The art of theft

The title's a word joke. But not a very good one.

So the other day I was thinking a bunch about illegal downloading of music, concerts and actual, physical pieces of art. And how to correlate the theft of those things.

Well, we all know paintings are super valuable, as there is only one original. But I think music and the visual art world have some similarities.

First, recorded music: I think there are ways of experiencing music that are quite different. I'm talking about the full album, at a good bit rate, or even on CD/vinyl. I buy most of my music because I like the packaging for the vinyl, like for The National's High Violet. It's gorgeous. I'm willing to drop $20 for that, because it looks nice and sounds warm. So that's the most obvious: the purchased, recorded music. But the bands makes almost nothing off of that. That's not really what I'm getting into today. Still, I love having physical copies. iTunes, emusic, amazon and others all fall into this category. It's the high quality, real recording, and you're getting what the band, mixer, producer and engineer have decided is the best representation of these songs. But it's just a reproduction, all the same, of the real thing, and it doesn't stand up to having the band actually play it for you. But we wouldn't steal this, would we?

Another experience most of us have had is going to a concert. This is entirely different. There are lots of variables, but my rating of concerts is another discussion. Assuming it's a mellow crowd, you're not sick and the sound quality is good and not too loud, a well-performed concert is many, many times more enjoyable than a recording at home. I've seen bands as big and accomplished as Radiohead and bands as small as Sybris blow me away. But imagine the collective cost for once concert, assuming it's a moderate club (500 to 1000 people) at $20 a ticket. That's 10 to 20 thousand dollars. Pretty steep price, right? It's a shared experience, which often makes it even better. I think it's funny that people will steal music left and right from the internet, but will gladly pay sixty bones to go see Lady Gaga. That's interesting and also kind of crazy, I think, and not just because I'd never pay to see Lady Gaga. But anyway: a live concert is seeing performers/artists you love, playing songs you adore and with a full, raw, room-enveloping sound. I love concerts.

I think the third major way is a download from the internet, especially if it's just a few songs from an album. I don't believe in having anything on my iPod that has just a few songs from an album, except for a couple very rare exceptions. But I've been through tons of iPods that have just a few songs from albums, even great albums. And usually these folks compress their songs down to 64 kbps or at most, 128 kbps. That, in my not-so-humble opinion, is not experiencing all recorded music has to offer. It's like a photocopy of a painting. It's a cheaper experience, and it's just kind of hanging around in the background, not offering as much. And these people usually have 3 or 4 times as much music as I have, with hundreds of artists and thousands of albums, and haven't listened to 80% of it.

Hope that all made sense. Here's how I think it translates to art:

So, like a decent quality recording, we have a print. Could be a painting, a pressing, graphic art, a photograph, whatever. We pay the cost (it's pricier to print/reproduce these much of the time, so naturally many are pricier than $20) to have it hanging on the walls of our homes, and most wouldn't dream of stealing these from anywhere, just like we'd never steal a CD or an LP from a record store.

An actual painting costs much, much more. Which is fair. Just like a band is pulling in 10 to 20 thousand dollars for one concert in a smaller venue, an artist will sell a unique piece to an individual or a gallery or whatever for a pretty hefty sum. But, like a concert, you can see much more detail, much more of the work that went into it. And it's still a shared experience, especially in a gallery. But who would ever steal this? Pretty much nobody we know is an art thief, but that's the only kind of thief that's cool, in my opinion. Not that theft is cool. But if someone handed me a business card that said "Art Thief," I'd want to hang around this person because he probably has awesome stories. Moving on.

Then there's the crappy stuff you can yank from the internet. I work as a graphic designer, so most of the time I'm using photographs strangers have taken and generously given to the internet. We have our background images on our desktops, some picture we thought was cool and printed out, whatever. Even paying $2.50 for the 5" by 7" of some painting falls into this category, I think. But most have no qualms about using some piece of original artwork this way. I sometimes have cover art of albums I love as desktop backgrounds. It's totally okay in our heads, and we don't give a thought to paying for a download of some piece of art we like. I don't think such a service even exists.

This isn't about what's okay to steal and what's not. And I've left some stuff out, I know. A lot of people download high quality music from torrent websites, but the people that really care about the bit rate of their mp3s are usually pretty into having a respectable music collection. I would know (I usually "borrow" an album for a bit until I decide to buy it, most recently Menomena and J Dilla).

What I do find interesting is how analogous music and art are, as far as what we're willing to pay for and what we think is okay to snake from the internet, as well as how we experience them. I would never hide a CD under my shirt and walk out of a store, and I'd never steal a print from wherever such things are sold. I snuck into a concert once because it was sold out, but I made up for it to some degree by buying t-shirts and drinks from the venue. Sorry, concert venue. I won't do it again, I was 17 and foolish. But in the other 40 or so concerts I've attended, I've contributed to the total price of the performance along with everybody else. And most people don't sneak into concerts. They accept the price, pay it, despite the ridiculous service charges, and have a lovely time.

Yet, we find it completely okay to just take stuff off the internet. Well, most folks my age do, and all the way up to 5 to 10 years older than me. I don't see that as a bad thing. I think an artist would say, cool, more people are seeing what I've made, and even though it's not at a good quality, it's nice to get seen by a lot of people. And music is the same way, I think. I would rarely buy albums or go to concerts if I hadn't listened to the album at least a few times beforehand. There are some rare exceptions, but the albums have to be very, very highly rated. I did it more in high school, when I would quest through used CD bins. I've been hosed with that before, though. But the bands should be glad. Because once I'm in their camp, I want people to come to concerts with me, to buy the album, whatever. Their name is much more widespread

I have to stop myself from going further down the whole illegal downloading thing. But I do think it's curious how the visual art world and the music world relate, even though they are very different in other ways. So, with this fairly new medium, the internet, we've democratically decided what is worth paying for, and what isn't. I think that's pretty much what it comes down to. We have essentially formed a rugged "pay what you want" system for music, and put a value on the experience. One person will pay $10 to $20 for a physical copy or a legal download; a group of people will pay thousands to share the experience of live music, and individuals will take cheap, sometimes mangled copies of albums. I don't really think it's a bad system. I'm sure the record companies think it sucks, but I don't want to hand out $10 to find out that Vampire Weekend isn't my cup of tea.

Also: there are a ton of concerts coming up this fall. Start buying tickets. Sonic Youth, Jonsi, Surfer Blood, Phoenix, Menomena, Pavement (well, it's in Colorado, but I'm going), Sufjan Stevens, and more. I get tired of empty venues in Utah. I once saw the Walkmen back in '06, and they played a blisteringly good show to a very poorly-attended venue. So go support the bands you love, whose music you may or may not have paid for in the past.