# 23 Keep the Music Free

I think that the current Supreme Court case arguing against peer-to-peer file sharing and seeking its regulation is ridiculous. It shows the sheer greed of the entertainment industry and their desire to so strictly control media distribution that innovation dies and competition is stifled to the point that only those with the blessing of the corporate leviathans ever get exposure. Let’s face it; the “industry” isn’t interested in art. They are interested in money. They could give a fuck less whether or not someone has talent. If they can package them and sell them they’ll do it. If the artist suffers or the product is sub-par, so what, just as long as it sells—at least for a while the industry is satisfied.

I don’t want to drop into a diatribe about corporations killing creativity though. I want to talk about the case and what’s real. I grew up on hip-hop music and learned to love it when it was on the fringes. I remember being 9 and 10 years old and laying awake nights listening to the radio trying to catch the songs I loved to record them. DJ commentary and all, those were the first mix tapes. If you could get the LP and your parents had the right system you could make tapes straight from the record player, static and all. I remember hearing groups like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Run-DMC, Kurtis Blow and Whodini for the first time from these home-made mix-tapes. Everybody had them. And with the explosion of Boom Boxes (we just called them Boxes) and breakdancing we would pass around music through what would today be called piracy.

This so called piracy is what fed the popularity of hip-hop and without it Midwestern kids like me would never have been exposed. We had no equivalent to New York’s Hot 97 fm. We had no other contact to the culture except for the tapes, and a few pirate DJ’s with underground radio shows. Thank god for those because they gave me an eye into the outside world through music. I don’t think I bought a record until I was 12 or 13 years old but I always had music. Somebody would make a tape and if it was fresh(slang for cool circa 1987) I’d dub it. There was always access to a dual deck tape player. Blammmm-it was done, no muss no fuss no federal court case. How things change.

I also don’t understand the angst of the recording artists. They complain about being ripped off but the record companies only give them pennies per record they sell. Their most lucrative hustles from everything I understand are their shows and other endorsements. They do get paid when their record is played on the radio but if I buy a CD they get like 5 cents one time (and they say it’s people burning CD’s that cost them money—wake up and smell the ink on your contract.) It seems to me that the more accessible music is the more likely people will come and see performers do what they should be doing—perform. Maybe there are so many strictly studio performers or lazy entertainers or do nothing cult personalities out there that the money generated by record sales is all they can really count on. Maybe if they did a tour no one would come or if peer-to-peer file sharing got the blessing of the court people would realize that only 2-4 songs on most of these 25 track records are even worth listening to.
Time will tell and I hope with all my heart that the entertainment industry loses it’s case and sharing is validated. Drew Clark wrote a great article about it. Check it out and think about the damn thing.