How is a Gum Ball like a Song?

How Is a Gum Ball Like a Song?
by Amanda Williams

Suppose your favorite restaurant has a bubble gum ball machine by the front door. Every time you leave, you pop a quarter into the machine & out pops a gum ball.

Now suppose there is a man named Herman Smithfield who owns that gum ball machine. Herman is a family man with a wife named Sarah, a son named Norm, a daughter named Kelly & a dog named Rip. He makes a modest living stocking the gum ball machines in town.

Each week, Herman buys a bunch of gum balls at wholesale & then visits all his machines, stocking them with treats. He has learned over the years that he can expect to earn anywhere from $150 to $225 from each of his machines per week. It may not sound like much, but from this money, Herman is able to pay his mortgage, electric & water bills, buy groceries & set a small amount aside for Kelly & Norm’s school fund & his & Sarah’s retirement.

Now imagine that one day someone discovers a tiny button on the side of the machine that you can press to dispense a gum ball without putting in your quarter. It’s not a free gum ball, mind you, because Herman has already paid 2 cents apiece for them, but at least you don’t have to pay for the gum ball anymore. You don’t know Herman or his family, you just see an opportunity to save a quarter. So now, instead of dropping your twenty-five cents into the gum ball machine every time you walk out the door of your favorite restaurant, you just push the button & wallah! a “free gum ball” drops down for you to enjoy.
Word spreads all over town that all you have to do to get a gum ball is push the tiny button on the machine. Everyone is doing it now. No harm, no foul, right? Everybody is doing it! Why pay a quarter for something you can get for free?

What about Herman? At first, he didn’t notice too much. He just thought that gum balls might have gone out of fashion. Then he did a thorough count and realized that he was missing just as many gum balls, but only making a fraction of the profit. After a week or two of only making $75 or so per machine (and some even less), Herman & Norm organized a stake out to figure out the cause of the problem. They sat near the front door of one of the restaurants, pretending to read the newspaper, all the while keeping an eagle eye peeled to see what was going on with the gum ball machine.

Soon enough, they found their answer. The culprit (as we know) was the tiny button! Herman & Norm acted immediately, after all, their family’s livelihood was at stake! They went around to all their gum ball machines & put a piece of duct tape over the tiny button. That should fix it, they thought.

But fix it, they did not. The cat was out of the bag. Everyone was used to getting their gum balls for free now, so someone just pulled off the tape & went back to pushing the button & getting their gum for free. Everyone loves gum balls, after all.
The Smithfields became angry. How dare these townspeople steal their gum balls! They worked hard for the machines! They spent hours checking & stocking each one! They took pride in filling them with the highest quality gum balls, buying the 2 cent ones instead of the 1 cent! And now, these thieves were chewing the hands that fed them! Someone would have to pay for this injustice!

Herman & Norm devised a plan: sue the restaurants who were letting people have their gum balls without paying. The restaurants argued that they couldn’t be responsible for the actions of their customers. They agreed to put up signs to alert everyone that the gum balls were not free & that they should pay their quarters like they used to do. (Yeah, right. The customers disregarded the signs. They hadn’t paid for a gum ball in weeks & weren’t about to start again now.)

What then? Sue the customers themselves! Make an example of someone! Again, Herman & Norm staked out near the front door of a restaurant where one of their machines sat. Sarah & Kelly came along to watch the justice unfold. Herman & Norm had rigged up the tiny button to make a loud buzzing noise when pressed so that everyone in the restaurant would see the thief brought to justice.

They didn’t have to wait long. Little Susie Ann came skipping up to the gum ball machine, her blonde curls bouncing with joy at the thought of maybe getting a pink one! She hadn’t even had to ask her mother for a quarter, because, just like everyone else knew, nobody paid for gum balls anymore.

No sooner had little Susie pressed the tiny button when the alarm sounded & the whole Smithfield family leapt on her! “Stop, thief!” they shouted in unison. “Drop that stolen gum ball!”

In their excitement, little Susie was pushed to the floor. She got a little bit of ketchup on her new dress & a tiny bruise on her left cheek where Kelly accidentally elbowed her. Susie made a terrible poster child for illegal gum ball awareness as her tear stained face was plastered across the cover of the town paper & all over the local news stations. The headlines read: “Small Child Punished for Stealing Gum Balls. $10,000 Fine Levied by Gum Ball Barons.”

This story may sound far fetched, but it is an illustration of the epidemic facing the music business, the wide spread practice of illegal downloading. Just like the Smithfield family in the story, songwriters and independent musicians rely on the few cents they make from selling their recorded music as downloads online. With the internet, it is easier than ever to distribute music to an international audience, but with the benefits of worldwide distribution come the risk of losing all your income to pirates, because it is just as easy to get the same material for free (maybe easier) than it is to pay for it.

Why should consumers be expected to pay their hard earned money on music when everyone is getting it for free?
Here’s why. Let’s say you buy a download for $0.99 on iTunes. iTunes keeps $0.29 to pay the credit card company & themselves leaving $0.70 that is paid to the copyright owner. If you are just the songwriter, guess how much of that $0.70 goes to you? Remember, the songwriter is the creator of the underlying composition, the reason the song is being sung, recorded & released in the first place. The songwriter gets a whopping $0.091 per copy sold. Less than ten cents.

If you are a professional songwriter who is signed to a publishing deal, you can expect even less money because that $0.091 gets split up 50/50 between you and your publisher. Regardless of how many people wrote the song, the amount allotted for the songwriter/publisher share is still $0.091 per copy, so rap songs with 6 writers only get $0.015 apiece (half of that if they are signed to a publishing deal).

I think the reason that most consumers don’t have a problem “stealing” (downloading from sites who don’t charge you) music is because getting music from major label artists for free makes one feel a little bit like Robin Hood. Yeah, he was a thief, but he stole from the rich to give to the poor. Everyone sees the big stars riding around in Bentleys & living in mansions & thinks, “I don’t have a Bentley or a mansion! That person doesn’t need my $0.99 as much as I do. I’ll get the song for free & no one will be hurt.”

What consumers don’t see is the songwriter & his family, counting every $0.091 that comes their way, driving a Hyundai & grocery shopping on double coupon day. Those families are the backbone of the music industry, the under appreciated heart and soul of a dying business. Without them, the music would cease. There would be no “Wind Beneath My Wings” or “16th Avenue” inspiring us to love more freely, to appreciate the little things in life, and to transcend our daily drudgery into the beauty of a well crafted song.

The common misconception among music lovers is that the artist (the guy driving the Bentley) writes all the songs he sings himself. This is not the case. There are countless families who eek out a modest sustenance gathering the crumbs that fall from the plate of these mega stars. Not just the songwriters, but the roadies, the studio engineers, the musicians, the accountants, the business managers, personal managers, on air personalities, make up & wardrobe designers, and the list goes on & on.

Next time you get online searching for that song you can’t get out of your head, know one thing: somebody is counting on that $0.99. It won’t be missed by you in your day to day life, but someone somewhere is counting on that $0.99 turning into hundreds & thousands of dollars that can be used to support their family.

So, what happened to the Smithfields and their gum balls? The choice is up to you, just like the fate of the music industry. Isn’t something that brings you so much joy worth paying a little money for to support the guys and gals who create it? Yeah, the big bad music industry made a fool of itself punishing kids for illegal downloading, but just like the Smithfields, they were at the end of their ropes. If you saw your livelihood threatened by thieves, no matter how well intentioned, you would probably get angry too. Maybe even a little irrational.

Do a songwriter a favor, pay for your music. You’ll get the satisfaction of knowing that you are supporting families just like yours. There’s no need to wait for “the man” or big industry to figure out what to do about the problem of illegal downloading. The cure is obvious - let your friends know what is at stake, the future of real people, families just like yours. Please don’t let the music die or become subsidized by corporate sponsorship. Help the little guy, the indie musician & the songwriter keep his dream alive. Pay for your music & share the word, not the tunes.



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