In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Butch (Paul Newman) sits astride his horse outside the same boxcar of the same train he’s successfully robbed over and over. Frustrated by the railroad owner’s ceaseless but futile attempts to thwart the hold-ups, Butch proclaims, “If he’d just pay me what he’s spending to make me stop robbing him, I’d stop robbing him!” Of course it isn’t true, is it? Neither the character nor probably the real Butch Cassidy would likely have given up the life he knew for something as boring as just money.
If you wanted to watch this classic film directed by George Roy Hill right now, you could do so on Netflix or Amazon Prime or rent it from iTunes for four bucks. None of these innovations existed just a few years ago, and those who have repeatedly insisted that they “only use pirate sites because affordable, flexible, online alternatives don’t exist” are starting to sound a little dumb. This is especially true as of yesterday, with the release of a new report by Dr. David Price of London-based NetNames, entitled Sizing the piracy universe.
This could get interesting. Digital Music News reports “The Xbox Music streaming service is venturing into iOS and Android platforms, as well as free internet streaming, with newly adorned with apps and features. The Web service will provide on-demand access to 30 million songs, with an ad-free subscription or ad-supported free use.”
What makes this even more interesting is that Microsoft appears to be paying more than any other streaming service that we know of (we don’t know what Itunes Radio is paying yet).
Since this is streaming money, there’s not a lot of it, but the rate is absolutely astounding: the latest statement pegs a stream at 3.6 cents. Yep, you read that right: several cents a pop. Traditionally, I’ll do a quick stream-to-download calculation which works out at 18 XBox Music streams to one iTunes download (both numbers for songs to which we own the entirety of rights, making CD Baby the only middle-man – they take a commission of 9% I believe).
It’s a sign of the times when we get excited by a per stream rate of 3.6 cents…
I don’t need a study to prove that search engines are an integral force in fueling online piracy, but since the piracy debate is awash in dueling studies I’ll happily chime in on the subject again.
Last week Google published a report–a characteristically self-congratulatory piece of fluff–declaring themselves to be a leader in the fight against piracy and that took great pains to deny the significance of “search” in maintaining the online pirate economy. The report repeated claims made in a recent study (published by a consortium of tech giants including Google) that it’s poor SEO techniques that are the problem–not search engines.
The amount of Internet bandwidth used to illegally download movies, TV shows, music, books and video games has jumped 160% since 2010, a study says.
Despite the growth of Netflix, Amazon.com and other legal channels for watching entertainment online, the volume of pirated movies, TV shows, music, books and video games online continues to grow at a rapid pace.
The amount of bandwidth used for copyright infringement in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific has grown nearly 160% from 2010 to 2012, accounting for 24% of total Internet bandwidth, according to a study from NetNames, the British brand protection firm.
At the same time, the number of people engaged in copyright infringement has grown dramatically too. In January2013, 327 million unique users illegally sought copyrighted content, generating 14 billion page views on websites focused on piracy, up 10% from November 2011, according to the report.
Claiming to be a “leader” in the fight against piracy is Google’s first mistake
This past week Google issued a report, “How Google Fights Piracy,” in which the tech giant attempts to explain what a great job it’s doing leading battle against online piracy. After reading it I think a more accurate title would be “Why Google Shouldn’t Have to Fight Piracy Because it Offers so Much Other Good Stuff.”
In an effort to burnish their tarnished image, the authors resort to repeating well-worn and disingenuous Google-spawned memes (which I’ve repeatedly deconstructed on this blog). These include:
* YouTube makes money for artists so there’s no need to provide a transparent accounting
* DMCA abuse is a considerable problem Search is “not a major driver of traffic to pirate sites”
* Google is committed to “rooting out and ejecting rogue sites” from AdSense
* Google quickly and efficiently terminates Blogger websites that feature pirated content
More and more artists, across more and more genres are recognizing the truth of the last decade. Musicians are more exploited and less empowered.
Classic Rock Revisited: The Internet changed a lot for the industry; piracy has certainly had a hand in changing the game. Do you think that piracy can be beneficial to some of those bands starting out? How has it affected you?
Yngwie: How could it possibly be positive? If you go into a store and you see a car that you like, you can’t just drive off with it. The cost and the blood and sweat and tears that go into making music is the same thing, it’s not free. Try telling the engineer and the producer that they have to work for free. It’s utterly bizarre. It’s like just going into a store and taking things off the shelves. It’s stealing. The reason there are no bands coming out now is that the money that was once there is not there anymore. So what happened was, in essence, by pirating music, you kill the music industry. The music industry died because of the piracy, and now all the fans will have no new music. Isn’t that wonderful? It’s a direct consequence of that.
Rene Summer posted the article “Stop treating symptoms and start curing diseases” on The Networked Society Blog where he re-hashed the same incorrect talking points that the internet industry “Merchants Of Doubt” have been trying to pedal for a while. As much as it may have been fair to make these arguments in 2003, it’s a more than a bit silly to propose the same talking points a decade later.
Rene writes:
This reliance on enforcement to protect old technologies (read physical distribution) and old business models is the root cause of the market-supply failure problem. It results in insufficient access to lawful digital content and its symptoms are illegal access. The causation works even the other way around increasing availability of lawful digital content also leads to decreased frequency in accessing illegal content.
The idea that there is a lack of new business models and legal distribution to address consumer habits of all kinds across many platforms is just as ridiculous coming from Rene as it was coming from Kim Dotcom earlier this year where it was also shown to be false.
The one thing that becomes clear is that all legal services have one major disadvantage, payment.
“It’s not that this participant is bad at math,” Juenger wrote. “This person did not want the pay-tv product, plain and simple.”
So let’s get honest about “business models” and recognize that there is a competitive advantage to companies who do not have to pay for the cost of goods and by extension, not pay the creators for their work.
Here’s our complete breakdown as originally posted in our response to Kim Dotcom. That’s some kind of company to keep Rene…
Kim Dotcom’s “End Of Piracy”, that was easy…
In the anticipation of the announcement of the new Mega launch, Pat Pilcher at The New Zealand Herald wrote an article titled “Kim Dotcom on Ending Piracy” in which the journalist listed Mr.Dotcom’s five steps to ending piracy. Pilcher writes,
As ironic as that may sound, Kim Dotcom’s logic is inescapably robust. Here’s what his end to piracy manifesto says:
1. Create great stuff 2. Make it easy to buy 3. Same day worldwide release 4. Fair price 5. Works on any device
Looking at what Kim is saying, the 5 points seem pretty obvious, although each could quickly get bogged down once Hollywood gets involved.
So let’s look at these one by one.
1. Create Great Stuff
Well, that’s a no brainer. The content industries create the most prized and sought after “stuff” in the world including films such as Avatar, The Avengers, and The Dark Night Rises as well as franchises like Iron Man, Transformers, Harry Potter and others. Music artists include the likes of Adele, The Black Keys, Taylor Swift, The Beatles and countless others. Making great stuff has never been a problem.
2. Make It Easy To Buy
Another no brainer. Perhaps a decade plus ago this might have been an argument, but not today. There are over 500 legal and licensed music services alone. For the film industry there are services like Netflix, Vudu and Cinemanow as well as other direct to home video on demand providers that give consumers more access to more content across more platforms than at any time in history.
3. Same Day World Wide Release
For music this is more less the standard now and is also more and more common for feature film releases as well. This is a common practice for the largest and most anticipated releases of music and films, the “stuff” that is the most aggressively pirated. For smaller indie releases this may not always be possible but than again I’m not sure that the problem we are combating is in Nigeria on indie rock albums and movies that are more or less film festival darlings.
4. Fair price
Done. Netflix is $7.99 a month for unlimited access to it’s entire library of films and tv shows. Spotify is $9.99 for unlimited access to it’s entire library which consist of probably 95% of every known recording in print. Add to this the cost of a song download is 99 cents. Less than the cost of a candy bar. Renting a movie from a video on demand service ranges from 3.99 to 5.99. Price is no longer an issue and has not been for years.
5. Works on Any Device
Music is DRM free and has been for at least half a decade. Streaming Services such as Netflix and Spotify are also available on every major platform including not only Mac and PC computers, but also mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets by a variety of manufacturers. Additionally most new video game consoles and blu-ray players also include many of these same apps.
Well there it is, RIANZ’s response in full. I can’t argue with much that they’ve said, as they’ve pretty much complied with most of Kim’s 5 points.
So Kim Dotcom’s five suggestions have been fulfilled and yet, I don’t think we’ll see an end to piracy anytime soon. There is still one thing piracy offers that legal, licensed and legitimate services do not, and that is compensation to the artists, musicians, filmmakers and creators which requires that consumers actually do pay the fair price asked.
It’s all pretty simple and by Kim Dotcom’s own suggestions and admission it’s pretty clear where the problem is from here on out, and it’s not in his five suggestions…
Guest post by Blake Morgan (copyright in the author)
Relativity Media and Google asked if I’d sit down and talk about my life in music, my new record, and the current battle being waged between musicians and Pandora that’s been garnering so many headlines. It was a terrific conversation that lasted almost two hours. Of course the piece they were looking to do was only going to be around five to eight minutes, and in the end it still turned out to be over 10 minutes long. But, there were a couple of points I felt were important beyond what was kept for the piece that I’d like to briefly underline here.
The first is that as big as the battle with Pandora is, the battle musicians are now saddled up for across the board is even bigger. Calling out Pandora on its unscrupulous double-talk to Congress and Wall Street, and fighting to get them to change their behavior is necessary and righteous. And I’m optimistic that in the long run that battle will get won. But we also have to keep our eyes on the prize: ending ad-funded piracy.
As long as the music world is bleeding revenue from the theft of our music (which in turn is sponsored by giant corporations that place ads right on the illegal download pages), the real problem won’t get solved. Our work, and our livelihoods will continue to be stolen right out from under us. Again, I’m optimistic, and I trust that we can focus on more than one righteous battle at a time. Both the important smaller one, and the over-reaching larger one.
Second, I wanted to just underline a whiff of good news in all this that I’ve been noticing. For the first time in this struggle, I’m seeing music lovers join music makers in our outrage. I’m getting letters and emails, messages, and tweets from music-loving people who are raising their own voices and saying, “I’m with you! I really understand this now…we want to get the music that matters to us, and we want you to get paid fairly.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people tell me this, and it’s in stark contrast to what I’ve heard over the last ten years.
So I’m not hopeful in a vacuum…I believe the consciousness is changing, and that there’s a great foundation to build on. There’s so much work to do, and little time to do it if we’re going to save the young musicians out there who are hoping in turn to be musicians as their profession.
You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.
The rights of songwriters are under attack. Pandora Media Inc., which controls 70% of the US streaming market, has launched an aggressive campaign to pay songwriters and composers less than a fair market share for their work – even as the company’s revenue and listener base has soared.
As songwriters and composers, we value the opportunities Pandora and other music streaming companies create for our music to reach new audiences. In return, we want Pandora to value our contribution to your business.
Right now, a song that is streamed on Pandora 1,000 times, earns the songwriter only 8 cents on average. And yet, Pandora is going to great lengths – even taking songwriters to court – to pay us even less.
Music drives Pandora’s business. If the company’s revenues keep getting larger, why should the rate it pays songwriters keep getting smaller?
Songwriters are not the enemy. Instead of fighting to pay music creators less than a fair market rate, join us in an effort to construct fair music licenses that allow songwriters and composers to thrive alongside the businesses that revolve around our music.
Songwriters deserve fair pay. If you agree, commit a tweet and help send this message to incoming Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews.
The Trichordist 
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