This whole Michael Jackson thing got me thinking. Earlier today, I was watching a special on him and learned that his Thriller album was the first album in the United States to have 4 #1 hits, and the first in the U.K. to have 5. Then I began thinking about today’s music, and the file sharing debate between the recording industry and, well, most of America. The recording industry claims that free file sharing is stealing, the American public claims that they have the right to as much free music as they can double click.
So who is right? Both of them, or course. They’re also both wrong.
*Note: I am not advocating free file sharing in any way. If you get caught, don’t point your grimy little fingers at me.*
In order to calm the brewing storm, I’m going to address both parties with my humble thoughts on this issue. Hopefully, someone will listen to me. But I doubt it. You can’t fix stubborn.
Dear American Public,
You are not entitled to free music. You are not entitled to free anything. The Constitution guarantees freedoms, not free stuff. Huge difference. You are promised an equal opportunity to work for a living, earn as much money as you want to, and spend it on whatever music strikes your fancy. Downloading music is not an expression of freedom of speech, it is stealing. In an ecomony, people produce goods and services in exchange for money. CDs are a good, the music on them is a service. Just because you aren’t capable of physically hiding something down the front of your shirt and walking out of the store with it doesn’t mean it can’t be stolen. Downloading music for free via file sharing is the same thing as taking a CD from a store, minus the fact that the profit loss comes from the recoding industry and the recording artist instead of from the store that sells the CDs. You can say that these people are overcharging you for music, and you’d be correct, but that doesn’t make you right for stealing it from them. You’re not “sticking it to the man”. You’re letting their greed make you a felon. And we both know you’re better than that, America.
Dear Recording Industry,
As I stated above, in our economy, people produce both goods and services. When goods are being sold, the cost they are sold for is determined by the cost it takes to produce them. When a service is being sold, the cost is determined by how much the consumer thinks the service is worth. You wouldn’t pay $5,000 for a haircut because people value their hard earned money more than having short hair. Now, lets say a CD costs $20. Most people look at how long it would take them to earn $20- let’s say 3 hours. So, our hypothetical consumer works 3 hours to earn $20, and they’re considering spending that $20 on your CD. They pick it up, look at the track list, and decide that the talent-to-”filler” ratio of your CD is quite low, and not worth their $20. They don’t buy it. My point here is that we all know you’re making a pretty large profit off of CDs, otherwise you wouldn’t be complaining so much about free file sharing. You have been overcharging us, because for a while, if we wanted music, it had to come from you. That is no longer the case. Over-pricing music is just as bad as people stealing it, because you’re taking money from our wallets. In a free market, the consumer decides what a service is worth. We decided a while ago that music was not worth what you were charging us for it. You didn’t back down, so now you’re getting what’s known as a wake up call. We’re sorry it had to come to this.
Now, what does any of this have to do with Michael Jackson? Its simple really. He reminds us of a time when music artists actually MADE GOOD MUSIC. Because the fact is, that’s not the case anymore. Before, people in the music industry used to slave over albums. Each song had its own voice, its own story. Each song could stand on its own. Each song was an experience. Today, artists produce one, sometimes two, and rarely three decent songs on a 12-15 track album, and the rest is just what I referred to before as “filler”. Crap songs that have no merit, and no effort behind them. Frankenstein songs thrown together from ideas and beats that didn’t fit in anywhere else, so that an entire CD could be produced and marketed in half the time (or less) in order to turn a quick profit. Most CDs today are filled with “cash cow” songs, instead of works of art, carefully crafted and performed with pride and passion. Say what you want about Michael Jackson, but you can’t deny that he had passion. Most performers today either never had it, or had it wrung out of them at the hands of a recording industry who prefers profit over talent. A real song can be dissected, the lyrics standing on their own as poetic genius, the music something to be heard and felt independent of the words. Together, they should make something beautiful. Today’s music rarely has that quality. Music has become an industry instead of a gift. Music artists are stylized and made-over to fit a mold, and the fact that their talent is limited is glazed over. Computers are used to synthesize a voice that can’t quite carry itself. Lip-syncing is used for the performer who lacks the ability to provide a live demonstration of their “talent”. Song lyrics don’t mean anything, and the beat that backs them up is created by a computer instead of someone artfully yeilding a guitar or piano. And the consumers eat it up.
Of course, it goes without saying that people have the right to listen to whatever type of music they happen to enjoy. I’m just worried that by the time the infants of today can appreciate music, all the true music artists will be long gone. Most performers today aren’t artists, nor are the musicians. They’re faces to sell on a CD cover. They’re the human face of what is mostly created on a computer screen. So, to the recording industry, you can’t demand that we pay so much for generic, emotionless garbage disguised as music. People aren’t going to pay $15-$20 for a CD filled with 2 good tracks and 10 that are “filler” songs. Stopping file sharing won’t make people start buying CDs. Even if they’re not downloading them, they still won’t pay more than they think its worth. Make music that is worth our money, and we’ll slowly, but surely, return to you. But our business should be earned, not assumed.
And to the American public, no wonder they think you’re going to be dumb enough to pay those prices when you go completely crazy over music that they know is worthless. Learn to appreciate quality over quantity. If you demand something new every 5 seconds, you’re inevitably going to be fed something mass-produced and meaningless. When music is good, I mean really good, support it by paying for it. Don’t think you have the right to listen to it for free, because real musicians can’t survive that way. Most music artists, in today’s world, make most of their money from live shows and endorsements. The real musicians are spending their time writing and making real music, so it is their main source of income. If you don’t want them to die away completely, support them.
People have gotten so caught up in greed, sex appeal, and filling up their iPods that making music has been almost completely forgotten in the music industry. It takes the death of a music icon to force us to slow down and remind us of a time when music brought tears to our eyes and helped us to grow as people. Most current music artists’ best songs combined don’t have as much talent and passion as Michael’s worst. Ever since his death, people have lined up by the millions to describe how his music touched them, changed them, and inspired them. I can’t think of a single music artist today who has had that effect on me.
