Rent, Buy or Steal?

What Would Bob Do? - Colin Hay (mp3)

Blockbuster closed again. This is the third store in our area to shut down in the last year or so, and this one was close to our house.

When the previous one closed down, I asked the manager at this one how long she thought they’d survive, and she said, “Oh, there’s no plans to downsize us. We’re doing fairly well all things considered. We’ll be here a while.”

Apparently “a while” equals about half a year.

The two streams of commerce and popular culture continue to collide in strange and unprecedented ways as we try and figure out this concept called CONTENT.

When I buy the latest Matt Nathanson album on mp3, what do I own? What did I pay for?
When I buy a Kindle book, what do I own?
When I buy Season 1 of Archer on Amazon, what did I pay for?

Why do we, collectively, seem more comfortable owning books, renting movies, and stealing music?

When they have increasingly all just become slightly different versions of pop culture content? Rent, Buy or Steal?

These aren't new questions, but it fascinates me that I still don't quite know how to answer them, and I consider myself well past the midway point on the TechnoBell Curve.

Almost everyone I know who likes but doesn't love music spends 80% of their music time on Pandora. They don't have to buy anything, and they get to listen to something akin to the radio, and they don't have to make but a few decisions to do it.

People of all religions and income levels, with all levels of music love, steal music. They even call it "stealing music" and seem minimally bothered by it, apparently because it's not as blatantly wrong as walking into John Cusack's music store and physically having to enact the Five-Finger Discount. "Data Transfer" just doesn't sound as criminal.

This happens with movies, too, of course, but the film industry seems to have done a better job of getting ahead of the curve by giving consumers who prefer being honorable (and I think most consumers are like this) options to watch movies via the Internet without excessive cost.

At least three of every four friends of mine is on Netflix... for now. The ability to watch digital streams of unlimited movies and TV shows through the computer totally tipped the scales. Music has these options: Rhapsody, Napster, and the new kid to the US party, Spotify. But people don't seem quite as willing to pay rent for music rights.

Maybe it's about digestion. The longer it takes you to get through the content experience, the more obligated we feel, culturally, to own it. Books take the longest, so we still feel like it's only right to buy them. Songs mostly run five minutes or less, the equivalent of a few pages in a novel, so we don't feel so badly about just stealing them or trading them with friends like baseball cards. Movies, falling somewhere in the middle and not frequently re-experienced by the average fan, get rented.

I only know I feel like I'm somehow falling behind. One of my favorite pasttimes was to walk into Blockbuster, rifle through their Previously Viewed aisles looking for their best "2 for $20" or "4 for $20" offerings, and biting off a few fingernails while wondering if the DVDs I had picked out were really worth my 20 bucks. Two-thirds of the time, I'd walk back out with nothing and feel like I'd earned some small, meaningless moral victory of fiscal responsibility.

But those times when I do buy, the movies go home with me, and they get added to my ebbing and flowing bookshelf row of Movies To Watch, and I lovingly stack them and plan for my next late night viewing experience.

I was so distraught over Blockbuster's closure that I drove straight to Best Buy and bought the first two seasons of The West Wing, a show I've never seen, for $14.99 each. That's, like, $0.75 an episode, and I'd totally pay $1 to cut the 20 minutes of advertising out of any TV show I watched and to be able to watch it whenever I felt like it. This is a universally true statement.

I took home 45 episodes. They're mine. I own them. I'm an owner. I like owning things despite the flaws in the approach. My collection of some 200 DVD movies and some 20 boxes of TV shows loses value every day even as I cherish my ability to obsess over something as meager and laughable as DVDs, something that will one day be mentioned in the same breath as VHS.

But I've never been comfortable with renting. No matter how practical, it just doesn't feel right to me. Something about knowing it's mine, and that I acquired it legally and properly, and that it will always be there until I choose to get rid of it, that all just feels better to me.

Musical Genocide: The Record Industry

Temptation - Duquette Johnston (mp3)
Valessa - Glossary (mp3)

Did you know that a bar that plays the radio in the background is expected to pay BMI and ASCAP royalties? Same goes for a restaurant that uses a jukebox. If you let bands play live at your dive, then expect this cost to go up a good bit, unless they play only original material. And maybe even then a royalty check is still expected.

Did you know that these companies can track, with mind-blowing accuracy, what songs get played where and how many times across most media formats? At present, humming earworms like "Blame It On the Rain" at your desk is still beyond their reach, but give them a few years.

I'll get back to this. First, I have an important statement: Devo can eat my gnarly, grody to the max shorts.

On July 7, I wrote a post bragging about the surprisingly enjoyable new album from '80s new wave demigods DEVO. The post was entitled, "Oh No! It's... Been 20 Friggin' Years!" You won't find this post on here anymore, because lawyers have requested it be removed three times.

The first time was de rigueur at this point. I'd posted two of their songs. Lawyers didn't approve. They sent cease and desist orders to Box.net and Blogger. As our side note says, I quickly and respectfully removed them, as I always do upon receiving notice. I then re-published my complimentary review of Devo sans music.

This is where it gets fun.

Four days later, the post was again removed for copyright violation. Assuming this time was somehow an error, I reposted it with no changes, and three days later, it was removed again.

I want you to think about that for a minute. Lawyers demanded the removal of a post, without any copyright violations, that proclaimed good and complimentary things about the band they represent.

So here's my new post, and the lawyers won't get this one removed, because it won't have any music on it that they care about: Devo's new album isn't that good. It's certainly not good enough to survive a boatload of lawyers and their fees rowing along the waters of pop culture.

This is why, this is why, this is why they suck.

There's Devo on one side. On the other are bands singing songs in living rooms.

I spent last Thursday at a really cool living room concert with members of the band Glossary with a dude named Duquette Johnston opening up for them. These cool and dedicated folks played with the kind of relaxed swagger and passion that reminded me what being a great modern musician takes. It takes being able to play in a living room, with only 40 or so people sitting around, most of them mostly paying attention, yet pulling it off like you were at Radio City Music Hall.

You don't need a stunning voice like Dennis DeYoung. You don't need to chop a guitar like Clapton. You just need to hit the notes and do it with a presence that lets everyone hearing you know you mean it, that it's coming from somewhere deep and valuable inside you.

Duquette was kind enough to chat with me in the kitchen between shows about his experiences with the kraken known as The Music Industry. It's devoured and destroyed more musicians than it will ever save. Some of the better ones figure out how to work around it. Superdrag, Patty Griffin, Nate Ruess (fun., The Format) and others have been determined and amazing enough to come through the jet engine alive.

But how many others -- hundreds? thousands? -- had their talents murdered by the same kind of idiots that now work for Devo (and, to be fair, Rush, who has done the same thing to me)?

As if anyone who truly loves music needed one more reason to hate the industry.

"The Music-Copyright Enforcers," a detailed piece in New York Times Magazine, is as even-handed and fair a piece on the music industry as you'll find. Reading this piece, you can't help but appreciate the significance of BMI's role in the Business of Music. Music is that rare product of creativity that, like kudzu, can grow and spread almost uncontrollably, and unlike architects or oil-based painters, the creators of these strings of notes and lyrics have virtually no way of keeping a leash on their creation and earning what is, debatably, due them. [NOTE: The awesome co-creator of Creative Commons, is quoted late in the article.]

Read some interesting responses to this on TheNashvilleScene's site. Especially the one about record stores:

Lately ASCAP has been hitting up independent record stores asking for fees. There is an exemption for record stores since we sell the music we play in-store but the greedy bastards have been sending those letters, hoping to dupe some unsuspecting stores.

Life would be too easy if everything were as black-and-white as Sarah Palin sees it, if there were bad guys and good guys and no one in-between. But for all the nuance and good intentions, BMI makes me seethe more than smile. They work against The Better Angels of Our Nature, as Glossary might say.

Oh yeah, and I guess you better start getting ready to pay a few bucks for the "privilege" of singing some Billy Joel song at a karaoke bar. Yes, BMI, that deserves a big fat WTF.

If the Music Business is right about one thing, it's that too many people steal too many songs without doing anything to help money get into the hands of the artists. Please consider joining eMusic, buying a few dozen songs each month, and helping some passionate and creative artists make a few bucks the right way.

A Lowdown, No Good Peace Offering

Jakob Dylan--"Everybody's Hurting" (mp3)
The Hold Steady--"Constructive Summer" (mp3)
Trashcan Sinatras--"Oranges and Apples" (mp3)

I have believed and acted upon all of the following beliefs, at times, somewhat chronologically and, at times, somewhat simultaneously:

1. Music should be bought and paid for.

2. Burning a CD of music that I got from somewhere else is no different than recording a cassette tape of music I got from somewhere else is no different from loading my Ipod with music I got from somewhere else. No one was ever prosecuted for his or her personal collection of self-recorded cassette tapes.

3. If I once owned a song or a bunch of songs in 45, 33, cassette, or CD form, it is fair for me to take free copies of that song or those songs that become available.

4. Music can be freely downloaded, if I only dowload music that was not available for sale (ex. live music, demos, outtakes, etc.).

5. It is okay to download music for free, if I do not intend to distribute it.

6. It is not okay for me to use the "lack of money" argument as a justification to steal music.

7. It is okay for me to buy some music and take other music for free. Corollary: if a musician performs at my school or at my house, I always buy the CDs rather than burn them from someone else.

8. It is okay to take music from other blogs to use on my blog.

9. It is okay to take music from other blogs to use in my mixes and to put on my Ipod.

10. I will buy an entire CD, but it may be okay to take the random song that comes my way (I say take, rather than steal, because so often now, the first song or two from a new CD is put out on a website as a free offering). I know, full well, however, that in a piecemeal fashion, I may acquire the entire CD over time for free.

11. It is the obligation of the music industry to protect music that it wants to protect from free sharing.

12. It is the obligation of the music listener to protect music by "doing the right thing."

There has been some discord on this blog recently, albeit anonymous, concerning how we or others do business, involving the procuring of and sharing of music. The comments "Nice to post any stolen song you feel like" and "Must be nice to just steal your music from other people" seemed to get other commentators (including me) cranked up.

Probably underlying the communal discomfort about Mr. or Ms. Anonymous' pithy remarks are their black and white implications. We infer from those comments the following perspective: #1 and #12 on the list above are the only acceptable statements. Statements #2 through #11 are either admissions of outright theft or equivocations justifying outright theft.

For most of us, equivocators or not, the issue of how we get our music is much more complicated than that. I'll wager that most of you carry around several simultaneous, irreconcilable perspectives, just like I do.

And, I imagine ethicists would or do have a field day with this issue.

Because, sure, it would be easiest if we just followed #1. But that would be in a world where we could put all of our Halloween candy in a bowl on our front porches with notes that read "One per person, please," while we head out to take in a movie and spare ourselves the annoyance of continual knocking on our doors. The fact is, we not only stay home to protect our candy, we also stay home to protect our homes.

While certainly I am not condoning basic thievery, I am also not naive enough to deny its very existence. When the cat is away, the mice will play. If you are not going to lock your door, Mr. Homeowner or Mrs. Music Company, eventually, perhaps sooner rather than later, someone is going to check to see if the door is locked. If I should not go onto hypem.com, find a song that fits my blog post, go to the blog that has posted it, download it, and then use it on this blog, it is up to the gigantic, multinational music corporations to prevent me. I hope they don't, though, because I'm certainly not trying to hurt them, and may be helping them. It's unclear. I'm just taking advantage of the technology that allows a person to listen to the song(s) I've posted while he or she reads my post.

If you disagree, that's fine; I don't think my position is particularly supportable, schizophrenic as it is.

Anyway, by way of a compromise, here's a bit of a peace offering. If you have never ventured onto the incredible site called Daytrotter, you have missed an opportunity to hear, live in the studio or live on location, some of the finest bands going these days, often of an alternative nature, the kinds of bands that bloggers like, but also some pretty established artists, one that I happen to like like Aimee Mann. And the good news is, you can also download the songs for free and completely legally.

You can get 4-5 songs from someone, usually songs that you like as well as songs that are new, in crisp, performance versions that dovetail nicely from the studio versions that the artists have just recorded. I've offered a few examples in the songs above.

At the risk of speaking for Billy, the music industry really needs to figure out how to best serve people like us. Not only are we significant consumers of their musical products (I, for example, purchase regularly from Itunes, eMusic, and Amazon), but we spend a fair amount of time promoting and highlighting those products from the past, present, and future. For free.

All of the songs above come from the artists' Daytrotter.com sessions.