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> I'm interested to know what people think about this. Do people think that the end (taking power away from big music industry) justifies the loss for those small-time players, or is it something that simply hasn't been considered at all?

My opinion: The end justifies the loss.

Secure and private file sharing is going to be essential for ensuring liberty in the future. I am absolutely convinced about that. You can't have that and make piracy impossible at the same time. The people who make tools for circumventing digital restrictions today are doing the groundwork for essential technology of the future.

Why is it essential? And why is this liberty? People may disagree with you and tell that musicians must have the liberty to get money from their music through sales. Can we really force them to give it for free? Music production cost a lot of money and involve a lot of persons to work on it. Musicians already have to do a lot of gigs to cover the cost of recording music. Even artists like Jeff Buckley had to work a lot to repay the studio.

It has nothing to do with music. The sharing of music is only a side-effect of free and private sharing of digital information in general.

There are a number of drawbacks with enabling private digital communications: It makes the sharing of copyrighted works possible without the possibility for law enforcement to intervene, it enables the spread of child pornography or other criminal and morally unjustifiable information, etc.

The thing is, that is a price that is worth paying, because the alternative is a complete loss of liberty. If the government can prevent you from sharing music, it can prevent you from sharing anything. This may not be a problem for you personally right now, but it is a huge problem for people living in North Korea or Syria, for example.

Besides this, it is not at all clear that private sharing of digital information is automatically detrimental to musicians. While it is easier to share music for free, it is also easier for the musicians themselves to reach out directly to their fans. Whereas it used to be the case that you needed a record deal signed with a major label to have anyone even hear your music, these days you can become a major star, making a comfortable living off your music without ever signing a contract with a major label.

I totally agree that we do not know if it has effect on musicians. But I do not think we should ignore it and just move. We need to find solutions if it is bad for them before breaking the whole system down.

I don't agree. I think it is more important to ensure free and private communications for people in oppressive regimes today than it is to ensure steady incomes for full-time musicians. Something that has, frankly, never been the case in history, before or after digital sharing.

>> "Besides this, it is not at all clear that private sharing of digital information is automatically detrimental to musicians."

Seems like this would be pretty easy to work out. Look at the amount of money musicians made 30 years ago and compare it with today.

>> "Whereas it used to be the case that you needed a record deal signed with a major label to have anyone even hear your music, these days you can become a major star, making a comfortable living off your music without ever signing a contract with a major label."

This needs to be proven. Show me some of these big stars. If I look through the top 100 albums or singles I doubt I'll find 5 that have done it without the help of a label.

"major star" may have been a bit strong, of course you won't make it onto the top 100 lists since those are completely controlled and owned by the major labels.

Making a comfortable living without a label contract is certainly possible. 2 seconds of googling found this person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordis_Unga

But enabling private communication is not the same as a public free for all. Some information should use private communication, but not be shared publicly, some examples that comes to mind is credit card numbers or private encryption keys.

How do you determine what information is legitimately private and what is not? If the only information that is ever transmitted under encryption is that which your adversary doesn't want you to transmit -- that is, if the only encrypted traffic is communication which the oppressor regime doesn't want to allow -- then the oppressor regime can easily prevent all encrypted traffic from reaching its destination. The only way to fight that is to encrypt everything. And if everything is secret, how do you prevent piracy? You can't. It is impossible.

Thus, the only way piracy is ever going to be fought is through examples being made. A grandmother who inadvertently downloaded Madonnas latest album by mistake is sentenced to pay millions in damages. A teenager listening to her favorite band is sentenced to ten years in prison.

What is worse? Ruining someone's life because they listened to the music they like, or musicians /possibly/ not getting paid as much as they /possibly/ might have earned, were there no internet?

I know what I think is the right response to that. And I say that as a person who once thought he'd make a living making music. Of course, wanting to do that and actually being able to are completely separate things. Perhaps it's not the piracy which is holding the musician back. Perhaps they are just not good enough.

Musicians have only recently been able to make money from recorded media. I see this as a temporary anomaly allowed by the state of technology in the 20th century (i.e. existence of mass media as a physical product).

Musicians (and other artists) can still make money from e.g. performing live - which I'm assuming was their dominant form of income before the 20th century.

I don't believe that a monetary incentive is necessary for good art. I understand that artists need to eat, but also that not everyone can eat from being an artist.

The internet is very important to me as an open and free resource. I can't see how information can be made non-private and scarce at the same time, so I can't see how we can pay for music and keep the internet as I want it.

It's a little-known fact that before the 20th century there was no artistic production of any kind. ;)

In more seriousness, I'd guess that the traditional dominant sources of income for musicians were (a) patronage and (b) being independently wealthy; I doubt giving performances mattered all that much.

That's a very good point. I had an image in my head of traveling musicians playing lutes but that's a bit unrepresentative! Especially of music that has endured through time (e.g. classical composition).

Instead of patronage / wealth, I suppose that a market mechanism could be used to support music creation in a wider section of society. However, I would actually argue for income redistribution to support that.

>> "I don't believe that a monetary incentive is necessary for good art."

It's not necessary but it's important. I'll explain how:

1) If artists can not earn money from their art the need a full time job to support themselves, provide food and shelter and pay the bills.

2) They will also need some of this money to pay for equipment and in the case of musicians studio time, sound engineers, mastering engineers, designers (for album art) etc.

3) They will need to spend some of their free time (after work) online managing their social media, promoting their music etc.

4) With the very little time they have left they need to write songs, record demos, make time (somehow) for a few days in the studio and then distribute the music.

If things were like this in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's we would not have some of the great albums we have today. Art takes time. If the artist has to do all of the above it leaves very little time for the actual art and we get mediocre art. We might get some good art. It's unlikely we will get great art.

There wasn't great art pre 20th century?

Yes definitely and those people got paid. Lots of the great works of art were commissioned be the wealthy. Other great works of art were created by people starving and living in shit. By allowing artists to sell their work at a low price they get to live comfortably, we get lots of great stuff, and nearly everyone can afford it. They don't have to make a choice between not creating great work and creating great work but living a horrid life. The current system (which has been getting cheaper and cheaper for consumers) is the fairest for everyone imo.

I guess where I disagree is that society should be deciding what is an ideal system for a given profession and attempting to lock-in a standard of living for that profession by maintaining the status quo to the detriment of progress and other industries. I disagree that there should be "blessed" professions that are given this honor.

I'm not involved with this project at all, but I do think you raise some interesting points.

First of all lets acknowledge the fact that if these tracks are on Youtube, they are publicly available for free, and unless they are registering 100k+ views per song, these artists are not making any money off these tracks.

Second, musicians taking wedding gigs and whatnot to supplement their creative careers is not a result of piracy; musicians, filmmakers and photographers have been doing that since always and probably always will.

Third, if these musicians are resorting to private functions like weddings to finance their creative career, its likely that they don't have a wide enough fan base and revenue stream for a product like this to significantly affect them.

In my opinion.

Not many musicians expect to make money from selling records.

It used to be "do free shows to sell records". Now it's completely reversed to "do free records to sell shows".

And that's actually been the industry's best response to it all - move the monetization to the thing you can't copy.

My concern is for authors, game designers and others for whom there is no such substitution possible.

I don't know about the gaming industry, but most authors make the bulk of their income off of speaking gigs, book signings, readings, etc.

Actually, most are unsuccessful and make their entire income off of a second job, but most successful authors make their income from the above.

Are you sure?

I know a friend who is a published, relatively successful author (makes a solid but not spectacular living from it) makes most of his money from the old fashioned business of selling actual books.

> But they have to make the assumption that the music they want to do - their own music - will never make any money in a recorded format, forcing them to do wedding gigs during the day instead.

Or concerts/show. Is that such an alien concept? A musician performing their art live, in front of an audience?