The SOPA and PIPA controversies have been on every music-lover's mind, and it was a relief to many when the legislation was dropped. However, it does leave us with questions that will inevitably effect us in the future, as the issues that SOPA and PIPA attempted to address are far from being byone woes.
These bills revolved around copyright infringement by foreign sites, and were mostly related to sites like MegaUpload which made their money off of copyright infringement. Without getting too far into the legal mumbo-jumbo, the bills were effectively considering making the U.S. government responsible for foreign web traffic into the country.
Sounds a bit too much like Big Brother watching over our shoulders if you ask me. I'm not going to say that piracy isn't an even greater problem, because it can be, but what is a problem is the lack of an adapting business model.
People don't want to pay for music anymore. It's that simple. Sure, this also addresses movies and eBooks, among other files that can be shared. However, a lot of what's at the heart of this debate is the RIAA and their associated labels pushing for legislation to stop piracy.
I will admit that piracy can harm an artist's livelihood. Some artists are trying new methods of collecting money for their albums (and by new I mean Radiohead let people pay what they wanted once, in 2008), and it can work for them. What isn't working is putting the same singles on the radio and putting the same records in the shops.
People want something more compelling.
I have a lot of music, some of which I can't explain the origins of. I also have a pretty decent collection of vinyl for a college budget and a lot of CDs that I bought in high school and my first year of college. I have only ever bought one album digitally, a Mexican pop punk band named Allison, which I couldn't find in any store I checked in Wisconsin, or even online at the time.
This one purchase completely turned me off from digital music however. I couldn't put the music on my MP3 player because it wasn't an iPod. It wouldn't play on the computer in my room, which wasn't connected to the internet at that point because it was a dinosaur. I sure as hell couldn't give a song or two to my friend to check out without authorizing his computer to my iTunes, which you can only do five times. Talk about jumping through hoops.
The only way around any of this? Burn the album to a CD, from a low quality file, and then rip the CD to your computer in a compressed MP3 format, effectively compressing it again. So I paid $9.99 for an album that I couldn't listen to except on my parents computer.
What a hassle. On the reverse side of that coin is physical media, which is more expensive, but so much more fun. I have a turntable in the living room in my apartment, and between my roommates and I we have everything from Glenn Miller and Johnny Cash to Bad Religion and System of a Down. The beauty is, there is a USB output from the record player which goes into a laptop and records lossless FLAC files.
Everything I have on vinyl can also be on my computer and my broken iPod! Genius! A lot of the records that I've bought this year also came with a download code, which I could redeem for a digital copy of the album (in every case I've run into thus far DRM free) if I needed one.
I realize that not everyone has a record player, and that some musicians don't have the type of fans that collect every album, every obscure picture disc and every 12" single, but that's not the point. I got something extra with my purchase, other than the physical media, the nice sleeve with cool album art and the liner notes that the artist chose to include. I got hassle free digital copies of those albums.
Some artists really go out of their way to make the album a special thing. When Ben Folds released Lonely Avenue in 2010 with Nick Hornby there were several editions available, most of which included the CD. There was also a version which came with a photo book and more writing by Hornby, who wrote the lyrics for the album. Butch Walker has done some very extravagant release packages for his last two albums, and Bad Religion recently released their entire discography on vinyl in a box set for their 30th anniversary.
Buying music isn't cheap, but then again neither is making it.
Have some thoughts on the future of file-sharing or the profitability of the music industry? Just want to complain? Tell Jeremy your thoughts at jgartzke@dailycardinal.com.
