At an awards show at the end of 2014, musician Taylor Swift accepted her award saying that 2014 was an important year because it was the year she stood up for herself as an artist. In July 2014, she wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the future of the music industry. (1) Swift makes economic arguments about the value of an artist’s work: “the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace.” She reasons as follows: “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is.”
What does Swift blame for society’s failure to recognize this value? “Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically,” she writes. By blaming piracy, file sharing, and streaming, Swift has adopted what author Rob Reid called in 2012 “Copyright Math”, in which the movie industry claims that the “economic loss” from file sharing of movies amounts to US$58 billion dollars – more than most of the value of US agriculture (2).
Unfortunately, as outrageous as it is, copyright math is no joke. In the same year the millionaire Taylor Swift stood up for herself as an artist, one of the best known, and most defiant, file sharing sites, The Pirate Bay, saw its founders arrested in an international manhunt. The three file-sharers, Fredrek Neij, Gottfrid Warg, and Peter Sunde, were handed prison sentences by a Swedish court in 2009 (3). They went into hiding. Sunde was arrested in June in Sweden and is serving an 8-month jail term. Warg was arrested in Cambodia and is serving three and a half years. Neij was arrested in November 2014 in Thailand. The investigation into the Pirate Bay was extensive, the seizures of equipment massive, and the attempt to shut the site down has been thorough and vindictive (4). The Pirate Bay is being made an example of.
Taylor Swift isn’t responsible for the Pirate Bay’s founders being in jail. But when artists make claims about file-sharing reducing their “value” as artists, these claims are political, and they are part of the political climate that makes the persecution of file-sharing politically acceptable.
But take Taylor Swift’s question seriously for a moment. What is the value of an artist? Taylor Swift has a net worth of US$200 million because tens of millions of people listen to her music. Most of these people first heard Taylor Swift’s music for free, maybe on the radio or online, and much later, decided to pay some money to buy recordings of her songs or albums, or to see her in concert. Almost no one buys an album without hearing some of the songs first. Without the free distribution channels, no one would know who Taylor Swift was, no one would have bought her album, no one would have gone to her concerts, no one would have known her value as an artist, and she would have none of her millions.
Or take a step back from that, and ask, did Taylor Swift develop her musical style on a deserted island and come to her American audiences, completed albums in hand? Or did she develop her songs based on influences by hundreds of other artists whose music she heard constantly, for free, throughout her childhood and adolescence? When I heard the wind instruments in her song, “Shake it Off”, for example, I thought of the bridge from Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”. For a more direct connection, artists have been telling their listeners to “Shake It” since at least the 1970s (5). Swift would never claim that the phrases “players gonna play” and “haters gonna hate” were original to her or to her song. And so on, and on. Musicians, indeed all artists, borrow from one another, are influenced by one another, learn, and add their own little original pieces to the culture. Some artists are more graceful than others in acknowledging influences or samples. I only knew that 2Pac had done a song called Me & My Girlfriend (6), which is pretty much the same song as Jay Z and Beyonce’s song, “03 Bonnie and Clyde” (7), when a friend played 2Pac’s (relatively obscure) version for me years after ’03 Bonnie and Clyde.
Without the chance to borrow and incorporate other people’s music into theirs, would Jay Z and Beyonce be able to refer to themselves as “a billion dollars in an elevator” (8)? Probably not. Without the ability to freely listen and share, there would be no Taylor Swift, no Jay Z, no Beyonce, none of the massive fortunes that these industry players are now trying to use, along with the legal system and their cultural influence, to stop file sharing.
No one can deny that these artists are talented. But talent is not so rare as Taylor Swift’s op-ed would suggest. There are millions of people, just as talented, that are toiling away in obscurity, putting their music out on the web, hoping one day to find audiences. Even for those who manage to put together a livelihood from their work, they might make thousands of dollars per year. Does Taylor Swift really believe she is ten thousand times more talented than one of these artists? Does she really believe that she has ten thousand times more heart and soul to pour into her work? Such beliefs are not to be celebrated. Like Beyonce’s talk of a “billion dollars in an elevator”, they are a celebration of an inequality that has become so pervasive that we forget how vulgar it is.
Biologist Stephen Jay Gould, wrote in his book “The Panda’s Thumb” that he was “somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” Taylor Swift’s millions are of a lot less interest than the millions of Taylor Swifts whose talent will never be known.
A few decades ago, when I was a kid, I used to sit next to a stereo system that had a radio and a cassette tape recorder attached, waiting for one of my favorite songs to come on, so that I could press “record” at exactly the right time and get a recording that I could listen to over and over again. Worse, I would use these recordings to make mix-tapes that I would share with friends from my school. In the world of Swift and of copyright math, I was stealing, contributing to an early version of the multi-billion dollar economic losses that file-sharing represents today.
There are much better ways that society could support artists, giving all artists a good living and the chance to find audiences. There are better frameworks, like the Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/), to facilitate artists being able to share and also get recognition for their work.
Taylor Swift cannot get what she thinks she’s worth without a whole framework of laws that control how we listen, watch, and read, without surveillance on all of us to ensure we comply with these laws, without the police to hunt down and arrest people who seek to share the products of the culture we live in, without jail terms and demonstrative punishments for those who defy these rules. It isn’t worth it.
Notes
- Taylor Swift,July 7, 2014. “For Taylor Swift, the Future of Music is a Love Story.” Wall Street Journal. http://www.wsj.com/articles/for-taylor-swift-the-future-of-music-is-a-love-story-1404763219
- Rob Reid, the $8 billion iPod. TED talks,February 2012.http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod?language=en
- Jon Russell, “Police Finally Arrest the Third and Final Founder of the Pirate Bay” TechCrunchNovember 4, 2014.http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/04/police-finally-arrest-the-third-and-final-founder-of-the-pirate-bay/
- Andy, “Police seized 50 servers in Pirate Bay raid”,January 23, 2015.Torrentfreak.com.http://torrentfreak.com/police-seized-50-servers-in-pirate-bay-raid-150123/
- Billboard.com, “10 Biggest ‘Shake’ Singles in Billboard Hot 100 History”. http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/6229455/biggest-shake-singles-billboard-hot-100-history
- 2Pac, “Me & My Girlfriend” – for now, listen at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdu9qt6XuPA
- Jay Z and Beyonce, “’03 Bonnie and Clyde”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=copiznIfV3E&list=RDcopiznIfV3E– part of what Beyonce sings in this song is also taken from TLC’s song, “If I was your girlfriend” –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoV_-gex-bY
- TMZ “Beyonce raps about elevator fight”.August 3, 2014.http://www.tmz.com/2014/08/03/beyonce-elevator-fight-money-jay-z-solange-flawless-remix-marriage/
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4 Comments
I’ll begin with my critique of Mr. Podhurs article and My Vals’ letter with the following quote from Bessie Smith: “I ain’t never heard such shit in my life.”
I’m sure Mr Val wouldn’t be impressed: after all Ms Smith, like Taylor Swift, recorded music for money:
“any artist who produces whatever it is they produce for money is not an artist”.
Well, Joseph: she sounds like an artist to me…but maybe i’ll re-listen now that you’ve taught me otherwise.
And I LOVE your plan Joseph: we should go on strike against working for money, because working for money is ‘slavery’:
“artists rarely consent to slavery; those who may, are promised great rewards…”
But i’m confused, Joseph: i always thought slavery was when you worked without pay? how very 20th century of me!
Now its true that
“since the creative impulse is indigenous to the species, most people would spend most of their time, their lives, pursuing creative activities…this is not conducive to industrial production”.
But how is this a reason not to pay musicians?
Ok: many people like to play baseball too. But professional baseball players whose work is commercially presented are unionized, and are entitled to a fair share of the wealth their labor creates. Over 85% of internet traffic is still professionally created content: made by people trying to make a living. I’m hurt, Joseph, truly i am, that you don’t consider our work ‘true art’.
I strongly suggest you don’t listen to any of it.
But can’t we agree that people are entitled to a share of the wealth their labor creates?
>taylor swift is not worth more than any other human being
Joseph, politically speaking, you’re right. Taylor gets one vote: same as yours. But artistically speaking, you’re wrong: some artists work has more artistic value than others. And economically, you’re wrong: more people value Taylor Swifts than, for example, mine.
Now don’t get me wrong: your theories that things can or should be different are all very interesting.
But until the basis of our economic life has been shifted from profit to human need for ALL people, in ALL industries, my colleagues and i are going to ask to be paid for the work we do: just like anybody else. Because Joseph- we’re not worth more than anybody else. But we’re not worth less, either.
by the way, don’t mean to pry Joseph, but what exactly do YOU do for a living…?
i’m a working recording artist. I get paid by the money generated from the sales of my work.
.
The Pirate’s Bay is a business: they sell ad space, and they increase the value of their ad space by posting massive amounts of other people’s work without giving anything back to the works’ creators, thereby increasing their value to advertisers. Now, we all like getting stuff for free, and there have been cases where riots and looting functioned as a form of social protest: but so-called ‘copy-leftists’ who don’t understand the difference between destroying an industry and socializing it; mistake a black market for a socialist economy; and are proposing the moral and legal equivalent of looting as a progressive model??? Sorry- i get that this is ‘social change’: but is it really the social change anyone reading this wants?
I jumped to the rash conclusion that the ‘social change to which Znet’s community was ‘committed’ was politically progressive, i.e.: in some way leftist. I was always taught that leftists supported workers.
over 85% of the online black market is large scale commercial ad based businesses: mostly lucrative businesses financed in the millions. they’re not “pirates”: they’re black marketeers: and i’m tired of seeing working artists– musicians, engineers, tech people, and the dozens of others whose work creates the music YOU listen to — MY friends and colleagues — having their livelihoods destroyed so these bastards can profit off work they had nothing to do with creating. I’m glad the Pirates Bay black-marketeers went to jail. They hurt a lot of people.
The music industry has crashed by over 60% since Naptster,
Is that ‘copyright math”? Well, no doubt SOME of that loss represents income that didn’t go to artists (as opposed to exactly what other industry??? would the same ghouls and creeps who celebrate the collapse of my industry cheer if the auto industry was “Ripped,… Burned”? That’s owned by capitalists too, last time i checked).
For every megastar like Taylor Swift who has been hurt — and yes, she’s absolutely right to speak out against a set of businesses trying to force her into a set of unsustainable business relations with a bunch of hype — there are hundreds who have been pushed underwater by the attack on our rights and livelihoods.
If you want to delude yourself into thinking that this isn’t hurting rank and file artists, dream on brother.
The only reason massive black marketeering has been tolerated — in this one area of the economy — is because Google and other Big Tech giants have run political interference for it. Why? because Google et al have made a lot of money selling ads on its search engine: and has brokering them to sites which post infringing material. The cheaper the content, the more valuable the hard and software that accesses it. These corporations have very smart publicists: who apparently also have a refined sense of irony: they’ve managed to convince a sizable portion of gullible consumers like Mr Val and Mr Podhur that one of the biggest power grabs in corporate history is an anti-corporate campaign. Nice!
Still: Self described progressives who find themselves on the side of the worlds’ largest corporations and opposed to virtually EVERY union and community organization representing workers in creative fields might want to take a moment to examine their positions.
Now, its true that sometimes the demands of workers and unions are beyond the limits of solidarity: for example, the famous musicians union strike to ‘keep flesh in the theaters” strike against the sound synch film in the 30’s. We feel sad for John Henry: but the fact is that the steam engine did it better for longer.
But this is NOT what’s happening in recording today: no ‘machine’ writes or records our songs for us. our work is generating more use and more profit than ever: just not for the people who create it.
This is neither ‘technological unemployment” nor ‘creative destruction’: We’re suffering from good, old fashioned exploitation:
And the ONLY reason you haven’t seen strikes and boycotts, and all the other tools of labor struggle, is because thanks to the 2ndary boycott provision of Taft Hartley, and disastrously bad anti-trust court decisions, we’d go to jail if we called engaged in them.
Like every other worker in post-fordist industries, we are subject to ‘indirect’ forms of exploitation, that have legally insulated the corporations exploiting us, and has made it extremely difficult to use the traditional tools of labor to defend ourselves.
Finding effective means of workers resistance in the face of those restrictions is the key challenge facing those actually committed to social change today.
But instead of getting down in the trenches and trying to help us fight back, Podur uses his platform to regurgitate Big Techs rationalizations for its power grab.
For shame.
Podur is advocating the destruction of a huge number of people’ livelihoods and the cancellation of acknowledged human rights without a real alternative:
“There are much better ways that society could support artists, giving all artists a good living and the chance to find audiences… like the Creative Commons… to facilitate artists being able to share and also get recognition for their work.”
creative commons licenses give away some or all of an artists’ rights to make money from their work.
Mr Podur: Please explain how giving away our right to make money from our work can ‘supports artists’ and ‘give all artists a good living’.?
Please explain how cutting most or ALL of the actual sources that fund our recording could possibly INCREASE funding?
Most mystifying of all is why you would ask artists to fill out a creative commons license if you believe our rights should be unenforceable anyway?
Your heroes at Pirates Bay don’t respect Creative Commons licenses. They don’t respect ANY license. And your article claims they should be free to do so without penalty.
You advocate a world in which anyone is ‘free’ to profit from our work without paying us.
“Taylor Swift cannot get what she thinks she’s worth without a whole framework of laws that control how we listen, watch, and read, without surveillance on all of us to ensure we comply with these laws, without the police to hunt down and arrest people who seek to share the products of the culture we live in, without jail terms and demonstrative punishments for those who defy these rules. It isn’t worth it.”
>””Taylor Swift cannot get what she thinks she’s worth without a whole framework of >laws…”
Ever tried working in places that lack such frameworks? You choose the extreme case: someone making a lot of money like Taylor Swift. But what about the norm?
We all know that laws can be oppressive or enforced with bias. But how do average workers make out…in situations where the rule of law really breaks down?
>,” without surveillance on all of us to ensure we comply with these laws, without the >police to hunt down and arrest people”
Its illegal for businesses to sell stolen material. When businesses break those rules, on a massive scale, their owners go to jail. This isn’t unique to capitalist countries.. And huge corporations like Google, major advertising firms, or credit card bankers aren’t normally allowed to do business with black marketeers.
No one is advocating surveillance on “All of us”, and this has zero to do with the jailing of the Pirates Bay black market profiteers.
(speaking of surveillance: it isn’t recording artists who are selling or giving your metadata and consumer info to every advertising firm or spy agency who will pay it: its your Pirates Bay heroes and their pals at the search engines. )
>”people who seek to share the products of the culture we live in”
Justin: when you ‘share’ things you don’t own…that’s not exactly ‘sharing’, is it?
And when exactly did what I make become “the product of the culture we live in”?
What do you make, Justin? I assume you aren’t getting paid for your writing (sorry, just a guess). But its your choice to post work for free… or not.
Don’t you think artists/working journalists/filmmakers/etc should have that same choice?
I’ll bet, judging by the fact that you’re alive, that there are some things you don’t choose to give away for free. Maybe they’re even things we all want.
When do we get to ‘share’ them? When does your labor cease to be yours, and become the common property of the culture?
Oh yes, to be sure: my music benefits from the ideas of MANY who came before me.
So does every sentence written in a language.
So does the computer i’m typing on. But if i tried to walk it out of the store with that rationalization, a big security guy would smack me on the head. And if someone tries to grab it from me on train with that line of BS, i’ll smack them.
Don’t get me wrong: i’m a big fan of affordable, culture, accessible by all. There are real ways to make this happen: creating public utilities, subsidies, etc. libraries, free subsidized venues and concerts…etc.
I love the free water that comes out of my tap: but the people who dig those tunnels get paid. Every last one of them, every hour.
Mr Podur is certainly right that there are other ways to support artists: in cuba, musicians recognized by the government receive a direct state subsidy. Its far from a perfect, but at least its a system.
Does anyone have any illusions that a country like the UK, barely managing to stave off privatizing its health and transport sectors; or the US, which practically restarted the civil war over a third rate health plan…and is in the process of privatizing its fucking SCHOOL SYSTEM…is anyone suggesting that billions a year for music in the public domain is even a remote possibility???
SO what is it, Mr Podur? do you just like to frame this issue in fake populist terms by attacking women like Taylor Swift?
Or are you just an irresponsible twit who likes getting stuff for free, and doesn’t really give a damn what happens to the people who make it?
“There are much better ways that society could support artists”: and auto workers, and secretaries, and dentists:
Yes, Justin, no doubt. Why don’t you go out and convince ‘society’ of that fact?
We’ll hold your coat.
Hey, Marc, don’t get your nickers in a twist here. Remember, it’s just the cream off the top. Copyright , patents and IP are about monopolies not about paying the artist. Remember that most if the whining comes from those who have already made millions, not the “artists” or bands still up to their eyeballs in debt after having their balls in the vice of some friendly “we’re here for you” corporate record company. Even Mr Zappa, a petit bourgeois copyright cuddler from way back nearly had his career destroyed, not by bootlegs, which he tried to beat, but by Warner Brothers. He went on your friendly, “we don’t get fed payola radio station”, to urge listeners, all of a sudden in his time of need (you know, I need help from all you people who love us “artists”), to tape record the Läther album! For FREE. Well not really, the poor consumer had to have bought with their hard earned, substantially smaller, tinier, than what their beloved favourite “artist” makes, a tape recorder, tape and a radio!
It’s the cream off the top and a matter of capitalist principle, not concern for the “artist” that copyright is adored so much by the “culture industry”.
Sit outside the institutional structure of capitalism for a change. Frank couldn’t, but his music did, and many shared it for free but he made a living because those who shared it around went to the concerts and “fans” love the actual CD or vinyl too. Remember it’s really about making a living, not hoarding a fortune, and most of those “criminals” “stealing” “art” are scraping by precariously. If it wasn’t for the sharing these “artists” like good old Swifty poohs, wouldn’t have the fan base they do.
And let us not travel over to some poverty stricken area in some poverty stricken country to see how those who “pirate” on a higher level are “living a life of luxury”, please. You won”t find it. The black martleteers thrive on the same exploitation of labour and violence to maintain their monopoly in the market place, just as the institutional structure of capitalism says you must.
Remember Marc, it’s the poor struggling “artist”, muso, who could be but aren’t, writing these articles about copyright. It would be almost as if their “poverty” was a direct result of not receiving the royalties from their music that diehards shared after spending their hardearned buying a CD at the gig, going home and alerting friends to the existence of “this great band they should go see!!” The royalties from the hundred CDs they sold out of the 5000 they pressed!! Yeah, that’s the reason, not the monopoly, created by a billion dollar industry run by companies with their grubby little hands dipped into the weapons industry and death in the Congo, and the homogenisation of creativity streamlined and manicured to keep the ruling classes rich. The band or “artist’s ” welfare is of little concern, as much as if the “welfare state” isn’t needed in order to keep capitalism working!
If anyone wants to defend copyright or being ripped off get all the many million dollar white boy riff heads all legalled up about an impending black blueser class action! See what sort of a panic that creates. Even after slavery they are being ripped off! Remember the King of rock and roll wasn’t black. Could he have ever been? And what of a Queen of rock and roll? Could there have ever been one, and a black one? This is besides the fact that Leon Russell wrote a song, a homage, to the queen of rock and roll. Do you know who that was Marc? Wonder how they went with their royalties and royal treatment they would have received during their career?
Copyright has never been and never will be about the “artist” or their “well being”.
“Give your finger to the rock and roll singer as he dances upon your paycheck”
PS: I get paid by the hour like all wage “slaves” and have no, absolutely no rights to the products I produce after I have made them. No recourse to further income. When a band plays at a pub they get paid (usually ripped off) in the same manner. When a writer gets an advance from their publisher, their boss, to write their “ticket out of their poverty stricken hell hole (just like living right on top of a garbage dump eh!) novel”, they are getting paid in a similar manner. The copyright has more to do with a private tyranny recouping investment, NOT the welfare of the “artist” because they are a dime a dozen. Millions of wannabes out their and let’s keep it that way, eh. Let’s make sure the barriers of entry into the world of creativity, which is really the only real point of being alive, are restricted and limited, so those few, who actually own the means of production, along with much else, can KEEP IT THAT WAY.
Further, please do not confuse “barely managing to stave off privatisation” with a desire not to. They, the bosse of everyone else, with far more than their fare share of tickets to the fair, certainly WANT to privatise health, education and pretty much everything else. That’s NOT something “they” do NOT want to do, it’s something, just like I.P., that helps make this world into the wonderful little gated community it is.
Podur isn’t attacking “poor” little old Swifty poohs at all, Marc, just her intellectual position. Swifty is doing what all good little well paid, over paid, live walking billboards masquerading as “artists” do for their bosses on behalf of their bosses. It’s advertising dude. She’s doing the robber barons dirty work.
And you’re right, it always gets me right in the heart and a tear always comes to my eye as I hear of the hardship these people (to paraphrase another GREAT GREAT unique and mind boggling contributor to the world of music, and ambassador of the “diversity industry”, oh, sorry, the “culture industry”, Jennifer Lopez) with the “soul of an artist” have to endure.
And I don’t mind the old Taylor Swift. She can play banjo, and anyone who can play banjo is alright by me.
At one time copyrights and patents were defended as necessary to facilitate innovation and distribution. So, for example, after the printing press was invented, it was argued that granting different publishing houses exclusive rights to publish different works would enable the publishers to estimate the demand for each work and avoid overproduction in printing and transportation. Having each work published by a single publisher also gave authors more quality-control.
Whatever the merits of these arguments for copyrights may have had in the past, they now have no merit whatever. Copyright advocates today claim that the large profits which are the sole purpose ogovernment-enforced monopolies on the production of certain sequences of bits and bytes are a “natural right.”
taylor swift is not worth more than any other human being…supposed merit-based financial remuneration is the cornerstone of all inequality, subjection, and exploitation…any artist who produces whatever it is they produce for money is not an artist…art is created and freely given to others, otherwise it is not art, but commerce…”artists have to live, and need money to do so!”…since the creative impulse is indigenous to the species, most people would spend most of their time, their lives, pursuing creative activities…this is not conducive to industrial production and hence, capitalism…hence, artists’ work is denied value by and large, with only a few exceptions that prove the rule…artists rarely consent to slavery; those who may, are promised great rewards…art thus becomes rarified, the realm of the special few…how better to discourage creativity?…our masters want slaves, not free-thinking creative individuals…swift is a well-paid slave of the capitalist enterprise, having swallowed the whole gamut if its indoctrinary pablum…she is not paid by fans, but by the executives of production companies and marketeers while she is hot; when she is not, she’ll be playing for the door at the local bar-n-grill…