 |
by Shannon West
Last month I reconnected with a college friend I hadn't seen for years.
We were part of a pack of music junkies who devoured and shared every
song could find and fall in love with. We were mostly pretty active - some
were musicians, some were writers, some had shows on the campus station,
others worked at record stores or at clubs that had live bands. We hung
out in each others apartments and dorm rooms listening to albums or playing
music and spent several nights a week checking out live bands. That's
how word got out about music back then. Progressive rock stations hadn't
caught on in smaller cities like Tallahassee yet and the campus station
played mostly news and classical, with a smattering of rock and jazz
if you were awake at 3am. Word of mouth ruled. I worked at the record
store and we could tell which albums had been making their rounds at
the parties over the weekend because we would be out of them by Tuesday,
even if nobody had heard of them the Friday before. Our little group
covered several dorms and an apartment complex. We would sit in the hall
with the doors open and blast music. People we didn't know would just
plop down and listen too.
Of course the first subject to come up was "what have you been listening to for the last 30 years?" Well... I'd love to invite him and his wife, also a music junkie, over and we could hang out and share cool songs but there is this little issue of 1,000 miles or so. It's hard to just drop by on a Saturday night. Oh, there's the Internet. We can do it that way. In 30 second increments. And you don't get to pick the 30 seconds. That works real well. Check out this killer guitar solo? Sorry, all you can get is the chorus. You've got to hear this incredible lyric! Oh, here's the instrumental bridge. I could do an iMix and send them and they could spend a delightful evening clicking a new sample every 30 seconds or do an iLike on FaceBook and clutter up my page and everyone else's with links to short clips of songs. There's got to be a better way!
Actually there are several better ways. Podcasts and streams originating on social networking pages are the new living room. Your friends can come in and hang out and you can turn them on to the songs you love. Problem is that unless you have a big chunk of cash to hand over for music licensing this is about as legal as the other stuff we did back when we were hanging out in dorm rooms on a weekend. Sorry. I just don't get it. 99% of the music that is available right now does not get played on the radio. Most of it doesn't get any hype at all. How are people supposed to hear it?
How am I ripping off a musician if I expose their music to people who might not hear it otherwise? I'm not charging anyone to listen and I'm not selling advertising. Obviously, if I was making any type of profit by using this music the artists would be entitled to a percentage of my revenue. I'm not making a cent, though. I'm not charging anyone to play it or hear it though. I'm doing it so people can hear music they would not hear otherwise and hoping they will discover new music and new artists in the process and purchase more of their music.
There seems to be this Napster hangover fear that people will steal the music but streaming music and illegal P2P file sharing are two totally different worlds. You can't download streaming music. If you have sound recording software you could go through a rather complicated process of recording and converting that would give you an inferior, tinny sounding copy but if someone loves a song enough to go to that much grief, when they hear how mediocre the sound quality is they will go ahead and spend the buck to own the track and probably one or two more while they are there. Even if a podcast is downloadable it would be inconvenient for someone to keep a whole podcast rather than buy several songs they heard on it. Plus, if the podcast is narrated they will want the song without me yapping over the start of it which will drive them to purchase.
The percentage of adults who illegally download files is extremely small, much to small to be causing a decline in revenue for musicians. Marketing studies have shown that adults, especially those over 35, actually want to buy whole CDs. They just have no way to discover new music and no way to find it when they do. The few retailers who still sell CDs are cutting back to a smaller list of titles, mostly youth driven pop and major label hype releases that do not represent the best of what's out there. Radio is out of the picture with adult oriented stations in all formats playing a small collection of overly familiar older music. In our format if new music gets played at all it is usually the cover song or the slowest and least interesting track on the CD, which makes people think the rest of the CD isn't very good either, when it often is fabulous except for the one or two tracks designed for the radio format.
Those of us who get promotional copies of new releases and know how to discover music online know what is out there. Wouldn't it be great if we could share the songs we found with you so you could discover them too. If I put up a player and 10 people heard a song on it, bought it, put it on their players and 10 more people heard it and bought it and more songs from the same artist, put them on their players or podcasts and 10 more people heard them - well, it's a geometric progression. That word of mouth buzz would generate more sales than the type of rotation most songs on the corporate smooth jazz chart get.
My feeling is that royalty charges should be based on a percentage of the money being made by the person or company who originates the stream. A corporate webcaster who sells advertising or charges a fee to access the stream should have to pay a percentage of what they make. An individual who wants use an MP3 player on their networking page to turn people on to the music they have discovered should too, but that cost is going to be zero because they aren't making any money. These people do it out of love for the music. They should be encouraged, not shut down.
I would love to invite you to my virtual living room listening party because there are awesome songs lying deep in these CDs and stunning artists that are not getting major label hype. Hopefully someday I'll be able to do that.
For another strong take on this issue read music industry blogger Bob Lefsetz's “Music's Power.”
Of course the first subject to come up was "what have you been listening to for the last 30 years?" Well... I'd love to invite him and his wife, also a music junkie, over and we could hang out and share cool songs but there is this little issue of 1,000 miles or so. It's hard to just drop by on a Saturday night. Oh, there's the Internet. We can do it that way. In 30 second increments. And you don't get to pick the 30 seconds. That works real well. Check out this killer guitar solo? Sorry, all you can get is the chorus. You've got to hear this incredible lyric! Oh, here's the instrumental bridge. I could do an iMix and send them and they could spend a delightful evening clicking a new sample every 30 seconds or do an iLike on FaceBook and clutter up my page and everyone else's with links to short clips of songs. There's got to be a better way!
Actually there are several better ways. Podcasts and streams originating on social networking pages are the new living room. Your friends can come in and hang out and you can turn them on to the songs you love. Problem is that unless you have a big chunk of cash to hand over for music licensing this is about as legal as the other stuff we did back when we were hanging out in dorm rooms on a weekend. Sorry. I just don't get it. 99% of the music that is available right now does not get played on the radio. Most of it doesn't get any hype at all. How are people supposed to hear it?
How am I ripping off a musician if I expose their music to people who might not hear it otherwise? I'm not charging anyone to listen and I'm not selling advertising. Obviously, if I was making any type of profit by using this music the artists would be entitled to a percentage of my revenue. I'm not making a cent, though. I'm not charging anyone to play it or hear it though. I'm doing it so people can hear music they would not hear otherwise and hoping they will discover new music and new artists in the process and purchase more of their music.
There seems to be this Napster hangover fear that people will steal the music but streaming music and illegal P2P file sharing are two totally different worlds. You can't download streaming music. If you have sound recording software you could go through a rather complicated process of recording and converting that would give you an inferior, tinny sounding copy but if someone loves a song enough to go to that much grief, when they hear how mediocre the sound quality is they will go ahead and spend the buck to own the track and probably one or two more while they are there. Even if a podcast is downloadable it would be inconvenient for someone to keep a whole podcast rather than buy several songs they heard on it. Plus, if the podcast is narrated they will want the song without me yapping over the start of it which will drive them to purchase.
The percentage of adults who illegally download files is extremely small, much to small to be causing a decline in revenue for musicians. Marketing studies have shown that adults, especially those over 35, actually want to buy whole CDs. They just have no way to discover new music and no way to find it when they do. The few retailers who still sell CDs are cutting back to a smaller list of titles, mostly youth driven pop and major label hype releases that do not represent the best of what's out there. Radio is out of the picture with adult oriented stations in all formats playing a small collection of overly familiar older music. In our format if new music gets played at all it is usually the cover song or the slowest and least interesting track on the CD, which makes people think the rest of the CD isn't very good either, when it often is fabulous except for the one or two tracks designed for the radio format.
Those of us who get promotional copies of new releases and know how to discover music online know what is out there. Wouldn't it be great if we could share the songs we found with you so you could discover them too. If I put up a player and 10 people heard a song on it, bought it, put it on their players and 10 more people heard it and bought it and more songs from the same artist, put them on their players or podcasts and 10 more people heard them - well, it's a geometric progression. That word of mouth buzz would generate more sales than the type of rotation most songs on the corporate smooth jazz chart get.
My feeling is that royalty charges should be based on a percentage of the money being made by the person or company who originates the stream. A corporate webcaster who sells advertising or charges a fee to access the stream should have to pay a percentage of what they make. An individual who wants use an MP3 player on their networking page to turn people on to the music they have discovered should too, but that cost is going to be zero because they aren't making any money. These people do it out of love for the music. They should be encouraged, not shut down.
I would love to invite you to my virtual living room listening party because there are awesome songs lying deep in these CDs and stunning artists that are not getting major label hype. Hopefully someday I'll be able to do that.
For another strong take on this issue read music industry blogger Bob Lefsetz's “Music's Power.”
