a very common question but not one with a simple answer. If for example someone has purchased the artists music then I believe that it is fine if they then lend this to a friend; however I think that if they buy it with intentions of distributing it on mass then yes there is an issue, whether or not it is illegal is debatable. But looking a it from another perspective; a file sharer may have purchased the music originally in order to share it this means they have rightly paid the artist for the product, but it is then the people are getting the music for free that aren't paying the artist, so are they the ones in the wrong? But they haven't intentionally ripped off the artist, they would just rather lend a friends CD or download it from the internet because of all the benefits, ie, its free, they don't have to make the effort of actually going out to get it, thus saving time and they can lose the risk of wasting money on something they don't actually like. To sum up, if I buy an artists music, I believe i should be able to do what I like with it, if I want to lend it to a friend then I should be able to do; if anything, I am doing the artist a favour, I'm publicising them, if i lend this album to 10 people, and they all like it, that's 10 more fans they have, those 10 can then pass it on, and so forth, creating a bigger fan base.
Whilst the internet allows bands to bypass the major companies, who acts as the 'gatekeeper'? How do you stop the 'dross'?
If anyone can post their music...how do you find the 'good stuff'?
Yes obviously now anyone can put music on the internet and distribute it without the use of a big label and in actual fact, the "gatekeeper" is the consumer itself. There are millions of tracks out there that people into certain types of music wont listen to all because of taste, so this filters out un-wanted dross. People distributing music online will use a source specialised to their style or if they use something generic such as Youtube, then they will have tag words which when searched for, brings up their music. So for example say a Drum n' Bass band were putting a video on youtube they might use "tag words" such as "Drum, Bass, dance, club, disco, rave". People who are into say indie bands for example, wont search for such things and therefore wont find them. So a combination of internet and consumer act as the gate keepers or the sieves of the mass online music market.
How do you think Music Industry companies are harnessing the power of the internet? How has the industry learnt to see the internet as a 'friend' rather than a 'foe'?
When music shared over the internet became the biggest source of obtaining music for the every day person, Music industry companies panicked. "If nobody is buying our products and more then how can we make money?" they asked themselves. And they have a point, if people can get the music for free then why should they pay. Victor Keegan sums up what's happening perfectly:
"In fact it is easier to make the case that the music industry, far from imploding, is one of the great success stories of the recession. The most dramatic example of this is in what kids are supposed not to be buying any more: single tracks. Last year sales of singles soared to an all-time record of 152.7m units, an astonishing 33% rise in a year when the whole economy (GDP) contracted by 3.3%. If the music pundits seriously think that these are not being bought by kids, then it shows how out of touch they are with their customers. These same youngsters who were – and probably still are – massively downloading free music from the internet were prepared to pay up to £3 a pop for an insipid ringtone (interestingly, not included on the industry's statistics unless they are full-track ones). Why? Because there is an easy payment system on phones which didn't exist on the web. Now there is an easy payment system (iTunes et al) on the web they are starting to pay again. If the big music companies had spent their energies dreaming up a payments mechanism for web downloads instead of suing their customers they could have swept all before them. Instead they were like the crew of a sinking boat that blames the sea instead of trying to mend the leak. If they were in the bottled water industry, they would probably be urging the government to stop free downloads of tap water at home as unfair competition. Yet the bottled water industry should have been their model. It got away with charging us lots of money for a product that was no better than free tapwater through clever marketing."
He is basically saying that although the companies are fretting over such things, the actually facts and figures show that they have nothing to moan about because they are still selling CD's.
However it was the smaller record labels who noticed that in fact, this could all be very beneficial. If they were to release an artists work onto the internet, available for free download, this means they can distribute it much easier; as its free more people are likely to download it. In doing thins, a larger audience is pulled in which meant sales on songs and albums not available for download increase. This then lead to a bigger loyal fan base who were the audiences at live shows and the ones buying merchandise. So they basically saw the internet as a perfect way of starting the multiplier effect. Better still, it doesn't actually cost the record label anything to put music on the internet. Now the bigger companies have caught on that this indeed the way forward, and now they are competing via the internet! But to sum up, after much needless moaning and complaining, the music industry companies have realised that the internet is actually their best chance of success.
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