Two-Sided Coin For Sure!
Jul 29 '00
I can honestly look myself in the mirror and call myself both a die-hard Metallica fan, and a newly established fan of this new digital music phenomenon called Napster.
I can do this because it's true. I've been listening to Metallica since way back in the garage playing days. I've heard every bootleg imaginable, and I've copied tracks from so many live concerts, you'd think at times, they were putting on a private performance in my own back yard. I love Metallica, and even when they went a little weird on me in the middle nineties, I stayed true to the Metallica mystique.
It's my respect and admiration for the group and everything they've done that makes me feel both nervous and a bit bitter all at the same time.
I'm nervous because I am also an artist. I'm a freelance writer struggling to get enough recognition to start pulling in the bigger writing contracts. It's not easy starting out, and as anyone in the same boat would know, it takes twice as much time and dedication to become big, than it does to stay big. I'm nervous that one day all my work will be all over the Internet for anyone to grab, reproduce and circulate as much as they want to, with zero restrictions. There may even come a day when they'll be making money off it, and there won't be a thing I, or any other artist can do about it.
In reality though, I don't think that's the future of Napster and digital music. As much as I agree with what Lars Ulrich and the RIAA are saying about the illegal trading of copyrighted materials, I don't think they are weighing the situation very well.
How can we forget that the music industry whined and complained about this very same thing back when the recordable cassettes came out? They said that soon everyone would be taping off each other and trading copies of the original tapes, leaving the industry and the artists without proper royalties. Certain music industry insiders went as far as to say that they industry would be greatly damaged by such acts, and that music sales would drop horrendously. I honestly didn't see that happen.
Metallica and RIAA are saying that Napster is costing them millions of dollars in record sales because they allow users to go online, and through a chain of servers, get pretty much any song they want from any album they want, from ANY artist they want. Maybe there are some people out there who are taking advantage of this system by building up super catalogs of every song known to mankind. Maybe they are selling them as bootlegs and making profits off them. Guess what? People have been bootlegging and breaking the law this way for decades.
The simple fact, and you can look all of this up in the statistics and sales inventory of all major stores, is that the music business is at the strongest it has ever been. I remember back about six years ago or so when Pearl Jam released VS. to the stores. They sold a RECORD AMOUNT in one week. It was something like 950,000 copies in one week alone. Britney Spears, N'Synch, The Backstreet Boys and Garth Brooks have all sold over 1 million in one week, and sometimes more than that. Album sales are SHATTERING records all over the map. There is no way the RIAA or Metallica can claim that digital music is hurting the business or the industry. Records, sales, inventory all show the exact opposite.
The music industry has been about control for more than four decades, and they can't stand to see someone else controlling the material they produce and craft. I really cannot blame thing, but then again, I would like to ask them how it feels to shoot themselves in the foot?
I can tell you of five incidences already, in which downloading material from Napster allowed me to decide upon purchasing an album from a certain artist. Those five times were Matchbox Twenty's new CD, Joan Baez, Pete Townshend's Live CD, and TWO, count them with me T...W...O...Metallica CDs. You heard me right. I downloaded several songs off the previously released double-CD from Metallica called Garage Inc. I liked the tracks so much, that I instantly shopped around online and picked the set up.
A real music fan won't just stop at downloading their favorite songs. They usually like to have the CD's in their collection. I want to have all my Pearl Jam CDs when I'm fifty. I want to look back at the art work, the lyrics and the pictures that went along with everything else they represented as a group.
The digital music world is giving people the chance to swap, check-out and listen to all sorts of new music. It's this type of marketing, the marketing done from mouth to ear that can be the greatest marketing tool the RIAA ever had. They need to shut up and think about how this industry could help them in the long run.
I remember listening to a tape over to a friend's house when I was younger. I liked it so much that I asked him to make me a copy of it. I took my new "pirated" copy of my tape home and listened to it over and over and over again until the darn thing was a mess of tape and plastic. About three months later, the same group came out with another album. I went to the store that day, and not only got the new album, but also picked up the old one that I had originally copied from my friend.
I want to leave this article with something I read off a website recently that made a lot of sense and helps to put this licensing thing into context. Please check this out as well....
I was in the pub last night, and a guy asked me for a light for his cigarette. I suddenly realized that there was a demand here and money to be made, and so I agreed to light his cigarette for 10 pence, but I didn't actually give him a light, I sold him a license to burn his cigarette. My fire-license restricted him from giving the light to anybody else, after all, that fire was my property. He was drunk, and dismissing me as a loony, but accepted my fire (and by implication the license which governed its use) anyway. Of course in a matter of minutes I noticed a friend of his asking him for a light and to my outrage he gave his cigarette to his friend and pirated my fire! I was furious, I started to make my way over to that side of the bar but to my added horror his friend then started to light other people's cigarettes left, right, and centre! Before long that whole side of the bar was enjoying MY fire without paying me anything. Enraged I went from person to person grabbing their cigarettes from their hands, throwing them to the ground, and stamping on them.
Strangely the door staff exhibited no respect for my property rights as they threw me out the door.
--Ian Clarke
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Epinions.com ID:
Kaurisma
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Member: Roland Geary
Location: Salisbury, MD
Reviews written: 44
Trusted by: 20 members
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