[MeadowTheory]

Musician weighing in:

Musicians and bands had been making a living for thousands of years before the recording industry was invented, and they will continue to do so for thousands of years after the recording industry has crumbled to the ground (mostly due to their own greed and stupidity). While the recording industry certainly allowed some musicians to become filthy rich, that was mostly through exposure. Musicians have never made very much from the sale of recordings alone, and have always relied on touring and merchandise for the majority of their revenue. Today, even very popular bands, the ones that get the juicy contracts, are making pennies on the dollar on the recordings they produce (and before this gets brought up, so are the engineers and producers, most of the money goes to marketing and distribution, and then a big chunk to the various executives and agents). The situation is much worse for smaller and rising acts.

The truth of the situation is that the recording industry and their distributors have been exploiting the labor of hard-working musicians for the last 100 years. Many of the old blues men from our earliest popular recordings were never even paid, although men that they never even met grew rich from selling their work. The recording industry has been selling the same snake oil to us sense then, just packaged differently according to the musical tastes of the time. There will always be a collectors market for physical recordings, but it is time that we acknowledge that digital content can be delivered for essentially zero marginal cost, and that free knowledge and art have cultural benefits that drastically outweigh any financial gains that may be made by restricting access to them. (And if you are someone that can only be swayed by economics, I would argue that by encouraging innovation and free exchange of ideas, you will reap greater economic benefits overall, even though certain industries may suffer initially.) Moreover, as an artist, by sharing my music for free, I feel that I am being much more honest and forthright with my audience and that am able to reach far more people than I would otherwise.

The only people really exploiting artists are recording industry executives. If you buy an album you like, instead of pirating it, you're taking advantage of those artists. Go see them play live or buy a fucking t-shirt instead.

[snowwrestler]

The idea that piracy hurts big labels is laughable. They long ago read the writing on the wall and started signing new acts to 360 deals that give them a cut of every revenue stream.

"Buy a fucking t-shirt"? There are two possibilities.

1) The artist is signed to an exploitative label deal. If this is the case, the artist is not seeing any more money from that t-shirt than they do from an album sale. Nor are they taking home their gate, so seeing them in person isn't helping either.

2) The artist is signed to a limited or ethical deal. If this is the case, then they have a good relationship with their label, and pirating music will hurt them either directly (lost royalties) or indirectly (hurting the label and forcing succesful bands to sign with a major).

I'm sure you play music, but I think your sense of the industry is incomplete or not up to date.

[MeadowTheory]

So, you think that, because the major record labels have stepped up their game and started exploiting musicians further and through different channels, the right thing to do is keep feeding them cash? Give me a break. Your critique is targeted only at the issue as it pertains to artists working for major record labels. My whole point is that the recording industry was controlled an unstable monopoly based on price-fixing and exploitative contracts from the beginning, and supporting them does not, in any way, equal helping artists.

Although I'd prefer not to dredge this into a petty back-and-forth ad hominem contest, it may be your sense of the industry that is incomplete. Many smaller labels are turning to free digital releases, treating these as a form of cheap and highly effective advertising, and still selling enough physical recordings and merchandise to make a profit, all while giving a larger portion of the revenues to artists. By presenting the situation as false dichotomy between "stealing from artists" or not, you ignore the fact that there may be a better model for the industry as a whole, with more equitable sharing of profits, and you also ignore the incalculable social benefits of free and open access to information and artistic works. In the real world, moral choices are complex, and often you are presented with the choice between two bad things, supporting a fundamentally corrupt and exploitative recording industry that is expropriating profits through collusion and unethical business practices or possibly taking some money away from some people.

[snowwrestler]

> So, you think that, because the major record labels have stepped up their game and started exploiting musicians further and through different channels, the right thing to do is keep feeding them cash?

No. You're putting words in my mouth, and are seemingly incapable of understanding that the works of small, struggling, middle class bands--the kind who have always treated each other well--ALSO get pirated, and that those declining revenues have an impact on their lives.

Bands and labels that are small, indie, and love their audiences are not fighting piracy because they don't want to demonize or create conflict with their fans. Their fans reward them for that by taking money out of their pockets by getting their albums for free from a pirate site instead of paying the actual artists.

And worst of all, they think they're doing the artists a favor by doing it!

Of course bands and labels are releasing music for free now. What other choice do they have?? You can't fight a tsunami. They are making do with less because they have to. That doesn't mean it's objectively a good thing for the industry or the artists.

You're not alone. There is this amazingly powerful Stockholm syndrome where young artists have been convinced by people way outside the music industry (primarily technology) to argue vociferously against their own self-interest.

It's one thing to choose to give away your music for free as marketing--that's always been legal and always will be. And it's not a new or innovative idea...the radio has been doing it for 50 years.

It's another thing if you're trying to sell albums, and the albums are really popular, but you're still not making enough to do basic middle-class things like buy a house, take a vacation, have kids, save for college, etc. Meanwhile, everyone else in the ecosystem gets rich: ISPs, electronics manufacturers, software producers, websites that run ads, etc. Music labels are not the only companies who can exploit musicians.