In our past posts, we have been discussing the problem of piracy and what it is doing to record companies and music artists today. The situation right now is that the music industry is losing huge revenue as a result of rampant piracy. And copyright, which is supposed to protect an artist’s work from this exploitation, simply doesn’t work anymore. The prevalence of the internet and mass downloading, and mass copying and selling of illegal CDs and DVDs, is destroying the industry to the point of collapse.

But whose fault is it really? Well, for one, the pirated CD/DVD business is certainly wrong, because some other people are making money from the music that is the rightful property of the artists. But regarding the internet and file sharing, for a long time now, I have always believed that since technology will only progress further, and over the years when we all have faster connections at home, what took hours will take a few minutes, and it will be impossible to police the entire internet and prosecute websites and people who download music (and movies, and books, and software, and PSP games, etc). The digitization of information of any kind, and the omnipresence of the internet, will only put further pressure on copyright as we understand it now. And nope, I don’t think DRM (digital rights management) will stop it either (ever heard of those supposedly uncrackable AACS keys for Blu-Ray discs?)…

I just finished reading a blog by Curt Smith (yep, *the* Curt Smith of 80’s mega-band Tears for Fears!) where he described his decision to release his latest album Halfway pleased not through a record label, but under a Creative Commons license. I had been aware of CC for some time now, but largely ignored it, and so I really didn’t know what it was really and what it meant to Curt’s album, and what potential it could serve to musicians.

Let me highlight some of Curt’s insights in his blog:

• Musicians want to *share* their music. They want it to be heard by as many people as possible.
• Copyright’s “all rights reserved” dictum restricts the ways music should be consumed, because it means that you cannot play or perform it in school events, or even lend a CD to your friend. Realistically, it’s impossible to enforce.
• Creative Commons allows relaxing copyright to “some rights reserved”. An artist can now select which rights he wants to retain, for instance, rights from commercial exploitation. As Curt said, “You don’t have the right to use my music in a way that generates revenue for you without my permission.”
• Again, I quote him here, “One misconception I should like to clear up about Creative Commons is that all music released under a CC license is free. Some is, to be sure, but not all. Some artists choose to release their music for free and concentrate on other revenue streams (such as live performances) for their income, others (like myself) do not. I invested a great deal in the recording and release of Halfway pleased, and charging for it is a way for me to recoup those expenses and to have the funds to invest in making more music.”
• And lastly, I think he couldn’t have said it any better… “That being said, I think I’ve been as democratic as possible in the way I charge for it. You can buy a track at a time from digital services like iTunes, AmazonMP3 or thesixtyone. You can buy the entire album digitally, or on CD. And you don’t even have to buy it to listen to it, since it streams for free on my website. If you’re a registered member of my site, you can download a track for free. That’s all pretty fair, don’t you think?”

From the CC website, it says, “Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.”

I was thinking that the logical conclusion to the problem is a complete overhaul of copyright as we know it today, a new world order perhaps, but maybe there are other inevitable endings. Maybe Creative Commons is *the* solution, or something along the lines that they advocate. I certainly hope so…

For additional reading:

• Get Creative is a fun and lazy way to understand what I have written above. You might say, “And now you tell me this after I’ve read your stupid blog!” LOL! Whoops!
• In Curt Smith on the (Musical) Value of Sharing, Curt discusses the pros and cons of music sharing today, and the pros and cons of the use of the internet in promoting yourself as a new artist.
• The article Help Key: The Essential Guide to Piracy explains it all.
• In Psychology of Internet music piracy, the problem of music piracy is given critical thought.
• In the article Greg Kot: The Music Industry Caused Piracy, and iTunes Isn’t the Way Out, offers a different perspective on the music industry’s collapse.
• The article How to make money as an independent artist? describes the hard life of being an indie artist today and offers some solutions.
• I found Creative Commons Philippines from this article: Arellano University launches Creative Commons in the Philippines. All the best!

I don’t get it… I had the wonderful privilege of recording and producing a lot of innovatively original music from so many talented artists from all genres of music, be it pop, rock, heavy metal, and gospel. A few of them we produced in the Studio with production values on par with the best releases of the genre, and yet, when it was time for them to knock on the doors of the major labels, their music all fell on deaf ears. They kept on trying, but their efforts went nowhere. It’s a sad story to say the least.

These artists spent their hard-earned cash to get their music recorded. We took their songs to greater heights, rearranged them, embellished them, orchestrated them, you know, put all these little hooks, bells and whistles. We made their songs sound like a record. I asked for the opinion of fellow engineer and producer friends in the U.S., even posted their songs on several Pro Audio forums, and most if not all of them agreed that these records should ring the cash registers. But why oh why can’t even a single label give these artists their much-deserved break? Is the material not good enough? Or are they just not trying that hard enough?

It gets even more perplexing when I turn on the radio. (I don’t do it often though…) I get to listen to a lot of music performed by actors who don’t even know how to sing! Yes it’s true… Anybody can be a singer now and even release a whole album, thanks to Auto-Tune and the many other wonders of the modern age. But doesn’t anyone even realize that all we get to hear now are never-ending covers of classic songs that don’t even have a sliver of artistic innovation added?  I mean, I don’t think anybody can just do a Beatles cover without adding anything musical to justify covering it in the first place, right?

What happens now to the current crop of these talented people we call musicians? Do we allow them to just give up and stop doing what they do, because they are planning for their futures, or trying to support their families, but they could not because music cannot earn them enough money and give them a decent quality of life? Are the major labels content on putting their money on the more easily bankable “artists”, those whose faces are already famous and whose acting talents are excellent, but whose musical skills leave much to be desired? Are they just not willing to develop new talents anymore?