
The problem isn’t piracy – it’s competition - nkurz
http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthetics-punk-rock-is-now-enforced-by-law/
======
rayiner
This article is totally wrong. It mentions two very important things, but gets
the implications of both wrong.

1) Competition is an issue. But competition isn't driving down prices. Despite
all the music out there, people continue to gravitate towards the big record
label stars. Nobody is competing by producing something people like as much as
Rihanna, except cheaper. Instead, the "competition" is by delivering Rihanna
for free by infringing copyrights.

2) Marginal costs of production of music are zero. But that does not mean
music should be free, any more than it means iPhones should be $200 or
whatever. The point about competition shows that music is not fungible. People
have rejected indie music. They want Rihanna. Now, when you're talking about a
product that is not fungible marginal cost is irrelevant. It doesn't how much
each Hermes bag costs to reproduce.

~~~
clicks
> Despite all the music out there, people continue to gravitate towards the
> big record label stars. Nobody is competing by producing something people
> like as much as Rihanna, except cheaper.

You seem to be under the impression that people determined her art to be of
greater value and thus a higher demand for it was created than all of
Rihanna's competitors. That is only very slightly true. Demand for Rihanna's
music is created mostly by record companies' aggressively promoting it and
advertising it in various venues, not because people decided with no outside
influence that her music is better than the competitors'. Rihanna won because
her record company is better at salesmanship than her competitors. Now her
popularity is soaring in a bandwagon effect, as is typical of popstars or
really any popular phenomenon.

Your point that music should not be free because of its marginal cost of
production being zero is an interesting one -- just as there isn't an
expectation for the iPhone price to be $200, it does indeed make sense that
music shouldn't be free. But, with all the talk about capitalism being a
faulty economic system these days, a particular recipient of rage -- and
rightfully so, in my opinion -- is that entity which charges bad prices [1]
for its goods. Now, you might be wondering why it's _music_ which gets all
this drama about people objecting to its costs, and not the banking sector or
something. That's because it's a thing that's close to people -- everyone
listens to music, and naturally everyone wonders why it costs so much when the
means of its distribution are effectively zero.

Personally I think we as a society need to first think deeply about
corporations that operate essentially on a rentiering model of monetization
(the recent wave of 'sharing startups' are a prime example) and then we should
worry about what is a good model of music distribution. But hey, record
companies are basically rentiering companies as well.

[1]: Bad as in socially or morally irresponsible. If some company finds a cure
for cancer -- and that cure, it turns out requires only $2 to make for every
pill, it would not be ethical to charge an exorbitant price like $20,000 for
it, no matter how much the research costs were (people dying is a bigger
concern than people not getting paid). This is obviously an extreme example,
but you get the point.

~~~
rayiner
I'm not going to say I think our existing system is without flaws, but here's
some food for thought: pop media is a wholesome product. It doesn't destroy
the environment like Apple's or Samsung's phones. It doesn't con people into
giving up personal information like Facebook. It doesn't take advantage of
desperate third world labor like everything Wal-Mart sells. It doesn't use up
scarce resources like gasoline production, contribute substantially to our
carbon footprint like shipping, pollute precious water resources like
manufacturing, clog up our rivers like farming. It doesn't destroy our
precarious fish stocks like the seafood restaurant I went to last night. Music
and movies are actually priced so most people can afford them, unlike say
life-saving drugs or medical care.

So even if we're reevaluating the basics of our economy, it seems to me like
music and movies are among the last things that deserve our philosophical ire.

~~~
icebraining
> It doesn't destroy the environment like Apple's or Samsung's phones.

 _" Looking at the 44 concerts, U2 will create enough carbon to fly all 90,000
people attending one of their Wembley dates (in London) to Dublin," Helen
Roberts, an environmental consultant for carbonfootprint.com, told the Belfast
Telegraph. Put another way, U2's CO2 emissions are reportedly the equivalent
to the average annual waste produced by 6,500 British people, or the same as
leaving a lightbulb running for 159,000 years._ [1]

> It doesn't con people into giving up personal information like Facebook.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/arts/music/jay-z-is-
watchi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/arts/music/jay-z-is-watching-and-
he-knows-your-friends.html)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootki...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal)

> It doesn't take advantage of desperate third world labor like everything
> Wal-Mart sells.

Wal-Mart sells pop media.

[1]: [http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jul/10/u2-world-
tour-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jul/10/u2-world-tour-carbon-
footprint)

~~~
rayiner
You're comparing apples and oranges. The carbon footprints of iPhones alone
sold in a single quarter is in the millions of tons. You point to a couple of
privacy breaches versus Facebook whose entire business model is based on
breaching privacy.

~~~
icebraining
_The carbon footprints of iPhones alone sold in a single quarter is in the
millions of tons._

Yes, and humans exhale almost a billion of tons in the same period. I don't
think just measuring the total is very helpful; you'd need to analyze
carefully the value of each things, and what they replaced. How many carbons
were saved when teenagers start defining themselves based more on their
smartphones that on their cars?

 _You point to a couple of privacy breaches versus Facebook whose entire
business model is based on breaching privacy._

Sure, but being less bad than Facebook is not an achievement.

------
mehwoot
Utter crap. Not everybody can be a musician, at least in the genres I listen
to, and the difference between the amateurs and the professionals is painfully
obvious. I'm not being elitist here- I wish anybody could make what I like
(and do it well), then there would be a lot more for me to enjoy. Maybe this
is the case in rock music or whatever the author is familiar with, but it
isn't in all genres.

And still, the income from selling tracks is miniscule. It is not competition
doing it, it is just the ease of getting it for free on the internet.

~~~
ThomPete
Sorry but many many many so called artists cant play or compose anything to
save their lives.

P-diddy never played an instrument. Plenty of popular singers are mediocre to
say the least. And many many many very talented musicians make no money what
so ever.

Musical talent have very little to do with whether you can live from your
music.

~~~
mehwoot
_Musical talent have very little to do with whether you can live from your
music._

For some genres of music yes, for others, no. There are genres where sound
design is of the utmost importance. I'm not saying competition isn't a factor
universally- I'm saying genres without significant competition still have the
same problems, so it clearly isn't the dominant factor.

~~~
ThomPete
The genres where it matters are not genres where you can make a lot of money
and are not the genres we normally talk about when we talk about piracy.

~~~
uniclaude
A few electronic music acts might disagree with you here. Daft Punk? Skrillex?
The Prodigy? A lot of importance on sound design here, and it is major enough
to be on topic on most of those debates.

~~~
ThomPete
Lets not confuse things here.

It is not because of their skills around sound design that they or any other
become popular. It has to do much more with timing, culture etc.

Again there are many great great sound designers and and composers out there
that will never see any fame at all.

It's much more complex than just the music itself.

~~~
lgieron
So you're saying that their music isn't actually outstanding, they just got
lucky? If so, I'd be grateful for a list of artists who makes as good stuff as
Daft Punk or Prodigy does, but who didn't make it because of "timing, culture
etc.". They can very well be my next facourite bands.

~~~
ThomPete
No I am not saying that. I am saying it's a much larger chain of events than
simply their skills and talent that makes someone popular. Luck is one of them
the same way it is for startups. Timing is another again just like startups,
network and so one.

~~~
lgieron
Yeah probably, but also a lot of the stuff that is acclaimed is just really
good. Luck plays a factor, but I'd be surprised if there were guys who make
music as good as say Radiohead's, who are toiling away in obscurity because
they were unlucky.

My point is, a a lot of the indies make music which, while being solid and
obviously requiring tons of work, still can't compare to the output of the few
talented guys who made it. For the most part it's not luck, just skills gap.
Almost nobody wants to listen to decent music if they can enjoy masterpieces.

~~~
ThomPete
There are. Believe me there are.

Great bands are built over time, they are not inherently great.

------
educating
Competition has _always_ been a problem. But the answer to that problem was
people buying _records_ of _music_ that they liked. No videos.

Stop fooling yourselves. Piracy _did_ seriously wound the music industry. CD-R
drives in computers and the internet, filesharing on Usenet, Napster, Googling
for mp3s. Then record companies were getting less because they were selling
singles vs. albums (though they sold 35s decades before with no problems, but
albums/full CDs brought in more than the singles, at least when there was only
one really popular single on an album/CD).

The industry is _not_ coming back either. The record companies have little
incentive to put money into a loser, which means everything is candy, peanut
butter, and honey. No gourmet. Dave Brubeck would be a homeless man in today's
record industry.

~~~
quadrangle
In today's record industry, Dave Brubeck would not be homeless, he'd be one of
the many thousands of extremely talented people recording stuff you've never
heard because there's so much competition; but he'd find some audience and go
around performing and making do. He'd probably struggle financially like lots
of others and rightfully complain about gross economic inequities today in our
corrupt system. None of this has anything to do with the red herring about
"piracy".

~~~
lutusp
> In today's record industry, Dave Brubeck would not be homeless ...

I have to repeat something funny that Brubeck said -- he said the most common
question asked by fans was, "How many musicians are there in your quartet?"

------
bhewes
When I read stuff like this I think, oh, I can download Linux, emacs, the GNU
Science package, quantlib, a few pirated quant books and then call myself a
quant trader. I mean come on, just because the tools are cheap or free does
not translate into me being competitive.

Music and art has always been about competition. Let me talk about space I
know better, Poetry - The Roman Empire produce a total of four major poets
Horace, Virgil, Catullus and Ovid. That is it four. A thousand years of
history you get four.

Anyways, everyone wants to be on top, but the top is only so big. And Art has
a nasty winner take all effect (as clicks pointed out). That is the game deal
with it.

As for Piracy, it is a side effect of making money. People only pirate things
that have value. Otherwise the use of the word piracy does not make any sense.

------
beloch
Before the twentieth century, and even today in some parts of the world, music
wasn't something you buy. It was something you participate in. Before the
invention of the phonograph, people would bring instruments to parties and
play music themselves. It took time for this tradition to die out. Even in the
40's movie theaters frequently showed sing-a-long shorts! While recorded music
has brought first-rate professional performances to the masses, it has robbed
untold millions of musical expression. How many of us learned to play some
instrument or another as children, but never bothered to keep playing because
we didn't like the music we were taught to play and didn't think we could ever
play well enough to be worth listening to? Odds are most people reading this
are much less musically accomplished than their great-great grandparents were.

For a substantial portion of the twentieth century, technological limitations
made recording and distribution expensive. You could make a lot more money by
promoting a star and making everyone want a small number of records than you
could by recording everything under the sun! Some of those stars were just
gifted amateurs who had mass appeal the moment they walked in from the wilds.
Those were rare enough that we soon learned how to manufacture stars, and the
methods have reached a level of sophistication where musical talent isn't even
necessary anymore (see autotuning).

The internet has practically eliminated the costs and difficulty of
distribution. The moment you record something, you can send it to the other
side of the planet almost instantaneously to as many people who are interested
in it exist. Recording still takes some knowledge, but the equipment required
to do professional quality recording is now easily accessible to hobbyists.
Natural prodigies are still showing up now and then, and _stopping_ them from
recording great music would be more challenging than allowing them to do so!
It's the manufactured star system that's collapsing. It costs a lot to do
research on what should appeal to teenagers in a few years, hire professional
writers to design songs matching your research results, hire somebody who
looks good in a latex bikini to record those songs, shoot videos, etc., and
finally have a team of professional audio engineers digitally massage her
horrid caterwaulings into something that doesn't sound horrible when blasted
through iPod earbuds at top volume.

Manufactured music superstars are a dying breed, and good riddance. My
playlist is devoid of them and full of gifted amateurs, and I couldn't be
happier with the change! The global musical monoculture is ending and a
diverse, global party is replacing it. We are working towards the point where
music can be created by anyone, anywhere, to be shared with everyone,
everywhere. Perhaps, as we listen to superstars less and to ordinary people
more, the pressure to play like a superstar or not play at all will drop away
and we'll reclaim the tradition of participatory music that we've been robbed
of. Perhaps, one day, people will start bringing their instruments to parties
again!

~~~
snowwrestler
Participatory music is great, and continues to this day, but it didn't produce
Handel's Messiah or Beethoven's 9th. High-quality original music has been
something people buy for many hundreds of years. It's just that until
recently, the only people who could afford to buy it were rich patrons.

Copying technologies (first printing, then audio recording) have made such
music available to the general public. Copyright has created the financial
means to create such music specifically for the public's tastes.

It also protects amateurs or indie artists from exploitation, by preventing
big companies from just stealing the songs and re-recording them with their
manufactured stars.

Manufactured stars are not collapsing, by the way. Music piracy has been
rampant for over a decade and we're still stuck with Myley Cyrus and Justin
Bieber and One Direction.

The exact opposite is actually happening--piracy is hurting middle-class
artists and their indie labels, while big labels just force their manufactured
stars into 360 deals. So they don't care if they lose half their sales to
piracy. They're getting a slice of everything else: every tour ticket, every
sync license, every TV appearance, every endorsement deal, every t-shirt,
everything.

~~~
quadrangle
"Copyright has created the financial means to create such music specifically
for the public's tastes."

Hypothesis there, I don't accept it, and there's little controlled empirical
evidence for it.

Piracy is hurting artists is also a baseless assumption that is grounded
really strongly in a bunch of reactionary people's minds who can't yet realize
that the economic assumptions they had from an earlier time were actually
flawed to begin with.

"Losing sales to piracy" is a tenuous hypothesis. Some evidence shows that
piracy _increases_ sales more than it reduces them.

At any rate, we have enough music now for everyone to listen to neat things
for the rest of all lifetimes on the planet. There's no need to subsidize it
anymore with these schemes to criminalize sharing.

~~~
sally88
If that were true, shouldn't music sales be exploding instead of decreasing?

~~~
sirwitti
No, as there's more going on than piracy in the music business.

------
kfk
1\. Marginal costs are not 0. The musician has a cost, his time has a cost.
So, let's not fall in the trap of seeing only certain costs. Of course, a cook
that does music in his free time might have a marginal cost of 0, but not
everybody listens to that. Amateur music, when it sounds amateur, is horrible.
I challenge the assumption that amateur is good enough for many, it is not
true, I have never seen people listening to crappy music in their cars.

2\. There is an easy way to make money: concerts.

3\. _The obvious answer is the destruction of neoliberalism_. No it's not. The
obvious answer is more liberism, because, believe it or not, less copyrights
BS is completely in the realm of neoliberism. While what he hints too, planned
economy and State, is exactly what has created these ridiculous music labels
that cash out on monopolies instead than real value.

~~~
yk
The marginal cost, that is the cost of one additional copy, is zero. (
Actually it is some server cost, so < $10 per TB.) The musician., studio etc.
are upfront costs.

~~~
kfk
For me the marginal cost is the additional song, not the additional copy of a
song.

Then again, if one looks at the obvious, that musician have to make money from
concerts, it becomes clear that marginal costs will never be 0 in the music
industry. Competition or not competition.

~~~
yk

        For me the marginal cost is the additional song, not the 
        additional copy of a song.
    

From the perspective of the musician, who sells to a record label, yes. From
the perspective of a record label, and thus what determines the prices for
customers, the marginal cost is zero. So the record labels need some other
revenue stream, and hence the push to control the entire 'celebrity product.'

~~~
kfk
Yes, I get this point. I am just saying that there are other ways to look at
this and that there still are plenty of costs in making music that generate
plenty of profits.

Finally, we should be happy when marginal costs are 0, it means free for all,
more for all. It is only who wants to go back to the State economy that can
find flawed arguments against it.

------
yason
Piracy only kills music that people are willing to bargain for, i.e. where the
cost matters and not so much the music. That translates to a lot of mediocre
crap generated and promoted by the record industry themselves.

However, the reason people buy works of good musicians and bands is that
because it means something to them to own that particular cd or album. That's
something you can't pirate because the point is to own something from the
artist and through that bond emotionally liken yourself to him/her.

If someone's good, it doesn't suffice to copy his music for free because you
can hear it in a lot of places anyway. And you've probably already copied his
albums from same place or some friend by the time. But you're still craving
for the only remedy which is to buy the album yourself so that you can listen
to _your own copy_ of that album.

People want to own things that they deem important, and nothing's going to
change that. The market for that is smaller than the preplanned pop music
market of today, but it's still a big market and it's also a market that isn't
subject to whims of trends that come and go.

------
api
A comment from the article: "In point of fact, I don’t think you can get
around the fact that we need to renegotiate how our economy works. It’s just
going to become more and more obvious over time."

It's already obvious. We're very rapidly moving toward a world where a tiny,
tiny elite capture massive percentages of all value through controlling a
small number of convenience portals. The value of all other non-commodity
goods tends toward zero, or the cost of whatever commodities they require.

This does resemble the post-Capitalist terminal state Marx described. Marx did
_not_ advocate a revolution, nor did he say "from each according to his
ability" and so forth. That was Lenin and Trotsky. Marx was really talking
about this-- about the fact that capitalism would eventually overproduce
itself into obsolescence. He wasn't anti-capitalist so much as post-
capitalist, sort of a sci-fi thinker talking about post-scarcity.

But I'm not a Marxist per se, and I don't think he had the right formula for
"what do we do now?" I think that remains to be discovered.

------
Pxtl
I think a big problem is clearchannel. While the marginal costs are zero, the
costs of marketing are not. The musical literati with their Pitchfork
magazines and their music blogs and their custom-made Pandora lists and all
that can dive into the deep end of indie music, but the laymen still just use
the knob in the car, and the knob in the car is effectively controlled by the
big record companies and they only offer it to musicians that they totally
control.

This means that, while the indie market is growing and the communication for
indie fans is better, the indie fanbase can't really effectively invade the
mainstream until terrestrial radio dies its long-overdue death.

If you want to go out of your way to select your music streams, there's a lot
for you. But for people who just want background music to some other task, the
process of digging around and separating the wheat from the chaff is time they
just don't want to allocate for 4-minute chunks of music.

------
ianstallings
I kind of wonder if a newer _patronage_ model may spring up, where people can
pay an artist for works and then maybe even contribute themselves, adding a
personal touch. We can already crowd-fund musicians, and donate to those that
release their music for free. Why not go back to patronage?

------
WalterSear
The problem isn't piracy, it's the mediocrity of the stuff put out by
professional music industry.

~~~
quadrangle
Your statement would be valid if the concern was only about quality, but
higher quality wouldn't rescue a completely obsolete economy.

------
simplexion
Hoodie Allen and Hopsin are laughing because they have embraced new ways of
making money with their music. Mostly via social networking. There are more
that are doing this but these 2 are good examples.

~~~
graeme
Are you referring to this stuff?:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodie_Allen#Fandom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodie_Allen#Fandom)

I'd love to hear more detail.

~~~
simplexion
You can also download all his music except 1 album for free.
[http://www.hoodieallen.com/music/](http://www.hoodieallen.com/music/)

------
hrasyid
I'm obviously no economist, so can someone explain if price tends to be equal
to the marginal cost, who is supposed to cover the fixed cost?

~~~
ds9
In the classical era, wealthy patrons contributed the fixed costs - training
of musicians, providing room and board and practice time for sponsored
composers and musicians, etc..

In the 20th century, the "record companies" covered the fixed costs -
recording, distribution etc.. They did so by offering only contracts that were
economically very unfavorable to the artists, and using some of the revenue
from the more popular acts to finance others that they hoped would make money
for them (not for the artists).

Today, unless a musician is foolish enough to sign up for the old-style ripoff
contract, it's DIY. But the fixed costs have declined - the musicians invest
in practicing their craft at their own expense, and pay for instruments as
always, but low-to-mid-quality recording and internet distribution are orders
of magnitude cheaper than the old means of $100/hour studios and hauling boxes
of CDs to stores.

------
moconnor
So the software industry will be next, right? Zero cost distribution. Is this
a factor in the popularity of offering SaaS?

------
snowwrestler
Total bullshit. The most pirated music is the most popular music, not indie
amateur stuff no one has heard of.

The problem is simply that teenagers like to get stuff for free.

~~~
josephagoss
>The problem is simply that teenagers like to get stuff for free.

Thats funny because I sometimes download indie amateur stuff without paying
and I am not a teenager, but I (and my many friends) are apart of the problem.
So is the problem really teenagers getting stuff for free? No, not entirely.

Augments with absolutes rarely work and make you seem like you have an agenda.

~~~
josephagoss
*Arguments

