A recent blog post by Emily White for NPR’s All Songs Considered has been getting some backlash from my musical facebook friends. It wasn’t a particularly interesting post, and as Mike Teager points out, it had some really strange problems. Normally I wouldn’t have said anything about it. But then I read a supposed critique of White’s post written by David Lowery. While I might not agree with White’s position per se, Lowery clearly does not get what’s going on here at all. Unfortunately, a couple of my facebook friends linked to his incoherent post, so I think I’m going to take this opportunity to clear the air, especially since the matter is closely related to another of my recent posts.
Lowery’s premise is simplistic enough:
“Fairly compensating musicians is not a problem that is up to governments and large corporations to solve[...] Rather, fairness for musicians is a problem that requires each of us to individually look at our own actions, values and choices and try to anticipate the consequences of our choices.”
Now, granted, there is such a thing as personal responsibility. But whenever you find someone using the personal-responsibility card in an effort to absolve us of our responsibilities as members of a society, you’ve found someone who misses the point entirely. A contemporary example illustrates this: no matter where you come down on Bloomberg’s war on soda-pop, you simply cannot take seriously anyone who claims that Bloomberg is advocating a nanny state designed to protect individuals from themselves; Bloomberg’s proposed legislation, whether misguided or not, has nothing to do with individual responsibility and everything to do with businesses that prey on people’s weaknesses. There’s still a debate to be had, but it’s not the one that Bloomberg’s most vocal opponents want to have. I consider it my personal responsibility (nay, even pleasure) to avoid drinking 64 ounces of pop in one sitting, but that has nothing to do with whether or not 7-11 should be allowed to market buckets of sugar water as individual portions (“Big Gulps”). Lowery sees a contradiction between individual responsibilities and social responsibilities, dooming his position from the start.
Yet I kept reading for the same reason that I watch those scenes in movies where the hero chucks a lit cigarette out the window only to have it sucked into the rear window as he whistles unawares. I know the hero is screwed, but I want to see the dominos topple. And topple they do. From here on out, Lowery’s every point makes less sense than the last. This is especially sad because he has some pretty interesting empirical data, data that his conceptual model inevitably reduces to mincemeat. My post could drag on for days and days if I went through it all, so I’m going to very deliberately limit myself to only one important example.
Lowery recognizes that venture capitalists and companies like Pirate Bay, Kim Dotcom, Megaupload, Google, AdChoices, Doubleclick, and Grooveshark are all making money off of the new-media model. Just because you download something for free doesn’t mean someone isn’t making money, it just means that the musician isn’t making money. And as Lowery says, “it’s worse than that.”
“It turns out that Verizon, AT&T, Charter etc etc are charging a toll to get into this neighborhood [the internet] to get the free stuff. Further, companies like Google are selling maps (search results) that tell you where the stuff is that you want to loot. Companies like Megavideo are charging for a high speed looting service (premium accounts for faster downloads). Google is also selling ads in this neighborhood and sharing the revenue with everyone except the people who make the stuff being looted. Further, in order to loot you need to have a $1,000 laptop, a $500 iPhone or $400 Samsung tablet. It turns out the supposedly ‘free’ stuff really isn’t free.”
Lowery is more or less right about all of this. Unfortunately, he hasn’t a clue about what to do with any of this information. He’s discovered that, indeed, where people used to buy copies of music, they now pay rent for access to that music, and the companies that collect that rent money aren’t compensating artists. But having identified the problem, his supposed solution, as insane as this sounds, is to have customers both buy copies and pay rent. The companies collecting rent can still rip off the artist, and the consumer is expected to pick up the tab.
Let’s leave aside for a minute the question of whether or not its better to have a company rip off a consumer than a musician. Lowery’s supposed solution to this social problem is-- Mind your own business, don’t think about what’s going on here, and certainly don’t try to propose more desirable, ethical, just, or sustainable alternatives. Even if we hypothetically grant that this non-solution is somehow a solution, practically speaking, where does Lowery expect the consumer to get the money to pay twice, to pay today’s rental fee on top of yesterday’s cost of a copy?
To be clear, I’m not doing the math here. I’m not claiming that the cost of buying the single and paying rent is literally or exactly double what it used to cost just to buy the single, I’m not suggesting that people haven’t always needed to buy hardware if they wanted to use their software, and I’m not ignoring the fact that today's hardware has more uses than just streaming music. I’m not suggesting that solving social problems is easy. But I am insisting that these issues have nothing to do with whether or not a social problem is a social problem. As Lowery himself argues, it is definitely the case that consumers are paying a kind of rent that they never used to pay before the advent of new media. The point is that if you think you can talk about personal responsibilities without talking about social circumstances, you’re going to wind up with additional personal responsibilities and fewer public opportunities.
I should probably stop there, but since Lowery wants to talk about personal responsibility, let’s make this personal. For better or for worse, whether as saint or chump, I have bought and paid for almost every recording in my possession (but, as explained below, not for every file). The only exception is that I have some rare recordings that aren’t available for sale anywhere I know of; I “stole” them, but if they’re ever released, re-released, or put up for sale at a local flea market, I’ll pay my dues. I essentially do exactly what Lowery advocates, but at least two things are worth noting.
First of all, one reason why I use this older media model is because I don’t use as many new media devices. Friends from my college days still ask me not “What’s your phone number?” but “Do you have a phone?” because for a couple of years in college, I didn't (try explaining that to a receptionist). Since then I’ve been using a drug-dealer-style phone that costs me about $20 every 4 months. I pay about 10% what many of my peers pay for a phone, though of course I don’t get a single bell or whistle, and I supplement my cell phone with online services like skype and googlevoice (services that, for now, do not charge me anything). Using this approach and others like it, I manage to save a little more money every month, and I have used a portion of that money to put together a fairly impressive private library; considering the size of my income, I buy an enormous number of books, CDs, LPs, and assorted desiderata. This means that I’m not paying nearly as much in rent for access to those things. I’m paying a lot more for copies, and a lot more of that money is going to musicians (including the uber-indie artists and small business owners that I go out of my way to patronize). However, I’d have to be as stupid as I am crazy to think that everyone should live the way I live. A personal lifestyle born of assorted emotional problems is not going to offer any solution to our social problems. Moreover, I think that my lifestyle causes me to miss out on a lot of the very really opportunities that new media has to offer. We should be trying to find ways to make better use of those opportunities, not preaching about personal responsibility.
Secondly, alongside all of my legal copies, I have “illegal” duplicates of several items. Why? Because iTunes puts so many proprietary restrictions on their files that I can’t even use them the way that I use my CDs and DVDs (though this doesn’t stop Lowery from writing a post that reads like an advertisement for iTunes). Whenever I “buy” music or movies from iTunes, I immediately download an “illegal” duplicate so that I’ll be able to do things like play a four-minute scene from a movie on the overhead projector in my music-appreciation class, something that iTunes renders impossible by making an end-run around any public discussion of what should constitute fair use. The fact of the matter is that no one ever “buys” music from iTunes; they rent it under very specific terms and conditions, terms and conditions that are decided unilaterally by a private corporation.
This rant barely touches the tip of the iceberg. But my point is a simple one, and it applies to more than just the music industry: when people try to tell you something isn’t a social problem because it’s a personal problem, they’re not making any sense. There are indeed some things that are personal problems and not social problems (don’t I know it), but not because the one precludes the other.
If something is in fact a social problem, you can’t solve it by privatizing it, you can’t wish it away into a personal problem. If a company is making money by ripping off musicians, you can’t fix it by having them rip off consumers instead. The companies Lowery himself names are making a bundle by absolving themselves of any responsibility for the very processes that are diverting that bundle into their lap, and they know it--that’s the whole point. Yet against all odds, Lowery has convinced himself that we can solve this problem by diverting our attention away from a social situation and onto our personal responsibilities.
Though I still don’t really think White’s post is particularly interesting, she and I are much more in agreement than Lowery and I will ever be. Moreover, White at least seems to understand that whatever model of media distribution is on the horizon, it won’t look anything like that of the first century of recorded sound, or at least it shouldn’t have to. So-called arguments like Lowery’s are gibberish, and it doesn’t take long to find out who benefits from the confusion. Societies are not just collections of individuals, any more than individuals are mere individuated cogs in a society. The best way to distract people from an unjust social arrangement is to blame its consequences on the actions of individuals, and the best way to avoid fixing a social problem is to tell people to be the change they want to see.![]()
Lowery’s premise is simplistic enough:
“Fairly compensating musicians is not a problem that is up to governments and large corporations to solve[...] Rather, fairness for musicians is a problem that requires each of us to individually look at our own actions, values and choices and try to anticipate the consequences of our choices.”
Now, granted, there is such a thing as personal responsibility. But whenever you find someone using the personal-responsibility card in an effort to absolve us of our responsibilities as members of a society, you’ve found someone who misses the point entirely. A contemporary example illustrates this: no matter where you come down on Bloomberg’s war on soda-pop, you simply cannot take seriously anyone who claims that Bloomberg is advocating a nanny state designed to protect individuals from themselves; Bloomberg’s proposed legislation, whether misguided or not, has nothing to do with individual responsibility and everything to do with businesses that prey on people’s weaknesses. There’s still a debate to be had, but it’s not the one that Bloomberg’s most vocal opponents want to have. I consider it my personal responsibility (nay, even pleasure) to avoid drinking 64 ounces of pop in one sitting, but that has nothing to do with whether or not 7-11 should be allowed to market buckets of sugar water as individual portions (“Big Gulps”). Lowery sees a contradiction between individual responsibilities and social responsibilities, dooming his position from the start.
Yet I kept reading for the same reason that I watch those scenes in movies where the hero chucks a lit cigarette out the window only to have it sucked into the rear window as he whistles unawares. I know the hero is screwed, but I want to see the dominos topple. And topple they do. From here on out, Lowery’s every point makes less sense than the last. This is especially sad because he has some pretty interesting empirical data, data that his conceptual model inevitably reduces to mincemeat. My post could drag on for days and days if I went through it all, so I’m going to very deliberately limit myself to only one important example.
Lowery recognizes that venture capitalists and companies like Pirate Bay, Kim Dotcom, Megaupload, Google, AdChoices, Doubleclick, and Grooveshark are all making money off of the new-media model. Just because you download something for free doesn’t mean someone isn’t making money, it just means that the musician isn’t making money. And as Lowery says, “it’s worse than that.”
“It turns out that Verizon, AT&T, Charter etc etc are charging a toll to get into this neighborhood [the internet] to get the free stuff. Further, companies like Google are selling maps (search results) that tell you where the stuff is that you want to loot. Companies like Megavideo are charging for a high speed looting service (premium accounts for faster downloads). Google is also selling ads in this neighborhood and sharing the revenue with everyone except the people who make the stuff being looted. Further, in order to loot you need to have a $1,000 laptop, a $500 iPhone or $400 Samsung tablet. It turns out the supposedly ‘free’ stuff really isn’t free.”
Lowery is more or less right about all of this. Unfortunately, he hasn’t a clue about what to do with any of this information. He’s discovered that, indeed, where people used to buy copies of music, they now pay rent for access to that music, and the companies that collect that rent money aren’t compensating artists. But having identified the problem, his supposed solution, as insane as this sounds, is to have customers both buy copies and pay rent. The companies collecting rent can still rip off the artist, and the consumer is expected to pick up the tab.
Let’s leave aside for a minute the question of whether or not its better to have a company rip off a consumer than a musician. Lowery’s supposed solution to this social problem is-- Mind your own business, don’t think about what’s going on here, and certainly don’t try to propose more desirable, ethical, just, or sustainable alternatives. Even if we hypothetically grant that this non-solution is somehow a solution, practically speaking, where does Lowery expect the consumer to get the money to pay twice, to pay today’s rental fee on top of yesterday’s cost of a copy?
To be clear, I’m not doing the math here. I’m not claiming that the cost of buying the single and paying rent is literally or exactly double what it used to cost just to buy the single, I’m not suggesting that people haven’t always needed to buy hardware if they wanted to use their software, and I’m not ignoring the fact that today's hardware has more uses than just streaming music. I’m not suggesting that solving social problems is easy. But I am insisting that these issues have nothing to do with whether or not a social problem is a social problem. As Lowery himself argues, it is definitely the case that consumers are paying a kind of rent that they never used to pay before the advent of new media. The point is that if you think you can talk about personal responsibilities without talking about social circumstances, you’re going to wind up with additional personal responsibilities and fewer public opportunities.
I should probably stop there, but since Lowery wants to talk about personal responsibility, let’s make this personal. For better or for worse, whether as saint or chump, I have bought and paid for almost every recording in my possession (but, as explained below, not for every file). The only exception is that I have some rare recordings that aren’t available for sale anywhere I know of; I “stole” them, but if they’re ever released, re-released, or put up for sale at a local flea market, I’ll pay my dues. I essentially do exactly what Lowery advocates, but at least two things are worth noting.
First of all, one reason why I use this older media model is because I don’t use as many new media devices. Friends from my college days still ask me not “What’s your phone number?” but “Do you have a phone?” because for a couple of years in college, I didn't (try explaining that to a receptionist). Since then I’ve been using a drug-dealer-style phone that costs me about $20 every 4 months. I pay about 10% what many of my peers pay for a phone, though of course I don’t get a single bell or whistle, and I supplement my cell phone with online services like skype and googlevoice (services that, for now, do not charge me anything). Using this approach and others like it, I manage to save a little more money every month, and I have used a portion of that money to put together a fairly impressive private library; considering the size of my income, I buy an enormous number of books, CDs, LPs, and assorted desiderata. This means that I’m not paying nearly as much in rent for access to those things. I’m paying a lot more for copies, and a lot more of that money is going to musicians (including the uber-indie artists and small business owners that I go out of my way to patronize). However, I’d have to be as stupid as I am crazy to think that everyone should live the way I live. A personal lifestyle born of assorted emotional problems is not going to offer any solution to our social problems. Moreover, I think that my lifestyle causes me to miss out on a lot of the very really opportunities that new media has to offer. We should be trying to find ways to make better use of those opportunities, not preaching about personal responsibility.
Secondly, alongside all of my legal copies, I have “illegal” duplicates of several items. Why? Because iTunes puts so many proprietary restrictions on their files that I can’t even use them the way that I use my CDs and DVDs (though this doesn’t stop Lowery from writing a post that reads like an advertisement for iTunes). Whenever I “buy” music or movies from iTunes, I immediately download an “illegal” duplicate so that I’ll be able to do things like play a four-minute scene from a movie on the overhead projector in my music-appreciation class, something that iTunes renders impossible by making an end-run around any public discussion of what should constitute fair use. The fact of the matter is that no one ever “buys” music from iTunes; they rent it under very specific terms and conditions, terms and conditions that are decided unilaterally by a private corporation.
This rant barely touches the tip of the iceberg. But my point is a simple one, and it applies to more than just the music industry: when people try to tell you something isn’t a social problem because it’s a personal problem, they’re not making any sense. There are indeed some things that are personal problems and not social problems (don’t I know it), but not because the one precludes the other.
If something is in fact a social problem, you can’t solve it by privatizing it, you can’t wish it away into a personal problem. If a company is making money by ripping off musicians, you can’t fix it by having them rip off consumers instead. The companies Lowery himself names are making a bundle by absolving themselves of any responsibility for the very processes that are diverting that bundle into their lap, and they know it--that’s the whole point. Yet against all odds, Lowery has convinced himself that we can solve this problem by diverting our attention away from a social situation and onto our personal responsibilities.
Though I still don’t really think White’s post is particularly interesting, she and I are much more in agreement than Lowery and I will ever be. Moreover, White at least seems to understand that whatever model of media distribution is on the horizon, it won’t look anything like that of the first century of recorded sound, or at least it shouldn’t have to. So-called arguments like Lowery’s are gibberish, and it doesn’t take long to find out who benefits from the confusion. Societies are not just collections of individuals, any more than individuals are mere individuated cogs in a society. The best way to distract people from an unjust social arrangement is to blame its consequences on the actions of individuals, and the best way to avoid fixing a social problem is to tell people to be the change they want to see.
