If music is coupled to a scarce commodity – the number of seats in a concert hall or a limited run of plastic CDs, then a market will develop to allocate that scarcity. I buy a concert ticket, and there is one fewer seat for others to buy. I buy a CD and the seller’s inventory is reduced – so a supply/demand equation is established and the musician gets some part of that transaction.

With music recorded digitally, the supply/demand equation completely breaks down – because a file downloaded does not diminish the supply of files available. A product that has infinite supply and very little distribution cost will be priced by the market at near zero. (That is why a lot of the money in digital downloading goes to those like iTunes and Spotify who are supplying the delivery and transaction infrastructure as a service.) The copyright laws offer some protection – and anyone should be able charge for their art and expect to have their copyright honored. The bigger record labels, in fact, have made an aggressive effort to criminalize illegal downloading of copyrighted material. But these legal efforts are up against powerful market forces that must, by their very nature, work continuously to devalue a commodity that is infinite in supply.

The better way forward is to free art – especially digitally reproducible art – from the forces of the capitalist marketplace. Music should be heard, not sold. Society will have to find some other way to support its musicians if there is no longer a viable marketplace for recorded music. To burden art with a selling price that is not governed by free market forces is, ultimately, folly. And music that is free will be more widely heard and judged on its own merits, rather than on the promotional and legal strength of the copyright holder.

We see the downside of trying to keep the old system afloat most clearly in popular music – the big labels have criminalized their downloading customers with lawsuits and given the world indifferent music in return. Free culture is better for culture and eventually, will be better for artists.

A good friend of mine got this published a while ago, and every now and then I’ve sent it to someone in hopes of getting it more widely-discussed. It seems more pertinent with this week’s blogosphere explosion, so thought you might like to take a look:

http://www.lawtechjournal.com/home/articles/332/

Cheers,

Nick

Thanks for linking David’s post.

Merits and moral quandaries? It’s just amazing to me how – theft of music having become so easy, and free of consequences – so many seem to seriously wonder if it’s still theft. David Lowery (in another – even longer! – article on Trichordist than the one you linked: http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-old-boss-full-post/) is very convincing that illegal downloads have in fact had an impact on the income of artists, and that in general artists are much worse off than they were before. And in the article you linked, he makes the point that there are a lot of corporate interests who make a lot of money from the culture of piracy; unlike the “evil” record labels, they aren’t sharing any of that revenue with the artists.

It seems to me that a musical culture where people are willing to pay for music is bound to be healthier than one in which people expect – in fact, feel they have a right – to be able to steal it.