I was always told that peer-to-peer filesharing was going to kill the music industry. How could a band make music for a living if their songs would be swapped for free around college dorm rooms? They wouldn’t, or so the thinking went. The business model of music couldn’t handle filesharing. Peer-to-peer trading of music was unsustainable. Metallica and Dr. Dre even sued Napster over some leaked MP3s. That lawsuit was almost ten years ago. And look what’s happened since then: more people are sharing more music in more parts of the world. Internet connections have gotten faster, too, which means higher quality music and quicker downloads. First generation iPods held 5GB of music. Now iPods come with 160GB of storage (or, if you prefer, 32GB and the ability to make phone calls.) Hardly seems like the end of music some predicted.
So we were wrong (or Metallica, Dr. Dre and music company executives were wrong.) People haven’t stopped filesharing. And while a few unlucky ones have been prosecuted for copyright violation, most downloaders have no complications finding music on the Internet. The problem with those predictions from ten years ago is that the “music industry” is very different from the “music album industry.” The first term is often used incorrectly to refer to the second. The “music album industry” is essentially album sales. And it’s true that fewer people buy CDs today than they used to (and probably rip those CDs onto their computers anyway.) But the music industry is a lot more layered and expansive that just albums. It includes album sales, but it also includes things like t-shirts, concerts, licensing for movies, journalism, even ringtones. People spend less money on albums than they used to. But do they spend less money on music?
I can’t find any conclusive or reliable data, but it seems highly unlikely. Music lovers still go to concerts. They still wear their favorite band’s t-shirts. Simply put, they still listen to music, even if they aren’t buying albums. P2P may be killing off the music album industry, but the music industry is thriving. I’d actually argue that the music industry is thriving because of filesharing. It’s especially true in the electronic music world. Filesharing fuels creation and performance. I love the fact that my favorite DJ spins songs from his favorite DJ. I hear new music that I otherwise might have missed, he gets another potential fan. The nature of creation is collaborative. Art inspires art. Sharing music makes us both better off.
I can already sense a few readers squirming in their chairs, eager to take a different stance: if an artist stops making money, he or she will stop making music. Those readers are right to a degree: you can’t eat a great remix. Money counts for something. There’s obviously some baseline level of income a musician needs to survive. But I’d like to make two observations. First, it’s not necessarily true that today’s musicians make any less money than those of ten years ago. They might make less money from album sales, but musicians have income coming in from all over– merchandising, licensing, concert ticket sales. The overall effect is ambiguous. If an illegal download leads to one less album sold, but one more concert ticket purchased, who wins? It’s hard to make a concrete statement about income. Second, artists don’t become artists to make a lot of money. I know that’s more of an existential argument (and something I might examine more closely in another post), but it’s an important point. Even if modern musicians make less money, they don’t seem to be making any less music. It’s always tricky when art intersects with commerce. But surely everyone agrees that new music is being created today in spite of (or maybe because of) the ability to download music for free. The music industry is changing, but it isn’t dying.
Station X
Here’s a perfect example of someone who benefits from filesharing. Ten years ago, his music probably never would have made it to my ears. I first heard about Station X through his killer Does it Offend You, Yeah? remix (see below.) From what I can gather, he’s a producer from the UK with an affection for dressing up like a cardboard robot. His songs have a nice mix of synthesized trance crescendos that rise and fall before the chorus. But he uses those sounds in a way that doesn’t scream overplayed 1994 techno. Simply put, his songs sound “epic.” Give them a listen below and, as usual, let us know what you think in the replies.
Does It Offend You, Yeah? – Dawn of the Dead (Station X Mix)
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Black Bikini Alpha – Nightmare (Station X Mix)
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