Really? Tell that to Solomon Linda and the other people who have benefited because Pete Seeger recognised the importance of paying the original creator.

Of course you should pay the original creator. Once, for their work.

One of the big positive arguments that FAC use to convince sceptical artists of our need to work with p2p users is the fact that figures show that file-sharers buy more legal downloads that non-file-sharers. How is this possible if file-sharing means we can’t sell copies anymore?

If you’re still trying to use filesharing to primarily sell copies, you’re not only misunderstanding filesharing but the entire creative market shift. There will probably always be some people who want to buy copies in any form because of convenience, collectability, or uniqueness – but it’s a shrinking market.

Any artist who plans on continuing to make money needs to force themselves, however painfully, to see beyond the sale of plastic discs. You’re in near-constant dialog with a community of people who would love to help, but it’s a whole new way of thinking.

Though it also seems to me the main reasons many filesharers would pay for downloads or CDs are to:

1) Have a better quality copy of the song (or, where the song segues into the next one as part of a medley, to have a copy without an MP3 break); and/or

2) Obtain an album or song that was otherwise unavailable (whether temporarily or not).

Would these reasons for paying go away if everybody torrented only FLACs and everything was available? I don’t think we are moving towards such a scenario, but there is an increasing awareness of better standards like FLAC, and hard drives are becoming so roomy that more people are willing to increase the quality of their files…

Things like royalties are archaic and unnecessary in the modern music world, regardless of how well-intentioned the purpose.

Really? Tell that to Solomon Linda and the other people who have benefited because Pete Seeger recognised the importance of paying the original creator.

You’ve got the wrong end of the stick here, Steely. Seeger doesn’t subscribe to Crosbie’s natural law argument. If he did, he would have just taken Linda’s song and not bothered paying him. Instead, he understood that he was using something that somebody else created and therefore went to great lengths to ensure that the originator was remunerated – and when he couldn’t find an originator he sought the community from where that music originated and put something back there.

And the notion that it should be up to the user to decide where the money should go – that’s is fine if everybody is as conscientious as Pete Seeger, but I doubt Clear Channel subscribe to such lofty ideals.

Also, you’re pedaling that tired ‘you can’t sell copies’ cliche again. One of the big positive arguments that FAC use to convince sceptical artists of our need to work with p2p users is the fact that figures show that file-sharers buy more legal downloads that non-file-sharers. How is this possible if file-sharing means we can’t sell copies anymore?

Instead of trying to set up international commissions, how about artists just work for their fans, the way they have for millennia? Pete can leverage the global sharing of his past recordings to get paid to create new ones, all while connecting with his fans and providing genuinely scarce things to buy.

It’s up to him where he wants the money from that to go, or if he wanted to set up different sites and tiered purchases for different end goals (personal income vs charity, for example). But the model is right there – release everything copyable into the world, and make money creating new, original things and providing fans with reasons to buy.

You don’t have to create a new world of any kind. The world we have will do – it’s just a matter of forcing yourself to see the myriad of new options available to you that go far beyond the narrow thinking the labels have engrained in us.