PostCage (premiere recording of dharmachakramudra)
rangzen quartet recording of mf
ImprovFriday CD (includes virtual music 2)
why I don’t charge for my compositions
Two recent postings on the Internet got me thinking once again about why I don’t charge for my music:
- http://www.sequenza21.com/2010/03/copyright-vs-copyleft/
- http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2010/03/keeping_the_score.html
I don’t want to rehash all my arguments I made in response to composer Jonathan Newman’s original post, but let’s just say I don’t have any intention of charging folks to download and print my scores or listen to my audio files. The essence of my argument is this:
- Just because others charge for their music doesn’t mean I have to charge for mine
- The assertion that my giving away my music somehow undermines the ability of other composers to make a living is so ridiculous that when I first read it I nearly burst out laughing
- Whether someone feels he or she deserves to be paid for composing new music has nothing to do with whether or not I deserve payment myself. That’s an individual choice. I mean, I think my music is halfway decent and all that, but composing is not how I ever chose to earn a living for me and my family.
- Using a Creative Commons license is an approach that works well for me. It might not be for everyone, and that’s fine. But it’s what I prefer, given that I think that copyright protection has done more to hurt innovation and collaboration than to help.
Many years ago, probably around the mid-90′s, I occasionally would go on Usenet and post something on “alt-rec-classical” to the effect that I’m a new music composer looking for performers and what’s more, my music has no royalties attached. That sort of approach produced zero takers. No one cared to play my music just because it was free. The reality is that performers will play what they want to play. For the most part, all of my music performances happened because of a personal connection. So the idea that those of us who don’t charge for the “privilege” of looking at our scores and listening to our audio files are somehow undermining the entire economic underpinnings of contemporary music is completely divorced from reality.
So here’s a quick list of just a few of the many composers who, like me, give away their music, at least to a good degree:
- Kyle Gann
- Galen H. Brown
- Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
- Steve Layton
- Leo Ornstein (dead, but still great)
- Samuel Vriezen
- Paul Bailey
- Dave Seidel
So right-all of us are causing anarchy and rips in the time-space continuum by allowing people to download our music.
None of this hurts composers. None of it hurts anyone. But I’ll tell you, what does hurt is when academic composers cast aspersions at us nonacademics. We’re always viewed as outsiders, as inferiors, as the barbarians at the gates. Perhaps we’re all of that except inferior. What I think is going on is that the people invested in the status quo are having a tougher and tougher time maintaining that status quo. It depends so much on a traditional model that says that if you’re a composer, you do it full-time for a salary and/or commissions, no one can listen to your music without paying up front, no one can download your scores unless they pay up front, etc. That model is dying, if not already dead. The composer Jonathan Newman allows downloading of his scores but they can’t be printed, so that in his view, the composer (him) is still in control. Well, hate to break it to you, Jonathan, but no one really needs to print anything these days when one can peruse a score on a computer. I can even look at scores on my iPhone. Sure, Mr. Newman would argue that performers would generally want to print out the scores to practice and perform them. Tell that to my friend the pianist Hugh Sung, who has a company (Air Turn) that promotes the use of tablets and other technologies to enable musicians to perform without printed music. So folks like Mr. Newman will be in the position of having to either cripple their downloads even more, or embrace the new paradigm.
I’m not saying that someone shouldn’t or can’t charge for his or her work. That’s a personal choice, and I made my choice long ago. But to disparage those of us who don’t charge as if we’re ruining it for everyone else is wrong.
So why don’t I charge? A large part of it is that composing is something I do because I want to, and because I really am passionate about it. Call it a “hobby” or whatever, but it’s what I enjoy doing, and once you start monetizing that, I think it becomes more of a job than something you do as an escape. Don’t get me wrong-I like my day job, I like being a physician, etc. But you can like your job and still get paid for it. For me (and I stress, this is just what works for me), charging for my music is not something I’m interested in. I’d feel like a prostitute. We don’t parent for money, right? I also don’t compose for money. QED.
Rob Teehan 1:59 pm on Monday, March 15, 2010, 1:59 pm Permalink
I don’t believe that your free music poses a threat to people like me who self-publish our scores, and of course it’s your right to distribute your music as you see fit. If, however, you started writing wind ensemble or choral music (for example) that started getting performed widely, then you would be giving away a product for free that those ensembles are accustomed to paying for. If enough composers did that, then eventually those ensembles would simply expect sheet music to be free from everyone, putting pressure on the publishers. This at the very least would drive prices down.
This is happening already in the world of commercial scoring – so many amateurs and hobbyists out there, using pirated sample libraries and sequencing software, offer to score films for free hoping for “exposure” i.e. fame, thereby undercutting the legitimate professionals who have invested the years in musical training, and don’t steal their tools. Their product is artistically better but the moneymen can’t always tell the difference, and now demand lower fees since they can go anywhere else and get a score “for free”. By the way, if one of your scores was suddenly a “hit” and started getting thousands of performances, would you change your free-for-all policy?
Anyway I guess the point I was trying to make before that digression is that you and Newman are different fish in different ponds. It may make more sense for composers such as yourself, whose performances come mostly via personal connections, to simply make your music available for free. On the other hand, composers like Newman operate in wind ensemble scene, which is a real market with real money at stake; there are thousands of high school and college bands out there that have money to pay for sheet music. A composer who writes music that satisfies this market can make a good living doing so. Of course, if you believe it’s morally reprehensible to earn money by creating artistic products, period (as you implied by your statement “we don’t parent, for money, right?”) then there’s not much we will agree on.
Anyway, though, I don’t agree with your insinuation that printed music is dead, and that composers such as Newman are somehow following an old paradigm by controlling the distribution of their music rather than unleashing it on the world. Composers of wind ensemble music can and do make a living by publishing their music, and charging people to download scores is simply the application of e-commerce and e-publishing to this flourishing market. Maybe some day the wind ensembles or choirs will use iPads instead of printed sheet music; if that day comes then the music publishing business may start to look like Amazon’s nascent e-Book business; by the way, you don’t see many authors giving their books away for free, do you?
dtoub 2:11 pm on Monday, March 15, 2010, 2:11 pm Permalink
Hey, thanks for commenting. I don’t feel it’s morally reprehensible for someone to charge for their art. i just choose not to do so. Maybe it’s my own hangup, but I like having the freedom to write whatever I want for whatever I want. I’ve never criticized those who do charge, and have many friends who certainly do charge for their work. But just as I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to criticize them, I don’t think it was appropriate for Jonathan Newman to criticize those of us who don’t charge. I don’t write commercial works, so pose no “competition” to Mr. Newman as you correctly state. And I am being quite honest when I say that that if my music were to miraculously become commercially popular (which is impossible; let’s be real), I would still have zero interest in charging for it.
But I do stand by my comment that printed music is dead or dying. It’s just too easy to circulate PDFs and bypass the ridiculous costs. And some authors actually do provide their books for either free or $0.99 on Amazon-I’ve read a few of those on my iPhone’s Kindle reader, for example, and it’s a way for those authors to get some attention. At some point, our schools, which are not well off, will start having to do without expenditures on music scores, parts, etc. That will accelerate the paradigm disruption. And I’m not sure that would be a bad thing. Like the music labels, the publishing houses need to reign in their large charges. I have a copy of the score of Berg’s Lyrische Suite I bought many years ago for a pretty low sum. I doubt you could get that score for less than $20 now. Stuff I used to be able to buy as a kid would be out of my reach based on today’s prices. And I can guarantee you I would probably have not been as interested in music had records and scores not been as inexpensive as they were back then (even considering inflation, it was way cheaper then).
Rob Teehan 4:26 pm on Monday, March 15, 2010, 4:26 pm Permalink
Shows what I know. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that some authors are giving away their books on Amazon. But at some point artists need to get paid or they can’t be full-time artists anymore. The challenge for all of us will be finding a way to embrace new technologies without starving ourselves to death.
Incidentally, Newman and myself use self-publishing as a way to cut out the publishing houses altogether. Musicians do it with their music too. I think that’s the way forward. I personally don’t sell printed music – I sell PDF files with a license to copy, and the end user prints his scores and parts themselves (for now, they still need a printed copy on their stands, regardless of where it comes from). The self-publishing method is cheaper and easier than the large publisher’s process. But still, it’s a way for me to get paid.
But if schools or other performing groups run out of money completely, and can no longer afford to buy new music, what will happen? Surely there will still be music out there from composers that are willing to give it away. But the best and brightest of the field will move on to another area of the market where there is still money to be made. I know some jazz musicians who score commercials and TV shows on the side. Quite a lot, actually. The financially-lucrative parts of our industry tend to subsidize the less lucrative.
Anyway, looks like the party is in the original thread, so I’m going to head over there.
dtoub 6:34 pm on Monday, March 15, 2010, 6:34 pm Permalink
Oh c’mon-the party is just as nice here
Paul Muller 11:41 am on Thursday, March 18, 2010, 11:41 am Permalink
Been following this discussion and find it very interesting. As you point out, the old model is on life support and giving away scores for free hardly seems a serious threat to a terminally ill paradigm. Alex S and Kyle G seem to have found the optimal balance between charging and giving away scores for free – at least for new music.
What I find interesting is a question that has been mostly absent from the discussion: should art be a commodity whose value is set by what people are willing to pay for it? Nobody seems to want to question this – its all a matter of how to maximize the composer’s share. Seems to me that once you let other people decide what your art is worth, you have already given up control of it.
Antonio Celaya 1:18 pm on Thursday, March 18, 2010, 1:18 pm Permalink
The issue seemed to raise the specter of words that we fear in the New Music World. It created images of realities we fear. It’s painful to admit that even someone like John Adams, who gets performances beyond the wildest fantasies of the rest of us, is, as far as American culture is concerned, a marginal character – or perhaps more politely, a caterer to a niche audience. We who compose dedicate a large portion of our time and energies to our music. Our consumer culture likes to categorize us as “amateurs,” and thereby marginalize us as dilettantes. The cold fact is that we don’t and are unlikely ever to eke out a living from our music. Even those few composers who do make a living off their compositions, do so because of subsidization organizations receive via grants. We are not going to win in the marketplace. So what? Doesn’t the creation and existence of our music declare loud and clear the political heresy that the marketplace is not everything and does not necessarily create anything that has a value beyond any overpriced vulgar trinket?
If one can get some nominal fee for a score, that’s wonderful. However, pieces of music are not fungible .
Antonio Celaya 1:27 pm on Thursday, March 18, 2010, 1:27 pm Permalink
Most of the “economic” arguments presented against giving away one’s scores were rather weak. Our music is not fungible, but as Robin Cox pointed out in a comment on (Kyle Gann’s?) blog, it is possible to price one’s self out of the market by charging large fees for rentals. Musical compositions are not fungible.
Publishers who would never publish a composer’s score are in no position to object to that composer using the free score as “loss leader” to get a performance. It ignores the reality that sometimes to get our music out there and thereby, hopefully, move to anew level, composers pay performers to play a piece or pay coast for production of a concert. We rarely get our money back. American culture may say that means our music has no “value.” American culture can keep Madonna and Lady Gaga and David Hasselhoff. I’ll keep composing my music “of no value.” If giving away a score is what ti takes to get a performance, then I’ll face reality and pay the postage too.
dtoub 2:35 pm on Thursday, March 18, 2010, 2:35 pm Permalink
I completely agree. I think it’s critical for new music to simply just get out there. Publishing scores is not necessary when one can self-publish and self-distribute. That can certainly be monetized if one so desires. I just have no interest in monetizing it, and even if I did, any revenue obtained would be minuscule or even nonexistent. As an experiment, I put some of my music up on Amie Street a few years ago. It started off selling for free and after a certain number of “sales,” the price would go up incrementally. I think one of my scores is now up to $0.13. And not that I’m seeing any of that “wealth.” Until it passes a certain amount it all goes to Amie Street, which is appropriate. My point is that it’s hard enough to create and maintain interest in one’s music. Putting impediments out there, like money, don’t help.