Why is piracy good for the majority artists?

Why is piracy good for the majority artists? – explained in less then 5 minutes (less then it will take to download the new cool album you heard of)

It seems to be be an endless discussion that I have from time to time with friends or random people I meet, usually people who are file sharing themselves, and sometimes even musicians. A big part of them think that piracy is bad, somehow, they don t always know exactly why, but it seems to feel like stealing or something else which is considered wrong and unmoral to do. I am a musician myself and I am very confident as an artists (and from a business perspective as well) that ‘piracy’ and digitization will be  beneficial for everyone:  music lovers, musicians and the music business.

Keep it short – keep it simple
To not make you spend more then 5 minutes to understand why, I will simplify this post, if you want to ask,discuss or go deeper into this, do so by posting stuff on my blog www.futuremusicbusiness.com or by mail info@futuremusicbusiness.com

Facts 1. It was never easier and cheaper to record, to distribute and to find the people, who like my music.

2. It is easy and cheap to stay in touch with these people who like my music. I can send them a newsletter, can inform them about shows and can sell them stuff like music, merchandise, tickets and others ‘direct’ to them. All I need is a myspace or an email.
(Well you need access to the internet first, which 60 % of  households in EU have. ( source )

3. People connect  through music and they are building networks around their taste of music. These networks are the new taste makers and are becoming more and more relevant. They are a good, efficient way to promote my music and to find new exciting music – and they are (much more) open and access able – and they are ‘free’.

4. There are nearly no technical borders to listen to music in every second of my day. The computer is the No1 device to listen to music and music is floating in the streets as well – in peoples mp3-players, phones and other devices. The next development will be that these devices will be ‘charged’ with new music on the go (on the fly), e.g. while you are waiting for your bus – everywhere, wireless.  This means the demand for music went up and will go up even more.

5.The markets/businesses around music like merchandise and concerts are overall stable and growing.

Morality Vs morality Vs ? The digital age forces change, music in a digital format and the ability of every computer to copy music makes people think – “why should I walk to the store and pay with money I don’t have or pay a price which isn’t worth it , when I just can do it here and now and free?”

The major record companies aren’t able (yet) to adapt to this new models of consumption and to these new markets around music because of their mindset – they want to control the copy – but this attend is like trying to control the printing of money when everyone has the facilities to print money at home in the same quality like a bank. Money would be worth nothing!  The only weapon they have is the morality and making use of the good will from people, who want to support the artists they like.
In discussions people often say “if everyone is downloading music for free, musicians are not gonna make a dime!”. Well just have a look on the pre-Napster-filesharing situation. The majority of musicians didn’t see a penny even when their album was selling well. There never was big money in cd sales for most of the musicians, so what actually should get worse?

See what Bender is saying -
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‘Piracy’ and promotion – how a low-budget movie came to success through filesharing – Interview with Richard Schenkman

The Man from Earth is a 2007 independent film written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Richard Schenkman. In what may be an unprecedented move, the producer of this film, Eric D. Wilkinson, has publicly thanked users of BitTorrent who have distributed the movie without express permission, saying that it has lifted the profile of this product far beyond the financier’s expectations.

The director Richard Schenkman, who “always wanted to make films” since he was a small boy wrote me, that he wants “people to see the film any way they can”. The movie was mainly financed out of the filmmakers pockets and the pockets of their friends and families, which shows the importance and risk someone is willing to take to realise his vision. (creative drive)
The business plan for Man from Earth was on the idea that the movie would go straight to DVD and hopefully sell to television as well.      –                        Richard Schenkman

“We never thought much about piracy, or illegal downloads, except to assume
that some of it would happen. We never thought it would get this big, with
well over 10,000 people having downloaded the film” says Schenkman and adds

“My feeling all along has been, “There’s really not much you can do about this, so there’s no point in stressing out about it.” Naturally, since I have so much of my own money invested in the film, I’m anxious about recouping the entire budget, and people taking the movie without paying for it certainly
doesn’t help that process.”

—

Scene from “Man from earth”

It looks like the theory that attention is the key for revenues proves itself right in this case, just imagine how many people would have heard about the movie if it would not be available in P2Ps. People loved the movie and told others, blogged about it, rated it on the internet movie data base on no.1 for indipendent and for sci-fi movies (its still on no 24 of best sci-fi movies ever today check here)

But still like everytime when artists/creative content creators set up a paypal account and ask for donations, the numbers of people, who downloaded the movie and people who donated break up. People not donating doesn t necessarily mean they don t value it.

“We garnered an enormous amount of publicity which
we probably would not have otherwise. Will that publicity translate into
greater sales, or a faster break-even, or an easier time making our next film? I
have absolutely no idea.”

Links to the movie -
official website
wikipedia
discussion on rlslog
BUY DVD at
Amazon