Music has been about sharing since its very beginnings, and the Internet has created plentiful opportunities to distribute creative works. In fact, some say music’s very future lies within the digital realm. Many independent artists have begun producing and distributing music without record labels, using do-it-yourself methods aided by new technology.
Baltimore rock band Fitehouse recently made headlines with its self-promotional campaign to establish the group’s song “Baltimore” as the city’s “Official Rock Anthem.” The four-member band is on a “musical revolution” mission to prove that corporate record labels have become irrelevant in the development and dissemination of new music.
“We’re squarely into the digital era, and the record industry is kind of lost,” Fitehouse guitarist Joshua Cohen said. “The big picture is that the record industry no longer has a clear definition of what service it provides to the market.”
The band has just released an album, “Fitehouse Released,” and the group independently promotes and distributes the CD using the Internet.
“Distribution has become much easier,” Cohen said. “We can put up our CD on the Web, and immediately we have a form of international distribution. (The record labels) have lost that comparative advantage.”
Cohen said record labels owned by corporate conglomerates are attempting to hold onto an old system that is no longer effective in the real world.
“If successful, we will be the nail in the coffin for the record industry, whose only remaining advantage is its national reach,” Fitehouse members said in their press release.
However, computer music Associate Professor and University Future Music Oregon Program Director Jeffrey Stolet said that while the Internet is a model for music distribution, it is not yet economically viable.
“I’m not aware of bands becoming famous because they have good distribution over the Internet,” Stolet said. “People like to buy atoms; they like to buy bits. They’re used to it.”
Cohen argued that many people misunderstand the role record sales play in an artist’s economic survival.
“The whole idea that bands make money from record royalties is somewhat amiss, because there are very few artists who can make money off record sales,” he said, noting production costs, and the “dirty little secret” of companies withholding royalties until debts are paid.
“When you sell your own record, you’re keeping (the profits) all yourself,” Cohen said. He added that all the members of Fitehouse have other jobs, and many bands play for sheer joy rather than monetary gains.
Cohen said Fitehouse is supportive of fans sharing the band’s music via the Web. In fact, he encourages listeners to download the group’s songs and post them on file sharing sites.
“We would love for people to share our music,” he said. “What is interesting is that they claim if you’re file sharing, you’re stealing from the artists, etc., and that’s really not what copyright is all about. The problem is media concentration. Is copyright doing what it was designed to do? Is it really increasing variety? And it’s not.”
Stolet said that as a professional musician, he doesn’t find the quality of the MP3 file format — by far the most prevalent for exchanging music over the Internet — good enough for exchanging music. He said high quality requires a greater bandwidth.
However, Stolet was critical of how record labels handle their artists. He said most artists support file sharing because it has minimal effects on the ones creating the music.
“No one cares because it’s not hurting the artists — it’s hurting the record companies,” he said. “No one feels sorry for the record companies because they’ve been screwing the artists for so long.”