Playing Whack-a-Mole With Arrington, Masnick, And The Free Music Crowd

Ok, I get that anger at the music business = page views. But it is, nevertheless, frustrating to listen to people make arguments that are internally inconsistent.

I feel like I am playing Whack–a–Mole because the arguments are so squishy. There are intellectually honest arguments for why free music is inevitable, like saying that you can’t stop people from stealing and so you have to get whatever little scraps you can. Too bad.

But that is not what you hear from the thought leaders like Mike Arrington from TechCrunch and Mike Masnick from TechDirt and others who offer advice and argue positions that are not consistent with themselves or with basic laws of business or self preservation.

This weekend, Arrington wrote again, as he has before, that music should be free.

Specifically, the article is about the royalty rate the record companies charge for playing radio music, and the statement by internet radio service Pandora that they will go under if the rate is not reduced. Specifically, Arrington Says:

For now the labels want to squeeze more revenue out of Pandora and others. But when these companies start to go under and the bird in the hand disappears, they may regret their overly aggressive negotiating stance. It’s time for the labels to die, and anything that cuts off another revenue stream is at least partially good. I’m reluctantly willing to sacrifice Pandora if it quickens the inevitable march of recorded music towards free. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.

Ok, so the nub of it is Mike longs for the “inevitable” day when music is free. And the label’s current stance is overly aggressive. But if music will inevitably be free and that is what Mike is pushing for, then why would anyone who actually wants to make a living from music listen to Mike? He seems to be arguing that the labels (and indirectly musicians) are dumb for charging too much. But his entire thought process is driven by the basic notion that *any* price is too high for music.

Its hard to take business advice from a guy who thinks you oughtn’t be in business at all.

From there, we move to Mike Masnick from Blog and Internet consultancy TechDirt, who recently took Warner Music to task for their stance regarding music royalties for the hit game Guitar Hero. Honestly, this argument is even worse than Arrington’s.

Masnick regularly argues that the music business should be making money other ways than selling “shiny discs”. And yet in the Guitar Hero case, Warner wants a greater royalty for using their music in the wildly popular video game. So here, it sounds like Warner is taking Masnick’s advice, right?

But not so fast.

Again Masnick chides the Warner. He criticizes the company for their argument that they need to make a greater royalty on the use of their music in the video game. His argument is that Guitar Hero is great marketing for Warner Music to sell, err… shiny discs.

Ok, so, according to Masnick, its not smart or proper, or good or whatever to depend on selling music in the traditional way. And its also not proper to demand substantial licensing fees from a big profitable video game franchise, even when that franchise is entirely based around music. This demand is improper because said game franchise is helping sell those silly shiny discs. So each identifiable revenue stream should be forsaken because it is “marketing” for all the other supposed revenue streams.

You can see how this could get problematic.

At least between Arrington and Masnick, Arrington is more honest. He wants people to stop selling music at any price. If I were a musician or a label I wouldn’t take his advice, but though he seems in some way to be offering advice to the industry, he at least doesn’t hide his conflicting agenda.

On the other hand, Masnick, *says* he’s not against selling music, but when you look at his arguments, he really doesn’t leave much on the table. If you can’t charge a billion dollar company who can you charge? The bottom line is Masnick wants to be seen as a business advisor since TechDirt is a consultancy. But he also wants to pander to the free music crowd, perhaps because that brings page views. Unfortunately these two positions don’t always mix, and so illogical, “whackamolian” arguments, like this one often ensue.