music_pirates_90803

Posted: 9/5/03

Does your church harbor pirates?

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

Pirates not only have ruled the Caribbean at the box office this summer, they've continued to ravage the music industry, including the Christian music industry.

Illegal downloads and compact discs are pushing people out of work and narrowing the Christian music industry, according to insiders.

Christian music sales have fallen for the first time in two years, and piracy is largely to blame, according to John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association. Although he does not have solid numbers of Christian music downloads from file-sharing sites, he said several factors indicate large amounts of activity.

Many songs from Christian artists appear on peer-to-peer file sharing sites, where people can trade electronic files across the Internet. Songs from artists like Michael W. Smith, Third Day, Amy Grant and Stephen Curtis Chapman are readily available.

Additionally, recordable compact discs outsold music CDs by a 2-to-1 ratio this year in North America, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Sales of MP3 players, which play the digital files, jumped 56 percent last year.

Couple these facts with the 10.23 percent decline in Christian music sales in the first six months of this year compared to last year, and Styll believes the connection is obvious.

Proponents of file-sharing claim the process does not hurt anyone because the artists already make outrageous amounts of money.

Styll agrees the retail price for an album is too high, but illegal downloading and CD burning hurt everyone in the industry, from engineers to producers to CD manufacturers, he added. One record label cut its workforce 10 percent because of the sales reductions, he said.

“I would keep making music for free, but because I work for a label, I don't think those people should work for free,” said multiple Dove Award nominee Shaun Groves.

Piracy also decreases the variety of Christian music available, said Groves, a Tyler native. He believes recording labels are allowing their artists to take fewer risks because the profit margin is so slim that investors cannot afford for any album to lose money. To ensure projects make money, executives produce only albums that will have mainstream appeal.

That means leaving certain topics out of contemporary Christian music, Groves mourned. It also means signing fewer new artists and cutting other performers faster. Had such a mentality prevailed in the past, artists like Rich Mullins, who was not immediately successful, would have been dropped and not blossomed into major Christian music favorites, he added.

“If you make music that has the whole truth of Scripture, it's risky,” Groves said.

Todd Agnew, whose first single off his debut album shot to No. 1 on the Christian pop charts, echoed Groves' thoughts, saying he does not expect to make money during his first year of touring behind the album but hopes to survive to make a second record.

“We're swimming as fast as we can to keep our heads above water,” he said.

Despite the negative effects of illegal downloading and CD burning, Styll and the artists agree that digital music can have a promotional purpose. Mainstream artists such as Toad the Wet Sprocket and John Mayer gained popularity through fans spreading their music without buying it.

But the artists must choose to market themselves that way, Styll said.

Whether they make that choice or not, popular artists most likely will end up on a file-sharing network. Groves does not get upset with people who ask him to autograph a CD of his music they have copied rather than bought because he does not believe people understand it is illegal.

Ryan Gregg of Dallas-based Addison Road, a band trying to get signed to a major label, does not agree with illegal burning or downloading, but he looks at a copied album as an avenue to larger fan support.

“If someone is willing to burn a CD, maybe in the long run they'll come to a show or buy a T-shirt,” he said. “This is not to say we support burning our CD, but I just don't think it is cool to get mad at people about it.”

Meanwhile, the Christian music industry is working to harness the promotional potential of the digital age, while educating the public on copyright laws, Styll said.

A board of directors from four major labels is investigating digital issues. One of their first steps is to begin inserting a piece of paper in each album thanking the owner for purchasing the music rather than illegally copying it.

Several labels have already printed, “Unauthorized duplication prohibited by law” on the CDs. Rocketown Records initially added the warning: “That includes downloading and file-sharing,” but since has changed the wording to simply: “Don't steal music.”

“It's a small bit of type, but hopefully it will feed the conscience of a buyer or two,” said Angela Magill, vice president of business affairs and general counsel at the label.

Manufacturers continue to work on technology that prevents people from downloading and burning songs. Until then, the carrot holds more promise than the stick.

Groves hopes to entice fans to buy his album rather than download the songs illegally. He added a promotional video and a live version of a song to his latest album. He also included a Power Point display for worship use.

Artists and labels also are encouraging fans to use legitimate websites such as liquid.com that charge about 99 cents per song to download.

“The industry has got to convert to the digital world and make it easy and affordable,” Styll said.

But that won't be the end of the battle, Styll noted. The industry fought piracy before CDs and will battle it long after the industry catches technology, he said.

“I think this will always be a problem in some form.”