Since the tired old subject of piracy was recently revisted on another thread, I thought it might be of use to link to this. I found it through Andrew Sullivan's site and it might help with people not making the same arguments over and over again.

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/


There's a lot in it but I think I agree with Sullivan that the following is the key bit from David Lowery.


"The average income of a musician that files taxes is something like 35k a year w/o benefits. The vast majority of artists do not make significant money on the road. Until recently, most touring activity was a money losing operation. The idea was the artists would make up the loss through recorded music sales. This has been reversed by the financial logic of file-sharing and streaming. You now tour to support making albums if you are very, very lucky. Otherwise, you pay for making albums out of your own pocket. Only the very top tier of musicians make ANY money on the road. And only the 1% of the 1% makes significant money on the road. (For now.)"

Mike

From the opening paragraph...
"Recently Emily White, an intern at NPR All Songs Considered and GM of what appears to be her college radio station, wrote a post on the NPR blog in which she acknowledged that while she had 11,000 songs in her music library, she’s only paid for 15 CDs in her life."

So her illegal downloading of 11,000 songs didn't result in her spending more money on other works by the musicians she liked after sampling those illegal downloads?

The most telling part of the article:



However, even with that accounted for, I'm not sure what your point is. Nobody on this forum has ever suggested that's it's fine to never put money into the system. To my memory, there were three main piracy advocates on the forum, and our opinions were:

Allen: he puts so much more money than you into art (such as comics) that his piracy results in more cash for copyright holders than your legality. So if your concern is lost profits (as it seems to be in this article), his piracy should not concern you.

Me: the vast majority of piracy does not result in lost profits. So again, if your concern is lost profits, the vast majority of piracy should not concern you.

Charles: the myth of piracy harming the starving artist is bullshit, and even accounting for that, an artist (his example was Kafka) isn't ethically due total control over his art. If your concern is lost profits, your concerns are with the commodification of art, not the support of artists.

Your response here, to all three, is: "but I'm concerned about lost profits!"

'kay.



Interestingly enough, I seem to remember someone on the previous piracy thread saying that the problem with piracy was that it's forced... forced!... the poor record companies to start taking a bite out of the sweet, sweet touring money that used to be the struggling musician's sole source of income. Weird how piracy can both hurt that sweet touring dollar, and force artists to rely on that meager touring dollar at the same time.

Either way though, I'd be interested to know where the author is getting the notion that "until recently, most touring activity was a money losing operation." I suspect this means "until recently, most touring activity was a money losing operation for the record company." Fighting anecdote fire with anecdote fire here, but I've never known a professional musician who didn't earn the lion's share of their income from touring.

Yeah, that has always been my understanding too, would have been nice to see some facts backing that up their claim.

Why do record companies still exist? Do they serve any useful purpose in this day and age? What advantage to they offer to musicians over DIY?

Seriously, I'd like to know.

Publicity. They have resources for advertising and distribution.

I think Ceci accurately summarizes the pro-piracy arguments.

Maybe some will find this interesting: a friend of mine regularly gives out copies of his band's CD, and just gave me a copy. If you're a fan of 70s technically proficient art rock and particularly Queen (Chris, Allen), you'll probably love them: Into the Presence. (Yeah, that's basically an ad, but only because I think they're pretty damn good at what they do.) Yes, my friend regularly rips CDs, too. EVERY musician I know does this, and I know quite a few. They also buy more music than the average American.

Oh yeah, 11,000 songs ain't shit. I've got something like 60,000 (much of it from CDs I once bought, but got rid of). And the Emily who sparked the linked essay, wrote, "But I didn't illegally download (most) of my songs." The real tragedy in all this streamable, iTunes-downloading culture is that few are listening to the music in a LOSSLESS format. iTunes and Amazon give you a shit quality, that's particularly awful if you're listening to jazz or classical.

Yeah, touring is the way that my favorite band, The Grateful Dead, made most of their millions. Additionally, the GD's Bob Weir and Phil Lesh still tour with their band Furthur, and they sell soundboard recordings of their shows. You can purchase pre-made audio CDs or purchase/download in FLAC or MP3. Plus, after a few months, they make the soundboard shows available for free streaming at archive.org ( link ). I love these guys!

Here's a link to a great show (track 1 has around 3min of crowd/tuning before the music starts, so you may want to FF): Stream me!

(Show Info) Furthur Live at Radio City Music Hall on March 26, 2011

And you gotta laugh at the rhetorical strategy where musicians are dying because of our listening to music for free. Should workers out there in the world who make less than $35K/year without benefits (e.g., more than 50% of workers in California, which is one of the most costly places to live in the US) really worry about listening to music for free? I'm wondering why more people aren't killing themselves (accompanied by their favorite ripped Joy Division tune).

1. The average amount of money made by musicians who file taxes is not an anecdote.

2. How many professional musicians have you known?

Mike