Smiling is sexy, but it's hard to grin,
When you've got an extra appendage,
Disconnected from its foundation,
By consensual sacrilege.
Intangible, parallel to the earth,
Full of memory, bereft of berth,
A bridge to nowhere, disused
Function, no longer fused
To another, it decays with haste.
The cthonian vole and sprightly
Chrysanthemum contribute imperceptibly
To its demise, reprocessing without waste
Once-merged soul soil now expired,
Reveling in love and life inspired.
Who actually pays for music any more? What are the ramifications of the free-marketization of contemporary music? I've always felt in my gut that obtaining music by Napster, Limewire, Soulseek, Bit Torrent - even potentially by interpersonal transfers - is wrong. Everybody knows that artists, musicians included, have to make that bread and butter. Downloading produces little to no direct revenue for the artist. It's stealing.
There are regular rejoinders to this argument. For one, artists find other ways to make revenue. Back in the day, artists would play shows to get people to purchase their CDs. Now that the latter is a no-go, do they disseminate their music for free or on the cheap, or look the other way because it is beyond their control, hoping that more people will pay to attend their concerts? Personally, of all the bands whose music I have downloaded or been given free of charge, I might have been to concerts for about 1% of them, or less. I don't know about you, but I think this is a pipe dream, an illusion, and a rationalization.
In another vein of complaints, it is claimed that artists do not receive revenues from CD sales; record companies do. This may be true for the big concert blockbusters and/or indentured servants of some of the bigger and more predatory labels. Yet, even before the proliferation of independent gigs and artist-generated and -managed labels, it is fallacious to say that artist's received little to no profit from record sales. Some did and some did not. Either way, both bands and record labels serve artistic and economic functions which deserve market remuneration.
Then there was the "I'm just trying the music out, man" argument, which really was always bunk, and which has been definitively nullified by Youtube, Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, and listening stations at Best Buy and other music shops.
Finally, there's a technological determinism argument: free music or novel, internet-particular ways of dissemination are the way of the future and should therefore be accepted. If everybody's doing it, and it only seems to be becoming more rife, why not me?
I'm putting more work into convincing you that free downloads constitute theft than I had initially intended. I am myself one of the most prolific thieves on the interweb. I feel perpetually guilty, understand the moral cost of these violations, and hope to one day make amends. In fact, the intended point of this post is: artists should have remuneration drop boxes. Ideally it would work something like this: while poor, we steal. When we make money, we pay back. It's like an honor code IOU system for art and music consumption.
This makes sense given the current and recent historical inadequacy of protections on intellectual property, especially music.
Here's one of my recent acquisitions. Rest assured, the artist - Portico Quartet - is on my IOU list. I hope that by the time I've obtained an income flow, my drop-box remuneration idea will have caught on. Otherwise, I hope snail mail is still operating: I'll send my contribution to these Brits in the post!
