“Where’s my free music?” | Did piracy spark the beginning of the end for art in music?
Technology in music is a minefield that none of us really knows how to talk about. But mostly, that’s because it moves so fast.
It’s one of the best and the worst things. With social media, musicians can promote themselves, create fandoms, spark cultural moments, the list goes on. But it’s also a cesspit of negative forums, blurring the line between basic respect and invasive entitlement. Now, all we hear about is AI, and how it’s the death of modern art.
Going back even further, though, especially when we look at everything we discuss with tech and music, it all started at the dawn of online piracy. So much has happened since the early days of internet culture and burning music onto floppy disks or listening to it illegally via Limewire, but a lot of the conversations back then are ones we still have, just shapeshifted into new clothes.
And the basic issue of sneaky downloads that you don’t actually have to pay for is exactly that. The musician doesn’t reap any of the rewards of the art they’ve created because people listening aren’t actually paying for it. Noel Gallagher was one of the first to kick up a fuss about it back in 2012, not mincing his words as always. He basically said nobody knows what they actually want, and so they should all be passive, buying music the way they know they should.
“The consumer [says] ‘Where’s my free music on the internet? Is this a free download?’ Fuck off! It cost me a quarter of a million pounds to make it, you’re not getting it for nothing,” he said, getting out his rage during that year’s Coachella festival. “I want my quarter of a million back, thank you very much. That’s why we’re rock stars.” He even went as far as to say it’s the reason musicians are overworking themselves, which, for someone like him operating on his own label, was a nightmare.
“I understand it, the consumer didn’t want Jimi Hendrix, but they got him,” he added. “And it changed the world. Fuck the customer. He doesn’t know what he wants. You fucking give it to him and he likes it.”
Others were far more diplomatic in their approach, but few got less backlash for speaking out on it. Lily Allen, for one, got heat for suggesting the more well-off artists shouldn’t get their backs up about it because it was a problem for those not making music off their art. But others saw this as the beginning of a bigger problem about the pop music churn, and that unless your music is a certain way, or you look a certain way, pandering to what the quintessential popular musician should be like, it’s not fair game.
Sitting here as a music lover in 2025, it might be hard to immediately draw the link between piracy and commercial artifice. But the point of contention with the whole debate started with the purpose of music itself, and how shifting consumer attitudes – like the simple fact they no longer wanted to actually buy music – meant the industry itself was moving from being art to something more similar to a service. Which, as we all know, is one sure way to make art something more transactional.
It was Billy Corgan who seemed to see it this way first. “People like me used to be auteurs, saying, ‘I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want to do, you like it or you don’t like it,’ and if you’re really good they’ll come,” he told SXSW in 2012. “Now I’m supposed to beg for attention. It’s completely counterintuitive to why I became a musician in the first place and the personality of someone like me.”
A cynical opinion but a justified one, Corgan also said that because he doesn’t fit the mould, doesn’t look the part, people like him are more susceptible to the issues of piracy. And in turn, that means a broader issue across the board for artistic value in music. Because if people are only showing up for so-called “cheap” versions of pop stars who tick all the formulaic boxes, it leaves no room for authentic voices.
But is it as cut and dry as all of that? Well, maybe. But back then, it felt like the worst it could get. Back then, people hadn’t yet witnessed the perils of all the digital age would do, and how it would affect things like grassroots venues and opportunities for people just starting out. They hadn’t yet seen what AI could do, or what it couldn’t do, and how we’re still very much in the weeds of debating for and against tech when we thought we’d already seen the worst of it over 13 years ago.
So maybe it did cheapen pop stars, but that’s nothing new. The issue still stands that people who play the role often get to the top faster, easier. And those fighting for artistic value and more honesty in songwriting are often those left by the wayside, speaking up about how most of our problems come from all the things we still know devastatingly little about.
