11.09
So it’s been over a decade now since the mp3 format hit it big-time, and I still can’t download any Beatles tracks legally. That’s fifteen years since the public release of the mp3 format. To put it in perspective the format is older than a large amount of the people using it. Yet I can’t listen to The Beatles without having to buy those plastic disks that nobody really has a player for anymore.
People fail to appreciate the impact of the Internet. I liken it in importance to the invention of Movable Type (the Printing Press). It is one of those discoveries that entirely changes the way our world operates. I think the slow encroachment of the ‘net, coupled with the original hype and it’s appearance as an entertainment medium has largely hidden this fact – but looking at the evidence it is fairly undeniable.
You can have anything you want delivered to your door in a few days – music, toys, food, furniture, even people. You can answer any question in a matter of seconds when before it would require a trip to the library. Want to know the air-speed velocity of laden African Swallow – no problem! It’s funny how things are taken for granted. The answer to any question you wish to ask – with the only real limit generally being your ability to understand the solution. Mass global communication – my crappy blog alone reaches thousands of people – if someone has something to say they can say it, and they don’t need money anymore to make their voice heard. The Internet has had a significant impact on peoples lives as the lightbulb.
Yet I still can’t actually (legally) get any Beatles recordings on the Internet. It reminds me of the monks who would laboriously copy the Bible and other tomes, creating beautiful manuscripts of ornate letters and illustrations. They were extremely expensive and rare, but they were art. They probably could have improved the process, cut corners, sped things up in an attempt to drop the price and increase the availability – but where was the motiviation?
Then (as mentioned) Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, and mass duplication was upon us. It took only marginally more effort to create 10,000 books as it did 100, and the monks, hand-producing each book with care and attention, were suddenly irrelevant.
Now the music industry is in the same place as the monks of the mid fifteenth century. They have been in control of defining the terms of the relationship so long that now that it has changed they still have not understood this fact. It has recently been announced that The Beatles will be releasing a plastic green apple with a USB stick inside for the princely sum of £200. Yet if all you want is the music to download to your computer for a reasonable amount of money you are entirely out of luck.
The music industry is still fixated on releasing ‘albums’, of creating ‘limited edition’ things and being choosy on who can download what from where, what devices you can listen to it on and how many times you can play it. “Sorry, you can’t buy that online, you’re living in the UK.”, and “Sorry, only UK residents can use this service.” It’s all about controlling distribution to the channels that they are most comfortable with and are the most profitable. Never mind the fact that the customers have spoken, and that there are pretty much no record shops open anymore, you’ll buy this overpriced crappy USB stick because that’s what we are selling. Want that acoustic version of that track? Just get the Japanese single imported. Want that live version? Tough – all you’re getting is the one studio version, and you’ll like it!
I am saying all this because recently the “Featured Artist Coalition” in the UK, after what they termed “robust debate” – just as I am sure the foxes have a “robust debate” on exactly how to eat the chicken – decided that they wanted a ‘three strikes’ law to combat ‘pirates’*. Never mind the fact that to a lot of people the Internet is as vital as electricity and water, never mind that you’d be placing an unelected group of businessmen in charge of extra-judicial punishment of citizens without courts or appeal, never mind the other businesses that would be collateral damage as this unelected group dished out their revenge – their business model is suffering so they need to put the blame somewhere.
The concept is very, very, simple. Give people what they want, in a format that they want, at a price they are willing to pay and they will come to you. Creating paranoid, locked down, untransferable and arcane systems where you provide a limited product in an unpalatable or annoying format then expect people to either pirate, or just plain not buy.
Oh, and considering that a movie soundtrack, which probably cost ~£50,000 at most to produce costs more than the DVD of the film, which probably cost ~£50,000,000 to produce it’s unsurprising that people find music too expensive.
* They apparently don’t want people cut off, just limited to 56kbps. Which ironically at that speed just about the only thing you can do is pirate music. I don’t think they had a single technical person at this “robust debate” of theirs.
Digital piracy, while a genuine threat, has obscured logical thinking in this never ending debate. Plenty of industries are not as profitable as they once were, but most of them blame consumer trends, economic factors, and mounting competition. Newspapers, for example, fit into this mold. What the music industry doesn’t seem to understand is it isn’t coming back because it’s not all about the piracy. Movies have risen in cost, too, but they still provide a product: a theater experience and a product that’s difficult to acquire even in piracy (cams don’t count). Video games represent an unstoppable entertainment industry force, and plain old internet browsing and chatting fill even more holes that once held music. There is just so much more competition vying for entertainment dollar and time these days.
Focusing solely on piracy as a given cause of the music industry’s illegitimate downfall has obscured thinking that piracy may, in fact, be a symptom. iTunes has showed that a revenue model can work. Many people feel $1/song more than offsets the hassle of piracy, along with the added value the iTunes ecosystem provides (very smart on Apple’s part). But, as you explained, the music industry doesn’t want to hear this and prefers to retreat back to selling platter “albums” and paying off radio disc jockeys. Do real disc jockeys even exist anymore? Are today’s teenagers even aware of the existence of radio?
Some 10-15 years ago the music industry would have been wise to take a page from Microsoft’s book and considered the pirated copies another form of competition. This line of thinking would have left them free to prosecute high value pirates but would have also put their frames of mind into considering what it is about their business model that attracts pirates and how they could capture that market with legitimate products.
But the solution isn’t complicated: lower your prices. Because high prices are always what motivates illegal trade. Don’t want to do it? Tough. Everybody else is. Want some ideas? Instead of contracting artists for 1-2 million dollars and requiring them to produce an entire album plus music video plus promotion, give them much less money (perhaps only for studio costs, which, let’s face it, isn’t much of a “cost” given they own the studios) for a handful of songs and a much higher cut of royalties. This puts the burden of competition onto the artists themselves, which is what they want anyway. Most of the promotion costs are poorly spent. Producing music videos and signing contracts with MTV are antiquated methods of getting the message out. Instead, pay modern venues like iTunes, Last.fm, Pandora, and Sirius to play your music for free with a $1 for a downloadable copy. Yeah, people will still use DownloadHelper to extract the song and put it on eMule/SoulSeek/Pirate Bay, but ignore them–we need to see the forest from the trees here.
I once went looking for an MP3 of Captain John Handy’s “Hard Work” song. All I had was an mp3 rip I had made of an OLD (ie, 1970′s) cassette tape, that sounded awful. I eventually found a decent copy in mp3 format from somewhere… And dl’d it.
In an effort to explain why I did not feel like I had done anything wrong, I suggested it this way, in an hypothetical question to the music industry:
How can you accuse me of stealing from you, something which you do not sell?”
Or… more properly, “something which does not exist?” (in anticipation of “well, my car is not for sale either. Are you gonna take that??”)
If the thing even simply existed to be purchased, I’d buy it. But there is TONS of stuff from the old days that was great stuff that I want in modern format, but they simply have not made it. What alternative do they offer along with their complaint?
Oh Jesus….the poor fucking music industry. Fuck them. Piracy is not a threat at all. If it were, there wouldn’t be a music industry any longer. They need the piracy. They support the piracy. There are plenty of artists that you cannot DL at all…but most you can. Explain that. Why is it I can get almost all of Mariah Carey’s bullshit somewhere and then to DL anything decent by anyone decent is close to impossible? In fact, in some cases it is impossible. Try getting Martha Berner stuff. Only her lesser songs are gettable, on youtube from guest appearances on Letterman or Good Morning Vietnam or whatever it is. There is no way to get her good songs other than to buy them. So…