Steve Albini on Piracy

[magma]

I reject the term "piracy." It's people listening to music and sharing it with other people, and it's good for musicians because it widens the audience for music. The record industry doesn't like trading music because they see it as lost sales, but that's nonsense. Sales have declined because physical discs are no longer the distribution medium for mass-appeal pop music, and expecting people to treat files as physical objects to be inventoried and bought individually is absurd.

The downtrend in sales has hurt the recording business, obviously, but not us specifically because we never relied on the mainstream record industry for our clientele. Bands are always going to want to record themselves, and there will always be a market among serious music fans for well-made record albums. I'll point to the success of the Chicago label Numero Group as an example.

There won't ever be a mass-market record industry again, and that's fine with me because that industry didn't operate for the benefit of the musicians or the audience, the only classes of people I care about.

Free distribution of music has created a huge growth in the audience for live music performance, where most bands spend most of their time and energy anyway. Ticket prices have risen to the point that even club-level touring bands can earn a middle-class income if they keep their s*** together, and every band now has access to a world-wide audience at no cost of acquisition. That's fantastic.

Additionally, places poorly-served by the old-school record business (small or isolate towns, third-world and non-english-speaking countries) now have access to everything instead of a small sampling of music controlled by a hidebound local industry. When my band toured Eastern Europe a couple of years ago we had full houses despite having sold literally no records in most of those countries. Thank you internets.

- Steve Albini

[volcanogeorge]

very well put.

does this mean in his opinion that you can't be a producer without being a DJ (for much longer at least)? I think that's pretty much the point we're at now anyway.

[Genevieve]

And where was I when he toured Eastern Europe? Well, in western Europe. I just wanna see Shellac o.o

[apmje]

I totally agree with this dude.

[magma]

very well put.

does this mean in his opinion that you can't be a producer without being a DJ (for much longer at least)? I think that's pretty much the point we're at now anyway.

I don't think he'll have considered the producer/DJ thing too much... he's always been pretty rooted in guitar bands who are obviously more used to playing/recording live.

As a producer IMHO you either need to be a DJ, be friendly with a DJ or produce EP/Album length stuff that reviewers/bloggers/the market can't ignore so that tracks filter to DJs. But it's a dancefloor led industry, certainly..

[volcanogeorge]

very well put.

does this mean in his opinion that you can't be a producer without being a DJ (for much longer at least)? I think that's pretty much the point we're at now anyway.

I don't think he'll have considered the producer/DJ thing too much... he's always been pretty rooted in guitar bands who are obviously more used to playing/recording live.

As a producer IMHO you either need to be a DJ, be friendly with a DJ or produce EP/Album length stuff that reviewers/bloggers/the market can't ignore so that tracks filter to DJs. But it's a dancefloor led industry, certainly..

yeah i agree. there's people like burial who don't dj but have really good "home listenable" material, but i'd say the majority get bugger all income from record sales.

[kidshuffle]

but in this new fandangled age, how will steve send condoms with his records?

[magma]

but in this new fandangled age, how will steve send condoms with his records?

He sends software firewalls these days.

[kidshuffle]

songs about (fucking) firewalls

[wolf89]

He does make a very good point,

The talking of files being traded because they don't have the worth of a physical product is something I've thought about a lot.

Basically I was thinking that one thing that might help to counteract piracy is that you need to have something people actually want a physical copy of. Mainstream music seems to be all about hit records and not about the art of the album any more which may be in part thanks to downloads (which I think also leads to less risks being taken by big labels on putting out anything that different or risky). Also combine that with the fact that they're trying to make cds sell more by making them cheaper and it's not that surprising that it's not working. Yeah you can't get away with extortionate cd prices anymore because people won't put up with it but the answer to their problems for me anyway is to make owning a physical album worth it and not to continue to pump out the same old crap and make the physical copies seem worthless by dropping the price right down and making them cheap badly packaged crap. Point being that a band like Radiohead can put out an album basically for free and people will still pay for the vinyl release. Make a nice quality record with a proper album on it and chances are someone will want it somewhere.

I also like the fact that he's pointed out that even though overall music sales are suffering it doesn't mean that people aren't willing to support good music. It's more that the casual listener has moved to piracy and the more dedicated fan has an incredibly broad choice to find their own musical niche in making for a broader dispersal of musical purchases from those who will still pay. It still makes it harder to earn a living in music and there is this weird attitude of entitlement out there which has appeared even amongst some of the slightly more serious music fans but still if you can make people go mad for a record like the Burial, Thom Yorke, Four Tet one did there's something to be learned.

[Today]

to me the files always had that value, and i think he's totally full of shit. but y'all already kow that about me ;]
This hasn't persuaded me one bit, and lacks any novel ideas to bring to the debate

[magma]

to me the files always had that value, and i think he's totally full of shit. but y'all already kow that about me ;]
This hasn't persuaded me one bit, and lacks any novel ideas to bring to the debate

I didn't already know that about you, but cool.

IMHO, roughly the same amount of money makes it into the "industry" whether piracy occurs or not - music fans actually enjoy spending money on music, it's just that the cash comes through a much greater number of narrower channels - afterall, there are hundreds of thousands of record labels these days where there only used to be a handful. The "majors" aren't really bitter because people are getting music for free - they're bitter because they're a lot less "major" than they used to be. 99% of artists will never need a major label. There used to be thousands of people releasing music, now there are millions - it's only logical that each of those millions will need to make a fair bit less than the thousands used to! It used to be that nobody knew "real" musicians... they were rare... now everybody's got a studio in their laptop.

Pop Music will always make money - and that's what the "industry" is for. Even if people all over the world downloaded Jessie J's music she'd still make around the same amount. The business model has never been all about record sales.. it's about licensing tracks to Pepsi, appearing on TV shows, pushing T Shirts and selling out the O2 - when you bear in mind that the O2 holds 20,000 people (approx the same number of records to score a UK #1) and you can sell tickets for around £50 (conservative figure), a single night at a sold-out stadium turns over more than 50 times the cash that a week of being the "Number One" act in the country does. The single is the marketing not the product!

[Today]

none of what you said means anything to me about ones rights to their intellectual property and protection of those rights. The industry restructuring will happen regardless, and it will continue to fail if those basic rights aren't protected. Lord knows they aren't respected.

[Sonika]

Interesting, but I don't think all artists share his views, so this isn't a justification

[wolf89]

It's not that he's justifying piracy quite as such but more that he sees why people will do it and that it's better than people simply not listening to the music at all. Like obviously he is still gonna want to be able to make his living but unless people make the music desirable to buy people won't pay for it and those that still don't will at least come to the shows.

[Today]

people were buying it before they could steal it. And no, i'm not going to stop using the word "steal"

[volcanogeorge]

people were buying it before they could steal it. And no, i'm not going to stop using the word "steal"

So what you're saying is that people were buying it 30 years ago? Yeah they should totally start buying it again because of that.

[Sonika]

He's saying they managed before, so they it's obviously very possible that we as a people COULD buy music instead of pirate it if we so choose

[AllNightDayDream]

Been sayin this for a while.

The entire concept of intellectual property needs to be reworked. It does nothin but make numerous industries sluggish and inefficient. It's one of the reasons American healthcare is choking itself at the moment. Realistically, the moment you put a file on the Internet it has a degree of public domain. If you want 100% personal control, don't release it.

[Sonika]

Just fucking buy the music.