blog.area51.org

UPDATE: I see that CNN is thinking the same way I am (for once).

The conspiracy that we call the record industry is dead.

We interrupt our normal weekend quietude to congratulate Radiohead on its success without the RIAA. If you haven’t heard, this post-alt band, a critical darling with a loyal fanbase, decided to release an album without a record company. At least, at first. And they may not need to go through with quiet plans to release the album via mainstream channels next year: In Rainbows is flooding the internet at a record pace. Downloaders who get the songs via official channels are allowed to pay anything they want–even nothing. Average price so far? US$8.

Meanwhile, you may have heard that fellow travellers Nine Inch Nails, Prince, Jamiroquai, and Oasis are attempting similar strategies. I’m willing to bet that it works out just fine. Who needs a middleman between us and the musicians, especially when that middleman is Tony Soprano?

All the hubbub has raised the eyebrows of nothing less than the New York Times, whose oddly monikered Eduardo Portman opined:

This phenomenon is not new. It’s called tipping. We do it when we go to the restaurant or the barber, or when we ride in a taxi … [Harvard economics professor] Dani Rodrik … asked his blog readers, “Has Radiohead gone bonkers?” He concluded, “Not at all.” Radiohead will make money. But those who are paying for the download may truly be nuts.

But it’s not tipping. It’s patronage, one of the oldest and successful ways to support musicians and songwriters. Before the phonograph record, musicians made music and songwriters wrote songs for one of two reasons: the sheer joy, or because people would give them money. (Sometimes it was for both reasons.) Mozart? Rich patrons. That’s how things were done.

And thus business will be done that way again, except–thanks to modern communication and the creation of the middle class–we can all be patrons. When I laid out my ten bucks for In Rainbows, I wasn’t saying, “here’s a tip for a job well done.” I was saying, “please keep making recordings. I’m willing to support you.”

An artist may not get rich that way, but I’ll bet he can make a living. Oh, and the better he is, the more people are likely to reward him for it.

It’s about time, isn’t it? The record industry, allegedly tied to organized crime, is one of the largest private conspiratorial groups in existence today. Freedom of expression is a first-amendment right, and copyright is only allowed for limited time to authors and inventors. The framers of the constitution don’t mention anything about corporations owning music as if you could hold a song in your hand. They just threw in a clause saying that it’s OK to give an artist control over music for a short time, because they thought it would motivate them. Yes, I’m saying that today’s copyright laws are patently (sorry) unconstitutional. And that it’s obvious if you actually read the constitution. Or just take a look at what Thomas Jefferson told James Madison on the subject:

“I like the declaration of rights as far as it goes, but I should have been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additons would have pleased me… Article 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose.”

We lived with these unlawful laws for a while because you had to buy the record anyway. There was really no other way. The medium was, for a time, the message. Now that technology has made that unnecessary, there’s no reason for said laws to exist. They’re trumped by the first amendment anyway. (What, you’d suggest that Paul McCartney owns the part of my brain that knows the tune to “Silly Love Songs”? Please.)

So it’s about time the bad laws were rubbed out, and musicians started making money again. As Wired magazine’s Tony Long trumpets: “Here’s an industry so bloated with executives and middlemen, all of them greedily slurping up profit like bluepoint oysters, that the people who actually write the songs and play the music–the ‘talent’–are getting royally screwed in the royalty department.”

The easiest fix is to kill the middleman. So long, RIAA. We won’t miss you.

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