The Age of Music Piracy Is Officially Over
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By Paul Boutin
- November 29, 2010 |
- 12:00 pm |
- Wired December 2010
![Start Illustration: Brock Davis](/congress111th/20101209091343im_/http://www.wired.com/magazine/wp-content/images/18-12/st_essay_nofreebird_f.jpg)
Illustration: Brock Davis
Mark down the date: The age of stealing music via the Internet is officially over. It’s time for everybody to go legit. The reason: We won. And all you audiophiles and copyfighters, you know who fixed our problems? The record labels and online stores we loved to hate.
Granted, when Apple launched the iTunes Music Store in 2003 there was a lot to complain about. Tracks you bought on computer A often refused to play on gadget B, thanks to that old netizen bogeyman, digital rights management. (It’s crippleware!) My local Apple store was actually picketed by nerds in hazmat suits attempting to educate passersby on the evils of DRM.
Well played, protesters: In January 2009, Apple announced that it would remove the copyright protection wrapper from every song in its store. Today, Amazon and Walmart both sell music encoded as MP3s, which don’t even have hooks for copyright-protection locks. The battle is over, comrades.
A few years ago, audiophiles dismissed iTunes’ 128-Kbps resolution as anemic, even though it supposedly passed rigid blind testing against full-bandwidth CD tracks of the same song. The sound is compressed, connoisseurs said. The high end is mangled. Good work, audiophiles: Online stores have cranked up the audio quality to a fat 256 Kbps. To most ears, it’s indistinguishable from a CD. (Actually, most ears are listening through crummy earbuds anyway, but whatever.) It’s certainly better than most of the stuff out on BitTorrent. If you still hate the sound of digital music, you probably need to go back to vinyl. You can get a pretty good turntable for around $500. Which, I’ll just point out, is not free. And when you steal vinyl records, it’s called shoplifting.
Haters might get a bit more traction with the gripe that official stores still don’t carry every track ever recorded. You won’t find, say, AC/DC or the Beatles* in iTunes. For other artists, contract restrictions mean some songs can’t be downloaded in every country, which indeed seems dumb for a store on the border-free Internet. Americans, for example, can’t buy Daniel Zueras’ 2007 Spanish hit “No Quiero Enamorarme” from the iTunes store for Spain. Still, the available inventory keeps growing, including artists’ back catalogs. I recently discovered that Salt City Orchestra’s limited-edition, vinyl-only 1997 nightclub fave “The Book” has been kicking around iTunes since 2008. Way back in the day, I had to trade favors with a pro DJ to get that record. It’s getting harder and harder to find the few holdouts to hang a reasonable complaint on.
That leaves one last war cry: Music should be free! It’s art! Friends, a song costs a dollar. Walmart has pushed some of its MP3s down to 64 cents. At Grooveshark, you can sample any song you want before you buy. Rdio charges $5 a month for all the music you can eat, served up via the cloud.
So there’s really no reason not to buy—and surely you understand by now that there are reasons why you should. When you buy instead of bootlegging, you’re paying the band. Most download retailers send about 70 percent of each sale to the record companies that own the music. Artists with 15 percent royalty deals get 15 percent of that 70 percent, or about 10.5 cents per dollar of sales. Those who write their own music and own their own music publishing companies—an increasingly common arrangement—get another 9.1 cents in “mechanical royalties.” Every download sends almost 20 cents straight to the band.
A recent court ruling against Universal Records—and in favor of the rapper Eminem—might even lead to downloads of older music being treated not as sales but as licensed music. (Newly written contracts tend to address digital music sales directly.) That would bump the artist’s split with the label from around 15 percent to an average of 50 percent. If that happens and you can still rationalize not throwing four dimes Eminem’s way, then maybe there’s another reason you’re still pirating music: You’re cheap.
* Yes, we know: Since we published this article, Apple brought the Beatles to iTunes.
Paul Boutin (paulboutin@mac.com) wrote about letting small investors in on pre-IPO deals in issue 18.07.
Fine. I’ll give back the silly hat, puffy shirt, shiny black boots, hook and sword.
But I’m keeping the patch and parrot!
Harumph!
1 music album > 2 lattes. ANY DAY.
F**k you… you try buying music when you are a student with no income in a lol country where average working people salary is under 600$ monthly. I’m even stealing wifi so that settles it.
Wow. A troll article! Another first for wired.
Cut the sensationalism Wired. It’s embarrassing.
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Actually no that age of piracy is far from over because it is not about quality it is about quantity… when one wants to buy 2-3 albums a year yeah maybe, when one is like me and has about 30.000 songs with about 500 new each month then even 20 cents a song is expensive…
Also most teenagers (which is a very large chunk of the market share) either do not want their parents to know what they are listening to, or they don’t want (or can) ask them for new song(s) every other day so piracy it is again… not to leave out peer pressure as well.
Also many people just don’t want to give their money to big, multinational, music corporations that want to believe that they control and/or design what we want to listen to with stupid, no-substance hip-hop, and/or juvenile pop stars (no I will not mention any names) so to downloading it is.
Finally I believe that there is currently such a diverse, and exponentially large quantity of genres, artists, bands, albums, and products in general that you just can’t buy everything you like, even more so when you want to try out a new band to see (listen) if you like it, with the risk of buying it (even from cheap solutions like itunes store) because if you don’t like it then it’s wasted money… with the downloading on the other hand you don’t like it you delete it and no harm done (to you anyways)…
So long live the pioneering pirates!!! May they live long, prosperous lives!!! (Only joking… no really!)
Art ceases to be art unless it is shared, but why do we expect access to free music? Are we a bunch of tight arses or do we belive that because the music industry is saturated we can take what ever we want? There are Artists behind that art and a whole bunch of other people that bring it all together, sure there has to be a passion for what they do but we don’t live live in the 60’s where people believe in free love I am sure the Hippys would have brought the vinyl… show some love
I don’t steal music because I’m some principled web-pirate claiming to represent free speech, Wired. I steal music because I, like the majority of people who pirate music and software, am a dirt-poor college student whose tastes outpace his income. I work my way up to legitimately purchase a lot of the albums I like, and I always buy the newest CDs made by my favorite bands (Weezer, mostly, =W=). I appreciate everything Apple and all the rest of the companies are trying to do, but the music business has been fundamentally changed by piracy, and I’d say for good. As long as we can get music for free, we’re not going to pay to get it. It’s not that we don’t want to pay our favorite bands for their intellectual property; it’s that we’d rather pay for rent than for songs, because a full library doesn’t keep you warm at night.
If I look at it objectively piracy is probably wrong but who says it’s left the music industry in a bad shape. I think it’s never been better just less profitable which is no bad thing.
Just look at how many tours and big bands attend festivals these days,more than ever before. Millions of people are now getting to see those bands in the flesh and they are actually having to work for a living.
Big deal if they didn’t make as much as U2 or Madonna did back when the sun was shining. I don’t see Eminem, Justin Bieber or even Mumford and Sons or the Arctic Monkeys starving. They get paid to travel the world and do what they love all day, if they don’t like it gthey can go and get a job in a call centre or the IRS.
Piracy has democracized music, all those years of paying $20 bucks for an album and $18 was profit is coming home to roost. I think there is nothing wrong with this new model, you have to put your music out there if you want to be heard (for free)and you make more money the more live appearances (or harder you work).
I bet most of us on this comments page get paid more for the more time in the office we spend, why shouldn’t that apply to artists? It seems wrong now that music should be free but in twenty years time our kids will not believe we paid for something that is so cheap for a musician to distribute via download.
Next time someone in my company uses one of my powerpoint presentations I’m gonna demand a royalty and take them to court for distributing it without my consent.
No, no. We won. Time NOT to buy, unless we can pay artists directly. Time to share. Ok. Time to buy ONCE, and then share and share and share.
I agree *and* disagree-
Agreement:I believe it’s high time that we all stop lying to ourselves about how pirating is a strike against Establishment and a blow for free art- it’s STEALING (always has been). The stupidly cheap cost of a song or entire album for that matter should make it entirely possible for all but the most destitute person to PAY the artist and the label for their work. This is how our society rewards people for good work- by paying them for their creations and enabling them to continue their work. A person who steals what they *want* because they *WANT* it is not a noble renegade in some just cause- he’s a self-centered self-pleasing jerk who doesn’t care that what he’s taken actually cost someone else their time, talent, hard work and MONEY to produce. He may argue that the “rich-guys” don’t need his money, but I reply that stealing from a rich man is still stealing. Songs are cheap, and stealing is wrong, don’t you think? Even more than this, there is FREE music all over the place- turn on a RADIO, a TV, try Pandora or Slacker or any number of free services- all you need are some simple electronics to tune in (not as expensive as the fancy ones that you store and listen to stolen music on).For these reasons the age of Piracy should be over…
Disagreement: It’s unfortunate but true that a person who might never dream of swiping a CD from a music store won’t blink twice at stealing the same album electronically. Reading earlier comments a majority of the people who intend to continue to steal say that they don’t care to pay and intend to take what they want simply because they can. They argue that they are poor college kids who can’t afford the 500 songs a month that they just have to have (where did they get the expensive electronics to play and store all this music I wonder?). I’m sad to think that these poor college kids are our future- when it was my turn to be a poor college kid I *did without* and learned to appreciate what I had, what I was given, and treasure what I could eventually afford to buy for myself. Much of today’s generation, however, seems intent on stealing anything not nailed down- for this reason I would say the age of Piracy continues (whether I like it or not).
The real artists are there for the art not the money, you want the money? you’re probably not a real artist, I’m not paying!
Bullshit.
Media conglomerates have greater control and legal power over the distribution and digestion of media than ever before, and they are continuing their appalling push for ever more control. They fought music fans tooth and nail, with zero respect or tolerance or patience, until they had sufficient control over the legal and technical infrastructure necessary to turn music fans into music consumers and ensure that they would profit off every note.
What Wired calls the “end of an age” was simply the practical realization that DRM is not necessary for profiting off of culture. Ultimately, DRM functioned as stalling tactic while media corporations seized the means of distribution (ie, the Internet) itself. Controlling the music was never as important as controlling the network, dressing it in advertisements and subscription fees so that the development of culture conformed to the business models and profit margins that the media found acceptable.
DRM was a practical victory in a losing ideological struggle; to claim that “it’s time to go legit” is a direct betrayal of that ideology; to call pirates “cheap” is a betrayal of the victims of the corporate media powerlust. The Age of Piracy will continue as long as content producers simultaneously control the channels of distribution. In a world where free speech and the propagation of culture is illegal for anyone outside the consumer class, and corporations have the final say over who gets to participate in culture, piracy is one of the last and most important avenues of counter-culture civil disobedience.
I agree with most of this, but still think the record company’s share of the profits from music is absurdly high. What exactly do they do to earn the money? I know that they often provide recording studios and equipment, but surely that alone isn’t worth 80% of the take.
Hopefully, with the cost of distribution falling closer and closer to nil, recording contracts will start sending a larger percentage of my money to the artists who actually made the music.
To record a decent album with mixing and mastering and have put a nice package together ie artwork, photos, basic inside sleeve (most bands will not be sold on iTunes so they still have to make the cd to sell). Lets say a ten song cd with NO AUTO-TUNE, guitars, bass, drums, vocals, backing vocals, keys, also lets say the band is producing the album themselves because they can’t afford a producer.
(this does not count, the time they use to write the songs)
A standard studio rate is $65 per hour (for an everyday studio, not any company with a name, a name company can cost upwards to $145 per hour)
Recording time you are looking at roughly 50 hours of recording, that is to put all your tracks down for your songs. Then you have about another 10 hours with of edits (60 hours still $65 per hour). From there you have mix down, roughly 4 hours per song (add another 40 hours, 10 songs at 4 hours per, and provided you have the same studio mix your album for you, you go to another place, which is always best the price can go up and even down). Mastering for a decent mastering $100 per song (easy). Granted some people have a friend here and a friend there, but I am talking about doing it without cutting corners to give the best product you can, because a friend this is not necessarily their day job, but a hobby. Album artwork, from an artists $150+ (optional), then photos, good quality with someone who has an eye (not your boy/girlfriend) $200 for a 2.5 hour session. Then we press the cd, another $230 for 100 Music CD,2-sided color front inserts, laser printing, 1-sided color tray cards (back of jewel cases), laser printing.
so at $65 (an hour)
50h (record
10h (edit)
40h (mix)
$6500
Mastering
$100 per song
10 songs
$1000
$150 for artwork
$200 for photographer
$230 for pressing
for a total of $8080 to make the cd and be able to sell it. Now they sell the album for $10 (with only 100 cd to sell) tell me if (we are suspending the fact that the music is just not good, this is a good band/artist, and you want their music). They make back $1000 for selling all 100 cds, provided, they are not with a label then they will make less money back. Even labels don’t put money into bands to develop them like they used to, they go for the sure thing, hence the cookie cutter, but once again that came from file sharing which killed the industry. Yes big bands like Metallica with millions of dollars it affected, but everyone looked at them as greedy. They are a world famous band, with Millions of fans, they are going to make millions of dollars, simple, greed? Maybe, but not really more luck. My rant is done nay sayers go ahead and rip me open. But live in the artist’s (not the famous) shoes before you decide to go get a pirated version of their music. Why shouldn’t an artist make money off of their creation?
To clarify, I think that: (a) media companies are hardly undercompensated for the work they do, and (b) I’m not wild about subsidizing their efforts to blockade or bury websites they dislike, which have free speech implications that transcend the fight over pirating.
Which is why I love programs like Audacity that let your record anything coming out of your speakers. You can find the most obscure stuff on line, hit record, convert to MP3 and be done with it. Or go to Pandora or Grooveshark, or any site, let it rip for hours, record it all, chop it. Done. Screwing with the audio from friends’ personal facebook videos is always fun. Youtube’s great for anything too – Record some rarely heard interview of your favorite musician, mix it with a few tracks of the artist. Sure, it takes longer, but there is literally NOTHING on line you can’t have playing in your car five minutes later.
The vast majority of piracy has never been the revolutionary fantasy portrayed by the anti-copyright folks.
It was and still is all about taking what you want and not paying for it, simply because the thieves either don’t have the cash or want to spend their cash at Hot Topic instead.
Music pirates are thieves, pure and simple and they aren’t going to stop. They don’t give a shit about the bands; otherwise they would have bought the bands music legally.
“Music wants to be free”; what self-serving bullshit. I hope someone who thinks your car, iPod and your laptop full of stolen music want to be free comes and pays you a visit. Or maybe a pissed off band member who you ripped off shows up at your door with a baseball bat to “free” your kneecaps. That would be fair.
Stealing music from an artist and telling him his produce has to be free of charge anyway, is like pissing him in the face and telling him he has to be grateful to get at least that little humiliating attention.
Whining about not having enough money to buy everything you want, is ludicrous: “Oh I want a Porsche and a Jaguar because it is my style and I need it sooo bad – I can’t afford it – O.k. I’ll steal them”. Please, cut the crap.
If nobody pays the one who creates the product, we will have nothing to listen in the end, except the now established (wealthy) artists. In the future making music would be something only for privileged rich people and you (the consumer) will have to listen to music made by privileged rich people, who think like privileged rich people – hey, sounds like a lot of fun. But until then, well, kick the artist, who deserves no money for his art (and sweat of the brow), straight in the groin, and keep on happy pirating ….
There is another open issue regarding the use of music and that is the Performance Royalty Act for radio broadcasting where the music is free. The industry has been in heated negeotiation on this issue. Here are some thoughts on a resolution for the last remnaining :unwired” music medium.
TextA DIALOGUE AT LAST ON RADIO PRA
FRESH AIR-FRESH APPROACH-FRESH START
KEEP THE HITS COMING
HD FAST TRACK RADIO
It is indeed refreshing to see that the NAB has taken a second look at their approach to resolving the issue of music performance royalties. Good for Gordon Smith and Bruce Reese and kudos’s to Jeff Smulyan and Peter Smyth for publically coming forward in favor of a compromise.
The conversation must be about much more than money. A creative collaborative approach may well generate a badly needed radio and music industry renaissance!
A RENAISSANCE AS PARTNERS NOT ADVERSARIES
Over many decades, radio has been the key partner of both artists and labels, creating success, profits and stardom. However, we cannot forget that it is artists who sing the songs that attract audiences to the airwaves. It is in radio’s best interests to continue to encourage a partnership with a creative wellspring that is a defining element of the industry. A permanent resolution of this issue without damaging a fabulous and long-standing relationship can be a big victory for everyone. I for one want every recording star exactly where they need to be, in the radio family!
How might radio prosper from a negotiated partnership with the recording artists and labels? First, and foremost the considerable risk inherent in an all or nothing approach would be eliminated. A negotiated settlement would preempt a third party (government) from writing or having an extraordinary influence over the deal. Even if radio wins the first round, a negotiated permanent settlement eliminates the issue from reoccurring year after year, which, would increase the ultimate probability of an industry loss.
A negotiated partnership could benefit radio enormously. Place on the table a window of broadcast radio exclusivity for new releases. Hard to police, yes! Impossible, no. The motion picture industry does this with every new release for the hardtop theaters. Is some film pirated? You bet, but the lines are still long for the blockbuster hits!
What about new music? HD and Broadcast Internet Radio may be the perfect platform to expose and experiment with new artists. Spectrum is extremely valuable to artists and record companies, particularly in a tight play-list environment. Make easy rapid access to that platform part of a negotiation. I could think of no better incubator for new music and new artists than HD Radio, particularly for artists and music genres that currently have little chance of getting on the air.
HD FAST-TRACK- RADIO
RADIO’S AMERICAN IDOL
HD Radio is in need of a programming rationale. Why not come up with an industry-wide strategy that puts HD Radio to better use? Let us expand the use of HD Radio multicast channels as a vehicle for getting new artists on the air. Let’s call it HD FAST-TRACK-RADIO
Crowdsourcing for new artists, driven by radio promotion on FM, on HD and on station Web Sites will discover new superstars! American Idol is an excellent example of Crowdsourcing that can also work for radio!
HD FAST-TRACK- RADIO could provide a nationwide new music network or networks by format with new artists uploading content from all over the world, distilling and judging the product and putting only the best on the air! The industry could offer the carrot of a top weekly, monthly, annual new music prize! Yes, there could very well be a weekly radio American Idol. Place the bright young minds that currently work in radio in charge of this concept and they will figure how to make it work!
What about paying the performance royalty bill? Radio delivers extraordinarily valuable targeted audiences and no one knows that better than the music industry. Can a pool of on air, HD and radio Web Site inventory be made available to become all of part of a royalty package? A negotiated partnership as opposed to a legislated settlement is likely in the end to be a superior financial arrangement for radio. The radio and music industry are simultaneously undergoing extremely challenging times. That in itself may be a sound bargaining foundation for a permanent, mutually acceptable and innovative profitable agreement.
Win or loose situations, particularly between constituencies that have historically been natural partners are not a good thing. There is also the reality that there is no guarantee that members of Congress who have currently signed on to support the Radio Freedom Act will not change their minds when it comes time for the actual debate and vote. Some reasonable and important voices in Washington have already sent a message that both sides should “sit down and work out a solution.” Poignant advice?
Music and radio are synonymous. Together they can creatively continue to be a formidably successful combination. It may be the best and only way to launch another radio renaissance. The answer is not in the nickels and dimes it is in the big picture.
Gordon Hastings
ghhmanagement
4 dimes to eminem, 3 to apple for 3mb worth of bandwidth, 3 to for a few hours of studio time…..
when the artist gets the bulk of the royalties i’ll start buying again. far too many middle men in the chain now. heck set up a paypal account artists and i’ll send you the buck you would get if i bought the album.
PS. if the RIAA needs the money, they can just sue some more 16 year olds.
$5 for a digital album should be the standard price. If the albums actually come out when they’re ready and not 3 months after they leaked to the internet, it might actually make sense to buy them.
The day the only model that can work these days is the subscription model (a-la Rdio or Spotify). If iTunes starts offering such a service, that would probably mean the end of piracy.
Oh that’s stupid. If they knew how many concerts I alone paid for and went to because of music I NEVER would have discovered without pirating, they’d change their tune.
I love Indie music. They’re NEVER gonna get any airtime on the radio, though, and I don’t watch music videos. The only way I hear about them is through downloaded playlists through other people. Then when they’re in a city near me, I’m all ‘Hey I’ve heard of them, I like them, let me shell out $35.50 for a concert ticket.’ I love Rihanna too, but not enough to pay $17 for an album. And I’ve seen recent pictures of Rihanna, and by the looks of those shoes by Italian designers I’ll only ever read about, them $.40 ain’t hurtin her.
And any new band that comes out should THANK pirating. Ain’t nobody tryin to spend $10 on an album by people they’ve never heard of. Worry less about selling your album, and more about selling your merch/concert/DVDs once you have a following.
I won’t attempt to absolve myself for responsibility when it comes to the fact that I pirate material. However, it should only stand to reason that I’m not the only party that’s in a morally gray area within this entire ordeal. Artists are nothing more or less than a commodity nowadays, a currency for the “big guys” at the music labels to get their fix of millions in dollars. When any company attempts to even so much as change a song (the point of art is inspiration; so unless some of the meaning is lost alongside the transition from being a traditional artist to being a musical artist, it stands to reason that their music is public, once it hits the public) the labels have to be contacted, and have to agree with the decision. Not only do they hold a monopoly on what is done to essentially an organized thought transcended into musical language, they also have this incessant need to “own” more music. I was shocked to find that even composers like Bach and Vivaldi have a legal team from their labels (!) pursuing people who use their tracks, and attempting to pass advertisements at the users’ expense. Surely such ruthless, baseless money grabbing schemes have to cease at some point. Copyrighting music in itself is a flawed concept, in my opinion. I do pay for my music. When it’s towards someone that matters, at a time that would matter to them. Say a concert, or a private high-end showing; you know, paying for entertainment. As I believe anyone should. However, I find little to no reason to pay people who force themselves into being the middleman, and call the music “theirs’.” How could a chord progression be anyone’s really?
It has never been about the medium. People were willing to tape record off the radio, for crying out loud. It has never been about the quality; people unwilling to shell out a couple of bucks for a simple track would be much less open to buying an audio setup that costs north of $20k to hear the difference in qualities. It has never been about sampling as radios, friends with cassettes, parties, and [b]people[/b] all existed long before piracy came along, and offered a broad (enough) means to experience and discover new music. It has never been about the price, as even with a stable economy people were weary of spending as much as 99c for a track they had sampled, heard on youtube, possibly heard at a club, in different qualities, with different remixes and have memorized. It has always been and will always be about the convenience. The convenience of knowing you can have any track you want and/or need, in any quality you desire, regardless of how pedantic it makes you seem, from any source you deem worthy, readily available for download straight to your computer where you can apply all the DSP’s you want, modify the file, then toss it on your sansa clip to take it with you on a run. That convenience that has been set by piracy is unmatched by any other service (if you don’t believe me, look at how Kinect is successful based on the homebrew scene, and look at nearly every other aspect of life, from Beer to craftsmanship, where it’s not the content producers that but rather the community that fueled the causes, and caused the innovation). But most of all, it has been about the convenience of pricing. It’s basically a “pay what you like” scheme. Except, you actually get to decide who gets your money, when and how. You can either support the artists directly in their concerts, or succumb to the corporate takeover of intellectual property.
So instead of trying to win people over into your side of the argument, why don’t you ask yourself this simple question: What could possibly challenge a(n) (illegitimate) medium where you have the convenience of quality, distribution, penetration in the masses, medium, source, functionality and pricing all at your disposal to tailor to your own needs? Allow me to answer: A legitimate version of piracy. It’s why Spotify is successful in the public’s eyes, it’s why you yourself admire grooveshark, and why piracy still prevails and sits at a staggering 50% of all internet traffic. At the end of the day, the wrong people are still being supported by these services (well, the former two), but at least you have the illusion of the same convenience; and until the whole system catches up with the needs of the people, the situation will always remain Labels v. Pirates.