OiNK Could Be A Piggy Bank, Too
OiNK was right and wrong, but there's so much bullshit flying around on both sides that taking the time to call all of it will take longer than reclassifying your entire music library by legality. Sure, people do "buy the CD," in the words of Alan the admin, but if you believe it's actually "a lot," we'd like your signature on this medical marijuana petition, too. The traditional press accounts have been riddled with errors, and every single possible analogy is being trotted out as ammunition for bloggy showdowns either way, despite the fact that argument from analogy is one of the weakest kinds of argument there is. Whatever side you're on, whether you were a member or not, one thing that's beyond all argument is that OiNK was remarkable, an incredible musical library of with more breadth and depth than any other -- that happened to be (probably) completely illegal. It was too awesome for anyone, copyright cops included, to think that there will never be another one, or another one after that. We have an idea, though, for making sure the next one lasts.
But first, a very brief minimally boring history lesson:
In 1731, sexy Ben Franklin and friends created America's oldest cultural institution, the Library Company of Philadelphia:
During the early years of the United States, books were not widely available. Standard English reference works were expensive and difficult to find: they had to be shipped to the colonies from Europe, and the average person could not afford to purchase the books that well-rounded intellectuals thought worth reading.OK, maybe it wasn't the first public library, like they told you in school, but what they definitely didn't tell you is that the United States was the biggest pirate country in the world back when Ben founded that library. Even after they passed the first copyright law in 1790, it only applied to domestic works. In other words, 97% of English-language literature was fair game, and American publishing started as a pirate industry, sort of like Hollywood -- which is why you'll find the Lars of letters putting lengthy rants about copyright in Nicholas Nickleby's mouth. It's hard to imagine libraries (how many times have their CDs been ripped?) starting in their current form in the modern copyright era, and like we said, argument from analogy, etc., etc., -- so how can we possibly create a legal OiNK when actual police are actually interrogating its founder?In 1731, Benjamin Franklin convinced members of the Junto, his “society of mutual improvement,” to pool their resources and purchase a collection of books none could have afforded individually.
First: Do we need to? Streaming albums, mp3 blogs, aggregators, your various and sundry spaces and sters ... how can you complain that you need to "sample" an album when there are so many ways you can hear it? Considering workplace internet usage monitoring, or the relative acceptability of sitting at work wearing headphones, etc., for those of us without the luxury of working with music all day, being able to get a feel for whether or not you like something often means being able to put it on an iPod and listen to it in the car or walking around. (For those of you over 40 who are appalled to even consider listening to music at work, consider that Americans work longer hours than ever, and commute longer than ever, so having a leisurely Schaefer by the hi-fi is harder than ever, too.) Some kinds of copyright-protected portability exists, but it's a hodge-podge of formats and devices with smallish, varied selections, which looks that much more diminished alongside the existence of all music in one simple, portable, universally-supported format. What you're selling is (shit, another analogy) pretty much abstinence sex ed.
So: It's not hard to think of a framework for a legal OiNK:
- You pay by the bit, so you're charged more for FLAC, less for 320kbps mp3s, and even less for 128kbps ... maybe that's free, if you keep your ratio above a certain level. In fact, maybe your ratio is a coefficient on what you pay. 0.25? You pay 4x the base rate. 1.25? You rock -- have some cheaper music on us, for making the service better.
- Artists/Publishers can upload or claim albums, ASCAP/BMI (or whomever) holds money for the rest that are still under copyright. They already do this -- if we license some weird old track, they sock it away until it's legally claimed and handle the accounting. If someone uploads a 7" that Mustard Plug completely forgot about, it's obviously particular to that artist, and there's no need to worry about where it came from; just charge people who download it by the bit and let the paralegals at ASCAP make some calls.
- Hell, for fun, you could even credit people by the bit for uploads, if you want to make sure every recorded song ever appears overnight. Downloads would far exceed uploads and it'd be cheaper than outsourcing it to Asia.
If they were smart, rights holders would drop the charges against OiNK-the-admin in return for building something like that. Of course all the majors will try to fuck it, because no one will go through them for releases anymore, but we'd sell it to them by saying, "You like iTunes ruling your future? Do this and Steve Jobs will collar himself and hand you the leash." iTunes doesn't work through the browser, and that makes it the loser in this fight, because there's such a huge community working on browsers, tools, sites, etc. that Apple can't possibly compete with. The majors own the back library, which will more than fund their operations while they figure out how to make themselves an attractive agent for new artists, to keep them from simply uploading their own music and keeping the profits to themselves.
Some of you might remember hearing that Napster 1.0 tried something like this in their last days, only to have the industry walk away:
Seven years ago, the music industry's top executives gathered for secret talks with Napster CEO Hank Barry. At a July 15th, 2000, meeting, the execs -- including the CEO of Universal's parent company, Edgar Bronfman Jr.; Sony Corp. head Nobuyuki Idei; and Bertelsmann chief Thomas Middelhof -- sat in a hotel in Sun Valley, Idaho, with Barry and told him that they wanted to strike licensing deals with Napster. "Mr. Idei started the meeting," recalls Barry, now a director in the law firm Howard Rice. "He was talking about how Napster was something the customers wanted."Fine -- make the FLAC downloads cost $25.99, or whatever CDs cost in stores now, and tell Darryl Worley to tell Wal-Mart it's not a copy of the CD unless it's fully lossless. Audiophiles have money to burn, anyway. What have you got to lose? Just because you didn't cannibalize your core business doesn't mean someone else didn't eat it. OiNK is something your customers want. Drop the charges against Alan Ellis if he builds you a for-profit OiNK and we promise not to use another non-profit one.The idea was to let Napster's 38 million users keep downloading for a monthly subscription fee -- roughly $10 -- with revenues split between the service and the labels. But ultimately, despite a public offer of $1 billion from Napster, the companies never reached a settlement. "The record companies needed to jump off a cliff, and they couldn't bring themselves to jump," says Hilary Rosen, who was then CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America. "A lot of people say, 'The labels were dinosaurs and idiots, and what was the matter with them?' But they had retailers telling them, 'You better not sell anything online cheaper than in a store,' and they had artists saying, 'Don't screw up my Wal-Mart sales.' " Adds Jim Guerinot, who manages Nine Inch Nails and Gwen Stefani, "Innovation meant cannibalizing their core business."
Posted at 6:42 PM
Good write-up. I don't think I could ever concede to a type of monthly-subscription purchasing plan, the same idea that Rick Rubin cooked up a short time ago. I myself never got around to using OiNK, but I do find their shutdown depressing. Not because I would've liked to use it, but the option to use it was always open to me. Sort of like how Siegfried and Roy stopped performing after Roy got mangled by that tiger. Even if I wanted to go see them in the future, I wouldnt be able to.
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oink was really an incredible system, shame to see it go
however, i honestly doubt that if it was revived as a legal paying system that it'd have the same success. look what happen to napster after all. im sure a system similar to oink will pop up soon, its just a matter of time.
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It's absolutely a stretch to say "a lot" of Oink users bought the cds they downloaded, BUT the idealist in me would like to think that Oink users bought the cds that they were inclined to buy anyway, and used Oink to download stuff they weren't inclined to buy, either because they didn't love the artist 100% or they were taking a flyer on something new.
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I believe that something along these lines in absolutely inevitable. There is no way that these types of sites will disappear or that this degree of musical accessibility will dissipate. The majors, much like any other bureaucracy, are desperately attempting to cast themselves as honest servants of what is right and good in the face of evil forces that seek to cripple a perfectly viable and benevolent industry. Their refusal to take the proverbial look in the mirror and question the root of the motivation of those who download their music is only serving to expand the divide between their product and their patrons. While it may appear to be "industry standard", a business model (and I have no problem conceding that this will affect artists as well as their labels) that is less and less able to turn a profit (this is a comment, so I'll just note that I'm not only referring to the effect of illegal downloading but to all other forms of new media as well as production and distribution) does not deserve to continue to operate "business as usual". The RIAA has been screaming about a falling sky for over a decade now but there has been a very refreshing and vibrant growth in music that appears to only continue to gain momentum for just about as long. Us music loving consumers will continue to have to pay for our music in some form. However, the questions remain. What are consumers willing to fork over to the good folks at the RIAA? When have consumers happily or even willingly paid top dollar for an objectively inferior product? The answers are nothing and never, respectively.
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There's nothing (yet) inherently illegal about a torrent site. It contains no copyrighted music at all, it only provides links for others to use (at their own risk).
It's almost a shame this case is going to be sent to trial in the UK, and not the US. I'm not sure how much US courts include UK verdicts in their judgements, but it would at least set a UK precedent on what a BitTorrent tracker actually is or isn't and how we can legally use them and support them.
Nobody's ever been successfully prosecuted to my knowledge for running a BitTorrent tracker. It's simply technology that's above the heads of the vast majority of even tech-savvy lawyers. You were never downloading "from oink" despite what common level ignorance thinks from the fact that they click on a link on oink to download their files. You were always downloading from another user of the site, hence the "peer" portions of "peer to peer". The blame lies solely in the users of the site.
The fact that it's a conspiracy charge is the important factor of the case. They're going to argue that by running the site, he was facilitating something that could have otherwise not happened. It's not that he was providing illegal content, but that he was providing access to illegal content. Whether or not he's responsible for the actions of the users of the site, is what we'll all get to see. Historically, if you commit a crime in someone else's house, with the knowledge of the owner of the house, the person who owns the house is guilty of conspiracy to commit whatever the crime is in the first place. Is the same thing going to be able to be argued about a BitTorrent tracker? I personally doubt it. It'll be interesting to see what happens to say the least.
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As a hardcore user of OiNK, I am sad to see it go. However I have seen huge strides in subscription music services like rhapsody that I am going to give a shot.
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At least at Rhapsody and eMusic and the like, the artist actually gets paid.
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You're giving Alan Ellis far too much credit. There's nothing technically interesting going on with his website; I'm not even sure that the software that ran the website is his (I've seen it used on a number of other private trackers, but I've never been clear on where it originated). He didn't invent BitTorrent and he had nothing to do with is popularizing in the overall sense (compare their 180k users to any major public or semi-public tracker). I'm not saying your idea isn't going to work-- but don't expect something as complicated as that to come from Ellis. His strong suit came from strict administration and what I can only assume was his own personal audiophilia.
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enough with lame models for a legal mp3 community people need to get over the idea of selling music all together. i don't care about artists that don't have a day job and the idea that i'm making it hard for musicians to make a living by enjoying their music without paying for it is silly. can we just go back to front porch recording made by folks that loved music… loved art. money has over complicated this sh*t for far too long.
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What the fuck is Oink!? Not in a literal sense, rather who really gives a damn about software? Your whole argument is absurd since the reason I used Oink! as I assume with everyone else was that it's free. If I really wanted to pay money I'd go to itunes.
I understand this whole concept of utopia that you've written, but it ain't gonna happen...see if people can get it free, then they'll get for free. If labels artists can still make a buck, then they will.
Frankly you sound like my stoner college roommate whinnying when Napster got shut down.
Relax sweety, there'll be another real soon.
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Just because Napster failed doesn't mean all subscriptions will fail.
The first all-you-can-eat subscription service that allows you to have DRM-Free songs (or at the very least, songs that will play on your iPod) will be the winner.
Just look at the fact...the #2 online retailer next to iTunes is...eMusic. The problems with eMusic are that they are not all-you-can-download plans (x amount of downloads a month depending on your payment level), they don't have major label music, and their website is absolutely awful to use.
There are over 100 Million iPods out there, and people aren't going to ditch their iPod for another "Plays4Sure" device to access these existing subscription services.
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I agree, to an extent, with bolig...What makes musicians so special? I've got tons of friends that are artists: painters, sculptors, performance artists, etc... that really don't make any money from the art they spend gobs of time laboring to produce. They all have day jobs or have to work double in order to secure grants for their work. Just painting a picture and hanging it in a gallery does not a living make. There is no central organization securing funds for underground sculptors.
As an independant musician, I've never held out any hope of making a living off of the recordings I spend way too much time producing. It's just not likely. I spend all that time and energy because I enjoy it. The only way musicians will ever make any money is by touring, just like a real job. It's the way it's been for ever. Yes, I think music artists should be paid when a corporation uses their music to sell a product, but when Joe Oink downloads an album to listen to on his way to work, it doesn't really matter where it came from or who got paid for it. If the RIAA really cared about all artists getting their due, they should work on setting their artists up with tours that are productive and profitable for both parties.
The artistic playing field should be leveled.
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Great article. I think the idea of people still buying CDs is, at this point, an idealistic dream. For someone like me, who doesn't even own a stereo aside from the speakers hooked up to my computer and an ipod, CDs have become almost pointless for me. If a band I really like comes out with a great album I'll go out and buy it to support them, but it's really stupid for me to do this because I just end up ripping it to my computer immediately and then putting the cd on the shelf to gather dust. I'd buy on itunes but ugggh what shitty quality and itunes for windows is one of the worst programs I've ever used. Personally, I download music, and then buy what I really like on cd, reluctantly, and spend an insane ammount of money going to see bands live and buying beautiful vinyl releases. I really feel like this is so much better for the artists too. Not to sound corny, but this is a revolution. For way too long, the consumer was forced to pay entirely too much for the music they loved because they had no other choice. If record companies hadn't been so greedy and had charged a reasonable ammount for a cd, they wouldn't be looked on as quite the greedy bastards they are today and maybe people would feel slightly worse about taking money from them. Once the masses were given an option to spite the greedy fucks you grew up hating, of course people took it and it's ludicrous to think that people won't continue to take it. People don't hate Merge, and Misra, and Matador, and fucking all the tons of small to medium sized labels because they put out a superior product at a reasonable price, they hate the majors because they don't give a shit about the music, all they care about is the money. The people who run the major labels are essentially the same people who sell you health insurance, and the same people who sell you medicine you don't need. They don't care about anything but the bottom line and I think that leads people to want to revolt. Once you give the pissed off masses a weapon that can defeat the people who made them pissed off, there is no example in the history of time of the people not using that weapon.
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this is all real nice and pretty, and maybe in a perfect world, it would work, but not in the one we live. yes, of course, the fault does lie on both sides of the debate. the labels think of money first and music second, while users want their music and want it for as close to nothing as possible. those two facts are never going to change, and for that reason, i don't think any subscription or pay site will ever have the success of napster or oink in their heydays.
of course, there were people on oink who never bought a CD/vinyl, but at the same time, there were many of us who did use oink as a "discovery system," and not only bought the albums we loved, but also bought merchandise, posters, & concert tickets, and then told their friends who went and did the same.
i think sites like oink have done more for the industry than the labels are realizing. yes, major album sales are down. yes, a portion of that can be directly linked to "illegal" downloads. but at the same time, the labels have to stop giving us britneys and soulja boys, and give us artists that take music seriously.
part of the problem with downloading for a fee is that people still think in physical terms. if they're going to part with their money, they want something they can hold in their hand (i.e. CD/vinyl). not only does it validate that purchase, but then it serves to show others that you've made that investment, that whole status thing. so one option is if i'm going to pay you to download this album, make it worth my while, and send me a hard copy of it as well.
also, if the artists i really like all did what radiohead's done and i knew they would see a majority of the profit, i would pay every time, assuming that the work being presented is worth paying for.
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"The artistic playing field should be leveled."
Amen to that.
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I think what SG proposes is a great idea that would work. I personally do pay the monthly subscription fee for a Napster/Rhapsody type service through my local cable company. Granted, I then run the songs I download through a program that allows me to keep them forever and burn them to cd and play them on whatever device I want, but still, I'm willing to pay. Even this has it's limitations in that some artists/labels don't make their stuff available for download (thanks for nothing Bright Eyes!), and that sometimes forces me to head out into the back alleys of the internet to "steal" stuff (in your FACE Bright Eyes!). But it also makes me a pretty little fish in the big sea of internet piracy. Judging from recent RIAA lawsuits, I'd probably only owe them, like, 50 grand or something (that's about 10 cd's worth of songs). But yeah, the labels are going to have to come up with something.
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If I didn't know any better, I would think that before Oink people never recorded friend's music, had to buy an entire CD before they knew anything about a band, and never went to live shows because there was no free service to help them decide who to see.
Amazing to think back to what it was like to be a music fan pre-Internet. I went to a LOT of shows and somehow knew about bands without the benefit of pirating their entire back catalogs. I managed to get a large music collection on a small budget. Believe it or not, I found out what to buy without Oink, P2P or blogs.
If Oink or an Oink-like service wants to survive and become legit, it should filter out all RIAA/IFPI content. Working with the indies will allow a legit service to get off the ground, prove whether or not it can be done and entice the majors to follow suit. Yes, the idealized version of Oink would have *all* content, but that's not realistic right now.
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Well said Glenn.
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It's all been said, but it is unrealistic to expect people to buy tons of CDs anymore. I think the majority of hardcore music fans are most interested, in soe extent, in musicians and bands that don't really benefit all that much from CD sales anyway. Sure they get a couple bucks, but when a musician says he isn't really irked by albums leaking and getting downloaded, it's hard to make yourself go to a record store (even if it's independently owned) and buy a record. Supporting a band's tour and purchasing an album there, to me, are the ideal way to ensure that your favourite bands continue to work.
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In case people didn't know, there was already a torrent site for indie content only. But damn, apparently it's down too.
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guys, holler if you need Libble invites.
http://ilx.wh3rd.net/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=44&threadid=1698
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Yes, definitely level the playing field! Why should someone in art make money at all? Hey, that painter is starving while that musician just made $67 from iTunes this month. That's corrupt!
Since when is making a living incompatible with doing something you love? I don't buy into the whole purity argument - fuck that. I've been making music for the love of it for 20 years now, only earning money off of it for the last 7 years or so, taking forever to make each work the best that it can be for those into my music.
The only thing that changed when I had day jobs was I had much less time and energy for music. Sometimes none.
People who take my music for free complain that I don't put out enough records on my label.
I'm not talking about majors or people who are rich. I'm talking about indie musicians who aren't rich, who need money from something to pay bills. If they get it from an exhausting day job, or two day jobs, there's likely going to be less/no time or energy left over for music making. It astounds me that consumers don't understand that logic. Money buys time, time is for music making. If you're combining your music making with earning money, you can actually finish songs and put them out. Incredible.
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I was a hardcore user for almost all of the 3 years Oink was around. I would say 50% of what I downloaded was something I had previously paid for, in another format. I replaced old cassettes and records. I replaced CDs that had been stolen or lost. And the other 50% was new music. To be honest, I only bought CDs from my favorite bands. But I would pay to have Oink's back, or a similar site.
10/24 THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED.
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