Storsällskapen vinnare

Forskaren Daniel Johansson föröker nyansera debatten om musikintäkter och fildelning. Härligt, tycker jag, för en bred ochb klyftig bild behövs – så myter och plakatdiskussioner kan undvikas.

Han berättar i SVD om faktiska siffror för musikförsäljning, om vilka som vinner på utvecklingen, samt en antydan om varför artisterna – återigen - inte drar fördel av utvecklingen: Då inspelad musik inte ger de stora intäkterna, så ökar istället intäkterna från livespelningar, och från direkt musikanvändning via radio och streaming. Bra kan man tycka, men hur ser det ut i botten, för de som faktiskt tillverkar musiken? Jag kan se flera ledtrådar:

När musik spelas via etermedia så betalas en användaravgift till Stim. Denna fördelas av Stim enligt en mall som säger att den som säljer mest plattor antas spelas mest i radio. Så Tomas Ledin och Per Gessle har hittills fått en stor andel av Stimpengarna oberoende av vem som faktiskt spelas. Detta beror på att infrastrukturen är ganska föråldrad och schematisk. Resultatet blir att den stora mängden artister som spelas men inte inhandlas, inte tjänar pengar på all den etermedia-spelning som sker. (Se för övrigt mina Spotify-poster).

När det gäller de ökande intäkterna från livespelningar så finns även där en sorglig ledtråd: I senaste Stim-Nytt finns ett stort reportage om nya villkor för livescenerna. Artisterna upplever en stenhård konkurrens, eftersom alla måste ut på vägarna och turnera. Det innebär att livegig är svårare att få, samt att arrangörerna kan dumpa ersättningarna. Arrangörerna å sin sida upplever en hyresboom vilket gör att de inte har råd att driva verksamheten. Resultatet blir en utarmning av livescener och ett allt trängre forum. Jätteartisterna spelar på idrottsarenorna och biljettpriserna ökar rejält. Men den stora mängden artister som spelas, hittar inte intäkter via livespelningar heller.

De stora vinnarna då? Centrala institutioner och företag som sitter på infrastrukturen förstås. Upphovsrättsorganisationerna och digitala distributörer.  Dessa tjänar bra på den nuvarande lyssnarkulturen. En långsiktig fördel för musikerna är att upphovsrättsorgansiationerna åtminstone kan investera i musikerskap. Och att fler digitala distributörer dyker upp framöver, med schysstare fördelningspolitik. Jag säger bara Bahnhof…

Visst är det svårt. Men betrakta inte detta som gnäll. Musik är livsviktigt och på musikgymnasierna flockas fortfarande ungdomar som brinner för att spela. Skönt att Johansson vill nyansera diskussionen, det är precis vad som behövs för att komma framåt.

Guilty of file sharing – financing next move

Today the verdict arrived in the largest file sharing trial in Sweden so far, 4600 musical works has been shared according to the verdict. I debated about this in TV a few weeks ago and I wrote a post about it too. The accuesd was found guilty today and got a 10 000 sek (about 1000 euro) fine. This pleases the lobby, such as IFPI, which hopes for more possibilities to prosecute file sharing pirates or whatever they call them. Apparently they use new tactics: focusing on people with hubs and doing a search at the prosecuted persons home. For future prosecutions, they are now trying to understand the bittorrent technology, to be able to put more people to trial.

My reflections on this :
- How is this helping musicians?
- None what so ever, the audience will continue sharing, but will regard the music industry with even more dismay. Progressive musicians with an insight in the possibilities of the internet, will have an even harder time working seriously.
- How much of this fine will go to the musicians that were shared?
- None at all. It will go to the government, funding things as the continued struggle against file sharing. This way, the struggle against file sharing will become an industry of its own, profitable as medieval wars that could continue as long as the money kept pouring in from looting cities. The musicians will not se a single coin of the sums that are to be paid by the guilty.
- Is this a development I prefer?
- Nope. They are backing their way into the future with blinkers to cover their eyes. Frustrating times, these.

Here is the article, in swedish, sorry: http://www.svd.se/kulturnoje/nyheter/artikel_1211875.svd

Are the copyright organizations our enemies?

When I joined the Swedish organisation for composers in the early nineties, I thought that the idea was perfect. Someone handling the deals with radio and TV-stations to help me get some money when my music is used. But the longer I have been around, the more strange the deal seems. And when I dug into the record company start-up, it just got bizarre.

First I learned that I have to pay to myself for playing my own music. Minus an administrative fee at 9 percent. Then I learned that I cant sell my own music in a proper way, unless I pay a similar administrative fee. I also started hearing about horrible attempts from the same copyright organizations, to thwart file sharing by lobbying for new laws, harassing and suing my audience and trying to cement the old ways of distributing music as static, physical items, bound in space and time. Now after a lot of discussion and correspondence I have reached a limit where I have to speak up against this.The organizations – STIM, NCB, IFPI and The Anti Piracy Board – have no idea in what world they work any more. They regard the industries as they worked in the fifties – with separate composers, musicians, distributors and record store owners. But today a composer can be sound engineer, musician, distributor and web shop owner. It is cheap and easy to get the music to an audience. This audience is moving, restless and used to huge amounts music they don’t pay for from radio, TV and Internet. But still these organizations remain in an old world of physical distribution of plastic discs, hit lists, copy protection and they motivate their existence by telling the politicians to impose new laws, protecting the old methods of musical expression and distributions.

Trying to be innovative in this business is almost hopeless. Because how do I create interactive products, changing over time, collaborating with other musicians and the audience to o something organic and alive, when I have to work with bureaucratic forms and deciding the length of a musical work before it is even created? How do I get the freedom to run my own business and use my own music, when a large part of the revenue goes to the organizations that is supposed to help me as a composer? Of course they have worked out a small exception, for small numbers of physical albums, released by a single composer. It can be free from the administration fees. But this exception, helping the smallest and poorest, is surrounded by strange criteria.
When talking and corresponding with the people in this business I have gotten these glimpses of their views: NCB (Nordic copyright bureau) regards cooperative companies as too large for this exception. So if you are a few composers, joining up to start your own record company, you are suddenly a large company, and are supposed to have a lot of cash to put in to your releases.

Hip hop collectives, where members are floating, are not valid for these exceptions either. I suppose we all have to form Beatles-like bands, with very few composers, for these organizations to understand what we do. Is the copyright organizations supposed to decide how and with who we create and distribute our music?

The handling can be extremely slow. I waited three months for the first answer to my initial questions, when trying to start my record company. They are mixing Internet sales with Internet downloads, resulting in bizarre fees. If I sell my physical album in my Internet store, sending it via mail to the buyer, it is strictly a business agreement between me and my buyer. But if she buys the album as MP3-files, there is suddenly a downloading fee to the copyright organization, that is a result of their ideas of downloading as something threatening. But if my audience pays me for my music, why do they have to pay more to STIM? They do not even follow their own policies. I have a strong notion that they do not know how to handle the Internet explosion, and improvising to override around their own rules. Examples: If you release your own music on Internet, they have concluded that you dont have to pay anything, as long as you own the web space and have full control over the FTP. Principally, the MP3-original on the web server, is also a copy and should render a fee from me as a composer to the copyright organizations, but ”for the moment” as they state in the deal, they have chosen not to demand that fee. It is kind of strange, and even more insecure for me as a composer/distributor. When will they decide that these temporarily free details will apply for payment?