Ask any American teenager whether they consider the potential harm they may commit to artists each time they choose to download a song for free from a file sharing website.
I am supremely confident that in most cases the “offender” would smile and wave the proverbial middle finger to the record companies supporting these artists. They would be quite right in doing so.
The forthcoming question may reek of banality, but it must be considered when attempting to address the latent transgressions of the congressional bill SOPA.
Who suffers more? The conglomerate record companies? Or the artist? It is certainly clear that ultimately the property legally belongs to these companies, a stipulation that is both alarming and revealing when considering the repercussions evident today.
The teenager is unlikely to feel remorse when he posits his act of thievery to be an attack directed towards an already wealthy record company. Companies, by the way, that routinely demand rights granted to individuals under law, requiring Governmental protection, as evidenced by this particular bill. These companies are effectively granted the rights of persons.
Although Marxism is certainly not immune to scrutiny, it does have much to say about how these conglomerate record companies were allowed to form in this particular way.
I acknowledge that this explanation may be a bit sweeping, but it is very illuminating nonetheless.
Individuals attempting to break into the music industry in the past had little trouble actually producing the music. However, their capabilities often met a dead end when faced with the daunting task of distributing and exhibiting their works – obviously requiring lots of capital. A dilemma recording companies are certainly eager to solve.
In Faustian fashion, artists sign contracts with major record companies that severely limit their own rights to own the music that they produce.
So I must propose the aforementioned question again. Who really owns this music? I’ll take it a step further. What does this say about the recording industry?
The major record labels Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI group and Warner Music Group have been dipping their nasty little fingers into the production process of making music for some time. Doesn’t this cheapen the music? Does the music not lose a bit of authenticity through this realization?
When a musician is taken up by these conglomerate devils they are immediately recognized and regarded as a brand – which is not such a terrible thing, unless you consider the fact that these artists are essentially devoid of agency.
In these circumstances artists are granted an alarmingly limited role in the creative process – supplied with teams of producers and writers who actually create the musical tracks and write the lyrics.
The artist is reduced to being a mere instrument in this shamefully contrived process, a process in which the artist is being paid primarily for their labor, not the quality of their work.
The responsibility of the quality of the music lies on the shoulders of these recording companies of course. (If your voice isn’t good enough they can auto tune it for you)
Ever wonder why so many popular songs today sound so remarkably similar? Free market capitalism relies on the principles of the relationship between supply and demand – an arrangement that certainly informs the “creative” decisions of the industry.
These companies take great delight in filling up their pockets greedily as the quality of music erodes through this systematic process of commoditization. It is also troubling that the U.S. Government protects these companies as individuals in regards to property protection.
Examining this process through a Marxian lens begs the question: Does the value of the product correlate with the price? This question must be seriously considered. It may reflect the underlying sentiments of the young “desperados” who regularly rob the recording industry of its livelihood.
We can certainly agree that the industry has been losing its grip on its property for quite a bit of time – the creation of CD arguably catalyzing this process. It should be common knowledge now, though, where the industry finds its most potent antagonist.
The Internet!
The Internet upsets these conglomerate recording companies in a very fundamental way. It offers a cheaper and more accessible means of production, distribution and exhibition.
I say this with a bit of delight, but the music industry finds itself in a dilemma principally caused by the very phenomena it employs to commodify music: the demand for its presence is weakening ever so slowly.
A free Internet cannot coexist with powerful conglomerates. Realizing this truth, if you were a record company what would you do?
Lobby to get legislation passed to limit the freedom of the Internet of course, which brings me back to SOPA and its maligned intentions.
This bill seeks to destroy an attribute of the Internet that is absolutely fundamental to its greatness and beauty – free knowledge. Isn’t it beautiful that the one thing separating us from accessing the wonderful breadths of the culmination of all human experience and knowledge throughout history are a few clicks from a mouse?
Anything threatening this process would be exceptionally shameful and would require confrontation with great suspicion and distrust.
SOPA attempts to confront third party rogue websites and prevent them from propagating copyright infringement and encouraging illegal downloads. Unfortunately SOPA lays responsibility on mainstream websites to discourage these third party infringers. Choosing not to do so would result in “blacklisting”, an alarming quandary in which websites such as Youtube, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Google, Twitter, Facebook and a host of popular websites would almost certainly be subject to.
As if that isn’t unsettling enough, the bill would require Internet service providers to enforce its rules. If an otherwise credible and upright website contains even a bit of copyright infringement on even one of its pages it is subject to being “blacklisted”. It doesn’t take a constitutional scholar to see the assaults that this bill wishes to make on freedom of speech.
The bill makes a case for itself by claiming to protect the intellectual property of American innovators. It would be a healthy exercise to examine this proposition. Did Akon spend millions of dollars lobbying in Congress to protect his assets? Or was it Universal?
Hmm. Your eyebrow should be raised. Another clear-cut example of the barefaced greed exhibited shamelessly by these conglomerate record companies.
Counter intuitively, a quick reading of this poorly designed bill does offer some consolation. It emanates an air of desperateness that suggests these recording companies are mindful that their days are numbered. We can take solace in that.
If these conglomerates wish to survive they must undergo significant change. If they attempt to remain strong in their ways of obstinacy they will certainly dissipate.
The government is tasked with protecting the property rights of individuals in a Constitutionally viable way. Our economic system hedges on the principles of free market capitalism, which of course limits government regulation.
Congress must be mindful of this when making decisions. There are undoubtedly ways of protecting intellectual property without violating the axioms of the Constitution.
The Artist must consider how beneficial an abolition of these conglomerates would be to their cause.
Individualism is grounded within the basic tenets of Capitalism, but this is clearly violated by giant recording companies that claim to possess the rights of the individual – rights that should be properly afforded to the artist.
Why would an artist want to abjectly subject themselves to a recording company if there are other outlets for exhibition and distribution?
Websites like MySpace, Youtube, Bandcamp and Soundcloud offer venues for musicians to exhibit and distribute their music free of charge. Bandcamp even offers a service in which artists can set the prices for download of their own songs, or even allow the consumer to set the price.
Conglomerates should pay attention to this.
Relatively cheap and commoditized programs such as Reason, Garageband, Logic and Fruity Loops offer amateurs and rising musicians the opportunity to produce music of professional quality. From a bedroom.
These are the realities of the Internet. It offers the artist so much more than the major recording companies. It grants creative license and agency. It grants autonomy.
The Internet is a frontier in which the quality of the product can be more closely associated to the price. Social Media sites give free venues for promotion, while search engine websites like Yahoo and Google aid in this process.
It’s no secret that major label artists make most of their money from touring as opposed to album sales. In the case of an Internet musician, perhaps notoriety is the ultimate aim. Signing a record deal for money can have the unfortunate consequence of transforming an artist into an abject slave-like musical instrument.
The Internet gives the individual (in purest form) ultimate agency, and it must be protected painstakingly. A violation of this is without doubt a violation against freedom.