“Particle Man in the Middle” – SoundtrackNet – February 14, 2002
John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants on alternate distribution channels:
There is a dimension to the MP3 situation that I feel is actually very complicated and supercharged that actually doesn’t directly apply to us, but, as a person with great respect for the profession of songwriters, I feel I should speak to. (One thing I have noticed about the whole MP3 debate is that speakers tend to feel they can only use themselves as examples, and there is a tremendous amount of oversimplifying of the real issues in play here.) I speak to many people about this, and am always surprised how many pundits only have the vaguest grasp of what a music publisher does, what BMI does, or how performance royalties, or licenses work—some of the cornerstones of how working songwriters are compensated—and yet they have highly evolved and elaborate ideas about how the music industry is a sham, and needs to be entirely re-rigged to “free the music” all the while ignoring the most basic concerns of the people who really create it.
Many of the loudest voices in the Napster/MP3 debate are either extremely wealthy artists who have no realistic financial concerns for themselves (or any one else), artists who are decidedly non-professional and are happy to have an outlet for their songs, or non-musicians who are simply using this issue to grandstand for essentially ill-considered political views that do nothing to address the practical concerns of artists. The search to find equity for song writers in the impending digital future is not particularly well served by any of these groups. I also feel strongly that songwriters deserve a system of compensation free of the cross-interests of recording labels, who are once again, and unfortunately, the strange bedfellows for songwriters in this discussion.
It’s also unfortunate that the perceptions people have of the music business are so often formed by wildly misleading gossip and the purely imagined tall tales of “Behind the Music”. I find if you substitute the phrase “pampered rock star” with “struggling blues journeyman” there is a surprising reverse spin to many of these discussions. In the music business, like in many other things in life, a little bit of information can be a very dangerous thing.
More questions than answers here: perhaps he’s alluding to why I don’t hear much from the musicians in this debate, except on the anti-piracy side. Is it fear or retribution that silences them?