Who doesn’t like something for nothing? Probably no one. If you can get something for nothing, then why pay for it? Football on pay TV? No problem: get a ‘dodgy stick’. Listen to music? Maybe not free everywhere, but companies like Spotify can stream just about every piece of music that’s ever been made and sell it for fractions of pennies and you can watch and listen for free on YouTube. And your news? Why buy a newspaper when you can get pretty well what news you will ever need online. It may not be that easy to get a free lunch these days, but you can get so many things for free, legally or not. Why wouldn’t you?
I still try to make the case, especially when it comes to music, that people should pay for the music they listen to. And when I find some music I like, new or old, then I am content to pay for it at the market rate. It’s also that ancient concept of wanting to pay for and ‘own’ my own copy of that music, whether it’s a hard copy or something I pay for to download.
I believe that people, in this case musicians, should be paid for the music they create. If someone downloads or streams their work – because it is literally their work – then the labours should be rewarded. It’s way too late to go back to a place before streaming so I have a simple solution. It should cost a great deal more to stream music than it does now.
I came across what I regard to be a totally mad argument the other day, where I was told that it was okay to listen for free to the music of a legend like Paul McCartney, but it was not all right to listen for free to a young, up and coming artist “because they need the money and Macca doesn’t.” I tried to explain that this not how the world works. You don’t get all your shopping free from Tesco because they are fabulously rich and and you’d have to pay your local corner shop, if it isn’t already a branch of Tesco, because “they need the money”. If you stream Macca’s work, then he should be paid for it, even if he is already richer than God. (By the way, because of the way the world is, Macca often has to pay royalties to play his own songs ‘live’, but that’s another can of worms.)
I go much further, though. If I like an artist, I not only pay for their music, if I see them live, I’ll buy their merch, too. And I’ll do that with artists great and small. Recently, I bought a Toto T shirt at the NEC in Brum and a High Llamas T shirt at the Exchange in Bristol. The thing that links both artists is that this is what they do for a living, I like what they do for a living, their music makes my life better so why would I not want to help sustain their careers?
I do see the benefits of streaming. Some people like what they hear and then go on to buy their music or go to a live show, buy some merch and all the rest of it. But as is the modern way, it is much easier to get something for nothing. And I totally get that.
Not everyone is in a fortunate position whereby they are even able to afford to buy music and go to gigs and I would far rather people paid their pennies to stream music rather than not pay anything at all. Having worked hard all my life, I am not as poor as I used to be. I am one of the lucky ones.
Years ago, artists made their money from selling their records and used touring to promote their records. Now it’s the other way round and artists make new music to promote their tours because touring is pretty well the only place they can make money and it’s one of the reasons why ticket prices can be so expensive these days. (That’s but one reason. The cost of touring, especially since Brexit, has become cripplingly expensive for many artists.)
For me, it’s a question of honesty. Having a dodgy stick to watch sporting events, and pretty well anything else, sticks in the craw, even though I have been known to watch a major event on a dodgy feed from time-to-time, when my willpower and so-called principles have failed me. I hate the amount of money I pay to watch football on telly, but I’d hate it even more if I was literally thieving from the TV providers. And it’s the same, if not more so, with music. How could I proclaim myself a fan of, say, a struggling upcoming band if I stole their music, or used a streaming company which paid them in fractions of a penny? Short answer: I couldn’t.
I suspect that the streamers will win in the end and we will all download music in future, either by stealing, listening on the cheap by streaming or actually paying for downloads. For as long as I am able to, I shall do the latter and for as long as ‘hard’ music products are available I shall endeavour directly from the artist and not the likes of Amazon, which as a failed author I know only too well, pays about as generously as music streamers, which is to say it doesn’t.
The way we consume our music has changed over the years and in the near future the music itself will change, and not necessarily for the better, when AI gets fully ingrained in our culture. What then for songwriters and musicians? Will we even need them at all?
Something for nothing sounds great until something turns into nothing. Who benefits then?
