Some more thoughts on File Sharing.

The debate about file sharing, and how much it's harming (or otherwise) various music scenes has been going on for ages, and recently The Wire started covering it, as even specialist labels start to feel the pinch of Mediafire and download blogs.

Mostly the arguments against file sharing are coming from the owners of labels, rather than the artists themselves. The message is clear, the labels, whether they be EMI or ReR want the clock to be turned back to a halcyon, pre-internet, age, an age where they controlled the artists, the means of recording, reproduction, distribution, and publicity.

Almost without fail, the labels have adopted a rather entitled stance, reacting in shock that people would be so 'evil' as to take something for free when the opportunity arises. I've seen label bosses react as if people downloading music are immoral disinterested plebs, thieves and pirates who don't even listen to the music 'properly' (heaven forbid that you should listen to music on an iPod!), The labels think that they have a right to expect people to buy their stuff, that people should be grateful that they're making music available.

They're wrong. People don't owe them anything, listeners AND bands alike.

The truth is bands no longer need them. The means to record are now available to practically anyone with access to even the most basic of equipment - got an iPhone or iPod Touch? Then you can download a fully functioning recording app that is far more powerful and flexible than a briefcase sized Roland VS840EX was ten years ago (and will cost you about £5 rather than the £700 I spent on the Roland). If you've got a laptop or cheap home computer (and almost everyone has these days) then you can get perfectly good free software (legitimately, there's a lot of Open Source audio stuff out there, and a lot of it's brilliant). Mic's are inexpensive, and there are plenty of cables that will link your guitar (or whatever) directly to the USB port of your laptop. In fact, the means to record 'professionally' at home have existed for a good 15 years now, and the corresponding closure of countless shitty 'demo' studios around the country is (IMO) a good thing.

Once bands have recorded they don't need a label to release, they can just upload to any number of free websites, and either give their music away for free, or charge a small amount and make some money via sites like Bandcamp. What do labels actually DO for bands these days? They manufacture a small run of records, 'pay' the band with a percentage of the pressing, then try and sell the discs. Why involve the middle man at all? Despite what label audiophiles claim, most people can't actually tell the difference between a 192kbps mp3 and a CD, and I maintain that anyone who claims to be able to tell the difference between a 320kbps mp3 and that same CD is just deluding themselves. For practically everyone mp3s are fine, just as tapes and vinyl (with arguably lower fidelity) before them were fine.

So all that's left for the labels to do is act as PR for their acts, after all there's no point in making a wonderful record if no-one ever buys it. But even then, a lot of the smaller labels do runs so small that they don't send out any review copies. In truth I don't think that the labels have a place in the new world that's stumbling, blinking, into the light of a world where everything is free.

I'm going to say something that a lot of people won't agree with here - I think it's great that people now expect to get music for free, and here's why....

When making music ceases to be anything that's even slightly profitable the types of people who are attracted to it by the potential rock star lifestyle will go elsewhere. I want to see the music industry collapse to the point where rehearsal studios go out of business due to the lack of sub-Kings of Leon acts practising their lumpen sludge, I want to see record sales plummet to virtually nothing......why do I want this? Because it'll be GOOD for the music, the artists, and the listeners in the long term.

Look at it as an evolutionary die back, the extinction of the dinosaurs providing the environment that led to mammals taking over the planet. Once the music industry is totally destroyed the ONLY people left making music will be those who do it for the love of it, because they feel they have something genuinely important to say via song, are unable to NOT DO IT. Remove the promise of potential riches and the wankers, twats, cocks, and cunts who think they they'll form a band and make a load of money and fuck tonnes of girls, will just go off and do something else that allows them to live that dream....and they'll no longer be swaggering around our venues acting like Bono despite it being a rainy Wednesday night at a 100 capacity venue in Derby. Into the void will flood the only musicians left, the ones doing it for (what I consider) the 'right' reasons.

With artists making art because they love it, the quality will go up, local gigs will cease being such a dismal grind of one shit guitar band after another, and with good gigs going on, people will start to enjoy live music again, which will in turn lead to them being more likely to buy the music they like, music that will be made available to them for the minimum of cost and maximum of convenience that the internet allows.

Downloading might be bad for labels, and it might spell the end for countless numbers of bands, but I don't care - I think the end result will be worth it.