Music and theft: the con of convenience

So this morning I'm reading a post from Mika Schiller on Made Publishing. It's called "Music File Sharing and Digital Disruption Aren't Unfair". The post is a bad attempt at justifying illegal downloading by putting it on a relative moral plane, clearly worse than murder or the right to decent health care or national defense. He goes on to say that file-sharing "isn't a moral issue, it's an economic one." Business models are changing, and why should we protect the old-guard industry standing in the way of progress?

The last part is partly right - business models are changing, and the record industry is struggling desperately to overcome it's near total irrelevance. But there are still key fallacies here. First and most important, a song belongs to an artist. It's their creation. If they choose to give it away, so be it. And indeed there's little choice given the realities of contemporary digital distribution. Secondly, songs from signed artists are the joint property of the artist and the company they work for. Sure, record companies have a long history of corruption. If you look around, so do many companies in many different industries. Kinda the nature of the beast. Regardless, artist and company have made a deal, and selling the songs is what makes the deal viable.

Enter the downloader. Illegal file-sharing is exactly that, the theft of property. Utopian net anarchists will tell you intellectual property should all be free, but they're wrong. It's a lawless, frontier mentality, devaluing the rights of the creator. Anything you create, you are entitled to treat however you the creator see fit, whether giving it away or selling it for profit. Profit is how you earn a living from your creation. It's not an inherently evil word. Perhaps in the future a better model will be adopted. The subscription model is bandied about all the time, but has yet to gain major traction. Legitimate digital downloading is growing, and convenience is certainly part of it. Buying tracks from iTunes or eMusic is a straightforward proposition, and it'll continue to grow as the CD disappears from view.

But back to file-sharing. Sure I'm crying over spilled milk, the cat's out of the bag and Pandora's box is waaaaay open. The fact remains all those albums and tracks you so conveniently swap back and forth don't belong to you. If you could download cars, or pies, the fact that it's theft would be pretty obvious. Sure you didn't kill somebody, but you can't just drive a car off the lot and keep swapping it for a new one every ten blocks. Making something digital makes it ephemeral, so the act of theft appears to be insignificant. Stealing an extra newspaper from the box is another example. You already paid a buck, the box is open, why not grab a few extra papers? But as you waltz away with five broadsheets in your hand, it's pretty obvious you took more than you were entitled to.

Music is especially ephemeral. With the precedent of radio, it's the least tangible art-form. Radio is of course subsidized by advertising. But there's a mental association for the majority of people, that they've listened to plenty of music for free, so now there's a better, easier way to get that music for free. And they're absolutely right. But who's paying for it? Not advertising. Not the industry. And certainly not the downloading music aficionado.

Then there's the live red herring. People argue they may download music from an artist that they don't pay for, but that makes them more likely to pay to see the artist live. It's highly unlikely given the amount of file-sharing going on, that people are seeing every artist they download. So what is it? A 5% justification? 10%? You see a quarter of the acts you download? Which would mean you only stole from 3/4 of them? Which you didn't. You stole from all of them. It just doesn't hold water.

Schiller argues that the rise of the auto industry put the horse and buggy industry out of business, and you can't say that the auto's innovation was unfair to buggies. It's an apples and orange comparison, though. Doubtless new companies will come along with different business models, ones that are more effective and yes profitable than the current record industry. And if those are equitable and share profit more fairly with their artists, more power to them. In the meantime, rampant downloading is no better than the storied corrupt record labels themselves. You're ripping off artists, just like they've done for years. You've just eliminated the middleman.

Ultimately what's under debate is the value of music. Maybe $1 per song is too high. I don't think so. A pack of gum or a chocolate bar costs a buck, you consume it and it's gone. A great song can brighten your day, haunt your memories, become entwined with the soundtrack of your life. A great song you'll play over and over, finding new things to love about it. That isn't worth a dollar? And even a song that isn't magnificent, isn't artful or moving or innovative or whatever floats your boat - if you take momentary enjoyment from that track, from the bop of the rhythm or a lyric or its melody - is that really any different from enjoying a $1 candy-bar?

Artists should be entitled to earn the fair value of their creations. Until a better method comes along that pays stakeholders fairly, can you really argue that taking their work for nothing is okay for now? As an artist myself, I support artists. I buy downloads through iTunes and I have an eMusic subscription (I don't even take advantage of all my downloads every month, but I figure what the hell, it's a small price to pay for the music I do enjoy). If an artist offers freebies and sample tracks, great, I'll grab 'em. But that's where I stop, 'cause there's no excuse for a con of convenience.

The new band, live at Tiger Bar

After a nine month hiatus, I'm glad to say we're finally getting back on-stage. That was waaay tooo loooong!

My new band, Charge of the Light Brigade, is hitting Tiger Bar this Thursday, February 25th, for our debut show. We've had some line-up changes and put a lot of work in on a mess of new material. The EP is nearly done, and we're über excited to be playing these songs in front of a bonafide audience at long last. It should be a cool show, with us, Bitter City and Volcano Playground putting it all out there for Tiger Bar Groove. The bar's at 414 College Street, east of Bathurst, underneath the Crown and Tiger. Cover's a 1+$1 deal - $10 for one person, $11 for two. There's even better deals if you join the promoter's Facebook group - see the details here.

The Brigade will be on at 10pm. Feels like it's gonna be the start of something pretty special. You should be there!

The Process

It don't come easy, this creating things thing. Oh sure, slap a guitar on me and I'll write three new songs before you can say "supernumerary dishtowel". The music part, that is. But the words part, that's harder. Finding the emotion, the pattern or sometimes just the patter, the jibber-jabber that brings those threshing chords alive, that takes some serious work. And then there's working up the music, building a song that's more than some jangles and a tremulous voice.

I wrote my last blog post when we were starting work on our new EP. That was in August. It's now December. That time just got sucked up like a whirly-gig cow, all moos and spastic limbs in a tornado's tumult. Except I barely noticed the time slip away. Three months later, the work's grown, deeper, broader. What started as a 3-song demo is now a cool dozen tracks in various gestative states, this one nearly fully formed, that one a speck scarcely visible to the human eye, with all variations between. But they're not frozen, preserved, floating in jars just yet. These babies are in flux.

We're working on a track "Young Love" that's gonna be pretty cool. But damn if we don't change the opening to the song every day. Subtle variations, pulling things in and out like a manic switchboard operator. We're booked for mastering in about 10 days, and there's a crazy amount of detail to sort out, just for four little songs. Striving for masterpieces in miniature, that's the beauty of pop music.

I'm really looking forward to sharing these songs. They're epic, personal, charged and meticulous. Zack's drumming is urgent and intense, Marc's production layered and rich. If you haven't already, check out the demo for "Desdemona" at our MySpace Now if we can just glue those last corners in place, go easy on the sprinkles, and get some fucking music out there. Sweet Jesus it's about time. It's always about time.

Men at Work

Well it's been awhile, I know. Things have been seeming quiet in Sneydville. But trust me there's work afoot, under the surface, out of view. Zack's back from his tour with the Kelly Girls, and Marc's cleared the decks, and the three of us are cobbling together our new musicology. There's some new tracks coming, and a few extra surprises along the way. These are going to be some pretty wicked songs, which is all I have to say about that for now.

I'm not in the habit of posting drafts, but I can't resist posting a peep here and there. Here's a spate of lyrics to tide ya, for a number called "The Defiant Ones":

No way home
The crossroads they came
And they showed me the way
But they faded before I could see

Once we were whole
But it seems like a dream
That fades with the rain
A chill morning that beats on the glass
A face from the past

Turn your back
Just leave me alone
With the blood on the floor
My footsteps will stain every door
Through which I pass

I've paid for my crimes
And served a lifetime
But I can't forget all I've done
I've laid at your feet
And I've prayed for relief
But nothing can change what I feel
The cold steel of love

We've made our beds
Now let's sleep for all time
Drown our sorrows with wine
Forget there was even a word
Forget

I've paid for my crimes
And served a lifetime
But I can't change the man I've become
I've laid at your feet
And I've prayed for relief
There's no breaking this bond, no release
From the cold steel of love

The Toronto One-Timer

Tomorrow night on Thursday, June 4th we'll be playing our only Toronto gig this summer. Gonna be a wicked night at Lee's Palace, with the Watters Brothers and Ladybird opening, and Exxxtra Juicy closing it down. We're on at 11pm, doors at 9pm and cover's $5.

After that we're playing a few more shows through the golden horseshoe. And then drummer Zack Mykula hops on the bus with Kelly and the Kelly Girls for an extended Canadian and UK tour through July and August. We'll miss Zackula Thundersticks, but we'll be hard at work without him, tracking in the studio with Marc Koecher for our fall release. The new tracks we're working on are pretty fantastic. The moody sweep of the Salvo EP is still there, but we're bringing more verve and crackling energy to these songs. They're gonna be pretty damn cool.

So if you're in Toronto, don't miss tomorrow night's gig. We're working a couple of different things into the set - it's gonna be a blast!

"Fightsong" video online now!

From Paul Thompson, the director of "The Prisoner" video, comes our latest for "Fightsong". A great vid of a couple's relationship unraveling, the story's told backward a la Memento. Lensed by Juan Montalvo and shot on a high-end RED Camera, it features the full band plus a sexy debut from Deniz Reno. There's even two different cameos from Elena Vardon, star of "The Prisoner" vid. See if you can find her!

Salvo Review on Fazer

Some fine words for the new EP! Check it out here.