Hip-hop fans only care that the music gets to them. Hip-hop heads care about
how the music gets to them. Fair warning, this post is for hip-hop heads. If you don't give a shit about what implications Harry Fraud's new (dope) "High Tide" EP has for the future of digital music, fair enough, just
click here to listen and download*. Everyone else, keep reading...
The corporate takeover of the music industry has been happening for years. With money from direct music sales drying up faster than a river in Death Valley, both artists and labels have increasingly turn to corporate America for their paychecks, and in many ways the effects have been positive. Not only are artist able to actually pay their rent and feed their children from their music (you know, no big deal), contrary to the fears of backpacker/conspiracy theorists, in many ways companies offer MORE creative control than labels.
Universal needs a RADIO HIT NOW, Converse doesn't care if
Rubber Tracks songs get played on Hot 97.
But those checks don't come with strings attached, and I don't think it's until the last month that we've really started to see those strings being played. As
Cipha Sounds pointed out, ten years ago
Def Jam would have been happy (behind closed doors) about the
Rick Ross "U.O.E.N.O." controversy; after all, controversy sells records. But
Reebok isn't in the record-selling business, it's in the people-buying-their-shoes business, and the second Rick Ross threatend that business, he was gone. Similarly,
Cash Money and Lil Wayne wouldn't give a fraction of a fuck about
a "Karate Chop (Remix)" apology if they weren't concerned about losing Mountain Dew - do you have any idea how many facial tattoos and new Bugattis that Pepsi money can buy?
So ultimately, will the move away from labels and towards companies mean more or less censorship? Frankly it's too early to tell, it may end up being a wash, but if the last few weeks have taught us anything, it's that there
will be an effect.
But it's not just the music itself that's being affected, it's how we'll be able to consume the music. Case in point, Scion AV's release today of Harry Fraud's "High Tide" EP:
For all of you who don't speak RapBlog-ese, allow me to translate. When "High Tide" dropped, sites knew it was a free project, free usually equals "do what you want with it", and so they posted the project with a full embeddable stream and direct download link. Because, you know, that's literally what 100% of our users prefer, and we're in the business of making our users happy.
You'd think Scion AV would be happy about all the posts, after all, I'm assuming they did the "High Tide" EP for exposure, and posts mean exposure, but instead their lawyers started rifling off
DMCA notices. To over-simplify, when a site receives a DMCA notice they're officially on notice that if they don't either remove or amend a post, they can be sued.
To be sure, the majority of DMCA claims are completely legitimate, and most major sites would never post anything that knowingly violated the DMCA. Why risk
getting OnSmashed so you can post an illegal album download link? But many DMCA claims are nothing but veiled bullying. Even if
a DMCA claim is completely frivolous, or at the very least debatable - and I think there's certainly a debate to be had about Scion's claim - what rap site has the time or money to legally fight a billion dollar company like Toyota? Over what, a post about an EP?
Companies, and here I'm counting labels under the "company" category, know nearly every site will capitulate rather than fight, and so they've effectively turned the DMCA from a way to protect their copyright into a way to effectively force sites to do what they want. I don't think Scion's sending out DMCA notices because they believe a copyright has been violated, they're sending DMCAs because their marketing department
wants to collect emails. Of course, all those emails will likely prove to be pointless**, but more importantly, it will look good when some marketing exec at Scion is able to put the email collection numbers on a PowerPoint slide.
Would 2Dope and Nahright and every other site who initially posted "High Tide" with a stream and download link, and then was later
forced to update their post, have posted in the first place if they knew they had to send users to Scion's site, where there's no stream at all and no direct download? Maybe...probably not.
And that's the real battleground in 2013. Not between companies and "pirates", but between companies stubbornly determined to have people to consume music THEIR way, and people who want music how THEY want it, with sites caught in the middle. If the internet has taught us anything, it's that the people will always ultimately win, and the
companies that will continue to thrive are those who enable, not inhibit, people from getting what they want.
In the end, even though I'm sure some will clump me into that category of bloggers who don't care or don't care to know about the financial realities of artists and companies, I recognize that companies have to get something in exchange for
effectively patronizing artists. This is the music business, not the music festival of hugs, and in many ways Scion's release of the "High Tide" EP is symbolic of the industry's growing pains as artists figure out how to work with companies instead of labels, and those companies attempt to fill many of the spaces labels once occupied.
Ironically, it looks like many successful companies in other fields seem determined to employ the same strategies as major labels when it comes to releasing music digitally, even as they watch those major labels fall apart. So even while music distribution continues to undergo a seismic upheaval, we may just end up stuck in the same place for the foreseeable future. Which is awesome considering the same place involves your favorite sites spending more time worried about bogus DMCA claims than supporting the music you want to hear.
I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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*You won't actually be able to listen, or directly download. See, maybe you should care about how the music gets to you. Now go back and read the whole article.
** Hey artists, heads up, study after study shows that collecting emails aren't nearly as valuable now as gaining Twitter or Facebook followers, particularly in younger demographics. Go ahead,
find an 18-year-old who even uses email anymore, let alone checks their inbox for tour dates and music releases. I'll wait.
P.S. - I can't figure out how to embed my Twitter convo with Harry Fraud in one hit instead of breaking it up, so sorry if it's annoying to read, but you should still get the point.
