"Dealing" With Casual Piracy

Quote:

What should the music industry do to address casual piracy?

Nothing!

The question people should be asking themselves is whether piracy is essentially a bad thing. I would agree profiting from it is, but not the practice in and of itself.

Piracy in the developed world's neither a social nor an economic problem. There's nothing at stake but the revenue margins of a few territorial conglomerate labels, and the possible loss of one market for the relevant manufacturers (discs, jewel cases, etc) as more of the music trade moves online.

At any rate the net has turned all suppliers alike into buskers, and that can never be reversed. Filesharing is more powerful than any PPP social engineering initiative, which is what this paper seems to suggest trying. The Decca Group and the rest must work out how to remain viable within the new parameters or simply close down, and the individual consumer must ask themselves if they want to pay the busker for a top product or just accept it free.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by BM

The far better solution to the RIAA is not to steal from the RIAA, but to render them obsolete through competition.

Your far better solution's long since been in play, and is steadily making the RIAA and its clientele obsolete: potentially costless music. Less secure prospects for revenue generation won't be killing music any time soon.

PS. LeHah, if rightful remuneration's a concern, Johnny Williams is going to get paid a shitting mint for the next self-derivative OST (as always) whether we open the wallet or hop onto Mininova.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

To suggest that up-and-comers somehow need a dinosaur infrastructure and business model to make music is the height of cynicism. And at any rate, to use the Williams example again, the majority of music makers are going to be plying their trade in the context of a wider industry, eg. TV, film, interactive media.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by BlueMikey

Do you really think there is a public need for free music?

There's a timeless social need for music as a non-commodity, which is why I find it so hard to understand how people can defend the notion that if you create music and get it out there, you have some sort of 'right to profit'. A far more sensitive and reciprocal model for the future of music commerce would be that creators/suppliers have an opportunity to profit - if they can sufficiently impress the listener to open their wallets. This is exactly what a technology like the net is providing right now, but everyone just wants to have a sook.

In fact I'd even be pleased if music traders were in the game merely to break even, instead of this insatiable thirst for profit, which leads only to aggressive litigation, draconian security methods, the infantilising drama of cashed-up celebrity, etc. I daresay the big producers invariably break even already. But of course that Possibility of Slighty More Profit If We Employ Piracy As a Price-hike Scapegoat! always beckons.

Originally Posted by LeHah

You're forgetting that to get attention to merit any type of those mass-media contexts, they need exposure - which means SALES.

New Line does not need Howard Shore to flog 500k copies of a score in order for there to be a thriving film music industry. Shore does not need to flog 500k copies in order to get rehired. That's ridiculous.

Nor do 'pure' music artists necessarily need hardcopy album sales to gain exposure. You can pester community and public broadcasters for airtime, put up a Myspace, do the odd pub gig or enter am/pro competitions. Only the last two will in some cases entail commercial transaction at all.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by BlueMikey

So, what, musicians are the only people who can't decide how they get paid?

Musicians certainly can, but if they get cunty about it, we'll all know.

I think extant and future players in the music industry should fundamentally operate like buskers. The jury's still out on whether or not this would jeopardise the ability of artists to earn a living from art, and I daresay it'll rule in my favour. Tomorrow's labels will just have to focus hard on concert revenue (provided tomorrow's rockers aren't labels unto themselves).

We pay top dollar for a genuine painting and peanuts for a poster of Guernica. The industry solicitors should let poster duplication slide.

Quote:

So you go in to work today. Your boss calls you in, rips up your employment contract, and tells you that you are going to get paid what he feels like paying you. He's not going to tell you why he's paying that much, he's not going to tell you what he's going to pay you tomorrow.

Sounds like something we've got already.

Originally Posted by LeHah

You don't understand the [blah blah flop mah cock about]...

On top of that, sales don't mean anything to a composer. Time and time again, a score doesn't ever get a release. Franz Waxman's score to the 1954 movie The Silver Chalice got released last month; do you think that he suddenly didn't get any work ever again because they didn't release this score for 53 years?

Lol gday reading comprehension o_].

I was speaking idiomatically.

If you'd put it back in your pants, you might realise we're not disagreeing on that point. Album sales are irrelevant to a composer's ability to get paid or re-employed.

Have you always been like this?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?