Sharing music files is fab, don't abuse it

Comment Give a dog a Bono

This argument only works for certain artists, though. It’s fine for established stadium rock bands, but it’s impractical for artists who are just starting out, and it’s not even remotely relevant to studio artists.

Recorded music isn’t just the result of sticking a microphone in front of a band any more; it’s become both a science and an art form, and well-produced recorded music costs money to create. It’s easy to say: ‘Aw, boo hoo, poor Lars Ulrich can’t afford to install a fifth swimming pool in his mansion,’ but this misses the point. Y

ou’re not just denying the artist the money that might have come from sales by sharing their files, but you’re also hurting the studio engineers and pretty much anyone else who worked on the production of a song. These are the people we need to create well-produced music. The insane popularity of music file sharing shows that we still have a very healthy appetite for well-produced recorded music, so why do so many people refuse to pay for it? It’s the increasing worthlessness of recorded music as a commodity that really worries me. The invention of the multi-track recorder ushered in a new way of looking at music.

You no longer had to play everything live, but you could do it all one instrument at a time, and even create a whole album on your own.

If it wasn’t for this, we would never have had many of the early classic rock albums, including Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and those were just from the early days of studio experimentation. Well produced multi-track recordings are now intricately complicated beasts.

As a case in point, one of my favourite recording artists at the moment is the electro-metal mastermind, Celldweller. An independent one-man band, Celldweller’s fusion of multiple styles is a rollercoaster of production techniques, with layer upon layer of different instruments, sounds and vocal effects. He even posted a screenshot of the Pro Tools session for one song at the end of last year, showing just how much work goes into producing a single song.

Celldweller sells his music in batches of two MP3s for a very reasonable $1.98 US. The tracks have no DRM, and are encoded at a decent bit-rate of 320Kb/sec, and you can also buy a CD if you want the full audio experience. Despite this, though, you only need to run ‘Celldweller torrent’ through Google to see that his music is also easily available for free via Bit Torrent.

This is what really gets me worked up. While I know a good number of semi-ethical file sharers who later pay for the music they like that they’ve downloaded via Bit Torrent, I also know plenty of freeloaders who apparently couldn’t care less if their favourite artists couldn’t afford to produce music any more. Of course, studio artists such as Celldweller can (and do) play their songs live and sell gig tickets, but the real moments of genius are found in the recording. The same also goes for many electronic studio acts. Richard D James, Orbital and the Future Sound of London have all done their own variations on live shows and DJ sets, which are great, but they can’t be compared to the recordings they produce.

It’s difficult to feel sorry for megabuck artists such as Bono, or the David Geffens of the world, and there’s no reason why we should. The music industry has done itself no favours with the use of draconian DRM systems, over-charging for downloads and even going after ten year old girls for file sharing. Equating downloads with lost sales is also a highly misleading, way of calculating lost profits, and it doesn’t endear people to the industry’s cause. Likewise, the introduction of badly thought-out acts such as the Digital Economy Bill makes the music business look more like a totalitarian state then an artistic community.

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