Local musicians defend music downloading

By Auren Ruvinsky

One hundred million songs were stolen today, according to the recording industry. 

An estimated 200 million people worldwide download three billion songs a month through peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing programs, only a tiny portion of which were paid for.  Licensed free and pay sites are proliferating but the vast majority of downloads are still done illegally through sites like KaZaA, Shareaza and eDonkey.

To the recording industry, this is outright theft. But many musicians — including local artists in Kamloops — say free downloading enables them to distribute their music without having to depend on a music recording business that mostly ignores new artists and often exploits the few they sign.

The battle over downloading started with the appearance of Napster in 1999 and seemed to pit multinational conglomerates against 12-year -old girls.  Of course it was never that simple.

“I love file sharing,” said Brant Westran who describes himself as a struggling musician.  “Without a doubt, it has given songwriters like myself the ability to market one’s music cheaply and effectively.”

Westran is one of many Kamloops musicians eager to weigh in on the debate.  “File sharing gives me the ability to share my music and listen to others’ music.  If I like the music, I will buy the CD and I believe that if they like my music, they will buy my CD.

“The only people it hurts are the multi-million dollar labels and their equally wealthy top musicians.  I cannot sympathize with them because I, like the majority of people out there, make next to nothing a year.”

Cam Bastado, another local musician, said at least 70 per cent of musicians “do it because they love it and they want to do it. Most people are happy just to have (their music) out there.”  Bastado is also part of a growing group using free, legal P2P (peer-to-peer) sites such as SoundClick and PureVolume.

Brad Hampton, who goes by the moniker Kead, said he’s also put some of his music on PureVolume.  “I just love getting my music out there, I love getting feedback.”

The recording industry’s argument

The recording industry argues that if they don’t sell albums and make a profit, they can’t afford to foster new talent or pay artists to keep producing new music.

However, studies are inconclusive about whether P2P file sharing is linked to decreased record sales.

According to the Canadian recording industry, CD sales dropped 20 per cent between 2000 and 2003, with estimated losses of $250 million.  But this year sales are back up by seven per cent from the same period last year, while the economy had paltry growth of 1.7 per cent.

The exact decreases are unclear.  The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claims U.S. sales dropped 31 per cent while other sources such as Forrester Research put the drop at 15 per cent.

'While it is clear that sales have decreased to some degree, the reasons are much debated.  While an industry-commissioned '>survey claimed to show downloading hurts sales because people who download buy less music, a Harvard Business School study refuted that.

'The Harvard study tracked files being downloaded against sales of the same music and found “downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”  (For further arguments against the connection click here or here.)

Struggling artists also argue the industry is not interested in fostering a wide pool of musical talent, only in betting on the surest pop sensations.

“This artist development bullshit is a cop out,” said a veteran Kamloops musician who goes by the name Mike the Party Hog and is one of the few in town making a living from his music.  “In 22 years in the business, I’ve never seen a record executive at a show, there’s no way, I’ve never seen any of that type of thing.”

Marketing tool

Even some industry insiders, stars and executives are turning against the industry line. John Snyder, president of Artists House Records, a board member of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences, and a 32-time Grammy nominee, recently wrote an 8,000 word argument for file-sharing for Salon.com with his son Ben Snyder.

In it, they argued that file-sharing could be the future and the saviour of the music industry.  As an argument against downloading hurting record sales they mention the much-talked-about example of Eminem. “The Eminem Show” was reported as the most downloaded album of all time but was also the world’s best-selling album of 2002.

From that and other examples, the authors suggest, “it could be argued that MP3s are the greatest marketing tool ever… if your music is not being downloaded, then you're in trouble. If you can't give it away, you certainly can't sell it.”

Mike the Party Hog echoes that sentiment “I encourage people to download my stuff and to put my stuff online, it gets me exposure.  Sometimes I go into KaZaA and see how many hits I get.”

The Snyders, along with computer theorist Dan Bricklin, argue that many other things could be to blame for a drop in record sales — including the economy, the profusion of other forms of entertainment (video games, DVDs, online content), shrinking radio play lists which lead to fewer musicians becoming well known and the 12.5 per cent rise in the average price of CDs between 1991 and 2001.

Dustin Walsh, guitarist for Kook Show, one of the Kamloops-Merritt area’s most popular bands, supports the economic argument.

Walsh said the last time he went to buy a CD, it cost $28.

“Who can afford that?  If the industry is so bitching about the downloading they should lower CD prices — problem solved,” Walsh said. “I think (music sharing) is a rad way for musicians to get their music out there.” 

Other artists on file-sharing

Kamloops musicians aren’t the only artists to support file-sharing. Musicians as diverse and well-known as U2’s Bono, Dave Mathews, Ween, Courtney Love, System of a Down, Public Enemy and hip hop hero of the moment 50 Cent support file-sharing to varying degrees. 

50 Cent boasted to VH1 that bootleggers “understand how much of a presence I have in the streets. They'll probably get the record two weeks before the album actually drops and it'll be all over the place… I believe word of mouth is just gonna generate more sales… If I consistently put out good music… it'll guarantee that they purchase the real CD when my next album comes out."

On his website, recording artist Moby wrote: “How can a 14-year-old who has an allowance of $5 a week feel bad about downloading music produced by multimillionaire musicians and greedy record companies?”

However, other artists have spoken out strongly against free file sharing including Elton John, Madonna, Sheryl Crow, Jay Z, Lenny Kravitz, the Dixie Chicks and most famously Metallica, who led the campaign against Napster and suffered a backlash for it.

Kamloops musician, recording studio owner and radio show host Henry Small — who’s had several top 40 hits, solo and with various bands including Prism — said he is not totally for or against downloading but noted even rich musicians “busted their ass to get there.”

“I think it’s a good thing for someone just starting out, but once you start getting noticed, at some point you want to get paid for your work,” Small said.

Legal issues

The fact is that downloading may actually be legal. When someone downloads a copy of a song, the original remains where it was so nothing has been lost and nobody has profited off someone else’s work.

Although the recording industry in the United States has launched a campaign of lawsuits, including  almost 1,000 in October 2004, that tactic hasn’t met with much success in Canada.

On June 30, 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Internet service providers are not responsible for downloads by their users, that downloading a song for personal use is not an infringement and that placing a song in a directory for others to upload from your computer is not considered distribution.

However, the aggressive lawsuit campaign in the United States is believed to be a major reason for declining download numbers.  According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the number of infringing music files on worldwide P2P networks dropped from 1.1 billion in June 2003 to 700 million in June 2004.

Control and cost

Another argument against file sharing model is that it wrests control of the product from the artist. Neil Young told Yahoo! Entertainment News in 2001: "I don’t like to have a record out and have people hear versions that we don’t want them to hear. With the Internet, there is no more privacy and not even the chance to express yourself in front of your audience in the intimacy of a concert that lets songs evolve. You can’t do this because they immediately get circulated."

This may also be a reason for the rapid growth of free legal P2P sites.  Bastado, the Kamloops musician, talks fondly of SoundClick.com, which boasts more than 130,000 profiles, mostly of unsigned artists.  These sites allow people access to vast amounts of music but give the bands some control.

“The vast majority of the online (artist) community work out of their basements and this is just a place for them to get their music out there and try things out,” Bastado said.

There is a realization among these artists that the big record companies aren’t handing out million-dollar contracts in the street.

“I don’t understand these big artists,” Mike the Party Hog said. “Only four or five per cent of record deals end up making any money, most of the money comes from concerts and t-shirt sales.  If there’s a resource to get your music out there, get it out.  The exposure brings people to concerts and sells shirts.”

Mike is on the side of musicians but feels they sometimes go astray.  “Every musician gets into it for the music but unfortunately a lot of them start to see it as a business once they get big.  They should just feel damn lucky they get to make money doing what they want.”

Even stories from the blockbuster musicians support this.  Famously, even the Backstreet Boys, one of the best-selling acts of the 1990s, never received CD royalties, according to their management.

For an LA Weekly article, Sarah Luck Pearson interviewed an unnamed “major-label president.”  He said artists only average 41 cents for each CD sold and that a band can sell a million copies and end up owing the label money for the advance they received and money the record company spent on them.

Mickey Melchiondo of the rock duo Ween said, "I don't have sympathy for the record companies, they haven't been paying me royalties anyway."

Levies

In 1999, a 21 cent levy was imposed on blank CDs in Canada to help offset losses from music downloading.  By the end of 2003 the Canadian private copying collective (CPCC) had collected $88 million, of which they will distribute $27 million to up to 50,000 claimants by the end of 2004.

In December 2003, a $25 levy was added to digital music players like MP3s with permanent memory of over 10 gigabytes or about 2,500 songs.  There was also a $2 levy for players under one gigabyte and a $15 levy for players from one to 10 gigabytes.

The levies join pay download sites as a method to ensure artists are compensated for music downloads.  Along with free legal sites, there are many pay sites such as the Canadian giant PureTracks with over one million tracks, the new Napster, MusicRebellion with downloads starting at 10 cents, Rhapsody, and Musicnet, which is only for AOL subscribers.  Each has at least 300,000 tracks and charges an average of about $1 per song and a monthly fee, usually about $10.

Macintosh’s iTunes is the major commercial site; currently accounting for about 70 per cent of all paid downloads (about 70 million in 2003).