Open Letter Regarding Radio Three’s Policy on Downloading of Classical Music
If you would like to have your name added as a signatory of this open letter please mail rufus [at] openrightsgroup [dot] org.
FAO: Roger Wright, Controller BBC Radio 3
Dear Mr Wright,
We are writing because of recent news reports that the BBC plans to severely limit the availability of downloads during its planned Bach season:
“BBC Radio 3 will not offer complete classical music downloads for free during its forthcoming 10-day Bach extravaganza following complaints from the music industry after the surprise success of the station’s Beethoven downloads.”_[1]
A spokesperson explicitly stated: “Nothing will happen without consultation and, should it happen, it will be nothing on the scale of Beethoven.”
We believe that the BBC’s offering of downloads during its Beethoven season was a wonderful idea for which the BBC should be commended, not criticized. The level of downloading should be taken as a demonstration of the public value of this activity and a reason to continue, not curtail, it.
We therefore wish to register in the strongest possible terms our objection to any reduction or removal of downloading access during the upcoming Bach season, as well as our desire to see the ‘Beethoven policy’ continued, and extended.
The BBC is a public entity largely funded by the licence fee to which we all contribute. Organizing such musical seasons and promoting the widest possible access to the results is exactly how we believe the BBC should be using those contributions.
We find the complaints of various parts of the recording industry not only selfish but short-sighted. It seems to follow from an assumption, expounded without any evidence, that downloads of classical music from the BBC deleteriously affect music sales from other, primarily commercial, entities. In our view it seems likely that the very opposite is the case: by promoting access, exposure and interest in classical music such schemes, especially in the long run, increase the demand and interest in these works, as well as in those who perform them.
Even were it the case that there were negative effects on the sales of record labels the benefits to British society would greatly outweigh these losses. The reasoning for this is simple but to follow it we must bear in mind that just because something is free it is not valueless, quite the contrary: its value is entirely unchanged.
Firstly each download that displaces a sale has no effect on societal value: all that has happened is that value equal to the price has been transferred from the seller to the consumer. Secondly each download that goes to someone who would not have purchased absent downloading is pure gain to our society (its value precisely equal to the amount of benefit they derive from the work). This second category is undoubtedly substantial. Even for major works, such as Beethoven’s symphonies, it is clear simply from the (rumoured) numbers involved that most of those downloading would never have bought. For more obscure works, which might not even be available commercially, this second category would clearly predominate (one of the particularly noteworthy features of the Beethoven season — and the planned Bach one — is that they aimed to cover all of that composer’s works).
Classical music is an essential, and highly valued, part of our culture and we find it entirely inappropriate that access should be restricted on narrow, and mistaken, ‘commercial’ grounds. The benefit to us, as individuals and as a society, of greater access to these works greatly outweigh any costs. Thus we formally request that the BBC repeat the policy adopted during its Beethoven-week both for Bach and future seasons by providing free online downloads of the material wherever it is able to. We believe that it is only in this way that the BBC can fully live up to its mission as a public service broadcaster.
Yours Sincerely,
Rufus Pollock, Open Rights Group and the Open Knowledge Foundation
Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Tom Chance, RemixReading and FreeCulture-UK
Andrea Rota, Liquid Culture
James Davis, Union for the Public Domain
Peter Clay, Campaign for Digital Rights
Desiree Miloshevic, Public Advisory Board, CC-UK
Andy Williamson, Managing Director, Flat Five Records
Owen Blacker, volunteer, Stand.org.uk
Ben Laurie, Licence Payer
Andrew Murray, Licence Payer
Barry Quayle, Licence Payer
Adam Bowie, Licence Payer
Tom Webster, Youth Worker, St. Columba’s Church of Scotland
Steven Rajam, Classical Musician, Wales
Mark Lord, Licence Payer
James Hobson, Licence Payer
Richard Weeks, brightbeat founder, London
Dave Mallon, Liverpool
David Mack, Licence Payer
Rodney Orpheus, Record Producer
Dafydd Harries, Licence Payer
David Bates, Licence Payer
Simon Ward, Listener, Manchester
Dennis North, Licence Payer
and 60 others ….
[1] http://media.guardian.co.uk/bbc/story/0,,1606160,00.html
November 18th, 2005 at 10:40 am
Wise words, Rufus. Thanks.
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November 18th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
I agree!
November 18th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
Great stuff guys, showing your quality already. This is a vitally important issue in my view - the BBC have been showing an unprecedented level of openness and forward looking in the last year or so, to the point where I feel proud and quite happy to hand over my licence fee - how great is it to have a national broadcaster with a policy of making great media, information and culture free for the people? Don’t let commercial forces stifle all this wonderful innovation!
November 18th, 2005 at 10:37 pm
I’ve been dowloading the mp3 version of ‘in our times’ running as an experiement and found it really useful, and stumbled across the beethoven downloads when a friend made me aware of the amazing Beethoven series a while back; i downloaded a few and was impressed. I really think the BBC needs to re asses how its going to meet the challenge of supplying its license payers with a good service; the fee is becoming harder to justify with the government forcing us to go digital, and thence to non license supported providers.
November 19th, 2005 at 1:35 am
Agreed, with every word. Our society seems so intent on taking stuff away from each other when we can further it so much more by giving.
November 19th, 2005 at 5:45 am
Please. Enogh with pop and cheap music. Lets us have the real one!
November 19th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
Queremos Beethoven!
November 19th, 2005 at 6:34 pm
FREE Beethoven !
November 20th, 2005 at 8:02 pm
I’m pleased to see the increase in visible progress with ORG, of which this is an example.
However, I do think its important to keep in mind that the BBC is a state funded entity. It is therefore entirely reasonable, many would say preferable, that its activities should be restricted to some degree. Otherwise high taxation (license fees) and harmful competition with the private sector will be the result. I’m not saying that the restricions proposed are the right restrictions, just that ORG should appreciate and address the economic arguments as well as the cultural arguments.
The two important metrics are IMHO the sterling value of displaced sales (i.e. the proportion of the creative economy which is nationalised) and the degree to which the private sector participants in the creative economy are assisted (i.e. by sparking interest in classical music as a genre).
Perhaps the BBC should not only continue the Beethoven policy but also drop the licence restrictions on adaptation and reproduction, allowing record companies and individual artists full access to use the material in their work.
SJG
PS *cough* Sony *cough* rootkit *cough*
November 21st, 2005 at 9:20 am
why not write to the record companies and MCPS (Royalty collection society) instead? The bbc can’t just suddenly decide
to give away free downloads when it would either be fined millions by the music industry, or have to pay millions to
license the tracks.
i somehow doubt that license-fee payers would be happy to be indirectly funding the already-too-fat record company
exec’s pockets…
November 21st, 2005 at 10:07 am
Two comments:
1. Simon: As stated in the letter the suggested metric was value to British society (an indicator that should include both commercial and cultural concerns). Thus it is not simply a question of total sales to record companies (and whether the sales increasing effect outweighs the displacing effect), as explained in the paragraph beginning Your comment on greater liberality on adaptation and reproduction is a good one but would have take the original letter into a much wider area.
2. Andrew: if you notice the letter specific request is (emphasis added). This is not requesting that the BBC go out and purchase rights to existing work so that it can make it freely available online but that, where it already has the rights — as was the case with the Beethoven symphonies since they were recorded by the BBC symphony orchestra — it should make them freely available.
November 21st, 2005 at 3:23 pm
CULTURE must be taken around the world. IT CAN NOT BE PROHIBITED!!!!
November 22nd, 2005 at 12:43 pm
The BBC is making admirable moves with the Backstage API and the planned publication of back catalogue. The record industry is acting like a strange combination of a dinosaur and an ostrich. As a publicly funded entity, why is the BBC forced to respond to complaints from the music industry in the first place? Isn’t it between the Beeb, the government and the licence payer?
November 24th, 2005 at 12:43 pm
The BBC should have the courage to be bold and look to serve the interests of license fee payers and the public at large, and not the Dinosaurs of the current recording industry who consistently fail to understand that a sea change is under way with regard to the “ownership” of music.
December 20th, 2005 at 9:45 pm
The Bach season has been inspirational. I’m finding a new intriquing source of musical delight. Being able to download allows me to explore the music further and will result in me buying many of them. it has already caused me to buy ‘The Learned musician.
Music industry you are incapable of seeing the opportunities staring you in the puss. You have become slaves to defensiveness which results in the more you try to protect the more you will lose control. Some of us know the extent to which you have been ‘gloriously’ripping the public for years.
Why, like pigs in muck,do you wnat to add insult to injury to a public who don’t, in truth, like, love or trust you.
December 21st, 2005 at 10:24 am
Have I missed something Don? All I can download of Bach that I can see http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/bach/downloads.shtml is a bunch of “bites” - biographical information about the man. Unless I use something like Total Recorder to turn the streamed music into MP3s…
December 29th, 2005 at 5:05 pm
1. Plug receiving equipment into your soundcard.
2. Use a wave editor such as ‘Sound Forge’ to record programmes in real time.
3. Access ‘Listen Again’ to patch up any glitches!
4. Make files available via (e.g.) ‘Limewire’.
I have paid my license fee, and I understand Herr Bach has long since passed away (!) - at any rate, his material is well out of copyright by now.
I have put in considerable effort to capture as much of the recent broadcast as possible; if I had a spare ‘grand’ or two, of course, it would have been much easier to buy it all on vinyl or CD.
Can’t do that, so no loss to the corporate jackals (actually, ultimately to their material ‘gain’) - so that’s all right then.
Some time in early January, I plan to make these .wav files available to my friends for your personal listening pleasure: they are recorded at 10megs/second (CD quality) and I will not be compressing any more quality out than has already been done! The stream was via ‘Freeview’, which I understand to be at a higher rate than ‘DAB’ (really!). Any technical advice is always welcome, by the way . . .
So if you want any of this, download ‘Limewire’ (obviously, if in doubt, search Google), then search for ‘Bach’ in ‘audio’ - a broadband, or faster connection will be necessary!
Give me a few days or a week or so - I am doing this for free, for the love of Bach, best quality poss. (though not guaranteed), so be patient, and please bear with me.
(I’ll also endeavour to catalogue what I have in a .txt file - also one or two chunks I’ve missed, and would like if you have them - thanks!)
PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT ME UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY!
Love & respect to all,
Chris.
(also see http://www.bach-radio.com/onair.php)
January 28th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
[...] Except, it wasn’t universal acceptance. Record Companies complained that this was unfair competition from a public service broadcaster, so when a Bach season was announced, surprise surprise, no music was available for download. Despite the fact that the music was wholly paid for from public funds, and the recordings actually belong to us, the licence payers. [...]