posted 2007/10/15 at 14:51
The recent RIAA court case and subsequent judgment have me thinking about the whole music distribution debate more than usual. I have never used any of the file-sharing services myself, although my primary reasons for doing so are for covering my butt against things like these lawsuits from happening, and because I've never been a big fan of lossy compression formats like MP3 in the first place. That being said, I've generally been supportive of the idea of sharing music because I have a very strong dislike of the music industry in general. In any other industry, the fact that nine out of every ten albums the music industry releases lose money, along with deep consumer resentment over having to pay upwards of fifteen bucks for a CD with only one good song on it, would force the industry to make changes in the way they do business. However, since the RIAA has been so dominant and monopolistic historically, instead of changing with the times and making their industry friendlier to both recording artists and consumers alike, they just sued the hell out of everyone, and now it looks like the courts are going to help them along those lines. (Even when they have allegedly tried to adopt to the Internet, they've saddles us with things like draconian DRM and not offering songs in non-lossy file formats.) Personally, I still view music-swapping as a legitimate form of non-violent civil disobedience, and although I won't risk my own neck and continue to buy CDs of the music I want, I'm supportive of those who song-swap.
Perhaps another reason this has been on my mind so much lately is because I've kind of been going back to my own music here lately, in part because I recently reestablished contact with an old-friend and near-bandmate from my days at Antioch. Back then you didn't hear that much about MP3s, and even when you did hear about them they still took an achingly long time to download over dial-up connections. Although I've moved more and more towards writing over the past six years, I've never really given up on music, but figuring out if I could find a comfortable place as a professional musician is difficult. I certainly don't want to become a part of the RIAA given how strongly I disagree with the things they do, but at the same time they're still largely the only game in town. Yes, there are certainly some publicized cases of musicians striking it big outside of the RIAA's framework, but those are few and far between, and it was a lot easier to think about doing that when I was a student; now that I'm in the job market and paying off my student loans, it's difficult to consider the possibility of dropping everything and seeing if I could make a living off of music.
Even at that, the ability for people to make it outside of the RIAA is becoming worse, most notably through Congress continuing to pass Internet radio laws that squeeze out the smaller Internet stations that provide the best venue for independent artists, such as the ones at my beloved somafm.com. The state of America's music industry is hardly the most pressing issue we face in this day and age, but I still think it's a representative microcosm of the potential for big business, in collusion with certain politicians, to poison an industry so that the only people who actually reap significant benefits from it are the executives. I come from a family where music has always played a deep role in all of our lives, and if you've read my work for any amount of time then you know how important music has been to me, and it's hard not to be saddened by the fact that the corporate fatcats of the music industry have just made it all the harder both for musicians to get their music out there, and for consumers to be able to find good music at a reasonable price.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon