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It's rare to hear an artist say something that's not disparaging when it comes to piracy. Most of them are clearly told by their labels or producers that they lost X number of sales because of the downloaders out there, so you can understand why they're annoyed, or at least feel so, but not everyone thinks that way. Take Rob Zombie for example, who recently stated that not only does he feel re-energized by it, but it's made him feel more creative too.
He said this during an interview with Loudwire (via TorrentFreak) where he explained that actually, the process of trying to sell music was draining on the soul.
“I don’t care about any of that stuff. In fact, in a funny sort of way the fact that nobody buys records doesn’t bother me. In fact, I feel like it’s freed me,” he said. “When you take that pressure away 100 percent, I swear to God you get more creative because it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“I'm happy to give it away for free,” he said. “I don't care, I just want to make it, play it, get crazy with it.”
Of course this is to some extent, a luxury that can only be enjoyed by those who have already made enough money to be comfortable, but bands and artists today make much more money with live performances than they do with music production and sales anyway.
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KitGuru Says: In many ways, that feels like a healthier place for the business to be. Instead of selling recordings of themselves, the artists sell themselves, sell their performance. That's what's unique about a song, not that they recorded it first.
Image Source: Wikimedia
It is a funny situation that bands are in. They basically create something that they don’t really want people to listen to. If you look at the release logs on nfo sites to see just how much music is being released -every day-, its hundreds of ep’s, albums, singles etc. It is impossible to purchase even a fraction of it so the current model just sets fans of music up in a situation where they don’t get to hear ~90% of the music thats out there.
Another funny situation is that because they got away with it in the past it seems that musicians want to get paid for doing nothing. With a band they want to record their music once and then get everyone to pay for it indefinitely. The rest of the jobs out there mean that each time you want to get paid for something (building a website, delivering something, operating on somebody, playing a football match, etc) you have to go out and physically do it. In the past this applied to musicians as well but then in about the 1870s (according to wikipedia) sound recording was invented and they had the luxury of not having to work while they got paid for their product for the last hundred and fifty so years.
There aren’t many situations out there where you can get away with something like this. I guess the bottled water industry is close, they just need to buy fresh empty bottles and their product flows freely. In truth the way that this should work is that if you want to make money off music then you perform live or find some way to sell it for a business use or something. I know that sucks, I don’t totally agree with what I’m saying because I love music and I don’t want to repay the musicians with a slap in the face but looking at the bare facts; can anyone justify the record once, paid indefinitely model the industry proposes?
(If you can then please let me know so I can continually charge people for my websites and do nothing after the initial build haha).
So you would expect Stephen King to write a novel all over again every time someone wants to buy one? Or make money only on the first one sold? Intelectual property is not manual labour.
I believe what you’re looking for is WordPress themeing. Hahaha
But labels DON’T loose anything except one or two copies used for the actual upload. This has been proven many times over and yet they are stubbornly naive about it :/
More peopleneed to be like this guy xD Gonna google some stuff about him now. Tah-taaah!
I like the idea of an industry where recordings are free but it’s generated around wanting to see musicians live. If recordings were completely free I can honestly say I would be much more inclined to see a musician perform live, because I’ve always begrudged the fact I have to pay for each listen (in one way or another) and each download, and then on top of that pay for the gig.
I dont know. The first time I read your comment earlier I thought to myself “oh I’ve made a mistake here” but this is just the same situation with a different example really.
I would expect to pay for the CD or the Book because there are costs associated with it. But if its a Stephen King ebook I’m suddenly feeling the same way I did earlier about it.
I just think its a funny situation to expect to be paid repeatedly for something you don’t have to do anything repeatedly for.
Lol yeah
It`s not funny at all and is the basis of creating art that is used comercially.
I`m (among other things) a musician and do get royalites – because someone else made money on my music. The most basic example would be radio stations with advertisement revenue.
Your local classic rock station would not exist without all of the ac/dc and van halen songs so it`s only fair that the artist is compensated for that. It`s not free at all – It really takes A LOT of money and time to produce quality music or other art of whatever kind.
You`re not doing work, yeah – correct. But your stuff is being played/read/used – everytime it is you have a right to decide if it should be free or not. Simple as that. I`m not getting money for my songs simply existing. I get it because they are USED by someone that makes money off of it.
Fair enough?
It only costs enormous amounts of money to produce music because of the archaic mentality surrounding musical output and artistry. The conventional album was brought about because artists needed a way to package and distribute their material to people effectively. This is no longer the case, but artists and big business have trouble adjusting passed profit models and are struggling with trying to find viable methods for monetizing the artist’s output. This isn’t because there aren’t effective ways of monetizing music anymore, it is just because people are stuck in their ways.
Albums have worked in the past, devilishly well, and no one wants that to change. People don’t seem to want to ask themselves the question “How do we adapt?”. The adaptation is inevitable, you will never stop technological progress or every generation’s inherent desire to share everything. The equation is simple, if your material is solid and you position yourself well and work hard, you can get attention. Once you have an audience’s attention, the principle behind making money as an artist becomes simple, as the options are limitless.
The album is dead, “piracy” is inevitable, and musicians just need to learn how to adjust accordingly. Fuck big business, because they bastardize the artistry surrounding music with questions about what brings the largest profit margins, which is never the question you should be asking when producing any sort of creative piece.