Finding good music these days is an awful lot like being on a raft in the middle of an ocean. No hints of land east, west, north or south. It?s hard to find a direction to go or a position to take because they all start to look pretty much the same.
The music industry is stagnating, and it?s not because of the bands. MP3 has become the listener?s best friend and the industry?s worst nightmare in a span of fewer than five years. Everybody?s doing it. The latest stats suggest at least 60 million users are downloading — a trend that continues to expand, with an all-time high of 1.75 million tracks downloaded per week in January, according to a recent Nielsen SoundScan pole. The figure is a rebound after last month?s record lawsuit naming 41 file-sharing clients.
While the logical assertion that stealing is bad, an opinion expressed by Lars Ulrich and Dre, seems to be true, a closer look seems to suggest that popular practice is quite the opposite. According to the New York office of the Attorney General, 28 states, including Wisconsin, have entered jointly into a 120-point antitrust suit against the RIAA, alleging price-fixing of CDs. Boycott-RIAA.com is thriving.
The root of intellectual property, especially music, has always been distribution. Band writes song, industry finances recording, industry distributes recording, people give industry money, some of which gets back to the artist. So it has been since the advent of the printing press.
The new millennium is a little different. The digital music companies are racing out their newest iPod clones — hard drives that seem to skyrocket to infinite capacity. At 10 GB, you?ve got room for roughly 170 CDs; at 40 GB that becomes 680 CDs — the equivalent of 27 days of continuous music, no repeats. That is, of course, providing you don?t sleep. Pretty soon, Moore?s law willing, you?ll be able to put pretty much every song you ever heard on your trusty digital player.
Four hundred years ago there were four major works of literature in circulation, one of which was the Bible. It may not have been variety, but everybody knew the words. After the advent of the printing press, the number of texts exploded. Today the average person has dozens of books, but there are still only three or four superstar authors.
Music is playing out that explosion again. Everybody can download songs in about a minute on a high-speed connection, which is becoming almost standard over dialup Internet. By the time you doubt whether you should be doing it, you have the track.
It?s not just that MP3s are available, either; it?s also the fact that listeners can use a sample-platter approach and figure out who to trust and what they want. Tiny record labels are popping up across the country on a daily basis, driven more by an artistic mission than a corporate one, and they?re getting by.
Rarity makes value, and the industry cannot force consumers to buy what they can get for free. I?m not saying that we should all buy CDs and pretend that file-sharing isn?t an option. It?s not going to happen. The point is that the industry doesn?t want to move on. In an age when CD-Rs cost less than 40 cents apiece, the RIAA constituency is charging $10 to $20.
DVDs, on the other hand, continue to sell at a brisk pace, despite the fact that they?re also digital. It may have something to do with the investment necessary to enjoy them. You paid for that DVD player. You paid for that wide-screen. You paid for those 7.1 Dolby speakers. You had damned well better enjoy your DVD experience.
Of course, it doesn?t hurt that to download a DVD in its entirety would take something approaching 113 hours.
There is a difference between the experience and the actual media. Eventually the fact of the matter is that people don?t like to read their books on a computer screen. The album is oftentimes completely different than the song for a reason. The important thing ceases to be that you?ve heard the song and begins to be about knowing you were part of something. If you bought the first-press of Elvis or the Beatles when it came out, it says more about you than where you spend your money.
If the RIAA wants to be the world?s file-sharing service, it needs to change what it?s distributing. CDs are too small and segmented to withstand the Internet. The industry has become obsolete. With dropping equipment prices, it isn?t even strictly necessary for recording. If the author survived, if the artist survived, so will the musician. Tickets might get more expensive and you might start to see more original recordings finding their way to eBay, but the musician will continue to survive and evolve.
If everybody in the world got an iPod, the CD would disappear, except as installation art. The RIAA and the artist need to seek out something else to record in order to remain viable, and with genesis of digital video, there are possibilities (Flaming Lips, I?m looking at you). When the limitations become so obvious, it?s usually necessity of something new making itself known. We just have to get off the raft and into the water long enough to remember the experience.
Let?s look around.
