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Thursday, June 15, 2006

how to deliberately avoid thinking things through, or convenience morality

A conversation with Pete this afternoon crystallised an unease I have felt for the last year and a half since I started ripping off large quantities of music for my MP3 collection. Pete has a much clearer moral code in the area than my flaccid, improvised convention. Mine goes something like this: I'll listen to everything and if (a) I really like and album and (b) the artist is still alive and (c) they're not already rich and famous then maybe I'll get round to buying it too, because more obscure living artists need support and don't need the likes of me to rip them off. Unfortunately that only works on the occasions when I actually get round to it. And I treat the vast area of music which falls outside these restrictive categories without compunction, partly legitimised by a dimly-perceived (be me) crypto-communism which seems to float around the area of illegal downloads - you know the sort of thing: the record companies take all the profits anyway and the corporations have hijacked the DIY ethic of file sharing, and isn't it terrible that they're brainwashing kids with copyright lessons in schools etc etc - so why contribute to the perpetuation of a corrupt economic and political system? Well I don't really follow, or know all the facts, but hey, it's good enough to get me out of actually paying for anything - a sort of "from each according to his whims, to each according to his desires" approach. Then there's the thought that I work in music, so it's kind of a fair-enough perk of the job to get my grubby hands on it (whether or not I review it, and I haven't reviewed anything for months).

So what should I do? If I delete the whole lot, I'll lose a lot of good babysitter music. And my wife will kill me. But that makes it a more interesting moral dilemma - I am stuck between a rock and a soft place. Or I could buy all 7000-odd tracks - but that would set me back, er, about 7000-odd pounds. But now that I'm a father I have to start taking my moral responsibilities seriously, or I will either start giving out bad advice or turn into a hypocrite.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

How much do you spend on music in total? i.e. including concerts, mags, books etc? I'd add those things in too before you do your sums ... I think the total spend on the music sector (not just the record industry) is important to consider, as it may be that records/disks/equiv. are becoming commodified anyway. But there's still money in music (in live music and other performance, paraphenalia and packaging, donation and subscription to clubs with value-added services (Jones with his Crimson Collectors stuff etc.)).

Tricky question though, isn't it. I'm pretty sure I spend as much money on music as I ever did, though I'm probably listening to more (through swaps etc.) I don't download though (too fiddly; dodgy quality; no context; sometimes DRMed). Importantly also, I'm not a father! I wonder if the music industry (record industry?) just has to assume it's going to make most of the money out of people before they start families!

8:14 am

 
Blogger lifestooshort said...

thank you Dan, that's just the kind of slippery logic I needed to help get myself off the hook..... I think my problem is at the level of the individual artist rather than the industry - i.e. if I'm particularly keen on, say Susanne Abbuehl, then I owe it to her individually as someone who probably isn't yet a platinum seller to support her and enable her to continue making her beautiful sounds.

The solution I've cobbled together is, where the artist probably needs the money, either to buy the album in question or if possible to buy another one (and if I like that enough I may eventually get another, or the original one), neither denying myself the extra music, nor the artist her living. still feels a bit of a fudge but as you say these are complex questions.

As for the family question, harsh but true. Bear in mind that we are now supporting whole new culture industries (children's books, lullabies etc), but yes, my concert attendance has taken a bit of a dive.

12:27 pm

 

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