Ok, I’m gonna try to stay calm and not use any profanity with this subject…It’s gonna be tough, though. Illegal downloading is a sore subject with me. I have a lot of friends that do it who equate it to getting a book from a friend then giving it back…Yea, not the same thing. Fact is, it’s kind of like cloning and paying nothing to the people that worked for endless periods and, in a lot of cases, exhausted all their recourses to create the original object.
We know that nobody likes record labels or record executives or 20k/year desk clerk that greets said execs as they come in the building…Whatever… That’s fine. Think about a few things, though. If Kanye (love him or hate him but he’s a good example) never sold another album. If all of his tracks we leaked before the release date to the point that nobody bought it…Who would that affect? Sure, record labels would suffer. They have, after all, put thousands into the studio time, studio musicians, engineers, producers, mastering costs, etc. Then there is the marketing that the label did for the drop date…thousands upon thousands…gone… Then there is duplication and distribution of physical copies…No big deal, right? Labels have spent years profiting from artists and, in many cases, ripping them off…They have the money to lose…True… I offer no contest…
Now, let’s venture down a different trail…
The record company starts losing money. Hand over fist. First off, they have to let people go…Hmm, layoffs? Serves them bastards right! Really? Granted, a lot of them make bank but a lot of them don’t. Now, the low man (or woman) on the totem pole gets cut. Out of work, no income…family and kids suffer…Maybe they get something pretty quick, though (we can be optimistic with the current economic conditions, can’t we?).
Alright, next thing the labels cut is the budgets for productions. They can’t afford to pay a room full of dedicated and highly trained musicians to sit in around and make the artist’s ideas come to fruition. So, they are out. Now you have a one, two, three, thirty, or however many people that are losing a day’s pay. Only, the same thing will happen tomorrow, too, so two days’ pay…until tomorrow’s tomorrow…Their jobs have been taken by one cat with an ass load of samples on a keyboard. You can imagine how this trickles down. They can’t afford healthcare or a decent education (in the case of bad local public systems) for their kids. Sooner or later, they may default on bills or lose the low budget lifestyle of being a professional musician all together. If you don’t know, most professional musicians are in the orchestra pits and studios and restaurants and we don’t make a lot of money!
What about the songwriters who write the tunes? The money that comes from the royalties which comes from the performance, broadcast and SALES of the piece allows us to write more music. How about the arrangers, proofers and engravers that make the artists’ ideas communicable to the studio musicians? Well, a whole lot less of their services are needed, too, or maybe not at all.
Well, sucks for them, huh? Yep. Sure does. It also sucks for the studio engineers. Now these cats have to build a reputation of quality and ingenuity on the artist’s shoestring budget. They can’t hire collaborators or the like to help them out…Oh yea, the cats working their way up at the studio (setting up mics, running cables, testing connections, making session notes, etc) don’t have a job, either. You see, the studio can’t afford to pay them. Now, most of the bottom-dwellers in the studios are interns. However, if a studio sucks, nobody wants to intern there which means no new talent and even less credibility for the studio. Eventually, the interns are out an opportunity or job or they have to relocate to farther away to get a reputable internship.
Ok, let’s assume that trend continues down the line. The studio tanks. Not only are the owners out of a job and an income, If they rented the building, the owner has to now find new tenants (easier said than done in the current economy where even the strong, well prepared proprietors have trouble breaking even). Let’s say the studio owned the building…well, it can’t draw business when it’s empty. So, the owner tries to lease it. That works for a little while until about the third renters go out of business. Soon, interest in the building reaches null and the owner can no longer afford to pay for it. Foreclosure ensues and initiates bankruptcy. The owner and the wife/husband and kids are directly and profoundly affected.
Alllllllll righty, then…That’s a huge economical effect…Damn, we haven’t even gotten to the marketing firms, yet. There are countless more considerations before we get down to the “mom-and-pop” stores that would love to sell the disc. There are still thousands of franchised stores around the U.S. (not to mention around the globe) that has suffered, as well, and I didn’t even mention the (legal) digital realm.
Oh, yea, what has Kanye been up to? Well, the label dropped him (not necessarily a bad thing) so he has had to front all the money for his next album and tour. It’s not that bad because he has a little bread from his mega albums so, he can afford it (He has it much better than a new artist that the label won’t work with due to the extensive loss of revenue from giant artists like West. Now, they have to work two jobs and play crappy gigs to pay for the studio time or equipment thus not being able to fully focus on the music. Consequently, they music suffers due to lack of time and abundance of distractions). The album, though, takes more time and lends no incentive with the looming fact of all the tracks being digitally stolen as soon as they are finished. With no help from industry leaders, finding the right cats to do the right jobs can be a hassle. Say that process cuts into the touring times. That’s that much time that people (stage hands, sound crews, bus drivers, rig drivers, etc) are out of work. Not to mention, that the venue sizes have probably diminished due to lack of industry backing. Therefore, even if the tour takes off and does well, there will be less people employed by the entertainer.
We didn’t even break the surface tension of the monetary effects of this issue. I could write for days on end and not account for every position in every part of the industry. The music business is unimaginably complex with more working parts than one can comprehend. Record labels make up only a small portion of the industry and, while they can be quite evil, they can help artists be artists.
Now let’s imagine I go to a popular chain restaurant and place a take out order. I get a nice steak with a baked potato. I take it home and clone it. Now, I have a copy of the meal I bought and it tastes exactly the same. Pretty badass! Now lets say that I give that cloned meal to ten people (the average number a digital music file is copied). My friends really dig the food. They dig it so much that they make ten copies of it and distribute it to whoever wants it. That is an awesome steak, too. It took the chef twenty three tries to get that recipe right on the money. After that, he had to bring it to the head cats at the restaurant in order to get it approved to go on the menu. Now, that recipe is getting transmitted all over the globe by people who don’t even recognize that the steak is intellectual property of the chef. Plus, the establishment that pays said chef a salary and maybe even give him a little bonus for making a good selling menu item (in hopes he would repeat the success) is starting to lose money. Meanwhile, everybody that hears about this steak just clones it instead of going to the restaurant and ordering it. Well, that raise they gave the chef is now too much for the business and they are forced to make cuts. The chef may get lucky and survive the cuts but he may not. Either way, somebody is going home. Now let’s imagine that the entire menu is compromised in the same fashion. The downfall would be exponentially faster.
All of the aforementioned victims have one thing in common. They do what they love; they make music happen (except for the chef, of course, who makes food happen). By stealing music, you steal their ability to do that. The musicians, engineers, and everyone else, love the music. That’s why we do it. Of course you have some people that take advantage of it; people who do it FOR the money. That’s wrong. The other ninety nine percent do it for the music and how dare some cheap, selfish bastard take that ability away from us. You’re not hurting the labels and the industry tycoons near as much as you are the people who have devoted their life to music and forfeited a chance at a normal existence for the opportunity to live music.
