On Music Piracy

This may not make any sense to you, but I've developed a code of conduct as pertaining to music piracy: I don't have a problem with people downloading music--I have a problem with people not feeling guilty about downloading music, people who feel that they are entitled to download something because it's freely available--that the universe owes them music, that it's rightfully theirs and therefore people who buy CDs are brain-washed capitalist consumers.

I'm hypocritical. I've downloaded hundreds of albums, and for most of them I didn't even stop and think twice about downloading. I tell myself it's okay to download them because I don't have the money to purchase CDs; the sales wouldn't exist anyway. I rationalize that I buy the CDs I love when I do have the money, and end up using downloading as more of a preview service than a collection of music. I tell myself the musician makes very little on each album and a few cents isn't going to make that much difference either way. I go to shows, I recommend music to people I think will like it, I support the bands I love and don't support those I don't like, and therefore it's okay to pirate music because I'm shaping the music industry with my purchases.

But a lot of that, and other arguments for illegal music downloading, is muddled thinking, and it's a result of an excessive music industry. While I'm going to defend my position on music piracy, I feel obligated to acknowledge that I think the music industry is inherently broken. I find it hard to justify paying anything for music downloads, yet alone the bloated prices of songs on digital music stores such as iTunes or Amazon. But I'm also part of a group of people that needs a tangible object in their hands, a group of people that may very well be growing smaller and smaller with every generation, and I might even stop purchasing music altogether if the CD dies out. I'm not going into any more depth on what's wrong right now and my ideas for a solution (mostly because they aren't fully thought out), but there needs to be some kind of massive overhaul, and until that happens piracy will continue to occur.

What prompted me to write this piece was a post someone left in the shoutbox for on the Mount Eerie page of last.fm, in regards to pirating the album Wind's Poem,

"Why not? The music sounds the same whether you buy it or not - Culture should not be a commodity that must be brought - Culture should be free to all. If we can make it free - why choose to buy? Purchasing music does not make one a more 'real' or 'authentic' a fan of music. If one feels it does, well done consumerist culture, Capitalist Ideology has made us think that buying things makes us whole! Yay!"

I get agitated every time I read it. It's the product of illogical thinking, of blindly choosing one view of an argument without considering the other.

Even if we ignore the audiophile side of the argument (that the music on CDs is in a lossless format and to many sounds better than MP3s) there are numerous examples of music being leaked to the public before it's even done being mixed. But mp3 (lossy) degradation also occurs offline, when someone burns CD for a friend from MP3s. The point is that with society in love with the MP3, many times a pirated copy does sound inferior to a CD.

I don't think anyone's trying to say that culture should come at a price, but part of the problem with piracy is that there's access to so much music, it's easy to become overwhelmed by it all, and overlook something great because you didn't like it on an initial listen. I'd argue that with fewer CDs it's easier to form an attachment to them. The act of making an investment on a CD makes you more prone to give it a fair chance.

This post comments that "if we can make it free, why choose to buy?". Music is not free just because it's free to you; it still costs the musician money to purchase instruments, rent a studio, pay studio musicians, mix, master, pay for cover art, promote the CD, and living expenses. No musician should be in it for the money, because that's a stupid idea. The money's pretty bad unless you're in the top 0.5%, but that doesn't mean a musician shouldn't get paid for something he or she spent hundreds of hours working on and poured immeasurable amounts of themselves into.

Furthermore, like it or not we live in a capitalist society: how we spend our money chooses what we support, what is continued to be produced and what isn't. I've spent over $200 on headphones that were probably made in a sweatshop, and I feel bad that my money went to the owners of sweatshops rather than the musicians of the CDs I could have bought with that money. It doesn't make sense to me to continue pouring money into something I don't support over something I do. But at the same time I'm not going to go into a store and steal headphones.

A few days later the poster responded to the discussion in the shout box as such:

"How amusing, Art should be free as it should not be something limited by how much money you make, it should not be something the rich can have and the poor cannot have. Supporting artists is all well and good, but the price on albums is rather ridiculous. If I were to change my sinful ways, I would have to spend over, say 10 thousand pound. Now before I downloaded music I barely listened to anything as I didn't have the money. Packaging is not why I want to listen to music and at the end of the day if I were Phil I'd be happy that my music was getting to more people than ever, rather than getting angry at the leak and subsequent lack of money. Now if you believe that Art will disappear if artists don't get a lot of money, you have reached heights of cynicism that not even I approach. Also I have not met you, so why are you calling me a dumb stoner?* Also, I actually do buy films** and I have spent way to much money on them, as I love them and think the higher quality pays off."

*Note: No one made a comment whatsoever about him being dumb or a stoner.***

**For people unaware of the piracy scene it's just as easy to pirate movies as it is music.

***After he made this comment I looked at his last.fm page and saw this: "I am a communist a film, music and video games nerd and I love drinking tea and smoking green."

It makes me feel better that not all people are as stupid as him. Now getting back on the subject...

Downloading music has allowed me to come across great bands I would NEVER have heard of otherwise (Brasstronaut, The Middle East, Seagull), and to show my support I buy their albums. New CDs probably won't exist in 40 years, and all my CDs will be worthless pieces of plastic, but I won't consider the money I spent wasted because it went towards supporting the artist. The only thing I have to show for the hundreds of dollars I've spent on concert tickets are my memories, but I also know that some of the money I spent allowed the artist to continue to make and play music.

Finally, this will probably sound stupid, MP3s aren't an adequate replacement for the CD; there's no soul in an MP3. It's something that exists only in the hard drive of my computer as a group of ones and zeros. Every MP3 I own appears exactly the same in iTunes, and I don't feel that much for any of them. Whereas with most of my CDs I can tell you where/when/why I purchased them, the memories surrounding the music, and to what other CDs those purchases lead me; they tell a continually evolving story of my music tastes.

In the end I think most artists would rather have someone buy a CD if only to distinguish it from everything else they download--because I think people are much more likely to give something a fair chance if they have it on CD, if they paid money for it; if they aren't spoiled by the technology available and half-listen to it once while making comments before dismissing it with the ten other albums they downloaded that day.

In Defense of Everybody's Favorite Album of All Time

Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is not my favorite album, but it is the sort of album that leaves me wondering if there will ever be anything as good ever again every time Jeff Mangum puts his guitar down at the end of "Two Headed Boy, Part 2." Yes, that sounds like hyperbole, and it probably is, but a large percentage of the music nerd world feels the exact same way, and none of us is faking it or trying too hard to fall in love with something that does not warrant our appreciation.

When I first discovered Aeroplane, I did not know about that following. I wasn't familiar with the name "Neutral Milk Hotel" or "Elephant Six" or "Mangum," I didn't know that the band had only released two albums, and when a friend stuck "King of Carrot Flowers, Part 1" on a mix CD during my sophomore year of high school, I didn't know that everybody everywhere had been waiting for a follow-up for eight years. If anything separates Sam from myself regarding this album, it is that I walked in without expectations. I heard "King of Carrot Flowers, Part 1," I fell in love, and I bought the full album. Hipsters weren't telling me how life-changing Aeroplane was to them; Pitchfork wasn't telling me that Jeff Mangum had managed to part heaven and let pure melancholic expression back into the lives of the many, or whatever the hell they were on about.

That isn't to say that In The Aeroplane Over The Sea can only be appreciated before it has been talked up, but that my love for it has probably become so steady because for all I knew I was initially listening to something that had been released earlier that month in 2005. You have to decide for yourself that something is brilliant, and I was afforded that luxury with an album so highly (and widely) praised that I still cannot believe that I didn't know it existed.

The production quality has never bothered me. Everything is clear and everything sounds exactly as it was intended to sound. I would even go so far as to call the guitar sounds "crisp." This isn't lo-fi in the sense that it sounds rough on purpose; it's lo-fi in the sense that Rick Rubin wasn't around to throw money at it, and the instrumentation never blurs together (with the exception of "Holland, 1945" and "King of Carrot Flowers Part 2 and 3," which are intentional blow-outs) or becomes too obscured to enjoy. That isn't to dismiss Sam's point-- bad production quality will destroy an otherwise good album-- but Aeroplane is produced wonderfully (there's another vague positive word), and easily sounds better than anything from early Yo La Tengo, early Pavement or Mount Eerie (sidenote: Phil Elverum owes his career to this album).

Jeff Mangum has a very pure voice. It's hard to call it anything else. Neutral Milk Hotel's singer/lyricist is always able to completely enunciate every word and idea. His poetry is itself profoundly and emotionally touching (whatever that means), and the voice only enhances it. Mangum has a terrific control over the volume of his voice. I wish that I could pinpoint why this matters so much, but all I can say is that it does, and let the reader listen for himself.

Anyway,

I think that In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is very good. The music is wonderful and the lyrics are as poetic as anything ever was. That is my review. That is my seventh-grade-debate defense. The difference between Jeff Mangum and the asshole playing guitar in the corner at every party is that Mangum can write lyrics and his band (who I should have emphasized more above, as they are nearly as important as their singer) can write music. I love this album and I can't really explain why. My brain can say "thank God I didn't walk in with unreal expectations," but it can't pick apart why I don't mind one of Sam's points about the "campfire" qualities of Jeff Mangum's guitar playing (though even Sam admits that the horns are BOSS). I asked Sam if I could defend this album a few days ago after he wanted to know if I would be interested in writing on this blog, and I can't just not write anything, but at the same time, I can't explain why I absolutely enjoy Aeroplane. It is moving. It is still moving every time I listen to it.

Overrated: "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea"

First of all, while these segments may be controversial, they do not aim to be inflammatory for no other reason than to evoke public outcry. The goal of these pieces is to explain why the author thinks these album are overrated and at the same time acknowledge why others praise them.

Neutral Milk Hotel
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
1998

When it comes down to it, my taste's don't vary that much from most fans of indie rock/pop. However I disagree with all those who consider Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea to be "perfect" and hugely influential.

I first tried to make my way through In The "Aeroplane Over The Sea" in high school. Granted at the time I was looking for bands with the same grandiosity as Broken Social Scene and The Arcade Fire, and was disappointed by it.

Flash forward to my freshmen year in college, and I kept reading people reference this album as one of their favorites, and thought I'd give it another try. This time I unfairly dismissed it as overrated sloppy campfire songs—the kind of songs that jerk at the party with the guitar would be playing. (2010 EDIT: I actually met one of those jerks last summer, transcending them from the "oh they probably exist" level to the "oh they unfortunately do exist" level)

A few weeks ago I sat down and tried it again, after listening to the "Everything Is" ep and enjoying it. Has my opinion changed?

I still think the guitar is too campfire-y. But I can forgive that; progressions have been ripped off since the dawn of music by countless imitators in their soulless tunes, but Neutral Milk Hotel do a good job convincing me that these aren't those songs, but instead something unique.

I still think most of the vocals are sloppy. But the melodies are catchy as hell. After repeated listenings many melodies were stuck in my head. I think Jeff Mangum's voice is so much more effective when it's controlled and quieter, as in "The Communist Daughter" or "Two-Headed Boy Part 2."

I'll also concede that the album has had an impact on the modern indie scene. There are so many imitators trying to achieve this folk/pop song sound, but I don't really think any of them come close. One thing that actually surprised me was how much the horn arrangements reminded me of the newest Beirut EP . Which leads me to a complaint: some of the instruments sound horrible because of the terrible sound quality. Perhaps this was an aesthetic choice, but when I compare "The Fool" to "On A Bayonet", I realize that while both are good, I like Beirut's better, if only because of the cleaner sound. But it's easy to see how Zach Condon was influenced by this album.

But is it worth all the hype? I personally adopt the viewpoint that it's a good album, but not perfect. And perhaps it would be better for one to listen to it not out of desire to see what the hype is all about, but instead to enjoy an album of consistently great songs, with the knowledge that it might not be an easy album to get into. But that's just my opinion. If you disagree you're welcome to leave a comment.

Some months later: I have been listening to it even more, and have gone through different periods of liking different songs. I can see why this album comes up as so many people's favorites--it's diverse enough to find a song for almost any mood, it's full of energy, and while it may sound sloppy at times it's hard to imagine Jeff Mangum recording a better take than any of those featured on this album.

I'm not sure whether I'd call it essential listening if you're a fan of the genre, because that might draw people in with the same expectations I had. Instead, I think this is one of those albums that should be passed on via the recommendation of friends. It seems contradictory to make a widespread impersonal recommendation of an album that affects so many people on a very personal level.