The music industry has probably been hit the hardest by all of this.\u00a0 Freddie worries that the natural extension of all this free, illegal downloading will be the death of the music industry or at least a major blow that will lead to fewer good bands producing music for widespread distribution.\u00a0 After all, how can these bands make a living if they don’t have any record sales?\u00a0 And beyond that, how can they even produce the records if they don’t have someone to sign them (and who will sign them if the record companies are all gone)?<\/p>\n

Okay, first of all, bands don’t really make that <\/em>much money off of record sales.\u00a0 Record companies do, but most band revenue comes from ticket sales.\u00a0 Only really, really wildly successful musicians really profit from record sales.\u00a0 So here’s how I see this going down.\u00a0 I see the record companies as we know them going the way of the dinosaurs.\u00a0 Smaller localized companies will fill their shoes and produce the records.\u00a0 Music will be available for free download at the bands’ websites.\u00a0 The music itself will no longer be what’s for sale–bands will move to a ticket-revenue model of business, making their money off of shows and merchandise.\u00a0 Perhaps live-albums will be sold at the concerts – niche albums, if you will, to pad those ticket sales a bit.\u00a0 But the record sales model will die off, as will any attempts at selling music online.\u00a0 This will be gradual, of course, but it’s the direction I see this industry moving.\u00a0 This will lead to a massive leveling of bands into a sort of musical middle class.<\/p>\n

Technology and online distribution allow anyone to get their music out there.\u00a0 If it’s good enough, people will come to their shows.\u00a0 They’ll make money, but they won’t be fabulously rich.\u00a0 Perhaps not being fabulously rich will force them to keep making good music – a net gain, I’d say.\u00a0 Call this the great democritization of music.\u00a0 It’s not going to kill the industry or the art, just change it in massive, and extremely good, ways.\u00a0 Expect to see more localized talent, and at the same time, that local talent exposed to a much wider audience.\u00a0 “The days of Big Music are over!” Bill Clinton might intone…<\/p>\n

Film and TV<\/p>\n

I don’t have a TV, but I do have a PC, and it’s been remarkable to me how things have changed over the past few years.\u00a0 Freddie writes:<\/p>\n

What in the end is more powerful in this equation than \u201cfree\u201d? Here\u2019s what people really like, when push comes to shove: they really like getting stuff for free that they once had to pay for. They like it more than owning the physical CD and packaging. They like it more than \u201cthe sense of legitimate ownership\u201d. They like it more than supporting really cool bands on their way up, they like it more than supporting independent cinema, they like it more than the feeling of satisfaction you get by donating money for an artist you really like. People want to get stuff free, and they can, and as long as that\u2019s the case I see ahead only armaggedon for the music industry, and very troubling times for other forms of digital media.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, but Freddie leaves out another important thing – something people enjoy just as much as “free” – and that’s convenience.\u00a0 Three years ago, you could download movies for free on the internet.\u00a0 You could use a torrent program to download the latest South Park episode, or Braveheart<\/em> or whatever you wanted to see.\u00a0 It was all out there, along with hosts of files filled with viruses, and it was all easily gotten, but you had to wander to all too often questionable sites to find it.\u00a0 Then, of course, you had to download the (large) files, which took time and ate up bandwidth and harddrive space.\u00a0 Great for people who knew how to traverse the shadier regions of the internet and didn’t mind waiting for their downloads to end.\u00a0 Not so good for your average Joe sixpack.\u00a0 (That phrase just doesn’t work anymore, does it?)<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2009.\u00a0 Now virtually everything<\/em> can be streamed.\u00a0 Much of it can be streamed for free if you don’t mind watching a few commercials.\u00a0 Take shows like The Colbert Report<\/em> or South Park.<\/em> Both are available at their respective websites to stream for free.\u00a0 No downloading necessary.\u00a0 Each requires you to watch three commercials – not three commerical segments, just three 30 second commercials total.\u00a0 The stream begins instantly, and when you’re done it’s not taking up space on your computer.\u00a0 Other models have opted for subscription fees rather than ads.\u00a0 For instance, I get Netflix.\u00a0 Two videos come in the mail at a time.\u00a0 But more importantly (and more frequently used by both my wife and myself) is the thousands of movies available at their website for instant streaming.\u00a0 And while Freddie may be right that people like free things, what I really like about Netflix (which is $8.99 a month for my plan) is the convenience.<\/em> This trumps free downloads in a big way.\u00a0 The ability to just click play and have any of a few thousand movies start up instantly on your computer is way, way better than searching for them and downloading them.\u00a0 And this is just the beginning.\u00a0 Between ad-based free television (available at most network and cable websites now) and fee-based subscription services, our film and television industries will make a successful leap to the interent.\u00a0 Most people are still going to get their fix on normal TV’s, after all.\u00a0 The rest of us will no longer need to expend the effort it takes to pirate this stuff.<\/p>\n

PC Games<\/h2>\n

Freddie’s right that PC game companies have found no way to effectively prevent piracy of their products – at least the single-player variety.\u00a0 However, what this industry has done is something remarkably clever.\u00a0 The consoles have not fallen prey to piracy as it is much, much more difficult to copy console games.\u00a0 I certainly have no idea how.\u00a0 PC games are another story, and pirated copies are easy to come by.\u00a0 So what has the industry done?<\/p>\n

A few things.\u00a0 First, more and more PC games have either moved to multi-player online experiences a la<\/em> Counterstrike, which are not free, but do require a legitimate license to be played online (something much harder to get around by hackers).\u00a0 The only way to really enjoy these games is to play them online, so people end up paying for them.\u00a0 Single player games may be just as fun on an illegal copy, but online games require the real deal.\u00a0 Since most people are online now, this is a very natural business model which takes into account the basic advantage of the PC.<\/p>\n

The second solution has also relied on online pay, but of the subscription variety, a la <\/em>World of Warcraft, one of the most successful games of all time.\u00a0 Again, you have to pay to play.\u00a0 Hacking just doesn’t work when you need to pay a monthly fee to keep playing.\u00a0 The fee also has an addicting quality to it.\u00a0 You keep paying every month which motivates you to keep playing so as to get your money’s worth which in turn causes\u00a0 you to keep paying and so on and so forth.\u00a0 Very clever.<\/p>\n

And yet, out of this has been born the free-online game market.\u00a0 You have WoW immitators now that don’t cost a monthly subscription at all.\u00a0 Instead, these companies allow you to buy expansions, items, and the like.\u00a0 The basic, free versions of the game are fine, but if you want to really<\/em> get into it, you have to pay.\u00a0 In other words, they hook you with the free stuff, but then, once you’re hopelessly addicted, you have to fork over the cash.<\/p>\n

Does this mean the death of single player games on the PC?\u00a0 It’s possible.\u00a0 Or it simply means that companies will have to integrate the online experience with all their games, or give them away but charge for luxuries.\u00a0 I’m not sure, but it hardly spells disaster for the industry.<\/p>\n

So in sum, I’m optimistic about all of this.\u00a0 I like being able to watch a show online for free, and I’ll take the ads and the convenience of the legal stream over the illegal download.\u00a0 I listen to the very convenient, free, and legal Pandora radio as opposed to downloading music.\u00a0 I watch movies on Netflix, and pay an extremely small sum of money for that convenience.\u00a0 Free is all well and good, and it certainly has been the driving force behind the quick shift in digital distribution methods, but I believe the industries and artists are up to the task–innovative, industrious, and at risk makes for a good solution cocktail: good for consumers and<\/em> good for business.<\/p>\n

Economic oblivion?\u00a0 The death of art?\u00a0 Hardly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Freddie’s post is a perfect example of “declinist, doom and gloomism” mine will be an example of me at my most optimistic.\u00a0 You see, to answer the question posed in the title of...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":301655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[]},"categories":[11156],"tags":[137,294,237],"class_list":["post-763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-art","tag-media","tag-music"],"yoast_head":"\n