Illegal download blogs
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For all the attention given to P2P networks, the music industry seems curiously indifferent to illegal download blogs. Perhaps their impact is relatively small compared to P2P. Or perhaps resistance is futile. That arcade game comes to mind where one knocks down frogs that pop up randomly. Squash one blog, and three spring up to replace it.
But maybe the industry should pay more attention. A casual Internet stroll reveals that the blogspot.com domain has become a massive, if crude, P2P-like network. Loadown is a prominent download site for death metal. (Here are two posts excoriating its opponents.) Its sidebar lists scores of similar sites. For the black metal equivalent, try Dunkelheit. These "blogs" have hardly any content aside from artwork, track lists, and download links. They're really just glorified FTP sites. Ironically, though, they're more faithful to the original conception of the term: "weblog," a record of one's Internet travels.
Let's say a label expects to sell 10,000 copies of a CD. It gets leaked, and 1,000 people download it. 500 people would never have bought it anyway. Those are nonexistent losses. Of the remaining 500, 400 keep the download. For them, the sound quality and convenience are enough to displace a CD purchase. (The inferiority of MP3's to CD's and LP's is well-documented. But as the iPod becomes the dominant music playback device, such inferiority becomes commercially moot.) The remaining 100 supplement their download with a CD purchase. Even this figure is generous. Who actually does this? The number is probably closer to 10. In this example, though, the label sustains a 4% loss simply through one download link.
Some solutions come to mind. Perhaps some intern could monitor rapidshare and megaupload all day, sending copyright infringement notices when necessary. Labels could also deal with the problem at its head. Who leaks albums before release dates? Aside from internal leaks, music journalists do. Perhaps labels could watermark MP3's. (And, no, streaming is not an answer, at least yet. I hate being chained to my computer to listen to a record. Reviewers should not be placed in hate-filled mindsets. Also, streams are piratable.) That's not foolproof, though. What if someone steals a journalist's iPod and leaks albums? Is the journalist on the hook then?
Labels could also employ the Internet equivalent of anti-missile chaff. On her blog, a friend of mine posted a fake download link to the new Animal Collective album. It was really 11 tracks of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" (see Wikipedia entry: "rickrolling"). People went bananas. Her hit counter went through the roof. She got death threats. (People send death threats because they can't illegally download albums! Unbelievable.) The band's clueless label Domino got its panties in a bunch. It shouldn't have. My friend demonstrated possibly the perfect anti-piracy measure. Fill the Internet with fake downloads; imagine the consternation of Coldplay fans when all their downloads are Gorgoroth albums!
A more realistic but related solution would be to leak the album first, at high quality. One harm of pre-release leaks is lack of control. Copies floating around of badly encoded, low-bitrate MP3's can actually create negative buzz. Why not control the message and be the first leaker? Audio pirates aren't terribly creative; they often just repost links they find elsewhere. Of course, this means kissing goodbye to album sales. However, I've advocated that here.
A possible corollary of this proactive approach is targeted advertising. I don't know how it would work with MP3's, and I'm not sure I support the idea. But this white paper (.pdf) sets out the interesting possibility. Downloaded content could serve as a platform for targeted advertising. A watermark could reveal telling information about a user. (The paper uses the example of "Stairway to Heaven" downloaded at Starbucks in San Francisco - which should yield a targeted ad by Brooks Brothers.) This raises all sorts of issues, like privacy. But it's a start. The Internet is the world's most powerful publicity tool. It should be harnessed, not fought.
25 Comments:
Imagine the consternation of Coldplay fans when all their downloads are Gorgoroth albums!
Imagining the opposite is perhaps even more rewarding.
Oh, and love this comment on Dunkelheit:
616: hmm thanks for Eblis but Shemhamforash is error...I want this album orginal Krapulax you know?band dont want sell it,understand?I want give them my money but they disagree
Good post, i like to consider myself a music fan and in general i will only download demos or out of print material that is impossible to obtain elsewhere.
Personally i cant see the harm in downloading something like a wormphlegm lp or sororicide cd it isnt harming the artists when the only place to obtain it is ebay for money that is frankly insane. If i like what i hear and a legit reissue comes along then i will buy it.
My personal policy is that I listen to MySpace to see if I like a band. If I do, then I buy their album on CD. If it's an old band that I absolutely cannot find the CD, I download it, but these are few and far between. Thankfully, there have been tons of classic reissues in the past few years. Well, I'm doing my part, anyway.
I really like the NIN model. Give away the download in high quality for free, and sell high priced packaged editions to collectors. I'm not spending $300 bucks for a NIN vinyl set but thousands of people did and by all accounts Reznor made a good chunk of change off of that. Obviously it takes an established fan base to support something like this, but there are probably variations of this model that would work for new bands as well.
I don't mess with the whole torrent thing (paranoid of viruses), but I download songs from mp3 blogs frequently. I may not be the norm, but I've also bought many, many CDs after being exposed to new music on these blogs. Monitoring them for abuse is a smart idea, but threatening every blogger who has an mp3 link on their blog would certainly be bad for business I imagine.
i usually buy vinyl and download the disc. maybe it's f'd up ethically but i feel that at least i'm buying something. plus, i'd rather own the vinyl and i'm rather lazy ripping vinyl, so it kills two birds with one stone. it's also kinda in spite of labels who don't release the vinyl at the same time as the CD. sure it's my lack of patience that comes into play in some instances, but it seems that some labels (Southern Lord anyone?) will release a disc then release the vinyl months later with extras almost 'forcing' (using that term lightly) to purchase the album again for the extra content. it sucks and i 'fell' for it for years until i pretty much got fed up.
also, i used to use soulseeX but haven't used it in about a year. indeed blogs, at least in my situation, have taken over finding music; new, old, rare or otherwise. torrents are decent for obtaining discographies in one shot and that's about it.
in summation, as much as i download, i do buy a LOT of music; thousands of $$$ a year with maybe 15% of that towards used music.
To the point helping the taste of HM listeners become more eclectic, this sort of convenient piracy has been a huge boon.
For some people, they just are pack-rats and download/store everything and pretend to like it all and know so much about HM because they have an extensive collection of shit, they'd do the same in the past only after having bought all this material and I won't be the one to suggest that's better (though more lucrative for the musicians and labels) because it's still feeding a pathology that has little to do with actual music appreciation.
But for other people 'try before you buy' access to new releases means they can disregard the hype machine and make up their mind if a new release is good enough to buy. More often than not in my personal opinion it's not. This doesn't have to do with anything else than how laws of averages and artistic creation work together. So a lot of marketing techniques that were reliable in the past in getting people to buy records that are bad (the hype mechanism mostly) aren't anymore and a lot of new HM remains unbought. That's a good thing although record labels and artists cry about it.
When I was starting out as listener of HM I trusted the Metal Hammer GR magazine writers and their taste to figure out what I should buy next. No mp3 samples, not a lot of tape-trading, pre-internet. Blind purchases, more or less. I listened to a lot of shit metal this way (and not just because the writers had shit taste but because their tastes were bought and sold) and whereas this made me knowledgeable about HM on the whole (I have an opinion on the Italian band 'Labyrinth' whereas I really shouldn't), I regret a lot of early purchases. Now I only buy albums which I know deserve my time and attention because I've already heard them online. I think this is a positive change, even if it makes it harder for a mediocre HM band to survive. No wait, exactly because it does that.
So, getting an intern to monitor the internet for blog posts? That sort of reactionary thing can serve to shield the labels' interest but it is besides the point which is that if the music is really good and really worthwhile, there will be a paying audience for it. If it isn't and the artistry is just commodified from inception to presentation, listeners will deal with it like consumers and consumers love free stuff.
The days of "music as product" are numbered. When there's ZERO limitations to free access...what price point makes sense? None. Instead, you'll see an increased (attempted) monetization around the experience of the music. Monetize how people interact with your content as opposed to the content itself. (i.e. ad supported)
The problem? This won't keep the lights on at fancy record labels. It's a much smaller revenue scale.
So will an "ISP tax" come into play?
Or maybe the idea of "music as water", in which you pay a flat rate a month for unlimited access, will take off.
Something's got to change...but the idea that somehow people are entitled to free music blows my mind.
(just leaving another comment because I meant to check the "email follow ups" box)
Answer: resistance is futile.
labels are aware of the blogspot thing. they are just powerless. all you can do is email a request to pull down links.
why isn't the riaa in the fight with blogspot.com and the mass download sites people use in conjuction? now that is a good question.
the nin or radiohead model will not work for most bands of interest to readers of this blog. they are huge bands. money has already been spent on promoting the bands for years.
no label wants to risk expensive ltd packaging for small metal bands and then give the mp3s out for free. Free mp3s as promotion for the live show won't work either because bands can't make enough money live unless they are Madonna.
bottom line - paid downloads are still 5% of CD sales. LPs are in the same area, maybe 5%.
Journalists and music geeks forget that because in our world people act differently; but its a small world. CDs are still king, by FAR.
Your favorite band sells 2000 Cds in the US, with 100 paid downloads. They get paid $100-500 a night to play. Subtract gas, food transport, and that's about $0.
I doubt lowering mp3 prices to $.50 will help either. Maybe for huge music geeks like us that would make a differnce. I might try alot of stuff out at that price, and only listen to it a few times before deleting, but we are not average music fans. $10 for an album is a good deal, its about 2 beers, one movie viewing, one lunch out.
I think the biggest problem for bands is the perception that they are already 'rich', and that buying Cds only helps corrupt labels.
If you like a band, buy the album. Buy some merch. Buy a ticket to the show.
and yes, for fucks sake listen before you buy and cut out the "tastemakers", but you can do that 'legally' on myspace, lastfm, etc.
My personal policy is that I download music that interests me where I find it, spend a little time with it, and if I don't like it, I delete it. If I enjoy it, I either buy the record, or find some other way to get money into that band's hands by purchasing their t-shirts, concert tickets, or other albums at full price or with my E-music subscription. With one band, I even sent them some cash through PayPal when they were robbed on tour in Europe and had all of their equipment and other belongings stolen.
In some cases, I will become a cheerleader for the band and go to bat for them in discussions on the web. For example, I was pretty vocal about Lair of the Minotaur's getting dissed by Decibel's top 40. I don't fool myself into thinking that I'm somehow able to serve as a mini-PR agency that generates sales for them, but I do what I can when it feels right. In the case of LOTM, I feel like I helped to get a lot of people talking about them on the Decibel forum, which is probably to their benefit. (LOTM really got the quad-fecta from me in 2008 – I purchased all of their albums, paid to see them live, bought a t-shirt, and prattled on endlessly about them online.)
I actually try to keep a tally of bands that I feel I owe money to, and try to make things right with them within a reasonable period of time. I'm not suggesting that this is the perfect policy for everyone, but it feels right to me.
And I'd never begrudge a band or label for asking to have their music taken down. It's their intellectual property and if they feel it's in their best interests to not have it out there on the internet, that's their business decision. However, I suspect some come to the conclusion that they gain more exposure if their music is floating free and thus see it as a way to expand their market share. In either case, their wishes should be respected by bloggers.
Copyright itself needs to redefined I think, if 'they' can't control physical piracy of music in the real world then they've no chance of policing the same thing online. p2p get's hunted then it shifts to blogs, they get hunted then it's something else.
People should really try to see the difference between blogs that do what they do out of scene-building & love of music and those who just list albums and have 6 ads before you get to the download.
In my ideal world the digital version of all albums is free and we get to drop our money on nice gatefold vinyl and and kick-ass gigs. People will always have problems spending cash on things the can't hold or indeed attend.
Interns patrolling RS/MU links: probably kind of like mopping up a hurricane, but sure, why not.
Watermarking: Already done. I have several review copy CDs with big scary watermarking threats, and I think the place I used to write actually did have to fire at least one writer. How it's implemented ranges from inconvenient to frustrating--some of my discs just have a few extra tracks that say "This CD was prepared for...", while some of them actually won't play on my computer.
Flooding with fakes: arguably not much better than patrolling RS links, and creates a wall between users and listeners. For instance, I think it was Madonna who put out fake copies of a song which was really just her (or somebody) screaming "What the fuck are you doing?" for 3 minutes.
I agree with your end point, that the internet should be put to good use, but before it can really happen I think the business model will have to change.
Some really good comments here. ISP tax, i.e., charging for bandwidth used, might be a solution. Commercial entities who stream video/audio might not like it, however, b/c it might turn users off to streaming. Watermarking is an interesting solution b/c it can be implemented in different ways. At one end, there's the ridiculous "won't play in a computer" kind, which is stupid. But I've gotten watermarked CD's that have played fine.
I agree with the commenter who said that there are ways to preview music without downloading entire albums (which would then be a waste of time/bandwidth). Most bands have a MySpace now, and usually one can tell within seconds if they're worth investigating.
Yes but it would stand to reason to expect a band to put their best material on their myspace and the rest of the record could be sub-par. Who wants that to happen to them anymore when they buy something?
I think a solution can only come from labels providing materials with a cd purchase that cannot be downloaded. I'm sure Tool had good enough returns on their last album because the packaging was incredible. Back when we all used to buy vinyl, the packaging itself was a huge piece of artwork. Thats why people still buy vinyl and lots of record companies are hurrying to get in on the demand.
CDs are TERRIBLE products. The jewel case is an easily broken(sometimes broken before you buy it), disposable waste. The liner notes are so tiny that they are just a waste of ink. Why not package zip disks in the CD packaging? Why not a ticket to see the band? Why not a belt buckle? A booklet with more art and photos?
There is absolutely NO imagination in the record industry and the sentiment from the consumers is right. Don't ask me to solve the problems with YOUR industry. I honestly don't care about the record labels... well, thats not true. I care about the small labels and like everyone I know I buy the cd at the show because I am giving money to the band, but as for the record industry as a whole? I'm sorry but I remain apathetic.
Tons of great comments here, guys. I don't know where to start, but really, here's the reality:
Internet is the new radio.
Which means that the ways that artists used to generate money on radio, now have to be transferred to the internet in streaming and considering "unpaid the new paid". By that, I mean that you have to find a way to pay content providers through even the most casual of listening and listeners online, because the demand is still high.....it's just that there's no price for it online, there's no price for it being in the public domain. It used to be that on radio, bands and artists would get paid royalties in lieu of selling the recording--that exposure was never guaranteed to sell more recordings, but the artists were getting small royalties in lieu of it cutting into sales, whilst reaching listeners.
Another problem is regulations. Everyone's got a blog, everyone's got a band, the whole system of being in a band and being a part of the industry, is so overexposed. When I was at the local music gear store, a guy that worked there was telling a customer (musician) that he provides mastering services. It's become easier for everyone, but profitable for nearly no one. The days of one being able to quit their dayjob and focus solely on being in a band on the road, being a journalist, being a producer, engineer, mixing engineer, mastering engineer.....it's pretty much over.
Also, like has been hinted at, I think that the solution is in the pay per byte model online. It's too long and detailed to go into here in both the problems and the solutions, but the days of absorbing mass, endless amounts of anything are coming to an end. The ISP's, themselves, are having to spend millions and billions of dollars to upgrade hardware, just so that someone can horde bandwidth and load up on tons of things that they don't need or will never get around to enjoying anyways.
There will be a point where the ISP's refuse to allow people NOT to pay per byte for what they are absorbing. I speculate that the tracking software for content providers (bands/ music/ songs, photographs, copyrighted things, movies, games, programs) will come later and will have to be on it's way to set up some sort of royalty system to compensate those who are in demand. Right now, something with 100,000 hits on YouTube doesn't reward content providers with anything but exposure.....and we're at a crossroads today of exposure not necessarily and sometimes rarely translating into paid sales. And don't think for a minute that YouTube isn't making millions of dollars in ad revenues, to not pay their artists (ring a bell? Like how the big bad greedy majors underpaid artists for years?)
I know a guy who developed major software and games and it ended up on Torrent sites. Imagine your hard work and sweat and equity being passed around......essentially, it is socialism for the lazy. The internet's "grab whatever you can" mentality reminds me more of communism than anything, and it is, in a way, social welfare for the morally bankrupt or the financially bankrupt.
The problem becomes that with most communistic approaches, the rewards for those that work hard are dithered down and divided equally among everyone. This doesn't promote hard work, if you are subsidizing everyone else (ie: listeners that like music that won't pay for it). This system doesn't reward hard work, so for us to expect the highest quality out of artists, is unfair.
When artists aren't rewarded properly for their efforts, they too, sometimes (alot of times?) will mirror the laziness of the audience. Hence more triggering in heavy metal, hence more brickwalled/ smashed/ dynamic-less masters, more Auto Tune. Less time spent crafting records. It's showing.
Also, you wouldn't know it, but compared to 20 or 30 years ago, bands used to be able to play several nights a week and make a living at it, pending that they stayed on the road or gigged enough to do so. I talked to guys that used to gig 6 or 7 nights a week--they weren't in mega successful bands and weren't the greatest musicians by any stretch of the imagination, but they were playing to good audiences and were getting paid at least enough to cover their rent and living expenses and it was their dayjob.
Now, bands can't often play more than once in a month or every few months in a market, in fear of weakening their draw. Either we're at the point of complete exposure and saturation, or people are just way more indifferent than they used to be.
Also, bands get paid as much today as they did 20 years ago. It's a price freeze that hasn't mirrored the cost of inflation and everything else.
I've always been intrigued with the excuses that there's tons of bad music today. Hasn't there always? Are the Pussycat Dolls better than the Backstreet Boys? Are the Backstreet Boys better than New Kids On The Block or Milli Vanilli? Is Milli Vanilli any better than any of the shitty teenybopper bubblegum bands on the radio in the 60's (ie: "Yummy Yummy Yummy"). I doubt it.
And how original could fifty zillion garage bands in the 60's possibly be when they were doing "Louie Louie" or "Gloria"? Music survived and did quite well.
I think that it's the audiences ridiculous expectations of what entertainment is supposed to do. Music is, in the end, entertainment. It's the channel changing "entertain me, i'm bored" mentality that's ruined people's perceptions of something that could be a whole lot more. I'm convinced of it. It's always been a standard that the next generation will have their bands that their parents say is "derivative noise", while it's new to those kids, that generation of listeners. It is up to THEM to make it new and exciting, because it SHOULD be new.
But I do think that we're at a point of complete saturation. Old is the new new, and new is the old old. It's a tricky slope to climb. Classic rock radio and the insistance on the old, has hurt the new. The industry has always tended to try to de-emphasize the old, because if we only relied on the old acts, they'd be the only ones that would be selling and the new acts that took their cues from that sound would be exposed for how unoriginal they are, or how much they're based on something that already exists or has existed.
In the media and online, there's so much saturation with everything and so much information, that it's a given that what once had alot more naivety is now scrutinized way beyond belief. Shitty records have always been sold to the naive (we all look back on certain purchases and cringe), but that was all a part of the learning curve. Learning what you truly like, and what was only good for a little while.
In alot of ways, Toys R' Us' bankrupcy a few years ago (they were in trouble) sort of points to a bigger problem in our society--everyone gets so hardened and jaded and mature at such a young age, that there's no time to revel in blissful naivety anymore. No time to play and be a kid and just be a kid. Parents want their five year olds to be 5 or 10 years more educated and advanced. Kids have cellphones at age 5 and whatnot. There's no room to be young and dumb anymore.
Are we smarter? Undoubtedly. But as I remember from a Paul Westerberg interview a long time ago, he paraphrased an old quote from someone else:
"the smart man learns something everyday. The wise man forgets something everyday"
Meaning that the more we know, the dumber we are. Look at a dog hanging out the window of a car--blissfully ignorant of anything. We can't unlearn thousands of years of evolution, and we can't unlearn 20 or 30 years of mass media saturation that makes us more jaded and aware than we ever have been.
From someone on lucidmedia
"I just read that Invisible Oranges article.
That's bullshit.
Some people just can't keep their fucking mouths shut, apparently."
stupid kids who think the world owes them something.
Great article Cosmo!
It seems that being a snitch is the cool thing around here.
...and the hydra grows another head
CANADA
Where is your high horse now, motherfucker?
You know, some blogs are terrible like you mention, with nearly no content whatsoever, but blogs like Sludgeswamp and Lucidmedia clearly are music-lovers dens. I mean, they also put on release dates of the actual products and for the vinyl. The disclaimer on most blogs reads that if the artists have any problem with their stuff being displayed, it will be removed. The reality is that loads of bands actually encourage their music to be on these sites, because they know it is better to be downloaded than to be ignored.
Cheese and Ryan's comments are related - there are some blogs that love and spread music. That offers exposure to bands, up to the point when they want to make money from records. Then it becomes murky. Does increased exposure at that point result in more sales, or does it just result in people downloading albums and not buying them?
In a simpler world, making money from albums was a reasonable goal. Record labels have bollixed that up so much that now labels and bands sometimes have opposing interests. If labels are putting bands into contracts where bands make no money from albums, then bands have no incentive to discourage piracy. In fact, they should encourage it, b/c more exposure means better tour attendance and merch sales. Of course, that backfires if it sinks the labels that gave them the money to record in the first place.
there are very little labels that give bands money to record a record anymore...really, most record labels are dinosaurs trying to survive in the ice age of the interweb, without a clue how to do it. Honestly dude, they don't deserve your sympathy.
nerd
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