It's a little sticky to compare the copyright situations of music to that of individual photographers or other small artists, at least if you're trying to judge it from a moral stance. When you're talking about a major signed artist, a lot of them couldn't possibly care less whether people pirate their music or not. They don't make any sort of significant money from those sales, it primarily goes to the labels. If the artists want to actually make any money they have to tour.
Take what Trent Reznor said to his fans back in '07 when he was with his previous label:
Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor had some harsh words for record labels during a concert at Australia’s Hordern Pavilion regarding Universal Music Australia pricing his album at $30 — apparently a lot more than other artists’ music costs there:
"Has the price come down? [crowd: no] Well you know what that means. Steal it. Steal away. Steal, steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealing. Because one way or another these mother f—ers will get it through their head that they’re ripping people off and that’s not right."
Here's the thing of it, the record labels are an antiquated system of promotion and distribution. By and large they are obsolete. They've been slow to adapt to the way media and the internet have fundamentally changed the paradigm of their industry, and they've suffered for it. A lot of artists are figuring out
that they can rely solely on the mechanisms of the internet to make a living as an artist. Maybe not if they want to be a megastar, but successful none the less.
The group [Pomplamoose] has made no hard copies of its albums; no CDs have been printed. Nevertheless, they make their living on sales, having sold about 100,000 songs last year.
Pomplamoose is one of the first bands to be invited into YouTube's Musicians Wanted program, which is an ad-revenue sharing program. YouTube places ads next to or on a video, and then shares the revenue for that ad, 50-50, with the artist. Income sources like this allow for bands to survive without the help of a major label.
"If you can't just do ... the production, the instruments and everything all by yourself, then you do need help. That's something that labels are really good at," Dawn says. "If, for example, you're somebody who writes songs, like Lady Gaga, and you need everything that's gonna make you Lady Gaga, YouTube's not gonna be able to do that. You need a big fat label. But if you're just a band, I don't think we're in an era anymore where you need that sort of major backing."
You can download free songs from Pomplamoose (mostly covers), and they also have music available for purchase, it isn't an either/or situation. Note also things like Arcade Fire winning a Grammy last year, an indie rock band signed up with much smaller, independent labels.
It's things like this that scare the big labels. It's the reason they resort to sleezey scare tactics like threatening to sue single mothers into bankruptcy for alleged (and unproven) copyright infringement.
I mean, bottom line? People will pay for media art. Not everyone on the internet is a pirate, even the scary teenagers will pay for media from the artists they respect. The crux of it is that it has to be easily available and accessible. You only need to look at the figures for iTunes and Netflix for proof of that.
