De Pemig

I have enjoyed playing in quite some bands. Sometimes, I have ran into discussions with fellow musicians about copyrights. In these discussions, I advocate releasing music under relaxed licenses, but I meet strong resistance from peers who believe that their music must be protected by copyright. I plan to write a post about the musicians’ psychology behind this belief soon. And about how this psychology is being played by really big companies and their cronies. (hallo BUMA, grüezi SUISA!)

For this post, however, I want to offer some positive arguments for more relaxed licensing that should appeal to all musicians who want many people to hear their music while still being able to earn some money.

The most popular arguments for copyright

Musicians who believe they need to strictly protect their copyright, or even pass the copyright to organizations like SUISA or BUMA-STEMRA most often adhere to the following logic: We put a lot of effort and money into in making and recording this music. Therefore, we need to keep people from freely copying our music because 1) we want to earn at least some of the investment back and 2) it would be really unfair if someone else would make money from our songs or recordings. Both parts of this logic are irrational. Below, I explain why.

Why these arguments are irrational

We want our investments back!

Let’s first put aside the fact that most musicians that I know have much more efficient ways of earning money than through recording, and would financially do best not spending their time recording music in the first place. But even if that weren’t true, the idea that you cannot make money without strict copy restrictions on your recording is just silly:

… through selling Vinyl

For most bands, the largest share of the turnover that is made on recordings is by selling vinyl or other physical records around concerts. I want to argue that If you lift the copyright on your recordings this does not affect these sales at all. No fan at your post-concert merchandise table will ever say: “Oh, I see this record is not copyrighted?! Well, then, never mind.”

… Through selling Digital

Now you may say, “OK, if we allow everyone to copy and share our work, how can we make money with digital albums and streams?” Glad you ask. Let me answer that with three rhetorical questions: First: Did you ever make significant money with streams of copyrighted material? Second, when people buy an album on, say, Bandcamp, do they ever check whether the music they buy is copyrighted? Third, how did those fans who buy Vinyl at your gig come to see you in the first place?

The relevance of third question may not be entirely obvious. First, the answer is: People mostly get to know your music when it’s shared on some social platform, or when they listen your recordings when deciding where to go this Saturday night. Put shortly: your online music is your advertisement! Who would to be so stupid to hide their advertisement behind a paywall?

But someone may earn money with our recordings!

Well, first, you may think a moment why it is such a problem for you if someone else makes money with you music. Anyhow, if you are appalled by that idea, a standard copyright license really throws the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, you can easily publish your material under a Creative Commons (CC) License with code “NC” for “no commercial use”. Under this license, anyone can do anything with your music (sharing, covering, as long as they attribute it to you), but only you can sell it. So that’s best of both worlds!

I hope this helps you feeling good about opening up your licenses. Your network will be thankfully sharing and liking your recordings. As a bonus, this may very well bring more people to future gigs.