Friends like these make enemies redundant; alas, Hornby’s offhand attitude is hardly uncommon. And although ticket sales are to an extent making up for a dip in recorded music revenue, they don’t present a definitive solution, especially for musicians who are unable to tour.
 

The doomsayers blame the pirates. In Hornby’s native Britain, a study carried out this spring by the organization UK Music found that 61% of respondents aged 14 to 24 admitted to sharing music files on peer-to-peer networks, with no remuneration for anyone except the ISPs. Some, such as the Canadian Recording Industry Association (or CRIA), see this kind of behaviour as a disaster that must be stopped, others as an opportunity.
Significantly, UK Music’s study found that 85% of active young music file-sharers “would be interested in paying for an unlimited, all-you-can-eat mp3 downloading service.” Such a model is being proposed by the Songwriters Association of Canada, which advocates legalizing file-sharing based on a flat monthly fee, collected by ISPs and distributed among rightsholders (i.e., record labels, artists, songwriters/composers, and music publishers). Its initial proposal in October 2007 was lambasted in the press because it called for a mandatory levy on all Internet connections; now, it’s allowing that those who sign an agreement that they won’t share files should be able to opt out.

There are many advantages to this plan: It seeks to monetize rather than change a widespread behaviour; it would be convenient for consumers; it would likely encourage investment in infrastructure by ISPs who currently throttle peer-to-peer traffic because of the strain they say it puts on their networks; and it would create a pool of money that could give even non-touring musicians an income sufficient to constitute what Hornby might call a “proper job.”

SAC director Emm Gryner, who’s a singer, songwriter and owner of the boutique label Dead Daisy, avers, “it would be nice to see money that is unfortunately going to ISPs go to people who work very hard to create music. … At the very least, it might help to improve living costs and basic expenses involved with making music, which in its best times, is a life of ups and downs.”

That said, the model calls for those who have opted out but are “caught” file-sharing to pay a predetermined sum in damages. This raises the important question: Who will police the Internet and determine whether or not we are sharing, and how can they do so effectively?
 

The SAC’s executive director, Don Quarles, admits that the proposal is “not going to work unless we can convince the general public that this isn’t about getting your private information; it’s just about making sure we can track everything fairly.”
At this point, the proposal is big on

forward-thinking ideas but short on practical suggestions as to how to implement them. It does have an advantage over the openly punitive model put forth by the CRIA, whose lobbyists have sought to outnumber and out-shout dissenting voices in the current Canadian copyright consultations. They seek to cast a wider net, believing that they can eliminate file-sharing by threatening to cut off persistent sharers’ Internet connections, thus driving teenagers to existing online music stores.
The SAC’s proposal, while less negative, requires a great deal of co-operation from a large number of interested parties; the first of several discussions with various rights-holders is planned for this fall. By the time the proposal could be implemented and legislation passed to legalize file-sharing, it may even be too late to be effective. According to Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group in Vancouver: “They can legalize all they want; I think file-sharing within two or three years is gone.”
 

McBride, who comes across as a music-business Cassandra, points to the importance of Spotify, a service currently available in several countries in Europe. It’s much better organized and comprehensive than current peer-to-peer trackers, allowing users immediate access to millions of songs from many labels, both major and indie. Paid subscribers receive uninterrupted music feeds, while free users have to endure occasional ads.
This model isn’t great for, say, audiophile-friendly high-quality listening, but generally it does allow for portability and convenience. It also provides for a possible emancipation from our current fixation with ownership.
 

“Traditionally,” says McBride, “publishers and intellectual property owners tend to try and attach [value] to copyright versus access.” The piracy issue, he says, “has never been about owning tracks; it’s about having access to tracks. That’s where they’re completely missing this. They missed it 10 years ago, and hopefully they don’t miss it again.”
McBride’s view is sensible: After all, music doesn’t exist on shiny plastic discs, on vinyl, or in data files on computers - it comes into being only when it is being played by musicians or speakers and listened to. One can’t “own” or “steal” it - one can only have the means to play it.
Such services as Spotify and Rhapsody provide this means in a way that no one has ever had before. And yet, as for-profit businesses, they represent another corporate mouth to be fed, taking a further slice of the pie that needs to be distributed among current rightsholders. Moreover, Spotify has come under criticism from some musicians for the low royalty rates it currently offers; its founder, Daniel Ek, has responded that Spotify is the equivalent of radio rather than a downloading store - a musician can be paid multiple times for the same track being heard by the same person, but not at a rate anywhere near that of selling a music file online.
If a giant virtual jukebox were to replace our personal collections, it would be convenient for consumers and acceptable to labels, but would the trickle of revenue make the “proper job” model for musicians elusive? All we can do at this point is stay tuned.

Source: National Post