People get upset when it comes to—well, call it “file sharing” or “music piracy,” depending on your point of view.
When Springfield-based WRNX 100.9 FM recently announced that a new album from Ray LaMontagne (who owns an estate in Ashfield) could be streamed from its website, local music photographer Doug Potoksky apparently misheard, thinking the album had been offered as a free download. He called the Advocate‘s offices to say that a download might be a buccaneering breach that would concern LaMontagne.
A call to WRNX’s offices set the record straight—the station was merely offering the album as a stream, and the streaming page even offers a helpful link for buying the album. But it’s clear all the same that the subject has great potential to whip up gale-force emotion, primarily among those who occupy spots somewhere in the flow of profit from music fan to—usually somewhere far down the line—musician.
I recently received another message regarding piracy concerns, an email from Jim Urie, president and chief executive officer of Universal Music Group Distribution and 2010 recipient of the National Association of Recording Merchandisers’ Presidential Award for Sustained Executive Achievement. It’s established orthodoxy that corporations are basically people too. But Urie raises the bar, casting Universal, the world’s largest recording industry comglomerate, as a victim: “Never before in American history has an entire industry been so decimated by illegal behavior.”
That’s especially rich coming from a company that, in 2006, settled for $12 million with the state of New York for allegedly engaging in the illegal behavior called payola. Then-Attorney General Elliot Spitzer said, “UMG and its labels—Def Jam, Interscope, Universal Motown Recordings Group, Uni-South, Universal Nashville and Verve—have agreed to stop making payments and providing expensive gifts to radio stations and their employees in return for airplay of particular artists’ songs.”
Urie’s email assumed that I was in agreement with his industry’s call for further legislation to protect its profits, and told me how to send a message to Congress if I hadn’t already done so. It also pointed me toward a Facebook page called Music Rights Now, “a community of individuals who believe music has value and is worthy of protection from online theft. We are songwriters, artists, musicians, recording studio engineers, managers, retailers, record company employees, publishers, performing rights organization employees, music producers, truck drivers, lawyers, stylists, music video directors, laborers, photographers, graphic designers, DJs, radio employees, music fans—and countless others—who have joined together to fight for the survival of artistry and the music industry.”
Think of it as We Are the World crossed with a corporate law convention. While the recording industry has a point, the presumptive and propagandistic language it employs is deeply offensive. These individuals “believe music has value,” so everyone else, apparently, doesn’t. And they’re fighting for the “survival of artistry.”
As a longtime musician myself, I find this effort quixotic. The recording industry is fighting not to preserve artistry, but to preserve its share of profits gained from running the business affairs of the largest musical acts on the planet, highflown rhetoric notwithstanding. Like many a musician I know, I’m happy to give away music online. If a CD gets copied, at least I’m getting heard. Anyone who wants nice artwork or other non-audio treats packaged with CDs still buys them, and I’ve always made far more money playing gigs than selling music anyway.
The recording industry could take the smart road and accept the changing reality of music consumption, but it is instead trying to entrench an antiquated system. One is reminded of their 2002 effort to copy-protect CDs. I remain uncertain why anyone would copy the Celine Dion album that came with that protection, but CD copiers simply circumvented the industry’s much-touted high-tech system by marking part of the disc with a felt-tip pen.
No matter what the recording industry masterminds do, they’re like the last defenders against the horseless carriage. The problem they face is that it isn’t just file-sharing fans who oppose their efforts to regulate the Internet. From their dizzy heights, they’ve missed a key issue: most musicians, the ones who don’t have deals with those massive record companies, want more than anything to be heard, not protected. Getting heard outside the recording industry’s bloated and limiting system is easier than ever. That’s a cultural force for the good, one that even sustained executive achievement can’t stop.
