Beatlemania and Piracy

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Technological advancements for equipment that was used by the military during World War II was utilized after the war in creating consumer products that were portable and user friendly. Such products, like 8mm movie cameras, were used to capture moments that were personal mementos for the user, especially during Beatlemania where fans wanted a piece of history that can be immortalized in a physical format. While these technological advancements led to the rise of consumer products and opened up a culture of leisure to more people, these advancements did not come without a price. Advancements led to the ability for users to go to a Beatles concert and record the entire show and sell that footage as a bootleg copy to fans. Andre Millard mentions in Beatlemania: Technology, Business, and Teen Culture in Cold War America how tape recorders and cameras were prohibited from Beatles concerts due to pirates selling unauthorized copies of footage and recordings. This early example of piracy is an issue that continues today where technological advancements in the digital age have made accessibility to music easier than ever. But this accessibility, which includes peer-to-peer software where users can illegally download and share copyrighted material, has become a legal problem for both users and major companies. Due to the growing magnitude of piracy in the digital age, it has been called into question whether piracy should be legalized. Although having free music would be nice, piracy should never be legal since it is theft and hurts the consumer and the creator.

Piracy in the digital age has transformed the way artists earn revenue. Like the technological advancements that led to products catered to young consumers of post-war culture, advancements in the digital age are catered to the youth where emphasis is placed on accessibility. Before peer-to-peer software became prominent, artists toured in order to promote their albums since album sales used to be their primary source of revenue. This trend can be reflected in the mass production of small record players. Millard quotes, “The bedroom culture of England was dominated by the Dansette, the portable record player introduced by Morris Margolin in 1950.” But with the rise of illegal file-sharing software and streaming services, bedroom culture has changed where album sales alone are not enough to compensate artists. In an online article from Digital Music News regarding the streaming service Spotify and the royalties artists are paid per stream, “The amount earned by the songwriter/publisher as a Mechanical Royalty each time a recording of their song was streamed in 2014 went DOWN -5.37% from $0.00071961 in January to $0.000681 in December” (Price, “The More Money Spotify Makes, The Less Artist Get Paid”). Although it sounds counterintuitive that Spotify is making more money and therefore artists should be paid more, this is not the case. In the same article, the cited reason says: “The Spotify Premium monthly per-stream rates are calculated by dividing the money in the royalty pot (the Spotify Reported Gross Revenue) by the number of streams in that month. The decrease in the per-stream rate is occurring due to the number of streams per month growing at a more rapid rate than the revenue.” The money that Spotify receives is from users who subscribe to use their premium service for a fee of 10 dollars per month. These subscribers are assumed to be the heaviest users who account for a majority of streams compared to non-subscribers. However, the amount of streams is spread out over a large number of artists, causing royalties to thinly spread out. Although using streaming services like Spotify is not considered to be piracy, it is worth mentioning how the numbers within these services are operating because, compared to piracy, artists are at least being paid some amount versus not being compensated at all if their music was illegally downloaded. Due to this, the roles have reversed where artists now use their albums in order to promote their tours since touring has become their primary source of revenue.

Since artists have resorted to touring, the price that many users have to pay as a result of piracy is reflected in the high prices of concert tickets. A concert ticket to see The Beatles at “The Met” in Minneapolis costed $5.50 (Gehring, “Woman keeps 1965 Beatles concert tickets”), which, by today’s inflation standards, would cost at around 41 dollars. Compared to concert tickets these days, and depending on the artist you are seeing, this is a reasonable price to pay as opposed to paying hundreds of dollars for a mid-section seat. Most tickets these days are distributed online through Ticketmaster, which is the largest ticket distributor. Ticketmaster is owned by the music company Live Nation, which is also responsible for managing the careers of many popular artists. Due to this and their lack of competition with ticket distributors, Ticketmaster is free to set the prices of their tickets as high as they want (clickitticket, “Why Are Concert Tickets So Expensive?”). As a result, artists are opting to tour instead of relying on album sales because no matter how expensive tickets can get, there are people who are willing to pay to see their favorite artists perform. In lecture, Cantrell mentions how The Beatles extensively toured at the height of their fame but eventually quitted touring altogether due to their unpleasant experiences. Their ability to quit reflects how artists at the time did not have to rely on touring to earn a decent income, and their decision to exclusively become a studio band also shows how albums used to be a viable way to earn revenue.

Due to the extensive technological capabilities many users possess, piracy has become an issue for the music industry that cannot be overlooked. The advancements made to recording and performing music has innovated the way artists and producers create their material, and the advancements that were made during World War II had carried over to mass production to bring consumers usable and portable products. The ease of access that users have has improved over the decades up to the point where music can be obtained with the click of a finger and within a matter of seconds. The advancements made in the past reflected an industry where album sales were the primary source of revenue. In contrast, the current industry is at the mercy of a fast-paced consumer culture where artists can no longer rely on album sales and have resorted to touring. Piracy has contributed to the development of these trends where their results are now reflected in the price of a concert ticket, which goes back to the consumers as a price they will ultimately have to pay.