Effects of downloading

I haven't followed the piracy thread in a while, so perhaps this post belongs in that thread, but I wasn't sure.

The link is to a post on the shoegaze forum I visit. It's a loooong post, but I think it gives some perspective to the impact of lost sales due to illegal downloads. Although the indie music biz is a little different than game development, I'd be willing to bet the numbers (development, sales, downloads, etc) would all scale pretty well. It puts a face and some real numbers to the issue.

For the 2 of you here that might recognize/care ( ), "ej" is the lead guitar and singer for Highspire. From what I know of the history of the band, I'm betting this post is nearly autobiographical, even though he doesn't present it as such.

You figure that if you sold all your discs ONLY to the people who downloaded your album via one of these 5 DL sites there’d still be 1000+ people buy your album.

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This is the core flaw of this perspective.

"If everyone who downloaded this bought it instead I would have X amount of cash".

We do live in the internet age and the way music is distributed today makes the "go the store, buy an album" obsolete. Now, I do not buy music simply because I rarely listen to music, and when I do I listen to stuff like c64 covers.

I can make a comparision with games; before the direct2drive services started to come along, I sometimes downloaded games just to have it 2-3 weeks before I could finally buy the DVD case, waiting for the Swedish version to become localized when I prefer English anyway. I had already finished Jade Empire a couple of weeks before I finally got the DVD in my hands... With my 24mbit connection I could almost have another game by the time I finish this post, without having to wait until Monday, go to the store asking for it and then wait for them to take it home...

So what he is doing is to compare a click or two with going down to the store and going through the process of actually buying it. If you think they are comparable you just do not know how lazy people are in this age. Most of those downloads were probably by people that didn't even know who the musicians were and deleted the song right after listening to the half of it.

Is this "right" then? Well, it's as right as an earthquake or a landslide. You cannot change nature, you can just try to build around it. It might sound silly, but many musicstores have gone around their problems selling CD's by selling physical objects, like T-shirts. And as any performer, playing live is the best way for a musician to get paid today, just like it was before technology in the 1900 made it possible to sell music as a product.

So, digital selling only ? Is this your point ?

Then, you'd lose a customer in me. I never purchase things I can't have in physical form.

But maybe I'm a living fossil, yet ...

Edit : Besides, JemyM, your point of view might have a similar "core flaw".

Believing that digital selling might increase the sales *might* be equally wrong.

It hasn't be proven otherwise, yet.


But a major point I see in all of these discussions, in all the arguments that say that "copying isn'Ät THAT bad" is the de-respect for the actual artistic work.

You all treat REAL artistic work like ... a sixpack of beer, for example, or a pile of tomatos.

You don't treat artistidc work like how it should be treated: Like relatively unique aand artistic work.

You all argue about artistic work as if this was a good like everything else that can be mass-produced, mass-sold and mass-copied.

The aspect of Uniqueness is totally gone while discussion merely the "economical value" of a work that can just be sold like anything else.

This is a nod towards the exploitment of the music industry towards the actual artists: The actual artists get only very, very few cents in all of this process, too often not enough at all to do it for a living.

The music industry has poit the scheme of exploiting so much into the heads of the customers that they (the customers) aren't willing to give the actual artists the money that they works are worth.

The music indistry has very effectively eroded the artistic and humanity aspect of artistical work - among others by paying the artists so few money that all of the customers regard it as totally normal to pay artists nothing more than a few cents for a for example highly complex song that was carefully composed maybe during several weeks and for which the actual producing and sound processing took several hundred dollars.

In short: the music industry has effectively eroded the artistical aspect so much that customers find itnormal to pay so few that the actual costs of the artists are never matched.

This has something to do with Justice.

And we all have become henchmen of the music industry by adapting THEIR points ofview which are entirely based on EXPLOITATION.

He mentions iTunes in his story (a fair ways into the "novel", admittedly). That means digital distribution is already available so the "lazy bastard won't leave his house to buy some tunes" excuse doesn't really hold water.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

So, digital selling only ? Is this your point ?
Then, you'd lose a customer in me. I never purchase things I can't have in physical form. But maybe I'm a living fossil, yet ...

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These days I realized that I do not want a physical case for everything I consume. It takes too much space, and transporting it over seas like that is a strain on the environment.

I understand your perspective but your last statement rings true. We lived up in an era where that was norm. I remember the time when games were really *physical* and you got loads of cool stuff in the box without buying a collectors edition.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Edit : Besides, JemyM, your point of view might have a similar "core flaw". Believing that digital selling might increase the sales *might* be equally wrong. It hasn't be proven otherwise, yet.

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It was a suggestion. We live in a different era now and chances are that the entertainment industry will fade away because new technology made it impossible to earn enough money. I realize that business sometimes stands and falls with technology, just like the IT-bubble that bursted y2k. No, artistry wont go away, but there might no longer be any big money in it, unless people find new and innovative ways to sell the art.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

In short: the music industry has effectively eroded the artistical aspect so much that customers find itnormal to pay so few that the actual costs of the artists are never matched.
This has something to do with Justice.
And we all have become henchmen of the music industry by adapting THEIR points ofview which are entirely based on EXPLOITATION.

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If art is money or not is a debate that been around since the 19nth century when artists in general became left-wing. It's still considered unethical to become an artist for money in many areas around Europe. It's something about art being human and what human cannot be sold. In a capitalist country everything is sold, including a talk with a nice girl on the phone late at night when you are alone and lonely.

Still, I think it's a negative perspective that an artist or musician shouldn't get payed. But the way music was distributed before have changed. Possibly permanently.

dteowner said:

He mentions iTunes in his story (a fair ways into the "novel", admittedly). That means digital distribution is already available so the "lazy bastard won't leave his house to buy some tunes" excuse doesn't really hold water.

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Personally I have never heard of iTunes so I do not know what it is. Which kinda makes my following point; you cannot expect everyone to use a service as soon as it's offered to the public. This is pretty much like when Internet and mobilephones came along... There's were many attempts of making money out of the new landscape. Most failed and some made billions. We are dealing with a whole new market here in which innovative ideas and good publishing might suceed and many will die in the process. Give it a generation or two.

Note that I do not really apply morals here, but I rather bluntly accept how it will go down. Human behavior is a force majura. Very little can change their behavior.

I don't have any deep knowledge of marketting but I think that what we see is a straight fight between two bussiness models. In first (originated before internet) you try to sell your high priced product (music CD, game or film) to a relatively smaller customer base (those prepared to pay your price); in second you sell your product for less but to the larger customer base.
IMO while music industry is embracing the seond model to an ever increasing degree, the film and gaming still try desperatelly to cling to obsolete

Piracy is here to stay (some people will never buy a product they can download for free no matter what) but I think that a lot more of people would be prepared to fork out the money if the prices were more realistic.
Let me give you just one example: Beowulf on DVD cost $19.95 at Amazon. This is a film which I don't expect to want to watch more than once. Why would I want to fork out 20 bucks on a one view film? Now, if the price was 5 bucks I would certainly think about purchase much more seriously.

JemyM said:

Personally I have never heard of iTunes so I do not know what it is.

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Wow ... you have never heard of the #1 music retailer in the world? Amazing.

My thoughts on downloading are similar to something I read in a fairly recent article that compared to sneaking into a movie theater. In that model there is no concrete 'theft', yet some are experiencing without paying what others have paid for, and there are likely some in the non-paying crowd who would have paid if the free method wasn't available, and the lower sales caused by 'sneak-ins' means that the makers will possibly be unable to make more.

The thing about that model is that it shows something that causes no direct 'harm' but is pretty generally recognized as wrong.

I see that like piracy - we can debate all day about 'harm', but is there any real debate about the fact that it is 'wrong'?

txa1265 said:

Wow ... you have never heard of the #1 music retailer in the world? Amazing.

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http://remix.kwed.org is my #1 music "retailer". I simply do not listen to "regular" music so I know as much about the "#1 music retailer" as I know about the "#1 snowboard retailer" or the "#1 speederboat retailer".

The "problem" is twofold:

(1) People cheat, if they know they can get away with it. They're even very good at rationalizing it to themselves so they can live without the ensuing cognitive dissonance.

(2) Trying to make it impossible to copy digital data is like trying to make water not be wet.

That means that "copyright enforcers" are fighting a losing battle. Anything they do will annoy their legitimate customers while doing little to deter piracy. And I think they're finally starting to realize it. There are viable business models out there that are not based on trying to stop people from copying stuff, and some of them are starting to make real money.

I'm fairly certain that five, ten years from now, the current obsession with intrusive copy-protection schemes, whether we're talking music, movies, or games, will be a thing of the past. We'll be subscribing to stuff like that, or buying it piecemeal with micropayments, or it'll be treated as advertising for something else (for example, recorded music is great advertising for concerts), or what not.

But, of course, that doesn't make it right to pirate stuff now. It's still cheating, and cheating is wrong -- even if most of us do it.

JemyM said:

http://remix.kwed.org is my #1 music "retailer". I simply do not listen to "regular" music so I know as much about the "#1 music retailer" as I know about the "#1 snowboard retailer" or the "#1 speederboat retailer".

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I get that, but how can you pretend to be in a position to engage in this discussion without knowing the single company almost entirely responsible for starting 'legit' alternatives to piracy?

txa1265 said:

I get that, but how can you pretend to be in a position to engage in this discussion without knowing the single company almost entirely responsible for starting 'legit' alternatives to piracy?

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Like I said, I compared it with games.

txa1265 said:

I get that, but how can you pretend to be in a position to engage in this discussion without knowing the single company almost entirely responsible for starting 'legit' alternatives to piracy?

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@txa, this may come as a bit of a shock, but on the Internet it does occasionally happen that someone states an opinion without being deeply versed in the subject under discussion.

(On occasion they may even have a point, or at least a different point of view. For example, "downloading" is much more mainstream in Sweden than in the rest of the world; that gives a different perspective on it.)

I see what you are both saying, but I also expect that people I know are capable of hitting Google when they don't know something will do so. Not knowing iTunes and talking about sales and downloads in the post-iTunes world is like talking about PC game sales without having a clue about Steam or WoW. Sure, you might have a point, but ...

And the perspective of different regions is crucial in this discussion, especially in Asia where the hardware/software price ratio is often much different than in the western world.

txa1265 said:

I see what you are both saying, but I also expect that people I know are capable of hitting Google when they don't know something will do so. Not knowing iTunes and talking about sales and downloads in the post-iTunes world is like talking about PC game sales without having a clue about Steam or WoW. Sure, you might have a point, but ...

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If it helps, I knew iTunes was some kind of music online service. I never used Steam or WoW either but I know games that use it.

I guess what I'm saying is that given that Apple's iTunes *digital downloads* are a bigger sales market than Walmart, Amazon, or anyone else, regardless of digital or CD, that not directly addressing them in *any* discussion on downloading music is like discussing the role of PC's in our lives and ignoring the internet!