My Question of the Day for 21 April 2010 – UPDATED
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My Question of the Day: Professor Daddy-O, founder of legendary hip-hop talent, Stetsasonic, says the following: “We should NOT have beat up the bootleggers. We should of made them our distribution mechanism.” Do you agree or disagree with his statement?
(thanks to @professordaddyo, for allowing me to ask this question)
My 2 Cents: As much as I love Professor Daddy-O, I’m going to have to disagree with him on this one.
Legalizing the bootleg industry would just create another bootleg industry. The bootleggers cut out the middle man and sell at deep discounts, because they don’t have to cost of overhead, which is what makes bootlegging profitable for the thief. Legalizing their theft and making bootleggers legitimate would add the very things they were seeking to avoid; the middle man and overhead. Bootleggers also fly under the tax radar. This adds another expense to their “business” that doesn’t exist now.
Ultimately, bootlegging is theft, and I don’t see a benefit to our society by legalizing criminal activity so it isn’t considered criminal anymore, just so the music industry can recoup some of its losses. I see this as rewarding bad behavior, which is something that is consistently eroding the moral fabric of our society.
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Take a few moments to check out the tweets from Twitter on this subject:
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JoshDamage I agree if it could be done fairly and legally. Which in the music business is asking a lot
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Um…no.
That sounds great in 2010. In 1988? Not so much.
Bootleggers engage in PIRACY. Stealing music, selling it at a cut rate price and cutting out the artist and retailer.
There is no deal to be cut. Why would they? What does it benefit the bootlegger to give up the grey/black market and go legit.
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LikeDislikeI agree. The bootleggers have a loyal clientele. They also have a direct unbiased or fudged data of whats selling and whats not. They know whats in demand, and what they cant give away. Instead of hitting them with fines they are going to pay with bootlegging make them work as a sentence then the record label might learn something. Just and idea.
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LikeDislikeIt actually makes perfect sense and goes along with the direction the entire industry is now shifting in. Your most proactive artists are always on the hustle trying to move units on their own. You’ve seen them selling their CD or giving it away for donations at the gas station or in the mall. Wu Tang sold CD’s out of their trunk for a while. It builds a buzz and you get popular by word of mouth, the most powerful way to go viral.
It’s funny that artists and other marketers have been doing this all along, but the Internet has only now brought this technique to the forefront.
Even established artists could do with some street buzz. Look at Drake and Weezy. Rather than beat the bootleggers up, artists could provide them with a higher quality product endorsed by the artist in exchange for a cut of the profits or something.
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LikeDislikeGenerally speaking, I would not reward law-breakers, for it undermines social respect and constructive apprehension of the law.
On a case by case basis, I would consider “reforming” some, but certainly not all, of those bootleggers into legitimate distributors, and only with a firm sense of their new convictions.
After all, consider Snoop. He’s an exceptional, but strong case in point, for how a drug dealer can go legit in a great way. I know of others in my own circle of friends for whom the same could be said, but we’ll let them remain anonymous here. ;^)
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LikeDislikeI think that having an independent network outside of the major distribution chains could have been critical to hip-hop artists maintain a comfortable level of profitability.
It would have fit right in with the way the Internet is being used to expand the way artists expose their music to a larger audience.
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LikeDislikeI agree. teamwork is usually good I guess
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