Neil Young is right — piracy is the new radio

http://gigaom.com/2012/01/31/neil-young-is-right-piracy-is-the-new-radio/

by DealisIN • 14 years ago

160 66 14 years ago

teyc2• 14 years ago

It is so true. Just as a busker would play music for anyone, and gets an appreciative tip once in a while, pre-recorded music can be seen as a leveraged way of busking.

In some way, the record industry is doing piracy a service by increasing the perceived value of music. Too bad they don't get a cut for doing that.

scribu• 14 years ago

A very apt analogy indeed. +1 for Neil Young.

res0nat0r• 14 years ago

Can you really equate piracy to radio when you can listen to what you want on-demand? This is a big difference from radio and services like Pandora which don't allow you to listen to exactly what you want when you want.

ChuckMcM2• 14 years ago

So the challenge is 'listen to what you want' versus 'discover new music'.

People will listen to something for 'free' even if they aren't sure they will like it, but they won't pay any money for something that they don't know whether or not they will like it.

Radio was a way to introduce new music, but with an iPod/iPhone/mp3 player people can carry around days of music that they already know they like, and it has no annoying adverts in it, so they don't listen to the radio any more. Thus a source of discovery is cut off from them.

'Pirates', listening to music and then giving a copy to a friend who they think might like it, allows new music to be discovered. That seeding is required for artists to develop a following. Pandora does similar seeding, but like radio injects advertisements which are annoying to many.

mohene13• 14 years ago

The issue of compensation for the artist never seems to come up in these conversations. Neil Young can charge $75 for his cheapest concert tickets. So record sales mean very little to him. For younger artists this is not the case.

> but they won't pay any money for something that they don't know whether or not they will like it.

people bought albums for decades without knowing what songs were on the album.

I don't see how it's fair to justify the acquisition of someones property with the pretense that it's gonna be better for you. Even under extreme cases like nationalisation and imminent domain, the owners are compensated. I made this comment on the Neil Young link, but it was censored. If we are so certain that the artist will benefit under the 'new' system, fine, but if he or she doesn't they have to be compensated to bridge the earnings gap.

Comparing music now to music in the 1930's is not fair, artists got paid almost nothing in the 1930-1950's. The whole industry was corrupt.

randomdata• 14 years ago

The difference is that with piracy, there is a chance you'll stumble upon something new. With the radio, you're stuck with the same handful of songs over and over and over again.

But seriously, I have always wondered how the radio model is supposed to work. Whenever I hear a song I like, just wait an hour, and I'll hear it again. There is simply no reason to buy the CD (or record, or digital download).

Value is, in part, driven by scarcity. When you only have 40 songs in your rotation, there is no longer that scarcity required to drive the high value. It's no wonder people were no longer willing to pay $20 for a CD.

zipdog• 14 years ago

The radio model was not geared to you (as far as I can tell). Up to the 90s, lots of people who heard a song a dozen times on the radio would then go and by the single or album. Even at $8 and $20. I don't know why they did, but they did.

I suspect the big problem with piracy (from RIAA perspective) is that it is teaching those people that its just as easy to get it online. Except that iTunes went and made it even easier to get it for $1, so most people in that market I know just buy it on iTunes.

InclinedPlane3• 14 years ago

Are they really so different?

The radio plays songs interspersed with commercials that thousands of people hear and a handful of those folks are influenced to go buy cars or soap or deodorant or fast food from the advertisements they heard (thus effectively paying the advertisers, thus compensating them for the advertisements, thus providing the radio station with revenue to pay the license fees which get paid to music studios and eventually to musicians). Is that really so very much better or more ethical than millions of individuals listening to music through file sharing and a handful of those folks being influenced to buy albums, go to concerts, purchase t-shirts and other merchandise which directly benefits the artists?

Edit: to add an additional punch to this: how is it that advertisements can be so enormously compelling that they can sustain 4 levels of profit margin (for the company selling the products, for the ad agency, for the radio station, for the music studios) yet the music itself is not sufficiently compelling to support even one level? The answer is that it is. The licensing fees are a token, the ads support the operations of the radio station, the music supports itself. Take away the technological need for a radio station and...

prawn• 14 years ago

Hell, if the music industry ran Pirate Bay themselves and profited from having higher quality ads on there, you would have something a little closer to the radio experience (ignoring ability to choose what you wanted). People would be seeing/hearing ads as they explored new music, as well as buying limited edition products, physical releases, concert tickets, t-shirts and other merch.

Problem is, the big players are hanging on to the cliff edge by their fingernails, rather than locking into the harness at the bottom ready to start their climb.

baddox2• 14 years ago

So radio is only acceptable because it's bad for the consumer? Does making radio better (by allowing on-demand listening) suddenly make it illegal/immoral/bad?

jeffool• 14 years ago

Radio pays far more per song than Internet streamers do. Running a radio station is $x/song, on the web it's $x/song/listener.

(Radio stations cost lots to set up up front, web radio costs kick in when you get bigger, but until then you'd have to operate at a loss, or go ad heavy.

InclinedPlane3• 14 years ago

We have come to accept a vast panoply of behaviors of sharing creative works and of allowing people to "consume" music, art, movies, etc. without directly compensating the creators. Radio, television, libraries, used books, etc. We accept such things largely because we've grown used to them. We have lived long enough in an era of libraries and radio to understand that they do not destroy the ability of artists to make a living.

Uncompensated sharing in the digital age has been unmoored from some of the traditional limits on sharing, moving it well outside the comfort zone for a lot of people and causing a lot of backlash against the phenomenon. But even though the returns on uncompensated sharing in the digital age are sometimes more diffuse and indirect than for the more traditional forms of sharing we are used to they still exist. Art will survive. Artists will not end up in the poor house. And eventually people will grow as used to what gets labelled "piracy" today as they have to libraries, museums, and radio.

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

I agree, this goes in line with what Francis Ford Coppola recently said [1]. People refuse to accept it because they cannot understand how it could be different.

Hollywood's model is broken because it has been dependent on scarcity of distribution. This couldn't be sustainable forever. Internet fixed the distribution so Hollywood is bleeding. Art is getting easier to access and to create thanks to technology. (this is where we, startups, come in)

IMHO, art will become a commodity. In a few decades, you won't pay so much to watch a movie that cost a few millions to produce. You'll pay almost nothing for a movie that cost almost nothing to produce. And it will have much higher quality than today's movies. Thanks to technology. Like you said, art will survive.

[1] http://the99percent.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-O...

sausagefeet• 14 years ago

Weren't 2009 and 2010 Hollywood's most profitable years?

mohene13• 14 years ago

Are authors paid for books purchased at the library? The library does not provide the public with a free personal copy of any book they want.

I do not doubt that artists may be compensated in the long run. But the compensation my come through higher ticket prices. I paid $32 to see Molotov, Eminem, The Black Eyed Peas, and Suicidal Tendencies in New York City back in 1999. Those days are long gone. To see those artists now, maybe $120.

Saying "will" seems speculative since the examples are not comparable to piracy. Museums dont give free copies and have collections which are sometimes donated. In radio there is a cooperation between radio stations and the record companies.

minikomi5• 14 years ago

What about something like kickstarter, for music?

The artist will only release if a certain threshold is reached.. Then the released music is completely "free" to share as people please. The artist is compensated as they see fit - they set the price in the first place, and also can use it to justify part of the price (to compensate for recording, hosting etc.).

"Piracy" then serves to generate rep to prove that they can deliver on future releases, there can still be people who make money in the middle - generating PR for the project etc.

The platform could take a small share of the cost, a slightly larger share for hosting, slightly more for promotion on the front page..

InclinedPlane3• 14 years ago

Yes, the limits are different, that's why I wrote this:

"Uncompensated sharing in the digital age has been unmoored from some of the traditional limits on sharing, moving it well outside the comfort zone for a lot of people and causing a lot of backlash against the phenomenon."

You say radio, museums, and libraries aren't comparable to file sharing. Do you have data to back that up or merely prejudice?

As for your anecdote above, it's rare for the price of a show for a given artist to remain the same over time. The Black Eyed Peas especially are very much more popular today than they were in 1999.

ghthorVX• 14 years ago

Resonates like drinking water.

RyanMcGreal• 14 years ago

The thing is, all the currently acceptable ways to consume music without paying for it were also strenuously resisted by the music industry when they first appeared. The difference is that governments were less inclined in the past to believe the industry hype and roll over with draconian laws.

Apocryphon• 14 years ago

Interestingly enough, he defends record companies as well here. He's in a very compromise position:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/01/31/neil-young-defends...

ethank• 14 years ago

To be fair: Neil always had a great relationship with his record company since being with Reprise. He'd come in and hand deliver every record, staying for playback in our artists lounge.

A great guy, super fun and always a joy to hang out with. A true music fan and appreciative of those that worked on his records. His manager Eliot is a great guy too.

marshray• 14 years ago

"Information wants to be friction-free."

That's worth thinking about.

mekazu3• 14 years ago

Is radio dead in the USA? In Australia I think the radio culture is quite vibrant. Personally I download music from time to time that sits on my phone but I listen to the radio 99% of the time because it introduces and plays the best music anyway. The radio stations that I listen to are govt funded[1] so they don't have any ads and have a community focus of getting people to go see live concerts and listen to good music.

We also have commercial radio stations that play disposable child-like pop music (combined with horrible ads and drone-like presenters) that is well suited to 13 year old girls but still becomes popular with the masses. So there is something for everyone.

I don't support SOPA (not that it counts in Australia, or anywhere else for that matter) but I think that artists should get some money from somewhere for their efforts. People listen to the radio free but they still have the option of buying the album. Downloading the album free makes that option redundant.

In Australia people typically pay $40 - $70 a month for their internet which - if they use the allocated capacity - they are using to pirate music, movies and TV without ads. I'd prefer to see part of that money going to an artist fund rather than the ISPs and broadband resellers.

[1] triplej.net.au and www.abc.net.au/classic/

rdouble• 14 years ago

It's not dead if you listen to country music, mexican music, christian music or talk radio.

davidw4• 14 years ago

Not just country music. They play both kinds, country and western.

TylerE• 14 years ago

Yes, it's dead. But basically minus the government stuff.

Well, there is NPR (National Public Radio) which is about 15-25% government funded, but that's typically news/talk/classical. Some of the edgier NPR stations might have an acoustic rock/folk set at midnight on a Friday...

mekazu3• 14 years ago

What do you think killed it? How do people find good music without having to filter through all the rubbish? Does the industry rely on advertising to sell bad music? Are "Top 40" artists built by record companies and sold on TV and/or the internet? Does good music travel through word of mouth by people in-the-know? iTunes is pretty and all but I can't picture people paying to download without having heard the music somewhere else before.

Lots of generalising to do here to answer these questions I guess but I figure there's opportunity out there for someone who can make something of the answers.

pm• 14 years ago

Don't forget, with digital radio, we now have JJJ Unearthed as a radio station. For the unenlightened, that's the best of Australia's unsigned bands getting played on the radio.

minikomi5• 14 years ago

I miss radio in Australia a lot now that I'm in Japan - the stations here are terrible (at least in the daytime)..

Adelaide, where I used to live, has only a population of 1.2 million and had three(!) quite active community stations (subscribers pay a good deal of the cost + a little advertizing, the shows are staffed by volunteers..)

http://radio.adelaide.edu.au/ http://www.threedradio.com/ http://fresh927.com.au/

joshuahedlund• 14 years ago

Radio in the US is dying, but anyone who thinks it's dead is in a bubble outside mainstream culture. Yes it's easier than ever before to become famous without radio, and artists with no radio play more frequently top the album sales charts, but just look at the iTunes single charts to see the continuing dominance of radio. 99% of the time the top 10 singles are all over pop/hip-hop/top 40 radio, and it's almost impossible to outsell those kinds of acts without the radio. Even the top-selling albums are still mostly driven by radio play (though increasingly less so).

jpdoctor• 14 years ago

He should write a song about it. Here are some suggested lyrics:

  Hey hey, my my,
  Piracy will never die,
  There's more to the torrent
  Than meets the eye,
  Hey hey, my my.

Craiggybear• 14 years ago

Its an interesting viewpoint, and one that is probably very true.

People often hear pirated material and like it so much they immediately purchase it. Not only that one album, but even sometimes substantial amounts of the artist's back catalogue. Which was and still is kind of the point with music radio.

Same with movies.

I wonder how much cash piracy actually generates as substantial income -- quite a bit I believe. And probably more than it denies. Quite a lot of people are exposed to material they would never have encountered, like it and pay up for it.

Neil Young is right — piracy is the new radio

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