How Long Is Too Long - WHAT YOU THINK
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The victim is now the villian.

Your How Long is Too Long article is great and not just because it's an opinion I share, it's also the patent and obvious truth - the historians will read guys like you and go, "at least somebody got what was going on".  Super article.

(I'm copying the wonderful Dean Kay on this and Chris Castle because I'm see you guys as the public truth tellers supreme and you deserve all the props the public can give.)

Sorry for the length of the following but for awhile I've been feeling there is another, psychological, angle to what's happening out there in the "free music" world, you don't read much of the underlying emotional drives that accompany - really follow - the act of illegal commercial content downloading, that is, your gentle and universal music killing "sharing".

We all know in the last decade the consumer-music world has been a Salem Witch Trials environment - consumer attacks directed only towards creative people and companies, labels, publishers, even artist who want to get paid, and stuff like you write gives some of the first public and plausible defense, and balance - using the historical truth.  But why do you have to explain that? The record labels were Late In Getting the Web?  Like the Travel Agent industry got the web?  It put them out of business!  So it is with massive P2P music downloading, the record labels can do no right in this climate, the victim is now the villain, and it isn't because we don't see what's happening.  You and Dean Kay a couple of other smart people are getting the picture back in focus with your articles.  And what's really going on I actually think more people know than want to admit to.

Your writing gives the face of this (very strange seeming, at first), early 21st century anti-creative producer consumer hysteria, which I think is fueled by two psychological components (and one commercial manufacturing one) some forces that lot of people would never guess... 

First.  The sublimated guilt of the "sharing" consumer.  Think about this: ever notice how the people who acknowledge ripping and bit-torrenting and Kazzaing all their music for free on online forums on in public, almost never use their real names?  And the ones generally supporting such attacks who do identify themselves are invariably professor or ideologue types who question even private property and with no stealable product themselves, or bands who will never see the light of day due to low talent issues or even talented "brand name" artists who no longer need the money that the record labels gave them to become band names, artists who are coasting down a long hill, "sayonara Major Label and thanks for the 10-year push!"? So, while everybody's downloaded stuff, it never feels right if we're taking a legit "for sale" creation of somebodies - unless we justify we are doing it because of "the evil record companies."  Even sitting in a bedroom and using their own computer, everybody knows and feels this is wrong, but, add the magic of phony virtue, "us versus the demonic RIAA" and all is right again.  The response of the taker is to attack what's making the taker feel guilty.  This is Psychology 101.  That's why THE LABELS TOOK TOO LONG TO GET THE WEB.   Not.

And, secondly...

The early 21st century will be seen as a time when popular culture was square and complacent, and a period, for whatever cyclical reasons, when young people were very conservative (but the Obama phenomenon thankfully may now be changing this for this beleaguered voiceless generation) and a time when mostly bad luck gave the music business the almost accidental role of being a psychological "target" for a slight but healthy rebelliousness of the 13 to 28 year olds, who (until Obama) were, how to say this kindly?, conservative and suppressed. 

The vitriol and anger I have seen from the normally up-tight consumer regarding record labels is astonishing, but why us labels? And, particularly why music makers and sellers as compared to the legit offenders, the pharmaceutical industry or the cigarette industry or the insurance industry, or the trillion dollar guns and bombs businesses?  These are all super high-profit enterprises, scams infinitively (look up the word) more greedy than the lonely and high risk business of backing unknown musicians and putting out their music hoping to make some new artist famous. 

So, why us? Because we're low hanging fruit for the digital black market, making us an easy target for the shamed and while we didn't do anything wrong, we are on the wrong side of that guilt curtain.

This bashing of the record labels is fueled by guilt, because everybody knows that getting free music, if the creator doesn't want it to be free, is deeply wrong, and also by an emerging and actually safe and tidy rebelliousness from a generation that has turned out to be very orthodox and very American Idol in their conservative leanings. A more sarcastic person than me might say "Stealing from the web, how rebellious!"  ;-)

 And so not to leave one last true villains out, historians will also have fun time eventually in pointing out how the cool silicon/plastic/steel guys, the computer hardware folks, were just as obvious in fighting for the theft of music and movies and art, so long as they could sell their silicon/plastic/steel Intel fueled laptops and desktop and iPods music appliances to the tune of billions of dollars a month.  As somebody in a Senate hearing a few years back said to Andy Grove, perfectly:  "Explain to me exactly how we're impeding innovation by asking you to help us create a technology that ends theft."  No truthful answer to that will the hardware folks ever put forth, they depend on the theft of human art to sell their metal boxes and to make their money.  And, everybody knows this.

Looking at middle class white kids, some generations fought against Corporate mentality (50's), some against war (60's), some fought against square sexual mores ('70's), some against conventional music ('80's through mid '90's punk/new wave, Cobain), and then there was a general lull in any type of rebellion - other than some deeply felt personal self-alienation (Radiohead, etc.) and then nothing - until Napster, came and went, taking the baby bottle away.  Then commenced the lashing out at the "man" who brought you the music, generally done in the safety of the bedroom.  I'm not trying to put down a cohort group, but stealing digits from inside your house and making that a statement against authority is basically a timid thing - but that's 2008, pre election.

In the end, I think a shrink could have a field day figuring out how this Millennium or so generation today has it in for anybody that is supplying them with their ear sustenance.  What is it? 95% of all iTunes music is illegal, not paid for and P2P originated?  The claim that labels are "late" in understanding the web is hogwash and it's just another attempt to push the rage and guilt off on a group - the labels - a group that's both not very wrong and not very different from any other business, except maybe we're cleaner and nicer than the people that brought you Vioxx and Enron and various Middle East projects, of which there is only, now, the first peeping of protest from this generation.  That this phoney anger and bogus virtue is fronting for what is basically petty theft - this would be a great sociological national age-group case study, and your article would be one of the rational exhibit "A"s in that case study.

George Daly

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Moses,

An under hyped company that I think who did not drag their feet on the internet was Michael Robertson's MP3.com, back in the day. I was one of the original artists from their humble 1996 beginnings. They were the first Napster, the first Myspace, and the first CafePress before such things existed. They gave artists a chance to do on-demand publishing when it was still considered new. They did payolla, 10/cents trackc per play. When you play a track on Myspace, the artist gets nothing. Somehow Mp3.com for about 2 years, managed to get sponsors to pay the artists 10-15 cents, every single time a track was played (until the pile was taken, so they always raced to find new sponsors.). You had the ability to customize your page, etc. Sell CD's, upload the artwork... they were even kinda like a CDBaby...

The overstepped their bounds though, by getting in trouble with the RIAA when they attempted to upload major label artist songs to the server, which was their ultimate downfall. To this day, there is not a site on the internet that gives the exposure, freshness and opportunity that Mp3.com gave to all of us. I loved the charting abilities, it was like billboard charts but for the internet, it was sooo cool to see your song raise in the ranks. It kept very specific stats and sales information for each artist. Me for instance, I had over 7M unique downloads of songs per quarter on my page (for a few years there), and over 30K album sales. Not bad, for a literally a kid in a bedroom at the time. It was at that point when I was like "who needs a label? when you can make your own CD's like this?" I think a lot of artists were able to realize the potential of the internet because of the groundwork that Mp3.com put down...

Also the staff at the time were humble and in San Diego and loved building working relationships with us artists and trying to get us great opportunities. Myspace doesn't do this, Facebook doesn't do this. Mp3.com cared more for the "independent" (not indie the genre.) artists, than places like Myspace whom just cut deals with labels for front page exposure and who knows what else.... The magic is gone, and even the new Mp3.com which was bought by CNET, is a very very different and very very empty shell of what the old site was and actually has nothing to do with the old site... this was back when mp3 technology just started growing, and the only mp3 player u could find was the Diamond Rio, and ipods were definitely a far fetched dream... The D.A.M. CD's (as they called them.) included the audio burned on the disk as well as the mp3's and mp3 playing software.

We need something like that again. There are tons of copycat sites, but nobody will have the impact that Michael's Mp3.com had. I think he now just does investing with his cash, and that Gizmo phone software...

Anyway, I just think he's an example of a guy who didn't drag his feet, and understood the power of the internet and music right away! even before Mr. Napster whom I think gets too much over-hyped credit and press.

-j

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what happened 2 ownership & protecting that ownership... the 1st big problem was not getting control of digital downloading ...why wouldn't a record co. that spends max $ on marketing just start their own download sites instead of allowing others 2 control it & 4 what a 30% distro rate ...that is just plain dumb....if u want warner product u go 2 the warner dig site ....pricing /give aways /singles /no singles /no subscription (what is this the public library?)& no 30 % fees ...makes sense 2 me ...but not 2 the rocket scientists that run the existing labels...also allowing any & i mean ANY company 2 create a device or create a site that allows 4 sharing or stealing of my product on it should b sued 4 all their worth ...if they r smart enough 2 create such a product then they should b able 2 create a product that protects the property they r containing ...so too late ? ...i think they r still 2 late......& most likely 2 late themselves rite out of the bz ....but they have retirement packages & such ...i just hope most of them live long enough 2 run out of $ so they can get clue what it is like 2 run out of $ ....most of the ones i have met never really cared that much about music any way or really had a talent of any kind 4 it ....2 bad 4 the next generation & all the real musicians left out in the cold ....music is gonna get a lot worse .....pete anderson