Don’t Hate: Five Reasons Why It’s Okay to Pay for Music Again
Hey, remember Napster? Of all the times various people have claimed the Internet was going to destroy modern industries, this was the one time it really pulled it off before getting too distracted by cat videos and porn. Whatsisname wrote a program to share your ripped CDs, introduced it to the Internet, and within a decade had totally destroyed the music business.
But now…well, now, downloading music from a peer-to-peer service instead of a store is just kind of…pointless. What happened?
We Kind Of All Realized Most Of An Album Sucks
Here’s a dirty secret: the reason albums are usually twelve to fifteen songs long isn’t because a band has a collection of brilliant musical compositions it wants to share with the world. The band has two, maybe three, and the rest are on there to drive up their royalties.
Music executives call this “bundled” music and the reason bands make more when an album sells is that studios make more when an album sells. This is why even the most obscure of the one-hit wonders has a “best of.” Hell, even a nothing band like La Bouche somehow has three best-of compilations.
So, if you type in a band, any band, most of what’s popping up isn’t going to be anything even the band wants to listen to. Especially if…
You Come Across an “Unofficial Remix” Of the Track You Want Far, Far Too Often
We’ve all run into this: some whiteboy who thinks he’s the next Kanye decides to “remix” the latest 50 Cent single and put it up online as if it’s the official track! Soon, fame and fortune will be theirs! “Gold Digger” TOTALLY needed those police sirens dubbed in and absolutely no other changes!
Or, even better, some dillweed with a garage band saying his garage demo is the latest hit because people don’t care about the artist, they care about the music, man. I still have an MP3 I downloaded from some Canadian insisting he and his buddy were Beck and Thom Yorke, covering a Lou Reed song, mostly to demonstrate what Gordon Lightfoot being assraped sounds like.
True, the MP3 has seen the rise of some great remixers: Danger Mouse turned The Grey Album into a legit career and Girl Talk is arguably one of the greatest musical geniuses of the last ten years, turning nothing but other people’s music into something brilliant. But more often it’s a guy who calls himself Ghostface Reviva or something inflicting his anti-genius on us all.
No Viruses!
Look, it’s no secret that people on the Internet are dicks. It’s practically written into the terms of service from your Internet Provider at this point: “Everybody with even a scrap of anonymity online is going to call you a doucheating penisnosed fart-tard, and there is literally nothing you can do about it.” Part of that dickery is messing with people on the Internet, especially people who can’t fight back, because generally whoever is doing this is getting beaten up by somebody they can’t fight back against.
Which means the solution to Internet douchebaggery is to just lift all gun laws and let everybody go to town, but we’re getting off topic.
The point is, they feel like hurting somebody, and by existing, you have volunteered. So, congratulations, just like touching Lady Gaga gives you a horrible disease, downloading her MP3 illegally gives you a toxic strain of Vundo that only bulk-erase magnets will cure. Seriously, Vundo’s bad news. There are venereal diseases you want more than Vundo, trust me.
Which brings us to…
Illegal Downloading Is Just Too Much of a Pain In the Ass
This is how a person legally downloads music: they go to Amazon, type in the name of the song, and download it. It costs them a buck and takes about ten seconds. I have a far too extensive collection of ’80s pop hits that proves how easy it is.
Torrents require you to fire up a torrent tracker, find a torrent site (which is no easy task in of itself), find the file you want, download it, and pray your download isn’t interrupted. Then you have to virus-scan it, then you have to check to make sure it’s not badly coded garbage, then you have to tag it and find the album art. There are plug-ins that exist solely to redirect you to the new version of a site when the Department of Justice shuts it down, that’s how complex it is.
Apple is a little more involved, true, but in the space of about five years, downloading music has gone from an annoying process involving research skills to something a primate could do accidentally while flinging their poo at a poo-resistant keyboard. They really have idiot-proofed the process.
The Customer Won, and the Bad Guys Lost
In 1999, the single biggest year financially in music, this was the nature of buying songs: songs were for the most part only available in album form, on physical media. Single tracks were only available in limited form, and only the very, very biggest hits. They were expensive. In fact, they were criminally expensive, literally: the record industry lost a lawsuit in 2002 over price-fixing. Your average album was $15, $17 if you blundered into a Strawberries or didn’t have Internet access to buy the CD on Amazon.
In 2011, you can buy albums or single tracks at your leisure. After years of complaining, they are available without any DRM for you to put on as many machines as you want. Any song that can be digitized is available for a buck, or even less, and albums top out at ten bucks. Or, you can pay twelve bucks a month and stream enormous libraries from subscription services.
In short, it’s gone from an industry where the companies dictate and control every aspect to one where the consumer, or at least people with a much bigger stake in making large groups of consumers happy, dictate and control every aspect.
And the record industry hates it. This is literally a new experience for them, this “actually abiding by the rules of capitalism and fair play” thing, and they do not like it at all. Keep in mind this is an industry that, to this day, has kept a strict control on radio: record labels in large part used to dictate the hits. This is an industry that has designed a contract system that ensures musicians getting million-dollar paydays will still owe them money.
The entire reason Napster exploded in the first place was the consumer was sick of getting screwed, and Napster offered an alternative to that. You may have heard Shawn Fanning went to the record labels and tried to set up a pricing scheme, and they turned him down cold. Of course they did: to them, Fanning was offering them a terrible deal, especially since it gave control to the consumer and took it away from them. Are you kidding? They’d lose billions!
Thus, downloading a song from Napster was, intentionally or not, an act of protest. Nobody worried about the artists because the artists were getting screwed by their labels anyway (except maybe Lars Ulrich). They still are: in the recent lawsuit against Limewire, the total amount of money going to the artists of the $105 million settlement the RIAA got (out of the billions they originally asked for) is…$0.
This is part of the reason the record industry is still futilely chasing music pirates. Nobody actually knows how much is lost to piracy, partially because there is absolutely no way to track who downloads what illegally and whether or not an illegal download made is a sale lost. One thing we do know is that the RIAA’s estimate of piracy losses have absolutely zero basis in fact.
They point to steadily declining sales revenues as clear evidence piracy is ruining them, but it’s kind of telling the revenues started dropping after they had to actually let the market set a price. And it’s an open question as to whether all those people buying tracks and albums digitally were ever pirate scofflaws in the first place: most piracy was centered around college campuses with high-speed internet access that most of the country didn’t have until later in the decade…you know, when the iPod and iTunes store had well and truly taken over the nation’s MP3 downloading.
Really, the lawsuits and grandstanding that currently define the RIAA are nothing more than a massive corporate hissy fit, smacking people with financial armageddon to make the rest of us long for the days when we could get fucked up the ass without lube. For some reason, it isn’t working.
It seems a lot more likely that the reason the music industry is losing money is because they have to properly compete in the market, instead of bundling their music and forcing us to buy those bundles at artificially inflated prices. Let’s see them admit that in court.
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5 Reasons Why It’s Okay to Start Paying for Music Again…
True, for awhile there, paying for music seemed like a laughable idea. But now that the customer has pretty much won the music war, here are five reasons why it’s okay to start paying for music again….
9:56 am on May 27th, 2011
I get that you have to write in a way that is pro-industry…but please don’t insult our intelligence…anybody who torrents laughed at your “it’s too hard” point…it’s easier and quicker to find a major song on a torrent site than through apple…I’ll even race you if you want to prove my point…not that I’d ever do anything illegal…
4:08 pm on May 27th, 2011
Pay for music? LOL, no one pays for music.
real-privacy.int.tc
4:08 pm on May 27th, 2011
“We Kind Of All Realized Most Of An Album Sucks” – You really don’t like music do you.
“You Come Across an “Unofficial Remix” Of the Track You Want Far, Far Too Often” – If this is the case this may explain #1, you listen to bad music.
“No Viruses” – You don’t get viruses from pirating.
“Illegal Downloading Is Just Too Much of a Pain In the Ass” – Pirating is easier once you spend the first 5 minutes figuring it out.
“The Customer Won, and the Bad Guys Lost” – Buying legally on the internet is around the same price as physical CDs… and with lower quality and no physical product.
Alright, so, I wish your argument was true, but it’s not. Purchasing music of course, has the moral advantage!
4:09 pm on May 27th, 2011
@alex
Ahmen brother! I was lol-ing at the “difficulty” of using a torrent. But i like my usenets better
4:14 pm on May 27th, 2011
“Torrents require you to fire up a torrent tracker, find a torrent site (which is no easy task in of itself), find the file you want, download it, and pray your download isn’t interrupted.”
That’s all anyone needs to read to know that you’re full of shit. Fire up a torrent tracker? You know that’s automatic when you download a torrent. Find a torrent site? Guess you don’t use Google. Find the file you want? Use the search on the website. Download it? OMG one click is so difficult. Pray your download isn’t interrupted? 1 in a million chance isn’t worth praying over.
Almost every single point you make is some BS the industry wants you believe. Amazon, iTunes, and even CD’s contain more malware than you even know. Amazon has the right to delete your music library if it sees fit. Apple can sue you if you transfer your music to too many devises. And CD’s won’t let you put your music on any other device.
Do your homework before you essentially spread lies and falsehood. Otherwise you’ll be laughed at. Just like how everyone is doing right now at their computer
4:17 pm on May 27th, 2011
Get with the times, grandpa
4:29 pm on May 27th, 2011
LOL HAHA! what Kari Said. The bands get enough money from me, from going to their show’s.
4:32 pm on May 27th, 2011
Torrents are easy, free, fast, and viruses are actually rare….
4:40 pm on May 27th, 2011
Do research next time. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
4:41 pm on May 27th, 2011
So much derp in one article, I feel stupid already.
Also, go easier on the lies next time, bro. You almost got me by sounding retarded.
4:43 pm on May 27th, 2011
you don’t know shit or you are full of bullshit, either way you are a faggot
4:44 pm on May 27th, 2011
What sort of RIAA propaganda bullshit is this? Who let this idiots nonsensical ramblings get posted?
4:51 pm on May 27th, 2011
If you think albums are nothing but the singles and filler tracks you’re a dumb asshole who has never listened to anything good, or has the attention span of a 3 year old with ADHD.
4:59 pm on May 27th, 2011
the main reason for which sales are falling is that music suqks. Each year is worse.
5:07 pm on May 27th, 2011
lol wtf am i reading
5:10 pm on May 27th, 2011
Ok, you CLEARLY have no idea how the illegal download of music works. You can’t be serious. It might require you to be slightly computer savvy, but if you are, it’s a piece of easily obtainable cake.
Also, I’m not sure torrenting is actually that useful or popular when it comes to music, considering their small size. The fact that you seem to only deal with torrenting shows, again, a lack of actual knowledge.
5:13 pm on May 27th, 2011
>We Kind Of All Realized Most Of An Album Sucks
Which is why it’s better to listen to it in it’s entirety at your friendly private tracker for free.
>You Come Across an “Unofficial Remix” Of the Track You Want Far, Far Too Often
Thank god private trackers have standards. And even on public ones, there are comment sections for a reason.
5:17 pm on May 27th, 2011
>No Viruses!
Viruses in an mp3 file…? You don’t know much about dem computers, apparently.
>Illegal Downloading Is Just Too Much of a Pain In the Ass
This is just gold. Fire up a tracker??? HAH! That doesn’t even make sense! I’ll sum it up for you, how it’s really done:
- Log in your favorite private tracker
- Search for the torrent on the search engine
- Click download
- Enjoy
Download interrupted…? In torrents? that hardly ever happens, and only on public trackers. You will have your album ready while the shmuck at amazon will still be filling out his paypal information.
>The Customer Won, and the Bad Guys Lost
Indeed we won. Now we support our favorite artists buying band merchandise or going to shows instead of feeding the fat middleman that does nothing good to this industry.
5:20 pm on May 27th, 2011
is this satire?
5:27 pm on May 27th, 2011
shiver me timbers!
5:35 pm on May 27th, 2011
Clearly a biased and shitty review. Why?
Here’s an example:
“fire up a tracker”
Stop this shit
5:58 pm on May 27th, 2011
i pirated a piece of software to pirate music which has been pirating while i read this article
7:54 pm on May 27th, 2011
I love how im pirating 4.5gb’s of music while im reading this article. Weeeeee….
6:39 am on May 28th, 2011
5 Reasons Why It’s Okay to Start Paying for Music Again…
True, for awhile there, paying for music seemed like a laughable idea. But now that the customer has pretty much won the music war, here are five reasons why it’s okay to start paying for music again….
2:48 am on May 31st, 2011
Your entire argument hinges on torrents being difficult to use and all shared music being virus infested which are both blatantly wrong. In fact by publishing these ridiculous assumptions which are completely incorrect (torrent downloads can be interrupted thousands of times) you demonstrate the clear bias in this article which undermines the entire message. If you are trying to convince people that it is OK to pay for music again you must back up your points with facts and authenticity, neither of which you have demonstrated here. If you are seriously too stupid to find torrent tracker websites I suggest you try http://www.demonoid.me or http://www.thepiratebay.org which hasn’t “changed websites or been rooted out by the DOJ” in about 10 years. I really laughed when you chose the wording “fire up a torrent tracker” as if it was some old machinated relic. The word choice further proves that A: you are 50+ years old and still worry about cranking up your computer every day or
B: you have never tried setting up a torrent tracker ever. utorrent and just about any torrent app pops open automaticlly when you download a torrent just like windows preview does when you download a .jpeg file, no hassle at all, in fact it is easier than paying for the music since you don’t have to submit any financial data at all. The entire point of the torrent system for file sharing is the security and open ended system. Torrent tracking websites allow you to review comments by users verifying the legitimacy of the data and you can even select exact files to download from the list of available files when the torrent opens on the torrent client. Even the assumption that the customer has won the music war is BS as most actual music artists (they used to be called bands) make a majority of money from live shows and lose huge percentages on trivial costs which the RIAA and record companies piss away on frivolous generic lawsuits which get laughed out of court. Show me a 320kbps .MP3 file which I can download for about 12 cents and then we’ll start talking. Music is an art not a source of income, the public really needs to get this point through it’s collective head and stop thinking that performance pieces on special plastic media have some inherent value.
10:13 am on February 7th, 2013
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