OFF, BRAIN: If you pirate music, you're downloading

[Jonathan Jarrett]

communism!
Reply-To: 
In-Reply-To: <498768.71375.qm at web36906.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 07:46:30AM -0700, gary shindler typed out:
> I personally stopped downloading and burning years ago. A member
> recently offered me a burn and I turned it down. If I wanted it that
> bad I'd buy it and hopefully the artist would be compensated for my
> purchase. 

	I resisted digital music for a while because of feelings like 
this. Nowadays I regard MP3s as free promos; some day I'll get round to 
buying genuine copies of the things I've got `unofficially', if I'm 
listening to them. The problem is of course that that doesn't do the 
artist much good, because the system is broke.

> I even try not to buy used copies, the artist doesn't get any pay for
> that. All those promo copies filling up record stores that DJs would
> hock for "other things" that comes out of the artist's advance. Albert
> wants to be paid for his work, that's not a crime. 

	Maybe I don't have the way it works correct here, but the 
artist is paid by the label releasing the album, right, according to how 
many copies distributors pick up for sale to actual retailers. So the 
artist with a conventional record deal is separated from the actual 
buyer by three stages, except for sales at gigs where usually, if they 
have a deal, they have to be a distributor and retailer as well, buying 
stock to sell themselves. Have I got the model wrong?

	So take Albert as an example. Because of my being short of money 
at the wrong time, I didn't get a copy of The Brain Surgeons' _Denial of 
Death_ before Cellsum sold out of it. If I now buy one from Amazon 
Marketplace or wherever, Albert doesn't get anything extra for that, 
right? He's already been paid for that copy whether it reaches a 
listener or not, because a distributor picked it up to sell to whatever 
retailer I might pick. The only interest he has sales-wise in whether I 
buy a copy or not is in whether the distributors subsequently remember 
him as someone whose records shift. Assuming that someone involved knows 
that Al Bouchard is linked to The Brain Surgeons NYC, that might just 
help, but they won't get that information from the retailers except in 
as much as they order more of Albert's next record. All I can do to help 
Albert make money from here is badger my favoured supplier to stock his 
next record if he makes one, I don't see any way he profits from my now 
buying _Denial of Death_. I still will, because I want it, but he 
doesn't get anything from it, so from his point of view it's only 
propriety that means I shouldn't just rip my housemate's copy, right?

	That's what I call a broken rewards system, and anyone who 
embraces a different business model can only surely be seeing sense, 
because almost anything has to be better than that. But perhaps I have 
details wrong somewhere. Set me straight, people?

	On another tBS note, I saw on a market stall in Cambridge the 
other day a copy of what seems to be a Ross the Boss solo album--Manowar 
is mentioned but I think only as part of its press puff--which has two 
of the _Denial of Death_ tracks on it. Has anyone heard it? Yours,
								   Jon

ObCD: Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO - _Have You Seen The 
Other Side of the Sky_ (bought at their gig, money direct to band)
-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk