Janis Ian on downloading--from 10 years ago.

[eridani]

The Internet Debacle: An Alternative View

http://www.janisian.com/reading/internet.php

The premise of all this ballyhoo is that the industry (and its artists) are being harmed by free downloading.

Nonsense. Let's take it from my personal experience. My site gets an average of 75,000 hits a year. Not bad for someone whose last hit record was in 1975. When the original Napster was running full-tilt, we received about 100 hits a month from people who'd downloaded "Society's Child" or "At Seventeen" for free, then decided they wanted more information. Of those 100 people (and these are only the ones who let us know how they'd found the site), 15 bought CDs. Not huge sales, right? No record company is interested in 180 extra sales a year. But... that translates into $2,700, which is a lot of money in my book. And that doesn't include the ones who bought the CDs in stores, or who came to my shows.

Or take author Mercedes Lackey, who occupies entire shelves in my local bookstore and library. As she says herself: "For the past ten years, my three 'Arrows' books, which were published by DAW about 15 years ago, have been generating a nice, steady royalty check per pay-period each. A reasonable amount, for fifteen-year-old books. However... I just got the first half of my DAW royalties... and suddenly, out of nowhere, each Arrows book has paid me three times the normal amount!.... And because those books have never been out of print, and have always been promoted along with the rest of the backlist, the only significant change during that pay-period was something that happened over at Baen, one of my other publishers. That was when I had my co-author Eric Flint put the first of my Baen books on the Baen Free Library site. Because I have significantly more books with DAW than with Baen, the increases showed up at DAW first. There's an increase in all of the books on that statement, actually, and what it looks like is what I'd expect to happen if a steady line of people who'd never read my stuff encountered it on the Free Library - a certain percentage of them liked it, and started to work through my backlist, beginning with the earliest books published. The really interesting thing is, of course, that these aren't Baen books, they're DAW---another publisher---so it's 'name loyalty' rather than 'brand loyalty.' I'll tell you what, I'm sold. Free works."

One other major point: in the hysteria of the moment, everyone is forgetting the main way an artist becomes successful - exposure. Without exposure, no one comes to shows, no one buys CDs, no one enables you to earn a living doing what you love. Again, from my personal experience: in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 20+ albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that didn't show I owed them money. So I make the bulk of my living from live touring, playing for 80-1500 people a night, 200-300 nights a year, doing my own show. I spend hours each week doing press, writing articles, making sure my website tour information is up to date.

Why? Because all of that gives me exposure to an audience that might not come otherwise. So when someone writes and tells me they came to my show because they'd downloaded a song and gotten curious, I am thrilled!

Who gets hurt by free downloads? Save a handful of super-successes like Celine Dion, none of us. We only get helped.

http://www.janisian.com/reading/fallout.php
Emails received on this subject: 1,268 as of July 30, 2003 (does not include message board posts)

Number of times the article has been translated into other languages: 9. (French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Yugoslavian.)

Times AOL shut my account down for spamming, because I was trying to answer 40-50 emails at a time quickly and efficiently: 2

Winner of the Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is award: Me. We began putting up free downloads around a week after the article came out.

Change in merchandise sales after article posting (previous sales averaged over one year): Up 25%

Change in merchandise sales after beginning offering free downloads: Up 300%

Offers of server space to store downloads: 31

Offers to help me convert to Linux: 16

Offers to help convert our download files from MP3 to Ogg Vorbis: 9

Offers to publish a book expose of the music industry I should write: 5

Offers to publish a book expose of my life I should write: 3

Offers to ghost-write a book expose of my life I shouldn't write: 2

Offers of marriage: 1

Number of emails disagreeing with my position: 9

Number of people who reconsidered their disagreement after further discussion: 5

[malthaussen]

1. It is so obvious

I don't understand why people of good will don't get it. People who have a vested interest in not getting it, this I understand.

-- Mal

[SwissTony]

2. Neil Gaiman agrees with Ms Lackey

[link:

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[Eid Ma Clack Shaw]

3. IP needs to be protected...

...but in a reasonable way. Sit down with the file sharing sites and work out a deal - they need to act instantly when handed a request to take something down, but if they song have a system which involves set fines instead of blazing in and arresting a shed load of people and 86ing the site completely.

There are reasonable, clear headed ways in which government and websites could co-operate in ensuring that work is protected to some degree, but it's never going to be 100%. I think a greater onus on immediately reacting to requests from copyright holders is the most realistic, non-antagonistic solution for all involved.

[eridani]

4. Yes, and those models are base on how we deal with phone companies

--when people use those common carriers to make obscene phone calls. YouTube, Facebook and similar sites are already very prompt in taking down content--they don't even wait to check if there are active violations.

[SwissTony]

5. Gaiman and Lackey are arguing that downloading actually increases sales

A download does not equate to a lost sale. It may stimulate interest in the short term or the longer term. If someone can't pay now, they may well be prepared to pay later when they have a better job, are out of college...

In an ideal world, every artist would get remuneration from everyone who downloads their music. But artists actually have very limited access to advertising their music. Stations like MTV and TMF are absolutely crap. How do I hear about that fantastic new band from Portland or Salford or Wollongong if I can't hear them on Youtube?

[Eid Ma Clack Shaw]

6. I agree to a point.

The early 2000s and Napster were responsible for me spending thousands!

That is why I think it's important not to just prosecute individuals with abandon. With that said, sites that host pirated items and have been asked by the rights holder, yet failed or refused to remove them deserve their punishment.

It cannot go unchecked because people *do* take advantage; there's a subset of people who seem to think that being asked to pay for something they can download for free is an affront to their liberty. That is patently ridiculous, and as someone who dabbles in more than one art form, I find it insulting to think that the time, hard work and money put into creating something you think is worthwhile is treated as something that must be free for all, without condition. You don't expect a free taxi journey or for the supermarket employee to work for nothing for a few months.

Copyright holders, downloaders etc. We all need to be reasonable!