Sure there are piracy laws to crack down on the illegal downloads
of music, but does that do anything? Do musicians actually care if their music is
being paid for or downloaded for free? If not, then how do they make their
living? Musicians are people and need money to live and survive in society. Yet
surprisingly a good amount of musicians don't care if fans pay for their music
or just download it for free. Lady Gaga started off giving her music away for
free to try to build a fan base. Today that and the internet seems like the
easiest way for aspiring musicians to make a name for themselves. A musician
trying to make a name for themselves could easily up-load a video on YouTube of
them preforming a song or make a Facebook page for themselves or their band.
According to Shakira, music is a gift and shouldn't have a price.
So if music shouldn't have a
price and artists need to give away free music to promote themselves, how do
they make music. Lady Gaga in an interview says her largest income is from
concerts and live performances. It is all about connecting with the fans and
not just having them buy your CDs. Part of that connecting with the fans might
be free downloads of music. Radiohead in 2007 had their fans pick their own
price for their album "In Rainbows" on their website. Majority of the
albums ended up being downloaded for free. So surprisingly, many artists don't
have a problem with the free downloads of music. Now a days many artists resort
to obtaining money from other means other than CD sales and digital downloads.
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Many musicians including Robbie
Williams, Billy Bragg, Blur's David Rowntree, and Radiohead's Ed O'Brien are
against the general public being prosecuted for illegally downloading music. The
musicians are trying to appeal to their audience, not criminalize them. Bragg
told the Independent newspaper on this issue of artists' rights and illegal
downloading that, "Artists
should own their own rights and they should decide when their music should be
used for free, or when they should have payment." A musician should have
the right to say under what circumstances and what price should their music be
paid for. The Featured Artists Coalition, which is made up of Britain’s largest
rock and pop artists, is more so against companies using their copyrighted
music in commercials than the public domain downloading free music. As said
earlier, many artists don’t believe that their fans should be punished for
wanting to listen to their music.
Sources
http://www.pcworld.com/article/161240/radiohead_pink_floyd_downloading_music_not_crime.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/its-not-a-crime-to-download-say-musicians-1643217.html
http://bhsportlight.com/2011/12/03/artists-view-on-illegal-downloading/
http://www.popeater.com/2009/10/21/shakira-illegal-downloading/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100524/0032549541.shtml
2 comments:
I found it very interesting that Radiohead let fans choose their own price for their album "In Rainbows." I wonder how they determined a price for it when they sold the album at concerts or in stores?
Your blog post was really insightful and expanded on some ideas I hadn't really thought about before! I like how you examined musicians' views of music sharing! It was interesting to see which artists agreed with the idea of sharing music for free/online (although they are not necessarily the same). I agree that assigning a value should be something the musicians decide. Do you think that if you were in a position where you had made a song and wanted it to be public, you would assign your own dollar value to it?
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