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Do you pay for music or pirate? The battle rages anew

BY Josh Kerns  on June 25, 2012 @ 1:36 pm (Updated: 5:53 am - 6/26/12 )

Kinski

For several decades, guitarist Chris Martin of beloved Seattle band Kinski has been scraping and clawing to make a living making music. But despite putting out several highly regarded albums on Seattle's Sub Pop and enjoying a certain amount of worldwide fame, he's never been able to make enough money have music be his sole vocation. Every cent has been put back into everything from recording and touring costs, leaving virtually no profit. So he has strong feelings about a recent firestorm sparked by an NPR intern's editorial admitting she rarely pays for any music despite having copied and downloaded thousands of songs.

"Statistics have shown there are 25 percent less professional musicians since 2000, you know everyone realizes it in music - there's just no money there," says Martin.

But should there be? Do musicians deserve to be paid for doing what they love?

The debate over downloads has been raging since the days of Metallica taking on Napster over a decade ago. But Emily White's post and thousands of responses including a widely re-circulated rebuttle by David Lowery of the band Cracker has sparked a new, emotional round of arguments.

"It's unfair musicians are attacked for even expressing concerns," says Chris Kornelis, Seattle Weekly music editor and co- host of Seattle Sounds on 97.3 KIRO FM. But he says people forget the bottom line. Whether it's buying guitar strings or renting a rehearsal space, it costs money to make music.

"When you steal music, when you don't pay for it, you're actually hurting musicians," Kornelis says.

"You won't see many older musicians. It'll just be younger musicians that can go for it, be kids, go around the country a few times and if there's no income then it's going to go by the wayside," predicts Martin.

There's a clear generational divide between those who grew up buying LP's and CD's, and those who've been able to get any song they want for free.

University of Washington student and Seattle Weekly writer Andrew Gospe is one of those. The 20-year-old admits while he and many of his generation love music, they simply don't value it as a commodity to pay for like other goods or services.

"You wouldn't just walk into a store and take a CD. The real problem I think for people my age is that when they're torrenting music or pirating music, it doesn't feel like they are stealing it," Gospe says.

But opinions vary widely: Some argue the prevalence of pirating will kill music and prevent many from making it. Many others, including numerous bands and artists, encourage free downloading and distribution of their music to get it out to as many people as possible.

"Music has always existed, well before there was ever a music industry," argues Andrew Walsh, music blogger and producer of the Ross and Burbank Show on 97.3 KIRO FM. "People who are successful will find ways to make money. Not only will that change but the model will change."

Walsh points to the sales of merchandise and touring as new ways aspiring bands can make enough money to support their musical endeavors. And many will have to continue playing music as a hobby rather than a profession. But as has been argued repeatedly, that's always been the case since the medieval days of the traveling minstrels. And as Gospe points out, realistically it's not going to change.

"Basically, it's going to take lots of young people making a conscious decision to pay for something they're not accustomed to paying for. Call me a cynic, but it's hard to believe that will ever happen, barring government intervention or some sort of widespread, "artist rights" cultural movement," Gospe says.

As for Martin, while he has no delusions of grandeur, at the very least he'd like to be able to make enough money from the sales of his songs to pay the thousands of dollars his band paid out of pocket to record their newest album, or at some point Kinski won't be able to afford to record anymore.

"If you care about music, you still need to go support artists that you like and really care about," Martin says.

Josh Kerns/co-host Seattle Sounds

Kinski photo by Katie Martin

Josh Kerns, MyNorthwest.com Reporter
Josh Kerns is co-host of KIRO Radio's Seattle Sounds (Saturday nights 7-8) and a digital content producer for MyNorthwest.com.
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Comments (24)


  • Add A Comment

  • CH wrote...
    No not me . . . .
    June 26, 2012 2:26 am
    republicans never steal. Just ask a one percenter.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • Zoeller wrote...
    Why buy or steal music?
    June 26, 2012 6:38 am
    Just listen to the radio for free!
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • FalconClaw wrote...
    Other avenues...
    June 26, 2012 6:47 am
    I can't remember the last time I paid retail for a CD. All the music I buy these days comes from EBay, Amazon or at a local garage sale. Granted it's not "pirating" the mucic but the effect is the same...the original band is not getting paid.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • RonJ wrote...
    If you
    June 26, 2012 7:23 am
    can't pay the bills making music maybe you should find some other way to make a living? Just sayin, I love fishing but can't pay the bills doing it so I consider it a HOBBY that is funded by my job. Or, keep carping about behavior that has almost zero chance of changing and keep struggling to pay the bills. We all (most of us) have passions but common sense and reason take over when your going hungry.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • RonJ wrote...
    FalconClaw
    June 26, 2012 7:25 am
    If you purchase a CD at a garage sale, didn't the band get paid when it was first sold? Does the music on the CD become your property when you buy it? Or does the band have the right to collect fees in perpetuity every time the disk is sold?
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • Chuck Gould wrote...
    I get all my music through iTunes these days, but be very careful what you wish for:
    June 26, 2012 7:23 am
    Music and poetry are closely related. Anybody seen a professional poet around in the last 100 years or so? More than one, or two? Nope.

    You create music to express an idea. That's really supposed to be the payoff. The joy of slogging through the creative process, perfecting something of beauty, and then the joy of sharing that with an audience who may, or sometimes does not, understand and appreciate it.

    It's really tough to monetize the transmission of sound, and even the transmission of thought, without a lot of artificial restrictions. There was a short era, (historically speaking) when the technological means to record and distribute sound was only available to a financially privileged group. These recording companies literally invented and created performers. The record companies made often arbitrary decisions that made one artist a multi-millionaire, yet determined that another equally or even more talented artist would remain broke and obscure. Talent was often a footnote.

    These days, the technology is available to almost everybody to record, transmit, store, and share sound. Everybody who wants to record an album and is willing to commit a relatively modest amount of money to the project can do so. Talent remains a footnote, although some of the independent artists are terrific.

    Just like any other form of publishing, however, the improved access and internet distribution floods the market with tons and tons of actually awful crap. The first hurdle is trying to get noticed at all, to convince people that there is something about your art or your performance that makes it worthy of slogging though the tons of crap to try to find it.

    We probably won't ever return to the days when 30 bands each sold a million records a year. Welcome to the era where a million bands sell an average of 30 records each. Everybody's a professional poet...

    The upside is that there is much more freedom of thought and expression. :-)

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • BigGovSux wrote...
    New Model
    June 26, 2012 7:58 am
    Kinda saw this one coming when Napster first hit the internet. After having paid for CD's full of crap just to get the one or two songs I wanted to hear, I quickly used it to download every song I could think of. Didn't think of the Artists not getting paid at first. I think more than anything, the record labels are just a dying business model. I thought at the time that the new model would be Artists putting out their music for free and, if it was good, touring and swag sales would enable them to make their money. Maybe even have the radio stations pay small royalties every time they play their song. Sorta like TV does now. I just don't see the genie being put back into the bottle at this point.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • RonJ wrote...
    I think your
    June 26, 2012 8:17 am
    right about the genie and the record companies struggling to stay relevant and buying an entire album to get one good song. Who on earth would buy a six pack of beer to get one good one and five skunky ones?
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • Tracy White wrote...
    Culture SHift
    June 26, 2012 1:09 pm
    Hey Fartforce... you can buy from Amazon. I support Silver Platters, preferring to buy local, but if I gotta buy online, Amazon is kinda local. Plus, there's no DRM, just watermarking, so you can transfer to multiple players or computers. My wife loads the songs I buy in her iPod and they work fine, and I can keep a backup copy on the home computer for when her ipod gets lost or dies and then copy it over again when she gets a new one. - On topic to my subject... we're seeing a cultural shift, and this is part of it. Most people are more consumer than producer, and they don't feel connected to the work it takes to create something. People are pirating books and software as well, watching video streams for free, so it's not a stretch to see why they would assume it's no big deal. Suing or fining them WILL NOT change things. We need to make it cool and fun to create things again, and then they'll be more connected.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • DesertRez wrote...
    One good thing
    June 26, 2012 12:59 pm
    about bands making less money from album sales is that they actually need to TOUR to make money. So you can go watch good bands live! That being said, I use the Amazon music service mostly out of pure laziness because it downloads directly to my phone. I don't steal music, but only buy maybe 10% of what I used to back in the day. Pandora and other such services are great.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
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