Bb's RealTech

Josh Ellis had an interesting post on this recently:
http://www.zenarchery.com/?p=248

Maybe I'm unique, but I buy my music on amazon mp3. It's just more convenient.

People do pay - even with the zero-cost option, Radiohead made more from In Rainbows than from digital (ie, iTunes Music Store) versions of all their other albums. Even Reznor predicted and expected the other volumes would be available from the Pirate Bay in his announcement he'd uploaded the first volume himself.

What did you think of the recent spate of "freeconomics" articles?

Nice favicon. With the Gecko 1.8 # bug, the gradiant under Topics doesn't appear, leading to white text on a white background. Where did the comment preview go? Comment editing is nice, but there's no hint you can do that before posting. Hmm, and my a tag got an XHTML error on submit, but not on editing.

Good to hear a bug has been submitted for that Gecko problem.

Had deleted the wrong JS file, Preview is back.

XHTML is under work. Thanks for comment on favicon.

As for this article, can Reznor speak for all artists? Because he has enough money, do they? Yes, Reznor uploaded the first volume — but that was the volume he wanted to be free, wasn't it? As for Radiohead, I've not heard that its download experience was positive.

The point is, all the old reasons for fire sharing were removed with the NIN experiment, but people still put the for pay part of the album out at the pirate P2P sites. People want music from artists, but don't feel they have to pay for it.

What kind of privileged asshole feels he or she deserves something for nothing?

Shelley, something missing from the conversation is the fact that, with few exceptions, artists don't make money off of albums and never have. For artists, albums have really always been more like a promotional vehicle for concert tours.

What may be emerging now is Internet as new promotional vehicle. We have a couple of perspectives on that idea over at Michigan Innovators. Ron Suarez is setting up do-it-yourself music promotion (longish). Al McWilliams has abandoned the digital master (i.e., albums) as a revenue generator.

I'm on a FF3 nightly, and things couldn't be better with this site. BTW, lack of support for the <a> tag in the original comment form is irritating.

"Shelley, something missing from the conversation is the fact that, with few exceptions, artists don't make money off of albums and never have."

Bud, it doesn't matter who makes the money. Where do people feel justified in posting anything online for free access that's created by another person? Where does anyone get off making the decision for every artist, or music publisher that they have an obligation to give their work away for free?

This is about people who most likely can afford the music, but feel privileged and that the rules don't count for them. After all, the world exists for them.

I feel it is legitimate for people to make a digital copy of a purchased music cd or DVD for their own use, and if RIAA started going after that, I'd join this fight. But what I'm seeing is not only do people rip music, they publish it so others can rip the music, and then pat themselves on the back for thinking they're some kind of rebel.

Don't think the record companies deserve the money? Don't buy the albums. But copying the music and thinking you're "sticking it to the man", is nothing more than a thin disguise over a self-centered wish to get something for nothing.

As for people who give their music away or whatever, great! We'll check in a few years and see how well _all_ of them do. However, they haven't the right to speak for all artists. No one has the right to determine how other people exercise their rights.

I've also removed the current XHTML validation until I can get something in less buggy.

Bud, check out the link I posted (and the comments). Josh Ellis contends that tours are generally underwritten by labels *because* of the expectation that they'll make money off of albums. If that symbiotic relationship ends, it will be much more difficult for bands to finance tours.

What Michael said.

Michael and Shelley, there are a few issues in here: (1) How you make money; (2) Whether you allow people to copy your stuff. Shelley, I'll simply point out regarding 2 that there are a few positions to take on this point. One is an Abbey-Hoffman-like steal-this-book (remember that classic). Clearly some bands are supporting that by uploading the files themselves. Torts only occur when you can demonstrate actual damages. If you actually support file uploading, you are not being damaged. However, if you don't, then you might be.

Coming back to making money. Well, there are all sorts of models for that. Most indie artists I know personally are not being underwritten by record labels. They are self-financing operations making money off of concerts.

I suspect that my position is fundamentally amoral. I'm not overwhelmingly alarmed by music sharing because I think music prices are inflated and that we are being coerced into paying too much for CDs. Or perhaps more accurately, I think there is higher morality in giving consumers what they want at a price they can afford.

Ok, let's get one thing out of the way - the entirety of Ghosts is CC-NC-SA so uploading it to a torrent site is fair game.

NIN just made $750,000 as the $300 super-ultra-deluxe-über-limited edition sold out its 2500 copies already. What's the lesson here? One, that the requisite attribute NIN and Radiohead have isn't money, it's fame. Two, that people are still willing to pay for physical objects, and to some extent convenience (the $5 option). Another example of this is the Baen Free Library, where sales of books have increased after they were made available free online. Or eMusic, where 67% of the (DRM-free) catalogue sells every quarter. Has O'Reilly tried putting current books (not out of print ones) online in their entirety and seeing what happens to sales? I'll grant technical books are somewhat of a different market to music and fiction so it might not work out, but it must be worth a try.

What kind of privileged asshole feels he or she deserves something for nothing?

Me. If the marginal cost of distribution is zero, charging for distribution is just rude. So the question becomes what value can one add such that people are willing to pay for it? Physical objects are one way, and paper books create an emotional bond. People are also becoming more accepting of making a voluntary donation after using a product and deciding it's of value to them. Ah, here's the link I was looking for, Better Than Free which lists 8 ways to add value to free.

Ars Technica (yes, most of my links in this post are from there) have an interesting comparison of copyright today with property rights in history. The freeconomics articles I referred to earlier are on ReadWriteWeb and Wired. More bonus links: Capturing The Demand Curve, Publishers Phase Out Piracy Protection on Audio Books.

James, it may be legal, but I'm not really talking about the legality of the act. The band put its fans on the honor system, and they really didn't act all that honorably.

It's nice that they made the money selling all those $300.00 sets. Most bands or artists couldn't do such a thing.

As for something like the Baen library, I use that. The understanding for that site is that the downloads would be good adverts for other books, specifically series. The site also takes donations, and I've donated at it, and Gutenberg, and ManyBooks. Why? I've giving value back.

I do the same with the open source software I use. Either that, or give them nods in my weblog or books. Again, I'm giving value back.

When you download the music from Pirate Bay, what are you giving back? What's the value you're adding to the transaction? A little space on your computer so someone else can grab it? But you just got through saying that when distribution is free, it has no value.

Very few tech book vendors will put books online for free. We provide chapters, examples, answer questions and when the book is no longer going for a printing, it gets donated to the public domain if we concur. Would people be more likely to buy our books if we gave them away for free? Maybe the stars, but not the bread-and-butter authors like myself.

I guess I could ask the stores if they'd give me food for free. Kind of like passing it on. The utility companies, though…I think that might get kind of tougher.

All I'm asking is, what value are you giving back? Well, not "you" specifically, but the people who download music on the P2P sites.

Thanks, very much, for providing links to the articles. See? Now that's value

What kind of privileged asshole feels he or she deserves something for nothing?

in my experience with both major and (so called) indy record labels, i would have to answer that question with: Record Companies are the kind of privileged assholes who feel they deserve something for nothing.

when i put out my first lp, my "indy" uk label was paid 250,000 pounds by geffen us to buy me out of that contract, of which i saw zero, except some equipment to keep on recording. then virgin fr licensed the lp for re-release in europe (only) and i saw exactly 11,000.00 dollars which i had to pay back before receiving any residuals from sales. they recouped, are still selling the lp in violation of the original contract, i have never seen centime one and, oh yeah, i lost my house in the states trying to fight them in court. i don't have the money to fight them.

i am not an isolated case. this happens to everyone i know at the lower end of the scale, aka: shit end of the stick.

this is not a guess on my part. i am not speaking from a cory "i strip the vowels out of any comment that offends me" doctorow privileged pov. i am speaking from my experience, and similar "fringe" artists whose stories i know first hand, not some story i read on a blog.

i downloaded all the songs from jonathan coulton i could for free, listened to them for a while, then at christmas i bought them all for frank as a birthday gift. because coulton deserves it and i know that no record co is getting their bloody hands on one cent of mine for it.

brian, over at bmo, just posted that he just bought the new NIN's, after having heard some of the free stuff.

there is a middle ground here. there must be. unless you are content to end up listening only to what some shit a and r record co exec guy (usually failed male musician in my experience) wants you to hear.

in any case, the horse is already out of the barn. the record co industry is nothing but a large group of plantation owners, the artists are the sharecroppers who are forced to work in the fields all day and spend their money at the co store which charges exorbitant prices just for the meager essentials to survive at below poverty level. sure, some artists make it to the pillared house to work and some even marry the plantation owners and some eventually take over. but that's rare.

i would think the tech publishing industry is not that much different.

madame l, I'm sorry you had such a lousy experience. But in this case, Nine Inch Nails had no record company involvement. It was them and the fans.

The value is the bandwidth you provide to others, which is how p2p can be free, but paying $5 to NIN is in part to cover the cost of running their servers and connection to the internet.

I was just discussing with someone the other day how one of my dream jobs would be providing relevant links to people on the internet, but that I doubted I could find a way to make it pay (Mahalo isn't it). This doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing it - I find it enjoyable, I'm good at it and I like the thanks I get from the recipients.

if we campaign, will we be poopooed as scolders? people are used to getting their music for free. it might be too late to make a stab at changing. is there such a thing as a viable pity economy or is that panhandling? that book "Freakonomics has a bit on economies that rely on people leaving money for goods used without accountability.