Artists on Piracy and the Value of Music

In my previous blog post I talked about piracy and my opinion on it. This time I'm looking at other artists opinions on the matter of piracy and music's intrinsic value. What I found is that like a lot of things, lots of people have no problem with piracy and or encourage it, and there are a lot of people who completely disagree with it. Not surprisingly, it seems like majority of music piracy's supporters are younger artists who are just starting out; although bigger artists like Lady Gaga and Jack White also agree with piracy.

Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters had a somewhat vulgar but good comment supporting piracy that does a good job summing up what is probably a lot of artist's view on the topic: "I think it’s a good idea because it’s people trading music. It has nothing to do with industry or finance, it’s just people that want music and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the same as someone turning on the f***ing radio, it’s the same as someone putting a cassette in a cassette deck when the BBC plays a special radio session. I don’t think it’s a crime, it’s been going on for years. It’s the same as people making tapes for each other. The industry is more threatened by it because it’s the worldwide web and it’s a broader scope of trading, but I don’t think it’s such a f***inghorrible thing. The first thing we should do is get all the f***ing millionaires to shut their mouths, stop b****ing about the 25 cents a time they’re losing."

A very different quote from Prince, who completely disagrees with piracy states: "The industry changed. We made money (online) before piracy was real crazy. Nobody’s making money now except phone companies, Apple and Google. I’m supposed to go to the White House to talk about copyright protection. It’s like the gold rush out there. Or a carjacking. There’s no boundaries. I’ve been in meetings and they’ll tell you, ‘Prince, you don’t understand, it’s dog-eat-dog out there’. So I’ll just hold off on recording."

Both of these quotes from artists today are reasonable, Dave points out that it has been happening forever just in different ways than it used to. While Prince believes that no one is making money off of the internet other than the large companies that drive it. In a way he is correct in saying this because these companies do make lots of money, but that doesn't mean he won't make any money if he puts his songs up for download on the internet.

Last I would like to mention electro funk artist Kill Paris's opinion on piracy, while I did not get to fully interview him he did tell me his opinion on how music should be distributed: "I think the biggest thing is to just make good music, give your music away for free for, as long as you can. Or as long as it takes and even after that, keep giving stuff away for free... If the music is good and it's a free download. People are gonna download and listen to it and share it with their friends. I think there is definetely still ways to make money off of music nowadays, but that shouldn't be the way you try to do it right outta the gate. Even the first couple years, shoot I've been making music for 10 years and only started selling it like a couple years ago."

Kill Paris's current soundcloud
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Kill Paris basically believes that it's better to just share music than try and sell it right away. He has a growing fan base of around 75,000 people as of right now and you can listen to his music on soundcloud, where he gives most away for free and sells his music on iTunes and Beatport. 

From what I have heard from several artists on the web, it seems majority cope with piracy in some way, whether it be give most of your music away for free or simply just not make any more music. It seems like more and more artists support piracy and free downloads the longer it occurs even with many of them against piracy.