The Power Of Free Music
In a world where SoundScan sets a minimum price to appear on their chart is the most valuable perch number one at the Pirate Bay?
Let’s start with what everybody seems to be interested in, money. What’s the best way to make a lot of money?
The major labels knew how. They controlled radio and retail, not allowing anybody else to play. And they reaped all the rewards.
To this day it’s almost impossible to get your record on the radio if you’re an indie act, and in the days of physical retail, if you weren’t aligned with a major, you could never get paid, no matter how many units you sold.
This is the game the content industries are trying to cement in stone with SOPA/PIPA. It’s got nothing to do with theft/copyright infringement. That’s a smoke screen. They want control.
And online, they’ve lost it.
Pretty Lights, an act with no label who answers only to himself built an empire on giving his music away for free.
So what would you rather have? The revenue from sales of an album or a career where you could go on the road and make millions, over a hundred thousand bucks a night?
This is what the Web has empowered, this is what the content industries want to stop.
Read every word of the above article.
And when you’re done with that, read this press release from the Pirate Bay:
I’m not saying I endorse the Pirate Bay’s position, but it does raise the question of the cleanliness of the copyright holders’ position but more importantly it asks whether it is truly possible to shut the operation down.
I’m not saying we should shrug our shoulders and give up fighting piracy, I’m just saying we should fight infringement with business solutions. It’s hard to argue against piracy when one has to wait months to rent the DVD or stream a file of a film now playing in theatres. Why? Why not allow me to pay for the privilege?
And allow me to pay for streaming music services, where I can hear what I want on demand instead of having to find a BitTorrent seed, download the file, decompress it and then import it into iTunes just to find I don’t even like it.
In the old days, Pretty Lights would have to sign with a major label, where he would be beholden to their release schedule and creative input and would get a tiny share of any revenue accumulated.
But in the old days, a major label never would have signed Pretty Lights. Because radio didn’t play electronic music, there was no market for it.
But the Web demonstrated that there’s a huge market for electronic music, that’s what blew the scene up, the easy availability of files and the rabid discourse about the music and concerts.
This is the new world.
And if you don’t think it’s better than the old world, you’re one of those rich media companies as opposed to an individual, who has no trouble paying for what he truly wants if it’s delivered in a fashion that accommodates him.
Also, you’ve got to know where in the food chain to charge!
Like that old joke goes…
The baby bull says to the papa bull, "Let’s run down the hill and screw one of those cows!"
And the papa bull replies…"Let’s walk down and screw them all."
Don’t be blinded by the old model. The greater riches for the greater number of artists and people is in the new world, undeniably.
