ITC Blog #5 - The UnConvention and P2P Debates

Edward continues sharing his In The City saga with us (blame the industrial action by the railway signal people in Scotland for the delayed entry!):

ITC must have proved itself as these days. It boosts not only a host of official fringe events and showcases but now an unofficial fringe, including the proudly independent Un-Convention - an event aimed at creating a space for the DIY music's grassroots, as well people from the more established independent scene, to discuss ideas and experiences, and engage in a bit of mutual camaraderie and support.

Rather than the plush, but somewhat sterile, Midlands Hotel that host ITC, the Un-Convention is based in the beautiful 17th Century Sacred Trinity Church, in nearby Salford (despite technically being held in a separate 'city' it's barely ten minutes walk). Despite the differences in outlook, UC is, I think, aiming to complement rather than compete with ITC. The opening UC panel focused on labels, a free ranging discussion of the ethics and opportunities of the indie sector.

Perhaps starkly illustrating the difference between ITC and UC, there was a lot of support for the idea that indie labels should be a labour of love, breaking even at best. Hardly a sentiment to be found up the road.

ITC panels focussed on the digital future, where not a lot of conclusions were drawn as the merits of 'a la carte' MP3 services such as iTunes were compared with 'all you can eat' subscription and ad funded platforms. Lyor Cohen pointed out yesterday that it's a mug’s game predicting the future, but that didn't stop the various reps from Noika, Myspace, Vodafone et al giving it a shot. The rather patronising 'you mum's gotta understand it' criteria seemed to be ubiquitously accepted, with everyone stressing that easy, popular and affordable were the criteria for a successful download platform. Obviously P2P downloading fulfils all these criteria rather well, but, for the majority of ITC delegates, there's another criteria: how they get paid. The publishers wanting a royalty, the labels wanting a chance to recoup their costs, the managers after their 20% and the artists not liking the idea of giving their 'music' away for free.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the delegates across at UC did, generally, view things slightly differently. The 2 million downloads of Radiohead's In Rainbows via P2P networks, when everyone had option of legitimately downloading it for only a penny, weren't seen so much as 'lost sales' but either as potential new fans or people downloading it on spec cos it was 'there' and probably never listening to it. At ITC there was more admiration that a band had basically given an album away for free yet could still flog 80 quid box sets of the same album. (One of the problem with any dissection of the “In Rainbows” phenomena is that the band have been, compared to say Trent Raznor and his NIN/Saul Williams downloads, pretty cagey about releasing any figures for either numbers or price paid for downloads, but it's fair to say a lot of people downloaded and paid for the album then enough people paid for the full CD version to send it to the number one spot worldwide – however you look at it it was a success!).

The fact that everyone in the industry has to face is that free P2P downloading is here and there's not a lot anyone can do about it, a fact perhaps more accepted at UC than at ITC – during the digital music panels (at ITC), P2P users were routinely referred to as thieves, and if I'd pointed out that I regularly download via Azureus I fear I'd have been hounded out of the room (in 32 minutes I'll have all the remixes ever done of M|A|R|R|S's classic “Pump Up The Volume”, now I couldn't get them from iTunes...).

Now, everyone in the industry knows if you want to get your music for free it's easy - a label rep never leaves another labels office without a bundle of freebies under their arm, most probably destined for the Music and Video Exchange in Camden or eBay, and if I were to contact almost any label or PR agent asking for a copy of any new release, purely on the basis that I run a label, a package would, I'm sure, be in the post – were I to add I'm writing a blog for the New York Times owned About.com, I'd soon be able to open my own eBay store. So free music for people in the industry from people in the industry is not only tolerated but expected – yet P2P file sharing isn't. An ex-journo was bemoaning the fact that he used to have an extensive and up to date music collection – nowadays, he had no idea what all these now bands sounded like, “Have you not heard of file sharing” I asked, and he looked as shocked as if I'd suggested he go gob in the face of respected, and much loved music mogul Seymour Stein (Yeah, I know that undermines my first point about everyone in the industry getting music for free if they want it, but maybe he just didn't want to ask!).

I see Heather's started billing me as the cynical Mr Pybus (Ed. Note: I said “WONDERFULLY” cynical), and perhaps I am being too cynical to suggest that labels are happy giving away free physical copies of CDs as the cost of all these promos can be recouped against the bands future royalties. But since labels are still charging artists a 25% packaging deduction on digital sales, I reckon it's often hard to be too cynical. Anthony Addis would certainly agree, he fumed his way through a session on industry royalties, the above example being just one of a litany of 'non-transparency', as it was diplomatically put, that were laid at the doors of the record labels when calculating artists royalties. (So my Pump Up The Volume download has tantalisingly stalled at 79.3% as all the seeders have gone offline - so P2P doesn't exactly give us what we want whenever we want it. Yet.)