{"id":4666,"date":"2012-06-21T07:19:40","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T12:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=4666"},"modified":"2012-06-21T07:19:40","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T12:19:40","slug":"theres-only-one-powerful-workable-response-to-free-music-sharing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2012\/06\/21\/theres-only-one-powerful-workable-response-to-free-music-sharing\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s only one powerful, workable response to free music sharing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9rick Deligne cartoon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

No matter how painful it may be for artists to hear, free music sharing is unstoppable. There is a ready hacker for every encryption formula, and there will never be sufficient means to enforce royalty schemes.<\/p>\n

So how is a musician supposed to make a living?<\/p>\n

By engaging in the one activity that is always in plain sight: live performance.<\/p>\n

Instead of seeing sharing as a liability, it needs to become a calling card. If listeners fall in love with a work or an artist in Spotify, they may very well seek out a related concert. If they really like the concert, they may turn around and buy a CD or\u00a0 DVD as a means to mark the happy occasion with something tangible.<\/p>\n

I realise that this represents wishful thinking on many different levels, but I can’t think of any alternatives that produce a smiling outcome for performer as well as audience.<\/p>\n

What crystallised my thinking was discovering that one of the dedicated concertgoers I know — someone I see enjoying live performances every week — has a penchant for ripping entire symphonies for free online. I began keeping a mental tally and realised that just about every classical music fan I know under the age of 40 has a substantial collection of free listening on their mobile device.<\/p>\n

This is theft, like tapping into a neighbour’s power supply, or quietly stealing their ripe tomatoes in the middle of the night. The trouble is, it now has a decade-long history of resilience in the face of all sorts of opposition and threats.<\/p>\n

So why not turn the theft into a form of audience building, like a crack dealer offering free samples?<\/p>\n

The thing is, live concerts are (or should be) far more interesting and engaging than a recording, anyway.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t address the need to cover the cost of the recording, which is why pop musicians have embraced the wonders of Kickstarter and other forms of crowd- or micro-funding in a big way, ensuring that the recording project is paid for by people who are truly committed the the cause.<\/p>\n

By coincidence, Kickstarter’s “album of the day” is a project by a bassoon quartet from New Haven, the home of Yale University. With 32 days still to go on their crowdfunding drive, they have already exceeded their $5,000 goal by a couple of hundred dollars (check the foursome and their project and Kickstarter out here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra uses an Old School version of this model, using its wide network of patrons in the same way Brooklyn Rider<\/a> used social media to fund its last album, Seven Steps<\/em>. The orchestra won’t release a new album until someone has paid for it — which is why it took nearly four years for us to get their latest tsoLive<\/a> offering, the Shostakovich Symphony No. 11<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Some people will buy the album. Many will share it for free. But the hope is that some of those free sharers will turn around and buy a ticket to a Roy Thomson Hall concert.<\/p>\n

It’s very easy to say that live concerts are the future of classical music. But how does a small ensemble with no hall make this happen?<\/p>\n

By starting small and keeping at it. There’s a lot more exploring and experimentation possible regarding venues and formats that fall outside the traditional concert hall.<\/p>\n

The software geeks who have brought us file sharing software had to be creative. Musicians need to be equally creative in return.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Through a tweet, I’ve just seen that Salon<\/em> published a story by former Los Angeles Times<\/em> arts and culture reporter, and current blogger Scott Timberg on this issue yesterday. It raises the same issues. Check it out here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

John Terauds<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No matter how painful it may be for artists to hear, free music sharing is unstoppable. There is a ready hacker for every encryption formula, and there will never be sufficient means to enforce royalty schemes. So how is a musician supposed to make a living?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31,36,42,51,61],"tags":[798,6455,924,1280,1343,1630,1865,2298,3252],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-1dg","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4666"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}