On The Media Takes On The Music Industry

from the good-summary dept

WNYC's excellent radio program On The Media this week decided to spend an hour discussing the music industry. It's quite well done, in that it highlights how this is actually a great time in the music industry for musicians and fans -- with the only party really in trouble being the old record labels. The program talks to numerous knowledgeable people, including James Boyle, Amanda Palmer, Greg Kot and others. The one section, however, that I thought was a bit weak, was the section on live shows. That section only focused large stadium/amphitheater shows -- the kind that only a very small number of bands deal with. It doesn't even mention the much more common forms of touring and live shows. Furthermore, that section only seemed to talk to one individual -- a smaller concert promoter who used the part to basically bash Live Nation. Now there are things you can complain about with Live Nation (though, I'd argue that they've got a much better understanding of where the market is heading than most people give them credit for based on conversations I've had with Live Nation folks), but that segment was incredibly one-sided.

The other thing that I found incredibly telling was that the person who sounded most out of date and most in denial was not the RIAA representatives (who actually sounded at least somewhat circumspect on how the music industry was changing), but Rob Levine from Billboard Magazine, who still insists that it makes no sense to pay attention to "those who steal music." He brushes aside the band Ok Go for just doing "ok" as if you don't count unless you go platinum in record sales. He dismisses things done "as a hobby" as simply not mattering. He is, of course, defending Billboard's obsolete "charts" which are still based mostly on CD sales and radio play, but just comes across as someone who doesn't even realize what he's measuring (at 43:15 on the podcast):

"Right, okay, the one thing that does skew our ratings is that older people buy more music. They steal less music.... So like, you know, a Bruce Springsteen or a Madonna might overperform on the album sales chart relative to some more subjective measure of their popularity. But as far as like who's stealing what... I mean, what use is that?"

And that, right there, is why Billboard has become so obsolete. It's lead by people who think that file sharing is "stealing" and that it's meaningless in figuring out where the money is in music. It ignores the studies that have shown that people who download also end up buying more music. It ignores the studies that show people who download are more likely to attend a show or buy merchandise (things that Billboard doesn't appear to think matter at all in the industry). It's as if Billboard wanted to judge the popularity of the transportation industry by judging how many buggy whips are sold. Yes, as automobiles became more popular, buggy whip sales declined. Sucks to be you if you're focused just on measuring buggy ship sales, but the problem is that you're measuring the wrong thing.

Instead, the guy who sounds like he's really looking to the future is Duncan Freeman, of the site Band Metrics, who shows that the really important thing is not figuring out how many CDs are being sold, but how much fans are devoted to an artist (disclosure: I've met Duncan a few times at events, and talk to him occasionally about the music industry -- he's also given me an account on Band Metrics to check it out, even though it's not yet fully public -- though, I actually haven't used it yet). The program shows how a band can actually figure out where their biggest fans are, where they're getting the most buzz, and actually helps bands better connect with fans in multiple ways -- not just on the old model of selling them more CDs.

Oh yeah, one other point. Some Hollywood lawyers were getting on my case earlier this year, every time I claimed that the RIAA announced last year that it was no longer suing end users, even though it did keep suing. Those lawyers insisted that the RIAA said no such thing (even though that's what all of the press reported). In this podcast, the RIAA's Jonathan Lamy repeats: "Last December, we officially announced that we would end the litigation program against end users." Except it hasn't.

Overall, the program is a really great hour's worth of discussion on the types of things we regularly talk about here, and well worth a listen if you're interested in these things.

Filed Under: duncan freeman, james boyle, jonathan lamy, music, music business, on the media, rob levine
Companies: band metrics, billboard

Yes, People Dislike The RIAA Because Of Its Actions, Not Because Everyone Hates Music Business People

from the that's-a-new-one dept

We mentioned the debate going on between copyright lawyers Ben Sheffner (supporting the entertainment industry's sue 'em all strategy) and William Patry (explaining why they're abusing copyright law, rather than focusing on business solutions), and Sheffner's response struck me as being wrong on a large number of points. In it, he argues that people's general hatred for the RIAA has little to do with its legal strategy, but that people just hate the music business:

I think a lot of this negative opinion was due not to specific alleged misdeeds, but to the very nature of the business and its product. Music is about fun, escapism, pleasure. The fact that music is also a business, populated with accountants, lawyers, enforcers, and other not-so-fun people, is quite jarring. It's natural that people react negatively when confronted with the harsh reality that it's about more than "the music" -- it's about making a buck.

I find this incredibly unpersuasive. It's not the fact that the music industry "makes a buck" that pisses people off, but the manner in which it does so. Sure, people have hated the industry since before Napster came around (though, I'd argue that Sheffner's not paying much attention if he doesn't realize how much greater it's become -- we're talking an order of magnitude). But, the reason was actually a precursor to what's happening today: which is that the industry was run by people who looked to screw over everyone. The history of the music business is not pretty. Sure, some people may not like "the business side," but the issue most people have is not that it's a business, but the way the business has been run. It was always designed to rip off both the artists and consumers at every turn. The folks who have run the music business for years have always looked at things as a zero sum game, rather than a market that can be expanded. So they squeezed everyone. It's just that the internet made it that much more blatant.

Sheffner then tries to back up this argument with another claim that is entirely unpersuasive:

The contrast with the public's attitude toward the software industry is instructive. The Business Software Alliance, the industry's equivalent of the RIAA, is very aggressive in its enforcement efforts, famously offering bounties for ratting out software pirates.... But my sense (admittedly anecdotal) is that most people have little problem with the BSA acting to enforce its members' copyrights; it's certainly a far less unpopular organization than the RIAA. (Can you imagine the outcry if the RIAA offered rewards for turning in your friends who "share" music without paying for it?) Why the difference? My hypothesis is that people have no trouble accepting that software is a serious business, and that owners of software copyrights, who spend millions developing their programs, have every right to stop people from copying them for free.

First, perhaps it's because Sheffner hasn't spent much time around the software industry, but the hatred of the BSA runs incredibly deep as well. And, yes, people find their marketing schemes to be totally ridiculous as publicity stunts. The BSA is also regularly mocked (not just by us, but by the mainstream press) for its annual rollout of BS stats on piracy, that falsely count every copy as a lost sale, and then double, triple and quadruple count "ripple effects" on the economy, but never account for how the savings from not buying overpriced software also "ripple" through the economy.

Furthermore, the rather obvious reason why it's a smaller group of people up in arms about the BSA's tactics is that the average person rarely buys software. Most people buy a computer pre-loaded with software, and then maybe download a few applications. But actually going out and getting new software occurs a lot less often than the average person gets new music.

The RIAA's tactics have received more attention because it's a larger community that interfaces with them on a regular basis. It's got nothing to do with some mystical feeling that floats around music.

Filed Under: copyright, music business
Companies: bsa, riaa