The Music Mafia Industry
Colleagues,
The group called “Nine Inch Nails” is coming to the Philippines for a concert. The Philippine news website Inquirer.net emailed the group’s lead Trent Reznor a few questions, published on the Inquirer website. What Reznor thinks of record label CEOs is an eye-opener for the public that is heavily being bombarded via “intellectual property rights” (and anti-”piracy”) campaigns that copyright benefits the artists. In reality, copyright is power by a handful of big media giants over the distribution of creative work done by artists. Copyright is power by a few media conglomerates over the artists and over the people.
Thanks to Danny E for the alert on the news article, pertinent section quoted below.
For more on the economics, politics and ideology of copyright, see http://www.copysouth.org/
Cheers!
Fatima
Q. You’ve been very vocal about the state of the record industry and how labels have been greedy about the whole business. How do you think it can be improved, if at all?
Trent Reznor: It’s a kind of Mafia-type run business .. They have systematically taken advantage of artists over the years from The Beatles onwards. You [the artists] do all the work, they loan you money to make records, then you pay them back and they own everything. To see that system collapse is an exciting thing. There isn’t a clear answer on what the right thing to do is right now, and as a musician you’re up against a pretty difficult scenario: most kids feel it’s OK to steal music, and do freely … The good news is that people are excited and interested in music …
As an artist it’s your job to capitalize on that. It means generally swallowing a bitter pill and saying, ‘Hey, people don’t want to buy music, so let me give it to you. I’ll find another way to make money but I want you on my side and hearing my music. So let’s get rid of this walled garden of having to pay to hear it, here it is, give it to your friends. Hey, try to come to our show if you can, or you can buy this T-shirt of ours if you like, and that will help us out. Or, here’s a nice version of our album that we put in a cool package for a premium price and we’re only selling a couple thousands of them.’
There are ways that you can monetize your business, but the traditional way of going to a record store and having to pay for it, those days are over. In the States, there aren’t any record stores left. The only place … is like a Best Buy where you go to buy a washing machine and there’s a tiny rack of DVDs and CDs. I think we’re in between business models right now …
I’m trying everything I can to contribute to when that next model does come up, whatever it might be, whether it’s subscriptions or whatever, where the artist is more fairly represented and has a say and is compensated, and you’re not paying for jets for record label CEOs … They’re in their last moments of death and I’m happy to see them go ’cause they’re all thieves and liars.
From this news report
PS. It’s interesting that Trent Reznor uses the term “stealing” when referring to sharing music (legally “copyright infringement”), but he does not make a moral judgment on “stealing music.” In many other places, the cultural context for sharing (and thus “stealing” and “copying”) can vary, and often sharing (as well as “stealing” and “copying”) are not seen as criminal; (the moral requirement for something to be called “stealing” is quite high, and it is often ridiculous to steal a copy). This is especially true in places where the concept of private property either does not exist or is not important.