The unsurpassed reach of the Internet and the emergence of a range of new digital technologies
have transformed virtually every corner of the music industry for fans and creators alike. While
consumers enjoy vastly more options, these market disruptions are presenting a range of important
challenges for creators, producers, and distributors of music.
In 1999 I spoke on a panel at the CMJ Music Marathon in Manhattan whose topic was Music Promotion and the Internet. Inevitably, though, the controversy of the time - digital downloading - came into play. At one point, a fellow panelist spoke of an artist she knew who'd had a song downloaded for free over 100,000 times. In response I asked "OK, so now what?" to which the woman responded "It was 100,000 downloads...who cares!" The room erupted into applause. Once the noise died down, and the panel moved on, I noticed no one had answered my question.
My question was shaped by the fact that it was September of '99. Napster had stormed onto the scene that June, and suddenly the prevailing attitude regarding music became give it away for free. This bothered me for a couple of reasons:
1.) I am a musician, and played in a band that was eventually signed to a record deal. I know what struggle is like. To suddenly have an application render the hard work of musicians valueless (monetarily speaking) pissed me off.
2.) We don't live in a system where anything is free. In fact, music is probably one of the most important things in any society, and to suddenly have an attitude of Just give it away! made no sense - economically, socially, or aesthetically.
Regardless of my thoughts, I was in the minority. To be honest, I felt like people were angry I'd even raised the question. The mindset in the room was "If 100,000 people downloaded your song, and 40,000 liked it...they'll go pay for one or two more or maybe...the whole album." That was naïve, and I knew it. Napster had created a mindset of "don't pay for it...take it" - and accomplished this in a mere four months. I found this hilarious because without music what was Napster? Seriously, would it have been culturally, or technologically, relevant if it was an application allowing the free and open exchange of recipes? The secret sauce providing its value was music. Napster wasn't what everyone wanted - it was what it gave them access to.
Why do I harp on Napster? Simple: It created a national mindset that musicians/artists and creative people ultimately still battle today: If it's on the Internet - it must be free. This subsequently spread to movies, books, newspapers, articles, photographs, images, quotes, papers, and anything else requiring creative thought, and input, from an individual. An article in CNN Money from 2010 discusses how music business revenue dropped more than 50% beginning in 1999. As if that wasn't depressing enough, the piece also states that by 2010, 90% of the market was "unauthorized downloads". That's a fancy way of saying that a mere10% of people pay for their music.
I teach music in an alternative High School for at risk inner-city kids. This past year I covered the history of Hip Hop music and, when we got to the unit on sampling, I discovered something I had taken for granted: My students had no idea how musicians get paid for their work. The discussion eventually led down the road of illegal downloads, and I was shocked to find that a vast majority of my students thought they were "screwing" the record labels by stealing music - not the artists themselves. This epiphany led me to create a lesson plan on how artists get paid, copyright laws, and protecting your work. I did one class where all of the kids simulated "stealing" a song from one student. This student was particularly vocal about why he didn't have to pay for music anymore, but suddenly, in this exercise, he found himself getting very angry as his fellow students took money from his pocket.
One of the biggest problems we face today is technological ignorance. In an earlier post here I wrote about the problem Internet based cheating has become in college. Young people today see this massive space they've been given access to as a place where creative copyrighted works can be downloaded, copied, cut, and pasted free of charge. Napster (and applications like it) created a generation of people (adults included) who don't believe they have to pay for any of it.
Maybe in addition to addressing the outdated methods by which musicians are paid, Rethink Music should also institute an initiative to educate kids about creative ideas in this technological age - and how you get paid for those ideas. Again, we have given our kids the keys to a world where they have access to a lot of wonderful and amazing things. How ever, they also have access to a lot of awful and illegal things. Yet, in our current system of education, there is no class on creative works, their value, and how to respect them in the age of the Internet.
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