Music Software piracy, how more becomes less.....

The future value of music, and pirated music software.

Whilst this document relates to music software, and the music industry, "purely because I am a musician and composer", it relates somewhat, to any type of pirated software.

As a musician and technologist I have, for a long time been working on my passion, which is, to bring back value, to the people who enjoy content, and to those who help make it.

After many years of hard work, the technology I invented, Linius, is starting to be understood and recognized by many industries, to be a pathway to my comments above.

In a conversation with a friend this morning I wanted to share my comments regarding piracy of Music software, as it seems to be a conversation I have over and over again. It is a complex issue, and my comments are of a high level, and do not address every particular case of piracy.

Below is a short summary of this conversation.

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How more becomes less 

Tim Ferriss quoted in his book the 4 hour work week.

"Too much, too many, too often, of what you want, ultimately becomes what you don't want."

Blessings become a curse.......

In my early days of digitally recording 'early 90's, I admit, I used a couple of pieces of pirate software, mainly to learn how these software products worked, once I used them professionally, I paid for them. 

Over the last 30 years I have worked with many music software companies from Emagic in Germany "original Makers of Logic Audio to companies like Jammit. 

When working with some of these companies I learned something strange, they often released "cracked earlier versions" of their software for the reason of customer adoption. 

Unfortunately a lot of people people don't move onto paying for music software, they keep hoarding cracked versions. 

Even though these people do realize that pirating this stuff can eventually kill off the authors of this software or cause massive damage to the industry, it's too tempting to get free software, that has a "highly"perceived value, as the justification comes in the form that "they cannot afford to purchase the software in the first place.

OK : Lets start with 2 core concepts as told by Seth Gordon in his book "the dip".

• Scarcity provides value.
• Doing something scarce is hard.

Pirating anything, drops the perceived value of the product, or the product it generates, as the product, or the output of the product becomes more accessible, or "less scarce".

 It's a tricky balance as the musicians can't often afford to pay for anything, as they don't get much money from making music, due to NON scarcity of their art-form, whether it be in a live environment or via existing music product.

Labels today "the ones that still exist", do not often do development deals, as decent development can happen in ones bedroom, with technology, and product that gets cheaper year on year, and the overwhelming supply of product makes the developed product a commodity. So why pay? 

Gear, gets cheaper year on year, and so producing content is more and more accessible to more people, which is great, but using the more is less principle, more content available = less valuable......

It's an all-round race to the bottom where scarcity, disappears in a sea of commoditized product.

More and more artists, songwriters use the same presets, loops, software and song writing techniques in order to create a "perceived" valuable product, yet the product ends up sounding the same as every other product and becomes part of the, "the more" which has less value, as opposed to product categorized in "the less" which has more value....

Pirated software has the perception that it's free, is it really?

What's the true cost?

1. What's the cost of having an overload of pirated software clogging the veins of your recording system, distracting you every time you want to record a song in fixing system crashes, trying endless sounds and loops or downloading and installing new cracked versions of software, Not spending that time, writing music?
2. What's the cost of pumping out more and more content, that often sounds the same, into a world of free platforms or streaming services, where you get virtually no financial reward, by hoping you may get noticed. Content in a sea of other content, making it increasingly hard for listeners to find, and adding to the 400 + hours of content being ingested into media platforms daily.
3. What's the cost of time, having to learn and operate complex systems, in order to record music vs having an engineer managing the recording process so you can focus on your songs and playing?

This world of overloaded content and piracy, from the software used in the creation of content, to the content itself, it is a race to the bottom, in my opinion.

In this world, music becomes a virtually worthless commodity, and the entire music industry loses value due to NON scarcity.

There is good news.

After being at the forefront of innovation, relating to media technologies for over 30 years, I see a new world coming, a world where technological advancements will provide new levels of value to the music industry, and those that are in it.

However, the industry, the artists and customers, need a change in thinking. They need to understand the concept of value as it relates to scarcity.

To start this process.

If your an artist, remove your cracked plugins, pay for the ones you use, and focus on finding your own unique voice, by writing original music, without the formulas, music co-created with people and organizations skilled in helping, not downloading more crap and trying to do it all yourself.

Recognize the association, that every pirate download has, a causal effect that alters downward the value of your end product.

As Ai, and technologies like Blockchain, put an artist at the connection point between every customer, and technologies like virtual content, allow for unlimited amounts of commercial and experiential methods, value will be wrestled from the big intermediaries hands, and into the hands of the artist.

As the value of low level metadata continues to rise, new business methods will also drive the value of content, especially when the content experience is driven by this metadata.

Start your journey to value, by respecting the value of all in your industry. 

Do not pirate music software and plugins, pay for them and co create with others around you. Work out deals with people around you, people invested in making good music product. This aids in reducing or removing upfront cost, and allows combined skills in helping the value creation process, a model that allows for all to share in the rewards when the products value is realized.

Make a stand, stand for a valuable future of music by participating in the creation of value, not the creation of destruction.

I believe the long term result will pay off.

Regards

Finbar