“R Street is a free-market think tank with a pragmatic approach to public policy challenges.” — R Street About Page —
If one is going to comment on public policy, then one ought to make an effort a) to understand the nature of a given topic; and b) to present facts instead of fiction. In this regard, R Street might want to be careful about republishing articles from the blog Techdirt, as it did last week with this Op Ed by Zach Graves all about what Prince did wrong in the management of his career.
Graves notes that although Prince was a musical genius, he was one who “…never quite found the right approach when it came to licensing his music for redistribution—in spite of the fact that he sold over 100 million records, placing him among the best-selling artists of all time.” If it seems as though the second half of that statement contradicts the first, that’s because it does. When you combine terms like musical genius and best-selling artist, it takes some chutzpah to presume to know best—in a post-mortem analysis—how the artist in question might have made wiser choices. In fact, Graves is working overtime trying to shoehorn Prince into an online market the artist rejected. He writes, “ … his fans were left in an odd position, on the news of his death, of being frequently unable to provide links to Prince’s massive oeuvre.”
Speaking as a representative of the 80s, and of those who have been Prince fans since he first emerged, that statement is not only surprisingly disrespectful to the wishes of a beloved artist who just passed away, but it lays bare a mindset that actually believes these fleeting moments on social media are of much greater emotional and cultural value than they really are. The shared sense of loss among Prince’s fans is not diminished because a friend does not post “Little Red Corvette” on Facebook via YouTube. Micro-moments like these are fine, occasionally interesting, but are utterly forgettable because of the very nature of the interface itself. Our relationships with Prince’s music, as with all music, are based on associations his songs have with tangibly profound, wonderful, painful, or intimate moments in our lives. And if the next generation doesn’t form these same types of realtionships with music, then they probably won’t relate to music at all. Meanwhile, the fact that YouTube & Co. were deprived of a few million advertising impressions they would have sold on the trending of Prince’s death is exactly what he wanted to deny these companies. He saw through the lie that the OSP’s revenue model has anything whatsoever to do with his music or our love of it. And he was absolutely right.
It is fairly well known that Prince spent considerable effort and resources during his career in order to gain and maintain control of his work. Quite simply, he did not like anyone dictating how, when, or where his music ought to be distributed—not Warner Music 23 years ago, not YouTube last month. So, the fact that Graves chose to compare and contrast the market potential of Tidal (which licensed Prince) with Spotify (which Prince rejected) is entirely irrelevant, whether Graves’s math in this case is sound or not. Prince was a Mozart. And it’s rare to see that kind of genius without the individual also being fiercely proprietary about his work. And although Graves acknowledges that Prince’s decision to license exclusively through Tidal “may have been a reflection of his proclivity to assert tight control of his brand,” he remains steadfast in his bias when he writes “…making music less accessible poses serious challenges for artists and consumers alike. For one thing, as English singer/songwriter Lily Allen explains, it will reinvigorate incentives for piracy.”
News flash: Prince did not disappear into obscurity despite his rejection of these “free” platforms. Yet, somehow, Graves believes the “lesson” we are supposed to draw from Prince’s legacy is that this hugely successful, influential, and universally-respected artist was fundamentally wrong, while the new-economy sages at Techdirt and R Street are right. Their logic says that if the artist chooses not to be fractionally exploited by a YouTube or a Spotify, then he naturally deserves to be fully exploited by outright piracy. Put that way, it sounds more outrageous, right? But that’s essentially what Graves and others are saying. Prince told that proposition to go screw itself, and maybe that’s the real lesson he leaves behind.
Of course, Graves actually reprises the blame-the-artist-for-piracy theme because he wants to point readers to a remarkably obtuse statistic presented by Techdirt founder Mike Masnick’s very own, brand-new “think tank” called Copia. The stat says that, “55% of 18-29 year-olds pirate LESS when offered a free, legal alternative.” Wait for it. It’ll happen…
I’m no longer amazed at the capacity some people have for presenting bad news as if it were good news. Because somehow Copia et al think nobody will notice that the truly stunning fact revealed by this stat is that 45% of the demographic will continue to pirate as much as ever no matter what free, legal alternatives are available. But creators should feel molified by the prospect that the other 55% of the market will pirate less! It is certainly indicative of a Kool-Aid narcosis that Techdirt, Copia, and R Street would even present these data with a straight face. After all, if one were to provide the same market research to the dumbest investor on earth, no matter what the business sector, he would tell you that no investment will be forthcoming. Try pitching investors and telling them that 45% of the target market is guaranteed to steal from you while 55% of the market will only steal some from you, and watch what happens.
Perhaps most importantly, R Street in particular should be held accountable for republishing an article that completely misrepresents the facts in what is commonly called the “dancing baby” case. Graves writes …
“Famously, Prince, via Universal Music, was behind the “dancing baby” DMCA lawsuit, which featured Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” playing faintly in the background of a short clip as a toddler danced. Ultimately our friends at EFF, who were representing defendant Stephanie Lenz, prevailed on their fair use claim. In 2013, EFF awarded him their “Raspberry Beret Lifetime Aggrievement Award” for “extraordinary abuses of the takedown process in the name of silencing speech.”
Setting aside the relatively minor detail that Prince himself was never directly involved in this case, the most important fact is that EFF sued UMG after the Lenz video was actually restored to YouTube via counter-notice procedure; and nobody ever sued Stephanie Lenz–at least not pertaining to this matter. The reader is free to review the facts of this eight-year litigation and decide for himself whether the temporary takedown of the “dancing baby” video represents “award-winning” abuse of DMCA—or if perhaps the EFF chose this case because it would inevitably lead to misrepresentation exactly like the quote above. “Prince sues mom and baby” makes good drama, but it just didn’t happen. And to say that it did in the immediate aftermath of this artist’s passing is as rude as it is irresponsible.
As for Zach Graves’s concern that Prince’s music may not “reach a new generation of fans” due to its absence from certain free platforms, I’d like to tell him not to worry. Prince’s work has touched millions of people and influenced thousands of other musicians around the world. It will transcend generations in spite of what web platforms have done to culture and memory itself. At the same time, although YouTube’s predatory and monopolistic strategy may position its platform as “essential” in a certain sense for musical artists, one must ask if this winner-take-all outcome is the kind of “free-market pragmatic approach” R Street policy hopes to support. The idea that Prince’s music needs YouTube in order to live on in our cultural memory would be a quaint conceit if it were not the kind of arrogant proposition that has hypnotized many policy thinkers by means of ceaseless repetition.
