A New Documentary Traces How Piracy Overhauled the Music Industry
A New Documentary Traces How Piracy Overhauled the Music Industry
‘How Music Got Free’ features interviews with Eminem, 50 Cent, Timbaland and more.
May be of interest to fellow pirates... youtube trailer | invidious trailer
Ah, the good old days of Kazaa, Bear Share, LimeWire, and Morpheus. What do you guys think - did piracy permanently devalue the music industry as claimed? Or were the record companies just massively overcharging for music in the first place? Given that record companies have been stiffing artists since forever, what is the best way to support your favorite musicians today?
In the streaming age, the concept of music piracy seems eons behind us. Back in the early 2000s, however, pirates shook up the industry by stealing and illegally distributing MP3s, which listeners would otherwise have to pay for.
How Music Got Free takes viewers back to the ‘90s and early aughts, when the FBI launched a sprawling investigation into music piracy to identify – and convict – those stealing music. Even once the thieves were discovered, mass music piracy was blamed for permanently devaluing music.
Directed by Alexandria Stapleton, the two-part documentary premiered at SXSW earlier this year.
Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24/7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/valves-gabe-newell-says-piracy-is-a-service-problem/
It was true then and it's still true today. Services like Steam, Spotify, and Netflix are far more valuable to the consumer than physical distribution.
If you want to support your favorite artists, come out and see them on tour (at non-ticketmaster venues, preferably) and/or buy merch.
Some of us still prefer Bandcamp over Spotify since artists actually get paid worth a shit from it, but that's just me.
To add on this, most musicians make little money off physical releases. If they're an indie group/artist, they're probably losing money in the hopes that they gain an audience. Shows usually pay artists (but trust me, not always), and merch always gives artists something to keep them going (unless they're a victim of a 360 deal).
So true. Record labels seem to just want the ability to sell overpriced, shitty DRM locked licenses without any competition from piracy, because it shows just how exploitative their practices really are.
Video/TV streaming services seem to forget why they succeeded in the first place, with all the restrictions on family accounts, exclusivity deals etc.
Im going to pirate this documentary
If a company makes millions (let alone billions) while all but the top 1-5% of their artists have to fight for scraps, piracy is the only good option. Dont buy from billion dollar companies at all. Support artists individually and let labels rot.
This is the way. Vote with your wallet and try to be conscious where/when possible.
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Music is so easy to make nowadays, and everybody wants to be a musician. It is an extreme oversaturated industry, and people keep falling into the same mistake of making it a career choice.
Same with acting, art, writing, and most creative positions.
Music can be easy to make, but IMO good music usually isn't easy to produce still requires a fair amount of time and talent.
Also I never stopped buying good music despite my pirating. The recording industry has certainly stopped wanting to sell us music though, and prefers we perpetually rent it instead. There is exactly one business my town where there is a decent selection of CDs I can buy, and it's a local, independent new-and-used media store. The ONLY alternatives are walmart and target, who have maybe a dozen or so albums for sale.
P.S. To anyone who releases an album on vinyl but not on CD in 2024: I hate you with the passion and determination of a hundred honey badgers.
Let's overhaul the video game and film industries now.
DRM-free versions are [almost] always available somewhere. If it's DRM-free, I will buy it if I like it. If the DRM-free version isn't for sale or I can't easily circumvent the DRM, it just means it came from the high seas instead of a local media store.
And don't even get me started on how often TV shows aren't even released on DVD/Blu-ray/4K. Again, I can't pay for it if no one is offering to sell it to me.
There's a book by the same title that's very good.
Probably my all-time favourite non fiction title. It made me feel part of something bigger than just thinking of my teenage self as some lowly degenerate trawling zero-day torrent sites.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I remember spending $34.99 on a double CD release because it was "an import" (narrator: it wasn't). This was back in the late 90's. Which based on inflation, is now like $89.99. That's insane.
And no wonder things changed. I don't think it was entirely piracy as Apple (Jobs really) did a pretty good job smashing the distribution network these assholes built to prey on customers. Sad thing is, most of the exorbitant prices went into the pockets of the record labels, not the musicians. Rap in its infancy was rife with the shadiest contracts on the planet.
Piracy did have a role, but there were a lot of economic and technological factors that ended the tyranny of record labels and the RIAA (fuck them ten times over).