It comes late in Mike Arrington’s loutish attack on Billy Bragg’s modest suggestion that we need to start thinking seriously about creating a system to compensate musicians and other artists for the commercial use of their works online. Here’s what Arrington writes:
“Recorded music is nothing but marketing material to drive awareness of an artist.”
I had to read that a few times to convince myself that he was serious. Here it is again:
“Recorded music is nothing but marketing material to drive awareness of an artist.”
As a printed poem, one assumes, is nothing but marketing material to drive awareness of a poet. As a sculpture is nothing but marketing material to drive awareness of a sculptor. As a film is nothing but marketing material to drive awareness of a director.
In the fallen world of the social network, “awareness” is the highest, most noble accomplishment that anyone could possibly aspire to. Because, you see, “awareness” is a monetizable commodity.
Your article hit the simple truth of the situation. While the industry scrambles to find a new profit model, it forgets what attracted people to its product in the first place. The art is appealing; the product is the conveyance (CD, book, DVD).
The music industry needs to recognize that the days of easy massive profits are over. They’re going to have to work for a living again. The same people who used to buy CDs still buy them, but the people who bought frivolous music because they had nothing better to do are now getting it for free. Maybe they picked a bad customer base to target for their revenue stream.
I stopped reading TechCrunch months ago. I had originally subscribed because it seemed like everyone around me read it. A pattern became apparent: it exists to rip others apart. There’s a pseudo intellectual smugness to the writing. Maybe it began life with more innocent and honest goals, but it’s quickly devolved into some kind of reductionist theater of the absurd. My suggestion: turn the tv off; unsubscribe.
Thanks, Nick, for standing up for the artist. You’re one of the few in the tech community to do so.
I’m not surprised that Arrington is so dismissive of a musician’s work, but I am surprised that so many throughout the tech community agree with him. It’s probably just another symptom of how little the creative community is valued.
It’s not hard to understand where Arrington and his legions are coming from: they want high-quality recorded music from talented artists, and they don’t want to pay for it. But they’ll soon find that musicians are not recording as much, and that the quality of their output has declined. There’s some crazy musicians out there, but none of them are willing to work indefinitely without some sort of financial reward.
I spent several years as a working musician, but more importantly, I’ve spent my whole life as a music fan. The variety and quality of the music that’s been available during my lifetime has been fantastically enriching. Most of the music I listen to is outside of the mainstream, and most of the artists I listen to have only barely been able to make a living.
Unfortunately, some of my favorite artists have recently been openly discussing the financial difficulties that they’re now facing. They’re making a loss on their recordings, and only breaking even on their tours. They can make a lot more money as session musicians or doing soundtrack work. I wish them all the best if that’s what they choose to do, but as a music fan, it’s pretty devastating.
What’s more, Arrington’s assertion that the talented will find some way to make a living is astonishingly naive. Corporations still dominate our cultural landscape, in spite of exaggerated reports about the “death” of the major labels. Pop music sung by pretty faces will always find a financial backer. It’s the creative musicians who are pushing the envelope who are most likely to get squeezed.
There’s no turning back the clock, so musicians will have to accept their fate. But Arrington will have to accept his fate as well: if he’s not willing to pay for high-quality recorded music, he’ll have to settle for poor-quality promotional crap. Of course, he probably doesn’t know the difference.
I think the issue brought up by Billy Bragg is wider and it can expanded to all the user generated content applications.
We are in the process of launching a new street fashion & lifestyle social networking application and we are trying to figure out a fair way to compensate the active user with a future option schema.
Maybe Bragg should pay Bebo for all the free exposure.
Arrington, as usual, misses the point entirely. Real music lovers will always be happy to pay real musicians for their work. That will never change.