the results of good music as they do from the results of good marketing. They create a market for themselves through the 'arrangement' they have through all the other institutions that have a vested interest in seeing these big companies stay on top. Be it the record stores who want to keep costs down by not having to be too big and deal with too many people as well as maintain a certain wholesale cost so that too many other players don't get into the game. Or all aspects of the media from radio to TV to print, as a fair amount of their revenue come from these Big 5, both in terms of direct advertising dollars, and in terms of the stupid things their artists do that the media can report on to sell more newspapers or get more viewers/listeners. Again, we are just as much to blame, it sickens me how most people are more concerned with the latest gossip than most of the more serious realities and situations going on throughout the world.
The biggest danger the Big 5 face is yet to come, when all newer artists realize they no longer need the big marketing engines of the Big 5. Good artists with good music will be able to promote themselves easily due to the simple fact they have good music. Word of mouth marketing still remains the most powerful and effective marketing technique of all time, which will leave the Big Five labels with artists who are more about marketing than music in the dust unless they start heavily concentrating on the actual music.
Overall revenue on direct sales of music will most likely diminish, but as time goes on, the actual portion that goes to the artists will not lessen anywhere near the levels of the final product. The portion that needlessly goes to the soon to be obsolete major music labels will be the only big loser in the end. The artists will ultimately end up getting a bigger portion as the labels get less and less power, and smaller, fairer labels will start to appear that focus in on particular artists, or more likely, new artist services will start to develop and offer everything different artists need in various service packages. Then eventually even further down the road, artists will be able to do almost everything on their own. The per item profit to artists may go down, but good artists will get significantly more distribution, on the scales of 10 or even 100 times, thanks to the Internet. It's a fact that if prices are lower and fair, people will buy significantly more music. So the only artists who have anything to lose, are the ones who are already so disproportionately popular, that there is not enough people in the world to give them that 10 times growth they will need to maintain their current income level. This however, is the Brittany Spears and Justin Timberlakes of the world, who only truly represent far less than 1% of 'real' artists out there. They are the ones who will lose, but don't feel too bad for them, they will still be very rich ... they just won't be filthy rich ... lol.
As for other artists represented by the Big 5, the Big 5 may represent around 75% of music sales by registered artists already selling music, but they don't even come close to representing even 10% of all music artists. What about the artists who only do it part time, who only do it for fun, who don't care about making money, or the ones that the big labels will never sign because they don't think they are pretty enough, cute enough, young enough, cool enough or shocking enough to market cost-effectively? So what gives the RIAA the right to even claim they know what is best for all artists? The following is the main paragraph that serves as the RIAA's mission statement. Notice the well placed 'and/or' they used to include the word 'create', because if they just used 'and' it wouldn't be true:
"The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States."
If you look at that text, you might think their cause is just, as it seems to imply they are fighting for the artists. They hope most people will interpret "supports and promotes our members" as meaning the artists. But in fact, its members are not the artists, the members of the RIAA are the big labels themselves. So by their very words, their primary concern isn't in fact the better interests of the artists, but it is keeping in place the profitability of the already large and powerful labels. But if they truly make most of their profit from marketing, then in fact, the very essence of the RIAA is to keep a rigid, inflexible and power hoarding system of control in place by keeping control in the hands of a few rather than letting a natural evolution take place. By fighting to keep these labels profitable, the RIAA and other similar special interest groups are actually hurting future artists, they are maintaining an unethical and powerful system of control over the industry and, most unfortunately, they are killing the potential of music and slowing down the natural progress and evolution of music.
Also notice the use of the word 'sold' instead of the word 'created' or 'made', they use it in the same sentence as the word legitimate for two reasons. Firstly, to confuse you into thinking that any music that isn't 'sold' is not legitimate, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth, as there is a lot of music that is legally free. Not only that, but there is now more and more artists who specifically want their music to be free for everyone, the RIAA by their very own words, could never rightfully represent these artists. The second reason for them wording it like that, is that obviously they do not represent 90% of all music (both sold and free). It's my hope that politicians will realize that the RIAA and groups with similar interests are not at all representative of all artists and their true needs and concerns.
They then go on with a second paragraph that explains how they plan to support their mission. They say they do so by protecting intellectual property rights. But the irony is, that they are referring to the unethical, unhealthy and uncompetitive rights which their special interests pushed through the legal channels in the first place. They also say they protect the first amendment rights of artists, which if some of you don't know, is the freedom of speech. But if that is true, where is their effort in promoting the view of artists that do want a fairer compromise? I know for a fact there are many out there. If the RIAA were really out for the best interests of the artists, they'd be searching for real compromises and solutions, instead of just fighting to keep a system of control over as much of the music industry as possible.
Again, it's not to say there was no good music, in fact, music has progressed fairly well over the decades, with numerous big name artists that deserve distinction, and many artists who seriously and honestly loved the music more than the money. It's like the laws I talked about above, many elements are good, but changes can be made to make it better. But making better music isn't something you can buy, sure they will still sign artists for big money for years to come, but eventually, through technology and the Internet, these groups will be able to make the same amount of money without the help of the Big 5 ... which is when the Big 5 will turn into the Big ZERO!
I mentioned Madonna before, if she is a true artist (which I think she is), she should be happy just being able to live comfortably by being a musician. I'm sure she'll be happy for the artists who enter the game and actually eventually take market share away from her. She's pretty much destined to be the last of icons that falls into the same category as Elvis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Police, Michael Jackson, Prince, U2 and a very few others. Brittany Spears and Justin Timberlake are just as destined to be among the last of the 2nd tier big players one level below the icons like Madonna, although there will probably be a few more big players in the years ahead before this entire deregulation has finally started to take significant effect.
With the ever increasing number of artists out there, the number of great songs will increase accordingly, and it will be harder and harder for an artist to actually distinguish themselves as being the best. That sounds weird and even sad to those of you who need people to follow, but the truth of the matter is, it's a great thing when there's so much good new stuff than you can barely cope with. It will be the end result of this long road we are only starting on. Many of these things I'm talking about will actually start slowly in the months and years ahead, with the ultimate end probably still a few decades away, which still leaves some time for the Big 5 to salvage something for themselves. They can survive (although they have no hope of being as powerful) if they make some smart and fair changes and compromises, but there will eventually be no use for them in their current form, as word of mouth marketing through the internet as well as other forms of e-marketing will be cheap and easy for any artist to do themselves, and overpower any marketing campaign based in traditional media on a cost:results basis (the ratio between actual cost versus the actual results). They will have to adapt and evolve like all other businesses in order to survive.
In the end, music will not be what it is today. Again, not to say what we have today isn't at all good, the variety of good music is rather good, but the truth of the matter is, that we no longer need to be limited to the 7 colours of the rainbow the big labels have put in front of us for so long, we will soon find the full spectrum of the countless colours found in between the former 7. As another example, go back to the days of 8 colour monitors. Back then you thought it was good because what you had before was simply black and white ... but eventually evolution needs to progress, and even if you were happy with your 8 colour monitor, I guarantee you'll be much happier with a 16 million colour monitor.
The way the Big 5 and the RIAA are trying to tell the story, is they're saying mp3's are going to take away your rainbow, take away your 8 colour monitor, or in effect destroy the music industry. They're scaring all the important decision makers, and the fact of the matter is, they're telling the truth for the most part, it's just that they're leaving out the details in hopes you'll interpret things differently. They hope that you think that you'll lose your rainbow, when in effect you will actually lose it, but they don't go on to say it will be replaced by one with even more variety. They hope you will think losing your 8 colour monitor will mean you will have to go back to black and white, when the truth is, it in fact means you can now have a 16 million colour one. So finally, they're hoping you'll think mp3's and P2P will be the death of the music industry ... because they are absolutely right, the music industry as we know it will be dead in a matter of years ... but they're neglecting to tell you that it will be reborn into a beautiful butterfly ... lol ... they're just upset because they know all they'll be left with is the useless cocoon as the butterfly flies off freely into the sunset ... lol!
Above I described the role of top 40 (pop and rock) music mp3 sites and more significantly the multitude of peer to peer networks out there. I'm not sure if the actual main personal reason of their respective creators for starting was the ethical reason to fight the big labels and unfair laws, or if they're just doing it for the music, or if they're actually trying to get something from it all (trust me, there is VERY little money to be made in such sites at the moment, and definitely not enough to justify the work as more than a hobby you love to do). I'm sure very few of them realize the whole big picture, as it even goes significantly deeper and further than what I've touched upon in this text here. If the main reason they are in it is to help force compromises from the RIAA and the Big 5, and to reform and change laws, both current and proposed, then they have my full support. Hopefully they all realize that completely free legal trading of mp3's isn't necessarily the ultimate goal, and that ultimate goal should be some sort of compromise, which might include free exchanging, cheap downloading, a tax based royalty system, something completely different that I haven't even thought of, or more likely, some sort of combination.
By compromise I do not mean meet exactly in the middle on issues ... Not at all. The goals should be different depending on how unfair the current or proposed laws, situations or realities currently are. In most cases, I feel it is the Big 5, the RIAA and related laws they support need to move significantly more than do those working against them. But working towards total abolishment of these laws and annihilation of all major record labels would also be a dangerous situation, so when the time comes, we must be prepared to start paying a few cents per song and/or support other ways to help artists support themselves in the long run.
People need to ask themselves, are they a pawn in this elaborate game, a pawn who has no clue of the overall big picture? Are they someone who just does his or her thing, by downloading music for free or alternatively by taking the side of the RIAA of fighting against freer music (or digital information) distribution, either way without really giving a serious thought as to what's going on in the big picture or the long term consequences of their choices and actions? Or are they a player in this complicated game, a player who is fighting for one side, or the other, knowing full well what he or she is fighting for and the reasons for it. The irony is, in the end it may not really make a difference whether people are aware of their part in the big picture or not, but it is simply something to think about. How will the masses even recognize when a goal has been established if they were never aware of the goal in the first place? Regardless of what side of the fight people stand on, they should really try to inform themselves of the big picture and the consequences of their actions and/or inactions.
Many people say mp3's should be free without fully understanding what that actually means. While at the same time, many who oppose any changes or increased freedoms don't even take the time to study how harmful, unfair and unjust the current situations and laws are, and what possible alternatives exist. I personally feel that the more people we can get to understand all aspects of all the issues that make up the entire "Digital Rights" debate, the sooner and closer we will be to a workable solution that will stand as a fair compromise. Distribution, sharing and discussions of all this information is the key to opening everybody’s eyes to the reality at hand and the choices ahead (can you see now why I'm in support of the movement for the freer distribution of digital information?).
I don't pretend to have a perfect solution to all of this. But I do have a large number of ideas that may or may not help. What is clear and obvious to me however, is that I see a current situation that is far out of hand. I also know that we must all work together to find real tangible solutions and compromises that in practice as well as they do in theory. Nobody on either side of this great debate has enough knowledge on the subject to come up with the perfect solution ... but by working together and sharing ideas, we can at least move things in the right direction. The trick is to be as constructive and open-minded as possible on issues of such importance. Let's just hope we can implement a working solution sooner rather than later before it's too late.
2- How Homeofmusic Fits Into the Big Picture
So ... where does that leave non-commercial mp3 sites like homeofmusic.com which concentrates on the less popular Electronica genres of Trance, House and Club music? Genre that the big 5 have virtually ignored due to their lack of mainstream success because it is much less practical to market cost-effectively. There have been several reasons why I started, grew and continue to maintain this site, of which, four are the most noteworthy. The most obvious, is for the simple love of the music itself. Another big reason, is to create a community and unite people from all over the world. The third main reason, is help inform people of important issues that affect the community and its members. The final reason, is an offshoot of the third, but it's to specifically bring awareness and information to the masses on the direction the music industry as a whole, due to actions of the big 5 record labels, due to problems in both proposed and existing laws, and also due to the influence of the internet. Again, that was the short and sweet version, what follows, are the details of each of those main points:
Reason 1: - For the love of music! I simply love Club Music. I love listening to it. I love that feeling you get when you listen to a new amazing remix. I love sharing good music with others so that they, in turn, can help spread the best music out there today, the music that deserves to be played but is often overlooked due to limited distribution.
I love making Electronica as a whole more popular. I cross paths with people on-line all the time, and constantly get: "Wow ... you're the guy who started homeofmusic.com? I totally loved your site! It was the reason I first got into Trance!" or "I would never have gotten into House Music if it wasn't for your site" or "Homeofmusic.com is where I got the inspiration to finally get into DJing" or "Ever since you posted my mix on your site I've been more and more successful and have now actually have some music officially released on vinyl!". It is such a great feeling knowing you've been able to change, affect or help people in a positive way or expose them to things they enjoy that they might have otherwise missed.
In the past, through Homeofmusic, songs got exposed to hundreds of thousands of people through further sharing and through the thousands of DJs who visit the site then play the songs in hundreds of clubs and parties all over the world. Many of these songs would have otherwise never had gotten off the ground in getting promoted, and would never have gotten the same exposure as they deserved.
It's even cooler to come to grasps with the fact that homeofmusic.com has made a tiny contribution in the evolution of club music. As time goes on, at some point in the future, I'd like to be able to look back with satisfaction, that the site played a strong part in the natural progress of club music as a whole. From inspiring, educating and directly helping artists both new and old, to making the Electronica scene stronger as a whole by promoting all the great tunes people might not have found if not for the Homeofmusic community. I truly love the fact that Homeofmusic is directly responsible for several mixes becoming significantly more known and popular than if the site wasn't there.
So with all the other issues and political reasons for the site, which are extremely significant and serious, it's important to realize that none of this would have even started if not for the music !!! :)
Reason 2: - To bring individuals from all corners of the world to form a community that values, respects and tries to learn about our differences while trying to work together towards common goals and enjoying and discussing similar interests. For it to be a place where people can learn from each other, so that at the end of the day, everybody is the better for it. A place where friendships can develop based on who people actually are and based on real tangible things in common ... not because of age, race, religion or culture. Running a site like this is a very tedious and time consuming job, there are occasions when I wonder why I bother. But then I have moments when I see a 50 year old DJ take the time to give advice to a 15 year old looking to buy his first pair of turntables, or when I see a DJ on a tiny tropical Pacific Island discuss mixing techniques with a DJ in Alaska, or moments when I see a Palestinian club music fan and a Jewish club music fan simply discussing a particular mix they both like. Moments like that, more than anything else makes the thousands of hours I put into the site all worth while. It are those moments that fill me such hope and amazement and make me believe that virtually anything is possible and any two people in the world could get along if they just took the time to communicate and find common ground, to listen and most importantly to try to at least understand points of view that are contrary to their own. This happens all the time in the homeofmusic community forum and since it started, there have been an uncountable number of new friendships created because of it!
People often wonder why I have set rigid rules against vulgarity in the Homeofmusic community forums. One of the many reasons, is that vulgarity is the result of hastily formed words that usually is spawned from a moment of frustration. Almost always, a better, clearer, non-vulgar and more precise way to word a statement without vulgarity would better serve to communicate a thought of message. In Latin, the literal translation for vulgar is 'the lack of experience in things beautiful'. This has been interpreted by many to mean 'vulgarity and obscenity is the literal crutch of the inarticulate' and 'vulgarity becomes such a psychological crutch that they feel an inability express themselves in meaningful language'. Ultimately, it represents the inability, or worse, the unwillingness to communicate and express oneself clearly. Also, due to the international nature of this and many music based communities, there is a much greater chance of misunderstandings, as many people often take things literally when communicating in second languages, so sometimes vulgarity is interpreted as a verbal attack, when its original intention was for humor or just laziness. Because if you use vulgarity when there is a better and clearer method of communicating your thoughts, then it is sheer laziness and disrespect towards members in the community, the goals of the community, the actual community itself, and ultimately towards the artists and music on which this community is based.
As I said, regular usage of vulgarity within a community shows laziness and even worse, the unwillingness to communicate in a professional manner. There is an even bigger reason why such behavior needs to be avoided in a community like Homeofmusic. We are trying to fight for something much more serious, whether we like it or not, we are part of a battle where getting people to respect us and our ideas is the ultimate goal. How can we expect others to respect our ideals and ideas if we don't even make an effort to communicate them properly and clearly. Nobody will ever respect us if we can't even show respect ourselves. There are other reasons as to why I frown upon the use of vulgarity in some forums, such as the fact many minors are exposed to and are influenced by such forums, but the main fact the overall mission and message of homeofmusic is so important is by far the most relevant reason, as it is impossible to ask others to respect us if we don't even respect ourselves as a community. I don't think I can stress that point enough.
When people within a community regularly behave abusively and show a lack of respect for others, they just make the community look like a bunch of people who can't act responsibly. In our case, it's extremely harmful, in that it could easily be interpreted by the governments and politicians of the world that we as internet users can't be trusted to behave responsibly on serious issues if we can't even behave responsibly within our own community. The lack of respect and responsibility through the internet is one of the RIAA's main arguments for many of their cases. By not being responsible, we are simply giving them ammunition to use against us and our cause.
Back to the community level, communication between languages and cultures is often very frustrating, but with seeing the value in overcoming those frustrations on a large scale, can prevent needless hate and anger we so often see in the world today. On a global scale, these misunderstandings (or not even attempting to understand) have eventually escalated into wars or have been the root reasons behind dangerous acts of terrorism. The more we realize we are more the same than different, the easier it will be to live at peace with each other. The key to this realization is communication. This is true for every level of society, whether it be between next door neighbours or between countries and nations. Communities are not important because they represent a bunch of people together, communities are groups that communicate with each other, which is why I list 'community' as one of the most important reasons for having Homeofmusic.
Sometimes we must actually fight for peace and freedom, but there is a lot more to the fight than just bloodshed and wars (although sometimes those are unfortunately the best of several terrible options), but by opening the channels of communication and understanding, we can actually create and explore new options for future problems and conflicts. If two cultures get to know and understand each other over time, then chances are they will discuss problems rather than go to war over them. It may all seem a little dramatic, but people who can relate to each other and understand each other are less likely to turn to more drastic measures, because once they see the similarities and things in common, it would be like attacking part of themselves. Also, as communication between different sides develop and progress, it becomes more and more apparent that understanding and compromises can be made.
Music, with the messages it conveys through song, aided by the Internet can help to bring the world together by bringing people together to communicate over a common interest (music), even people who otherwise might have found themselves on opposing sides of a future battlefield. More specifically, Electronica has the potential to do this even more profoundly, as club music communicates even more internationally, as it not only has vocal messages (that can be lost in translation), but it also brings out ra | | |