Of course, I don't think ANYone is gonna say that file sharing sucks, unless they work for a major.

I certainly wouldn't have all these Mission of Burma, Shellac, Pixies, Sleater-Kinney, and Replacements concerts otherwise. I fucking love it and take total advantage of the availability of rare material on the web. I personally do still think it's bullshit to download entire albums, and I do this very rarely, opting to purchase the vinyl format later on.

I agree that file sharing can be a great way to find new artists and/or material that has not nor may never be released, but there is one item that no one has yet mentioned - and that is that most file formats (MP3, etc) have terrible audio quality. I cannot stand to listen to an MP3 (or almost any compressed format) audio for any extended length of time. It continues to amaze me that so many people find MP3 an even marginally acceptable medium for music. Granted the stuff I'm usually going after is acoustic instrumentation - but even loud pop music sounds atrocious when decimated by the codecs used to compress these files. Of course $30 computer speakers aren't going to reveal these artifacts or make them as obvious as a qaulity hi-fi system will. I'm curious as to how even the most avid file sharing proponents feel about how these audio compression schemes affect sound quality (or complete lack thereof).

Ultimately if there's something I really like I'm going to go out and get it on CD. If it's something I adore (and old enough) I'll look for a NM vinyl pressing.

From the standpoint of the two sided arguement that the 'artist' is being deprived of earnings/being expoited anyway; my feeling is that most of this arguement derives from the RIAA/media conglomerate based 'artists', which have willingly subjected themselves to the potential to be horribly exploited in hopes that they will be 'stars'. It is a relatively easy path to be offered worldwide distribution, promotion, an advance, etc... Though you have, as the 'artist', relequished most control over your destiny. I have little sympathy for those obviously seeking the easy path, when it has been demonstated by others (Zappa, Biafra) that it is possible to record, distribute, and promote yourself and be sucessful at it. However it takes more business savvy and hard work than the average four-piece has available, but that is exactly why internet technology (if not file sharing specifically) can benifit an independant in terms of exposure, promotion, and sales channels.

Most major market music is a commodity. It ties itself into fashion, entertainment media, product placement. If it didn't there would be a limited market for it. Most people consume music as a lifestyle accoutroment - a soundtrack for their life - not as an artform to increase self-awarness, cultural or historical insight, or exposure to innovative melodic, harmonic, atonal or rhythmic forms and timbres. It is a personal irritant to continuously hear a group of four whiney, self-important middle-class white kids referred to as 'artists'; their hoplessly mediocre musicianship and cliche and simplistic tonal and rhythmic forms referred to as 'art'. That somehow by plugging thier instruments in to the same old effects boxes and altering their timbre slightly they've created an 'innovative sound' - when in reality it's all the same old crap. This would all seem to lead to the conclusion that no matter what advancement new technologies may hope to offer, it cannot remedy cultural stagnation.

well said... geiginni

i'll just respond to the question you raised, as bet i know how.

geiginni wrote:I'm curious as to how even the most avid file sharing proponents feel about how these audio compression schemes affect sound quality (or complete lack thereof).

a couple of things on this.

I think (hope) that compression is a temporary mesure. in the last couple of years w've gone from bandwidth not even supporting audio, to a good chunk of the populace having access to high enough speed modems to stream/download 192kbps mp3s. and hard drives are measured in the hundreds of gigs now, where 5 years ago, 15 gigs was a HUGE drive.

i don't think its unrealistic to expect broadband streaming fast enough to support uncompressed 24/96 audio.

As far as the quality, 90 percent of my listening is in transit (on my bike, in cabs, on the train, walking around etc...). I have a 10 gig iPod. Its not perfect, no... but having access to a couple thousand songs on a walkman the size of a cigarette box (and being able to transfer them via firewire at about 15 seconds per album) is a pretty awesome convenience.

A lot of colletor types are complaining about the potential death of album art and packaging as art (the same way they complained about CD jewel cases scrunching up beautiful old gatefolds), but overall, having physical media is kind of a liability, i think. No scratches, CD wallet thefts, warping, scratches, etc to deal with...

i'm not unsympathetic to the aesthetics of packaging and vinyl, but for me at least the convenience and flexibility of filesharing tip the scale.

As far as quality, I'd never pretend that any compression is completely transparent, but when i rip and encoe with semi-pro quality stuff (sound forge/CD architect, as opposed to the consumer oriented stuff) at 192 kbps, it sound pretty decent to me... i've A/B/Ced some good mp3s against the source disc and the source .wav file on my (completely middle brow) event monitors and honestly have had a tough time hearing much difference on most styles music. And certainly i can't tell the difference 95 percent of the time at iPod volumes.

Mp3 isn't so much the answer, as its a transitional technology, till bandwidth is fast enough and storage is cheap and large enough that its not really necessary.

The other nice promise of dealing in files as opposed to media, is that it has the potential to finally end the upgrade upgrade upgrade (or atleast future proof things a little bit) in that theres no good reason why an iPod or a solid state storage based home stereo built 10 years from now wouldn't be able to support a .wav or mp3 file from right now, as opposed to the other high-end consumer audio fetishes like CD24s and SACDs and DVDaudio technology, where, if (when) they decide to significantly change the specs of the disc themselves, they may render previous generations obsolute. (remember laser discs and minidiscs? yeah exactly).

geiginni wrote:This would all seem to lead to the conclusion that no matter what advancement new technologies may hope to offer, it cannot remedy cultural stagnation.

true enough. and again, nicely put.

to me, the power that the internet DOES present is the potential to change the relationship between artists and consumers of art from "broadcast" to dialogue. Its admittedly a long view, and admittedly, borderline utipian, but even things as simple as message boards are changing the nature of music fandom...

i mean, for one simple and obvious example, in this very thread i'm arguing with (ok, being gently mocked by) steve albini. Most of the indie bands i know of have boards or forums where they interact with fans, and on boards like the pitchfork and stylus message boards etc... theres constantly threads like "should i go see Ted Leo tonight?" and someone in another town who saw him last night gives the lowdown. Music fans can talk amongst themselves, without a centralized entity diseminating tastes or forwarding an agenda (unlike traditional music media which- even if independant- always has some sort of singular voice).

Yeah i know, thats what record stores are for: hanging out and shooting the shit, but as steve mentioned earlier, some of us have jobs and are too busy to spend all day long hanging out at Reckless. But we can check message boards while burning a CD for work, or while on hold with a client, or whatever...

"Cultural stagnation" is real, but i don't think its happening because people aren't interesting in new ideas, i think it happens beacause every year, the corporate taste makers get better and better at studying and predicting and immitating cultural movements and insinuating themselves into our lives. there are people out there making art, no more or fewer than there were 20 years ago, but with Clear Channel and Deregularion and megalithic entertainment giants swooping down from more and more angles every year, its just harder to FIND the options if you look to any traditional media for cultural insight.

When the contry tightens its fiscal belt in tight times, the first artists who lose corporate support are the ones who aren't "sure things" (read: prepackaged, focus grouped approximations of what the kids in new york listened to/wore/watched last season).

The internet, online communities, sharing etc mean that kids who aren't in NYC or Boston or Chicago no longer have to defer to mojo or the source or fucking AP (or whatevah) to interpret and distill "movements" for them. They can hear 50 Cent the Rapture months before the albums hit the streets and the hype machine is in full effect and join in the dialogue, instead of waiting untill the dust has settled and some sort of party line concensus emerges. it gives more people access to particpatory culture, rather than just being passive.

(and then they can realize that the Rapture sucks and not be taken in by the bullshit hype and revisionist hero myth that accompanies thier coming out party.)

ok i've written a lot. i'm hepped up on cold medicine, so i reserve the right to backtrack or take anything i've said back later.

H

thats all well and good, i suppose, but i think that the defense of the effort as having worth becasue someone put effort into it is sort of flat for me.

lord knows i've put a shit load of effort into projects that haven't yeilded any comerical worth. Could i start making play dough sculptures and arbitrarily decide that they have a worth of a couple of thousand dollars? sure i could, but the worth isn't ENFORCEABLE. Or more practically, i work pretty regularly as a sound designer/composer for theatre and i promise that i put in as much or more effort into my art as some hack writing sitcom themes, yet, according to my tax returns, it yeildssignificantly less commerical "wortth". Why? because the creator of a product or service doesn't always (or even usually ) get to arbitrarily determine the worth of his work. the market does.

thats the whole point. i'm not debating whether or not its good that filesharing exists, or anymore than it makes anysence (on a grander scale) to argue as to whether or not the nuclear bomb exists.

its a box thats been opened, and you can argue till you'e blue that the music still "has worth" just based on the effort that went into it, but if the ownship/cotrol of that product is so unenforceable as to necessitate an honor system, so abstract that you can accuse someone of stealing that "poduct" when the creator is not deprived of any of the resources that went into its creation by its supposed "theft", then what is its "worth"? and why is hearing metallica's album "worth" something and say... hearing wilco's isn't?

becasue Lars fucking Ulrich say it is!?!?? fuck that.

And goddamnit, enough with the cheapo comments. I spend plenty of money on shows and more time working in and promoting the arts (on which i depend wholy for a living, like many of you). Its not that i am unwilling to spend the money, or that i don't have the money to spend, and this isn't some misguided socialist dreamland.

The recording industry is spending millions of our dollars trying to prosecute college kids for trading fucking eminem albums with thier AIM buddies, spending millions of our dollars trying to make CDs that can't be ripped to play in portable music devices, spending millions of our dollars trying to write trojans into media files that crash computers, spending millions of dollars trying to convince congress (and succeding by and large) that these transgressions against them constitute a threat to "artists" and "musicians" by these viscious "pirates".

its vile.

and in the long run, they're going to loose. the gates have been opened, it will always be easier to crack the solutions that it will be to impliment them. So all i am suggesting, yet again, is that perhaps its time to reevaluate the inherant "worth" of recorded music, and start thinking of other ways to support music and musicians than the current system which amounts to- essentially- a tip jar.

a tip jar in which the jar itself keeps 80%

and for another thing... music existed and thrived fine for thousands of years as a folk art, without the benefit of "intellectual property" protection.

music wasn't owned, it was shared, and mutated and evolved. in the space of half a century this concept has been largely legislated out of existence in modern society.

Whatever happened to the idea of music as an experiential tradition? I'll still slap down my cash to sit in a club or a theatre and watch a band live, to participate in an event...

the "open source" movement in software design is the ost progressive model i can think of for dealing with this. Open source programmers basically recognize that code can't be "owned"... for the same reasons that recorded music san't be owned... it can't be controlled.

So rather that attach an artificial arbitrary value to a "product", they're reinvented themselves as service providers. You write custom code for a specific client, and customize it, and provide your expertise and support and time (a service, to which you can enfore value). One of my closest friends is an open source geek and does extraordinarily well.

So translating that to music, if you resign yourself to the idea that "ownership" of recorded music (meaning that you control accesss to it) is on the verge of obsolescence, you reinvent the industry, and the art form as a service industry, rather than as producers of "product".

A concert is a service, providing music around which a radio station can sell advertising is a service*, providing tunes on a jukebox (or dmx or sattelite radio) which contribute to the ambience of a bar or restraunt or club is a service*, scoring a film or play is a service... there are tons of ways to restructure (or even enforce and refine and enhance the existing royalites structure) that don't involve participating in the illusion of music as "property".

*the difference between radio/public broadcast and "piracy" is twofold. in the first place, controlling broadcast is enforceable whereas ultimately, controling private use isn't. and secondly (and more importantly, i think) thers a HUGE difference between someone having access to my music without be being compensated and someone PROFITTING off of it without me getting a cut. the latter is obviously uacceptable.

H

if you are using filesharing to educate yourself, that's one thing

if you are using it to avoid having to buy entire albums that are otherwise available, that's another--i find the penuriousness of that approach to be as offensive as anything else

luckily, not everyone burns all their music

and it's quite possible that the educational and promotional value of filesharing/home taping/whathaveyou outweighs whatever impact such activity has on artists

i hope so, or you will end up hearing nothing but mp3s (yuck), or at least a lot more records made on 4tracks and computers (not necess. a good thing either)

if you are using filesharing to educate yourself, that's one thing

if you are using it to avoid having to buy entire albums that are otherwise available, that's another--i find the penuriousness of that approach to be as offensive as anything else

luckily, not everyone burns all their music

and it's quite possible that the educational and promotional value of filesharing/home taping/whathaveyou outweighs whatever impact such activity has on artists

i hope so, or you will end up hearing nothing but mp3s (yuck), or at least a lot more records made on 4tracks and computers (not necess. a good thing either)

badhat wrote:and for another thing... music existed and thrived fine for thousands of years as a folk art, without the benefit of "intellectual property" protection.

...

*the difference between radio/public broadcast and "piracy" is twofold. in the first place, controlling broadcast is enforceable whereas ultimately, controling private use isn't. and secondly (and more importantly, i think) thers a HUGE difference between someone having access to my music without be being compensated and someone PROFITTING off of it without me getting a cut. the latter is obviously uacceptable.

In the first quotation above, you imply that intellectual property as a concept isn't applicable to music. In the second, you assert a right to enforce that very concept if others are making a profit off your art. You say the distinction is "obvious." The only thing obvious about it is that in the first case, you would have to pay and in the second, someone would be paying you. You like the kind of intellectual property that pays you, but you don't like the kind you have to pay for.

You want to have music for free, but you don't want a radio station to have the same right. If this is because the station is making a profit from the use of it, then so is your ISP, your file-sharing software company, its sponsors and the websites that got them to you.

If I download an MP3 and then play it for the patrons of my bar, should I pay you for that? If I play it to the same people in my home, should I pay you for that? If I use it in a student film? what if that student film wins me a prize? A commercial film? A theme song at a Bush rally?

These distinctions are petty. The one thing we can agree on is that you don't think you should have to pay to have a physical copy of the recording. I can go along with that. I also think it's a juvenile perspective, and it betrays a hypocrisy in wanting to protect your right to earn money from music used for other purposes, but that's beside the point.

The only way you can be sure of getting paid for music is to have someone hire you to do it, or to sell physical copies of it. I don't think it is possible to enforce protections of either, as they are both based on the desires of a client class that is fickle, cheap and quick to rationalize its decisions.

File sharing is another kind of listening booth or radio station, that's all. If you don't mind the sound quality, and if you want to go through the hassle, you can make a copy of something, but it isn't the same experience you get from buying a record. If it serves the purpose for you, then all these things tell us something about the value you place on music, and I don't think this class of client would buy more records if file sharing didn't exist.

In other words, it's a harmless pastime like stamp collecting or trading Pogs -- it is a trivial detail that it involves music, and I believe its impact on the consumption of music in commercial forms is neutral or positive. Eventually the music industry will accept this as the obvious truth and the issue will disappear, just like the flap over home taping.

I admire open source programmers, and I think people getting all bent out of shape about their intellectual property is silly, but I think most rationalizations about file sharing (and especially prognostications about it being "the way of the future") are patently ridiculous or simplistic, and ignore the applicable history of how society has dealt with very similar technological changes in the past.

best,
-steve