True Confessions: I was a Thirty-Something Music Pirate.

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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From: 


Dave, remove my name from this if you would.

> From: Anthony Watson <Anthony.Watson () dollarsandsense com>
> I find it often a good idea to look for symptoms in the real world of an
> alleged problem or look for real world instances taht seem to refute a
> particular version of reality.

Am I the only person to notice that the music industry is blaming
their lower revenues on piracy even though the economy in general has
been in a significant recession?

I also -- no joke -- wonder if the decline was partially precipitated
by the fall of Napster. I really mean that.

I'm about to admit to having been a casual copyright criminal, much to
the benefit (rather than harm) of the music industry.

The claims that piracy often increased music sales are absolutely true
in my instance. I'll admit to having napstered a lot of music. I used
napster as a way to relieve the perpetual "hey, I've always heard of
Band X but none of the dumb commercial stations in NY play them so
I've never heard them -- I wonder what they sound like" issue. Napster
became a sort of "true alternative" radio station for me, introducing
me to vast new horizons of music I had no other way of experiencing.
It really was radio-like -- I never kept anything I pirated for more
than one or two plays.  If I liked something I wanted to buy the
album, and if I didn't I didn't want to waste the disk space.

Many friends of mine were in much the same position -- we were all in
a frenzy, learning about music we had never heard of before, trading
recommendations and listening to new things as though possessed. The
freedom was astounding -- things I'd heard of for years suddenly were
available for me to try, easily and conveniently. During the period
when I was a rampant pirate, I purchased about 20 CDs per month --
more than I have ever before or since -- because I had an easy way to
learn about and listen to music that I'd wanted to know more about for
years.

I knew, via friend of friend connections, college kids who were not
buying CDs at that time, but I was a working professional who could
afford to buy $300 a month in music and they weren't. The kids are in
some sense utterly uninteresting pirates in that they wouldn't be
buying anyway -- they have no money. When they pirate, they are not
paying for something they would not pay for anyway -- no revenue is
lost. The question is mostly what did piracy do to the buying habits
of those people who could afford to buy music, and my anecdotal answer
is, many of them that I know bought far, far more.

Perhaps I should not admit to being a criminal, but honestly, I am not
at all ashamed. I was more than harmless to the artists I was
"stealing" from -- in general, I was increasing their revenue, and if
I liked them, I told my friends who bought their albums too, after
also "stealing" to get a real honest first listen.

Perhaps it was "immoral" of me to shamelessly break the rules to do
what I did, and it was certainly illegal, but I felt very little shame
about it -- I was simply doing that which the mindless radio stations
and foolish record companies would not do for me, which is actually
let me learn about the depth and breadth of what is out there in their
catalogs. I wanted to hear more than the drivel that Clear Channel
will play for me on the FM dial and I got my chance.

I think the music industry has really missed something big here --
they had a golden opportunity for promotion like none they've ever had
before and they blew it.

This is not new. The industry bitterly opposed radio play of music
when that started seventy years ago, only to discover that it became
their main promotional outlet. Hollywood tried to destroy the VCR only
to find that it was truly their friend. Have they shot an opportunity
to gain vast new sales through truly unfettered promotion of music as
never before? I suspect they have, but that they are all so mired in
the past that they will never realize it.


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