New or small artists are often used as a foil by established artists either unwilling or unable to adapt to a new business model that doesn’t revolve around selling copies of music, digital or otherwise. If you’re a musical artist who loves what you do and are just trying to establish yourself by getting heard and building a fan base, the 21st century was practically built for you. Never before has a relative “nobody” been able to instantly connect with interested persons worldwide.

It’s not them we should be worried about at all. It’s the people who are trying to find “solutions” to a “problem” that doesn’t exist that are holding themselves back. Every abundance creates new scarcities – the trick is finding and capitalizing on those scarcities. Not trying to artificially limit the abundance through copyright law, guilt tripping, or argument.

I know there is something wrong with the language but I am not good enough to figure out a better way of saying things.

Music has value
The coping of music has a price of zero
The price of making music (time, labor and equipment) is more than 0.

So artists should be paid for making music not coping it.

One example I have seen (I might be modifying it) is put out low quality versions for free then charge for higher quality. The secret is the price. Charge too much, or be too restrictive with your product and people will just go somewhere else, charge too little and you don’t get paid.

No matter what the price some will go elsewhere the goal is to get the right amount. That amount will be different for different artists and maybe different for each song. A van Gogh goes for millions, one of my paintings I have trouble giving away.

After stumbling over the first sentence of your mission statement already, I would suggest to re-consider… everybody needs to be paid for his work of course.

What artists really need is a business model that pays for recorded music in order to be able to pay studios and realise their ideas in the way they should be… so they need new models to get paid for this work. You cannot pay to create something and then be willing to give it away for free – nobody would do that. Or be able to afford that over a long period of time.

A second proposition: many users have NO IDEA about what artists earn and how dramatic the situation really is. Try to put numbers on the table (records, live, merch…) you don’t have to mention the bands names, but if a well-known internationally acclaimed artist cannot pay for his rent or studio anymore, we all face a huge problem, with massive effects on our culture.

First, let me thank you and Jon for sharing with us this forum in which to brainstorm the future of viable business models to support the creation and enjoyment of music (as well as artistic effort in other industries). I have made my way here from Crosbie’s natural rights blog.

I would like to address your question “How, in a market where recordings have no value, are new artists supposed to establish themselves?”

By “value” I infer you mean “economic value” and move forward to my suggestion.

The present model (as I am aware of it as a layperson) is that an artist must first refine their work and establish a following. Making a name for yourself in the 20th century has always been a very labor intensive effort. Even when your natural talents are exceptional, being trapped in a small town (or cultural cul-de-sac of any sort.. ghetto, small country, you name it) without capitol or means can make recognition challenging to obtain.

In any event, the Shangri-La of budding artists has traditionally been in garnering the attention of a talent scout and/or ultimately a record executive, who may sign them to a contract. Until such eventuality, I am to understand, any new artist in the 20th century still has a day job and after this event, their career is entangled with the big business of record production.

Today, the internet is helping to level the playing field of recognition and global distribution. Talented artists from small towns to projects to Uzbekistan need nothing more than modest computing equipment and (not too heavily censored) internet access to share their work amongst any global community that they choose.

Such artists are bound to have to release work to the public with little or no compensation early on just to establish a name for themselves. Just as budding film directors presently post their work to free video sharing sites to establish a following.

The key here is that the value of these recorded copies of performances is best measured and utilized in their ability to promote your future work and reflect well upon you as an artist, not to insert your work into the cultural pantheon as some kind of a pay-only experience.

So a new artist must establish themselves as being a producer of music that people wish to hear, by offering their music (inexorably into the de facto public domain) for consideration until enough fans and aggregators feel they would like to finance the production of the next work and the artist can make a primary living on this and ancillary revenue streams.

In this way recorded work is like the “magic penny” from the old schoolyard rhyme. Artists who cling to the notion of monetizing work that already lies in the public’s hands instead of relinquishing their grip and maximizing public exposure stand to gain pale recompense for lost opportunities to incite public interest and support.

It’s just like a magic penny,
Hold it tight and you won’t have any.
Lend it, spend it, and you’ll have so many
They’ll roll all over the floor.

So let’s go dancing till the break of day,
And if there’s a piper, we can pay.
For love is something if you give it away,
You end up having more.

You are absolutely right to point out that I am in a prime position to benefit from the new paradigm, as an established artist who owns their own back catalogue.

The big question – one that this website was set up to shed some light on – is how, in a market where recordings have no value, are new artists supposed to establish themselves?

It comes down to a misunderstanding of what constitutes the “work.” Nobody, not even me, is saying that you should give your work away if you don’t want to. What they are saying is that once you decide to put something out there, it is infinitely copyable and without monetary value. As you said, though, there is more to it than monetary value. The promotional value is near-limitless and focusing on how to use that to your advantage is time well-spent.

As for the drop in recordings, I sincerely doubt that. People can have more recording power than the Beatles ever had in their basements and put out some great stuff. As a popular, established artist, you’ve got the most enviable position of all. You’ve got hundreds of thousands of fans, you can sell out venues. I’m willing to bet that if you put up that initial investment to make a new recording, you’d make the money back with interest not from selling records, but from the myriad of new income channels the internet era has opened for you.

The possibilities are limitless, and the music world is waiting for somebody both popular and revolutionary to take advantage of it them in a big way.

You state correctly that the distribution of digital files is free, then you wonder why artists don’t jump at the opportunity to give their stuff away?

The simple reason is that music is free, but it’s not worthless. Artists believe that it has intrinsic worth and that is why they are loathe to give it away for free. Hence, they fight against it.

There is also an economic imperative at work for artists. They have to invest to make the recordings which then have no intrinsic economic value in themselves.

I believe that, ultimately, artists will follow your advice and find other ways to make money, but you have to be prepared for that move forward to be accompanied by a huge drop in the amount of music that is being recorded.

Distribution of digital files is both ubiquitous and free. You’d think people would jump at the opportunity to quickly and cheaply populate the world with their stuff, but instead we’ve seen an industry fight tooth and nail to go back to a time when distribution cost something.

You’re focusing on trying to “change the culture” of p2p as many others have done in the past, but it’s the wrong way to look at it. You might respond well to donation links or digital stores (and that’s why it’s a good idea to have those), but there are millions of people out there who don’t. Those people want to spend their money in exchange for something they find valuable. It’s as simple as giving them something valuable to buy (it’s not digital files).

There’s no guilt, coercion, or middlemen involved (labels or ISPs). Just artists and fans working together in a mutually beneficial relationship. Why would anybody want to fight against any aspect of p2p when they could so easily make money by accepting it and moving forward?

So I’d like to pay. I suggested the tipjpar/paypal idea as a short term bandaid, perhaps a good habit to get into. Copyright is indeed broken (a copyright holder holds the right to copy which he releases in exchange for consideration. Assumption: Control of scarcity, i.e. how many copies are made. That assumption no longer holds). So now we need to look at getting compensated for ubiquity.

Talk of giving up monetizing recorded music, instead to pursue popularization for collateral benefits is fine, it works for some artists to a point. But I understand the focus here to be about restoring some degree of compensation for those dependent on recorded music. And it’s the ISPs now, not the labels, who stand between artists and fans. So, question: How to meaninfully engage them? What tools do we have?