stealing music
by Edward Guglielmino
The great Master was asked a question: “Master is it wrong to steal music?”
The master answered:
“There was once a great musician Mandelo, and people came from all over the land to see him play and give him gold pieces. The musician was famous across the land. One day he discovered that a musician at the far reaches of the land was playing his music. This infuriated Mandelo, so he decided to travel across the great land to demand a portion of this musician’s gold.
“Mandelo spent many days traveling across the country and when he finally got to the town, he knew he had reached that farthest part of the land. The people had strange accents and dressed very differently. He went to the town centre where the musician was playing Mandelo’s songs and receiving gold pieces. He approached the musician ready to yell at him and demand his share of his gold, but before he could the musician yelled: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the great Mandelo which I speak of, this is the man who wrote my songs.’
“Before Mandelo could do anything, the town was around him in a flurry. They lifted him upon their shoulders and took him to the town hall. They made a great feast for him and celebrated all night.
“The next day Mandelo played for the town.
“During his song about the river a young mother cried because her child was born while the river was full.
“During his song about the sun an old lady smiled because her husband used to sing this song to her.
“During the song about rain the farmers rejoiced and sung along.
“During the song about love those who had just found love smiled and those who had known love for many years were reminded of their first days in love.
“Mandelo left the town having made no gold, but he was smiling from the inside out. On the way home he stopped in every town to rest and discovered that each town had a musician playing his songs. Mandelo realised that his songs, like all great songs, belonged to everyone who had music in their hearts.
“Mandelo was never to grow rich, but his days were filled with happiness. Every town he visited from then on had a warm bed and a nice meal, and people told him every day what his music meant to him. When he died his music lived on forever.”
The master paused.
“It is wrong to steal music, but if your soul is alive you won’t be able to, the music will move you in such a way that you must say thanks in the way best you can. If the music does not move you then it is not for your heart and you may disregard it.
“There will be artists who live for gold but they will never be happy, for the life of an artist is rarely the life of a rich man. On the occasion when the artist does become rich she will lose her spirit and lust for life as everything has come to her too soon. A great artist knows that some things are worth more than gold. A person whose soul is alive knows what these things are and will give them to the artist daily.”
19 Responses to “stealing music”
Leave a Reply
Author Spotlight
Edward Guglielmino
Join Our Mailing List
Subscription Options
Recent Comments
- Charles on Song of the day – 590: Johnny And The Fembots
- Craig Montgomery on Song of the day – 589: Go Violets
- Everett True on Song of the day – 589: Go Violets
- kathyclark on Song of the day – 588: Eros and the Eschaton
- Everett True on John Grant @ St George’s Church, Kemptown, Brighton, 16.05.13
- Nick Godfrey on The Pastels – Slow Summits (Domino)
- Erika Meyer on Fuck the critics. Sabbath continues to rock.
- Everett True on Fuck the critics. Sabbath continues to rock.
- Amazing presents Alt Thursdays, The Old Queens Head, 23/5/13 | Lucy Dearlove on “Cute for a while… but then it gets boring”
- Joseph Kyle on Song of the day – 582: Camera Obscura
- Dan on Song of the day – 582: Camera Obscura
- Erika Meyer on “Cute for a while… but then it gets boring”
Recent Posts
Popular Posts
Similar Posts
Random Posts
Collapse Board archives
Conversations with Bianca
- Screeching Weasel’s Ben Weasel on: Spirituality, Johnny Ramone & Punk Rock Nostalgia Acts
- A Q&A with Brian Peterson author of Burning Fight: The Nineties Hardcore Revolution in Ethics, Politics, Spirit, and Sound
- Musician & Paris Girls Rock Camp Founder Toli Nameless: “Be organized, on time, stay focused, pay what you owe, be honest…”
Two thumbs up from me
I made some stuff to sell at market. A few people bought my stuff. I made enough money to buy half an onion. Someone came along and stole the rest of my stuff. I ran after him and caught him. He said he wanted to take my stuff (he thought it was very nice) and that by giving it away I would have a warm heart and would be spreading the gift of nice stuff to all the worlds.
I punched him the face, said he was mistaking me for Bono and told him to fuck off cos I had to feed my kids.
Oh, this tired, knackered old thing again. *yawn*
I’ve blogged to death on this:
Here: http://reinspired.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/the-new-york-times-would-the-bard-have-survived-the-web/
Here: http://reinspired.wordpress.com/2010/11/20/the-real-victims-of-online-piracy/
Here: http://reinspired.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/6-things-people-believe-that-are-wrong/
Yes, you just go on thinking that you are helping people. Just go on ignoring the real businesses that are failing, real people who are losing their jobs, real musicians who can’t afford to tour or make new records because you just plain don’t feel like shelling out six fucking quid for an album. But you’ll pay six hundred pounds for an ipad. You would tell yourself ANYTHING to justify it but you do it because you can. You know what the latest thing is? Running out of restaurants without paying. But never mind, because you’re advertising the restaurant, right, whenever that one makes the news?
Another thought: if I worked for a label or was making music myself, I’d take note of the writers and publications that endorsed the mass theft/counterfeiting of my music, and I’d think about that next time anyone asked for a free copy of an album, or an interview, or any favour from me at all. Why the hell would I want to help you when you’re actively trying to destroy my livelihood?
Yeah, this ruined my morning. I strongly considered asking Everett if I could write a counterblast – even warming up a blank doc – until counting the sheer number of wrong-headed points that needed addressing made me (marginally) more tired than angry.
I bet Jeff Pollack’s been fwding it to friends all day.
Satire
There’s no real solution to the problem until the record companies decide to adapt to a real world solution, instead of hiding behind the churning wheel of ‘idols’ and other reality tv, viral and popularity gimmicks.
Also DRM is the biggest load of crap i’ve heard and that’s supposed to stop piracy – just hurts the people that don’t know any better. Itunes shits me up the wall.
Basically piracy has made mainstream music very conservative (i mean it always has been to a point) but it’s really fluffy and bubblegummy at the moment, record companies are so afraid of losing more money that they are recycling over and over again to consumers. Unfortunately people keep buying this crap?!
Some solutions that are being thought about:
ISP (Internet service providers) charge consumer a small fee by which a scheme pays out most listened to Artists of the month (yeah not perfect, i could see a lot of money going to beiber
Mp3 players and media devices charge consumer an extra fee
Thoughts?
@ Claire – the conservativeness we see is a direct effect of piracy on the market: they can’t afford to take risks. It’s not just majors, either. A friend wrote a very strong album but it’s just not a particularly fashionable style of music. It’s a very professional-sounding record with catchy songs, and a few years ago some indie would have snapped it up – but even though all of these labels are effusive about how great it is, nobody actually wants to sign it because they just can’t afford to take the risk.
I’m surprised so few people seem to know about Amazon downloads – my main source of music these days. There’s no DRM, tracks and albums are cheap, and it’s incredibly easy to use. The only downside of the service at all is that it’s TOO damn easy to use so I have to discipline myself not to buy everything. You can’t re-download albums if you accidentally deleted them, but then in many cases I’m paying £3 to replace an old CD I lost or broke anyway, so it’s not much different. I just back up the MP3s on a CD-R, just to be on the safe side.
Your suggestion sounds like what Pandora are doing in the States, which is great – but those very licensing arrangements make the service unavailable in the UK, which is disappointing.
Last.fm have a smartphone app which I believe pays royalties to artists while letting you hear new music, and again that would be a great idea … if only I had a smartphone.
I’m Ed G and I’m a social libertarian. The article is making fun of the moral high ground that labels attempt about piracy. They talk about piracy being against the ten commandments “thou shall not steal” the opposing argument sounds just as ridiculous.
We need to accept we have entered a new paradigm and that it isn’t a moral argument. Its a pragmatic one.
How do be monitize recordings in the 21 century?
Stop calling pirates thieves. Stop calling labels evil. Watermark mp3s so we get a royalty every time they are played. Or something like that.
I don’t mind shelling out maybe £4 or £5 for an album that’s been self-released and I know all of the money is going to the artists. But if I wanted to buy, let’s say the latest Ladytron album for £10 or however much it’s selling for on CD. How much of that money will be going to the artists, and how much will be going to record company execs and their company credit cards? How much will have been spent on PR and marketing? How much will have been spent on needless photo shoots? Quite a lot of that £10
If I buy the album on iTunes, how much will go to the band, and how much will go to iTunes?
If a band self-releases or operates on a small independent without the bloated budget of a major or a big indie, and they sell an album for £4, they will still make more money per album than if they sold it for £10 through another channel. The difference is, they’re not letting the vampires of the record industry suck away their money.
It’s the same principle when a band / promoter pack out a 300 capacity venue and the only person who makes any money is the owner of the bar.
For this reason I’m encouraging people to play in venues without bars, let people in for free and sell their own drinks. MORBID RECORDS is a label I’m setting up in London, and that’s what we plan to do.
@ Ed G: aren’t you basically proposing DRM? If you watermark something, someone will find a way around it so that they don’t want to pay for it because given the choice between paying for it and not paying for it, people would rather not pay for it. The reason why labels and artists call filesharers “thieves” is because it’s a polite way of expressing their wish to beat the living crap out of them.
I should start adopting that pragmatic argument. I’ll ask the bus driver to let me on for free because plenty of people sneak on without tickets so they really need to be adopting a new paradigm. I’ll persuade the nice lady in Top Shop to let me have a pair of shoes for free because she should stop trying to take the moral high ground when I stuff them into my handbag. I’ll wander into Starbucks, take a sandwich off the shelf and leave without paying because after all it’s just The Man and a symbol of corporate excesses. I’ll stop paying my mortgage, since everyone hates banks anyway, and when they go to take my house I’ll explain to them that the enjoyment I had from living there should be payment enough to warm their souls. I’m sure they’ll understand. I’ll tell them that you told me so.
@ Lewis, I hope everything works out with your label. As for thinking of major labels as “vampires”, it’s like any big business vs small business. The majors will typically give you 11%, the indies 50% – but you have to do the maths on that one based on whether the majors, with their brand power and distribution channels, can realistically sell more copies: “what’s 50% of f*ck all?”
Of course, since this current generation of whiny, self-entitled brats will grab it all without paying for it, it’s all rather moot anyway. 11% of f*ck all is still f*ck all.
I think that’s why Cults have done a great job of protecting their music… the fact that they have managed to build anticipation for their album’s release is a major achievement given the instant-availability of everything on the internet. Hats off to them. I’m looking forward to buying some of their music. Then again, I think sites that stream music are great because I can experiment and try out more stuff before buying it and making a mistake with my money. And not being dictated to by whatever business deals the radios have done with the labels to play the most endorsed rather than the best stuff. I think that when you love a band, you want to collect their physical albums, merch and posters etc. Call me old fashioned, but I take pleasure in investing in my fave bands. I have also watched streamed movies online and then gone out and bought them on DVD. So it’s not black n white. I like how this story above was written. Very charming. Covering music is a sign of the highest respect and is quite different to devaluing music and taking away someone’s ability to earn money from their records. They say that 70% or so of music sales come from CDs- perhaps that statistic is misleading, perhaps fewer are being sold and there is less money in recordings in general due to online MP3 theft? The record stores in the UK are fighting for their survival right now with events like National Record Shop Day… I try to support HMV- but having to pay £15 for a Hole album that’s almost a year old, is not exactly a fair price- but it’s likely a price bumped up by availability of their music online. I now have to pay a larger portion of the pie because there are less people investing in music.
Musicians are creative by nature- they have to raise their game on the package if they want to compete with online MP3s- or find a way to prosecute people, but that’s not realistic right now. The best option is to make the CD or whatever an ‘experience’ that you can’t get from MP3s. I saw this cool thing the other day where they sold these button type things that looked a bit like a fan button badge, but were mini MP3 players that held an album by the band pictured on the button- now I thought the collect-ability of them was appealing, creative, cool and fun. Think they cost about £10. I think this is the type of thing that needs to be invested in. It’s the more convenient version of the Vinyl 7″ limited editions.
Also because a person is wearing these badge/mp3 players on their jackets for all to see, they both advertise the band and help us identify people with common tastes in music and that’s social, which is always good.
http://www.playbutton.co/ Check it out.
My main problem with this post is that it seems to be conflating copyright infringement/illegal downloading with plagiarism, which are distinct from each other in both a legal and layperson’s sense.
In fact, this wouldn’t even be about true plagiarism since the antagonist doesn’t claim the music as his own and has been properly attributing it. This ‘parable’ is simply extolling the virtues of being lax in enforcing license agreements.
I have heard very few–hell, almost zero musicians–complain about someone covering their music. I’ve not known a musician to be anything but flattered.
I’ve been following these IP arguments for years (I’m a sample-based artist) and after hearing hundreds of different analogies, I think I can safely say that there isn’t a historical analogy to be found that compares with the current state of the music industry. People can talk about buggy whips (inaccurate. The product, recorded music, has not changed and it is still recorded music that people are demanding through their downloading), and they an talk about how “information wants to be free” (while neglecting the second half of that quote: “Information wants to be expensive… That tension will not go away), but the reality of the situation is this: people ate creating a product and asking for a price they think just, and a handful of people are ignoring the seller’s wishes and taking the fruits of their labors without compensation.
And I haven’t a single problem with music being distributed for free, but that decision should be left to the creator and to those whom she is contractually obligated herself.
It’s an old argument with many people relying on the little money that is raised in music. Think outside the box and contribute in a meaningful way and I am sure everyone can get a share of this tiny tiny pie.
Should we also target buskers?
I mean, this parable would equally be relevant to them, even if that wasn’t the intent of EdG.
Must I constantly live in fear of the wrath of Bono, who may come to take me down for playing New Years Day in the street?
Dude, it’s not Bono’s wrath you need to be living in fear of …