Of all the changes in music distribution over the past decade, the biggest by far is that the technology is now commonplace to allow consumers to acquire music online without paying for it. Defenders of this practice, myself included, have described it as the harbinger of a revolution. We predicted that making music free on the Web would render record labels, management firms, and other industry power brokers unnecessary, allowing artists to build followings without relying on middlemen. Though it wasn’t clear what new economies would arise to replace artist revenue lost to vanished record sales, we were confident a healthy and equitable system would evolve.
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“Freeloading says that music is free because it ‘feels’ free, because it can be had for free,” he writes. “Freeloaders say no expressed idea or recording has an intrinsic value. It’s like water, everywhere and naturally occurring. Music is everyone’s, so we’re justified in taking it. No artists’ labor has an intrinsic ‘monetary’ value, and we all need to just get over the dirty concept.”
My experience with Lose Your Illusion was a big part of the reason my opinion about free music changed so dramatically over the course of this past year. It was the first album I’d been involved with that had a real label backing it up and covering the bills—all my previous records had been self-funded, self-released DIY projects—and as such it was the first one where the music didn’t “feel” free. Somebody else’s money was on the line.
It might not even be worth trying to find out. Maybe musicians should simply accept that their music is stripped of whatever monetary value it once had and busy themselves looking for those alternative sources of revenue that haven’t materialized yet. Free streaming music accompanied by ads—already offered by services like Spotify—might be a solution. Corporate patronage, either through sponsorship or licensing, might be another, but few people seem sanguine about it. Ruen thinks sponsorship is just as bad for musicians as being signed to a major. And DJ Shadow, in a blog post early this month, dismisses corporate cash as unreliable—for most companies, supporting musicians is merely a form of brand extension, to be abandoned when money gets tight.
