NPR Intern Gets an Earful After Blogging About 11,000 Songs

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/npr-intern-gets-an-earful-after-blogging-about-11000-songs-almost-none-paid-for/

by danso • 14 years ago

28 93 14 years ago

mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com

rhizome9• 14 years ago

Once again, killing (or at least assaulting) the messenger.

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

I don't actually see it that way. Admittedly, there is always some gray area when it comes to Intellectual Property, but, in this case, the intern's behavior was just disgraceful. Stealing is stealing. Ever since reasonably priced alternatives (iTunes and Amazon) of non-drm content in flexible packaging (per song purchasing) became available - music listeners have no excuse for stealing music.

I.E. This might have been excusable behavior in 1997-2009, but starting January 6, 2009 (The day Apple removed DRM from iTunes), the rationale for stealing music effectively disappeared.

Now, Game of Thrones torrentors on the other hand....

w-ll• 14 years ago

>Ever since reasonably priced alternatives (iTunes and Amazon) of non-drm content in flexible packaging (per song purchasing) became available - music listeners have no excuse for stealing music.

That's subjective, if it were really the case we wouldn't be talking about it now.

ctrlfrk3• 14 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but songs are 99c on iTunes? Is it reasonable to expect a 20 year old intern to drop almost $11,000 on songs? It would seem being a music lover is an expensive hobby.

zheng• 14 years ago

Here's my issues with this line of thought. For one, why is 99c considered "reasonable" for a song? I feel as though this price point has little to do with the economics of the song-making business and a lot to do with the economics of iTunes/etc. Secondly, what is "convenient"? Why is iTunes downloading convenient, but watching GoT on HBO's online service not? I'm not saying they are equal, I think iTunes is easier, but why does the line fall in between them? Basically, the writer in question thinks the line still falls on the other side of iTunes, so why does that make their behavior disgraceful?

_delirium2• 14 years ago

Except this article has nothing to do with stealing...

andreasvc• 14 years ago

Copying is not stealing. As said in the article, the files were not obtained by illegal means, just passed around, so I think your "disgraceful" is too strong.

te_chris2• 14 years ago

They still don't offer lossless, so there's one rationale right there.

While it's oh so easy to claim a moral high ground on this there are still things in the market which could be easily offered (ALAC downloads in the iTunes store, for example) but aren't. As such, I use spotify premium for day to day, but if I'm buying music, it's lossless or nothing. I'm not paying the same price for a CD for a worse experience. That is not value.

tptacek20• 14 years ago

Oh, boy, these threads are going to be a whole bucket of fun. 200-odd commenters competing to see who can most stridently express opposition to the copyright/royalty/license business model of mainstream music, and 5 of us getting yelled at for suggesting that maybe private businesses should be able to pick their own business models, even if they're completely idiotic, and that everyone has the right to simply not buy music provided under business models they find objectionable.

But I'm sure the whole thing will wrap up nicely with Hacker News solving the problem of digital music sales once and for all.

(I didn't flag; the articles themselves are interesting, even if I utterly despair for the quality of debate they'll inspire here.)

JoshTriplett6• 14 years ago

You forgot the half-dozen people making meta-complaints about the views they'd like to see expressed on HN and the views they'd like to see silenced. :)

kiba• 14 years ago

Nation-states have the right to pick completely idiotic policies(even if the consequence are horrific) and we citizens have the right to move with our feet(Not so easy with immigration laws)?

In truth, I am kinda bored by these debate. They repeat themselves ad nauseam every time we have them. I wish we see new arguments for a change.

lomegor• 14 years ago

You do realize that by expressing your opinion you opened yourself to the discussion? And I do want to refute your point: some of us do not believe that these private businesses own the culture they or their artists create, and that society has inherent rights to their consumption and distribution.

tikhonj4• 14 years ago

Oh yes, I should be able to pick my own business model! What fun. I know: I'll just pay old investors with new investors' money. That may be completely idiotic, but it works. After all, nobody has to invest in my venture! There's always some risk in any investment, so it's only fair.

Now, I'm definitely being too glib. But I think you are as well: it's a complicated issue, and simplifying it down to your view while being almost unbearably condescending helps nobody.

tptacek20• 14 years ago

The problem with your message isn't that it's glib; it's that it isn't logical. "Just pay old investors with new investors" isn't a business model (it is, obviously, the definition of a Ponzi Scheme). "Pay a licensing fee for XXX" is.

falling• 14 years ago

pg may well say that HN has not become Reddit, but it has.

(yes, my account is less than a year old but this is a fresh start, my other account is 6x older)

tikhonj4• 14 years ago

I think you only say this because you haven't seen reddit any time recently or you've only looked at a select few sub-reddits.

Perhaps HN is closer to something like /. now, but I don't mind that. But it is really nothing like reddit (or at least reddit's front page).

natmaster0• 14 years ago

They're idiotic because they are not enforceable. It's their own fault for thinking they won't get copied.

rhizome9• 14 years ago

By the same token, private businesses who pick their own business models, especially when they all pick the same one, shouldn't be surprised when those models provide, shall we say, less than perfect coverage of the market.

Not only that, but this story is a perfect illustration of someone who has exercised their right to simply not buy music provided under these models. She has a right to this just as much as rightsholders have a right to feed a market failure by not being reasonable in adapting their business models to reality.

tptacek20• 14 years ago

You know what else provides less than perfect coverage? Pin-tumbler locks. Should we stop prosecuting breaking and entering?

maxko87• 14 years ago

Just curious, how does she have 15gb of "legally downloaded" music that she didn't pay for?

samspot• 14 years ago

She didn't say it was legally downloaded, she said it was not illegally downloaded. Meaning she got it from a source other than downloading it.

fadr• 14 years ago

She does not say that those 15gb where "legally downloaded". They where copied to her iPod by a friend. She also ripped CDs and copied music from other sources, which are not categorized as "illegally downloaded". Seemingly "illegal downloading", in her eyes, is only done via file-sharing networks.

_delirium2• 14 years ago

I assume she means that she didn't download it, but copied from a friend or similar. And, the law is a bit inconsistent on whether that's legal, since it depends strangely enough on what technology you use to do the copying, which may be leading to some confusion.

Copying music on analog media for personal use from a friend is fair use, under the Audio Home Recording Act; in return, the music industry gets a kickback from every blank tape sold to compensate them. However, the AHRA does not apply (in either the fair-use or kickback portions) to copying music from a friend for personal use onto your iPod. It's not clear very many people who aren't specialists understand that home-taping is legal but home-iPodding isn't...

milesskorpen• 14 years ago

I think people don't get what "legal" really means. It seems comparable to all illegally-uploaded YouTube videos with "I don't intend to violate copyright" messages, which the posters seems to think exempts them from the law.

The utter disconnect between actual behavior and what is dictated by law is rather problematic. Seems like some compromise is necessary.

rhizome9• 14 years ago

Because it's not currently illegal to download.

JAMan• 14 years ago

I have one question for everyone: who cares?

mattmanser2• 14 years ago

The girl herself cares and is naively lamenting about it while not realising her lack of perspective is part of the problem. It's the whole point of the article you dum-dum.

Read before you comment.

mhb• 14 years ago

"...what she really wants is simply to pay to subscribe to “one massive Spotify-like catalog of music that will sync to my phone and various home entertainment devices...”

Isn't that what Rhapsody is?

smspence• 14 years ago

Pretty much. And isn't that what Spotify is? or is it implied that Spotify doesn't have a library as big as she wants?

Lately, I have been listening to Slacker Radio with a Premium account ($10/month), and it is very much like Spotify and/or Rhapsody, and I have been pretty impressed with how big the library of music is that can be played on-demand.

mattmanser2• 14 years ago

Don't get musicians started on spotify, it's terrible for artists.

rhizome9• 14 years ago

It's not implied, it's explicitly defined as part of their business model. Spotify's tagline for their catalog is "something for everyone." "Something," not everything, means it's a limited selection.

nerdfiles2• 14 years ago

All the same, as consumers we are being punished for either (1) desiring and getting music in the means most convenient and historically accessible to us or (2) desire and getting technology in the means most convenient and historically accessible to us.

The historical, political, and mercantile lines draw behind the scenes is a theatre we are not privvy to. Pulling the card "you're actually supporting the big wigs of tech and the cost of the big wigs of music" all to make the point that the big wigs of music could enable artisans assumes that artisans themselves trust and believe in the music industry.

The point I want to make here is that all of this is heavily historical. We're to simply overlook our desires, aforementioned, because of historical and political threads which largely interplay outside of our control? I mean to suggest that, in a sense, reprimanding anyone for jumping onto these historical presentations of music and technology seems like reprimanding one for not staying inside because it _might_ rain, or because aliens might attack. Whether they do or not is a fact of the matter, but should we await for Apple, RIAA, etc. to play their course while they continue to tantalize and bombard us with all sorts of "technology"?

One obvious point is that _that is difficult_. The growing philosophical trend of the counter-culture is this: Hey! Musicians were still making a living out of their music _before_ technology put any of us into this mess!

briandear3• 14 years ago

Spoken like a true intellectual. Historically people have stolen photographs and graphics to use on their web pages. Is that cool? Image if someone just ripped off one of your client's advertising slogans and used the same design to sell their products. All's fair when digital right?

This "historical" argument is the same argument that people use to explain all manner of social ills. It's a cop out. It was wrong historically to steal and it's wrong now. People have a personal responsibility, it isn't societies fault that this girl is a thief.

nerdfiles2• 14 years ago

I'm suggesting the new departure, a new form of problem is this: casually, it is her fault, but this is irrelevant to responsibility. Responsibility involves a conscious acknowledgement of the world around you, and one is at fault, personally, for a lack of consciousness of that world. However, what is the problematic is the presentation of (1) and (2). Independently, they are harmless. We should consume as much music and as much technology as we can, but whether their political, historical and mercantile threads interweave, we are face with a problematic.

I take a majority of this way of thinking from Alain Badiou: the truth procedures of music and the truth procedures of science. What is most interesting to me is that a truth procedure of polity is _seemingly_ determined by the historical presentation of file sharing software and music. I should hope that my arguments do not justify theft, though I may be led astray by my own constructions of thought. But what I am most concerned here is with White's role played as a militant, within the political theatre of piracy; by Badiou, she would be considered a "militant of truth" I believe. One who compels who to witness a "rupture" of the system which _presents_ such a militant. Her superior's condemnation, to me, presents something that might be expected: that we should be compelled by a _person_ to deal with these abstractions which have happened upon our political drama.

People do have a personal responsibility, but at the same time, "personal responsibility" is a function of an social structure. I do not mean to address any "casual" but rather "semantic" description of this "responsibility." What connections (political, historical, etc.) immediately can be drawn from our _decision_ (rather than hypothesis or principle) that White is "wrong"? One conclusion is "education"; but one problem is that a society may very well believe that stealing is "right," like ours. How _might_ one present a counter-indoctrination? From their perspective, this may be how it is presented. We have had decades to mature the ideologies, I believe we are now at a time where we must accept that fact. Some of these ideologies are inherently confrontational. Calling it theft does not entail that any particular action should follow, so it seems that in the absence of one, we might inevitably decide, produce such a _decision_, what those actions should be. I should hope that I am prompting such a discussion.

It _is_ theft. But it is theft born out of a period that allowed dogmatisim to mature.

Codhisattva3• 14 years ago

For a much better post than the skimpy NYT rehash see :

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emi...

tptacek20• 14 years ago

David Lowery (the former lead singer of Cracker [of "Low" fame from the early '90s] and Camper Van Beethoven [of "Take The Skinheads Bowling" fame from the '80s), the guy who wrote the page at the link you posted, took up this issue a few months ago to great effect, complete with numbers, and we kind of discussed it then a little:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850935

pdeuchler6• 14 years ago

Put morality aside for a second.

The market has clearly dictated they will not support the business practices of the major record labels, and have instead resorted to alternate ways of obtaining their music. The record labels must adapt, or they will fall[1]. Econ 101. You can debate morality until the cows come home, but that's not going to change these simple facts.

[1]Ignoring possible government interference

tptacek20• 14 years ago

It's not "the market" when the new channel is based on ignoring contacts and copyrights, any more than it's "the market" that would be acting if I went to my local library, scanned all the books, and then resold them at "Bookio.com".

pdeuchler6• 14 years ago

I'm no economist, but AFAIK market forces are defined by the way people buy/sell goods.

Your analogy fails to draw a parallel since you have only one side, the seller. Also, you're talking about reselling here, where the main debate is the sharing of music.

However I fail to realize where you deny this is "the market". Consumers are making their demands known by pursuing alternative ways of obtaining a good. Seems pretty market-y to me, regardless of the means.

guelo• 14 years ago

It's not what you as an individual might do that defines "the market" that pdeuchler refers to, it's how the majority of customers behave. If everybody was doing a lot of book scanning and freely sharing copies book publishers would have to find new business models or perish. If customers don't behave in a way that supports your business model, and you can't talk them into changing their behavior, you need to find a new business model.

earbitscom• 14 years ago

While adaptation might be necessary, to say debating this topic can't change the future is inaccurate. I have this debate with plenty of people, and I know at least a few who have changed their behavior as a result. Educating people about the consequences of their actions is important, even when it seems like it has little impact.

pdeuchler6• 14 years ago

I'm not discouraging debate. I'm simply saying that arguing morality will fail to sway market forces, and the fact that record labels believe in the exact opposite is foolish, and bordering on ignorant. The record labels can stand on the side of "good" until they go bankrupt. Pyrrhic victories do nothing for the bottom line.

leot2• 14 years ago

Let's say that a musician goes $50k in debt making an album. They are now given a choice: would you rather be listened to by 50 million people and get no immediate money, or by 10k people and be quickly made whole?

Which do you suppose they'd choose?

The fact is that celebrity, attention, and "coolness" are more than enough reward for most aspiring musicians.

Anyone who gets famous by giving their art away has been more than fairly rewarded for their work. Evidence for this comes from the 10k+ ultra-capable undiscovered who would happily pay to take this artist's place.

[Edit: I write this as someone who has earned good money through music, and thus I'm not sure what is being objected to, here. It is plainly true that fame brings instantaneous massive rewards and significant potential to earn more, later. It is also plainly true that even in the current "bad" economic environment for music, millions of people spend 10s of millions of hours each week writing, rehearsing, and performing. Clearly, the motivations are not primarily monetary.]

tptacek20• 14 years ago

Unless the band you create is called Sparklehorse, and you're considered an indie-musician's indie-musician, and you collaborate with PJ Harvey and Tom Waits and Danger Mouse and James Mercer, and tour with Radiohead, and end up destitute living out of your old recording studio too in hock to hospitals to pay for mental health care and then shoot yourself in the chest.

On the plus side: now you're extra famous.

leot2• 14 years ago

Isn't this more an indictment of the U.S. social safety net than it is of the economics of music performance?

And, am I to conclude from your statement that, in fact, all artists who are as good as Sparklehorse are entitled to sufficiently remunerative compensation, in addition to their fame and prestige?

Cd00d• 14 years ago

Two initial reactions: 1) with the current state of iTunes and Amazon downloads, it seems easier, safer, more legal, and more supportive to buy songs, instead of relying on P2P. You can't claim to be a music lover with 15 GB of free music, IMHO - you're only a collector without commitment.

2) She claims that the music wasn't illegally downloaded, implying to me that she trades legally purchased copies with friends. Since she's only purchase 15 albums worth, I'd claim she's a leach to her friends, as that seems really uneven an exchange.

I dunno. I'm older now, and selectively downloaded free music when I was younger and poorer. I never wanted to collect hundreds of albums I would never get around to listening to, so even in the Napster heyday, my collection didn't explode like others. Now I buy my music, but I don't know if that's because iTunes removed the ethical dilemma for me, or because I have more cash and maturity.

Though these days, I seem to only listen to podcasts.

NPR Intern Gets an Earful After Blogging About 11,000 Songs

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