It is easy to agree with Janis Ians attack on the major record labels. In many ways, perhaps most, they are not really the friends of the music world, either to its exponents or to its audience. (To the businesses that feed off it, maybe.) But it cant be good that even these giants are losing billions to piracy and illicit downloading.
My views on how those lost billions could have been spent in rewarding composers, songwriters and performers and investing in expanding the musical horizons and raising the expectations of listeners might be different from theirs, but that is another issue. That money is being lost is certain.
Furthermore, while I can see that the current generation of music collectors might wish to purchase a shop copy of what they have downloaded, with art work and other trimmings, I suspect that it is the last generation who will. Do we want to be creating a situation for the future in which the accepted model for acquisition of desired audio tracks is theft?
Janis (Id like to call her Janis from now on after all Ive been listening to and enjoying her work since I first bought the LP Between the Lines rather a long time ago ) makes a persuasive case for the global and inexpensive exposure of her new material on the Internet. I suspect that for lesser-known musicians, however, sooner or later one is going to need to pay some digital shop-window to display the wares simply because there is otherwise far too much available for a customer ever to find exactly what they want.
But again, having found the product, wouldnt the preferable scenario be a simple and properly costed download sale rather than a free copy? After all, someone has to pay the costs of making the music in the first place, and getting it onto the web as a recorded item.
Moreover, shouldnt it actually be the choice of the legitimate owner of the material whether they want it copied or not? Or is simple posting on the net meant to indicate help yourself? No Internet shop could survive with a policy like that. After all, I dont think that Napster carried credits to Janis, signposts to her site, details about other work and suggestions that people buy copies.
Water music
The most damaging aspect of illegal download, however, is probably the indirect erosion of respect for copyright which it encourages. Now, Ive never been totally sure that copyright is the best system for paying creators of intellectual property for their work in proportion to its commercial value. But, right now, I cant think of a better one.
Ive always believed that music itself is free. It comes freely to the composer who freely passes it on, via a performer, to a listener. That way the circle is complete and all are nourished. Water also is free: it comes with the creation. However, if you want water that is available when and where it suits you, water that is pure enough to drink and clean enough to use, someone is going to need to pay the price of having the pipes in place and properly maintained. That means that the musical infrastructure needs a return on its investment.
But the story doesnt end there. For each piece of music is new and different, more like hidden spring water which must be found by a skilled diviner. And if you want those music diviners the composers and songwriters around to keep the new music flowing, let them earn from their work. So, while society as a whole has responsibilities to make sure that basic needs are met in the case of water, isnt the best person to pay for the choice of listening material the one who turns on the tap: the listener? Certainly it shouldnt be the artist who is finding and refining and presenting the wonderful stuff in the first place.
I admit to being enough of a starry-eyed artist not really to care deep down whether copyright is good for business. But I am a professional composer, and I need to earn from my work in order to pay my bills and do what I want to do, which is to keep on writing music. Copyright protects my material, allows for a more-or-less efficient system for payments when people want to play or hear it and entitles me also to benefit from the fact that, somewhere along the line, someone who is business-minded is charging the consumer for my product - or using it as a freebie to get that customer into their shop.
