2008 Woodie Awards
Sharing files
By: Brian McLean
Issue date: 3/17/08 Section: Voices
Last week's South by Southwest music conference was filled with the sort of chat that is unsettling to many record label executives.
One panelist proposed providing free music file downloads and sharing the site's advertising revenue with participating musicians.
This, of course, was not a wholly popular view, with some audience members contending the model would leave artists with an unsustainable level of income.
Others advocated an expansion of subscription-based service, which still would allow users to discover bands without incurring any additional cost.
Though neither model came out on top, it's encouraging to see an implicit acknowledgment of the defects in the traditional music distribution model, rendered obsolete by technological advancements and openly renounced by some musicians.
Traditional record sales, and even pay-per-song models, cannot satisfy many listeners' constant desire to find and share music: a passion that, until the advent of file-sharing software, contented itself with record purchases.
File sharing, of course, was the industry's Pandora's box.
Once Napster was quelled, a number of sites sprung up in its place. The termination of OiNK, a colossal music-sharing community dismantled in October by an international coalition of copyright agencies, was arguably the heaviest blow since Napster.
But soon after OiNK's downfall, a new set of communities surfaced.
The Record Industry Association of America, notorious for several-thousand-dollar lawsuits against everyone from students to grandmothers, has established itself as a key player in prolonging the traditional model's bleeding to death.
Despite its witch-hunts and posturing, the agency has been unable to stem the flow of illegal downloading. If the RIAA wishes to justify its preposterous punishments on the basis of deterring file sharing, it has so far failed horribly in doing so.
What makes illegal downloading the topic of such great ambivalence is that it pits fans' desires against one another.
One panelist proposed providing free music file downloads and sharing the site's advertising revenue with participating musicians.
This, of course, was not a wholly popular view, with some audience members contending the model would leave artists with an unsustainable level of income.
Others advocated an expansion of subscription-based service, which still would allow users to discover bands without incurring any additional cost.
Though neither model came out on top, it's encouraging to see an implicit acknowledgment of the defects in the traditional music distribution model, rendered obsolete by technological advancements and openly renounced by some musicians.
Traditional record sales, and even pay-per-song models, cannot satisfy many listeners' constant desire to find and share music: a passion that, until the advent of file-sharing software, contented itself with record purchases.
File sharing, of course, was the industry's Pandora's box.
Once Napster was quelled, a number of sites sprung up in its place. The termination of OiNK, a colossal music-sharing community dismantled in October by an international coalition of copyright agencies, was arguably the heaviest blow since Napster.
But soon after OiNK's downfall, a new set of communities surfaced.
The Record Industry Association of America, notorious for several-thousand-dollar lawsuits against everyone from students to grandmothers, has established itself as a key player in prolonging the traditional model's bleeding to death.
Despite its witch-hunts and posturing, the agency has been unable to stem the flow of illegal downloading. If the RIAA wishes to justify its preposterous punishments on the basis of deterring file sharing, it has so far failed horribly in doing so.
What makes illegal downloading the topic of such great ambivalence is that it pits fans' desires against one another.
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