I beg to differ.
It's not a good article. It's actually a very bad article. I agree with
the general direction making clear that a "free culture" is bad for
musicians and that they have to make money and that it's not OK to just
"pirate" music but the article is full of stereotypes, false claims and
bad/wrong examples.
It's not true that I can get any music I want with a few clicks
(legally, that is). It's true for Lady Gaga, but she has no income
problem, too. But of the music I listen to and buy today (even the new
one!) less than 50% is even available on iTunes. Spotify et al are a
little better but they are also villains by David Lowery's measures.
I'm too lazy and have too little time to hunt down stuff on file sharing
or download sites so there's a lot of stuff I will only ever get through
streaming services or mixes, but I WOULD buy that stuff if it was just
available.
The article also completely confuses author's rights with recording
rights and is plain wrong in some of the legal claims it makes. "The
accepted norm for hudreds of years of western civilization is the artist
exclusively has the right to exploit and control his/her work for a
period of time." Somebody might want to discuss this with the likes of
Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and George Michael who are among those who
essentially made this true - for high profile artists and not hundred of
years ago but only during the last few decades and by sheer market
power.
But the thing that infuriates me is the example about Mark Linkous
(Sparklehorse). David writes that his suicide was partly caused by a
harsh financial situation caused by a lack of income from his music and
directly attributes this to piracy while hinting record companies are
the good guys helping musicians and guaranteeing them income. ("There is
no other explanation except for the fact that fans made the unethical
choice to take their music without compensating these artists.")
In this particular case things could not be more wrong.
Sparklehorse happens to be one of the minds behind one of my favorite
albums of the recent years ("Dark Night of the Soul", together with
Brian Burton (Dangermouse) and David Lynch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul_%28album%29 . The
other example given, Vic Chesnutt, was also involved in a track of that
album, btw.).
It's probably his commercially most successful album but only became
such after his death. And the reason for this has nothing to do with
piracy, it was due to a rights dispute with EMI which delayed the
release for more than a year, when it finally came out. Had that not
been the case I doubt he would have been in the dire financial situation
David describes.
And it was the artists themselves who distributed the album freely (on
their own web site) while the dispute was not settled. That was where I
originally downloaded it from, for free, like probably many others, too.
You can argue whether this was piracy or not but you just can't claim
that this had to do with "free culture", piracy or anything.
Of course I don't know details about the contracts involved and I would
not claim that there weren't legitimate reasons for EMI's position, and
also David Lowery sure knows much more than I do about what was going on
with this and maybe it was between the artists, I don't know. But to put
this forward as an example of why only record companies are the good
guys guaranteeing the artists a nice income and taking away any risk
from them while everybody else around, Spotify, Apple and especially the
customers are evil and drive them into suicide is just so ridiculous it
makes me mad.
No, this is NOT a good article.
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View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=95541
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