Piracy

I'm sick of hearing about it, it's so 1999.

That's right, piracy in music is dead, and if you keep trumpeting it as a cause for the decline in recording revenues you're stupid or work at a label or both.

Because the only people bothering to steal these days are those who never planned to pay.

Because everything you want is available for free. On YouTube, on Spotify...streaming won, and people only want what they want, not the other nine cuts surrounding the hit.

That's why recording revenues tanked and didn't recover. Piracy was a wakeup call, but after the iTunes Store/legal alternatives, we found out that people didn't want the album. Yup, while you keep trumpeting its vitality, its artistic necessity, I must point you to YouTube, where you'll find the hit has zillions of views, and the albums cuts...not so much.

Same deal on Spotify.

Turns out people don't want most of your music, and that's got nothing to do with piracy.

We're not only living in a post-Napster era, we're living in a post-piracy era.

It doesn't pay to steal.

And if you're broke, it's your own damn fault.

Because you're not writing hits, you're not tying up with people who can make hits.

Music is a game, and if you're unwilling to play it, you're not going to be successful.

Even if you write a hit song, you're gonna need help. And that help certainly exceeds posting it online and spamming everybody you know about it. Your song has to enter the collective consciousness, it must be perceived to be a hit, people must believe they need to check it out.

And once they do, if they like it, they'll continue to click and spread the word. If they don't...

That's the dirty little secret, if I check you out once and don't like you, the odds of me checking you out again are infinitesimal. You can blame it on piracy all you want, I'll blame it on me not having enough time and having a plethora of other music at my fingertips. And five year olds and fifteen year olds are no different from me, everybody's got endless stimulation, endless options, and very little time.

Recording revenues will go up. When more people have streaming subscriptions. Which will happen. Just look at foreign territories, where the CD is dead and gone, like Scandinavia. But the labels were smart there, they did not delay the entry of Spotify, but embraced it. Yes, if Warner hadn't prevented Spotify from launching in the U.S., by refusing to license it, YouTube would never have gotten the traction.

But at least YouTube pays... Have a couple hundred million views and you're making serious coin. Not only on YouTube, you'll have many other opportunities.

But we've got ancient players decrying the end of the old game. The one wherein you won the lottery by getting a label deal and got heard on radio everyone listened to and the only way to hear all of your work was to buy an overpriced CD.

So now that these people are broke, they're blaming piracy.

Piracy was once the issue, over a decade ago, but no longer.

But people keep decrying the future and embracing the past, it's seemingly endless.

The people who said they had no reason for a cell phone, never mind a smartphone. Now you laugh at those without smartphones, yes, we're laughing at you...

The people who said they saw no reason for files, who embraced CDs.

The people who kept lauding bookstores, with their limited inventory and low accessibility. Yup, I drove to the store where they didn't have what I wanted, or they couldn't find it because it was mis-shelved. Now I can find it instantly on Google, that's a problem??

The future is scary and different, but it keeps coming down the track.

Lately it's Bitcoin/digital currencies, you pooh-pooh them, seemingly unaware that every time you charge something there's a huge payment to the bank, to cover fraud amongst other costs.

Techies are doing their best to whittle those costs down.

But you're afraid of the future.

So you put up a straw man, a bogeyman, piracy.

We live in an incredible era, where you can hear every song ever recorded for free.

Not really. You're paying, that ad before the YouTube clip, that ad on Spotify or your subscription fee.

And those who are not being listened to don't like it.

But if you create something people want to hear, and that's the essence of popular music, this era is nirvana. Lorde could not have made it in the last century. Sure, she had a deal with Universal in New Zealand, do you really think she would have gotten a U.S. release pre-Internet?

But you think you deserve that attention, even though your track is nowhere near as hooky.

Whenever you hear someone making excuses, complaining about how they just can't make the money they used to in music, move on, don't listen, don't get dragged down the rabbit hole.

There are winners and losers in every revolution.

Sure, it might be harder to record drums at home on Pro Tools, but many couldn't record at all previously, not being able to afford a real studio, never mind a real engineer.

And those without a deal can play now, despite the fact that in most cases we don't want to listen to what they have to say.

And if you do create viable music, people are willing to pay more than ever to see you perform it live.

This is a problem?

I'm not saying the music biz is without pitfalls, but I am saying we're living in a new reality, and piracy helped get us here, but piracy is not the problem now.

P.S. Used to be very few paid for music, now almost all do, even grannies click through to YouTube clips. This is a start, a good thing. We've just got to up the payments.


--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1

If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25

To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25




-- powered by phpList, www.phplist.com --