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Show BIZARRO Mj) name ifillersAel, I'll Share the files share the wealth CLOSE TO HOME fee tfffrgy your Amm etoMtohonMaeompuMrvt.com master this evening. Can I leny vjou a kwuorajyelizer to siOani With? tor" If, 1 1 :H A ".ili t'riafewr'"" Jf ' vMm By Sean Piccoll SOUTH FLORIDA X X That is a good song 11 worth? Legend has it I f that a young, broke Willie Nelson sold "Crazy one ," irfilj Before taking the big math test, Kevin warmed up d on his calculator with a finger doughnut one-poun- or WORSE Pupy anMemh have a list I UN ONE BIDE OF IHE I 18 8T0H VJS vMT IN A FOR BETTER OH.lEflH! -- 1 WAKT SOME- ONEWH0U. IKE, PwrrNrmTfie oiHert Soe is I NOT CKmCilB. I WANT H0NE3TV, n OtN W IOVE8 D0 OR "WW itfncty, I we're Huns ISI i I music tn 1HNST6- - I, w,,, UPommomevC rrvenmcoo. ir 1 of the first hits he ever penned, for somewhere between $50 and $150 to cover a bar tab or to buy groceries. The details change, but the point never does that someone acquired an eventual classic for, well, a song. Willie got paid, as every composer should for work that people enjoy. But considering how beloved "Crazy" would become with Patsy One's 1961 recording, in hindsight Willie also sold himself short. What he needed was the Internet. Don't laugh. For all the over music's migration into digital space, and the supposed folly of people swapping digitized tracks, there may be no better measure of a song's true worth than what happens to it once it gets online. Music executives want the average consumer to believe otherwise They are blaming a sharp downturn in album sales 20 percent in two years on file sharing. They say music is being stripped of its value by people trading album tracks free of charge over the Internet. Keep trading without paying, they warn, and the quality of available music will take a dive, too, because the economic incentives to produce albums will disappear. They also point out that file swapping is an illegal form of copying which is true. Every one of us violates federal copyright law when we send or grab a song on the Internet without the permission of the song's legal owner(s) and without paying. We were just as guilty making mix tapes on cassette, but the record industry learned to live with that offense. The record industry's lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), uses the phrase "Internet piracy" to describe file sharing. They compare swappers to the operators of pirate CD factories that make cheap copies of hot releases for black-marksale. The RIAA says piracy of all kinds drives as opposed to the up the cost value of music for the hand-wringi- zrrs ft PEANUTS I ; F WOODSTOCK i. WAS A LETTER, HTOBe FOURTH CLASS! 1 DILBERT EVIL H.R. DIRECTOR I'M SORRY, I CANT GIVE REFERENCES FOR BUTIFIDID.IT WOULD RHYrAE WITH -- IWYLORON.- g, v The value drops, by this view, because every unauthorized copy feeds an oversupply of something that nobody has to pay for any longer. On that trajectory, a song eventually becomes worthless. But does it, really? If the story of "Crazy" demonstrates one thing, it is that listeners, not music companies and lawyers, ultimately decide a song's standing in the world. Without the emotional response a piece of music generates in people, there is little basis for calculating its appropriateness in a packaged volume, in a television spot or in any other forum that allows the owner to earn money. The invested parties can bicker all they want over royalty rates and licensing fees; a song without an audience to appreciate it might as well not exist. The Internet is nothing if not avenue for spectators. Online clamor can be a useful measure of impact When people are furiously trading a song over the Web, that is the kind of uproar that a smart entrepreneur can channel profitably. Record companies have unmatched skill at making music more valuable by promoting ft. The illegality of file sharing is beside the point: The record industry cannot criminalize the conduct of tens of millions of people sitting at computers any more than Eliot Ness could stop Chicagoans from drinking. But it is sensible to assume that most people, even live by the golden rule. They are not pirates. They are not out to injure musicians or make a dime off somebody else's labors. Quite the opposite. They are just trying to get at songs they enjoy, either because radio plays them or because radio does not play them. In the latter case, they are chasing down songs that are talked about, written about, heard in fragments on television or picked up from other people's music collections. The problem, record companies contend, is that they're not making money on this swap. But record labels are a major reason that file swapping became attractive. They kept songs artificially scarce, or Musicians, take note. Thanks to file sharing, the next Willie Nelson can put some of his songs online, measure the response, and use the knowl- edge to cut a better deal for himself. |
