Even very good arguments describing musicians who are deprived of compensation usually have no impact on downloaders.
Communication often involves thinking strategically to find the right appeals that will produce compliance in a target audience. Searching for ways to induce others to accept the kinds of choices we endorse is always a challenge. And while it usually makes sense to focus on what works—strategies that show some success in getting agreement—I am struck with how difficult it is to produce one kind of change: convincing individuals that a favored leisure activity is a bad ethical choice. It almost never works.
There are no shortages of relevant cases where we have all have been on the sending or receiving end of these appeals: criticizing attendance at sporting events that can result in serious injuries to the participants (boxing, football), decrying a life-style choice that wastes resources (owning a mile-to-the-gallon cigarette boat or SUV), attending performances that include individuals charged with making bad choices (avoiding films by Woody Allen), using products that come with significant health risks (smoking, racing motorcycles), and so on. We all struggle with the apparent hypocrisy of violating our own values in the pursuit of the things we enjoy.
One especially good case study is the plea from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and any number of musicians to not download “pirated” music. The request is to instead purchase “legal” singles and albums from record companies or online retailers, who will then distribute royalties to songwriters and musicians. The cause seems just, even though the industry can be its own worst enemy, as in attempts by Warner Music to go after restaurants and public venues where someone might sing “Happy Birthday to you,” a song they erroneously claimed to own.
Piracy is no longer a new problem. But one can look at the state of the music industry today and conclude that the digital revolution has been cruel to musicians. Stephen Witt’s recent book, How Music Got Free (Viking, 2015) is just the latest account of the unraveling of the record business, mostly at the hands of ordinary listeners who can now copy music files without payment. Witt reports that there was only one platinum album (1 million units shipped) in 2014. The singer was Taylor Swift, and–as television’s ET reports– even she’s not happy.
We simply don’t buy as much recorded music any more. We rent it, sometimes legally from online services, and often borrow it from each other, bypassing a legitimate path for distributing royalties. Fewer albums and singles are sold today because a digital copy of any one can function as a “master” available to make many more.
I’m always impressed with how little impact solid arguments about musicians deprived of compensation actually have on listeners, which means most of us. We simply resist linking our behavior to the theft or “piracy” of someone’s creative work. It’s not that we have to worry about whether Ms. Swift will be able to pay the light bill. It’s that musicians in virtually every musical category have been cut off from revenue streams that could support them.
And so a simple quid pro quo can be made: To support the musicians you like, buy their music. But images of talented modern musicians living as paupers doesn’t motivate in the ways one might expect. Adding in the argument that downloading is “theft” of their intellectual property hardly results in the kind of cognitive dissonance a persuader might expect.
Even students who are also budding musicians don’t seem to take the bait. Perhaps they should. As RIAA spokesman Cary Sherman noted in a 2012 speech, the Bureau of labor statistics estimates there is a 41% drop since 1999 in people who identify themselves as musicians. That corresponds to a continuing decline in the sale of recorded music of all sorts. Even though more albums are being released, most (80%) sell less than 100 copies.
At several levels it’s obvious why we do not heed requests to change a behavior we enjoy. Our leisure passions are linked to our personal identity. To give them up is to face the unwelcome thought of becoming at least a slightly different person. Then, too, the immediate rewards of our passion are much more tangible than compliance with a behavioral ideal. It’s probably only a few academics and some musicians who like to intellectualize potential hypocrisies.
In addition, we can generate perfect rationalizations that will take us off the hook. We look for cases that will confirm a prefered view that no harm is done. Using this kind of process of “motivated reasoning,” we focus on the single instance that minimizes the power of arguments for change. Hence: “Taylor Swift will never miss the puny royalties she would get from a legal download,” or “I paid too much to hear Paul McCartney last year,” or “I live by the principle that the internet ‘wants to be free.'” And so we find ways to not notice the lie that separates our best instincts from our actions.
The challenge for all of us is to know when we are part of a true audience: when our presence is part of the presenter’s consciousness.
The Broadway actress Patti LuPone is apparently at the end of her tether. As was recently reported in the New York Times, during a performance of a play at Lincoln Center she grew frustrated with an audience member who texted continuously through an entire act. The texter was downfront, just a few feet from the actors. Finally, at the conclusion of the last scene LuPone grabbed the offending phone from the audience member as she left the stage.
The problem of audience members otherwise engaged has been more common in recent years, notwithstanding pleas from theater managers that audiences shut down their arsenals of personal hardware before the lights go down.
As for LuPone, the multiple Tony winner reports that she is utterly defeated by audience members staring into blue screens. With dismay she notes that she may give up working in live theater.1
Anyone who makes any kind of presentation to a group knows how daunting it can be to remain effective when an audience member visible to the presenter has decided to opt for an electronic environment over the one they are in. Any electronic surrogate that gets more attention than the human who striving to connect is bound to produce some justifiable anger. Making a choice in favor of the device not only signals a kind of aggressive indifference to the performer, but other audience members as well. In its own small way, it’s an tacit act of sabotage against a presenter who has a right to expect at least minimal responsiveness.
To say that as a culture we have a problem with granting others our sustained attention is obvious, and not completely attributable to our growing obsession with constant connectivity. Commanding the interest of others always requires the mastery of a very narrow path that threads its way between vast spaces of boredom and distraction.
Cayleigh Goodson aptly illustrates this lack of focus that seems to make attention deficits an emerging norm .
Research on the nature of the fickle human attention span includes a lot of cautionary conclusions. Among them,
Attention Is Intermittent Rather Than Continuous. We make a serious mistake if we believe that humans give themselves over to just one thing at a time. This only happens in times of emergency. Otherwise, our attention to one object wonders, turning on and off faster than lights on a traffic signal. This is why oral presentations need some tactful redundancy.
Demands On Americans For Attention Are Enormous. It comes as no surprise that we have immersed ourselves in environments that flood us with messages. In the pre-electronic world it was not always this way. Previous generations more or less chose their communication moments, especially when work was a more solitary process. Now the arrows are mostly reversed. Those moments mostly choose us: a result of the constant connectivity of e-mail, texts and other proliferating forms of social media.
The Rate Of Decay For The Retention Of Content IsVery Steep. We could not function effectively if burdened with the cognitive consequences of all that we take in. So our brains protect our sanity by discarding most of the data that washes over us. With its emphasis on ceaseless mayhem, news alone would drain our abilities to act on the premise that every event is potentially transformative. So our restless information-processing requires that we ignore a lot, sometimes making us useless as engaged interlocuteurs.
From this last perspective, Patti LuPone is just another momentary intrusion in a continuous parade of incoming stimuli. But she has a right to be ticked off. The challenge for all of us is to know when we are part of a true audience. There’s a simple imperative we need to honor: When our presence is part of the presenter’s consciousness, we should act on the clear obligation to be responsive to their efforts.
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1Erik Piepenburg “Hold the Phone, It’s Patti LuPone,” New York Times, July 9, 2015.
