File sharing of your music.

[dmguitar0]

I am a college student studying information technology. All the time we hear what the music industry has to say about losing money on sales, or what consumers have to say about getting free music.

Therefore, I am writing a research paper about how musicians (the ones who matter) feel about file-sharing of their original works.

While this isn't a new idea, I am conducting a survey to provide me with data for my paper. The survey is a single question and is aimed towards those who either have had, or might have their music downloaded for free.

 

As such:

If you aren't a musician who writes your own songs, please dont take the survey.

 

However, do feel free to post comments on this topic. I also encourage those who take the survey to do so as well.

 

Thanks to you all.

-A fellow songwriter and musician

[Poker]

I like it.

 

Only big labels hate it.

 

It is one of the only way to be known without $$$$$$$$$ or cocksucking industry assholes.

 

Its here to stay and I embrace it.

[dmguitar0]

I wonder sometimes what the other musicians think though. While many of us are embracing it, I wonder how many of us actually agree with either opinion that the record execs and file-sharers hold.

 

 

It is one of the only way to be known without $$$$$$$$$ or cocksucking industry assholes.

 

 

Oh I definitely think that's an accurate statement. Its an easy, and inexpensive!! way to get your music out there.

 

 

Its here to stay and I embrace it.

 

 

Here to stay? Im not so sure. I think a better system could come along and make a way for musicians to get paid their royalties, wiithout dealing with the industry so much. The industry a-holes you mention do provide a service, despite all the crap they do; services such as marketing, better recordings, packed worthwhile touring schedules, and the like.

[chris carter]

It sucks major ass. And I don't mean "major" only as in "major label". I know and work with lots of independents and it has really sucked bad for them. The SF Bay Area used to be disproportionately full of independent labels; now there are VERY few inexistance here and almost none of them are turning a profit. They don't like admitting it, but when you know them personally, you know the reality. I honestly don't know any successful independent label owners (and I know quite a few) who actually like ilegal downloading. In fact, I don't know any who don't HATE it like the freakin' plague. And these aren't 'evil bloodsucking' labels either. Many of these have the 50/50 model and some are artist collectives (ie. group of artists forming their own label).

 

If you are a label, downloading absolutely sucks. Basically no label is turning a profit from record sales right now.

 

If you are a publisher (ie. songwriter or publsiher or both), then downloading absolutely sucks. It used to be viable to make up a lot of money through sync licensing as major labels didn't go after that stuff. But since majors aren't making any money, they are looking at sync to balance things out so now it's very crowded going after that stuff. And don't even get me started about mechanical royalties from record sales - that sucks for publishers just as much as for labels.

 

If you are an artist, then you might like downloading. Artists never made money from record sales (except in rare situations). Artists make money from touring and merchandising and similar stuff that is basically dependent upon popularity. Downloading doesn't hurt those things one bit - and artists (generally) don't care about the lost sales.

 

If you are a producer or studio or engineer, then the downloading sucks. Since the labels aren't making money, their budgets have shrunk CONSIDERABLY.

 

People don't like admiting how much things hurt in this business right now because of ilegal downloading because so much of this business is "image". But I know plenty of big folks and when I chat on the phone with them and ask them how they are handling things they are really honest. It's not just that they say things suck horribly, that they are having a hard time paying their bills, etc. You can actually HEAR IT IN THEIR VOICE. It's to the point where I just don't like to ask folks anymore because it's so depressing.

 

I've been through situations where I've produced records before all the craziness and after and the difference is staggering. Even in cases where it's the same artist and I had a single a few years ago and a single in the current crazy scheme. Despite all kinds of improvemenets... massive increase in radioplay, MTV play, performance fees being 5 times greater, much more press, etc. Yet sales don't increase. Or situations where sales are lower than they were before despite everything from a promotional standpoint pointing significantly to the positive side.

 

Anybody who thinks ilegal downloading helps anyone (aside from artists to a certain extent) is either fooling themselves, buying into the hype, or just don't really know anybody in the business.

 

Someone said, "It is one of the only way to be known without $$$$$$$$$ or cocksucking industry assholes." Yeah, it is a way to be known without spending tons of money or cocksucking industry assholes. The PROBLEM is that even when you become known, you can't make any freakin' money. If ALL you want is some fame, then sure. But most people need to pay some bills here and there. I know SO MANY artists, producers, etc. who are "known" and I used to think to myself: "what the hell, how are they kickin' ass in all this stuff" and I actually felt a little jealous. Then I would meet them and find out that they aren't making any money and THEY ask ME "dude, how are you paying all your bills???"

 

For someone who is starting out in music and it's not really a source of income it seems appealing because you don't know what's missing. It seems like it will be all rosey when you start getting known. But in reality is doesn't work that way anymroe.

 

And besides all this, there are plenty of options from ilegal downloading now. iTunes, myspace? There's no shortage of easy ways to preview and acquire music now. It's just that people don't wanna pay and they aren't going to get caught. It's like the asshole with a radar detector in his car that drives 90mph. All he cares is getting caught. He doesn't give a rat's ass about all the people in other cars he puts in jeapordy. Same thing. People who steal music only care about their wallets, they don't care about who it hurts.

 

And for anyone who REALLY thinks it HELPS sell more records... aside from the fact that far fewer records are being sold now, if it did help sell more records then every record label would be posting their stuff on their website with big signs saying "download me!"

[guitar user]

my bad

[Beachbum]

Selling recorded music.

 

Long distance telephone fees.

 

Dialup internet access.

 

DOS.

 

The dinosaurs.

 

Is there a pattern here? Is it anyone's fault? Is it simply reality?

 

(What's the good news? People actually pay for water now, and that used to always be free, it still is free actually but people pay for it.)

[chris carter]

 

Originally posted by Beachbum Long distance telephone fees. Dialup internet access. DOS. The dinosaurs.

 

 

I don't think any of those things ended because of ilegal activity.

[Poker]

Well don't get me wrong.

 

In a perfect world, illegal (free) download of music would not exist, artists would be all making money and big labels would be honest with everyone. Artists would all have the same chance to play on the radio, make money, and be happy.

 

But its not a perfect world. I kind of accepted the fact that internet is unstoppable, and that we must live with it. Years ago I had dreams of living from my music but these days are long gone. I have a job. Music is my expression, my passion.

 

Its also in human nature to NOT pay for something they can have for free.

 

That being said, once you stop seeing music as a mean to make money, free internet sharing is a good thing. What are the other options? Get signed... And what you must do for that is most of the time a pain in the ass, and despite all the hard work CHANCE is a big factor.

 

The industry was blinded by greed and it ignored the internet, and now they pay for it.

[chris carter]

 

Originally posted by Poker That being said, once you stop seeing music as a mean to make money, free internet sharing is a good thing. What are the other options? Get signed... And what you must do for that is most of the time a pain in the ass, and despite all the hard work CHANCE is a big factor.

 

 

Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of "signed" artists, even major label artists, do not make enough money to support themselves. Often a major label will pay an artist's rent as a courtesy because they know if they don't, the artist can't tour and promote the record. The rent payments become recoupable against the artist's royalties of course - it's not like a label is just going to GIVE money away - because the vast majority of the time it doesn't get recouped.

 

Anyway, I'm just saying that it's a misconception that if you get signed to an indie or a major, that you will be able to earn a living. Doesn't work that way... it's never worked that way as a matter of fact.

[dmguitar0]

Based on what I have read, it is close-minded to blame all the lost sales on file-sharing. One must take into account a little economics; consumers are spending less on music in general - and oftentimes it is a result of some other economic phenomenon in combination with the file-sharing explosion, not just the fact that they can get music for free.

 

So, what do you guys think about the loss of sales in the music industry? Is it a direct result of the file-sharing craze? or is it something else? I am finding research which suggests that "Yes, file-sharing affects album sales in a negative way, but no it isnt the sole or even predominant cause of the huge decrease."

[chris carter]

 

Originally posted by dmguitar0 I am finding research which suggests that "Yes, file-sharing affects album sales in a negative way, but no it isnt the sole or even predominant cause of the huge decrease."

 

 

I'm curious what research is saying this as it's something that is very difficult to quantify. In my own experience, being involved with many projects in a variety of roles, I would easily say that filesharing is the dominant factor responsible for probably 2/3 with 1/3 being the economy. I'm a nerd, I watch Jim Lehrer, I watch the week to week trends in the economy, I watch when the CPI and consumer spending go up and down and music sales haven't responded to those things the way other products, especially entertainment products, have.

 

In the beginning filesharing was new and shiny. It was hard to find anyone against it. As well, while I think we have some of the best news media in the world, there are some serious flaws with the system. It was very difficult for news outlets to report accurately about filesharing in the beginning. Especially given the fact that they need to show a face for the music industry and the one that brings in viewers are artists, and most artists aren't hurt by it. But for a long time (and still) the vast majority of 'industry' people we heard from in most reporting were people who weren't necessarily hurt. As well, the complexities of the music industry are such that the average person simply cannot grasp how publishing works. They cannot grasp that a label typically keeps about 1/3 of the CD sale price. And there was this misrepresentation that it only hurt Major labels. That representation was because regular people knew who they were and heard them complain. They never heard the thousands of publishers, the thousands of indie labels, etc. because those individual voices aren't big, people don't know who they are, and thsu don't make for interesting news.

As well, for a long time indie labels kind of stayed out of it thinking that maybe there was a way to take advantage of it. Yeah, they saw their sales plummit just like majors did. But they reserved their opinions because traditionally indie labels have been able to think/respond faster than majors. Many of the indie label owners I know were kind of holding their breath trying to figure out a way to use it as an advantage. Well, turns out that they couldn't. The only ones that couldn't were ones that weren't turning a profit anyway so they looked at it like, "I wasn't making money before. This way I still won't make money, but at least I have a chance for some popularity and that's at least fun."

So whereas in the beginning a lot of people in the industry didn't necessarily consider file-sharing evil because they just didn't know and were hopeful, I really don't know anybody personally in this business who likes it, other than some artists for the obvious reasons.

 

I honestly don't know how anyone can look at a 40% loss over 4 years and say it's mostly the economy. Put aside the other potential issues that can affect sales. Not even Ford and GM have lost 40% over 4 years. Not even the airlines were losing at that kind of rate the year after 9/11. I mean, that's a DRASTIC loss. Consumer spending, at it's worst, didn't go down more than a couple percent. And, ironically, sales of music playing devices actually went up.

[Poker]

Labels where still selling albums for 20$, while everyone knew productions costs/technology prices were going down.

 

Also, are CD sales really going down? In North America, the last stats say they are down 5%, and I wonder how precise those results are...

 

Another thing... Like dmguitar0 said, its easy to blame file-sharing for all the problems.

 

The main problem I see is the way labels market their artists as flavor of the weeks. They don't even give them the chance to develop and grow a fanbase of LOYAL fans. I'm talking about fans that will stay with the band for 5 years or more.

 

Everything now is just overexposed for a few years. Labels think short term and they kill their own products. They go for the "shooting star" kind of marketing strategy. Then what happens? People stop caring about artists/bands, because they know its just a fad. They start caring about SINGLES and what is hot "at the moment".

 

When you are caring about singles, you don't need to buy an album. You just need to download the hot song (most of the time, the only good song on the album).

 

People don't feel guilty because they don't care for the band!

[Beachbum]

Another contributor to lower CD sales?

 

Many people now download simply the one (1) song they want instead of being forced to purchase the entire CD.

 

It's about time the record comapnies take it in the shorts for making people buy 10 - 12 songs when all they really wanted was 1 song.

[megadan]

Indie labels need to make it cool to buy records again.

 

I will buy your 7" split. Or download your jewel cased EP. Whatever you choose

 

 

 

 

Seriously though, at this stage, the important thing is that people hear my music, tell their friends, and get us shows when we book tours.

[Poker]

Originally posted by Beachbum Another contributor to lower CD sales? Many people now download simply the one (1) song they want instead of being forced to purchase the entire CD. It's about time the record comapnies take it in the shorts for making people buy 10 - 12 songs when all they really wanted was 1 song.

 

See my post above yours

[dmguitar0]

 

I'm curious what research is saying this as it's something that is very difficult to quantify.

 

 

Try this link to a google search I did as part of my research to see what opinions were being put out there. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cd+sales+file+sharing&btnG=Google+Search

 

What I see is roughly 90% of the results being a news story, or more importantly a study (see second result, or this one):

 

http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf#search=%22cd%20sales%20file%20sharing%22

 

..about file-sharing either not being the reason for lost sales or actually boosting cd sales (i doubt the latter is true..im a skeptic myself).

My browser shows 100 results at once though so out the first ten there should be 8 i think and I continue to scroll and see result after result which substantiates the idea that file-sharing isnt the predominant cause of lost album sales.

[chris carter]

At a certain point I just skimmed through it, but right from the get-go I noticed a MASSIVE problem in their statistical sampling. What is ironic is that they point it out, yet fail to further take it into account in their data (or did I miss it? I was looking for it) which seems rather bizzarre.

 

 

We have records for two servers, which operated continuously for seventeen weeks from 8 September to 31 December 2002. During this time most high school and college students, primary users of file sharing (Ipsos-Reid, 2002ab; Pew Internet Project, 2003), had access to broadband connections at school. The study period also includes the holiday shopping season when about half of all CDs are sold.

 

 

I'm still reading, but suffice to say that album sales are affected by the holiday shopping season while P2P downloads are not. The idea of doing this study on any period of time other than a full year cycle is a little absurd. And doing so during that specific time period will show disproportionate records sales vs. downloads. This is not to say they should have used a different third of the year - doing this in the first third of the year would likely overstate the imact of downloads. My point is that to have good data for this kind of stufy, you really are forced to use a sample set of a full year.

 

What is interesting would be to conduct the same study later. 2002 was right at the front edge of the downloading thing and things definitely deteriorated further in the next few years. There are two other factors to take into consideration in future years. 1) increasing saturation of high-speed internet connections. 2) and much more interesting, the culture of users who are too youn gto remember the non p2p era. The second point is very interesting when I meet fans of records I've worked on at meet-n-greets. Some of these kids who are 12 years old simply don't remember a time when you couldn't swipe music so easily; their initial music acquisitions were quite possibly via P2P services. As such, they don't have a reference point. Many of these kids will walk up to the artist and say silly stuff like, "I LOVE your album sooo much! I got it on __P2P_name_here_ and I play it ALL the TIME" and then they hand over a photo for the artist to autograph because they never bought the CD and it doesn't even occure to them what they did. I've witnessed this exact scenario so many times it's just to the point where you have to laugh. So it would be interesting to validate the data over time.

 

Okay, getting a little nerdy.... I think I should avoid this topic from now on. My point is that one has to look not only at the results of the data, but the data itself. Researchers are always talking about "good data" and "bad data". Unless I missed something here, this is a lot of "bad data" - but a noble effort nonetheless.

[Finnkeeper]

been feeling the heat in another thread for having the audacity to inquire if there were a non-MP3 format I could offer samples of my songs in, so no need for me to wade in too deep...

 

However, one thing that organizations like SOCAN here in Canada could do to help stem the tide is pay broke artists like myself a token (or a toke) to speak at schools, re: how their free downloads take food from my daughters' mouths. After crying the blues, I could play my best stuff & maybe sell a few CD's off the stage!

 

Moreso than hyped up 'scare tactic' commercials that the kids fastforward over, here would be someone who's truly being affected by their greed for the freebie, likely having far greater impact.

 

Just a thought that struck me as helpful, which means the industry would completely ignore it.

[BlueStrat]

I'm mixed about it, but I opted for "mixed but don't like it." I should qualify that by saying that if I voluntarily offer my songs to be downloaded, as a promo tool, that's one thing. I actually have 7 songs I'm offering on one of the links below. However, I have a huge issue with someone else making my stuff available without my permission. At the level I'm at, it doesn't hurt me much, and might even help a little, but if I'm a John Mayer or another equally large name, it's costing me money, because I have to repay the record company for what they put into me and every lost sale or royalty makes it that much harder to repay what I owe. So nmany guys who think they're 'sticking it to the greedy record companies" are actually sticking it to the artists,. They are naive if they think record companies are going to forgive the debt artists incur and just write it off.

 

The thing is, record deals are based on sales. If you like an artist, but you steal his music without paying for it, his chances of getting another contract after this one diminishes greatly. And developing new artists? Forget it. Record companies don't have the disposable cash they once did to develop and promote new ideas and fresh acts, causing them to want to stick with the tried and true clone bands.

 

So, yeah, it's a double edged sword. It can benefit unknowns, but it hurts known acts. The average kid downloading free music doesn't seem to be able to make the distinction.

[BlueStrat]

Many of these kids will walk up to the artist and say silly stuff like, "I LOVE your album sooo much! I got it on __P2P_name_here_ and I play it ALL the TIME" and then they hand over a photo for the artist to autograph because they never bought the CD and it doesn't even occure to them what they did.

 

This has happened to me twice at festival shows, where I was presented with a burned copy of one of my CDs with photocopied liner, and the person wanted me to autograph it.

 

The first time I was so shocked and there was a line of people waiting, so I just signed it. The second time was a year or so later, and I said really loud, "Oh, you burned a copy of my CD. Well, that was free, I guess, but the autograph will cost you 15 bucks!"

[Poker]

 

Originally posted by Finnkeeper been feeling the heat in another thread for having the audacity to inquire if there were a non-MP3 format I could offer samples of my songs in, so no need for me to wade in too deep... However, one thing that organizations like SOCAN here in Canada could do to help stem the tide is pay broke artists like myself a token (or a toke) to speak at schools, re: how their free downloads take food from my daughters' mouths. After crying the blues, I could play my best stuff & maybe sell a few CD's off the stage! Moreso than hyped up 'scare tactic' commercials that the kids fastforward over, here would be someone who's truly being affected by their greed for the freebie, likely having far greater impact. Just a thought that struck me as helpful, which means the industry would completely ignore it.

 

 

Man, get a job. Seriously. People don't care about artists who are broke. They hear about war crimes/cancer/sex abuse everyday on TV. You won't change the world. It WON'T HAPPEN.

[dmguitar0]

 

People don't care about artists who are broke. They hear about war crimes/cancer/sex abuse everyday on TV. You won't change the world. It WON'T HAPPEN.

 

 

What do you think? Is this guy correct? Is the American consumer going to write us off as unimportant? should we give up our passion? is there no hope for the file-sharing system to undergo change?

 

i personally think these are inaccurate. its not as important as war or cancer, but its an issue with some attention. its in the news enough - it must be of some concern. and besides, asking a musician with passion to get a job that isnt music, is like telling a dog not to bark.

 

i just cant help it. its in my nature

[Poker]

 

Originally posted by dmguitar0 What do you think? Is this guy correct? Is the American consumer going to write us off as unimportant? should we give up our passion? is there no hope for the file-sharing system to undergo change?

 

 

I never said you should give up your passion.

[dmguitar0]

 

I never said you should give up your passion.

 

 

well...i took this to say get a job instead of playing music:

 

 

Man, get a job. Seriously. People don't care about artists who are broke.

 

[Finnkeeper]

 

Originally posted by Poker Man, get a job. Seriously. People don't care about artists who are broke. They hear about war crimes/cancer/sex abuse everyday on TV. You won't change the world. It WON'T HAPPEN.

 

 

I had a job for a lengthy period that was holding me back from my music. It also barely paid enuff to keep my 2 kids at daycare, should I bust my nuts so some stranger can look after them or stay home and do it right, myself? No brainer as to why only my wife works now; she makes a good salary thanks to her degree.

 

My idea wasn't for these speaking engagements to be a source of revenue for the unemployed but rather, informing the general public, eye to eye, on how low income artists feel about illegal downloading.

 

Sorry for offending!