Collateral Damage Part Three: Rob Levine

On the subject of the collateral damage online piracy is doing to advertising, we’ve heard from David Lowery and Adam Weber.
Now Adland has an exclusive interview with former executive editor of Billboard , journalist and author of “Free Ride,” Rob Levine.
While David Lowery approaches piracy from an ethical standpoint, Levine looks at the issue from the eyes of a business reporter who covers culture. Not necessarily from the same standpoint.
“I could tell you as a non-specialist that it (piracy) seems wrong to me,” Levine says. But it gets complicated beyond that basic statement, and it's one he’d rather leave to ethical experts. Suffice it to say there are a lot of nuances to navigate. The internetz is not a small place, after all.

Beach House is still relatively unknown, so it was a good bet someone familiar with their music was behind the decision. This is troubling to Levine who asks “if you’re a Music Head, do you really want to be ‘that guy?’”
I sure as hell don’t. And while Beach House took the high ground, Levine suspects they didn’t have much of a choice. Not every one is Tom Waits. It takes time and money to sue. And to a band he suspects might be having a break through with their newest album Bloom, the resources are better spent on tour than fighting a company.
It’s a bit different with the Olympics, however. Last week’s news came out that the organizers of the London Olympics are expecting musicians performing at the games to play for the exposure instead of money. When I bring this up Levine asks “Are the organizers being paid or are they doing it for the exposure?”
Oh no he didn’t!
To be clear, this is the London 2012 Olympics Organising Committee (LOCOG). You know, the people who work for the Olympics as sponsored by Mcdonald’s, Coke, Panasonic and a bunch of other companies with deep pockets. You don't have to follow the money to see they have a bunch of it.

Levine sees the attraction if not sometimes necessity of musicians doing work for the exposure, but is quick to point out if you do too many of those freebies and “at some point opportunities to get paid for your work will decline.”
So do you believe the big organization who tells you you’ll get exposure and that’s a good thing, or do you stick to your guns? It’s not an easy answer. It should be, but it isn’t. And perhaps it’s because of the way we spend our lives online, which is still unregulated from a moral perspective.