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Movies & Music: The coming music tax
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Over at Slate is an interesting article about the future of the music industry. As music companies face plummeting revenues, industry bigwigs are concocting all sorts of plans to ensure the industry’s survival. One such plan: Add a $5 per customer, per month tax onto all Internet service plans. In exchange, music lovers would get to download whatever they wanted (with no more DRM format) and pay nothing.
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has condemned this idea as a “music tax” and “the music industry’s extortion scheme.” Though the proposal is not technically a tax-rather, it’s a call for “voluntary blanket licensing agreements”-it will certainly feel like one. And instead of paying for roads, schools, and bombs, you would be helping to keep record executives in cigars and the finest silks. As Arrington argues, there is good reason to believe that this huge pot of money will turn the music industry into a lazy near-monopoly that lives off of fat royalty checks. Once the majors get this guaranteed revenue stream, won’t they just spend all their time scheming to increase the fee from $5 per customer per month to $7.50? There’s also the small matter that not all Internet users listen to or download popular music. If this plan somehow goes through, millions of moms and dads who pay for Net access so junior can browse Britannica Online will find that they are subsidizing the hedonistic lifestyles of America’s most-tattooed singing sensations.
Yet, Slate’s Reihan Salam writes that “something like the music tax simply has to happen” because “piracy can’t be stopped.” He advocates for a reward system that eliminates middlemen and encourages creativity, but he supports a plan that puts the government in charge.
The feds would levy a small tax on all broadband subscribers. Musicians, signed and unsigned, would register their creations with the U.S. Copyright Office, who would then set up a massive Nielsen-style sample of music listeners to track the popularity of different songs. The more your song is played, the more you get paid. The revenue from the tax would be parceled out to the copyright holders.
But do we really want the government running yet another area of our life–or does the idea have potential?
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Soul searching
I don’t download music, so why should I be “taxed?”
If the non-music lover is not represented, I suggest–under cover of darkness and disguised in tattoos–we dump a whole lot of ipods into Boston Harbor.
I suppose with that logic, we could also begin to have the government take over the software industry, since many people steal software and “you can’t stop that.” (A little bit of sarcasm there)
Sounds like a way for the RIAA to get there hands permanently in the pockets of hard working Americans. How would the government determine who is a “musician” and deserves the redistribution payment? Would we have another congressional committee for this? I suppose it could fall under the “Ministry of Plenty’s” responsibility.
This plan should be completely and loudly rejected by both liberals and conservatives. Liberals should reject it because it is a way for a big industry to take advantage of the little people. Conservatives should reject it because it is a way for the government to control one more thing.
Adios, let me be clear. I love music. I don’t know how to download music.
But I do think those who don’t love music or don’t know how to download music should not be “taxed” for a service they don’t use to support an industry that should find another means to market and/or protect its product. Why should that fall to me? Why should this problem be the responsibility of the government at all?
So, I will meet you at Boston Harbor.
It’s a ridiculous idea.
I don’t ilegally download anything. I do sometimes check CDs out of the library and copy them onto my computer (and in the pre-computer days, record them onto tapes.)
Should everyone with a library card pay $5 a month in a tax or fee for that?
I download occasionally, but not even monthly, much less $5/month worth.
If you’re really interested in the digital music industry and the changes facing it and us, check out http://lashawnbarber.com/
She used to focus on politics from a Christian view, but now focuses on mostly secular music.
The business model of the music industry is broken and these companies deserve to go out of business, which they are, just as much as every person that steals the artist’s and company’s products and assets should be prosecuted for theft and punished accordingly - which they are not.
I think that music will go the way of radio, then broadcast TV, then cable TV, then the Internet, etc.
These industries all start out uncommercialized. Then a few ads appear, then a few more and before you know it there is almost no content left.
Why shouldn’t the music industry will go the same way? (Hopefully, I am not giving them any ideas).
I believe that advertisers will soon figure this out. Music will then be offered “free”, as long as you listen to an ad at the beginning of each song.
Before long, each song will be more than 50% advertising, much like radio and television and the Internet. Don’t be surprised if ads interrupt the songs in the middle either, like movies and AM radio where ads and brands are interspersed with programming.
Eventually, every song will itself be a jingle of some sort pushing brands on the unsuspecting.
I don’t mind being taxed for highways. We need highways.
We don’t need the music industry.
The music industry thinks we need them. They’re all pretty much full of themselves.
Book publishers should tax every person who has access to libraries $5 because we can go borrow a book for free without paying the book publisher anything. Shouldn’t book publishers be going after libraries for allowing people to “steal” their books; aka getting the pleasure from reading them but not paying any fee? Oh, and the libraries themselves should be subject to civil and criminal lawsuits for allowing books and music to be available for anyone to borrow…at least until we’re all taxed for the books we don’t read.
I doubt this idea will get any traction. It’s wrong on too many levels (kinda like “taxing” people as a way to pay for the people’s retirement many years down the road–oh wait, we do that–but worse, because there’s even less connection between payers and users).
I chose not even to plug my speakers in when I set up my computer. I have it for text, and use neither music nor video. I don’t own an i-pod, just CDs and cassettes. Charging me for others’ theft would be like jailing me for others’ murder or (when I was a child) spanking me for another child’s lie.
Let the music industry figure this one out, but this is absolutely the wrong answer.