File-sharing
My position on the practice of file-sharing shifts on a daily basis. Much like Lily Allen’s, I imagine. This makes neither of us hypocrites.
What doesn’t alter, however, is my belief that denying repeat ‘offenders’ access to the internet is a deeply unhealthy approach to the problem. There are three main reasons for this:
1. One particular industry - and let’s be more specific, one particular division of one particular industry - dithered for 10 years in the face of a digital music revolution happening right in front of their faces. I refuse to get righteous about this: sorting out a workable model from the blueprint of Napster would have been an incredibly difficult task, and a minority of clear-headed music industry honchos did try. But they failed, and afterwards no major label had a good word to say about MP3s for half a decade.
So the agenda was led by technology companies, first Apple and then more significantly by the likes of Imeem, Pandora, Last.fm and Spotify. The latter websites’ message that music was free had considerable impact, in a sense legitimizing the actions of a generation now used to music blogs offering a plethora of pre-release MP3s every day at zero cost - blogs which at first had been angrily targeted with takedown notices from labels, and then slowly embraced by them, ultimately finding themselves the recipients of legit promos direct from the label if they were deemed to be influential enough.
It’s easy to see why a 14 year old kid these days quite genuinely believes the ‘music is free’ message applies across the board.
Now, for that particular division of that one particular industry suddenly to turn to this kid, who for all intents and purposes believes recorded music is now generally accepted to be free - however wrongheaded that may technically be - and say: “we’re shutting down your access to the most important communication and information service in history”… well, it’s plainly ludicrous.
2. Which leads to my second point: why are you attacking the consumer in the first place? Even if you’re a major label exec who snortingly dismisses everything I’ve just said, you still have so many untried options at your disposal before you call in the lawyers. If there was a concerted re-education campaign from the industry even half as well-promoted as the Home Taping Is Killing Music scheme from the ’80s, I didn’t see it. Nor did I see Simon Cowell devote a portion of last Saturday’s X-Factor to explaining exactly how much money Alexandra Burke is making from the sales of her music, how much work she (and the label) have put in, and how - especially this - the vast majority of bands don’t have Syco-sized resources at their disposal and rely on record sales, at least partially, to keep them alive.
All I’ve seen is millions wasted on suing music fans, while record stores, cheap music venues, decent studios and rehearsal spaces close from lack of funding. Even if you stubbornly blame file-sharing as the root cause of all those closures (which it isn’t), you must admit that a lot of your money was still flowing in the opposite direction.
3. I won’t linger on my final point too long, as I can’t back it up with hard facts (no one can right now), even though I believe it to be true. It’s this: make file-sharing disappear tomorrow and the industry’s issues won’t suddenly be solved. Consuming recorded music as a recreational pursuit is now much less a priority for most people compared with, say, downloading games from the App Store. It simply isn’t making people reach for their wallets any more. That would be the case even if file-sharing had never existed.
Those millions of ‘illegal’ downloads do not equal lost sales. Some of them do, and kill file-sharing and you’ll start to get that cash back. But it won’t save the industry. Offering an attractive alternative is surely (and I can’t believe I’m still saying this 10 years after Napster) the more logical solution, isn’t it?
If TMZ and Perez Hilton can make money putting crappy ads next to photos of celebrities falling out of taxis, then surely the music industry - 50 years old, such a master of the universe that it feels justified in extorting hard cash from teenagers - can figure out how to offer its product in a way that makes sense for the consumer, and still pulls in the dollars.
To finish: I am both a music fan and a musician, so I don’t favour the arguments of one over the other. And I also believe I - and Ms. Allen - have the right to express a viewpoint on this subject without getting abuse from blinkered trolls on either side.
