Elton and Lily Say Filesharing Is ‘Not Alright’!
Elton John has come out in support of Lily Allen’s stance on filesharing:
In a letter to the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, he said: “I am of the view that the unchecked proliferation of illegal downloading (even on a “non-commercial” basis) will have a seriously detrimental effect on musicians, and particularly young musicians and those composers who are not performing artists.”
The letter comes as talks to heal a growing rift in the music industry over piracy broke down today , with a group of artists including Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, Billy Bragg and Tom Jones accusing labels of stubbornness.
The artists are part of the Featured Artists Coalition, whose members also include Annie Lennox and Blur’s Dave Rowntree. The FAC took the rest of the music industry by surprise by publicly announcing that it has “agreed to disagree” with labels over government proposals to suspend the internet connections of persistent filesharers.
I’d love for one of these mega-artists to prove just how filesharing has a detrimental effect on musicians. Taio Cruz, currently number 1 in the UK says:
“I could have been dropped from my record deal because so much was spent and so much of my album was leaked and not paid for. But luckily my label had great belief in me. File-sharing has had a very, very negative effect on my career, as it has on many others.”
He added: “I think it’s very positive to see that other artists, along with the government, are coming together to defend the right to protect our art.”
This is all hyperbole and no fact. The Wolverine movie was widely leaked before its cinema release, but the leak to p2p services made no impact to its takings. In fact considering how awful a movie it turned out to be, it was shocking that its leak had no financial impact. How on earth has Cruz’s album being leaked had a negative effect on his career? How can Elton say sharing music has a ‘detrimental effect’? Lily Allen says:
The music industry is now facing destruction because people have stopped buying music. For every car sold in the UK , a small piece of that profit will go to the designers of the cars, there are thousands ands thousands of other people working in the motor industry that need to be paid too. If we stop paying for a product, the industry supporting that product falls apart, as we have seen over the past few years. i hope that made sense….
Well sorta, but I don’t think the comparison is a valid one. Unless she can prove that the downturn in music sales is uniquely down to filesharing, there’s no reason why the downturn in the music industry hasn’t been down to a period of terribly bad product being made. And she can’t. And neither she nor Elton has attempted to come up with a credible justification as to why the government should be able to terminate households’ internet connections for what is overwhelmingly a civil offence. Maybe they should take their blinkers off and start encouraging their colleagues to make better music, just to see what happens!
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I think there’s a definite difference between films and music when it comes to downloada – especially in respect of the big releases.
Put simply, an event movie can only really be enjoyed at the cinema and people who would be inclined to watch it properly will go and buy a ticket regardless of what they may have dowloaded. Watching films is also a communal activity, and most people seem to appreciate that the audiene is part of the experience.
Music is a different beast altogether – for the vast majority of music consumers, listening to music is a solitary act, done through headphones and currently using a portable machine playing an MP3 file – ultimately no added value is derived from buying a legal copy. I am old enough to prefer to acquire my music collection in physical form, as a CD with a printed cover and booklet in a jewel case. Even so, on getting the CD home I rip it to MP3 and the the CD is most likely never played again (and even that one play was at high ripping speeds, rather than to listen to). I don’t even actually own a dedicated CD player at present, using my DVD player output through my home cinema system for the very rare occasions when I play CDs. My DVD player is also capable of playing DivX films usually collected through file sharing systems.
Furthermore, while some movies do generate dedicated fanbases, most are only ever watched once or twice – even DVDs are very rarely watched with any frequency. Music, on the other hand, is generally sold on the principle that a sing or album will be listened to over and again. I know that I’m not alone in thinking that, in my own little world, I have less trouble with the idea of downloading a ripped movie which I know I will watch once and delete, whereas I’m likely to listen to an album several times before I’ve even made up my mind that I like it! On the other hand, downloading a movie in any kind of viewable resolution will probably take at least a couple of hours. An album will be transferred in under five minutes, and a single track in less time than it will take to listen to it!
On the question of economics, there is also a separate issue that we’re all aware that commercially successful music will be played on legal radio stations who will pay relevant royalty fees to those responsible and so the artists will not be entirely out of pocket – movies might get sold to TV stations and the studios factor such sales into their budgets, but how much of that cash actually filters down to the artists concerned who (apart from mega-stars) were paid to appear and that’s it.
Anyway, all of that isn’t really a proposition to move the debate you’ve tried to create in any specific direction, just to add a whole new series of elements which make the topic even more contentious and difficult to talk about!
And I’m grateful for the comment!
I think it’s worth pointing out that I’m not advocating piracy. I buy all my music from iTunes (79p really isn’t much); I watch all my films at the cinema (£13.50 for as many films as I like in a month is peanuts). I do know people who barely touch the cinema anymore because they download most of what’s out there and then don’t catch it at the cinema – whilst I don’t consider that theft (as mentioned in the article), it’s certainly bypassing what to me seems a largely fair means of revenue collection. As you say how much of my hard earned makes it to the people who actually made the film? I don’t know – a dedicated file sharer would probably argue my consumer habits benefit iTunes and Cineworld most, but then of course their behaviour can too. What if I download the Sugababes’ new album just to check out if I like it? Studies show people with the ability to try before they buy invariably do by, and it’s notable that people like Elton and Lily don’t have figures to hand to prove otherwise.
You make a great point in splitting the different media up into the differing reasons why they may be illegally downloaded, and as the Featured Artists Coalition accepts, it’s impossible to put the genie back into the bottle. Shutting households’ internet connections down entirely is an asinine way to respond to the fears (legitimate or otherwise) of the music and film industries (haven’t even touched TV yet). Technology has again moved on, and as with recordable CDs and cassettes (tape and video) before them, creative industries haven’t died as a result. I think most people realise that a James Blunt or District 9 isn’t going to die financially as a result of some of their potential customers filesharing – word of mouth, sharing a love of music (or film, and I take your point about the different experience) and trying before buying are all important behavioural trends which the Barlows, Allens and Johns are failing to take into consideration, and which help their industry. And I’d love to see someone try to prove that cinema is dying because everyone who illegally downloads doesn’t then buy the DVD, watch it on paid cable or watch it in some cinema somewhere in the world.
Surely the issue is about scale. Kids sharing the latest media with friends and talking about them must be a good thing and can’t credibly face the sort of punishment Mandelson advocates. But artists should be paid fairly for what they do. I wonder whether large scale downloading would continue to flourish if the perception were there that rights holders (who in large measure are not the creators) made sure creators got their fair share. I ask: how has that perception changed over the last 25 years or so?
Hmm, interesting thoughts on your blog. However, I’m not sure I agree. If x = the total number of people who want the product (album, say), y = the number of these people who will use p2p to avoid paying for it, and p = the price, then it’s obvious that the new reality of (xp)-(yp) is going to provide less returns for the artist than the old xp model. This is not going to damage established millionaire artists whose real revenue is from sell-out stadium tours, but I believe it could negatively impact up-and-coming artists of potential. You’ve stated that you feel there is no proof that p2p has been responsible for lowering music sales, but I would ask you equally to prove your hypothesis that lowering music sales has been due to inferior product! Do you really think that all the young people for whom filesharing is the norm don’t really enjoy the music they download (ie because it is ‘rubbish’), and would not therefore have chosen to purchase it had filesharing not been an option? I find that very hard to believe! Lastly, and I’m genuinely interested here, why do you feel this is largely a civil offence?
Oops – didn’t mean that all to sound so confrontational! Sorry. But it definitely is an emotive issue….