Masturbation and extra-marital affairs are also pretty normal in society, but that's not what a social norm is. Like downloading-for-free, people generally don't publicize these behaviors, because they know they will likely face socially negative consequences.
In my experience, publicizing these behaviors is more common these days with online communication and such. And even if someone chooses not to publicize them, I get the sense that the general environment is less scornful that it may have been in the past about publicizing sexual behavior. However, that is admittedly just my impression... if you have a graph indicating otherwise, I'd actually be interested to know. But masturbation and extramarital affairs aside, I'd venture to say that one likely faces very little in terms of socially negative consequences as a result of publicizing downloading. I mean, what socially negative consequences does one face... a couple people on message boards or facebook getting annoyed?
Yes, these consequences may be arbitrary and illogical, but that's just how it is.
If they are arbitrary and illogical, then you and I should both be trying to dissuade people of them, not just accepting that "that's just how it is". Not that anyone can devote all their time to trying to convince people of things, but whatever small amount of time one has available to spend on it should be used to spread logical ideas, not promote acceptance of illogical ones, right?
The fact that you scoff at people who use comfortable and sanctioned channels to pay for a product indicates that your understanding of human behavior is odd at best.
As I've said, I don't have any actual problem with people getting these files from Amazon... if that's what they like doing, fantastic. I've bought a lot of stuff from Amazon myself over the years. Not mp3s, but a lot of physical products, to be sure. But I also think that mentioning potential alternatives not a bad thing to do either. I think attempting to gauge my understanding of human behavior based on this is odd at best.
This chart indicates that paying a sanctioned vendor for electronically-distributed music continues to become more "normal" every year, at a rate that's accelerating, so you're gonna have to work really hard if you want to make people realize how dumb they're being!
I don't know that this signifies people being dumb, at least inasmuch as I never said anyone was dumb for downloading music from Amazon. But whether they are or not, there are much more important things that people are being dumb about in the world... things that actually adversely affect me... so I'll likely concentrate more on those things. Also, that chart only shows the number of sales on the Itunes store... it doesn't give us any kind of comparison between how many people are downloading via Itunes vs obtaining music in any other way.
I think you quite underestimate the number of players still involved to get music to your ears.
Quite possble; I have no inside expertise of the industry, so there's a fair chance I missed something.
You get no value from the people who wrote the music? No value from the manager that kept the band off drugs? No value from the producer who made it sound halfway decent?
I'm including producers / engineers / audio technicians under the category "people who recorded the music". I'm not exactly sure where the manager falls there, but I suppose that can vary quite a bit by band.
And no value from the money the record label invested in promotion, without which you would have never even heard anyone on the Internet talking about it?
That's tough to figure, but you raise an interesting point there. At this point in time, I personally get very little information about music directly from record labels. Almost all of the info on new music I get at this point is from other people on message boards and such. There are some bands or fans of bands who have no label, from whom I've gotten good info, so obviously a label didn't play a role there. But for bands that are on a label, even if I did not get the information directly from the label, did the person I got the information from get it from the label, or did they get it from someone who got it from the label, etc. Of course, I have no feasible way of knowing that.
Yes, there are certainly fewer players in the chain than there were before, but that doesn't mean you can collapse that "few" to "one", and on top of that, arbitrarily decide that the "one" player that creates value is the recording musician(s). This is what I meant by my Big Mac analogy, I was similarly deciding arbitrarily and unilaterally that the beef producer was the only value producer.
I understand where you're coming from with the big mac analogy, however, my whole point here is to question the value of the supply chain in delivering music to consumers in this day and age... whereas no one has any question about value of the supply chain in delivering big macs to consumers.
Whether we're talking about physical or electronic products is fairly irrelevant. Whether you're stealing a Big Mac and sending money to the beef producer, stealing TV shows (either by tapping into a cable line or downloading) and sending money to the actors, or downloading music and sending money to the recording artist, the point is that you're arbitrarily bypassing key members of the supply chain, members who all have agreements with each other on how to split the revenue. Heck, even if you find some way to send money to "the band", the drummer might just keep it all for himself because it's not a channel the other band members even know to expect revenue from.
That sounds more like an interpersonal problem between band members... one which might occur even aside from sending money directly to the band. But yes, I do agree that this whole process would work better if the band had a channel on their website or something, from which they knew to potentially expect donations.
For a truly independent musician, who writes, records, promotes, and distributes his own music, your suggestion makes sense. However:
1) That musician likely already has a preferred point of download (such as Bandcamp) that doubles as their preferred point of payment, so if you were going to send money straight to the artist that would be the place to do it; it would be silly to download the music elsewhere.
Agreed. But this kind of thing is basically what I'm talking about to begin with. I imagine Amazon is even the preferred payment point for some musicians.
2) Truly independent musicians have nothing to do with this thread. I bet every single one of the musicians mentioned in this thread has signed agreements to split revenue with other parties.
I agree. Since this thread is about bands whose music is available on Amazon, all the bands mentioned in this thread have music available on Amazon... so undoubtedly every one of the musicians mentioned in this thread has agreed to split revenue with at least one other party.
3) Even the "independent" musician still splits revenue. 15% goes to Bandcamp if they use that site. 5%+ goes to PayPal if you use your idea of sending the musician money that way. In fact, an independent musician selling mp3s through Amazon using CDBaby as his digital distributor would get $3.19 for a $5 retail sale, while the $3 you sent him directly would become $2.80 after PayPal took their fee. So in that case the *musician* would even prefer that you buy through Amazon!
Indeed... but if a band / musician explicitly prefers that you buy through Amazon, that strongly suggests they are actually making some significant-to-them amount of money as a result of that Amazon sale. And if that's what they prefer, then presumably the theoretical donation link on their website would simply be a link to Amazon. I mean, obviously if a band feels that putting up a donation link on their website is going to violate an agreement they made with some other party, then they would not choose to do it. The info you mentioned about CDBaby is interesting IMO, and I will keep that in mind for potential future purchases. As far as the Bandcamp percentage charge, one imagines that the band thinks or hopes that using Bandcamp will increase sales by more than 15%, in order to justify the charge. The idea of accepting money on their own website through Paypal is simply a concession to the notion that they probably aren't going to bring in enough revenue through that channel (at least not at the start), to spend the money to be able to directly process credit card charges. In that sense, at least making the option easily available to file-sharers who would otherwise not pay them anything, increases the chance that the occasional person will send them something, and even with the 5% processing fee, presumably getting the occasional 95% of $3 is better than getting 100% of $0.
