The Internet is Good for People Who Listen to Music!
One of the crazier things about contemporary life is that you see tons of words spilled on the question of how much the internet is hurting the music industry. This goes on even though I’ve never heard anyone even attempt to argue that a person in 2009 looking for some good music to listen to is in a worse situation than was a person in 1989. Tobi Vail, guest-posting for Carrie Brownstein, isn’t quite focused in on that point, but I think it’s implicit in what she says:
I asked a younger friend of mine if he thought the Internet had eliminated the hierarchy of “cool,” and he said, “Instead of hanging out with annoying record-collector guys, kids today just read that guy’s blog, but the same guys still get to decide what’s considered cool.” I think he’s right regarding hipster culture, where there does seem to be a handful of male-dominated music sites that exert a disproportionate influence over what’s trendy. But women have thrived in the past 10 years, and our history is being documented and preserved like never before.
Today, previously hard-to-find records by ’60s soul queens Irma Thomas, Marva Whitney and Betty Davis are readily available. People know who Betty Harris, Meredith Monk, Karen Dalton and Patty Waters are, and if they don’t, they can easily find out once they hear a name. Listservs such as Typical Girls offer a place to share information about out-of-print recordings by esoteric post-punk groups like Y Pants, Bush Tetras, Fatal Microbes, The Mo-Dettes and Snatch. A new generation of all-female bands such as Erase Errata, Mika Miko, Wet Dog and Finally Punk were informed by this history. “Feminal” all-female punk groups The Raincoats and The Slits reunited, and still play to responsive crowds who know all the words to their old songs; original members of both groups are actively pursuing solo careers. ESG, Pylon and Young Marble Giants are groups everyone has heard of, if not heard. Yoko Ono has a new record out at 76!
Which is just to reiterate once again that to make minimizing violations of intellectual property law the goal of intellectual property policy would be circular and pointless. Making the goal to maximize producer income would be non-pointless but illegitimate. The goal ought to be to ensure as widespread availability of works to consumers as possible. And all indications are that consumers are much better off than they used to be, and increasingly so. When people start reporting some practical difficulty in finding new music recordings, then call me about strengthening enforcement.
28 Responses to “The Internet is Good for People Who Listen to Music!”
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November 12th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
The goal ought to be to ensure as widespread availability of works to consumers as possible. And all indications are that consumers are much better off than they used to be, and increasingly so.
interesting… you do realize the same argument holds for walmart?
November 12th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Part of the problem is a conflation of terms. The internet isn’t hurting the music industry, it’s hurting the record industry. It’s in the interest of the major labels to elide the distinction. I think the point you’re making, Matt, is that while the record industry is hurting, the music industry — or, at least, music — is thriving. Check this episode of NPR’s On the Media for more.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Yoko Ono has a new record out at 76!
I don’t see how this is good for people who listen to music.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Yep. People can find all kinds of cool things.
That’s what’s killing the record industry. Their model was to sell megaunits of crap to everyone.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Semi-unrelated, but the Slits and the Raincoats are both totally awesome. As are they Young Marble Giants. That is all.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
The internet makes it super easy to find out about new and old music. This is a good thing.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Some of us are old enough to remember the days before the internet. I heard a very limited selection of music on the radio. Little of it really spoke to me, but what little I did like, I went out and bought.
The internet has indeed opened up many new avenues to hear new non-top 40 music and that has pushed me even further away from major label albums as I discovered so much that I liked to much more. I haven’t bought a top 40 album, or probably any album by a major label in over a decade. The internet did no doubt caused me to stop being a consumer of major label albums.
As for the bands, I switched from buying a couple albums of bands that I was never really excited to see live (nor would I ever pay the exorbitant priced “big” bands charge for a concert) to frequently seeing smaller (and cheaper) shows by bands that actually excite me. So, a few big bands lost my album money (what do they get? $1 per album split amongst the members), but many small bands have gained me as a consumer of their concerts (and merchandise). A much higher percentage of that ends up in the pockets of the artist.
This is bad for record labels, and probably bad for big artists, but its great for me, and very helpful for small bands.
Time, technology, and progress render many business models obsolete all the time. I’m not going to cry a river over one more industry futilely fighting the inevitable.
Should we cry ourselves to sleep over all those lost milkmen jobs? How about gas streetlight makers? The horseshoe and VCR repair industries probably ain’t what they used to be either, but hey, that’s life.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Article 1, Section 8:
“The Congress shall have Power…To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”
As a matter of law, the copyright is not inherent in your common law rights, but is something created by the government, the purpose of which is to promote progress. Of course, there’s no mention of the non-useful arts, so by the Constitution, music shouldn’t be protected at all (the courts, of course, have decided otherwise). But even if it is, there is no justification for draconian laws if they clearly depress progress in the name of corporate profits. And there is no question that music production and innovation has blossomed since the era of Napster.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
The goal ought to be to ensure as widespread availability of works to consumers as possible.
Well, the (political) goal ought to be widespread improvement of the human experience: politics is about improving people’s lives.
Widespread availability of works to consumers fits neatly into that larger goal, so long as it’s not offset by imposed suffering on a different population. (This general principle is why this music availability is basically a good thing, but also why Wal-Mart should be held to stronger labor standards.)
November 12th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
I love being able to push a button and identify whose voice or what voice goes to what name.
The record industry would have it that you couldn’t do that.
November 12th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Geez, I keep saying this…
It’s never had been about the money. It’s about the power. Entrenched major Media Companies are against the idea of a Heavenly Jukebox in general, and loss of media sales is a mere reason for disliking it. Otherwise they would have moved onto some kind of general royalty scheme paid for with a special tax or some sort.
A heavenly jukebox diminishes media companie’s ability to direct consumers at the need of the company. People with diverse musical tastes are harder to corral at a useful size for megacorp to advertise to taste or help create a space to attract people of a generally well understood (by media companies) ilk.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
j r: It is a good thing for people to be able to make a decent salary in some sort of employment under reasonable conditions, and Walmart’s actions discourage that, although there’s certainly pros and cons to it. But what has to be remembered is that being a musician has never really been an especially stable form of income, (and in so far as people have made a living off of it, live performances have been more important than recordings) it’s just that at the extremes some people are able to make a very lot of money off of it.
If there were lots of hard working families of musicians losing their jobs because of copyright infringement, then maybe that would be cause for more concern, but that is not what is happening.
November 12th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Finding out about and acquiring are not the same thing. Matt’s argument seems to focus on the benefits of being able to find out about more music more easily than ever before, but copyright issues have more to do with how you come to own it after you find out about it. So I don’t see Matt as even really addressing the correct issue here.
November 12th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Speaking of all female punk bands, here’s a shameless shout out to my wife’s former band The Smears. We recently found this on youtube from back in the mid-90’s (the mrs. on drums). The internets are cool!
November 12th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Or those who like watching 80s/90s cartoons from my misspent youth.
But then, why *wouldn’t* I want to watch Pirates of the Dark Water?
November 12th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Finding out about and acquiring are not the same thing.
I agree. By the way, Mr/Ms Carrow, is your first name “Conlon?”
November 12th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Finding out about and acquiring are not the same thing.
I don’t know whether MY addresses this or not, because I don’t understand what he’s saying! But Nan Carrow does raise a good general point. It’s very easy for consumers to decide that it’s great that there is so much free music out there, but it’s not always great for the people who make it. Not that old model (Record Co. criminals) wasn’t worse in most ways.
Also, the internet allows everyone to know who Conlon Nancarrow was! THAT is amazing.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
This post is simply argumentatively incoherent.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
By the way, Mr/Ms Carrow, is your first name “Conlon?”
Nice catch.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:20 am
Why is it illegitimate to maximize the profit of producers? Shouldn’t the wishes of producers be taken into account?
November 13th, 2009 at 4:17 am
If what’s valuable about the music on the Internet is that it makes a massive selection available to, well, the masses, and–more to Matt’s point maybe–that it makes finding “new” or “good” music easier, then who adds the most value? The artists making the music, the technologists building the music-finding and music-serving infrastructure, or the listeners who “crowd source” the infrastructure with data for the technologists algorithms by blogging, tweeting and linking to music they think is cool so others find it?
Right now I think it’s pretty clear that the technologists are adding the most value. It’s so easy to record and distribute music now that there’s basically music inflation, and the value of any individual artist’s work is diminished. It’s the technologists selling the ads on the Internet, so they’re also the only ones really making a profit off the whole racket. So at the end of the day it just seems like we’ve replaced one set of big media companies (record companies) with a new set of big media companies (Google).
November 13th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Also, the internet allows everyone to know who Conlon Nancarrow was! THAT is amazing.
Back in the 1990s, I learned about Nancarrow (and Meredith Monk, Partch, Varese, Cage etc.) from the excellent radio programs “Schickele Mix” and “American Mavericks” on NPR. Similarly, I learned about Pylon, Young Marble Giants, the Slits and the Raincoats from reading SPIN Magazine (then available at any newsstand)in the late 80s/early 90s.
Obviously, the Internet has made access to the material vastly easier, but it seems disingenuous to suggest, as Tobi Vail seems to be doing, that the information wasn’t out there at all–in fact, it wasn’t even hard to find for anyone with the slightest initiative.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Speaking of all female punk bands, here’s a shameless shout out to my wife’s former band The Smears. We recently found this on youtube from back in the mid-90’s (the mrs. on drums). The internets are cool!
I’m willing to bet that if somebody would have walked up to the drummer-chick in that bar, and told her that someday some dude would be calling her “the mrs.”, she would have spit on them and drove a drumstick through their eyeball.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:45 am
James Gray said:
Right. We could say “Records are Good for People Who Listen to Music!” And print too. Before recorded music and mass market magazines (or indie zines, take your pick), it was harder for music lovers to find new and cool music and listen to it whenever they wanted to. The Internet has just made it much, much easier.
The old media companies exploited old music technology to extract as much profit as possible. Now, what if the old record companies had had the option of simply not paying the musicians at all? (You can argue this is what they tried to do, but at least it was understood that the artist and label signed some sort of contract.) Without having to pay the musicians, there’d be more money available to manufacture and distribute records and CDs, the savings gets passed on the the consumer and records would be cheaper, right? By making records cheaper and unentangling record companies from the all those complicated contracts, such a policy would have obviously “ensure(d) as widespread availability of works to consumers as possible (given the technology available).”
The new media companies will also exploit new technology to extract as much profit as possible. Nature of the beast. They now control the music distribution medium. It’s a major shift in lots of ways, but I just don’t see why it changes fundamental assumptions and policies about the artists ownership of their work. The new media companies benefit greatly when they don’t have to pay the artist a dime. I mean, face it, before it had free porn and free music, what the hell use was the Internet to most people? I don’t know a good solution–but if we just throw away copyright, how are artists ever going to get a fair shake?
November 13th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
I’m willing to bet that if somebody would have walked up to the drummer-chick in that bar, and told her that someday some dude would be calling her “the mrs.”, she would have spit on them and drove a drumstick through their eyeball.
Her finely tuned sense of irony, combined with my very infrequent use of the term has kept me safe so far.
Actually, back in the day, it was likely wise to assess the availability of means of rapid escape before dealing with any/all of The Smears. In the absence of such precaution, I’m pretty sure that deployment of the phrase “drummer-chick” would have been enough to set eye-surgeons’ hearts aflutter as well!
November 13th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Although a few chimed in with sympathetic notes, I’m somewhat appalled by the lack of sympathy some have for those in the “record” or “music” industry. As a musician who has recorded for Independent labels for 20 years, I’m not celebrating my reduced royalty statements. The music industry is not only made up of evil major labels. Let’s not forget that it was small, independent labels that discovered much of the music being discussed here. If the promotion and distribution of these artist’s music were left to themselves, many would still be undiscovered. Believe it or not, many musicians are not thrilled to have to do all of the work that labels did. Many of us would like to focus on creating and performing music. With indie labels becoming less and less financially viable, who will perform this valuable service?
I accepted long ago that the old model of selling recordings is near dead. I still make decent money playing live (not an option for some genres). My feeling is that a new model of the record label will arise- a sort of multi-service company that handles all possible revenue streams, from live shows, merchandising, publishing as well as promotion to the new media outlets. Until then, a lot of really good musicians will make considerably less money than they did just a few years ago.
I agree that the internet has made a slew of hard to find music more easily available. Conversely, the ease of recording and distributing digitally means you have to sift through a sea of pretty miserable stuff to find the gems. That’s where the taste and passions of indie label owners come in. The demos they threw out are now just as widely distributed as their releases!
November 13th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
As a musician who has recorded for Independent labels for 20 years, I’m not celebrating my reduced royalty statements. The music industry is not only made up of evil major labels. Let’s not forget that it was small, independent labels that discovered much of the music being discussed here.
Deanowaco–I hear you. There are a lot of creative people–visual artists, writers, actors, designers, musicians–who made a decent middle-class living producing work under the old model and now face an extremely uncertain future.
The problem in discussing this topic is that no one (on this blog and others like it, at least) will even acknowledge the existence of such people. In the popular mind (and the mind of Matt Yglesias), the creative world seems to be composed of 1) noble, infinitely energetic artists who work day-jobs and produce art or music in their spare time for free, and 2) eeeevil old-media companies who serve no other purpose than to exploit those in category #1.
I’ve tried to address this here in past discussions on copyright and the media, and my remarks have always either been ignored or snidely dismissed. You’re welcome (in fact, encouraged) to join me in banging your head against the wall.
November 14th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Thanks, James Gary for the sympathetic ear. I’m on board…this is a blog I frequent and I’m prepared to begin the head banging!