

Paying the musicians: can we legitimise piracy with distributed patronage?  - blankslate

Synopsis: people steal music. Stealing music is good for the listener but bad for the artist. Can we build a system to help mitigate the bad effects of this theft while benefiting the producers of music?<p>With the rise of Bittorrent and the collapse of the traditional music market, two things have happened. On one hand as an audience, should we choose, we have unprecedented access to music. A well connected and technically savvy listener can acquire almost any track in their choice of bitrate, unencumbered by DRM, within minutes of deciding they want it - without paying a cent. We've found a way to beat the record labels at their own racket, which has the potential to bring amazing benefits to us music lovers.<p>On the other hand, artists have all but lost the revenue stream which they could formerly expect from sales of CDs and other recordings. Some of them manage to make a living through live performances and the sale of merchandise, and may even approve of piracy as a means to reach and attract more people to their concerts, but the fact is that for the most part, an already cruelly difficult career path has been made completely unviable for many.<p>Assuming (perhaps generously) that most people actually want to support the artists whose music they listen to, and are willing to pay enough for it to sustain the industry, perhaps there is a way to turn this state of affairs into a system that nurtures the artists. Only a small fraction of the sales from traditional media ever arrived in the hands of the artist; a new, more efficient system (one in which the traditional role of labels is largely absent) might reward artists as well as the traditional one did, at a substantially lower cost to consumers than the purchase of CDs.<p>What I'm suggesting is a service, probably in the form of a non-profit organisation, which accepts and distributes payments from consumers to producers of music, directly, and without raking their profits. I might choose to pay a certain amount per month to the artists I listen to; an intelligent system could scrobble the tracks I listen to each month, divide my monthly "subscription" according to my usage, and deliver a "donation" directly into the account of each artist. Or, I might choose to pay for each track I download, or simply donate a lump sum to one of my favourite artists.<p>The service itself would be responsible for facilitating these transactions, both by providing technical and financial infrastructure, and by ensuring that information about how to pay the artists - their bank details, in a nutshell - are correct and appropriate. There would be a fraud risk; I would have a strong incentive to provide an account number of my own and claim to be a high profile artist. There are also ethical challenges surrounding independent labels which may actually deserve a cut of the takings. We can also count on the RIAA using every tactic it possibly can to shut down the service.<p>However, these problems seem surmountable; there are a lot of smart people here, and to me it seems that there is a yawning vacuum left by the collapse of last century's labels which a culture of patronage might fill. Perhaps as the way we consume art is transformed by technology, our best hope for fostering the arts is a democratised, distributed spiritual successor to the system that helped to sustain artists through the Renaissance.<p>Discuss.
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namank
So you are donating to the artists? Why do I need an intermediary for that?

Maybe an 'art' tax which gets distributed amongst artists proportional to how
popular (number of people downloading/listening) they are on the net? Kinda
like doctors the Canadian health system.

Or that artists just need to load their songs on an mp3...so I will own every
song by Blink 182 if I go buy the notPod

Or they distribute their music free with their branded souvenirs

Or they collaborate with other artists and start selling mixed tapes
(playlists)...so 10 bucks for 11 songs by 4 artists. Of course the 11 songs
are similar in taste and of genre/appeal that a single person is likely to
want

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blankslate
Ok, since it seems there's remarkably little interest in this idea as it
stands: why not try it out as a Bitcoin startup?

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ScottWhigham
I don't get it. Just buy the artists' CDs. Why add a layer of management/crap
in between?

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blankslate
A couple of reasons. Firstly, because in a traditional record label deal, not
much of the money actually finds its way into the artists' pockets.

"In a typical deal, the band gets thirteen or fourteen percentage points. We’d
have to give a few of our own points (four perhaps) to the producer of our
record (producers typically get a fee and points). Then we’d be down to ten
points. Before calculating the value of those ten points, however, Electra
would subtract a large percentage of the gross sales to account for free
goods, records given away for promotional and other purposes. Thus, the amount
on which our 10 percent was calculated would be reduced by 20 to 25 percent.
So we’d be down even further, perhaps 10 percent on 75 percent of the
wholesale album revenue. If our CD was sold in stores for fifteen dollars, the
band’s share of the revenue might be something between fifty cents and a
dollar per CD. Would we get to keep it? No! ..."

source:
[http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1...](http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irs.princeton.edu%2Fpubs%2Fpdfs%2F499.pdf&ei=Ut29TZK_A4PevQOJ6tTXBQ&usg=AFQjCNGrfCAvBHYyKJakbDCXbKyWSZzjuQ&sig2=FLjftqIpheA4O-MPsoNkLw)

A more optimistic (and modern) document which contrasts options such as the
iTunes store (which gives the band perhaps 60% of the proceeds and the
customer a DRM encumbered copy of the recording):

[http://www.bradsucks.net/archives/2007/05/22/where-your-
musi...](http://www.bradsucks.net/archives/2007/05/22/where-your-music-money-
goes/)

Secondly, because digital distribution of unencumbered music is in many ways a
better experience for the consumer than purchasing physical CDs or DRM
encumbered tracks.

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blankslate
And thirdly, and probably most importantly, because piracy is so convenient
it's usually my first port of call when I'm wondering what an artist sounds
like. I can spend less than a minute typing a search into
$COOL_PRIVATE_TRACKER, and in a few minutes be listening to high quality mp3's
in my choice of media player.

It's only after I actually decide that I like (and will ever listen to) the
music that I would wish to give some money to the artist.

