Lyndsey's X10 Blog

“Say Lyndsey, have you considered the impact this has on the creative process for these artists? Or the future of music? How will aspiring artists find the motivation to become something valuable to the industry if the product they offer is so easily taken from them? Will the future generations find themselves without Dylan's, Lennon's, Mercury's, or Vedder's?”

Hi Owen,

It's funny you should ask this, because I was thinking about whether I still agreed with myself this morning at the coffee shop I stop at on my way to work, and I had to had a little conversation with myself about how I finally felt. It went something like this.

***

"Self, have you considered how all those powerful, big name artists who aren't selling records might feel about P2P software?”

“No, Self,” I had to admit, “I haven’t. But I bet I don’t care.”

“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think,” I was taken aback.

“True, but they’re rich and powerful, like you said; and those people downloading music from their friends, well, most of them aren’t.” It was shocking to hear such rash and thoughtless words come from my own mouth! I had to keep going.

“Well, that’s not really fair. They earned that money through their creative talent.”

“That might be true, but thanks to P2P software, music lovers have far more access to artists they had never heard of before. Since the advent of file sharing the music industry has exploded with independent labels and artists using P2P to spread the word about what they have to offer. And we both know that when there is more music – or more of any product for that matter – and buyers have more choices, the marginal value of each musician goes down a little. SO, those truly exceptional artists might be making less money, but rest assured, they will be found through the quick disbursement of files online and social networking over time. And furthermore, in the days before file sharing record companies had way too much control over what we got to hear and what we didn’t. A performer who had better connections would often get more play than one who was less connected but more talented. That sucked for the Bob Dylan’s and Vedders of the 90’s. Why do you think late 90’s music was so bad? Would people have really been so ga ga over Brittney Spears and the Backstreet Boys if they had more choices? I think not. And how much money does a performer make from album sales anyway? 2% or something awful, right? Who cares! The more people know and love their music, the more shows they’ll book – that’s where the big bucks are!”

I was astonished.

“Well Self, I don’t really have a comeback for that right now. I’ll have to think on it. Is it all true?”

Then I got to the front of the line at Bauhaus Coffee and had to order so the conversation had to stop.

***

So Owen, that’s how the conversation went. If you want to help myself rebut myself I’d greatly appreciate any help you, or anyone else, could give either side of my argument…with myself.

(I’m so going to get fired for being schizophrenic)

Posted by Lyndsey Patterson at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

What follows is my lengthy response to Mike Mallari’s questions with regards to P2P software.

“Lyndsey,
How do you feel about the P2P softwares that are created for file swapping and are provided free of service?
Their creations started a way of sharing and transporting data that caused such an uproar from many of thes music producers and companies.
Many of the P2P software authors feel that they should not be held accountable for the actions of their users, as it's the users who "initiate in the illegal activity."
Do you feel that they should be held accountable?”

This is a great question. I'm really glad you pointed out the important distinction between file sharing ethics and the ethics of providing a means to swap files.

This is a challenging question to answer because - for me - the argument isn’t one of copyright ethics at all, but of the tug-of-war between the benefits and damages to different sectors of our economy as a result of new technology. From my perspective it doesn’t really matter whether having the means to file share is ethical or not. What matters is that the things we do with the technology are ethical and how these actions change our world. File sharing is happening, happening for free, and it’s going to continue happening regardless of whether we, as a society, choose to hold someone accountable. Any choice to hold someone accountable for producing free P2P software would be a purely symbolic vindication of copyright laws.

There are several historical analogies that you can play with to think about this issue and discuss it here and among other people. They land on both sides of the argument:

• Small video recording devices and the video feed that makes its way onto the internet. Some of the content is ethical – some isn’t. Should we outlaw the XCam2? What have been the benefits of these cameras? The damage?
• Nuclear weapons. They exist. They’ve undeniably caused horrific pain and suffering since their invention. Would prosecuting their inventers eliminate their existence? But what would that prosecution do?

Bearing in mind that the first consideration in supply and demand is that buyers prefer having more to having less and that free trade produces more innovation, I can see both sides of all these arguments. So Mike, I don’t have an answer for you. But I’d push readers to twist the file sharing question as much as possible. Is the argument about ownership rights? Or is the argument about technological advancement?

And now Mike, my brain hurts. Thank you for making me think way too hard. I hope some of this makes sense.

Posted by Lyndsey Patterson at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A response to Marko’s thought provoking (if not directly related) final question…

Online file sharing has been a big deal for almost a decade, but as far as I can tell companies and performers benefit so much from making their goods digitally transferable that the loss of some of those goods due to illegal file sharing is worth it in the overall scheme. File it under loss of potential profit regularly accounted for. But maybe there’s something else companies stand to gain...

Pirates at the Gap
Take this example. I’ve had quite a few friends who put themselves through school working retail for the Gap. People regularly shoplift from Gap stores, and they go to great lengths to do it. A friend of mine who was an assistant manager once told me that women would waltz through the entryway of a store with a shopping bag lined in tinfoil, slide a stack of twenty or so tops off a display table, and slip past the RFID sensors undetected. This was a daily problem. Gutsy. Gap Inc. knows this is going to happen from time to time, and has to account for that theft in production and distribution. There is a certain amount of clothing the Gap knows it’s going to lose, and they try their best to deter it with Loss Prevention efforts, but at the end of the year their accounting department knows there’ll be some margin of loss.

Polly Pocket strikes again
But Gap clothing is a physically produced good. Not an idea or a reproducible file. Someone’s hands stitched the shirt that Polly pocketed, and it can’t be remade by a Xerox machine. A consumer can only have the benefit of that tee shirt by either buying it or stealing it. File sharing is intangible. It’s difficult to measure because it’s a loss of potential profit not a loss of inventory. It’s not as though someone actually dipped into the company coffers and yanked from executive pockets to get the latest copy of Pink’s I’m not Dead, they copied a file that they probably never would have purchased in the first place. They also did something else. They identified themselves as people who were interest in the company’s product and wanted to have it. They made themselves a measure, in some sense, of the number of people who are potential buyers but unwilling to spend money out of pocket for something they could get for free. This could either be taken as a form of theft on the part of the pirate, or a major snafu on the part of the recording industry that placed Pink’s CD at a price point of $15.99.

Think tank
Let’s think about this. According to People to People Net (p2pnet.net), “It’s estimated that somewhere between 40 million and 61 million people regularly download music in the US, and indisputably, by far the vast majority do so from the p2p networks...” Ok now let’s (very hypothetically) presume that some portion of those people actually pay for their p2p shared music at $1 a download. That’ll knock the estimate down to 35 million people. So if there are 35 million people out there not paying $15.99 for Pink’s smarty-pants album by walking into Sam Goody or ordering from Amazon, but still demanding the benefit of owning it, what have they done? They’ve let LaFace Records know that there are 35 million people out there who want Pink’s music, but don’t want to blow $15 big ones on it. Maybe those people existed before the market for music turned digital. That means all the potential sales record companies were losing before music turned digital was staggeringly high. (Ok, I’m not naïve enough to assume that there are really 35 million out there who were unwilling to buy Pink before. That number has clearly grown over the past 8 or so years).

The fact still remains that the market has changed, and free markets don’t lie. Record companies, and other companies that provide digitally reproducible goods are simply going to have to get smarter about their medium of sales from now on. Start providing a tangible, physical benefit to buying the reproducible item from the company. Use the downloading data you receive to boost sales in other departments. The smartest entrepreneurs are not the ones who play tug-o-war with buyers. File sharing has its benefits to corporations and artists, it's unfortunate that companies, artists and governments haven't invested enough energy in figuring out how the piracy phenomenon can benefit their individual causes. Seems silly to fight such a powerful movement.

What this has to do with hackers infiltrating the Swedish Government’s website and taking it offline for nearly 24 hours is beyond me, but it was good food for thought…

Posted by Lyndsey Patterson at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Ah yes the life a new blogger. So hopeful. So carefree.

Naively, I thought I’d have time last week to give prompt and accurate reporting on Sasquatch! 2006, but my reality is deadlines for www.newtox10.com – and the horrifying threat that Marko’s German Shepherd, Tacoma, will rend me asunder for not meeting those deadlines!

So here we are. Nearly a week after the blog was supposed post, and you’ve no doubt read all about Sasquatch! 2006 by now, but I’ll give you my details anyway.

Credit where credit’s due.
First off. I neglected to give credit to the right people for making Sasquatch! a fantastic event. Yes, KEXP did play a hand in sponsorship, but so did all of these wonderful people:

TobaccoSmokesYou.com
MySpace.com
AlaskaAir.com
Da Kine
Easy Street Records
Filter Magazine
103.7 FM The Mountain
107.7 FM The End
Xbox
MSN Video
Coors Light Live

Intents
The campground in particular was sponsored by Tobacco Smokes You. And per my mention in the last post I should give some credit to them for a job well done. Camping was much cleaner than I had imagined it would be – even with respect to all the mud. Port-a-potties were well placed throughout the campground and lines were never longer than a few people. My friend and I stayed for two nights, and I never once waited to use a bathroom. There was some unforeseen weather that made things muddy, and quite a few cars got stuck in puddles, but that just provided more entertainment. We actually watched the same girl fall over on her scooter three times in the same mud puddle before the end of day two. By Sunday, the campground had been plowed for excess mud and moving cars went lickety-split.

Sas-squish!

That's the sound of 20,000 people jumping in mud puddles at the Gorge in George, Washington! Ok, it was actually pretty miserable for an hour or so…

The 2006 Sasquatch! Music Festival was far more intense than expected, but nearly an hour of pounding hale, gales of freezing wind, gigantic pits of death-defying mud, and showers couldn’t keep the faithful from seeing the best music this summer will bring to the Seattle area.

Here’s the rundown:

Rogue Wave and Gomez?
My friend and I arrived at the Gorge at noon, but by the time we got to our campsite and set up tents we had already missed Rogue Wave and Gomez, which was a sad state of affairs indeed. Their high placement in the lineup was a disappointment considering that we later suffered through Tragically Hip.

Sufjan
We started out listening to the stately sounds of Sufjan Stevens (pun very much intended). I’ve since listened to more of his music and thoroughly enjoyed it, but the vibe he had that day didn’t seem to match the crowd or the sunshine. It was beautiful weather for such oddly cynical lyrics. So after just the first song we made our way up to the Yeti stage for Slender Means.

Slender Means
I’d seen these gents in Seattle back in November and was pleasantly surprised to find that their presence has improved even beyond what it was before. They’re pop/rock with positive, contemplative lyrics about love and life. And although they have that unmistakably pop/rock appeal, their sound isn’t like any other young band. Not Killers enough to be an indie cliché, not digital enough for Ben Gibbard. They’re just good pop. Josh Dawson and Sonny Votoloto kept the hail away with their harmonies, and the crowd was a perfect size. Large enough to create energy, small enough to keep things relaxed. We laid in the sun, lulled by their voices. Probably the most peaceful part of the day. I’ll be seeing them in Seattle again this Friday at Neumo’s.

Neko Case
Next Stop: The main stage. We got down to the main stage just in time to see the set change between Iron and Wine and Neko Case. Hers was a voice I’d never heard before, and wow. To hear her tiny body booming such powerfully crystal clear, bluegrass influenced melodies made my day for a whopping three songs. Just as Neko peeled into a fast-tempo cut the wind picked up, dark clouds masked the sunshine, and Mother Nature played ping-pong with Sasquatch. At first, the effect on Neko’s set was stunning. Her volume increased, and gusts of wind danced with her hair like waves of electricity. Until the hail started. Neko and her band were very gracious about giving up their set, but my friend and I were disappointed. She came back outside to check on the crowd and reassure us that the show would go on, but unfortunately it went on with out her.

Mother Nature
At this point the weather took over. For half an hour we stood in pounding, marble-sized hale, rain and wind. Soaking, steaming, stinking, the huddled groups of people in the pit waited. And we waited. A lot of us were afraid that if we tried to go back to the campground we’d be denied reentry (per signs at the front gate). So we stuck it out. Then there came the realization that so many of us had waited in the bad weather that it getting your money’s worth for that ticket was on everyone’s mind.

Keeping Our Spot
My friend and I had had intentions of going back to the Yeti stage for Common Market. No longer. We decided that since we were 10 feet from the stage, and we’d been there all day, the main stage was our territory. Give up the opportunity to see the Flaming Lips that close up? No way. We’d lose the spot. And what a price to pay…

Tragically Hip
Next up in the lineup on the main stage was Tragically Hip. I don’t have much to say about this group other than that their performance was tragic. Very tragic. Their sound smacked of sleazy lounges and bad cocktails. Canadians… The things I’ll listen to for the Flaming Lips.

The Shins
Although I enjoyed the chance to finally see the Shins live, they were visibly tired and altogether anticlimactic. I found myself wishing I was listening to their album instead.

Ben the Party Crasher
Ben. I was not at all pleased with Ben Harper. His set was bumped up ahead of the Flaming Lips due to his “time schedule.” That’s strike one. Strike two? A two hour set. TWO HOURS. As talented as that man is, and as genuinely thrilled as I was with the first 45 minutes of his mind-blowing performance. I did not need to stand soggy watching Ben Harper for two hours.

But wait. There’s more. He was a little arrogant to boot. His stage presence played as though he were the only one at the Gorge. He rarely talked to the crowd, asked us if we were still suffering, gave kudos to the other bands performing. He was just sort of convincing me that he actually was the only person who suffered through the weather that day. Bad form Ben.

THE FLAMING LIPS (Yes Dave, I’m yelling at your grandma)
By now it’s roughly 12 AM. My whole day has been building up to this point. (My whole LIFE has been building up to this point. I love the Flaming Lips, and this was my first live Lips show.) The pressure was palpable. Gradually, as Harper progressed, more and more people had crowded into the main stage area. The colder it got outside, the tighter we packed, until we were sardined chest-to-back-to-chest-to-shoulder-to-armpit-to-chin. At some point I came to realize that my legs weren’t even supporting my body anymore – I was held up by the force of people around me. But still no one was dancing. Until the Flaming Lips started.

Ben left the stage (thank God) and the lips began their 45-minute stage setup. I was annoyed and cold, but I knew something good was coming. Then came the aliens. And Santa Clauses. And the gigantic projector screen. Oh my god what are they going to do to us? Finally things got underway with an Instrumental piece from At War With The Mystics and Wayne Coyne walking over the crowd in a gigantic plastic bubble. He passed right over my head and I actually touched his knee – yep that’s right! After that utter musical chaos ensued. There was sound everywhere, dancing, singing, confetti, silliness. The benefits of watching the Lips last were that only their fans stayed for the set, and their stage time was considerably longer than it would have been had they played ahead of Harper. Their show was one part circus, one part independent film, one part acid trip, and five parts confetti streamer. INCREDIBLE.

We jammed out to their cover of Bohemian Rhapsody first, followed quickly by Yoshimi ans the Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, finally swinging into the new album. By far the biggest party at the Gorge in 2006 was thrown by The Flaming Lips that night. Thanks guys!

Posted by Lyndsey Patterson at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)