The Great MP3 ethics thread

I think that I'm the poster-boy for this. Earlier this year -- fed up with my tiny Lower East Side apartment toppling over with all of my CDs and records -- I began ripping my entire music collection onto a 250 gig external hard drive attached to my iBook. It took about four months of ripping, and the entirety of it ended up being about 200 gigs. Then, a few weeks ago, I took about a quarter of my CD collection to Other Music and sold it, and I'm readying another batch to sell off as we speak. I struggled for a while about doing it, about how much fondness/nostalgia I have for the physical artifact, and finally I just decided that it wasn't worth it. That -- not to get too romantic here -- music isn't made in a pressing plant, so why the hell should I act like that CD is the music rather than being just a vehicle for it?

I didn't start file sharing until last year. A friend got me into some private file sharing group with an FTP server, and while I occassionally upload things, I am primarily a downloader, snagging maybe an album or two a week. My day job these days is as the managing editor of a prominent legal file sharing website/service focusing solely on independently made music, and my position affords me a limitless account of downloads, so on some days I'm snagging as much as 10 gigs of MP3s onto my backup external HD here at work.

None of this has anything to do directly with the ethics of MP3s -- something that I honestly find dull -- but my point is that pretty soon the whole ethical concept of digital music will be a moot one, like a farmer still stubbornly hanging onto his horse and buggy clopping along the interstate pondering the ethics of the internal combustion engine. The shift of music to a conceptual -- rather than a physical -- artifact is already complete. Think of the kids aged 12-20 right now who only relate to music via MTV or Kazaa. Do you think they really care if they have liner notes?

Of course the artists still need to get paid, and I guess I'm doing my part by participating in the cash side of the download age. But all we need is one label-less artist to have a successful album solely via the web, and suddenly the major label/MTV/Clearchannel axis can be sidestepped altogether, and perhaps the rules of engagement can be rewritten, even if only slightly.

Yancey said:

My day job these days is as the managing editor of a prominent legal file sharing website/service focusing solely on independently made music ...

...the ethics of MP3s -- something that I honestly find dull

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for the first time in my life, words fail me.

you're joking, right? this is a big wind-up?

if not, god save us all. especially the poor bands you're dealing with.

this is their L I V E L I H O O D! if people like you don't engage with the issue, who will? what happens in the future is moot - FWIW i agree with your final points - but there ain't gonna BE a future for music unless people start thinking very seriously right now about how downloading can work to artists' benefit. and i'd have thought a manager at a filesharing service would be the very person doing that thinking.

sheesh.

cheekybuddha said:

Downloading music provides a new means of distribution which can save the ARTIST costs in getting their music to their audience. How much revenue from cd sales goes on idiot marketing, laywers fees for tying artists into crippling contracts with their record companies who then go on to dictate what an artist produces, swanky record company offices, etc etc.

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yes. excellent point. this, surely, is what we should be aiming for. BUT ... this is a dream, an ideal. the problem is the here-and-now.

for established artists, the problem is their existing contracts: they can't just go bypassing their labels. and for new artists ... well, without the clout of a label/promoter/etc, it's a lot harder to get your website (the one where your listeners can download your songs at 5p a time) noticed.

the problem is that everything's in limbo at the moment. it's all very well for minor music-biz people like yancey postulating about a glorious new dawn, but the fact remains that the music business has to bring that about. how they do that, i don't know. but one thing's for certain: you can't expect the poor bands - the ones who are busy, you know, writing and performing and creating - to do it alone.

on a tangent, cds and space, the way forward is case logic cd holders, i swear by em

Yancey said:

But all we need is one label-less artist to have a successful album solely via the web, and suddenly the major label/MTV/Clearchannel axis can be sidestepped altogether, and perhaps the rules of engagement can be rewritten, even if only slightly.

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wondering for quite a while why that hasn't happened yet, i can think of two reasons.

(1) it's just an effect of how success is being measured. since nobody is counting downloads in the big free music exchanges, some music that is very popular is under the statistical radar, because it's success isn't being translated into measurable sales.

(2) Success (in the conventional meaning the music industry has been employing) is a function of focussed marketing. that means, unless there's some concerted (and expensive) effort at promotion, human taste is too random to focuss on a few pieces of music or artists that stand out in popularity above the rest.

but, as usual, i'm not sure!

grimly fiendish said:

for the first time in my life, words fail me.

you're joking, right? this is a big wind-up?

if not, god save us all. especially the poor bands you're dealing with.

this is their L I V E L I H O O D! if people like you don't engage with the issue, who will? what happens in the future is moot - FWIW i agree with your final points - but there ain't gonna BE a future for music unless people start thinking very seriously right now about how downloading can work to artists' benefit. and i'd have thought a manager at a filesharing service would be the very person doing that thinking.

sheesh.

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Well Grimly, I have nothing to do with negotiating the contracts with labels (we only deal with labels, never artists alone), so it's not like I'm fucking off by not considering these things. (My title is managing editor, which means hiring writers (some of whom are on this message board), assigning reviews, editing copy.) The bands that are on our site make out pretty damn well, assuming that the labels distribute the mechanicals the way they should. But our business model is actually a good one -- there's a very interesting article in the most recent <i>Wired</i> about the mainstreaming of niche businesses online -- and it's an effective way of exposing average Joes to new music, and along the way getting the artists a decent check.

I think that the answer to this "problem" (I'm not convinced that it is, neccessarily) is not to ban MP3s or move music back onto the digital realm, but to simply make people comfortable with the idea of paying for a file instead of a jewel case. With the launch of the iTunes store, I became comfortable with that, and buy at least an album or two a week from them. If the psychology of music purchasing can change -- where people don't feel ripped off without something tangible in their hand -- then the online music stores will become more successful.

Perhaps one way to approach it would be to draw more comparisons between music and film in the consumers' minds, giving the act of purchasing/listening to an album more of an event feel. I have no idea how to do this, but people are plenty satisfied with seeing a movie for $10 and leaving with only a ticket stub, or purchasing movies via PPV on their cable boxes. And Jesus, look at the DVD sales! <i>Passion of the Christ</i> sold more DVDs in its first week of release than the best-selling CD of the year will sell in all of 2004. (Incidentally, I downloaded <i>Passion of the Christ</i> when it came out and only watched the flailing and crucifixion scenes -- it's the only time I've ever downloaded a movie. I was thrilled to steal from Mel Gibson.)

Expanding on the material versus experiential point (note, experiential not spiritual).

It's an economic and sociological truism, well documented, that in affluent western societies, particularly Europe, there has been a shift in recent years from spending on material goods e.g. cars, watches, lawnmowers to spending on experiences e.g. holidays, classes, restaurant meals.

This is reflected in those countries undergoing a shift from a manufacturing economy to a service economy (obviously this is also connected to increased production of manufactured goods in developing economies).

That is not to say that people have stopped spending on material goods, but they are spending proportionally less.

The second point, is that if people stop spending money on cds, what do they do with the money they save? Do they put it in a bank account? Use it to buy jeans? Or use it to go to a gig?

There's no way of predicting this, but my inkling would be that a sizeable proportion of people will choose to spend it on music in some way, shape or form. It might be gigs, it might be t-shirts, it might be on some form of musical experience that none of us know about yet.

Evidence for this is ringtones. This is an area that did not exist 5 years ago, and now it is a huge industry. I don't know how much people spend on ringtones in a year, but it's a lot. There could be something else, equally leftfield, that will come along in the next few years and provide a source of revenue.

I completely agree that the shift to mp3s will cause massive changes in the economics of music, and may well cause a lot of people short-term pain.

But in the long term there are three things that don't change:

1) People want to listen to music
2) People want to make music
3) People will have money to spend on music

Music has survived a transition from a performance-only medium, to a patronage medium in the renaissance. From thence to an economy based on sheet music and from that to one based on recorded music. I find it very difficult to imagine that there will not be a similar transformation based on the realities of file-sharing and digital formats...

Backjob said:

Evidence for this is ringtones. This is an area that did not exist 5 years ago, and now it is a huge industry. I don't know how much people spend on ringtones in a year, but it's a lot.

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I remember reading that it was $3 billion last year.

christ, I feel like a total shit....not only did I d/l Grime 2 from Soulseek a couple of weeks ago, but then I just left it in my shared folder and now I'm back online and there's already a bunch of people greedily sucking it into their own harddrives as I type. Wot a total bastard I am. Still, this clearly illustrates the demand for Rephlex downloads, so hopefully they'll get their catalogue available online soon and we can all buy it legally...

sufi said:

just loving soulseek at the mo

i reckon if it wasn't for soulseek i jus wouldn't listen to music hardly at all

now i got:
super biton de segou, super eagles, faytinga, mulatu astatke, ahmadou & mariam, orchestre zembe zembe, orchestre los angel, orchestre mando negro kwala kwa ...

joy

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does anyone know if you can run soulseek on a mac (osx) ????

btw .. good discussion

orson said:

does anyone know if you can run soulseek on a mac (osx) ????

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You can do it using this thing: http://www.captnswing.net/howto/nicotine/. But it looks kinda complicated. I haven't had the nerve yet.

am i the only one here who doesn't use soulseek?

Not the only one...

mpc said:

am i the only one here who doesn't use soulseek?

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nope i've never used it .

The Prince Model

Yancey said:

But all we need is one label-less artist to have a successful album solely via the web, and suddenly the major label/MTV/Clearchannel axis can be sidestepped altogether, and perhaps the rules of engagement can be rewritten, even if only slightly.

Click to expand...

echo-friendly said:

wondering for quite a while why that hasn't happened yet, i can think of two reasons.

(1) it's just an effect of how success is being measured. since nobody is counting downloads in the big free music exchanges, some music that is very popular is under the statistical radar, because it's success isn't being translated into measurable sales.

(2) Success (in the conventional meaning the music industry has been employing) is a function of focussed marketing. that means, unless there's some concerted (and expensive) effort at promotion, human taste is too random to focuss on a few pieces of music or artists that stand out in popularity above the rest.

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The new comments caused me to sit down and re-read this entire thread at lunch today. The above posts caught my eye.

Somewhat like Yancey, I recently came to the conclusion that of the hundreds of CDs I own, I only have about 20 in heavy rotation at any given moment, and the majority of them sit in my desk at work, not in the CD tower I custom built ten years ago. I'm maybe unique in that I didn't really discover the glory that is house until well after it peaked (1996 or so). As a result, the majority of my music purchases are 12" singles. Casual listening tends to be either the aforementioned CDs or mixes I've recorded on Minidisc.

So, I boxed up the whole works and dumped them unceremoniously in my attic. There if I need something, otherwise out of the way.

While I was boxing them up, I came across some stuff by The-Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Prince-Who-Is-Now-Known-As-Prince-Again. Now here's a guy who's got the right idea: sells the mp3s on his website and GIVES AWAY no-frills copies of his latest disc at the gigs.

Makes me wonder why his example hasn't been trumpeted by more than just fans.

humm.. lets question the ethics of sellers rather than stealers (because the whole 'home-tapeing is killing music' is a dry hat that sucks egg......

Backjob said:

But in the long term there are three things that don't change:
3) People will have money to spend on music
{snip}
Music has survived a transition from a performance-only medium {snip} I find it very difficult to imagine that there will not be a similar transformation based on the realities of file-sharing and digital formats...

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Sellers of music know that a better 'sort' of person buys rather than steals, (in xchange for cash they get a stable format (HardDrives die suddenly and R-CDs slowly within aprox 4 years), presentation/context, quality, ownership(as least when played privately), and a fearless legal existance..

Lifestyle options with mp3s are a choice to those that wear white headphones, download music fromiTunes and want to be mugged.

Yancey said:

With the launch of the iTunes store, I became comfortable with that {snip}. If the psychology of music purchasing can change -- where people don't feel ripped off without something tangible in their hand -- then the online music stores will become more successful.

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(warning - yancey has stated his vested intrest in this point of view, being an employee of a company selling this business model)

Apple (iTunes), the current business model and all those that have influenced the current EU Copyright directives want to profit from actualy providing a service while representing that the consumer is purchacing a singular 'mp3' product ((try selling iTune music on ebay). Before iTunes we had eMusic (the original independant label mp3 service), you bought a service (unlimited downloads for 9.99 p.mnth), and explored via downloading vast catalouges that often were not avaliable else where (I have 4/5 of the whole FAX catalouge from Emusic )

This combination will not help artists earn a living. i.e. the current iTunes limited ownersip model (that limits ones offline music player by having to buy a singular tune rather than access to a whole catalouge) & it being now illegal to circumvent digital copyright protection (something that will cost small labels & musician more money to distubute music with).

sad note: the public have bought into this bullshit, the independant labels have sold out & i no longer pay independent labels and thier artists for downloading mp3's..........

wheres the consPiracy now?

ome said:

sad note: the public have bought into this bullshit, the independant labels have sold out & i no longer pay independent labels and thier artists for downloading mp3's..........

wheres the consPiracy now?

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the fact is most independent labels are aware of this, not all of them have got involved and governing bodies such as aim etc are trying to negotiate better terms.
However there are other business models .
tried http://www.bleep.com ?

I don't feel like I've ever fully fitted into the standard capitalist model of music consumption, whatever that was/is - listening to my parent's record collection, taping songs off the radio, home taping, borrowing cds from the library, collecting second hand records from op (thrift) shops and now listening to mp3s, as opposed to going out and buying new records/CDs. I did put together a collection of CDs over the years (although a lot were purchased second hand) but they were all nicked which sucked.

I like that MP3s are compact and portable, and make theft less easy (and sharing easier).

Also organising mp3s is awesome. Although I haven't tagged all my mp3s properly yet, I look forward to the day when I can create playlists based on year/genre or any complex search combination.

I like the physical artefact that records are - maybe something about their Aura if am I remembering Walter Benjamin correctly. Actually I think he might have been saying that only original art works (live preformances?) have that Aura - maybe records despite being commodities, have a bit more Aura than mp3s. Although mp3s can be commodities too I guess. (aside - is anyone into the band Aurra? - I have heard some awesome tunes by them).

I don't think art and music and capitalism should have to work together. Artists should not be producing commodities. They shouldn't be doing it to make a living. Except live performers. People should be able to work less and then more people could make art.

Making a living from music shouldn't be about putting a successful product out into the market.

What is primary resources like protein or oil were inifitely reproducible - would we still need a market to make sure they were distibuted fairly?

Anyway maybe if it is going to be harder to make a living as an artist in a digital world then there will be less artists and less art pollution.