At last the emergence of ways to end the record companies’ stranglehold on the music business?
Thom Yorke, leader of Radiohead and a vocal campaigner for musicians’ rights, is releasing his new solo album, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, via the record industry’s bête noir, BitTorrent.
For some time now BitTorrent is the name used not just for the peer-to-peer file sharing protocol created by Bram Cohen, and responsible for a significant amount of global web traffic, but also the company that manages and maintains this protocol and its clients, along with a content distribution service. The company, created in 2004 by Cohen and Ashwin Navin to make the open protocol commercially viable, has for some time been trying to muscle in on the culture scene through activities such as financing work via crowdfunding or distribution. In July, BitTorrent announced it was developing a paywall gateway to commercialize its Bundles, which are designed to hold anything and everything an artist makes, from video, to art, to music, in a single download whether free, all-you-can-eat, pay-per-download, or subject to a range of restrictions.
BitTorrent keeps 10 percent of the price paid by users for direct sale of content, and the remainder goes to the artist; a very different approach to the way traditional record companies and publishers work. The artist is free to decide how much to charge for his or her work, along with any free stuff, the amount of downloads, or restrictions of other kinds, such as requiring an email or some kind of identification system.
The move could have major repercussions: there are twice as many BitTorrent users out there as there are Spotify, Hulu, and Netflix combined, and although the protocol is overwhelmingly used for free downloads, there is no reason why people wouldn’t pay for content on BitTorrent, if the price was right. Indeed, developing options that appeal to users could well be the key to reducing the number of people who download without paying for content. It would be a nice twist if the protocol that has contributed most to the global spread of irregular downloads ended up persuading people to try alternatives that contributed financially to supporting artists and creators.
BitTorrent is a technology company that has been able to develop what is without doubt the best protocol for moving heavy files around the web. The challenge now is to establish itself as a distributor of content, effectively a record distribution company with a business model that gives its artists a bigger slice of the cake, and that is also able to give artists marketing channels to better promote their work. Access to television or radio, which have long shaped our tastes by setting trends, are still the means by which record companies hold on to their hegemony: the key lies not so much in the conditions that they impose on their artists, nor their excellence in producing music, but instead their control of the mass media, which assures that almost everything that is played on the radio or appears on television is decided by the music industry.
There already exist any number of ways for artists to get their music to market, such as SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Spotify, and other streaming services, or by creating their own app, or even by going old style and selling vinyls to fans. But using alternative channels to the record companies means renouncing traditional marketing, which is essential when it comes to letting the world know about their work: in other words, unless of course, you are so famous, like Thom Yorke, that the media comes to you.
Cross media marketing, exclusive distribution platforms, statistics, and sales lists, or simply by having direct, permanent access to the media allow the traditional record companies to maintain an iron grip on their markets and on music makers, allowing them to position a song or album to maximum effect. An artist can create a piece of music, create a bundle and put it on BitTorrent or any other platform that in theory will give access to the public, but the problem remains the same: it is practically impossible for them to get on television or radio.
The main problem that musicians face comes not from technology, which is perfectly able to offer them the right channels both for distribution and to make money from their work. The biggest problem artists face, in my humble opinion, comes from the record companies, and particularly the latter’s relationship with television and radio.
BitTorrent and other channels offer a tremendously viable alternative to the record companies, allowing musicians to make money from their work; but unless they are able to break into television and radio, the vast majority will be limited to relatively small audiences. But for the moment, initiatives such has BitTorrent’s are certainly a welcome alternative…
(En español, aquí)
