The new pirates

Downloading files from the Internet has become a usual action for every of us. The problem appears when those files are songs, movies or programs. Millions of these ones are downloaded every day in the entire world, but for today I will only talk about the music issue. Each country has its own associations that claim compensations for this activities and punishment for the ones that execute them. In the other hand, people like me think that downloading free music is not only legal but positive for the music.

First of all I´d like to clarify which are the effects of downloading music for free and who does it affect. The most affected ones are those, so called, artist and authors associations as RIIA or SGAE. They demand the payment of royalties to every individual, association or venue that plays any kind of music to distribute it between the artists in function of their selling numbers. Following this line we can see that the best selling artist are the next victims. And in the last but not least position we can find de discographies. Obviously, if no CD is sold, they won´t see any money.

Now that these points are clarified, let´s start to point the injustices and contradictions of the actual music industry. I think it isn´t fair for the less known or not so commercial bands the way the money of the royalties is distributed. Think about this, if a bar tenders plays in his bar the last song of a local Swedish band, most of the money he has to pay for doing that will go to ABBA, as they are the best selling artists in the country. Even if they hadn´t gave a show or make any new song in the past 10 years. Want to change that? Wait! The number of votes in those associations comes to with the economic results of the artist. Looks line a dead-end.

The discographies also have been making money of this injustice system for years. He artist sees less than a 5% of the profit for each sold album. Where does all the rest of the money go? Publicity campaigns, production, distribution, etc. Good artist have realized that the best way to take their part in this game is giving shows from which they receive a bigger slice of the cake.

To conclude I´d like to make some reflections. The downloading of free music is dangerous for the big fishes mentioned before. But, in the other, it´s a whole new world of possibilities for emerging bands. Free music makes people know more bands and therefore pay to see them life, the true source of money for active musicians. One hit artist complain as they aren´t able or don´t want to make a continuous effort of creativity and time consuming work. Discographies try to defend their self saying that downloading music will destroy lots of jobs. Well, that may be true, but times change. I´m sure that all the blacksmiths complain when they work style disappeared but we all know that it had to be done. All these entities, enterprises and musicians will have to change their model of business or disappear.