Earlier today, Digital Music News's Paul Resnikoff posted an alarming quote from an interview with famed film director Francis Ford Coppola.
You have to remember that it's only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.
This idea of Metallica or some rock n' roll singer being rich, that's not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I'm going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?
Is Coppola right? And if he is, what does that mean?
Obviously it's not the first time this topic of conversation has come up; Chris Robley wrote a long post about whether artists should be compensated on the CD Baby blog a few weeks ago, and fodder for both sides of these arguments pop up all the time. One week, Gorillaz gives their album away for free; the next, it's reported that 23.8% of global internet traffic is “digital theft." More will come next week, and the week after that.
Contributor Marc Weidenbaum believes creativity will survive the paradigm shift Coppola alludes to.
But Coppola's question—"who said art has to cost money?"—which seemed like an abstract question just six months ago, is becoming more pressing. Digital sales are not compensating for the downturn in physical sales, and despite the huge upturn in digital streams, those rates aren't high enough to make up the difference. Even if Google decides to exert more effort in cracking down on piracy, censoring more keywords and removing more terms from their auto-complete, the piracy will remain.
Of course, this rampant piracy isn't possible without the growth of digital culture and commerce, and for the past few years, artists and entrepreneurs alike have interpreted that growth as a glass half full, hailing the dawning of a new age:
“Your band is a small business!"
“It's all about fan engagement!"
“Freemium!"
“1,000 True Fans!"
That we're in the opening moments of a new age is indisputable, but this glass-half-full argument assumes a lot of things: that people still view the arts as something worth funding; that people believe in the value of owning art rather than accessing it; that people will invest significant mental energy in listening to music rather than just aspiring to constantly hear it.
If some (or even all) of these things turns out not to be true, it's not going to mean the death of music, but it might affect who makes it. What effect would it have on you?
