Interesting thing about music copying: it is not intended to make sure that the artists get more money. It's about control, not about money.
Music is given away for free all the time. The radio plays it for free, for example. The record labels do not make radio stations pay licensing fees because the radio stations are in effect nothing but constant advertisements. People do not buy music they do not know about.
Every study that has been done on music sharing and P2P distribution, including a study done by the Recording Industry Ass. of America, has shown that music copying increases sales. If people really like the music they hear online, they tend to buy it.
And that is the problem.
In the past, before the days of the compact disc, it cost about $100,000 to cut an album--not including duplication, advertising, or distribution costs. That was just the cost of recording, mixing, mastering, engineering, and making the duplication original that the records were pressed from. Because very few artists had that kind of money, the music labels grew up to provide the front money to record an album.
The money that the record labels put up to record an album is a loan. The artists are required to pay it back out of royalties (typically between 25 cents and a dollar) on every sale. Most artists never sell enough records to pay back the loan; only the top few ever really make any money from record sales. Often, small artists are forced into bankruptcy after signing a record deal.
The advent of digital recording and the CD has changed that. Today, an album can be made, mastered, and duplicated for only a few thousand dollars. It is within the reach of an average person to make a record on his own; I have friends who have done it.
But you still need the labels.
Why? Advertising. The labels are--or were--the only way to advertise and distribute an album. If I make a record in my basement, it will never get on Top 40 radio, it will never be sold in Virgin megastores, and it will never get enough publicity to go platinum...
...until the day of P2P music sharing.
Now, for the first time, an average person can make a record
and advertise that record to a wide audience. Now for the first time, the record labels are no longer necessary.
And that is what it is really all about.
Most record artists starve, while the executives who run the labels become fabulously wealthy. Think they are going to give up their 12-million-dollar homes and two hundred thousand dollar yachts without a fight? Think again.
They are not stupid. They know that if people can create, promote, and distribute music on a wide scale without labels, eventually the labels will vanish--and the executives will have to sell their yachts and find real jobs. So they will do anything to shut down P2P networks and to convince people not to swap music.
Let's take a great example. There is a band called
The Dresden Dolls that's about typical of bands that sign a record label. They're moderately successful, and fairly well-known; they have radio airplay and three abums that you can buy in music stores. They tour all the time.
They make, in total, once the label fees and loan repayments are deducted, a total of about $1,500 a month ($750 a month for each of the two members) on album sales, concert tickets, and T-shirts. In other words, this band, which tours aggressively and has a label contract and three albums in stores, can not make a living from their music.
Now let's look at
Jonathan Coulton. He's a quirky, kind of funny singer/songwriter who makes his own albums but has no record deal. He sells his music for $1 a song from his Web site. His music is all released under the
Creative Commons License--that means that anyone who wants to is free to redistribute his music, put it on P2P networks, share it with friends, give it away, rebroadcast it, or anything else.
Everyone who wants can legally give his music away. He has no record deal. He is less popular than the Dresden Dolls. Want to hear the kicker?
He makes a lot of money from his music--a very comfortable living, in fact.
He has been offered music label contracts on several occasions and has turned them down--because if he signs on to a label, he'll go bankrupt.
People who say that copying music hurts the artists don't understand the whole story; it's not that simple. Most often, it hurts the labels; most artists never make any money from their album sales.
