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File Sharing
Benbecula receives many enquiries about file sharing from college students
carrying out projects and also from the listening public who wonder if we
may be 100% against it or if we are "all for it". The truth is
somewhere in the middle and hopefully the text below will go some way to
stating our case, which we know, in essence, is shared by many others.
The first point to make is that this label, as well as the majority of
labels have witnessed a decrease in sales over the last five years.
Any search on Google will turn up 100s of articles addressing the subject
and a large number going some way to disproving the idea that that the drop
in sales is due to file sharing. We personally agree with a lot of the
arguments that dispel the "myths" concerning file sharing, although on the
whole the statistics are more geared toward the big five majors with
billions of dollars of revenue.
As a label we have a duty to our artists to promote their music as far as
possible and to all our best endeavours, sell as many copies as possible.
As we have stated in our Game Plan, this is no art project, this is a
business, and we are in the business of keeping ourselves afloat and paying
our staff, and more importantly, ensuring the artists get their dues.
Many releases are a struggle, and one or two run at a loss, and it can be
sole destroying when those that run at a loss appear to get so much praise
from many many people. Why is that?
Our feeling (and its just a feeling) that we share with many others, file
sharers and labels alike, is that downloading albums per se without any
intention of buying, devalues the music. One hears about an album or comes
across it by accident, downloads it within half an hour, sticks it in their
playlist or mp3 player, gets bored of it within a week and moves on. After
all , where's the loss? We fully believe that not owning the physical
object takes away the magic of hearing the music for the first few times,
which are probably the most influential and important.
The proliferation of legal download sites through all sorts of media, and
the eventual marriage of the majors with the file sharing corporates, has,
if anything, gone some way to promoting throw away mass marketed pop even
more. This is THE point where the small indepedents, such as
Benbecula, are the exception to the rule. The myths about file sharing
are true, but only to an extant.
We have no doubt that sharing our music promotes it. However we also suspect
that the downside of sharing (those who download and never buy) negates that
promotion to some extent.
We came to terms with file sharing very quickly and have formed a definite
and well adhered policy to live with it. Downloading is here to stay. We are
not attempting to fight it. We also suspect (perhaps wrongly), that file
sharing in the long run has SOME damage to sales. So we therefore employ a
strategy of DAMAGE LIMITATION, just in case.
This damage limitation does not take the form of attempting to stop sharing.
On the contrary, as an example, we whole heartedly offer free high quality
downloads of tracks from albums, in order to promote through the new
internet routes. It would not make business sense to state word for
word what our full policy is, suffice to say that we make every effort to
make the physical product as attractive as possible, in as many formats as
possible, and ensure there is enough sample material around so that
listeners can make an informed decision before purchase.
Benbecula Records |
