Issue 12: I Download MP3's For Minors by John Book
What is the real reason behind the Recording Industry Association of America wanting to punish music fans because of active MP3 downloading? Why do other organizations in other countries want to do the same? Plain and simple: the industry does not want fans controlling the kind of music you listen to. Seems odd though doesn't it, the fact that here is anindustry that thrives on having all types of artists and genres, yet will only throw a fit when they realize their name artists are having full length albums that are being downloaded and heard for free.
"Hold on" I hear you virutually asking, "isn't the real reason the fact that the industry is losing money due to these downloads?" Yes it is, my friend, and since you did ask let's bring it up here. Does a download hurt a record label? I guess if you're used to making $20 billion a year instead of $10 billion, sure. But how much of those billions go to the artist? Does one MP3 really make an effect?
Let's look at it differently. Let's say you have Justin Timberlake's "Senorita". You bought the CD, and you MP3'd it because you don't want to constantly take the CD out of your rack. It's on your hard drive, and you decide you want to check out some other songs. You jump onto KaZaA and you see that your favorite song is being downloaded about 1500 times at that very second. You notice that someone is downloading your "Senorita" song, and the cue list is picking up. Now you find about 10 people are downloading your track, and you decide to do a search to see how many other people are downloading "Senorita". You lose track after seeing that about 2500 people are downloading it right now. Do the math. If one is to buy "Senorita" as a CD single, that's roughly $6U.S. Multiply that by 2500. The sum is just for any given time at any given moment that you are using a peer to peer program. That's one program, multiply that by 10 or even 20. Now realize that it's going on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. "Senorita" could have been downloaded a million times in one day. This is the reason why the industry is upset. Or is it?
Let's look at it another way. The recording industry relies on record sales, always has, and until CD's are phased out, always will. The general public values an album by how many copies sold and how many times it's heard on the radio. There are a lot of corporate companies who are pretty much buying the airwaves, making it almost impossible for the public to have a say in what they want to hear. In the U.S., Clear Channel not only owns various radio stations in the same city, but they also own venues in which the artists play, and own the billboards on which radio stations are promoted. If Ashanti gets airplay on Stink Jams 95.7, you're going to see those Stink Jams on the billboard on your way home from work, and you're going to see Ashanti and the Bopsy Twins when that same radio station hosts the Stinky Jams Jammy Jam this December at the Starbucks Arena. What makes music suck in '03? Before you give out the obvious answer, keep in mind that it isn't ALL music that is affected by this. Yet if you are to believe news reports and articles, the music being downloaded, the music that's the most affected is the music YOU'RE supposed to be buying. If people are constantly downloading, it is not only the industry that hurts, but YOU, the music buyer, right?
There's a hidden reason as to why the industry is upset. They do not want you to have options as to what you listen to. People are creating their own playlists and are now capable of listening to what you want to listen to at any given time. Technology has made it possible for you to create your own digital radio station and hear what you want to hear at any given time. How can they hype up their new color printers if you edit out their commercials?
There's another reason that the industry doesn't realize either. If you are to believe what they are saying, then you believe that the only music that exists is what you see and hear on MTV and M2. But the truth is not only are CD prices too high, but a lot of music these days is shit. Why is it that after the release of Avril Lavigne's "Complicated", we now have Liz Phair doing a similar song, Lillix doing a similar song, and good ol' Hilary Duff doing the same damn song? Carbon copies of a popular artist has existed since the days of Frank Sinatra, when he hit it big, various record labels wanted to have their own special crooner. When Elvis Presley hit, everyone wanted to be a rebel. When The Beatles broke into America, we saw an onslaught of bands with long hair with names that resembled an insect colony. The sincerest form of flattery is nothing more than slicing the pie a bit thinner for maximum financial benefits. The industry has always relied on formula, this is why today's hip-hop is far removed from the greatness of 1988. The beginning of corporate hip-hop pretty much began in the late 80's when they realized kids were actually buying a trend that refused to end. Now, most corporate hip-hop today is the same formula. It's less about the song and more about how good your video is. Do you catch yourself singing Nelly's "Country Grammar" even though you hate the man? Or when you sing the song, do you think about Gloria Velez shaking her ass to the rhythm of Jay-Z's flow? When did the visual take over? Even record covers, as great as they are, only help compliment the music found within. Today, if you're not an artist with a good visual image, you're pretty much set for the cutout bin.
The industry has no control over what you listen to, and maybe they never did. They never force fed fans to buy Kiss, or Beastie Boys, or Bros for that matter. There will always be the hype machine and a lot of us do fall for the glamour of the hype, but if the music doesn't hold up, no one will care. Sadly the industry didn't realize this either, and yet they kept on releasing the same old crap. The power of the industry relies on trusted names that have been best sellers over the years, but even that has been crushed now that you can download the entire Beatles discography, including their bootlegs.
Let's touch on that last word, bootleg. Bootleg records have existed since the 1920's, when someone wanted to preserve an opera or jazz performance. But in the modern sense, bootleg records boomed in the 1970's with the release of unreleased material by Bob Dylan and The Beatles. The first type of rock & roll bootlegs were generally lo-fi recordings of live shows that even diehard fans found hard to listen to. But then came something new. These bootlegs consisted of songs recorded in the studio, revealing things that fans would never have had the opportunity to hear. These albums were often pressed in low quantities of 1000-5000. In the early days they used to be sold at regular record stores alongside the official LP's, even reviewed in major publications. Soon you could find them "behind the counter" or sold at head shops. The industry back then felt these bootleg albums were a thread when it consisted of live shows where you could only hear screaming and echo. Once someone brought out "unreleased material", they were upset and did everything in their power to control and eventually stop bootleggers from coming out with albums. The view was that bootlegs were taking away money from the artist and the record label. Bootleggers said these records are for true fans, and the artist and label had no intention of releasing them anyway. In the early 70's, no one viewed recording live shows as a threat, so fans could bring in their cassette recorders or big reel-to-reel machines (yes, people actually brought in reel-to-reel machines to record) and have an audio souvenir. This is why so many Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones shows from 1968-1973 exist. By the mid-70's, the industry enforced a rule putting an end to fans recording concerts. That didn't stop the bootleggers, who would often pay soundmen for the tapes, which would eventually be pressed up overnight and sold the next morning on the streets.
The bootleggers were fans themselves, and they wanted to cater to the fan who wanted more than what they were getting on the regular albums. When a live album came out, it was heavily edited from the original performances. It was known that the Grateful Dead had an open taping policy, where fans could trade live shows and be able to hear full concerts. Since other bands didn't have a similar policy, bootleggers went out of their way to share full live shows with fans. The intent was not to make money, because a lot of times the bootleggers would take all money earned and produced more bootlegs (although in the book 'Black Market Beatles', one bootlegger said he was able to pay for his full tution for college). Bootleggers used their own recordings to sell to music-hungry fans. What changed bootlegs was when unreleased studio recordings came out. The industry wanted to know who were stealing the tapes, and moreso why fans would even want to hear "rough" mixes of anything. In time the industry would come close to crushing the bootlegging industry in the United States, although the bootleggers simply went overseas. Then the first CD bootlegs started coming out, at a time when it was believed that the creation of compact discs was not available to the general public. It wasn't, but now that someone could make an illegal CD, that opened up the door to everything to have come afterwards.
The same motivation to press up a live concert on vinyl is easily the same motivation to see if a song on a CD can be turned into a computer file. It's the same motivation that went into figuring out if a full audio WAV file can be compressed without losing its basic qualities. It's the same motivation that made a programmer think of a way for people send these compressed music files back and forth. If it can be done via e-mail, why not in a manner where people can download songs freely? The music is now freely available to music-hungry fans, and while the principles are the same, there's one big difference. In the 70's it was about obtaining previously unreleased recordings. Today, we can get for free the album we normally would buy at the store. There is a younger generation whose view of obtaining music is not struggling at work or begging mom for cash, but to turn on the computer and download an entire album for an hour. I feel old here, but in my day I remember when stealing a cassette was considered a big risk. I figured "eh, it's in the cutout section, no one was going to take this tape anyway". Now, the power of music belongs in those who download what they want, when they want.
The benefit of MP3 downloading is being able to hear artists and styles of music that you otherwise would not have been exposed to. Maybe someone who loves Roots Manuva may enjoy the sounds of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. A fan of Coldcut can now hear a ballad by the Sunday Manoa. Or someone who loves Jimi Hendrix can listen to Cassandra Wilson. It's very secretive, comparable to finding and downloading porn, where curiosity will lead you to mysterious places. With the internet and all of the various forums and newsgroups that exist, music fans are exposed to a lot more and no longer do they have to search for records that would be too pricey. If I want to hear music from Afghanistan, I can do search, find a name, and then jump onto a p2p program and maybe find a song. In my case, if I like it enough, I will go out and buy the LP or CD. MP3's definitely bring the music world closer to the music fan.
My mom would often talk about going to a record store as a kid and sitting at a record booth to sample a new 45 or album, before thinking about wanting to buy it. MP3's should be thought of as the same principle. Yes, you can download an MP3 but it's not the actual CD or vinyl. If you like the song, or artist, go out and buy the CD. This is especially true for all independent artists. I have discovered the likes of Joelle Leandre, Jaza Jazzist, CoH, and Reaching Quiet by reading reviews and downloading a few songs, moving me to buy their music afterwards. I love the cover art, reading liner notes, seeing what the artists wanted to create with their music.
I am an artist myself, and I wouldn't want people to download my main albums. So I go out of my way to release tracks every now and then so people can get familiar with my music. If they like it, maybe they'll be moved to buy my full CD. I will regularly release megamixes and put them up for people to download. My goal is if someone likes what I'm able to do with my music, they may hop along for the ride and go with me until the end. I am an independent artist, I do not do freelance remix work yet where I can have someone drop $250,000 (the said price for a Neptunes remix) and I'm comfortable. While my music is primarily electronic, I am capable of writing lyrics but I don't have someone from Nashville calling me up and saying "hey, Faith Hill wants to turn your song into a possible #1 hit". My only option right now is to sell my CD and hope people will make a purchase. I support people trading my other MP3's if I'm the one who released them. There's a rapper from San Diego, California named Soul-Junk who regularly puts up MP3's on his website. A number of independent artists do this too, including the Seattle punk band The Gloryholes. I feel that if you want people to like your music, you have to put up one or two songs for them to decide. I go out of my way to put up my other material, which I feel are as good as anything I've done, so it's not like I'm giving fans crap to hear.
As a fan, I always show support to the artists and music I love. I would hope that my fans would do the same, and respect my views. Yet none of us can deny the appreciation of the forbidden, but there is a good and bad side to everything. I highly doubt downloading MP3's will ever stop, because someone will find another format to download, or another way for people to hear music. However, if people really want music, they will do anything in "their power" to get it. If it's live, they'l go. If it's a new CD, they'll buy it. MP3's make things more appealing for the music-hungry fan, but the industry should also cater to the fan without constantly feeding them poor quality music. As music fans we do have a choice: we can just keep to independent music and support true artists with integrity. That's the one thing the industry doesn't want us to have: a choice.
Listen to music responsibly. Thank you.