#93 Music Piracy
March 30, 2008 by clander
White people have always been renowned for having ridiculously large music collections. So when file sharing gave white people a chance to acquire all the music they ever wanted, it felt as though it was an earned right and not a privilege.
When (not if) you see a white male with a full iPod, ask him if all of his music is legal. If he does not immediately launch into a diatribe about his right to pirate music, you might have to nudge him a bit by saying “do you think that’s right?” The response will be immediate and uniform.
He will likely rattle off statistics about how most musicians don’t make any money from albums, it all comes from touring and merchandise. So by attending shows, he is able to support the musicians while simultaneously striking a blow against multinational corporations. He will proceed to walk you through the process of how record labels are set up to reward the corporation and fundamentally rob the artist of their rights, royalties and creativity. Prepare to hear the name Steve Albini a lot.
Advanced white people will also talk about how their constant downloading of music makes them an expert who can properly recommend bands to friends and co-workers, thus increasing revenues and exposure. So in fact, their “illegal” activities are the new lifeblood of the industry.
When they have finished talking, you must choose your next words wisely. It is considered rude to point out the simple fact that they are still getting music for free. Instead you should say: “Wow, I never thought of it like that. You know a lot about the music industry. What bands are you listening to right now? Who is good?”
This sentence serves two functions: it helps to reassure the white person that they are your local “music expert,” something they prize. Also, it lets them feel as though they have convinced you that their activities are part of a greater social cause and not simple piracy.
If you bring up this issue with white person who says “nah bro, I don’t give a shit, Dave Matthews has enough money as it is.” You are likely dealing with wrong kind of white person.
In the even more rare situation where someone says “it’s all paid for, and it’s all transferred from vinyl.” You have found an expert level white person and must treat the situation carefully. 
Because of the availability of music online, a very strict social hierarchy has been created within white culture whereby someone with a large MP3 collection is considered “normal,” a large CD collection is considered to be “better,” and a person with a large vinyl collection is recognized as “elite.”
These elite white people abhor the fact that music piracy has made their B-sides, live performances, and bootlegs available to the masses. Their entire life’s work has been stripped of its rarity in terms of both object and sound on the record. The best thing you can say to them is: “vinyl still sounds better.”
However, it is recommended that you do not let this conversation drag much longer. If you let them continue talking to you they are likely to spend hours talking to you about bands you’ve never heard of and providing you with a weekly mix CD of rarities that you do not want.
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Such a heated discussion.
Well, it is stealing. And I steal. And it is bad.
Can’t really justify it in anyway.
It is what it is.
it is not stealing if the other person is GIVING you access to it, now is it?
Im in a medium sized indie band (over 200,000 records sold worldwide in total, toured the us over 15 times, europe, australia, 4 full length albums) and while downloading doesnt really hurt us, because most of the time people that download come out to a show and buy as shirt which give us much more money than if they would have bought an album in a store, if everyone that downloaded our album had bought it we would have gone gold or platinum. I support downloading, but it does affect how a band comes across to their label.
this is the 21st century. Why do so many musicians, bands, singers, etc feel that they really NEED to go thru the labels? You know you sell your soul to get onto a label (they get 94% of profits on the FIRST album….why? because they said that they took the ‘risk’ on ‘giving you’ an opportunity…..an opportunity to do what? make them tons of money while you do all the work.)
you know already that you are making a hell of alot more money touring than you are getting from your record label….
I would be a lot more inclined to pay for a CD if they didn’t cost $20 to buy and $.0000001 to manufacture. Sure, I know a lot of the purchase price goes towards the recording and marketing costs, but c’mon… Remember when CD’s came out and they cost more to buy than cassette tapes? WTF? A cassette tape has moving parts! It’s a complicated device that is expensive to manufacture! A CD, on the other hand, is a slab of plastic that costs next to nothing to make. Pirating MP3′s is a direct backlash to an industry that tried to jack prices in the 90′s even as its own costs plummeted. No sympathy for the devil, or those who sign deals with him.
As a musician who makes their living from performing (among other things, such as teaching piano) some of the responses here seem heartless and ignorant. I don’t mean to attack you personally, Dr. J, you’re just the most recent post. I would, however, like to share my side of the story. I am an independent artist with no immediate plans to form a relationship with a label in this chaotic time in the industry. My album cost around $17,000 (four years of my own savings) to make, and I don’t expect to make that back directly through album sales. Still, even with my realistic expectations that I will lose money on the album, I find it offensive when people burn it, or buy it only to rip it and re-sell it on Amazon and the like. I put four years and every cent I had into making some music I hoped people might want to buy, so when they take it without paying their tiny share of the costs, it sure feels like stealing to me.
(By the way, each album costs me about $6 just to manufacture, once you factor in licensing/publishing costs, and forget about studio time etc. This .00000001 figure you’ve come up with is not true for me or any of my colleagues.)
You were ripped off paying that much to produce an album. Sorry to say but the fact that you thought $17,000 to produce(and why do you need licensing and publishing for an album?) was justifiable makes you a troglodyte. In 1969 that price would have been realistic, today the same can be done for less than $500. SHOP AROUND! Lol.
pussy, i play music and i give shirts and cds away for free.
fuck yeah. if you’re in a band to make money your band probably sucks anyway and no one’s going to want to purchase your cd.
Why do you distribute your music on plastic discs? Oo Noone uses them anymore y’know..
Doktor J slam dunk!
check cd’s out at the library and burn them with your computer. who gives a shit if it’s illegal. I have a huge music collection and don’t feel inclined to explain how I got the music to anyone.
I think I’m really cool too because I have a huge music collection that I listen to on my iPod, while I’m wearing a sweater and a Motley Crue t-shirt and a scarf, watching a soccer game, eating hummus with sea salt, my dog at my side, while doing yoga in my New Balance shoes and drinking coffee and tea at the same time.
Oh yeah, I voted for Obama, buy organic, am vegetarian, snowboard, like to go outside, get movies from Netflix and I’m really sorry for all this, although I find it all a little ironic and offensive at the same time.
Damn, I have bangs too! Well. count me in as one proud ass white chick, haha
YOU ARE THE PERFECT HUMAN BEING WILL YOU MARRY ME
my kind of girl, except for eating hummus…
I have to agree with what Dick Chaunce is saying about people stealing and not understanding that it is wrong but i also have to agree with what Cookie is saying about how artists can use torrents and downloading to their advantage.
First something most people miss is that artists do depend on album sales for quite a lot. If an artist does not sell enough albums then they will likely be dropped from their label or simply have no tour support from them making it near impossible to tour and get their music out to the public. This will in turn directly effect the money you could make. While yes many bands are rich beyond the wildest dreams of your average American when Metalica for example filed their lawsuit it was not just them they filed it on behalf of a extremely long list of musicians that could not afford the lawyer fees to say this is not ok. anyone who actually looked into this would know that.
If a band can not sell records then they dont get to tour they dont get on the radio and they dont get to pay rent support their children buy their basic groceries unless they start working a day job which will only negatively impact their ability to produce quality music on a regular basis.
If you enjoy an artist then you should support them go to their shows buy their cds (directly from them at the show if possible but if not then from a store or on the internet like CD Baby Amazon or Itunes) buy their merch and tell your freinds about them or just play it in your car and let people know who they are if they ask. DO NOT TORRENT 100% of their work and tell your freinds to do the same because that will ultimately kill the band you love so much.
Second : Some bands have realized that they can not continue to ignore the power of torrents and the instant gratification it can bring to their fans realizing that the government and lawsuits will most likely never stop torrents they have chosen to embrace the technology and use it to their own ends. In a previous post someone used the example of what wilco did with their albums in recent years. Not everyone knows who they are but none the less a good example. I am going to use the example of Nine Inch Nails. Trent Feznor has revitalized his music career in recent years due in no small part to what he offers his fans. He provides torrents on his own website of music files from his albums for fan made remixing and then those remixes can be posted on the site for all to hear. He has produced a 100% free album which later went on to sell well in stores when he released a deluxe version of it.
It is possible to move forward and realize the potential of the technology but at the same time saying it is ok to steal just because it is there or to say well i bought it and i am simply putting it out there for anyone in the world to have for free is just putting on the blinders and placing a gun to the head of the bands people love. If you like them or are not sure about their music because you heard only the one song go ahead find more but then if you like it go out and buy the cd. If you dont then dont keep it and dont buy it. But do not download torrents of anything and everything you enjoy and then complain when the band gets dropped from the label and breaks up because they need to go work in a restaurant to pay their rent and provide for their loved ones.
You obviously don’t know how the music industry operates, do you? Because if you did, you would know that artists were not making any money from their work BEFORE there was an internet or limewire.
It is the labels that make the money from the labor of these artists. Musiciians are a dime a dozen and unless they can produce hits with at least 3 albums (usually the third album is when they get majority proceeds since they’ve now proved that they are a consistent money maker for the label), they are treated like toilet paper: used to hype up a particular song they’ve created (but the label receives most of the royalties due to ‘marketing’ the artist). Afterwards, that artist is usually gone with the wind as a one hit or two hit wonder. They would make more money going on the road singing their one or two hits in small to medium venues than they would collect from the music labels that marketed them.
Get over your little pipe dream of bands being ‘hurt’ by torrents or limewire or any other so-called ‘download’ software. If what you said were true, then we would be reading about RECORD LABELS going out of business due to so-called ‘stealing’.
When have you read or heard about a record label going under recently?
not.
hahahahaha…this one is true
Whats wrong with downloading music, its there, its free, and these motherfuckers arleady got money. Im not taking the food off their plate. So what if they have to get a benz instead of a bentley. If its such a problem then stop making music cause your not gonna stop music piracy.
You’re a thief and a douche bag. Stealing is stealing no matter how you rationalize it.
OK Why don’t people just admit that music piracy is stealing? If you are pirating music you are getting something for free that you wouldn’t otherwise. You are also depriving the artists of money. Please don’t go on about the evil record corporations who supposedly fleece the artists.
It just seems so simple to me. Just because it is easier to download an album than it is to steal a CD from Best Buy doesn’t make it not stealing.
Yes I sometimes pirate music. I have also stolen clothes and groceries and candy. I am therefore a thief.
fuck the artists
if they actually care about getting their music heard, they’ll find a way of living with file sharing, if not, it’s their problem and they should have done something worthwhile with their lives instead of having fun making sounds.
the term stealing obviously does not apply here; as for “intellectual property”, read this http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/dcm.html.
let’s see:
I buy the music. right. Now usually when you BUY something, it is yours, right? That is what OWNERSHIP means. right.
I take the music I BOUGHT and put it on my computer, right? Then i go online with the music THAT I BOUGHT and i make the music THAT I BOUGHT available for others, right? I BOUGHT IT, so it is mine to do what i see fit to do with it, right?
so where is the stealing?
god damn, you’re obnoxious
well fuckyouvery much for your comment.
beeeetch.
Giving away someone’s art instead of telling them to buy their own CD takes food away from their children’s mouths. Especially independent artists. If you cared anything about the artist instead of being selfish, you’d do the right thing.
I hope someone breaks into your house. If they get caught they can say, “He makes enough money.”
Just because something is reproducible does not mean you have the right to copy and distribute it even if you bought it. Similarly, the people that download the music you bought are breaking the law as well. Its called intellectual property and it exists to protect the investments of the creators.
Well explain what i paid my money for. It is like i bought the music and if i played it loud for a block party, am i breaking the law by ‘distributing’ the loud music into others ears?
Intellectual property laws should be changed. In this day and age, the cat is out of the bag. Digitizing is here to stay, and blame it on the greedy corporations who STILL charge more for a crappy CD (which has maybe two good songs on it) than a movie DVD!
People are willing to pay for a product, but not when they know that the product is way overpriced.
i don’t care either way about “stealing” music or whatever…
i mean i buy music and pass it around (because i love feeling like a music guru, obviously!)
but i think the “ownership” thing is a huge loop hole that i’m sure the man has though about…
i could be totally wrong but, when you buy an album you are buying it for yourself, not for others. it’s like the FBI warning at the beginning of movies, basically you are not, legally, supposed to publicly share them…
just a thought!
so you are a candidate to go to jail next time you let your friends or family come over to watch a DVD movie, because, as you said, you are buying it for yourself and you are sharing the view with people other than yourself, right?
just a thought.
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lol white people
This guy, to me, comes off as really mean spirited. Maybe he’s different in person, who knows?
I don’t necessarily think it’s right or wrong. The fact that it’s even an argument seems somewhat ridiculous. If a band is smart, they can use this sort of thing to their advantage. One example is Wilco. In 2001 Reprise gave Wilco rights to their latest album for free when they dropped them from the label for not producing something commercially appealing. Wilco didn’t want low quality mp3s of the songs out before they signed with a new company, so they released the full length album for free on their website in September. I saw them in concert early spring of 2002, right before the record was officially released. Jeff Tweedy made some little joke before he played a song, like “this is from the album that’s not out yet but everybody knows the words to” and he laughed about it. The tour was a huge success. It’s their best selling album to date. They’ve done the same thing with other records since. And guess what? We still buy the cds. Because if the music is good you want the real thing too.
When bands do the little PSAs about how wrong stealing from them is and how much it hurts, etc. – it turns a lot of people off. It’s not only condescending to fans but the bands themselves look like puppets.
And as for copyright infringement, I look at it this way : I sell my photography online, which makes it very easy for someone to save a photo to their computer and print it. They can also claim it is their own or distribute it. Sure, I would love for people to buy the photos from me – that’s the best outcome I can hope for. But if someone chooses to print my stuff out and hang it on their wall, I am actually honored that they appreciate what I do. If someone takes my work and credits themselves or tries to profit from it – that’s when I have a problem.
“When bands do the little PSAs about how wrong stealing from them is and how much it hurts, etc. – it turns a lot of people off. It’s not only condescending to fans but the bands themselves look like puppets.”
Condescending? But it’s not condescending at all when “fans” steal the music, right? Puppets? You think it’s just the record labels who care whether or not people are actually buying the records? Unbelievable. It is literally astounding sometimes how stupid people can be. Clearly you don’t make living off of selling your photography online. A lot of musicians make their bread and butter selling records, not touring. This whole thing about “it should be flattering to the artist that people are stealing the music” is as naive and uninformed a comment as can possibly be made. It really pisses me off when people who know absolutely nothing about the music business say that. I have news for you, music isn’t “all about the fans.” It is such a selfish and ignorant notion that people think they are “entitled” to the music for free and that the band should be glad so many people want their music. Musicians work hard to make a living, just like everybody else. You wouldn’t walk into a store, steal a piece of candy, and offer the argument that the owner should be flattered that you like his wares so much. It is the exact same thing. You pay for your groceries, you pay for your clothes, you pay for your cable TV, and you pay for your music. The fact that anyone still has to explain this to people is beyond evaluation.
Did you even read what I wrote? Or did you just pick a sentence to get pissed off about? My whole point was that bands can actually use this to their benefit in order to increase record sales and I gave an example of such. Furthermore, do you understand the definition of condescending? A person who enjoys music and wants to hear it is not looking down on the artist. A major label propping up a band and giving them a script for some melodramatic commercial calling people thieves? Seems kind of condescending to me. I know a few small bands in the Atlanta area. They don’t make money by touring. They want to sell as many cds as possible. But they don’t mind online exposure either. In fact, they sometimes release free mp3s of live shows to the incredibly appreciative fans on their myspace lists.
Maybe this is where things get muddy for you though. When you speak of “bread and butter” and musicians working hard to make a living, you’re talking about the music industry I assume (since you say I know nothing about the music industry). You also say that many bands don’t make money by touring. And yet the bands I just mentioned, the small ones who don’t make the money by touring, don’t make their “bread and butter” by selling albums either. These people have regular day jobs for that. Which brings me back to the reason they don’t mind the mp3s online – they’re trying to make a name for themselves. They are artists who want to be heard. And it works pretty damn well.
And as for *This whole thing about “it should be flattering to the artist that people are stealing the music” is as naive and uninformed a comment as can possibly be made.* If you’ll actually read (can you do that?) what I had to say, you will realize that those words are not there. That naive and uninformed comment was made by you.
Two more things : #1 – I don’t buy my clothes. I make them. #2 – You come off as both pedantic and solecistic, but not quite funny enough to make my Elitist Asshole Top 10. Keep trying buddy, you’ll get there!
The “comment” is the sentiment expressed by people who advocate music piracy and try to excuse it. It’s implied all over this thread and in your post with, “but if someone chooses to print my stuff out and hang it on their wall, I am actually honored that they appreciate what I do.”
“These people have regular day jobs for that.”
Exactly Cookie. I’m not talking about some desk jockey who’s really hopin’ for the big time someday and plays out at the Brew ‘n Burger on Thursday nights. I’m talking about professional musicians, composers, people who depend on their album sales to pay rent. Somewhere along the way in this artistically inept climate of American Idol, Youtube videos, MySpace etc. where everyone and their mother thinks they’re suddenly an “artist” because they can “put their music out there,” people have lost sight entirely of the fact that professionals do this for a living, that not everyone is a hobbyist who likes to sing karaoke. And confusing some myspace saturday night band (who either works in accounting 40 hours a week or has mommy helping out with the bills) with a professional musician is the first mistake in the equation.
“A major label propping up a band and giving them a script for some melodramatic commercial calling people thieves?”
Wow. I mean, wow. Ask Metallica if they were “propped up” by their label to take a stand against piracy. Ask ANY professional musician. You really think the bands don’t care about it??? I don’t know what bullshit music business 101 class you took where they told you artists make nothing off of album sales, but you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. Music seems to be one of those topics that everyone thinks they are an authority on, just because they “like music.” It really boggles my mind. I wouldn’t presume to argue a clearly wrong and bullshit point about medicine to a doctor. I don’t know why people seem to think they “know the biz” so well that they can somehow justify that stealing is right, but just ask a professional musician whether or not he/she advocates music piracy.
Stealing music is illegal, but more importantly, morally wrong. Especially if you actually LIKE the artist. You’re taking money out of their pockets, especially if it’s an independently produced record. If they offer their album for free, great. If not, pay for it.
As for your “Asshole List,” I’d love to be submit, but I’m already being considered for another high school freshman’s top ten list this week. Thanks though.
Very well said, cookie. A close friend of mine, who recently discovered that his latest release is available on a variety of torrent websites, was flattered at the outcome. But then again, he is not attempting to acquire “boats n hoes” through his musical endeavors. I suppose an “artist” with such aspirations would be upset with the lack of revenue.
“Boats n hoes?” How about paying rent?
How very white of you to assume that the “boats n hoes” group you are referring to cares any more than jimmy buffet about music piracy. Must be nice to be able to sit back in white boy land and pass judgment on lives and backgrounds you clearly know NOTHING about!
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