In Defence of Musicians’ Paychecks

You can laugh all you want at the “you wouldn’t steal a car… PIRACY. IT’S A CRIME” adverts, but they make a good point.

If you’re downloading music or films without paying for them, you’re probably breaking the law.

People don’t care they are breaking the law. But if they worked in the music industry and witnessed redundancies all around them because of illegal downloading, they probably would!

Today I stumbled across a recent live Christian worship album uploaded in its entirety to YouTube. This was not done by the producer, record label or artist. It was done by someone who didn’t own the copyright. I politely pointed this out to him, and he kindly promised to remove it. His excuse? He didn’t know it was illegal.

You may think I’m being picky and being a kill joy. Many of you seemed to have this impression when I relayed some of the above on Twitter. I was shocked at the number of Christians defending this person’s actions!

So let’s deconstruct some of the arguments for illegally streaming or downloading music and see if they stand up…

I believe we as Christians should be leading the way in acting within the law and acting morally and in accordance with our own scriptures (Rom13:1-2)

1) It’s not stealing because it’s not physical!

According to this argument, when it comes to downloading, there isn’t a physical object to take so it can’t be called stealing.

I don’t know of many people who would steal a CD for the artwork! They steal it for the information (songs) on it. When people download – they are taking that same information. So the same product is being taken. It may not be being taken in the same manner, but the outcome is the same.

2) The artists earn too much money anyway. They won’t notice a few quid lost because I didn’t buy their CD.

Christians, let’s get a few facts straight: Probably the best selling Christian CD of the last 18 months was Spirit Break Out. It reached number 9 in the iTunes chart, and according to the people involved, it hasn’t even broken even yet! Worship leaders are clearly not rolling in it. You have to sell millions, not thousands to make a big profit.

But that point is actually an aside.

By the above logic, I could steal Rihanna’s car because she’s already rich and can afford another one.

But I don’t refrain from stealing music or cars because it will or won’t damage people. I refrain from stealing because it’s morally wrong.

3) I just illegally stream or download so I can decide if I like it. If I like it then I’ll buy it.

This is a really common argument. The ’try before you buy’ attitude sounds great to begin with, but what is it based on?

It’s based on the idea that stealing is only stealing if you hang on to something for a certain period of time.

So you could argue the first 45 minutes of listening to an album is not stealing, it’s just sampling/trying. The argument implies that if I continued to enjoy the product and held onto it for X hours or days then it would be considered stealing and wrong. But where’s the limit?

The limit is hour 0. In other words, unless you’ve already paid the money, it’s wrong and it’s stealing.

4) All music should be free, anyway!

These people want there to be a world where everyone benefits from the joys of music, but no one has to pay for it.

Can you imagine walking up to someone who already struggles to sell tickets to their gigs or get money from album sales and telling them to “just do it all for free!”? These people have mortgages to pay and children to feed.

To those illegally downloading music saying “it should be free”, can I just point out there’s already a legal and free way of listening to music? Spotify.

You have NO excuse to illegally stream music on YouTube now that Spotify is here. Thanks to Spotify – the person who wants music to be free, gets what they want. But they get it without damaging the artist.

Concluding thoughts

It is shocking to me that we need to have a discussion on what constitutes stealing and what doesn’t. But all the statistics suggest that’s exactly what needs to happen. (Seeing as Ed Sheeran’s album is the most illegally downloaded, perhaps we also need to have a discussion on what constitutes good music? But we’ll save that for another time)

While I believe it’s wrong to steal regardless of your religious beliefs, I’m primarily aiming this post at my fellow Christians. Check Rom13:1-2 again. Too many are setting a bad example, damaging the very industry (Christian music/film) they claim to love and deliberately ignoring God’s commandments.

Sorry for the preach, but this isn’t an issue that’s going to go away. I welcome your comments and am more than happy to debate this if need be…