Here’s the story: friend A lives in Germany and is an avid fan of Bruce Springsteen. Which is why he knows that there’s promotional free download of new Springsteen song exclusively on Amazon, who recently opened their DRM-free mp3 to UK users. Friend A can’t download the bugger, even though it’s DRM-free, because he is in Germany. So he asks me to download it and send it over. I can’t. Amazon gives me a message that mp3 sales are only available in the US – whole pile of rubbish taken into account that the UK store has just been open. I presume this particular mp3 is only available in the US, but they didn’t bother changing the message (very smart Amazon, here goes few hundred customers – down the drain). All this we are discussing on certain microblogging service. Predictably one of the US friends picks it up, downloads the mp3 and then it gets distributed among all those interested, who are based in Europe. On the occasion another friend remarks: ‘Pretty sad when you have to pirate a free song’.
Pretty sad indeed. I don’t blame Amazon on this occasion, I would have guessed this part of the deal was on the side of the record company. All tied to release dates and deals between companies on different continents. It might be free to us, but to them it’s all investment that we will pay for when we buy the album. Because that is the assumption, that we will like the song and therefore buy the album.
It might work for the 4 people left in the US who don’t know Springsteen’s music. ‘Oh, look, free mp3 download! Bruce what? oh heck, let’s try it, it ain’t costin’ me nothin’…’
For most of us this is a legal mp3 file released for free on the internet which we can’t legally download due to geographical positioning (and not extent of our interest in Bruce Springsteen). Get on with the times, Columbia, I beg of you.
If the title of this post indicated I will give here some answer to current pressing issues of the music industry I apologise upfront. I won’t. It’s one of these ponder posts, thinking out loud (very loud) in a vain hope that some one who knows better will hear and answer it for me. Outsourcing my curiosity – or ignorance, depending which way you look at it.
What I have been pondering is that soon there will be little need for physically downloading music to one’s machine. We might well be listening to everything via streaming, because we’ll be online all the time - most of the ones who would download miusic any way (just for clarity I’m am taking about the audience who’s primary source of music is digital download).
So a good opportunity to get rid of the middle-man presents itself (and everybody dislikes the middle-man): it might end up working like radio on demand. Then services could pay more to artists who people stream most, or even more so – we would pay the artists as much as we’re prepare to based on their asking prices, in a perfect incarnation of totally free market first introduced to us by ebay. I was trying to find out how this goes on in the subscription services such as Napster or streaming services such Spotify – but obviously the sort of deals they do (and my assumption is they are different type every time) are not very publicly available. This is sweet but not dead informative:
Spotify – the story on Vimeo. If you need a Spotify invite send me an email.
Except this would not be very protective of less popular, niche artists and as it’s the culture of human race that s at stake we should protect them. You wouldn’t want the next species to rule the world to only find traces of Britney Spears. Right? The current record industry is not protective either, except for the indi one, but even that tends to be difficult. As my friend said in conversation on this topic ‘it’s a shark pool out there for small artists’.
So here we are in position to actually improve things. The reason I’m writing about this is that there is quite an animated discussion over this topics in the independent film communities, but somehow music industry, including the unsigned artists seem to desperately stick to the old models and not talk much about possible changes. Of course it’s not entirely the same situation, as pay-per view, big hope of independent film online won’t really work with 3 minutes long songs (although pay per playlist of album doesn’t seem like an entirely stupid idea).
This would of course require drastic change in the culture of thinking about content online – i.e. if there is a way of getting it free, by whatever means, it’s alright to get it for free. It’s all well and nice to protest (and rightly so) against the amount of money production companies and distributors rip of the listener while paying small percentage of it to the artist. But let’s say they are not there, that we have distribution model that allows direct dealings between the artist and the listener. Would we pay?
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Comments ( 5 )
RT @binarylife: some thoughts based on yesterday’s discussion re free bruce springsteen mp3: http://tinyurl.com/88pq58 x
springsteen (Springsteentracker) added these pithy words on Jan 06 09 at 3:21 pmNice assessment of the situation. To clarify some things about Springsteen’s case (note, I am not tyring to defend the man here, although I *do* love his music): I doubt Columbia did this. From what I hear, Sony/BMG (who owns the Columbia label) is negotiating these deals which seems very likely especially with the Amazon and iTunes deals lately. It is well known that Bruce got so much money for even *sitting down* to negotiations with Sony/Columbia after “The Rising” that some people at Sony/BMG got in trouble. I think that Sony is hard pressed to get a return on investment in this case. Not that I want to defend them either, since anything Bruce does is guaranteed to sell millions of copies in the US alone (he is a very, very deeply ingrained household name over there, much more than in Europe).
But I really think this is Sony/Bertelsmann not getting it. Or possibly Amazon (although I doubt that). Columbia is already pretty much out of the game with these decision, I think. Of course, it could also be Bruce himseld or his management imposing this restrictions, but somehow either The Boss nor Landau seem the type to me. Besides, Bruce is already VERY, VERY rich (just look at what the Rising & Magic tours grossed). I doubt he cares.
But I agree, whoever decided this, does not understand the world in 2009 *at all*. It’s not like this will crop up on the torrent sites even if they sold it, after all. And I would bet that about 90% of the people downloading this (especially those that learned about it from backstreets.com) will be buying the album on the 27th anyway. Bruce has pretty much the most dedicated fans in the business and he knows it.
As an aside, all this shouldn’t distract from the fact that they *did* release an *unprotected* and *free* mp3 of a song before the album was out, though. This should be commended, even if somebody fucked up the actual execution.
Fab added these pithy words on
Jan 06 09 at
11:28 am
Fair point, I should have clapped my hands for them, it is a step forward is suppose (one forward, two back).
It is true that Springsteen (I like how you call him ‘Bruce’ :) is a special case, I only recalled him because that’s what we were talking about yesterday.
I wish the evaluation of such things was a bit more open and thus less dependent on marketing of the artists and more on what people are actually willing to pay. Democratization of music, if you like.
ana added these pithy words on
Jan 06 09 at
11:45 am
Most of his fans call him Bruce and he’s OK with that, which is neither here nor there but shows that he really is a bit of a special case.
Anyway, I like your take on this but I think changing this will be up to new artists. Something like severedfifth.com. What I don’t get is people who are just starting out, who bet their lives on an oudated model. People like Amy Macdonald (who is younger than me, for frak’s sake). I seems to work for her, but how many are there that are even better that you never hear of? Somebody like Dylan would probably be playing for a few cents in some bar (if even that) these days. That makes me sad…
Fab added these pithy words on
Jan 06 09 at
11:58 am
Interesting article and as you know it’s a subject very close to my heart as a musician. I hate the current music industry model, people would say I’m just bitter because it didn’t make me famous or something but it’s really not that. It’s so flawed. There are some great independent labels out there working hard for their artists and they’re really all that’s kept new music alive for the last 30 years. Exciting new artists never get a chance with majors, they start on small labels and then when they’ve proven they can be successful they get snapped up by the bigger sharks. Nirvana being a good case in point, essentially created and nurtured by the Sub Pop label (2 guys who liked music in an old house) they were “discovered” by Geffen and his major label after they’d already done 2 albums. The majors couldn’t find their arses with both hands. They really don’t give a fuck about music, they could be selling furniture or anything, it’s not about art. I don’t blame them, they’re just being themselves and trying to make as much money for as little outlay as possible, that’s business but that doesn’t mean we should allow it. I think there are artists who get this new model and trying to do it for themselves but musicians rarely care about each other. The old industry is designed to have us at each others throats, “if he has a number 1 single then I can’t better sabotage him” kind of attitude. Independent artists should be organising and getting together to strike deals with distributors, shops, merchandisers and the whole thing. In short what we need is a union, call me an idealist champagne socialist if you like, I know unions are not always positive in the end but I really believe in this climate it’s what we need. I’m a member of the Musicians Union but they don’t really do this kind of thing. They only concern themselves with live performance and session musician rates. Billy Bragg (another lefty of course) has gathered a group of artists together to form a group which will hopefully grow and be a force to reckon with the major labels in time. I can’t remember the details of it right now but I’ll dig out more for you. Ok sorry I’ll stop ranting now before this comment becomes longer than the original post ;)
Dan added these pithy words on
Jan 10 09 at
9:43 pm