SkatKat... GREAT ARTICLE by Janis Ian..More
ppl need to take a look at this one.. This
article needs to go to CNN.. oops, they're
owned by Aol/Time/Warner.. owned by RIAA..
dammit! Hell, I'll post it here and you guys
send it to people who are actually believing
the propaganda that the RIAA is putting
forth: Enjoy!
Article from www.janisian.com
THE INTERNET DEBACLE - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW
Originally written for Performing Songwriter
Magazine, May 2002
* Shortly after this article was turned in,
Michael Greene resigned as president of
NARAS.
Read Janis' follow up to this article:
FALLOUT - a follow up to The Internet
Debacle
"The Internet, and downloading, are here to
stay... Anyone who thinks otherwise should
prepare themselves to end up on the slagheap
of history." (Janis Ian during a live
European radio interview, 9-1-9
*Please
see author's note at end!
When I research an article, I normally send
30 or so emails to friends and acquaintances
asking for opinions and anecdotes. I usually
receive 10-20 in reply. But not so on this
subject!
I sent 36 emails requesting opinions and
facts on free music downloading from the
Net. I stated that I planned to adopt the
viewpoint of devil's advocate: free Internet
downloads are good for the music industry
and its artists.
I've received, to date, over 300 replies,
every single one from someone legitimately
"in the music business."
What's more interesting than the emails are
the phone calls. I don't know anyone at
NARAS (home of the Grammy Awards), and I
know Hilary Rosen (head of rhe Recording
Industry Association of America, or RIAA)
only vaguely. Yet within 24 hours of sending
my original email, I'd received two messages
from Rosen and four from NARAS requesting
that I call to "discuss the article."
Huh. Didn't know I was that widely read.
Ms. Rosen, to be fair, stressed that she was
only interested in presenting RIAA's side of
the issue, and was kind enough to send me a
fair amount of statistics and documentation,
including a number of focus group studies
RIAA had run on the matter.
However, the problem with focus groups is
the same problem anthropologists have when
studying peoples in the field - the moment
the anthropologist's presence is known,
everything changes. Hundreds of scientific
studies have shown that any experimental
group wants to please the examiner. For
focus groups, this is particularly true.
Coffee and donuts are the least of the
pay-offs.
The NARAS people were a bit more pushy. They
told me downloads were "destroying sales",
"ruining the music industry", and "costing
you money".
Costing me money? I don't pretend to be an
expert on intellectual property law, but I
do know one thing. If a music industry
executive claims I should agree with their
agenda because it will make me more money, I
put my hand on my wallet…and check it after
they leave, just to make sure nothing's
missing.
Am I suspicious of all this hysteria? You
bet. Do I think the issue has been badly
handled? Absolutely. Am I concerned about
losing friends, opportunities, my 10th
Grammy nomination by publishing this
article? Yeah. I am. But sometimes things
are just wrong, and when they're that wrong,
they have to be addressed.
The premise of all this ballyhoo is that the
industry (and its artists) are being harmed
by free downloading.
Nonsense. Let's take it from my personal
experience. My site (www.janisian.com ) gets
an average of 75,000 hits a year. Not bad
for someone whose last hit record was in
1975. When Napster was running full-tilt, we
received about 100 hits a month from people
who'd downloaded Society's Child or At
Seventeen for free, then decided they wanted
more information. Of those 100 people (and
these are only the ones who let us know how
they'd found the site), 15 bought CDs. Not
huge sales, right? No record company is
interested in 180 extra sales a year. But…
that translates into $2700, which is a lot
of money in my book. And that doesn't
include the ones who bought the CDs in
stores, or who came to my shows.
Or take author Mercedes Lackey, who occupies
entire shelves in stores and libraries. As
she said herself: "For the past ten years,
my three "Arrows" books, which were
published by DAW about 15 years ago, have
been generating a nice, steady royalty check
per pay-period each. A reasonable amount,
for fifteen-year-old books. However... I
just got the first half of my DAW
royalties...And suddenly, out of nowhere,
each Arrows book has paid me three times the
normal amount!...And because those books
have never been out of print, and have
always been promoted along with the rest of
the backlist, the only significant change
during that pay-period was something that
happened over at Baen, one of my other
publishers. That was when I had my co-author
Eric Flint put the first of my Baen books on
the Baen Free Library site. Because I have
significantly more books with DAW than with
Baen, the increases showed up at DAW first.
There's an increase in all of the books on
that statement, actually, and what it looks
like is what I'd expect to happen if a
steady line of people who'd never read my
stuff encountered it on the Free Library - a
certain percentage of them liked it, and
started to work through my backlist,
beginning with the earliest books published.
The really interesting thing is, of course,
that these aren't Baen books, they're
DAW---another publisher---so it's 'name
loyalty' rather than 'brand loyalty.' I'll
tell you what, I'm sold. Free works."
I've found that to be true myself; every
time we make a few songs available on my
website, sales of all the CDs go up. A lot.
And I don't know about you, but as an artist
with an in-print record catalogue that dates
back to 1965, I'd be thrilled to see sales
on my old catalogue rise.
Now, RIAA and NARAS, as well as most of the
entrenched music industry, are arguing that
free downloads hurt sales. (More than hurt -
they're saying it's destroying the industry.)
Alas, the music industry needs no outside
help to destroy itself. We're doing a very
adequate job of that on our own, thank you.
Here are a few statements from the RIAA's
website:
"Analysts report that just one of the many
peer-to-peer systems in operation is
responsible for over 1.8 billion
unauthorized downloads per month". (Hilary
B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick
Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002)
"Sales of blank CD-R discs have…grown nearly
2 ˝ times in the last two years…if just half
the blank discs sold in 2001 were used to
copy music, the number of burned CDs
worldwide is about the same as the number of
CDs sold at retail." (Hilary B. Rosen letter
to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman,
February 28, 2002)
"Music sales are already suffering from the
impact…in the United States, sales decreased
by more than 10% in 2001."(Hilary B. Rosen
letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher,
Congressman, February 28, 2002)
"In a recent survey of music consumers,
23%…said they are not buying more music
because they are downloading or copying
their music for free."(Hilary B. Rosen
letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher,
Congressman, February 28, 2002)
Let's take these points one by one, but
before that, let me remind you of something:
the music industry had exactly the same
response to the advent of reel-to-reel home
tape recorders, cassettes, DATs, minidiscs,
VHS, BETA, music videos ("Why buy the record
when you can tape it?"), MTV, and a host of
other technological advances designed to
make the consumer's life easier and better.
I know because I was there.
The only reason they didn't react that way
publicly to the advent of CDs was because
they believed CD's were uncopyable. I was
told this personally by a former head of
Sony marketing, when they asked me to
license Between the Lines in CD format at a
reduced royalty rate. ("Because it's a brand
new technology.")
Who's to say that any of those people would
have bought the CD's if the songs weren't
available for free? I can't find a single
study on this, one where a reputable
surveyor such as Gallup actually asks people
that question. I think no one's run one
because everyone is afraid of the truth -
most of the downloads are people who want to
try an artist out, or who can't find the
music in print.
And if a percentage of that 1.8 billion is
because people are downloading a current hit
by Britney or In Sync, who's to say it
really hurt their sales? Soft statistics are
easily manipulated. How many of those people
went out and bought an album that had been
over-played at radio for months, just
because they downloaded a portion of it?
Sales of blank CDs have grown? You bet. I
bought a new Vaio in December (ironically
enough, made by Sony), and now back up all
my files onto CD. I go through 7-15 CD's a
week that way, or about 500 a year. Most new
PC's come with XP, which makes backing up to
CD painless; how many people are doing what
I'm doing? Additionally, when I buy a new
CD, I make a copy for my car, a copy for
upstairs, and a copy for my partner. That's
three blank discs per CD. So I alone account
for around 750 blank CDs yearly.
I'm sure the sales decrease had nothing to
do with the economy's decrease, or a steady
downward spiral in the music industry, or
the garbage being pushed by record
companies. Aren't you? There were 32,000 new
titles released in this country in 2001, and
that's not including re-issues, DIY's , or
smaller labels that don't report to
SoundScan. Our "Unreleased" series, which we
haven't bothered SoundScanning, sold 6,000+
copies last year. A conservative estimate
would place the number of "newly available"
CD's per year at 100,000. That's an awful
lot of releases for an industry that's being
destroyed. And to make matters worse, we
hear music everywhere, whether we want to or
not; stores, amusement parks, highway rest
stops. The original concept of Muzak (to be
played in elevators so quietly that its
soothing effect would be subliminal) has run
amok. Why buy records when you can learn the
entire Top 40 just by going shopping for
groceries?
Which music consumers? College kids who
can't afford to buy 10 new CDs a month, but
want to hear their favorite groups? When I
bought my nephews a new Backstreet Boys CD,
I asked why they hadn't downloaded it
instead. They patiently explained to their
senile aunt that the download wouldn't give
them the cool artwork, and more important,
the video they could see only on the CD.
Realistically, why do most people download
music? To hear new music, or records that
have been deleted and are no longer
available for purchase. Not to avoid paying
$5 at the local used CD store, or taping it
off the radio, but to hear music they can't
find anywhere else. Face it - most people
can't afford to spend $15.99 to experiment.
That's why listening booths (which labels
fought against, too) are such a success.
You can't hear new music on radio these
days; I live in Nashville, "Music City USA",
and we have exactly one station willing to
play a non-top-40 format. On a clear day, I
can even tune it in. The situation's not
much better in Los Angeles or New York.
College stations are sometimes bolder, but
their wattage is so low that most of us
can't get them.
One other major point: in the hysteria of
the moment, everyone is forgetting the main
way an artist becomes successful - exposure.
Without exposure, no one comes to shows, no
one buys CDs, no one enables you to earn a
living doing what you love. Again, from
personal experience: in 37 years as a
recording artist, I've created 25+ albums
for major labels, and I've never once
received a royalty check that didn't show I
owed them money. So I make the bulk of my
living from live touring, playing for
80-1500 people a night, doing my own show. I
spend hours each week doing press, writing
articles, making sure my website tour
information is up to date. Why? Because all
of that gives me exposure to an audience
that might not come otherwise. So when
someone writes and tells me they came to my
show because they'd downloaded a song and
gotten curious, I am thrilled!
Who gets hurt by free downloads? Save a
handful of super-successes like Celine Dion,
none of us. We only get helped.
But not to hear Congress tell it. Senator
Fritz Hollings, chairman of the Senate
Commerce Committee studying this, said "When
Congress sits idly by in the face of these [file-sharing]
activities, we essentially sanction the
Internet as a haven for thievery", then went
on to charge "over 10 million people" with
stealing. [Steven Levy, Newsweek 3/11/02]. That's what we think of
consumers - they're thieves, out to get
something for nothing.
Baloney. Most consumers have no problem
paying for entertainment. One has only to
look at the success of Fictionwise.com and
the few other websites offering books and
music at reasonable prices to understand
that. If the music industry had a shred of
sense, they'd have addressed this problem
seven years ago, when people like Michael
Camp were trying to obtain legitimate
licenses for music online. Instead, the
industry-wide attitude was "It'll go away".
That's the same attitude CBS Records had
about rock 'n' roll when Mitch Miller was
head of A&R. (And you wondered why they
passed on The Beatles and The Rolling
Stones.)
I don't blame the RIAA for Holling's
attitude. They are, after all, the Recording
Industry Association of America, formed so
the labels would have a lobbying group in
Washington. (In other words, they're
permitted to make contributions to
politicians and their parties.) But given
that our industry's success is based on
communication, the industry response to the
Internet has been abysmal. Statements like
the one above do nothing to help the cause.
Of course, communication has always been the
artist's job, not the executives. That's why
it's so scary when people like current NARAS
president Michael Greene begin using shows
like the Grammy Awards to drive their point
home.
Grammy viewership hit a six-year low in
2002. Personally, I found the program so
scintillating that it made me long for Rob
Lowe dancing with Snow White, which at least
was so bad that it was entertaining. Moves
like the ridiculous Elton John-Eminem duet
did little to make people want to watch
again the next year. And we're not going to
go into the Los Angeles Times' Pulitzer
Prize-winning series on Greene and NARAS,
where they pointed out that MusiCares has
spent less than 10% of its revenue on
disbursing emergency funds for people in the
music industry (its primary purpose), or
that Greene recorded his own album, pitched
it to record executives while discussing
Grammy business, then negotiated a $250,000
contract with Mercury Records for it (later
withdrawn after the public flap). Or that
NARAS quietly paid out at least $650,000 to
settle a sexual harassment suit against him,
a portion of which the non-profit Academy
paid. Or that he's paid two million dollars
a year, along with "perks" like his
million-dollar country club membership and
Mercedes. (Though it does make one wonder
when he last entered a record store and
bought something with his own hard-earned
money.)
Let's just note that in his speech he told
the viewing audience that NARAS and RIAA
were, in large part, taking their stance to
protect artists. He hired three teenagers to
spend a couple of days doing nothing but
downloading, and they managed to download
"6,000 songs". Come on. For free "front-row
seats" at the Grammys and an appearance on
national TV, I'd download twice that amount!
But…who's got time to download that many
songs? Does Greene really think people out
there are spending twelve hours a day
downloading our music? If they are, they
must be starving to death, because they're
not making a living or going to school. How
many of us can afford a T-1 line?
This sort of thing is indicative of the way
statistics and information are being tossed
around. It's dreadful to think that
consumers are being asked to take
responsibility for the industry's problems,
which have been around far longer than the
Internet. It's even worse to think that the
consumer is being told they are charged with
protecting us, the artists, when our own
industry squanders the dollars we earn on
waste and personal vendettas.
Greene went on to say that "Many of the
nominees here tonight, especially the new,
less-established artists, are in immediate
danger of being marginalized out of our
business." Right. Any "new" artist who
manages to make the Grammys has millions of
dollars in record company money behind them.
The "real" new artists aren't people you're
going to see on national TV, or hear on most
radio. They're people you'll hear because
someone gave you a disc, or they opened at a
show you attended, or were lucky enough to
be featured on NPR or another program still
open to playing records that aren't already
hits.
As to artists being "marginalized out of our
business," the only people being
marginalized out are the employees of our
Enron-minded record companies, who are being
fired in droves because the higher-ups are
incompetent.
And it's difficult to convince an educated
audience that artists and record labels are
about to go down the drain because they, the
consumer, are downloading music.
Particularly when they're paying $50-$125
apiece for concert tickets, and $15.99 for a
new CD they know costs less than a couple of
dollars to manufacture and distribute.
I suspect Greene thinks of downloaders as
the equivalent of an old-style television
drug dealer, lurking next to playgrounds,
wearing big coats and whipping them open for
wide-eyed children who then purchase black
market CD's at generous prices.
What's the new industry byword? Encryption.
They're going to make sure no one can copy
CDs, even for themselves, or download them
for free. Brilliant, except that it flouts
previous court decisions about blank
cassettes, blank videotapes, etc. And it
pisses people off.
How many of you know that many car makers
are now manufacturing all their CD players
to also play DVD's? or that part of the
encryption record companies are using
doesn't allow your store-bought CD to be
played on a DVD player, because that's the
same technology as your computer? And if
you've had trouble playing your own
self-recorded copy of O Brother Where Art
Thou in the car, it's because of this
lunacy.
The industry's answer is to put on the
label: "This audio CD is protected against
unauthorized copying. It is designed to play
in standard audio CD players and computers
running Windows O/S; however, playback
problems may be experienced. If you
experience such problems, return this disc
for a refund."
Now I ask you. After three or four
experiences like that, shlepping to the
store to buy it, then shlepping back to
return it (and you still don't have your
music), who's going to bother buying CD's?
The industry has been complaining for years
about the stranglehold the middle-man has on
their dollars, yet they wish to do nothing
to offend those middle-men. (BMG has a
strict policy for artists buying their own
CDs to sell at concerts - $11 per CD. They
know very well that most of us lose money if
we have to pay that much; the point is to
keep the big record stores happy by ensuring
sales go to them. What actually happens is
no sales to us or the stores.) NARAS and
RIAA are moaning about the little mom & pop
stores being shoved out of business; no one
worked harder to shove them out than our own
industry, which greeted every new Tower or
mega-music store with glee, and offered
steep discounts to Target and WalMart et al
for stocking CDs. The Internet has zero to
do with store closings and lowered sales.
And for those of us with major label
contracts who want some of our music
available for free downloading… well, the
record companies own our masters, our
outtakes, even our demos, and they won't
allow it. Furthermore, they own our voices
for the duration of the contract, so we
can't even post a live track for
downloading!
If you think about it, the music industry
should be rejoicing at this new
technological advance! Here's a fool-proof
way to deliver music to millions who might
otherwise never purchase a CD in a store.
The cross-marketing opportunities are
unbelievable. It's instantaneous, costs are
minimal, shipping non-existant…a staggering
vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs.
Instead, they're running around like
chickens with their heads cut off, bleeding
on everyone and making no sense. As an
alternative to encrypting everything, and
tying up money for years (potentially
decades) fighting consumer suits demanding
their first amendment rights be protected
(which have always gone to the consumer, as
witness the availability of blank and
unencrypted VHS tapes and casettes), why not
take a tip from book publishers and writers?
Baen Free Library is one success story. SFWA
is another. The SFWA site is one of the best
out there for hands-on advice to writers,
featuring in depth articles about everything
from agent and publisher scams, to a
continuously updated series of reports on
various intellectual property issues. More
important, many of the science fiction
writers it represents have been heavily
involved in the Internet since its
inception. Each year, when the science
fiction community votes for the Hugo and
Nebula Awards (their equivalent of the
Grammys), most of the works nominated are
put on the site in their entirety, allowing
voters and non-voters the opportunity to
peruse them. Free. If you are a member or
associate (at a nominal fee), you have
access to even more works. The site is also
full of links to members' own web pages and
on-line stories, even when they aren't
nominated for anything. Reading this
material, again for free, allows browsers to
figure out which writers they want to find
more of - and buy their books. Wouldn't it
be nice if all the records nominated for
awards each year were available for free
downloading, even if it were only the
winners? People who hadn't bought the albums
might actually listen to the singles, then
go out and purchase the records.
I have no objection to Greene et al trying
to protect the record labels, who are the
ones fomenting this hysteria. RIAA is funded
by them. NARAS is supported by them.
However, I object violently to the pretense
that they are in any way doing this for our
benefit. If they really wanted to do
something for the great majority of artists,
who eke out a living against all odds, they
could tackle some of the real issues facing
us:
The normal industry contract is for seven
albums, with no end date, which would be
considered at best indentured servitude (and
at worst slavery) in any other business. In
fact, it would be illegal.
A label can shelve your project, then extend
your contract by one more album because what
you turned in was "commercially or
artistically unacceptable". They alone
determine that criteria.
Singer-songwriters have to accept the
"Controlled Composition Clause" (which
dictates that they'll be paid only 75% of
the rates set by Congress in publishing
royalties) for any major or subsidiary label
recording contract, or lose the contract.
Simply put, the clause demanded by the
labels provides that a) if you write your
own songs, you will only be paid 3/4 of what
Congress has told the record companies they
must pay you, and b) if you co-write, you
will use your "best efforts" to ensure that
other songwriters accept the 75% rate as
well. If they refuse, you must agree to make
up the difference out of your share.
Congressionally set writer/publisher
royalties have risen from their 1960's high
(2 cents per side) to a munificent 8 cents.
Many of us began in the 50's and 60's; our
records are still in release, and we're
still being paid royalty rates of 2% (if
anything) on them.
If we're not songwriters, and not hugely
successful commercially (as in
platinum-plus), we don't make a dime off our
recordings. Recording industry accounting
procedures are right up there with films.
Worse yet, when records go out-of-print, we
don't get them back! We can't even take them
to another company. Careers have been
deliberately killed in this manner, with the
record company refusing to release product
or allow the artist to take it somewhere
else.
And because a record label "owns" your voice
for the duration of the contract, you can't
go somewhere else and re-record those same
songs they turned down.
And because of the re-record provision, even
after your contract is over, you can't
record those songs for someone else for
years, and sometimes decades.
Last but not least, America is the only
country I am aware of that pays no live
performance royalties to songwriters. In
Europe, Japan, Australia, when you finish a
show, you turn your set list in to the
promoter, who files it with the appropriate
organization, and then pays a small royalty
per song to the writer. It costs the singer
nothing, the rates are based on venue size,
and it ensures that writers whose songs no
longer get airplay, but are still performed
widely, can continue receiving the benefit
from those songs.
Additionally, we should be speaking up, and
Congress should be listening. At this point
they're only hearing from multi-platinum
acts. What about someone like Ani Difranco,
one of the most trusted voices in college
entertainment today? What about those of us
who live most of our lives outside the big
corporate system, and who might have very
different views on the subject?
There is zero evidence that material
available for free online downloading is
financially harming anyone. In fact, most of
the hard evidence is to the contrary.
Greene and the RIAA are correct in one thing
- these are times of great change in our
industry. But at a time when there are
arguably only four record labels left in
America (Sony, AOL/Time/Warner, Universal,
BMG - and where is the RICO act when we need
it?)… when entire genres are glorifying the
gangster mentality and losing their biggest
voices to violence…when executives change
positions as often as Zsa Zsa Gabor changed
clothes, and "A&R" has become a euphemism
for "Absent & Redundant"… well, we have
other things to worry about.
It's absurd for us, as artists, to sanction
- or countenance - the shutting down of
something like this. It's sheer stupidity to
rejoice at the Napster decision.
Short-sighted, and ignorant.
Free exposure is practically a thing of the
past for entertainers. Getting your record
played at radio costs more money than most
of us dream of ever earning. Free
downloading gives a chance to every
do-it-yourselfer out there. Every act that
can't get signed to a major, for whatever
reason, can reach literally millions of new
listeners, enticing them to buy the CD and
come to the concerts. Where else can a new
act, or one that doesn't have a label deal,
get that kind of exposure?
Please note that I am not advocating
indiscriminate downloading without the
artist's permission. I am not saying
copyrights are meaningless. I am objecting
to the RIAA spin that they are doing this to
protect "the artists", and make us more
money. I am annoyed that so many records I
once owned are out of print, and the only
place I could find them was Napster. Most of
all, I'd like to see an end to the hysteria
that causes a group like RIAA to spend over
45 million dollars in 2001 lobbying "on our
behalf", when every record company out there
is complaining that they have no money.
We'll turn into Microsoft if we're not
careful, folks, insisting that any household
wanting an extra copy for the car, the kids,
or the portable CD player, has to go out and
"license" multiple copies.
As artists, we have the ear of the masses.
We have the trust of the masses. By speaking
out in our concerts and in the press, we can
do a great deal to damp this hysteria, and
put the blame for the sad state of our
industry right back where it belongs - in
the laps of record companies, radio
programmers, and our own apparent inability
to organize ourselves in order to better our
own lives - and those of our fans. If we
don't take the reins, no one will.
Sources:
Baenbooks.com, BMG Records, Chicago Tribune,
CNN.com, Congressional Record, Eonline.com,
Grammy.com, LATimes.com, Newsweek,
Radiocrow.com, RIAA.org, personal
communications
* for more information on the Free Library,
go to www.baen.com/library .
Read Janis' follow up to this article:
FALLOUT - a follow up to The Internet
Debacle
This article has been revised to ensure
factual accuracy.
Author's note: You are welcome to post this
article on any cooperating website, or in
any print magazine, although we request that
you include a link directed to
http://www.janisian.com
and writer's credit!
Additionally, we've started putting our
money where my mouth is. We will be offering
one song a week in mp3 format for free
downloading...and if we can ever afford the
server space, we'll try to put a bunch of
them up there at once! These are songs I own
and control both the copyright and master
to; you are welcome to share these files
with your friends. We'd appreciate your
showing your support of this project by
signing up for our email list - just send an
email to
janisian-announce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
We won't bother you very often! Beyond
Yahoo's requirements, we do not rent, sell,
or lend our email list. All you will receive
is notification when a new album is
released, and an occasional tour schedule.
Thank you for your support!
Want to know how your politicians are voting
on these issues? Go to www.vote-smart.org/
Write to your representative and be heard on
this subject!
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Jon Newton
Malchus
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