Letter from David Lowery

Many of you have probably already seen this, but it's a well thought out letter from David Lowery on why the current generation of music "fans" is killing the thing they claim to love.

[thetrichordist.wordpress.com]

This is an absolutely amazing letter. One of the best I ever read on the topic. I agree and sympathize with every single word of it. The degree to which our entire species has sold its soul for the cocaine drug rush of carrying around a little networked computer in our pockets is astonishing. I dont even get mad at the hoodwinked kids. The incredibly low number of adults who feel more loyalty to music and book culture than AAPL culture is shameful. I feel like fucking Rousseau's noble savage looking for CDs in a music store or walking around with a thumb inside a paperback book instead of tapping away at a text message. We are all destroying the things we claim to love. We deserve what we get.

Possibly my favorite thing Lowery has ever written, and that's saying something because the man wrote My Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart.

"You may also find that this ultimately hinders your hopes of finding a job in the music industry. Unless you’re planning on working for free. Or unless you think Google is in the music industry–which it is not."

Bang-on.

Oh dear...

There's a lot that's not right about this article. I don't know if i wanna go into it all right now (I am at work, after all!), but the bit about the guy from Sparkelhouse getting killed by downloads was ridiculous. There have been poor and mentally ill musicians since day one. Kurt Cobain was on a major lable at the height of the music industry's power and it didn't save him. On the other hand, there certainly have been plenty of musicans who went broke because the labels ripped them off. There's an entire foundation dedicated to restoring monies to primarily blues and r'n'b artists who were getting swindled for decades. The labels didn't "bet" on them, they robbed them.

As an academic I would hope that Lowrey learns their ways: please use exisiting studies, footnotes, don't relay on emotional appeals (e.g.: downloads kille!), etc. If he had, then he might have come across the Harvard study that found that those who download more also buy more. "most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing." Exactly - I download stuff out of curiosity. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bought it! Then I buy, and buy plenty.

For further study:

- file sharing = good publicity

- Equating buying a computer (and giving money to 'the man') and downloading something for free is not an apt comparison. Music is information, and information has a tendancy to want to be free. It dupicates without a loss to the original, as opposed to, say, if someone steals your car - your car is one and only, and now it's gone. See Dawking's 'meme theory' (in it's original state, not the way the word 'meme' gets thrown around now.)

- downloading vs checking an album out of the library, or buying it at a used shop. How many of us have done that? The artist gets no money from that, right?

- What Jermoe said, +1.

- lots of crap music leads to a disposable culture

- you're not 'killing the thing you love' because music isn't being killed. It's been around for tens of thousands of years. It's built into the human DNA. What's happening now is simply the death of the current model of the music biz, a blip on the grand cultural radar screen.

I could go on...but...

- I think we can all agree that CVB rules. I loved when I saw their reunion show few years ago, someone brought their little girl who requested "The Day Lassie Went To The Moon," and they played it. They're good guys! But they clearly don't work in law all day like I do...

The Harvard study followed online downloads vs. sales. Did it take into account such transactions as described by the girl who wrote the article Lowery was responding to, wherein she handed her boyfriend her iPod for the weekend and ended up with the entire catalogs of Big Star, the Velvet Underground and other bands loaded onto it? Or that she apparently copied huge swathes of her college radio station's collection into her personal library, again not going anywhere near an online download site? How many transactions take place via thumb drives, external hard drives, iPods, etc., that never come close to the sites that the study was apparently tracking?

Maybe it's true, that downloading and sharing music spurs music sales. But I have a hard time squaring that with the fact that music sales today are less than half of what they were before the advent of Napster. And even if "less than half" is overstating it, is there anyone anywhere who would argue that sales are higher now than they were in 1999 or 2000?

So if music sharing via Napster or Limewire or any of the many other websites increased in the last decade, and music sharing in fact SPURS music sales according to the Harvard study, then where are those sales occurring? If the musicians aren't getting paid (and they by and large say they aren't), and the labels aren't getting paid (they're downsizing and disappearing left and right), and the record stores aren't getting paid (they're clearly an endangered species), and music publications can't afford to stay in business because advertising money can't sustain them anymore (bye bye, print editions of No Depression, Paste, Harp, Cowbell, the monthly edition of Spin...) then who in the hell IS getting paid by the extra sales that Harvard claims are being spurred by file sharing?

I'm not trying to be obtuse here. I just really have a hard time accepting that black is white just because one study says it is. Maybe it is and I'm just not bright enough to see it. But I'm sorry, if an entire thriving industry collapses concurrently with the rise of an activity dedicated to bypassing that industry and - intentionally or not - cutting off its income stream, I have a really hard time seeing any way it can be explained away with a wave of the hand and a proclamation of "No, no! We're HELPING you. You're just too emotionally involved to see it."

And as far as crap music leading to disposable culture, as you say, music has been around for tens of thousands of years, and there's always been crap. But even the crap used to SELL in massive quantities, and using a supposed preponderance of crap currently as a rationale for why sales are down is kind of silly. In 1994, MC Hammer's The Funky Headhunter went Gold in the U.S., and that was an album absolutely no one on the planet Earth liked that spawned no hit singles. Nowadays, Gold records are rarities and Platinum is a nearly impossible dream. In 2010, Arcade Fire's The Suburbs was considered a critical AND commercial hit. Its sales topped out 50,000 short of Gold status.

I think Lowery makes a lot of good points, and a few perhaps specious ones, but to talk about downloads as a promotional tool or the enduring human impulse to make music is to change the conversation. He's responding to a specific article, as well as the anecdotal observations he's made while teaching/interacting with his students. For people who grew up during the "download era," paying for music hasn't been a part of their musical fandom. Since this is the younger generation, it suggests a problematic future for people who would make their living from music.

Lowery makes a compelling argument, but I do take issue with his characterization of Lawrence Lessig and Creative Commons. While it's convenient to lump them in with Pirate Bay, Kazaa and the like, that simply doesn't wash.

Picking a nit:

"it is the premise of every “machines gone wild” story since Jules Verne or Fritz Lang"¸

No machines gone wild in Jules Verne. Lots of very colorful mad scientists though.

And I fully agree with Lowery. I'm glad to pay for my music. Even if the artists only make pennys on each cd I buy, at least they get something. But I'm from another generation...

That is the best nitpicking I've seen in a long time. Bravo!

What is the first machine gone wild in fiction? Was it the Tin Woodsman from the Wizard of Oz? He's supposed to be a tree chopping robot, but then he just takes off with a roving band of assassins to go kill a witch that's never done anything to him except threaten to turn him into a beehive.

Much earlier, Jonathan Swift had the flying island of Laputa (tee-hee on the name), which was operated via controls. Didn't do the king much good, as he could never leave the island (illustrating, at least in my grad school paper from 1997, the paradox of "absolute" power...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz).

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Also, you can find practically any used cd you want now. That is very different than 20 years ago. Sure if you lived in a huge city with tons of used entertaiment stores you had a bigger selection. Amazon excelerated the process.

That is a very good point I'd never considered. It is true that you can now find just about anything used for a cheap price and I can definitely see where that might make a significant dent in things. But while I think it may be a significant factor, I don't think it's significant enough to explain the massive die off of the industry.

And buying by the song definitely is a big factor in crashing album sales, but by the same token, though, it seems like it would then boost the sales of singles up into the platinum realm where albums used to reside, but I don't think that's been happening.



Post Edited (06-19-12 15:28)

As Lowery goes to great pains to establish, it's not about record labels. The artists he cites release independently using personal "imprint" labels.

The other point, which I didn't emphasize, is that obviously artists over value what their album's worth is. If a sizable portion of the audience doesn't pay anything, maybe try to meet them half way.
Maybe if the audience knows the full profit goes to the band, they might be more considerate.

An independent study should be done.

pick an album made with in the last year. try to determine how many digital copies there are legally and illegally out there. find the average of how much was paid for it. do this with several albums of all different genres with different audiences. in other words, get a base album worth.
The free market says that $10-$11 is too much, so we will pay nothing. With the big bloated middleman system, you can't get much lower, but with a direct approach you easily can. Like I said, if you sell 100,000 albums for $3 directly, that is great. If you used rudimentary equip, website etc, even 50,000 for $3 would be cool. Get a few other bands for sometype of coop together to get better health insurance rates.
It wouldn't be hard.

I am completely against illegal downloading, but the reality is that there needs to be some changes.

I had a big problem with this part:

"Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?"

This is so utterly wrong. Teens download music illegally. If it was as easy to get internet service for free, as it is to get music... EVERYBODY would be getting service free. Everybody I know hates the ISPs and Big Phone companies.
These companies work together to have over-inflated prices. Nobody "gladly" gives these companies money.

Plus with services like Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, 8tracks, etc, there is no need to illegally download music to just check it out. You can listen to all kinds of music, and give money to the musicians who you want to have your money. There shouldn't be anybody illegally downloading at this point.

I do agree with Mister Fabulous, His arguments were pretty bad. Although I agree with his anti- illegal download message, he didn't back it up with accurate information.

It's weird Brad, I don't know exactly what's going on. I'm sure you're right that it's not a black/white situation. Maybe the Harvard study was right in their suggestion that there's just so much more to do now, citing video games. I bet you could graph the rising sales of video games vs the downward trend of music sales. We have more cultural choices in general now than we did in the days of crap Hammer albums.

I bet buying by the song has caused more of a trouble in the industry than most could imagine. Also buying used on Amazon.

You could almost do a study: anytime someone buys just 1 song on Itunes or Amazon, that is $1 or $1.29 instead of the $11 you used to spend 20 years ago because you had to buy the whole CD. Sure you could argue that the only reason someone bought the song was for the fact that they didn't have to buy the whole CD or album, but that has to play a part.

Also, you can find practically any used cd you want now. That is very different than 20 years ago. Sure if you lived in a huge city with tons of used entertaiment stores you had a bigger selection. Amazon excelerated the process.

Now the only reason not to buy used is because the shipping cost will bring up the price of a CD to nearly the cost of a new one which gets shipped for free. All it takes is for one of the major Amazon marketplace dealers (Mars Movies, ImportCD, etc) to offer some type of free shipping on their used CDs and people will flood them.

> You could almost do a study: anytime someone buys just 1 song on Itunes or Amazon, that is $1
> or $1.29 instead of the $11 you used to spend 20 years ago because you had to buy the whole CD.
> Sure you could argue that the only reason someone bought the song was for the fact that they
> didn't have to buy the whole CD or album, but that has to play a part.

My favorite example of this (if "favorite" is the appropriate word) involves S-Curve Records. In 2000, when Napster was just beginning to get popular, S-Curve moved 4 million copies of the Baha Men's Who Let the Dogs Out? Quick, name one track from that album besides the title cut.

Three years later, S-Curve released Welcome Interstate Managers. Fountains of Wayne scored a gold single with "Stacy's Mom," mostly through downloads. In fact, the tune hit #1 on the "Most Downloaded Songs" chart on iTunes. But the album — a true all-killer-no-filler gem, and one of the best of the 2000s, IMO — didn't even scrape gold status.

To those that take the morally-superior-file-sharers-are-scum stance, I would pose a few questions: Ever share a mix-tape? Ever dub a cd or cd's from the library? Ever borrow records from a friend and copy them? If so, you're a gigantic hypocrite. And spare me the argument of degree or scale. It matters not one whit.

@Wade,

Thats an insane argument. It also relies on the old strawman which makes hypocrisy worse than an actual crime committed brazenly. The more severe hypocrisy resides in those who deny that downloading is stealing. It obviously IS stealing. These copyright thieves operating on a massive scale are even audacious enough to claim that all this downloading some HELPS the artists. That is about as disingenuous a claim as you can possibly make.

I certainly have dubbed a few albums onto cassette and CD in my day. The amount of music that I stole in this manner is exceeded by several orders of magnitude by the amount that kids steal today through file sharing. The girl in this letter assembled a library of 11,000 songs while only purchasing 15 CDs in her life. So lets estimate: 1000 albums for a $150 lifetime investement. All of us on this board have spent massive amounts of money on music in our lifetime and dont need to establish our cred. Suffice it to say, we have all spent significantly more, emotionally and financially, to assemble our first thousand albums, and that the hard-earned and gladly-given money filtered down to the artists and that this money has sustained the musical and artistic culture we all profess to love. If everyone was as willing to spend money on recorded music as the TP'ers, the music industry would be healthy. If everyone followed the example of this NPR intern, the industry would be moribund as it is today. These facts are indisputable, and any minor hypocrisy you detect in our words or in Lowery's letter is a minor matter by comparison.

Regards,
Craig



Post Edited (06-20-12 13:55)

Craig,

Sorry you think it's insane. To me, if you place yourself in a higher ethical realm, then you better be able to back it up. Don't take potshots at someone who is doing what we all did as teens. Teens haven't changed, technology has. It's just that simple.

I identify with this guy's article a hell of a lot more than with Lowery's (it's really fuckin' funny too.)

[www.huffingtonpost.com]



Post Edited (06-20-12 14:04)

To comment on the unsustainability of massive file sharing is not to "place ones self in a higher ethical realm." And once again, I dont think self-righteousness is a worse crime than massive copyright infringement

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I certainly have dubbed a few albums onto cassette and CD in my day. The amount of music that I stole in this manner is exceeded by several orders of magnitude by the amount that kids steal today through file sharing.

Stealing is stealing, tho, right? That's what wade is saying. I don't know if stealing a slice of bread is any better (that is: more moral) then stealing the whole loaf. (Not to be confused with 'pinching a loaf.') (Sorry.)

Depends if it is your loaf of bread or not. Stealing to a degree which destroys an entire industry is obviously much more harmful than making the occassional mix CD. People who made mix CDs and dubbed CDs from the library on occassion, were generally augmenting libraries assembled over years with cold hard cash. The whole point of this NPR columnist's original column is that stealing has replaced (not supplemented) purchasing for an entire generation. Isnt it obvious that these activities are not proportional?

I dont even think morality is necessary to the discussion. I buy music not because I am holier-than-thou but because (1) it is an activity that I have always enjoyed and see no reason to stop; (2) I have enough money to support the habit; (3) I dont want to see something I love (music stores, CDs, etc) - things which make life more enjoyable and interesting - swept down the drain of history; and (4) I want to throw a little money the way of musicians I enjoy so that they keep on doing it. Isnt that just pragmatic?



Post Edited (06-20-12 14:56)

Wade, did you read the article? How about the one that the article was in response to? Lowery went out of his way multiple times to point out that he didn't mean to personally attack or demonize the writer of the first article. Sure, we've all dubbed albums and made/received mixtapes, but Lowery's main concern didn't seem to be with downloading a song without paying for it, but rather with questioning why we have to pay for music in the first place.

There's a big difference between dubbing friends' albums in addition to buying as many as you can afford because your musical appetites can't be sated and saying, as the woman in the original NPR article does, in so many words, I don't spend money on music and I can't really see myself or my generation ever paying for music, so someone out there needs to figure out a way that I can get all music for free, and the artists can get paid.

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Wade, did you read the article?

Yes, I've read the articles by the intern from NPR, Lowery, Albini, Lefsetz and the guy from the Dismemberment Plan. In addition to that, I've read the countless comments by people that would like to see the intern hung, drawn and quartered (or at the very least fired from her job and prosecuted posthaste). Lowery makes some good points to be sure, but my quarrel isn't even necessarily with him.

I think it should be clarified that Emily White did not, in fact, state she would never pay for music:

I honestly don't think my peers and I will ever pay for albums. I do think we will pay for convenience.

Emily, and millions like her I suppose, just don't want to be tethered to a physical product. It doesn't hold the same value that it has for most of us here. The industry has had well over a decade to figure out how to adapt, and they still can't get it right.

To Wade's last point, I thought this article in Salon had some good points about the industry's cluelessness in the face of the download revolution.

Bob Lefsetz makes my head hurt. He no has the logic bone.

I may have overstated the case in terms of the NPR article, so I could probably stand to read a bit more carefully myself, but the larger point remains. All fields of the Entertainment industry are facing many of the same challenges that newspapers have been facing, and I would hate to see them suffer the same fate. Less money coming back is eventually going to mean less money going in, which is going to hurt fans as well as corporations. We see a lot of logical and moral gymnastics go into justifying piracy, but the bottom line is if you really value something, you should be willing to pay for it, and if you aren't, then you can expect less of it in the future.

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if you really value something, you should be willing to pay for it, and if you aren't,then you can expect less of it in the future.

But that's not happening. There's actually more music out there now then ever. And for the same reasons - computers and the internet. It's never been easier to record good quality stuff at home and release it to the world instantly, without any corporate meddling. It's more DIY than punk. If anything, this will weed out those who only want to get into showbiz cuz they think it will get them rich and famous. If there's not much money in it, then only the ones who are nuts about it - the ones who have to make music - will be doing it.

If all this affects those who are just worried because "it's their livelihood," well, tough luck. Sorry, kid. Hey, when Henry Ford started rolling those Model Ts off the assembly line, it severly affected the horse-drawn carriage industry. Maybe they'll have to get another job. The real artists will make music anyway because, as I said, it's what humans do.

This is the way things are now, there's no putting the genie back into the bottle.



Post Edited (06-21-12 12:54)

Every society recognizes different levels and types of theft. To claim otherwise is absurd.
I will shoplift a comb, you go kidnap a child and I need someone to volunteer to steal $1000 from a bank. Let's see how we are are penalized for each act of thievery. Your defense in court can be "scale doesn't matter."

Also, nobody here is hating on people who download illegally. I would highly doubt if anybody here would even hold it against a friend ("I'm not talking to you if you keep downloading!")

But the truth is, its wrong. And I say that not out of ego but my compulsion to tell the truth. I have been close friends with murders, thieves, and all sorts of deadbeats. I don't judge. But I know right from wrong.

It's interesting that Lowery's been beating this particular drum for a long time without getting much traction...he should have started responding to 20-yr. old interns years ago!

The vagaries of our modern world...

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I honestly don't think my peers and I will ever pay for albums. I do think we will pay for convenience.

Emily, and millions like her I suppose, just don't want to be tethered to a physical product. It doesn't hold the same value that it has for most of us here.

Someone brought up that point in the comments section on Lowery's article, and he responded that he had considered that before writing the open letter and had contacted NPR for clarification on the exact nature of White's iPod library. It turned out that the reality seemed to be, in fact, exactly what Lowery had assumed it was - that out of a collection of over 11,000 songs, Emily White had paid for a grand total of 15 albums worth of it, and not "15 albums + scores and scores of tracks purchased independent of albums."

That goes beyond "not wanting to be tethered to a physical product." That is "I want this, it's there for the taking, I'm taking it." Because the kids today, y'know, they get the vapors when there's something they really really want and OMIGOD WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T HAVE IT RIGHT NOW????

And yes, yes, I realize I'm an old man grumbling about the damn kids. But I don't care. Damn the whole bunch of the little farts. I'm glad they're probably going to end up spending their final days beyond Thunderdome. Maybe they'll be able to build yurts in the great Saskatchewan Sahara out of their old iPods.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THAT LAST PARAGRAPH IS INTENDED AS A SATIRICAL OVERSTATEMENT. I love the kids. God bless 'em all. (Wipes affectionate tear from eye.)



Post Edited (06-21-12 11:03)

Here's something that might not be coming across that really needs to come across:

David Lowery is, was, and always will be a righteous dude.

My two cents (which actually is a grossly inflated estimate):

I buy my music — CDs, records and the occasional download-for-pay — for all the same reasons Nosepail listed. (Very well stated, Nose.) For myself, I'd extend the list with: (5) As a radio DJ, it's good to have CDs that I want to play on the air; and (6) I'm old-fashioned. I like to have the physical artifact in my collection. I don't feel "tethered" to the CDs and records ... although my wife occasionally wishes I'd break that habit and join the 21st century.

When Napster first appeared, I happened to be working at a software start-up that let its employees play pretty free & loose with the internet. I downloaded Napster, tried it, and was excited to find MP3 copies of old favorite LPs/singles that I'd never found on CD. (This was before the technology advanced enough to allow most consumers to rip vinyl.)

But I gave up Napster fairly soon, when I was placed in a supervisory position. All the interns just loved to spend time on Napster, to the point where it really was cutting into the work. I had to put a stop to it ... and of course, I had to set an example myself. By then, I had downloaded approximately 300 free tracks; about half of them were songs that I already had on vinyl. (If you want to say I stole them, I won't argue.)

Napster got shut down by the courts at about the same time I left that job. Since then, all the free songs I've downloaded have been from "legitimate" sources (e.g., an artist's own website, online mags, or a "song of the day" from iTunes or Amazon). For one thing, I haven't worked at a company that allowed similar access on its network ... and I don't have time at home to just scour the internet for songs. For another, the RIAA started filing lawsuits against illegal downloaders — and even though that was a crass, harsh scare tactic, I figured it'd be just my luck to get caught up in it. And for a third ... well, like I said, I just prefer to visit the music stores and buy the music.

I heard a CVB album cut ("Joe Stalin's Cadillac"[!!!]}and a couple of Cracker tunes ("This is Cracker Soul" and "Sweet Thistle Pie") on terrestrial, commercial radio this weekend.

Coincidence?

[digitalmusicnews.com]

Aitch, thats a good write-up. The system is obviously broke. I think the system was horrible all along anyways.
I think the future lies in what Louis CK did last year. Here is an article if you aren't familiar: [www.bigbigdesign.com]

He basically sold a show from his web site...and made millions. Of course he had an installed fan base. But if a four piece band could sell 100,000 for $3-$5 a piece, they could easily recoup their cost (production,website,etc), have enough to make another album and live nicely. You could tinker with those numbers etc but the model is doable.
Hell if I was Lowery or another established artist, I would help young artists set up such systems.

no more record labels. no more middlemen.

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no more record labels. no more middlemen.

"W-w-w-what are you doing to me here. I-I-I-I thought we had a relationship here!"

so if you steal via wi-fi you are really a dick

[jezebel.com]

The point of this article is to show another group of people that need to rethink their business model.
All these different groups need to figure out how to make money off their "products and services." I am not condoning file sharing of course.