For the last few years, top executives from all the major record companies have been giving interviews in which they criticize consumers for doing exactly what the execs have been doing for years - getting music for free. I was “in the loop” for a couple years, when I was writing about music for a free weekly, as well as a major daily newspaper, in Los Angeles, many years ago. And I can tell you – none of these characters paid for anything, ever.

The bookcases in their offices and their homes were (and are) filled with “product” that they receive for free as a matter of course. They would not dream of ever paying for recorded music, themselves, with very few exceptions. But now that the average consumer can download a ripped file from the Internet, you’d think it was the end of Western Civilization, from the way they talk.

The false piousness of their pronouncements on this subject really offends me. I assure you, back in the day, if somebody at Record Company A wanted a copy of the new LP by so-and-so and the such-and-suches, they would shout at the secretary to call their good friend at Record Company B and have it messengered over, with the fee for the messenger charged to the artist signed to Company B! Maybe it took a little longer than getting an mp3 off the web now, but my point is that they did not go down to their local record store and pay list price to nobly support the artist who they claimed to be interested in.

I made money selling the promos I received. It never paid my rent, it was more like a meal here and there, but I knew of other journalists who were much more handsomely rewarded for pumping up certain labels’ artists by being double or triple-listed on the promo mailing list. And, back then, many records were released each month, and there were far more record companies, so if someone got that privilege at five or six different publicity departments, it could really add up.

Basically, if you were connected to the teat, you waved your magic wand and any music you wanted came to you free of charge. It was, and is, a nice way to live, but now that the great unwashed can aspire to it, what a scandal, what a terrifying phenomenon. How dare these peasants emulate the lifestyles of the wealthy behind-the-scenes movers and shakers?!

The studies I hear about vary in terms of exactly how downloading affects/impacts sales. That poor little Eminem is doing okay, as far as I can tell. But one artist who I worked for told me his label believes that, without downloads, he would have sold a quarter or a third more copies of his latest CD. Of course, they might just be trying to cover up for how badly they worked his record!

I asked a college-age person I know how it worked among his contemporaries. His account was very interesting. He confirmed that most people he knows are on a dial-up and do not have a high-speed connection. “At the most,” he said, “they will download a track or two, and if they like it, they will buy the whole album.”

Then, among the smaller percentage of people who have high-speed connections, there are actually comparatively few who want to take the time to assemble an album’s worth of tracks and then burn it. If they are affluent enough to have a high-speed connection, they can also afford to just go out and buy the CD, and usually do just that.

There is another issue, when the venality of the majors is discussed, that the trade press has explored thoroughly but receives little play in the mass media. And that is, CD’s actually cost less to manufacture than vinyl records but are sold for a higher price. This was one that the industry smoothly and successfully snuck by a narcotized populace.

And I don’t mean by drugs. I am referring to just a generalized lack of questioning in most people today, who never seem to think that what movie stars get paid is obscene, or greedy, and never make the connection that that is why the price of their Coke at the theater is so many more times what some fizzy water and sugar syrup actually costs. The uproars of the Vietnam era have been tamed, it seems, and consumers toddle happily through a non-stop arcade of carefully crafted diversions.

Punk rock has made some gestures toward a more equitable business model, witness the $10 price tags if you want to order a Fugazi CD from Dischord Records’ website. You can get a double live album of Ani DiFranco for $25 from her Righteous Babe Records.

Will there be increasing numbers of recording artists who market directly to their fans? I believe there will be. But radio play is still very powerful if one wants to be a mass-market artist, and the major record labels and their promo people still have a lock on the biggest stations. You more or less have to play their game if you want major-league fame.

The execs get free CD’s now, instead of the vinyl LP’s of 20 years ago, but you can still go to a used record store and see the blizzards of promos that come in right after a new artist is launched. I just wish that the execs - with their salaries, benefits and expense accounts -would have the least little bit of humility and stop their grandstanding.

But, when you think about it, if they were humble people they wouldn’t have gotten the jobs they have! And their wild-eyed accusations have proven to be an effective PR technique, to distract and cover up just how profitable their sales of little plastic discs are, and also masking the truth of those shelves that they all most definitely have, full of assiduously collected freebies.

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Some artists discuss these subjects:

The The’s Matt Johnson

Negativland

And, an interesting anecdote from an excellent article by John Kostura on 2near.com:

We rented a VHS tape "Elmopalooza!" a Sesame Street tape for my two year old. On the tape were several performers but I was especially struck by one of them, Shawn Colvin. I had never heard of her. There is not a radio station in Oklahoma City that would play any of her music.

I searched around the Internet looking for some of Shawn Colvin's songs to get an idea of what her music is all about. With not much luck searching . . . I turned to Napster. Sure enough, I was able to download enough of her music to determine that she is an absolutely great performer.

After listening to the MP3 versions of Shawn Colvin's songs I developed my favorite list. The next step was to go and buy a couple of her CD's. Without the ability to listen to her music, I would not have bought her CD's.