I am a huge music fan. I've been to countless concerts, have thousands of MP3s, and a few hundred CDs. I love it, and listen to it all the time, whether I am at home, in the car, or in the office.
But I also love technology and I also see it always moving forward, and that is where music comes in.
I belong to an online forum with thousands of users. One recent topic was file sharing and piracy and is it right, and if not do you do it and why. One of the users posted his views and thoughts on it, and I found myself agreeing 100%. It's quite eye opening, and I needed to share it. It's very long but please don't let it deter you from reading it all, especially if you care about music and the future of it. Take about 10 minutes out of your day and read it. Even if you need to break it up into a few reading sessions. I mean it and feel that passionate about these words. Although I didn't write them they resonate inside me. Enjoy.
For quite a long time I've been intending to post some sort of
commentary on the music industry - piracy, distribution, morality,
those types of things. I've thought about it many times, but never gone
through with it, because the issue is such a broad, messy one - such a
difficult thing to address fairly and compactly. I knew it would result
in a rambly, unfocused commentary, and my exact opinion has teetered
back and forth quite a bit over the years anyway. But on Monday, when I
woke up to the news that Oink, the world famous torrent
site and mecca for music-lovers everywhere, had been shut down by
international police and various anti-piracy groups, I knew it was
finally time to try and organize my thoughts on this huge, sticky,
important issue.
For the past eight years, I've worked on and off with major record
labels as a designer ("Major" is an important distinction here, because
major labels are an entirely different beast than many indie labels -
they're the ones with the power, and they are the ones driving the
industry-wide push against piracy). It was 1999 when I got my first
taste of the inner-workings of a major record label - I was a young
college student, and the inside of a New York label office seemed so
vast and exciting. Dozens of worker bees hummed away at their desks on
phones and computers. Music posters and stacks of CDs littered every
surface. Everyone seemed to have an assistant, and the assistants had
assistants, and you couldn't help but wonder "what the hell do all
these people do?" I tagged along on $1500 artist dinners paid for by
the labels. Massive bar tabs were regularly signed away by record label
employees with company cards. You got used to people billing as many
expenses back to the record company as they could. I met the type of
jive, middle-aged, blazer-wearing, coke-snorting, cartoon character
label bigwigs who you'd think were too cliche to exist outside the
confines of Spinal Tap. It was all strange and exciting, but one thing
that always resonated with me was the sheer volume of money that seemed
to be spent without any great deal of concern. Whether it was excessive
production budgets or "business lunches" that had nothing to do with
business, one of my first reactions to it all was, "so this is why CDs
cost $18..." An industry of excess. But that's kind of what you
expected from the music business, right? It's where rock stars are
made. It's where you get stretch limos with hot tubs in the back, where
you get private jets and cocaine parties. Growing up in the '80's, with
pop royalty and hair metal bands, you were kind of led to think, of
course record labels blow money left and right - there's just so much
of it to go around! Well, you know what they say: The bigger they are...
In those days, "piracy" was barely even a word in the music world. My
friends and I traded MP3s in college over the local network, but they
were scattered and low-quality. It felt like a novelty - like a digital
version of duping a cassette tape - hardly a replacement for CDs. CDs
sounded good and you could bring them with you in your DiscMan, and the
only digital music you could get was as good as your friends' CD
collections, anyway. It never occurred to any of us that digital files
were the future. But as it turned out, lots of kids, in lots of
colleges around the world, had the same idea of sharing MP3 files over
their local networks, and eventually, someone paid attention to that
idea and made Napster. Suddenly, it was like all those college networks
were tied together, and you could find all this cool stuff online. It
was easier and more efficient than record stores, it was powered by
music fans, and, well, it was free. Suddenly you didn't have to pay 15
to 18 bucks for an album and hope it was good, you could download some
tracks off the internet and check it out first. But you still always
bought the CD if you liked it - I mean, who wants all their music to be
on the computer? I sure didn't. But increasingly, more and more people
did. For college kids, Napster was a Godsend, because you can all but
guarantee two things about most college kids: They love music, and
they're dirt poor. So it grew, and it grew, and it started to grow into
the mainstream, and that's when the labels woke up and realized
something important was happening. At that point they could have seen
it as either a threat or an opportunity, and they, without hesitation,
determined it to be a threat. It was a threat because essentially
someone had come up with a better, free distribution method for the
labels' product. To be fair, you can imagine how confusing this must
have been for them - is there even a historical precedent for an
industry's products suddenly being able to replicate and distribute on
their own, without cost?
For quite a while - long after most tech-savvy music lovers - I
resisted the idea of stealing music. Of course I would download MP3s -
I downloaded a lot of stuff - but I would always make sure to buy the
physical CD if it was something I liked. I knew a lot of musicians, a
lot of them bewildered at what was happening to the industry they used
to understand. People were downloading their music en masse, gorging on
this new frontier like pigs at a troff - and worst of all, they felt
entitled to do so. It was like it was okay simply because the
technology existed that made it possible. But it wasn't okay - I mean,
let's face it, no matter how you rationalized it, it was stealing, and
because the technology existed to hotwire a car didn't make that okay,
either. The artists lost control of distribution: They couldn't present
albums the way they wanted to, in a package with nice artwork. They
couldn't reveal it the way they wanted to, because music pirates got
the albums online well before the actual release date. Control had been
taken away from everyone who used to have it. It was a scary time in
unfamiliar territory, where suddenly music fans became enemies to the
artists and companies they had supported for years. It led to laughable
hyperbole from bands like Metallica, instantly the poster-children of
cry-baby rich rock stars, and the beginning of the image problem the
industry has faced in its handling of the piracy issue. But still, at
the time, I understood where they were coming from. Most musicians
weren't rich like Metallica, and needed all the album sales they could
get for both income and label support. Plus, it was their art, and they
had created it - why shouldn't they be able to control how it's
distributed, just because some snotty, acne-faced internet kids had
found a way to cheat the system? And these entitled little internet
brats, don't they realize that albums cost money to create, and to
produce, and to promote? How is there going to be any new music if no
one's paying for it?
On top of that, I couldn't get into the idea of an invisible music
library that lives on my computer. Where's the artwork? Where's my
collection? I want the booklet, the packaging... I want shelves and
shelves of albums that I've spent years collecting, that I can pore
over and impress my friends with... I want to flip through the pages,
and hold the CD in my hand... Being a kid who got into music well past
the days of vinyl, CDs were all I had, and they still felt important to
me.
It's all changed.
In a few short years, the aggressive push of technology combined with
the arrogant response from the record industry has rapidly worn away
all of my noble intentions of clinging to the old system, and has now
pushed me into full-on dissent. I find myself fully immersed in digital
music, almost never buying CDs, and fully against the methods of the
major record labels and the RIAA. And I think it would do the music
industry a lot of good to pay attention to why - because I'm just one
of millions, and there will be millions more in the years to come. And
it could have happened very, very differently.
As the years have passed, and technology has made digital files the
most convenient, efficient, and attractive method of listening to music
for many people, the rules and cultural perceptions regarding music
have changed drastically. We live in the iPod generation - where a
"collection" of clunky CDs feels archaic - where the uniqueness of your
music collection is limited only by how eclectic your taste is. Where
it's embraced and expected that if you like an album, you send it to
your friend to listen to. Whether this guy likes it or not, iPods have
become synonymous with music - and if I filled my shiny new 160gb iPod
up legally, buying each track online at the 99 cents price that the
industry has determined, it would cost me about $32,226. How does that
make sense? It's the ugly truth the record industry wants to ignore as
they struggle to find ways to get people to pay for music in a culture
that has already embraced the idea of music being something you collect
in large volumes, and trade freely with your friends.
Already is the key word, because it didn't have to be this way, and
that's become the main source of my utter lack of sympathy for the
dying record industry: They had a chance to move forward, to evolve
with technology and address the changing needs of consumers - and they
didn't. Instead, they panicked - they showed their hand as power-hungry
dinosaurs, and they started to demonize their own customers, the people
whose love of music had given them massive profits for decades. They
used their unfair record contracts - the ones that allowed them to own
all the music - and went after children, grandparents, single moms,
even deceased great grandmothers - alongside many other common people
who did nothing more than download some songs and leave them in a
shared folder - something that has become the cultural norm to the iPod
generation. Joining together in what has been referred to as an illegal
cartel and using the RIAA as their attack dogs, the record labels have
spent billions of dollars attempting to scare people away from
downloading music. And it's simply not working. The pirating community
continues to out-smart and out-innovate the dated methods of the record
companies, and CD sales continue to plummet while exchange of digital
music on the internet continues to skyrocket. Why? Because
freely-available music in large quantities is the new cultural norm,
and the industry has given consumers no fair alternative. They didn't
jump in when the new technologies were emerging and think, "how can we
capitalize on this to ensure that we're able to stay afloat while
providing the customer what they've come to expect?" They didn't band
together and create a flat monthly fee for downloading all the music
you want. They didn't respond by drastically lowering the prices of CDs
(which have been ludicrously overpriced since day one, and actually
increased in price during the '90's), or by offering low-cost DRM-free
legal MP3 purchases. Their entry into the digital marketplace was too
little too late - a precedent of free, high-quality, DRM-free music had
already been set.
There seem to be a lot of reasons why the record companies blew it. One
is that they're really not very smart. They know how to do one thing,
which is sell records in a traditional retail environment. From
personal experience I can tell you that the big labels are beyond
clueless in the digital world - their ideas are out-dated, their
methods make no sense, and every decision is hampered by miles and
miles of legal tape, copyright restrictions, and corporate interests.
Trying to innovate with a major label is like trying to teach your
Grandmother how to play Halo 3: frustrating and ultimately futile. The
easiest example of this is how much of a fight it's been to get record
companies to sell MP3s DRM-free. You're trying to explain a new
technology to an old guy who made his fortune in the hair metal days.
You're trying to tell him that when someone buys a CD, it has no DRM -
people can encode it into their computer as DRM-free MP3s within
seconds, and send it to all their friends. So why insult the consumer
by making them pay the same price for copy-protected MP3s? It doesn't
make any sense! It just frustrates people and drives them to piracy!
They don't get it: "It's an MP3, you have to protect it or they'll copy
it." But they can do the same thing with the CDs you already sell!!
Legal tape and lots of corporate bullshit. If these people weren't the
ones who owned the music, it'd all be over already, and we'd be
enjoying the real future of music. Because like with any new industry,
it's not the people from the previous generation who are going to step
in and be the innovators. It's a new batch.
Newspapers are a good example: It used to be that people read
newspapers to get the news. That was the distribution method, and
newspaper companies controlled it. You paid for a newspaper, and you
got your news, that's how it worked. Until the internet came along, and
a new generation of innovative people created websites, and suddenly
anyone could distribute information, and they could distribute it
faster, better, more efficiently, and for free. Obviously this hurt the
newspaper industry, but there was nothing they could do about it,
because they didn't own the information itself - only the distribution
method. Their only choice was to innovate and find ways to compete in a
new marketplace. And you know what? Now I can get live,
up-to-the-minute news for free, on thousands of different sources
across the internet - and The New York Times still exists. Free market
capitalism at its finest. It's not a perfect example, but it is a part
of how the internet is changing every form of traditional media. It
happened with newspapers, it's happening now with music, and TV and
cell phones are next on the chopping block. In all cases technology
demands that change will happen, it's just a matter of who will find
ways to take advantage of it, and who won't.
Unlike newspapers, record companies own the distribution and the
product being distributed, so you can't just start your own website
where you give out music that they own - and that's what this is all
about:
distribution. Lots of pro-piracy types argue that music can be free
because people will always love music, and they'll pay for concert
tickets, and merchandise, and the marketplace will shift and artists
will survive. Well, yes, that might be an option for some artists, but
that does nothing to help the record labels, because they don't make
any money off of merchandise, or concert tickets. Distribution and
ownership are what they control, and those are the two things piracy
threatens. The few major labels left are parts of giant media
conglomerations - owned by huge parent companies for whom artists and
albums are just numbers on a piece of paper. It's why record companies
shove disposable pop crap down your throat instead of nurturing career
artists: because they have CEOs and shareholders to answer to, and
those people don't give a shit if a really great band has the potential
to get really successful, if given the right support over the next
decade. They see that Gwen Stefani's latest musical turd sold millions,
because parents of twelve year old girls still buy music for their
kids, and the parent company demands more easy-money pop garbage that
will be forgotten about next month. The only thing that matters to
these corporations is profit - period. Music isn't thought of as an art
form, as it was in the earlier days of the industry where labels were
started by music-lovers - it's a product, pure and simple. And many of
these corporations also own the manufacturing plants that create the
CDs, so they make money on all sides - and lose money even from legal
MP3s.
At the top of all this is the rigged, outdated, and unfair structure of
current intellectual property laws, all of them in need of massive
reform in the wake of the digital era. These laws allow the labels to
maintain their stranglehold on music copyrights, and they allow the
RIAA to sue the pants off of any file-sharing grandmother they please.
Since the labels are owned by giant corporations with a great deal of
money, power, and political influence, the RIAA is able to lobby
politicians and government agencies to manipulate copyright laws for
their benefit. The result is absurdly disproportionate fines, and laws
that in some cases make file sharing a heftier charge than armed
robbery. This is yet another case of private, corporate interests using
political influence to turn laws in the opposite direction of the
changing values of the people. Or, as this very smart assessment from a
record executive described it: "a clear case of a multinational
conglomerate using its political muscle to the disadvantage of everyone
but itself." But shady political maneuvers and scare tactics are all
the RIAA and other anti-piracy groups have left, because people who
download music illegally now number in the hundreds of millions, and
they can't sue everyone. At this point they're just trying to hold up
what's left of the dam before it bursts open. Their latest victim is
Oink, a popular torrent site specializing in music.
If you're not familiar with Oink, here's a quick summary: Oink was was
a free members-only site - to join it you had to be invited by a
member. Members had access to an unprecedented community-driven
database of music. Every album you could ever imagine was just one
click away. Oink's extremely strict quality standards ensured that
everything on the site was at pristine quality - 192kbps MP3 was their
bare minimum, and they championed much higher quality MP3s as well as
FLAC lossless downloads. They encouraged logs to verify that the music
had been ripped from the CD without any errors. Transcodes - files
encoded from other encoded files, resulting in lower quality - were
strictly forbidden. You were always guaranteed higher quality music
than iTunes or any other legal MP3 store. Oink's strict download/share
ratio ensured that every album in their vast database was always
well-seeded, resulting in downloads faster than anywhere else on the
internet. A 100mb album would download in mere seconds on even an
average broadband connection. Oink was known for getting pre-release
albums before anyone else on the internet, often months before they hit
retail - but they also had an extensive catalogue of music dating back
decades, fueled by music lovers who took pride in uploading rare gems
from their collection that other users were seeking out. If there was
an album you couldn't find on Oink, you only had to post a request for
it, and wait for someone who had it to fill your request. Even if the
request was extremely rare, Oink's vast network of hundreds of
thousands of music-lovers eager to contribute to the site usually
ensured you wouldn't have to wait long.
In this sense, Oink was not only an absolute paradise for music fans,
but it was unquestionably the most complete and most efficient music
distribution model the world has ever known. I say that safely without
exaggeration. It was like the world's largest music store, whose vastly
superior selection and distribution was entirely stocked, supplied,
organized, and expanded upon by its own consumers. If the music
industry had found a way to capitalize on the power, devotion, and
innovation of its own fans the way Oink did, it would be thriving right
now instead of withering. If intellectual property laws didn't make
Oink illegal, the site's creator would be the new Steve Jobs right now.
He would have revolutionized music distribution. Instead, he's a
criminal, simply for finding the best way to fill rising consumer
demand. I would have gladly paid a large monthly fee for a legal
service as good as Oink - but none existed, because the music industry
could never set aside their own greed and corporate bullshit to make it
happen.
Here's an interesting aside: The RIAA loves to complain about music
pirates leaking albums onto the internet before they're released in
stores - painting the leakers as vicious pirates dead set on attacking
their enemy, the music industry. But you know where music leaks from?
From the fucking source, of course - the labels! At this point, most
bands know that once their finished album is sent off to the label, the
risk of it turning up online begins, because the labels are full of
low-level workers who happen to be music fans who can't wait to share
the band's new album with their friends. If the album manages to not
leak directly from the label, it is guaranteed to leak once it heads
off to manufacturing. Someone at the manufacturing plant is always
happy to sneak off with a copy, and before long, it turns up online.
Why? Because people love music, and they can't wait to hear their
favorite band's new album! It's not about profit, and it's not about
maliciousness. So record industry, maybe if you could protect your own
assets a little better, shit wouldn't leak - don't blame the fans who
flock to the leaked material online, blame the people who leak it out
of your manufacturing plants in the first place! But assuming that's a
hole too difficult to plug, it begs the question, "why don't labels
adapt to the changing nature of distribution by selling new albums
online as soon as they're finished, before they have a chance to leak,
and release the physical CDs a couple months later?" Well, for one,
labels are still obsessed with Billboard chart numbers - they're
obsessed with determining the market value of their product by how well
it fares in its opening week. Selling it online before the big retail
debut, before they've had months to properly market the product to
ensure success, would mess up those numbers (nevermind that those
numbers mean absolutely nothing anymore). Additionally, selling an
album online before it hits stores makes retail outlets (who are also
suffering in all this) angry, and retail outlets have far more power
than they should. For example, if a record company releases an album
online but Wal-Mart won't have the CD in their stores for another two
months (because it needs to be manufactured), Wal-Mart gets mad. Who
cares if Wal-Mart gets mad, you ask? Well, record companies do, because
Wal-Mart is, both mysteriously and tragically, the largest music
retailer in the world. That means they have power, and they can say "if
you sell Britney Spears' album online before we can sell it in our
stores, we lose money. So if you do that, we're not going to stock her
album at all, and then you'll lose a LOT of money." That kind of greedy
business bullshit happens all the time in the record industry, and the
consistent result is a worse experience for consumers and music lovers.
Which is why Oink was so great - take away all the rules and legal
ties, all the ownership and profit margins, and naturally, the result
is something purely for, by, and in service of the music fan. And it
actually helps musicians - file-sharing is "the greatest marketing tool
ever to come along for the music industry." One of Oink's best features
was how it allowed users to connect similar artists, and to see what
people who liked a certain band also liked. Similar to Amazon's
recommendation system, it was possible to spend hours discovering new
bands on Oink, and that's what many of its users did. Through sites
like Oink, the amount and variety of music I listen to has skyrocketed,
opening me up to hundreds of artists I never would have experienced
otherwise. I'm now fans of their music, and I may not have bought their
CDs, but I would have never bought their CD anyway, because I would
have never heard of them! And now that I have heard of them, I go to
their concerts, and I talk them up to my friends, and give my friends
the music to listen to for themselves, so they can go to the concerts,
and tell their friends, and so on. Oink was a network of music lovers
sharing and discovering music. And yes, it was all technically illegal,
and destined to get shut down, I suppose. But it's not so much that
they shut Oink down that boils my blood, it's the fucking bullshit
propaganda they put out there. If the industry tried to have some kind
of compassion - if they said, "we understand that these are just music
fans trying to listen to as much music as they can, but we have to
protect our assets, and we're working on an industry-wide solution to
accommodate the changing needs of music fans"... Well, it's too late
for that, but it would be encouraging. Instead, they make it sound like
they busted a Columbian drug cartel or something. They describe it as a
highly-organized piracy ring. Like Oink users were distributing kiddie
porn or some shit. The press release says: "This was not a case of
friends sharing music for pleasure." Wh - what?? That's EXACTLY what it
was! No one made any money on that site - there were no ads, no
registration fees. The only currency was ratio - the amount you shared
with other users - a brilliant way of turning "free" into a sort of
booming mini-economy. The anti-piracy groups have tried to spin the
notion that you had to pay a fee to join Oink, which is NOT true -
donations were voluntary, and went to support the hosting and
maintenance of the site. If the donations spilled into profit for the
guy who ran the site, well he damn well deserved it - he created
something truly remarkable.
So the next question is, what now?
For the major labels, it's over. It's fucking over. You're going to
burn to the fucking ground, and we're all going to dance around the
fire. And it's your own fault. Surely, somewhere deep inside, you had
to know this day was coming, right? Your very industry is founded on an
unfair business model of owning art you didn't create in exchange for
the services you provide. It's rigged so that you win every time - even
if the artist does well, you do ten times better. It was able to exist
because you controlled the distribution, but now that's back in the
hands of the people, and you let the ball drop when you could have
evolved.
None of this is to say that there's no way for artists to make money
anymore, or even that it's the end of record labels. It's just the end
of record labels as we know them. A lot of people point to the
Radiohead model as the future, but Radiohead is only dipping its toe
into the future to test the waters. What at first seemed like a
rainbow-colored revolution has now been openly revealed as a marketing
gimmick: Radiohead was "experimenting," releasing a low-quality MP3
version of an album only to punish the fans who paid for it by later
releasing a full-quality CD version with extra tracks. According to
Radiohead's manager: "If we didn't believe that when people hear the
music they will want to buy the CD then we wouldn't do what we are
doing." Ouch. Radiohead was moving in the right direction, but if they
really want to start a revolution, they need to place the
"pay-what-you-want" digital album on the same content and quality level
as the "pay-what-we-want" physical album.
Ultimately, I don't know what the future model is going to be - I think
all the current pieces of the puzzle will still be there, but they need
to be re-ordered, and the rules need to be changed. Maybe record labels
of the future exist to help front recording costs and promote artists,
but they don't own the music. Maybe music is free, and musicians make
their money from touring and merchandise, and if they need a label, the
label takes a percentage of their tour and merch profits. Maybe
all-digital record companies give bands all the tools they need to sell
their music directly to their fans, taking a small percentage for their
services. In any case, the artists own their own music.
I used to reject the wishy-washy "music should be free!" mantra of
online music thieves. I knew too much about the intricacies and
economics of it, of the rock-and-a-hard-place situation many artists
were in with their labels. I thought there were plenty of new ways to
sell music that would be fair to all parties involved. But I no longer
believe that, because the squabbling, backwards, greedy,
ownership-obsessed major labels will never let it happen, and that's
more clear to me now than ever. So maybe music has to be free. Maybe
taking the money out of music is the only way to get money back into
it. Maybe it's time to abandon the notion of the rock star - of music
as a route to fame and fortune. The best music was always made by
people who weren't in it for the money, anyway. Maybe smart, talented
musicians will find ways to make a good living with or without CD
sales. Maybe the record industry execs who made their fortunes off of
unfair contracts and distribution monopolies should just walk away,
confident that they milked a limited opportunity for all it was worth,
and that it's time to find fortune somewhere else. Maybe in the hands
of consumers, the music marketplace will expand in new and lucrative
ways no one can even dream of yet. We won't know until music is free,
and eventually it's going to be. Technological innovation destroys old
industries, but it creates new ones. You can't fight it forever.
Until the walls finally come down, we're in what will inevitably be
looked back on as a very awkward, chaotic period in music history -
fans are being arrested for sharing the music they love, and many
artists are left helpless, unable to experiment with new business
models because they're locked into record contracts with
backwards-thinking labels.
So what can you and I do to help usher in the brave new world? The
beauty of Oink was how fans willingly and hyper-efficiently took on
distribution roles that traditionally have cost labels millions of
dollars. Music lovers have shown that they're much more willing to put
time and effort into music than they are money. It's time to show
artists that there's no limit to what an energized online fanbase can
accomplish, and all they'll ever ask for in return is more music. And
it's time to show the labels that they missed a huge opportunity by not
embracing these opportunities when they had the chance.
1. Stop buying music from major labels. Period. The only way to force
change is to hit the labels where it hurts - their profits. The major
labels are like Terry Schiavo right now - they're on life support,
drooling in a coma, while white-haired guys in suits try and change the
laws to keep them alive. But any rational person can see that it's too
late, and it's time to pull out the feeding tube. In this case, the
feeding tube is your money. Find out which labels are
members/supporters of the RIAA and similar copyright enforcement
groups, and don't support them in any way. The RIAA Radar is a great
tool to help you with this. Don't buy CDs, don't buy iTunes downloads,
don't buy from Amazon, etc. Steal the music you want that's on the
major labels. It's easy, and despite the RIAA's scare tactics, it can
be done safely - especially if more and more people are doing it. Send
letters to those labels, and to the RIAA, explaining very calmly and
professionally that you will no longer be supporting their business,
because of their bullish scare tactics towards music fans, and their
inability to present a forward-thinking digital distribution solution.
Tell them you believe their business model is outdated and the days of
companies owning artists' music are over. Make it very clear that you
will continue to support the artists directly in other ways, and make
it VERY clear that your decision has come about as a direct result of
the record company's actions and inactions regarding digital music.
2. Support artists directly. If a band you like is stuck on a major
label, there are tons of ways you can support them without actually
buying their CD. Tell everyone you know about them - start a fansite if
you're really passionate. Go to their shows when they're in town, and
buy t-shirts and other merchandise. Here's a little secret: Anything a
band sells that does not have music on it is outside the reach of the
record label, and monetarily supports the artist more than buying a CD
ever would. T-shirts, posters, hats, keychains, stickers, etc. Send the
band a letter telling them that you're no longer going to be purchasing
their music, but you will be listening to it, and you will be spreading
the word and supporting them in other ways. Tell them you've made this
decision because you're trying to force change within the industry, and
you no longer support record labels with RIAA affiliations who own the
music of their artists.
If you like bands who are releasing music on open, non-RIAA indie
labels, buy their albums! You'll support the band you like, and you'll
support hard-working, passionate people at small, forward-thinking
music labels. If you like bands who are completely independent and are
releasing music on their own, support them as much as possible! Pay for
their music, buy their merchandise, tell all your friends about them
and help promote them online - prove that a network of passionate fans
is the best promotion a band can ask for.
3. Get the message out. Get this message out to as many people as you
can - spread the word on your blog or your MySpace, and more
importantly, tell your friends at work, or your family members, people
who might not be as tuned into the internet as you are. Teach them how
to use torrents, show them where to go to get music for free. Show them
how to support artists while starving the labels, and who they should
and shouldn't be supporting.
4. Get political. The fast-track to ending all this nonsense is
changing intellectual property laws. The RIAA lobbies politicians to
manipulate copyright laws for their own interests, so voters need to
lobby politicians for the peoples' interests. Contact your local
representatives and senators. Tell them politely and articulately that
you believe copyright laws no longer reflect the interests of the
people, and you will not vote for them if they support the interests of
the RIAA. Encourage them to draft legislation that helps change the
outdated laws and disproportionate penalties the RIAA champions.
Contact information for state representatives can be found here, and
contact information for senators can be found here. You can email them,
but calling on the phone or writing them actual letters is always more
effective.
Tonight, with Oink gone, I find myself wondering where I'll go now to
discover new music. All the other options - particularly the legal ones
- seem depressing by comparison. I wonder how long it will be before
everyone can legally experience the type of music nirvana Oink users
became accustomed to? I'm not too worried - something even better will
rise out of Oink's ashes, and the RIAA will respond with more lawsuits,
and the cycle will repeat itself over and over until the industry has
finally bled itself to death. And then everything will be able to
change, and it will be in the hands of musicians and fans and a new
generation of entrepreneurs to decide how the new record business is
going to work. Whether you agree with it or not, it's fact. It's
inevitable - because the determination of fans to share music is much,
much stronger than the determination of corporations to stop it.
