(iii) Other Ways to Sustain Publishers’ Revenue. — If, in the absence of copyright protection, an initial publisher of, say, a text with a long time horizon and large initial expenses fears that copying will destroy his profits, buyers — anxious to obtain the book — may find ways of assuing him enough revenue to operate profitably. Buyers, individually or in groups, might contract to buy the book in advance of publication, before copying is possible. Or organized groups of buyers may place a large enough order for an initial printing (either before or after publication) to assure the publisher a profit. Also, the government could subsidize the publication of certain high cost books.If many, or most, of the potential buyers for a particular type of book can be organized into a group that can negotiate with publishers, the danger that copying will make book production unprofitable diminishes. For if a publisher can convince the group that he needs a substantial “contribution” to cover the costs of production, the group will often prefer to pay the money than lose the book.

It’s well worth reading the whole article. Unfortunately, I think this document is only available on academic file-sharing sites, or on request from your friendly Harvard law school student who’s prepared to risk a bit of copyright infringement for a good cause.

Sell music not copies.

“Eh? But copies are music.”

No. Copies are copies. Music is music.

Duh?

Look, a photocopier can produce a copy of Macbeth, but only Shakespeare can produce Macbeth.

The copy is not the play.

Pay Shakespeare to write his play. Pay printers to print copies of it.

Pay Billy Bragg to write, sing, and record his songs. Pay the chap at the car boot sale for copies of them.

Are we there yet?

This quote

Artists in other creative industries all also cutting out the middle men, and I’m sure they will be watching us with interest.

clearly tells us that the whole idea of compulsory licensing, cultural tax or however you call it cannot be a solution.

Appart from issues that have been discussed here, you would need to apply such a system to all kinds of creative digital products (software, games, music, film…) because there is no reason why the music industry should have a priviledge. Just to name two problems with that: (1) you would need to collect a quite high tax/fee for that, (2) some people are consuming significantly more digital products that others (injustice). There are a lot more issues around I don’t want to digg into right now.

I’d love to push this whole discussion a bit more torwards alternative solutions. Talking about what’s right, what’s wrong, what shall be done with copyright and all that is certainly important and helpful. But as we are having this great community of fans and artists here in one place we should discuss what both parties think are feasible solutions and what not. So here is one alternative:

I’ve described it here http://a2f2a.com/2009/10/27/louie-louies-jack-ely-joins-a2f2a/#comment-263 and I will repeat it again and again, till it get’s picked up by the discussion.

The ultimate problem is that digital music is a public good (more on wikipedia). That does not mean digital music belongs to everyone, or has no value. That only means that digital music is a good with two distinct characteristics:

non-rivalrous and non-excludable

This means, respectively, that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good.

The problem with such goods is that you cannot sell them piece by piece. Billions of dollars have been spent trying to make digital music rivalrous and excludabel again through DRM, legal actions, etc. All that is just a waist of time and money. What is really needed are business-models that are able to handle music as a public good. So here is what I have in mind and I appreciate your opinions on that:

If you cannot sell your music piece by piece, then sell it only once. But then to the whole market. The idea is to satisfy the artist’s (note, not some large corporation’s) financial interest right at the products digital release and give up control afterwards.

How? Like this: Say you just completed the recordings of your new album. It hast not yet been published, though. You offer the world the following:

“World! This is my new album. For $10,000 I will release it under Creative Commons* license by-nc. That means everyone will be free to legally copy and share the album as long as it is for non-commercial purpose. If you want to make money with my recordings, please contact me and we sort out a deal. Everyone of you if free to pay whatever s/he wants. But remember, the album will only be released if we reach this target together. We’ll be collecting for the next three weeks.”
* if you want to learn more on CC, check: creativecommons.org

This is a totally fair approach, engages fans and enables artists to make some money from their unique role as gatekeepers. There are a couple of reasons for people to actually pay: They can legally share afterwards, they can get it for maybe $2 if enough people join in, the love the music, they love net-neutrality, etc.

What I love about this solution is that (1) it does not require a change in copyrights law – a major legal act; (2) it leaves all power to the most important parties involved – artists and fans; (3) it does not require a central organization.

Please note, if you do a background-check on me you’ll see that I am tyring to run such a system. That’s why I am pointing out that I do not want to sell something here! I love that concept and want to see it happen – that’s all. BTW, anybody who wants to copy that can actually do it. Copyright does not protect ideas like that
Plus it’s not my unique idea (even though I thought it was once ). It’s quite old actually. You can check for the “Street Performer Protocol” on Wikipedia to learn more.