TweetI spent part of last weekend cleaning out my CD collection. By that I mean I threw it in the trash. Some of the albums were somewhat obscure and stuff I’d probably never find in a store. But I threw them all out for the simple reason that I don’t need them anymore. I can find every single song that was on every one of those CDs online. I can either download them to my iPod or I can just listen to them on YouTube or any number of online music portals while sitting at my computer.
A big part of what motivated me to throw all my CDs out was a need for simplicity. I hate having all those CDs lying around taking up space. That’s also the main reason I don’t buy physical books anymore. I still like the feeling of touching and holding a book in my hands. Physical books provide a sensory experience that electronic books never will. But the joy of that experience doesn’t outweigh the psychological convenience of not having a bunch of books lying around taking up valuable space.
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A close friend of mine is a 50 Cent fan. He owns the entire 50 Cent discography. But he hasn’t paid a dime for it. Like him, I enjoy music tremendously, but never pay for it because I know where to find anything I want for free. Do I take perverse pleasure in being able to find all this free music? No. Do I feel bad about getting everything for free? No.
I don’t think about it much either way. I do whatever’s convenient. This issue of free is a very sensitive one for a lot of people because it touches on the issue of fairness. Many people will make the argument that downloading isn’t fair to artists, labels or the industry.
But as we all know, fairness can be a very fluid concept, depending on who’s doing the talking. One of the reasons it’s problematic to invoke fairness when it comes to the music industry is because in the grand scheme of things, the music industry isn’t all that important.
That statement could sound insensitive to anyone who’s in the music business, so let me explain it. By the way, I was involved in a music venture myself several years ago, so I’m not ignorant to the realities of the music business.
Fairness does exist in nature. It’s a fundamental human moral sentiment. We all have a capacity for it. When somebody is wronged, we feel bad because we put ourselves in that person’s shoes. But fairness occupies a spectrum. Some things in this world are deemed more important than others and require a greater invocation of fairness to enforce.
I think it pretty much comes down to how close something comes to denying a person the right to life. Except for the most hardened criminals, we can all agree that killing innocent people isn’t fair(and is in fact evil) and should be met with severe punishment. Taking an innocent life is the red hot tip of the fairness spear. The further you get away from that, the more fluid the concept of fairness gets.
One of the reasons the whole health care issue in America has kept popping up over the decades is because it’s heavily intertwined with a lot of right to life stuff. That’s part of the reason people get so emotionally heated over it. Many liberals and Democrats believe it’s a basic human right. But it isn’t as morally clear cut as, say, murder. Not everything about health care is related to life and death so there’s more room for the opposing side to argue. But most people will admit that many elements of it are fundamentally about fairness and sympathy in a way that taxes and guns aren’t. National defense is another life or death type issue and that’s why it eats up such a disproportionate part of the yearly national budget and nobody really complains.
So where does music file sharing, free music and all that stuff fall along the fairness spectrum? Pretty far away from the right to life stuff. That’s why most people don’t think twice about it the way they do about many other things. Except for the people making a living from it. In fact, I would put nearly the entire world of business and commerce in that category. It’s all very important, but just not from a moral standpoint. How do we know it’s relatively not that important? Just ask yourself which matters more, money or your health. You could go to any society in the world and the answer is always the same.
File sharing isn’t a moral issue, it’s an economic one. And business tactics are constantly changing with the times. You can’t make a solid moral argument for something as fluid as business models in the music industry(or any industry), partly because it’s too easy to construct a counterargument.
One hundred years ago we could have said that the rise of the automobile was unfair to the horse and buggy industry. But what about all the people later employed by the auto industry? Wouldn’t it have been equally unfair to them to never have had an auto industry? You could make the same argument for the music industry. Why should we deny opportunity to all the people who are going to be employed by future music business models just to maintain the status quo? But neither am I saying that the status quo is bad or evil. All I’m saying is that we can’t make black and white moral arguments about this stuff.
We complain about file sharing and all things digital wreaking havoc on traditional music distribution and livelihoods. But what if ten years from now, we’ve figured out even better business models that take advantage of all the new technologies(and I have reason to believe cloud computing/streaming will have something to do with it)? Will we continue making the same arguments we make today? I don’t think so. Better things are coming. Adaptation can be painful, but the winds of economics demand it.
March 23rd, 2010 at 7:18 am
I been thinking about that quite a bit lately. If it wasn’t for all the loss of profit in the last ten bad years or so due to the advent of internet in the mainstream we wouldn’t of ever pushed the boundaries of how the music industry can find new ways to market all these new artists as You have talked about in many other great blogs u have posted.
For example, from my own experiences just googling any artist and their album throws up more illegal d/l sites than legal ones and therefore newer smaller artists and labels get more promotion off these obscure illegal sites than emusic, itunes etc.
For example… In the House music scene… I search for deadmau5 BUT I also get wolfgang gartner, jerome isma-ae, and Orli & Marti thrown up on the search.
Ive become a big fan of the latter names mentioned ONLY due to the illegal sites popping up rather than legal stores. Its the only way u really know whats hot and whats not in other parts of the world
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:11 am
That’s an excellent point Bob. I think a lot of people don’t realize how helpful it can be to just have stuff out there whether you put it out or someone else did.
March 26th, 2010 at 11:00 am
I don’t agree with your fundamental argument.
It could be used to justify all sorts of wrong behavior, such as insurance or tax fraud, for example. No murder involved, and the harmed parties probably don’t feel it from in individual’s infraction.
But once society adopts that moral philosophy, other bad things increase, I believe.
But that’s a long debate.
March 26th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Hey Mika,
I enjoy your blog. I think you have a lot of interesting perspectives regarding the climate and overall state of the music industry. I appreciate the the fact that many of your ideas are beneficial to many of the new bands that really don’t have a lot of places to get innovative sugestions to get their music heard.
A few of your blogs (and this is one of them), however, have a few elements that I’m a bit taken back by.
As in the following;
“But as we all know, fairness can be a very fluid concept, depending on who’s doing the talking. One of the reasons it’s problematic to invoke fairness when it comes to the music industry is because in the grand scheme of things, the music industry isn’t all that important.”
To say that music “industry” isn’t important to people is simply ludacris (not the rapper). First of all, an industry is essential. Without an infastructure of some sort, how does the general public go about discovering the new “Beatles”,”Muse” or “Ludicris”. Would there be radio? How would they know what to play? Do you actually think that the majority of individual bands have the capability, experience and technical skills (much less the money) to produce,package and market their own music with any scope? Most bands don’t have enough money for guitar strings. Which bring me to my point.
Without an industry (not to suggest I’m a fan of the current hierarchy) there would be utter chaos. People would have to be willing to sift through millions of bands to find ones they like..Sites like the one you and your buddy go to wouldn’t be able to sell advertising to porn sites to pay for all their hosting infastruture
Best,
S
March 26th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Scott, I appreciate the point you’re trying to make. I do think music is important in many people’s lives, including my own. I’m just looking at the idea of music on a more philosophical level. Our idea of how we should view and interact with music is fluid and changes over time in a way that our idea of how we should view something like murder doesn’t. The crucial difference is that one has to do with life/death and the other doesn’t. If we got rid of the music(or film) industry tomorow, the world would still go on fine. But if we got rid of laws against murder, it wouldn’t. When I say that the music industry isn’t that important, I only mean it on that level, not a subjective one. Hope that makes sense…
March 27th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Scotty, I have to disagree. The music industry as we know it is no longer important. It is only self-important.
Sure, we can imagine a time in yester-year when if not for the almighty “industry” deciding who we should like and listen to, we’d have had no one.
Those days are (or should be) long gone.
Radio sucks. I knew that back when it was still the only “choice”. Rotate the same top-40 (yes, Virginia, EVERY radio station is top-40) ad nauseum.
Thankfully, I’ve not needed them to tell me what I like for quite some time now.
Utter chaos? How about better choices.
There are a number of sites that perform the act of “sifting through millions of bands” to find the ones you’ll like; and most of them do it quite well.
The one I’m most familiar with is last.fm — just type in an artists name and click Go. Couldn’t be easier.
It was not until my discovery some years ago of last.fm and a couple other sites; that my eyes (and ears) were opened up to catch a glimpse of the entire music universe. There is just so much more out there than what those top-40 radio stations and their self-important industry will have you believe.