Throughout the tireless and often fruitless debate over
intellectual property rights and Internet piracy, the ‘main attractions’ so to
speak have generally been the legal and monetary issues involved. There has
been a consensus for at least a few thousand years, spearheaded by Moses and
some famously flammable shrubbery, that stealing is wrong. Even among the
people who do pirate music, many do so with a heavy heart over the idea of
stealing from their favorite bands. When streaming services such as Pandora and
Spotify came along and piracy plummeted, it seemed like the debate may have
been resolving itself. The financially handicapped fans still got their free
music and bands got paid.
But now things have gotten more complicated since word has
gotten out that the reimbursements that streaming services offer is pretty much
negligible. If it’s money musicians are after, they’re probably better off
fashioning their guitars into shovels and picking a spot to dig for something
universally valuable…treasure, oil, Jimmy Hoffa….whatever draws the highest
bounty these days. But is it the same thing as piracy? Not really, but some
might argue it’s worse. In this case, ‘some’ refers to Radiohead’s Thom Yorke
and their producer Nigel Goodrich. If this immediately reminds of the Metallica
(et al) vs. Napster showdown from a decade ago, you shall be easily forgiven,
but there is big ideological difference. Metallica were upsets about making
fewer millions of dollars which proved to be a pretty fatal turn-off to the
general public, trumped only by the salary cap (AKA, ‘millionaires vs.
billionaires’) showdown that take place every few years in each major sport.
Yorke and Goodrich are complaining about money, but not
their own. The Black Keys already voiced that particular gripe with Spotify,
though they did so with a bit more humility than the one-time kings of popular
metal. Yorke and Goodrich are not complaining about piracy on the part of fans,
but on the part of the Spotify itself. They have removed their music from the
service in protest on behalf of struggling bands (such as yours), claiming the
reimbursements are grossly insufficient. This is of course objectively true and
for the sake of discussion, I’ll hold the cynicism and assume their concern is
sincere. The fact that they gave away an album for free does make them pretty
credible on this issue.
But others might (and do) argue that their idealism is a bit
out of touch with the average band's concerns. Streaming services provide a platform like
no other in the industry today, for bands to gain exposure. It used to be that
bands fought to get on the radio with a shred of concern for whatever royalties
they may or may not have been entitled to. But the radio doesn’t really exist
in that way anymore. Now it’s generally just a platform for mainstream bands to
stack on top of their already substantial collection of platforms. If you think
about streaming sites as the radio stations of the 21st century, the
appeal becomes obvious. If a band demands money from people who haven’t heard
them yet, they are installing a shark-filled moat at the very entrance to the
path that would lead them to people BEGGING to give them money. On the
other side of this, one could see how Yorke and Goodrich aren’t necessarily
condemning the service itself, but simply pushing for fairer compensation. It’s
a pretty interesting thing to think about. But since this is an advice blog, I’ll
close by taking the liberty of saying, “Yes”, you should put your music on
Spotify. To read more, click the link below:
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