To a Mother Concerned About File-Sharing

The folks over at the excellent website musicianswages.com have invited musicians and bloggers to participate in a discussion on file-sharing. I thought I'd lend my voice to the discussion.

First of all, I don't think that musicians are really in the business of selling music. Musicians make music and do whatever they can to eat and take care of their families while they make music, which by its nature takes up a lot of time. At one point, like others have pointed out, people made money by selling their sheet music, and before that, it seems like musicians were supported by patrons. The technology to make and control the distribution records is relatively new and, from our current vantage point, possibly short-lived. The days of musicians living solely off of record sales are probably over.

Theory and morality aside, there are some real-world implications of file-sharing and downloading. The sites and software used to host and distribute illegal content are plagued with viruses. If your son is visiting those sites, don't use the computer to access your bank account.

I think the most practical argument for legal downloads right now is simply that they don't open your computer to infection. Unless you're comfortable with donating phone cards to somebody in Dubai (true story, unfortunately), you should really be careful about how your computer is being used. Had the music industry been quicker on its feet with technology, this might not have been the case, but the Internet is in its "wild west" days, and that's what we have to work with.

From a moral standpoint, I take issue with everyone calling illegal file-sharing "piracy." It's more than a little self-serving. Since when is the unstoppable flow of music from one listener to another piracy? An industry built on appropriating freely shared folk songs from poor people should hardly be allowed to frame the debate in such terms. This is the same industry that has, for the last 70 years, put extravagance and wealth before art, treating the insatiable musical curiosity of teenagers as "market share", and charging restaurant owners ransom for allowing waiters to sing songs in the public domain. In moral terms I reject the idea that music listeners owe the music industry anything.

There is a fundamental shift occurring in the entire model of how music is made, distributed, and listened to. In the very recent past, the knowledge of recording was limited to a relatively small group of people. With that came the benefits of working in a studio, including the rich composition possibilities that come with recording as you write. Now, recording is more like learning an instrument - it's cheap enough that you can afford to dabble in it, but with practice, study, and some good ideas, there are no limits on the creative potential.

Likewise, the free flow of music from creator to listener is huge. I've played the trombone for 15 years, but only really started to get good when I started listening to recordings of trombone players, which are not necessarily easy for a 14 year old to get a hold of, or afford. Now I am intimately familiar with many obscure classical records, which never would have happened if the only way to hear them was to drop $18 on a CD.

All of this, for me, comes down to the fact that a teenager who is really interested in music is going to find it, whether that means biking to a record store, holding a cassette recorder up to the TV during music videos, or firing up Pirate Bay and pulling down Springsteen's entire back catalog.

I think that's something that everyone in the music industry should embrace and create a realistic, cool way to make that music available and charge a reasonable price. Rhapsody's fee-based model for instance, which is closer to say, Netflix than Best Buy, is probably a step in the right direction. Soon, wireless networks will be completely integrated into mp3 players, and its connection to the Internet will create an unlimited super-radio. Someone is going to make a lot of money on it. Whether or not it's the music industry is up to them.