Pirated music: good thing, bad thing or nothing?

[San Antone]

Practically, this is not so true, I think. If you steal a physical object, this object is subtracted from the use of its owner, who suffers a lost, a minus. He won't be able to obtain any benefit of that object. But that's not so true when we are talking about "digital objects" because if, for instance, I copy a disk or a program, this won't avoid their owner to obtain all the benefits of the "original" product copied. I mean, the inner economy of digital products is quite similar to the economy of the ideas in general, frequently expressed under this attractive aphorism: "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

Copyrights have always been as a sort of monopoly; that's the reason because they have a term. A protection for creators during a reasonable term, as a form of balancing the general interest and the particular interest of the creators. But with digital technologies even the practical possibility of this protection has been put into question.

I can tell you that no creator of intellectual property, like music content, will agree with you.  When a recording is offered for sale, either as a physical item or a digital artifact, the creators, publishers and distributors only accrue royalties when it is bought (or sold in some fashion, used as ringtone, or streaming services, pay royalties, etc.).  Illegal downloads take money out of the pockets of all the creators involved in the project. 

You might dance around this simple logic all you want, but the bottomline (pun intended) is that creators of content are hurt by illegal downloads.  Also, even if the music is in the public domain, like much of classical music, the recording itself is copyrighted by the record label and the performer shares in this income.

Addressing your last point, digital technology has changed nothing about copyright protections.  It is the same term for composers and songwriters no matter how the music is presented to the market.  The clock on copyright starts ticking the minute it is registered (which usually is just before a recording is released) - and if it is a digital track or a CD it does not change the length of the time the content is protected or falls into public domain.

[Ken B]

I think there are good arguments against intellectual property, especially in software and related fields, but the copyright in a performance is more justifiable I think than in a software technique. regardless, the existence of the copyright is part of how musicians get paid. The law has affected the business practices. Musicians might get paid differently if the law changes. But as it is, san antonio is right. Even if downloading doesn't affect that performer it does affect the next, prospective, one.

[Cato]

I can tell you that no creator of intellectual property, like music content, will agree with you.  When a recording is offered for sale, either as a physical item or a digital artifact, the creators, publishers and distributors only accrue royalties when it is bought (or sold in some fashion, used as ringtone, or streaming services, pay royalties, etc.).  Illegal downloads take money out of the pockets of all the creators involved in the project. 

You might dance around this simple logic all you want, but the bottomline (pun intended) is that creators of content are hurt by illegal downloads.  Also, even if the music is in the public domain, like much of classical music, the recording itself is copyrighted by the record label and the performer shares in this income.

Addressing your last point, digital technology has changed nothing about copyright protections.  It is the same term for composers and songwriters no matter how the music is presented to the market.  The clock on copyright starts ticking the minute it is registered (which usually is just before a recording is released) - and if it is a digital track or a CD it does not change the length of the time the content is protected or falls into public domain.

Thank you!

Plus:

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

Unless the idea is stupid!  How valuable is a stupid idea vs. one that leads to e.g. heavier-than-air flight?  Are all ideas equal then? 

I know of a company that has had numerous ideas stolen by "entertainment" companies and others, after they had "pitched" the idea to do business with the other company.  The cheated company chalks it up as the price of being in a business where "ideas" are seen as fair game and not protected by property rights or copyright law, and they have undoubtedly lost millions.

Occasionally the other company will say "Stop!" during a presentation, and say sorry, but they are already working on a similar concept.  In some cases they are honest and actually do have a similar idea in development.   In other cases they have heard enough and steal what was presented!

[Jo498]

I have a hard time believing that illegal downloads (or some years ago, mostly legal burning copies from/for friends) have a large impact on recorded classical music sales. There was a big impact on popular music but this was more than 10 years ago and one reason was that the industry itself had missed getting commercial downloads on the way. They probably recouped some of their losses since then with selling overpriced ringtones to kids.

Classical music listeners are comparably old and affluent. It took them years to get even interested in Downloads (and many, especially those older than ca. 50 still are not interested). Sure, I have no hard statistics but from my anecdotal evidence and the demographics of classical buyers I simply cannot imagine that filesharing etc. would have had a huge impact. (And now we have legal downloads and spotify etc. so the situation has changed again.)

I think the main bias in most of these discussions is that the decline of the last 15 years in the recorded music industry starts from a wrong baseline, namely the boom because of the CD replacing Vinyl in the late 1980s and early 90s. Here we have the factors of a new medium (which is also more expensive at first), additional purchases because older collectors were replacing their LPs and affluent buyers because the middle class in most western countries was doing quite well in that time. Parts of (South) East Asia like South Korea rising to almost first world economic conditions might be another factor.
And there was the original instruments movement going on to Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert which could justify recording this repertoire once again with different ensembles and conductors.

And in the 1980s we still had some of the most famous classical musicians of the 20th century recording stuff (Karajan, Bernstein, Arrau, Horowitz etc.) Apparently the industry believed that it could keep going like that forever. Of course it could not. This was probably aggravated by too many recordings of large scale works in the 80s and early 90s that were not all that distinctive and lost money in a mature market already saturated with recordings of Beethoven symphonies and La Traviata.
Briefly, a lot of the "decline" is actually regression to "normal" and if below normal, this could probably explained by saturation.

I believe that the fate of recorded music is only loosely connected with classical music as a whole. In hindsight, some people got very rich with recorded classical music within the 40 years from the late 1950s to the late 1990s. Hardly anyone became rich with classical recordings in the 1920s or 30s and the situation is maybe similar now.

Therefore the state and status of classical music is a different question from the state of the recording industry.

[Florestan]

Audiences for orchestras in the UK have grown by 16% since 2010 with over 4.5m people now attending an orchestral concert every year, according to a new report by the Association of British Orchestras.

The survey also pointed out that public funding for orchestras has fallen by 14%, due to further pressure on arts budgets across the country. Donations and sponsorship, however, have gone up by 30%.

More encouragingly, the report states that "UK orchestras now reach over 660,000 children, young people and others in the community in education and outreach sessions".

[Florestan]

As the musicologist and pianist Charles Rosen so eloquently put it, "The death of classical music is perhaps its oldest continuing tradition." To place that tradition in context, consider the infographic below.

[...]

To play the numbers game briefly: Vanhoenacker professes to be alarmed that classical recording presently constitutes only 2.8 per cent of the market. A cursory glance at industry reports would show that the market share has hovered around three per cent since the mid-nineteen-eighties. The stability of that share might actually be a sign of health. Yes, it's a niche market, but so is most music in our polyglot society—not reigning supreme is not the same as ceasing to exist.

The doomsayers also like to cherry-pick a few crisis-ridden institutions and use them to generalize about the art form itself. Classical music is the sum of all its institutions, performers, and listeners, plus a thousand-year-old cultural lineage; it can't be snuffed out through any combination of bankrupt orchestras and mediocre album sales. What's most remarkable, perhaps, is that the industry remains relatively vibrant in the face of an American media culture that appears so determined to marginalize it. The classical-music declinists rarely consider the value in having a few of the greatest orchestras in the world located in America, the so-called homeland of pop culture. Or the civic pride that the citizens of Chicago and Minnesota take in their symphonies. Or the lifelong bonds forged between musicians and their audience. Or the uncanny thrill of hearing Mahler live, an experience like no other.

American classical music launched in earnest on Christmas Day of 1815. The Boston Handel and Haydn Society—comprised of middle-class music lovers—unveiled excerpts from European oratorios, and concluded with a rousing "Hallelujah" chorus. "There is nothing to compare with it; it is the wonder of the nation," proclaimed one critic. Next year, the Society will celebrate its two-hundredth anniversary. How many other American phenomena have endured for two centuries? Those are not the sounds of death throes you hear; they are a steady heartbeat.



Don´t miss the opportunity of guaranteed great fun: check the infographic in the article.

[Madiel]

I hear you.  However, it is not just buying a CD of the Hammerklavier, but in this case having to shell out $112 for the entire set of sonatas.  Somewhat different, imo.

In this case, yes.

And poco sforzando has also talked about things like single CDs of opera highlights

But it's not even true that each and every performance would always be released on single CDs so that you could get just one disc if that's what you wanted. There've always been things that have only come in box sets. I can think of a Hyperion collection of Poulenc songs I've been thinking about, and it's 4 discs, and I'm not aware of any evidence that it's ever been anything other than a 4-disc box. In that case, iTunes allowing everything other than Babar the Elephant to be downloaded individually arguably provides more flexibility.

It's simply up to the record company how to present and offer things, just as it's always been. You don't have some inherent right to what you consider a good deal, and you never have. They make an offer, it's up to you whether you accept that offer or not - but if you don't like the offer they make, that doesn't constitute permission to go and invent your own deal that you like, any more than you have a right to take a physical object from a shop if you think the price is a bad deal.  If something is for sale for $70 but you think it's only worth $50, you're not allowed to grab it and leave $50 on the table. There is an air in some of your posts that you think unilateral action is fine the moment that you're frustrated because the seller's offer isn't convenient to your own wants.

In fact, what you're entitled to do is negotiate. If you don't like the way that something is presented, then write to the record company and say "I don't like it this way and I'm not willing to buy it, but I'd be willing to buy it this other way". If they have any sense they'll listen - in my experience, most of the smaller companies will at least reply to you when you write to them about something, and I even managed to get a response out of Sony Classical Germany with a bit of effort.

If it's simply a case of second-hand physical copies being more expensive than you'd like, then message the seller of one and ask "would you be willing to accept $X for it".

But fundamentally, the world does not owe you the music collection of your dreams. Any more than it owes you the house of your dreams, the car of your dreams, the spouse of your dreams. It certainly doesn't owe you one particular recording of Beethoven's piano sonatas out of the myriads available.

[jlaurson]

...You don't have some inherent right to what you consider a good deal, and you never have. They make an offer, it's up to you whether you accept that offer or not - but if you don't like the offer they make, that doesn't constitute permission to go and invent your own deal that you like, any more than you have a right to take a physical object from a shop if you think the price is a bad deal.  If something is for sale for $70 but you think it's only worth $50, you're not allowed to grab it and leave $50 on the table. There is an air in some of your posts that you think unilateral action is fine the moment that you're frustrated because the seller's offer isn't convenient to your own wants....

...fundamentally, the world does not owe you the music collection of your dreams any more than it owes you the house of your dreams, the car of your dreams, the spouse of your dreams. It certainly doesn't owe you one particular recording of Beethoven's piano sonatas out of the myriads available.

Ah, thanks for that! Had a very calming effect on my pulse, to read this, and a lifting effect on the corners of my mouth.

[Cato]

I have a hard time believing that illegal downloads (or some years ago, mostly legal burning copies from/for friends) have a large impact on recorded classical music sales.

So stealing is therefore allowed, because one believes that the impact will be negligible?  Stealing a dollar from Scrooge McDuck's money bin is not really stealing, because he would not notice the loss? 

This is the rationalizing of thieves throughout the millenia.

But fundamentally, the world does not owe you the music collection of your dreams. Any more than it owes you the house of your dreams, the car of your dreams, the spouse of your dreams. It certainly doesn't owe you one particular recording of Beethoven's piano sonatas out of the myriads available.

Amen!   0:)

Ah, thanks for that! Had a very calming effect on my pulse, to read this, and a lifting effect on the corners of my mouth.

Amen again!   0:) 0:)

To paraphrase a famous lady, the problem with musical socialism, is that eventually you run out of other people's patience with your non-payment for their productions.  The "entitlement mentality" is certainly the disease of our day.

[Madiel]

Yes.

I already mentioned one of a couple of relevant quotes from my own favourite musician, Tori Amos, on another thread where a slice of this topic came up. Very much about musical socialism: http://www.yessaid.com/talk/5baronsofsuburbia.html (the last, longer paragraph)

But it's worth also mentioning the other one here. Unfortunately, I can't find the exact quote at the moment, but it goes something like this:

Vineyards will often let you sample their wares. They give you a tasting opportunity. And you can try lots of wines, and you'll only like some, and that's fine. You might even be able to get the odd bottle for free. But if you want the vineyards that you like to keep making the wines that you like, sooner or later you've got to buy bottles. If you just keep taking bottles, eventually there won't be a vineyard anymore.

[Madiel]

Having said that, I finally found a copy. It's on this site - http://www.musicaldiscoveries.com/reviews/toriamos.htm - but as the relevant bit is buried in the middle, allow me to quote it in full. Yes it's lengthy, but to me it's also a pretty good summation of how a musician feels about this.

Speaking of laws of the land, what are your feelings about others individual covering your work and also downloading music from the internet?

OK. Obviously there are two separate questions there.

Although they are associated: music as community property.

Yes, fair point, which we'll talk about. I think that other people covering my work is exciting. I'm really open to that kind of thing because I think interpreation is an artform so yeah, I'm open to that. Community property fascinates me because let's not dodge it, this subject, by going back and forth. The core of this issue is do you value this musician? Do you value this artist?

Like when I walk into a painter's workshop, I just don't start putting things in my purse. Because I want them to continue to create and I want them to pay people well and not have nine year olds in the back getting say 20 cents an hour doing God knows what for them in that room where they do sculpture.

I think what it is important to me is that people have to look at themselves in the mirror and they can call this filesharing, they call it whatever they want. But you know it's about how do you show an artist if you value what they do? By taking it? That's the question.

Now that's what you have to ask yourself. Because I'm very clear on it. I don't feel comfortable taking stuff because it shows that I don't value what you do. Because music is ether now, we can, you can shroud it by saying it's sharing doing this, but I see it very simply. Taking is taking. And valuing is valuing. And these are the questions that we have ask ourselves.

If there's a wine that I like, winetasing is something that I'm all for. Tasting music and then deciding, well do you want to buy a case? Do you want to buy a bottle of it? Well I don't really want that one, but I want that one. But then you know putting a case in the back of your trunk after you've tasted it is a very different thing. Do you follow what I am saying?

Sure, yeah.

It shows that I don't respect the winemaker. You know what, at the end of the day, I want them to keep making that wine. So they are a small vineyard or a medium size vineyard. They have people working at that vineyard depending on that. People don't think about all the people, the busses and the trucks and the roadies. When I pass by Texaco, I don't say, "Well you know you guys downloaded my songs, so give me free petrol." It just doesn't work that way.

If we were in a bartering system and so everybody that downloaded my music came by and dropped some carrots by, we'd be fine. We'd be clearer. But you see we are not in a bartering system so how do you show value. And this is a question that I'm asking you. Because at the end of the day, we all have to sit with ourselves on this and it's not can you get away with it or and I've always said "If you don't have it, if you don't have a way to show you value it, financially, then take it because I'd rather you have it."

But, and sometimes it's "Tori, I'm strapped this week." Then take it, but at a certain point when do you become a taker. That's the question. And that's something a whole generation is going to have to ask itself.

[Jo498]

Please do not claim that consequences you want to draw were implied by what I wrote.
I have not said a single word in favor of illegal downloads and the like (except that it certainly hurt the popular music industry), even less defended them!
But I also think that "intellectual property" is not a straightforward concept and there are obvious disanalogies to normal theft that have been mentioned already. It clearly does not help to claim that this is exactly the same as theft. (Especially because there are some things which are *legal* (as "fair use") in many countries, e.g. burning a copy for a friend, that also deprive artists/industry of possible revenue.)

Maybe this was not clear. I only tried to give some perspective and list causes I hold to be serious contenders for the decline of some parts of the classical recording industry because this wider question has also been discussed in this thread.
I am pretty sure, illegal downloads do not belong to the salient causes (again, the situation is probably different for popular music but there the industry recovered considerably since the options for paid downloads/streams have improved).

[Florestan]

If Tori Amos lived exclusively off selling her music she'd be right. But...

51-year-old Tori Amos has taken the No. 1 spot on People With Money's top 10 highest-paid singers for 2015 with an estimated $96 million in combined earnings.

The American singer-songwriter-pianist has an estimated net worth of $275 million. She owes her fortune to smart stock investments, substantial property holdings, lucrative endorsement deals with CoverGirl cosmetics. She also owns several restaurants (the "Fat Amos Burger" chain) in Washington, a Football Team (the "Newton Angels"), has launched her own brand of Vodka (Pure Wonderamos - US), and is tackling the juniors market with a top-selling perfume (With Love from Tori) and a fashion line called "Tori Amos Seduction".

Seems to me that she can afford losing some hundred, or even thousand, bucks a year because some people value her music high enough to want to listen to it but not that high as to want to pay a few bucks per individual songs or complete albums. 

EDIT: possessive pronoun corrected

[(poco) Sforzando]

Yes.

I already mentioned one of a couple of relevant quotes from my own favourite musician, Tori Amos, on another thread where a slice of this topic came up. Very much about musical socialism: http://www.yessaid.com/talk/5baronsofsuburbia.html (the last, longer paragraph)

But it's worth also mentioning the other one here. Unfortunately, I can't find the exact quote at the moment, but it goes something like this:

Vineyards will often let you sample their wares. They give you a tasting opportunity. And you can try lots of wines, and you'll only like some, and that's fine. You might even be able to get the odd bottle for free. But if you want the vineyards that you like to keep making the wines that you like, sooner or later you've got to buy bottles. If you just keep taking bottles, eventually there won't be a vineyard anymore.

Well, yes. But let me play the devil's advocate here, since digital files, which are infinitely reproducible, are not the same thing as bottles of wine which are not. And it's not just playing devil's advocate: I genuinely want some clarification of the law and its rationale.

Say that record company X puts out 500 CD sets for $35 each of Vikram Gupta's new version of the Beethoven quartets transcribed for sitar and tabla. There are no plans for further sets, but all the copies sell. After this, however, three other willing buyers (we'll call them DD, FF, and GG) emerge who would have been happy to pay their $35 for a set if they could. Company X however is firm and refuses to issue additional sets; the cost of producing just another three sets is prohibitive and they don't offer company-sponsored digital downloads either.

The following then happens:
a) DD persuades his kind-hearted friend VV to let him rip the digital files from VV's set. VV asks for no money.
b) FF finds a used copy on Amazon for $950, and wants it so badly that he buy its, this making the seller a nice profit of $915 that the record company and artists never see.
c) GG finds the files uploaded to YouTube, downloads them, and stores them on his computer or burns his own CDs.

Who is being damaged in each case, and are all these situations illegal?

Would the situation change too if company X had issued 1000 sets of which only 500 sell, and DD, FF, and GG had still behaved (for whatever reasons) as above?

[San Antone]

In the US the law is very clear: aside from fair use, which generally means quoting small parts of copyrighted material for the purposes of scholarship, critical review, etc. which is allowed, all other consumption of the intellectual property is prohibited unless you pay for it.  It is common for file-sharing advocates to attempt to make a fair use argument.  These specious arguments have been deemed unconvincing by every court that has reviewed these cases.

Scenarios trying to make the case for hardship are irrelevant.

[mc ukrneal]

Seems to me that she can afford losing some hundred, or even thousand, bucks a year because some people value her music high enough to want to listen to it but not that high as to want to pay a few bucks per individual songs or complete albums. 

So what? Stealing is stealing is stealing, regardless of how well off (or not) the seller.

[Madiel]

Seems to me that she can afford losing some hundred, or even thousand, bucks a year because some people value her music high enough to want to listen to it but not that high as to want to pay a few bucks per individual songs or complete albums. 

Seems to me if you think she was talking specifically about her own music, you've missed the point utterly.

You're very, very good at minimising things.

[Jo498]

I think b) is legal everywhere (undeserved speculative windfall profits are after all what our civilization is based on ), c) will probably get the person who uploaded it into legal trouble almost everywhere and the person who downloaded it at least in some jurisdictions, and a) depends but is often legal per "fair use".
For burned copies (similar to case a) in Germany "fair use" included the right to give away a copy to a friend (it's illegal to sell it to him, though, and it would certainly be stretching it to give away 100 copies to your 100 friends). It seems also perfectly legal to rip a disc I bought to my computer and sell the original used. (Something I consider morally rather fishy, at least if done a scale of 100s or 1000s of discs.) There is a legal difference to computer software here where such a procedure is clearly illegal. For music it's only illegal to sell copies.

[Madiel]

Well, yes. But let me play the devil's advocate here, since digital files, which are infinitely reproducible, are not the same thing as bottles of wine which are not. And it's not just playing devil's advocate: I genuinely want some clarification of the law and its rationale.

Say that record company X puts out 500 CD sets for $35 each of Vikram Gupta's new version of the Beethoven quartets transcribed for sitar and tabla. There are no plans for further sets, but all the copies sell. After this, however, three other willing buyers (we'll call them DD, FF, and GG) emerge who would have been happy to pay their $35 for a set if they could. Company X however is firm and refuses to issue additional sets; the cost of producing just another three sets is prohibitive and they don't offer company-sponsored digital downloads either.

The following then happens:
a) DD persuades his kind-hearted friend VV to let him rip the digital files from VV's set. VV asks for no money.
b) FF finds a used copy on Amazon for $950, and wants it so badly that he buy its, this making the seller a nice profit of $915 that the record company and artists never see.
c) GG finds the files uploaded to YouTube, downloads them, and stores them on his computer or burns his own CDs.

Who is being damaged in each case, and are all these situations illegal?

Would the situation change too if company X had issued 1000 sets of which only 500 sell, and DD, FF, and GG had still behaved (for whatever reasons) as above?

The situation you're describing with 500 sets is to my mind quite different from everything I've been talking about, because I've been very focused on the situation where buying the music and remunerating the creators of it is possible. You're now describing a situation where buying the music is not possible.

Honestly, I don't know exactly how the law deals with this. I personally think that copyright should have a certain "use it or lose it" element, but I don't think that's actually the legal situation. The tricky thing for the company in a situation like this would be showing any damage from the breach of copyright, because that's a crucial component of suing someone. If no sale was possible, there's a good argument that the loss suffered by the company was zero.

I will admit to having downloaded some music for free because it has been impossible to buy. Not just expensive, but simply not obtainable in a transaction. That is a situation I ethically allow myself, but that is my personal ethics.

[Florestan]

Well, let's say John Doe is sued by Abracadabra Records because he downloaded Symphony No. 165.32 by Max Mustermann, performed by Juan Tal conducting the Middle-Of-Nowhere Philharmonic Orchestra from Youtube as mp3 instead of buying the CD they released and ask from him $10, the price of the CD.

In the court, he says:

Your honor, they offer for sale a physical CD, I downloaded an mp3. Now, they don't sell mp3s. Why then should I have to pay them for something they cannot sell me?

Your honor, furthermore, I ask them to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the mp3 I downloaded was ripped from their CD. On Youtube it was labelled Symphony No. 165.32 by Max Mustermann, performed by Juan Tal conducting the Middle-Of-Nowhere Philharmonic Orchestra, but how do I, or they, or anyone else for that matter, know it is not in fact performed by Takahichi Kokorichi conducting the Symphonic Orchestra of Kalahari and recorded by Mwahaha Records? And if the latter be the case, why then should I have to pay them for something they cannot sell me because they never recorded it?

Would he be dead wrong or spot on?