Monday, November 03, 2008
lacuna
This thing is going dormant again if it isn't already obvious. The current budget doesn't have a line item for additional music acquisition and it's tended a little too much to classic rock nostalgia pieces, which is nearly the opposite of the intent. I guess I'll let the economy have it's way with the scrappy underdogs for a while, and see who's left standing later. To be continued?
Monday, October 13, 2008
First and foremost: eMusic
I'm in my second year of membership at eMusic now which says something in itself. That I've taken this long to get around to reviewing it says something else: considering how long it has been ahead of the curve, eMusic has definitely gotten short shrift in the dialog about the quest for DRM-free digital downloads. It's been at it more than a decade and has served into 9 figures of downloads from its catalog, which is in the vicinity of 5 million songs.
There are two obvious issues with eMusic. The first is that it is subscription only. There are no a la carte downloads: you have to sign up for a subscription plan that charges a fixed amount in exchange for a certain number of song downloads per month. While eMusic guarantees you can cancel your subscription at any time and attempts to lower this barrier to entry by offering a generous no-cost, no-obligation trial preview (which allows you to keep the trial songs you download whether or not you sign on for the paid service) many will find this requirement an obstacle. It certainly kept me away for a long time.
The second and arguably more significant drawback is that eMusic carries non-major-label music exclusively. Major label artists are represented here and there when their early career material was recorded on independent labels. But you will find no Madonna, no Beatles, no ABBA or Led Zeppelin here (considering this, it is an irony of eMusic's history that for a time it was owned by prime clinger to DRM and general customer abuser Universal).
The first question to answer then about whether an eMusic membership is right for your music budget is whether the indie label catalog is valuable to you. There's no question that eMusic's catalog is deep. There are tens of thousands of tiny labels represented, including heavy hitters like Merge, Matador, Drag City, Kill Rock Stars and Thrill Jockey, and eMusic has relationships as well with distribution giants The Orchard and CD Baby, among others. Noticeably missing is Sub Pop, who I believe inked a deal with Rhapsody. I wish I could speak intelligently to eMusic's Jazz and Classical catalogs, but here my knowledge falters. But for indie rock and alternative there's really no shortage of music available for years of subscriptions.
And there's no denying that the compensation for the membership requirement is good value, with the per-track prices for monthly subscriptions from 25 to 60 cents, depending on the plan chosen: additional discounts come if you prepay your account in advance: at the top level (75 songs per month) paid 2 years in advance, per track costs are as low as 20 cents. Even the lowest obligation (10 tracks paid monthly) beat iTunes and Amazon at 60 cents per track.
Downloads require installing a download tool and (unless there is some clever widget out there I haven't figured out) must be manually uploaded to your music player's catalog. I'm probably pushing a thousand song downloads and only once had a technical problem. The browsing and searching interfaces are pretty effective: I've in particular had better than average luck with their "Artists Like This" feature that suggests similar artists to what you're searching for - including artists similar to artists (like major label properties) that eMusic doesn't carry. I've found a number of new things following these suggestions. Another feature that can deliver a lot of value is information from other members. Viewing the playlists, reviews and so on from other members can lead to lots of similar tastes (it's good to remember, though, that these things are publicly viewable, so you might want to delete that "songs to seduce my best friend's girl with" playlist).
On to the downsides. eMusic definitely bears the marks of being built on older, legacy interfaces. Until recently, for instance, music previews came in the form of clunky streaming file downloads that caused me persistent problems in iTunes. They have finally come around to in-browser previews (via Flash, I assume) - but they persist in the all-too-common paranoia of offering abbreviated partial previews only. As I've mentioned before, I think the failure of digital sellers to give full-length previews represents a short-sighted approach that ignores the retail legacy of free listening. But they are certainly in good company there. And still, while it is not as slick as a fresh-minted start-up might be, the interface does continue to adapt and improve.
I think eMusic focuses on getting potential customers to sign up for their free previews to a fault: as a non-member it's fairly difficult to, for example, get to the point where you can browse their catalog or look over the subscription plans (the FAQ on subscription plans, for example, is out of date and leaves out many options such as the prepay discounts mentioned above). They don't go so far as to actually prevent non-members from viewing this information, they just don't make it easy. Again, it's a policy I think is shortsighted. Even signing up for a free preview is a certain amount of hassle, and I for one want to know a bit more about what I'm getting before I start handing out my personal data.
Once you are a member, it's important to keep in mind that unused downloads don't roll over: it's use them or lose them. Amplifying this problem is the fact that downloads are not strictly monthly: they reset every 30 days. So rather than knowing your downloads will reset on the 20th of every month or whatever, you have to keep track of when the deadline date is. While technically you get more downloads per month this way than if they reset each month on a particular date, I've lost a few month's downloads when I was too busy to keep track of my subscription. This is a situation that clearly factors in eMusic's favor - they could, after all, easily send an alert email when your downloads are about to reset. I've been told, however, that they do distribute revenue from unused downloads to their member artists rather than simply keeping it for themselves.
Although I have no experience with it, it has to be noted that there have been persistent complaints of eMusic failing to process subscription cancellations and continuing to charge customers after cancellation has been requested. Whether this is actually common or widespread, and whether it has gotten better or not over time, I don't know.
I consider these minor gripes. For the indie music fan eMusic gets solid props. I've gotten a steady supply of new music and indie classics for nearing 2 years and I suspect I'll be keeping my subscription up for years to come, indefinitely if the deal stays solid and new artists keep signing up. I hope to someday rectify some of my jazz and classical deficiencies through them as well. It's worth mentioning, though not strictly relevant here, that they also offer subscription plans for DRM-free audiobooks. eMusic deserves more recognition as a pioneer and being for most intents and purposes the best deal in digital music downloads. Keep up the good work, eMusic!.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
There are two obvious issues with eMusic. The first is that it is subscription only. There are no a la carte downloads: you have to sign up for a subscription plan that charges a fixed amount in exchange for a certain number of song downloads per month. While eMusic guarantees you can cancel your subscription at any time and attempts to lower this barrier to entry by offering a generous no-cost, no-obligation trial preview (which allows you to keep the trial songs you download whether or not you sign on for the paid service) many will find this requirement an obstacle. It certainly kept me away for a long time.
The second and arguably more significant drawback is that eMusic carries non-major-label music exclusively. Major label artists are represented here and there when their early career material was recorded on independent labels. But you will find no Madonna, no Beatles, no ABBA or Led Zeppelin here (considering this, it is an irony of eMusic's history that for a time it was owned by prime clinger to DRM and general customer abuser Universal).
The first question to answer then about whether an eMusic membership is right for your music budget is whether the indie label catalog is valuable to you. There's no question that eMusic's catalog is deep. There are tens of thousands of tiny labels represented, including heavy hitters like Merge, Matador, Drag City, Kill Rock Stars and Thrill Jockey, and eMusic has relationships as well with distribution giants The Orchard and CD Baby, among others. Noticeably missing is Sub Pop, who I believe inked a deal with Rhapsody. I wish I could speak intelligently to eMusic's Jazz and Classical catalogs, but here my knowledge falters. But for indie rock and alternative there's really no shortage of music available for years of subscriptions.
And there's no denying that the compensation for the membership requirement is good value, with the per-track prices for monthly subscriptions from 25 to 60 cents, depending on the plan chosen: additional discounts come if you prepay your account in advance: at the top level (75 songs per month) paid 2 years in advance, per track costs are as low as 20 cents. Even the lowest obligation (10 tracks paid monthly) beat iTunes and Amazon at 60 cents per track.
Downloads require installing a download tool and (unless there is some clever widget out there I haven't figured out) must be manually uploaded to your music player's catalog. I'm probably pushing a thousand song downloads and only once had a technical problem. The browsing and searching interfaces are pretty effective: I've in particular had better than average luck with their "Artists Like This" feature that suggests similar artists to what you're searching for - including artists similar to artists (like major label properties) that eMusic doesn't carry. I've found a number of new things following these suggestions. Another feature that can deliver a lot of value is information from other members. Viewing the playlists, reviews and so on from other members can lead to lots of similar tastes (it's good to remember, though, that these things are publicly viewable, so you might want to delete that "songs to seduce my best friend's girl with" playlist).
On to the downsides. eMusic definitely bears the marks of being built on older, legacy interfaces. Until recently, for instance, music previews came in the form of clunky streaming file downloads that caused me persistent problems in iTunes. They have finally come around to in-browser previews (via Flash, I assume) - but they persist in the all-too-common paranoia of offering abbreviated partial previews only. As I've mentioned before, I think the failure of digital sellers to give full-length previews represents a short-sighted approach that ignores the retail legacy of free listening. But they are certainly in good company there. And still, while it is not as slick as a fresh-minted start-up might be, the interface does continue to adapt and improve.
I think eMusic focuses on getting potential customers to sign up for their free previews to a fault: as a non-member it's fairly difficult to, for example, get to the point where you can browse their catalog or look over the subscription plans (the FAQ on subscription plans, for example, is out of date and leaves out many options such as the prepay discounts mentioned above). They don't go so far as to actually prevent non-members from viewing this information, they just don't make it easy. Again, it's a policy I think is shortsighted. Even signing up for a free preview is a certain amount of hassle, and I for one want to know a bit more about what I'm getting before I start handing out my personal data.
Once you are a member, it's important to keep in mind that unused downloads don't roll over: it's use them or lose them. Amplifying this problem is the fact that downloads are not strictly monthly: they reset every 30 days. So rather than knowing your downloads will reset on the 20th of every month or whatever, you have to keep track of when the deadline date is. While technically you get more downloads per month this way than if they reset each month on a particular date, I've lost a few month's downloads when I was too busy to keep track of my subscription. This is a situation that clearly factors in eMusic's favor - they could, after all, easily send an alert email when your downloads are about to reset. I've been told, however, that they do distribute revenue from unused downloads to their member artists rather than simply keeping it for themselves.
Although I have no experience with it, it has to be noted that there have been persistent complaints of eMusic failing to process subscription cancellations and continuing to charge customers after cancellation has been requested. Whether this is actually common or widespread, and whether it has gotten better or not over time, I don't know.
I consider these minor gripes. For the indie music fan eMusic gets solid props. I've gotten a steady supply of new music and indie classics for nearing 2 years and I suspect I'll be keeping my subscription up for years to come, indefinitely if the deal stays solid and new artists keep signing up. I hope to someday rectify some of my jazz and classical deficiencies through them as well. It's worth mentioning, though not strictly relevant here, that they also offer subscription plans for DRM-free audiobooks. eMusic deserves more recognition as a pioneer and being for most intents and purposes the best deal in digital music downloads. Keep up the good work, eMusic!.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Friday, October 03, 2008
Rhapsody MP3 Store: oasis in the desert of the real?
Rhapsody.com was on the no-fly list until recently: they were every kind of wrong for Phree Musique: subscription, DRM format only, tied to the hated Real Player - but I’d read they had recently joined the growing ranks of those tapped to skunk iTunes yet again with a la carte, major label MP3 downloads on sale for more or less the going rate. Even so, I probably would have let my ongoing spite for Real keep them on the bottom of the check-out list, except for one thing: when I’d gone by to casually cruise the interface I’d noted they were giving a good deal on Led Zeppelin: Complete.
Zeppelin being one of my format problem bands: this set is mostly selections from my (recently-released-to-secondary-retail) tape collection, but Zep along with a handful of others I still own on that most persistent of formats, vinyl. I did some experiments transferring LPs to digital which were conclusive: it was a pain in the ass.
Other thirty-something’s Led Zeppelin nostalgia couldn’t be duller, right? So suffice to say that it is music that has earned a permanent spot on my emotional playlist and provided the soundtrack on a fair cross-section of teenage angst and joy. I figured I’d buy it again someday.
Still, I dithered over the purchase. I’ve yet to pay this much for a single purely digital item. The Box Set: the usual deal is you save on volume, but the physical package generally sweetens the deal with bonus material: booklets, photos, packaging, lyrics. My experience with the digital music market suggested that I’d get bupkus but the song files out of this deal. I’m not a fanatic: the bonus audio, the live versions and rare studio out takes didn’t hold much appeal.
Still, the deal was solid: the same package on Amazon was almost 40 dollars more. Maybe I’d be better off cherry picking the main albums? No help there: I wanted pretty much the canon: I through IV, Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti, and yes, Presence, In Through the Out Door and Coda, and the live stuff off of The Song Remains the Same at least. Over a hundred dollars worth of even the cheapest digital downloads, more than even the Complete Set download at Amazon. It’s a good deal. Really, when was the last time I read any of the printed material from a CD (there’s that slippery slope into digital ephemera again)?
I went for it. Browsing and building a shopping cart on Rhapsody can be done without a sign in, checkout requires setting up an account. Oops, it turns out I already signed up at some point back: looks like I’ve been resisting this purchase longer than I realized. Sign in, a standard credit card checkout, download initiated. A straight zip download: the lack of a proprietary download tool is a welcome feature.
I’ve been observing with interest the fact that digital music comes with a maintenance cost that CDs lack for being their own physical archive: I download, start loading it up into my iTunes library, but then burn the zip file to DVD: protect the data. All is ephemeral but you do what you can. And then, If I want to listen to it in the car I need to burn CDs. The blank discs, of course, are on my tab. Media and time: one is cheap but the other is ever more dear. But it takes me more than a minute to work off 60 bucks so I do my diligence and back up.
Rhapsody almost got shrugs teetering on the edge of props, because one nice deal doesn’t overcome that same old same old two point oh dietetic candy lozenge graphic design that makes browsing at their store a big ol’ yawn, the same old computer-generated link puke front page, the same boring categories, flavor of the month favorites, and blah blah blah you just paid 60 smacks for seventeen cents worth of bandwidth. And intellectual property, of course, which with luck and a little management I could own forever...
But in a little postmortem browsing later I discovered that on a fair cross-section of their material (not including Led Zeppelin, which is why I missed the feature the first time, and defined, one presumes, by the dictates of the content owners) Rhapsody is providing free, full preview without being signed in - in other words, you can just browse right in and stream full songs while you shop (albeit in an annoying pop-up window). Free listening, once an absolute staple of the record store experience just makes sense and its general absence in the current digital retail sphere is basically absurd. You nudged yourself into props, Rhapsody... just barely, so don’t get too comfortable.
P. S., why yes, they did indeed include metacontent with my “Complete” Led Zeppelin, in the form of one (1) jpeg of the collection’s utterly dull cover (the ZOSO symbols white on a black field), of the grainy persuasion, matchbook sized for mobile display. Probably could have included a 40 page pdf that someone probably already has lying around for about two tenths of a cent but grumble grumble grumble.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Zeppelin being one of my format problem bands: this set is mostly selections from my (recently-released-to-secondary-retail) tape collection, but Zep along with a handful of others I still own on that most persistent of formats, vinyl. I did some experiments transferring LPs to digital which were conclusive: it was a pain in the ass.
Other thirty-something’s Led Zeppelin nostalgia couldn’t be duller, right? So suffice to say that it is music that has earned a permanent spot on my emotional playlist and provided the soundtrack on a fair cross-section of teenage angst and joy. I figured I’d buy it again someday.
Still, I dithered over the purchase. I’ve yet to pay this much for a single purely digital item. The Box Set: the usual deal is you save on volume, but the physical package generally sweetens the deal with bonus material: booklets, photos, packaging, lyrics. My experience with the digital music market suggested that I’d get bupkus but the song files out of this deal. I’m not a fanatic: the bonus audio, the live versions and rare studio out takes didn’t hold much appeal.
Still, the deal was solid: the same package on Amazon was almost 40 dollars more. Maybe I’d be better off cherry picking the main albums? No help there: I wanted pretty much the canon: I through IV, Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti, and yes, Presence, In Through the Out Door and Coda, and the live stuff off of The Song Remains the Same at least. Over a hundred dollars worth of even the cheapest digital downloads, more than even the Complete Set download at Amazon. It’s a good deal. Really, when was the last time I read any of the printed material from a CD (there’s that slippery slope into digital ephemera again)?
I went for it. Browsing and building a shopping cart on Rhapsody can be done without a sign in, checkout requires setting up an account. Oops, it turns out I already signed up at some point back: looks like I’ve been resisting this purchase longer than I realized. Sign in, a standard credit card checkout, download initiated. A straight zip download: the lack of a proprietary download tool is a welcome feature.
I’ve been observing with interest the fact that digital music comes with a maintenance cost that CDs lack for being their own physical archive: I download, start loading it up into my iTunes library, but then burn the zip file to DVD: protect the data. All is ephemeral but you do what you can. And then, If I want to listen to it in the car I need to burn CDs. The blank discs, of course, are on my tab. Media and time: one is cheap but the other is ever more dear. But it takes me more than a minute to work off 60 bucks so I do my diligence and back up.
Rhapsody almost got shrugs teetering on the edge of props, because one nice deal doesn’t overcome that same old same old two point oh dietetic candy lozenge graphic design that makes browsing at their store a big ol’ yawn, the same old computer-generated link puke front page, the same boring categories, flavor of the month favorites, and blah blah blah you just paid 60 smacks for seventeen cents worth of bandwidth. And intellectual property, of course, which with luck and a little management I could own forever...
But in a little postmortem browsing later I discovered that on a fair cross-section of their material (not including Led Zeppelin, which is why I missed the feature the first time, and defined, one presumes, by the dictates of the content owners) Rhapsody is providing free, full preview without being signed in - in other words, you can just browse right in and stream full songs while you shop (albeit in an annoying pop-up window). Free listening, once an absolute staple of the record store experience just makes sense and its general absence in the current digital retail sphere is basically absurd. You nudged yourself into props, Rhapsody... just barely, so don’t get too comfortable.
P. S., why yes, they did indeed include metacontent with my “Complete” Led Zeppelin, in the form of one (1) jpeg of the collection’s utterly dull cover (the ZOSO symbols white on a black field), of the grainy persuasion, matchbook sized for mobile display. Probably could have included a 40 page pdf that someone probably already has lying around for about two tenths of a cent but grumble grumble grumble.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Monday, September 08, 2008
Site and Review Updates
Once again, I'm vowing to try and get this business rolling again, with new reviews this week! Maybe!
For now, go and read the brief update I made to the Brad Sucks Review.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
For now, go and read the brief update I made to the Brad Sucks Review.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Saturday, July 05, 2008
aside
Seeing as how I invoked this post, I thought, hell, let's check the Amazon music store (I'm shilling it for absolutely zero $s, baby!) for the theme song of Flambards. Sure enough. The Amazon MP3 download store is slightly borked, incidentally - it keeps trying to make me download the downloader over and again. Still, I got it. Now I got two copies, my hiss-n-poppy 45 transcription, and my shiny new digital download. There's a longer story attached to that, but I'll probably never bother telling it...
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
So Walk Tall... Or Baby, Don't Walk At All
Maybe someday it will become the download store review site I pine for it to be...
One of the problems, incidentally, is Amazon.
Example: my recent loss of a significant number of CDs to basic distraction and merciless physics is, in fact, dwarfed by a not-quite-as-recent intentional loss... I sold all of my audio cassettes (aside from the 8-tracks) to a used record store...
Late in high school I took some of my not-insignificant savings (oh how I pine for those long-lost net black ink days) and bought myself a boombox produced under the Realistic brand by Radioshack. In my little rural Minnesota town Radioshack was run by Reed's Music, a sort of one-stop for musical instruments traditional and electronic, as well as the various technical ephemera of ye olde nineteen eightees. Ah, nostalgia. Anyway: 'twas a thing of beauty, dual cassette with hi-speed tape-to-tape dubbing, RCA line in and out, stereo divided line in... a number of my earlier recorded masterpieces were slammed directly to this beast. It was all I had. The first commercial tape I ever bought was Lou Reed's Street Hassle, from some bargain bin in Willmar, the nearest "big" town to my home in the (extraordinarily misnamed) Montevideo. Changed. My. Life.
I never listened to those dozens and dozens and dozens of tapes anymore, the classic rock and odd alternative and heavy metal and psychedelic and blues I collected from off-brand department store bins, from the ever-dwindling tape racks of city music stores. I access my music collection through my computer, and to a lesser extent through my car's CD player. I fooled around a little bit with transcribing tapes and albums to digital but it was too big of a hassle. A novelty, the novelty wore off. I sold them to clear up some space without having to add to the week's landfill quotient. I got an okay price, to my surprise. I probably lost 5 times as much as I did when I let a wallet of CDs blow off the roof of my car in that sale. I had a lot of cassettes. It was my sole format until like my senior year of college, when I bought a cheap portable CD player I could line-into that self-same realistic boombox, and my first CD, Pink Floyd's Meddle (a terrible digital transcription which sounded ten times worse than a tape my brother made me from his used LP).
Bringing us to this: a phrase rose in my mind, just moments ago. "So walk tall.. or baby, don't walk at all." Bruce Springsteen. The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle. Disdain, if you wish. This is my youth, my childhood, that I can't quite believe is gone although I'm (gasp) pushing 40 (I'll turn 37 this year). It's also a great album. I haven't owned it in a couple years, I suspect I haven't heard it in quite a few more. I sold it, it's gone.
I looked it up on iTunes, I guess I still have some grudging allegiance to the Apple. No dice, not Plus, fuck it. Amazon has it, DRM free, and for EXACTLY the same price (Iiinteresting...). I gots me some one-click, which is actually like five click (I have to re-download the Amazon downloader, like, WTF Amazon?) Oh well. And just like that, I'm hearing it again, after so many years, in a matter of minutes. I suppose I date myself that it still amazes me. Delights me.
"Sandy... that waitress I been seeing lost her desire for me... I spoke to her last night, she said she's not going to set herself on fire for me, anymore..."
Seriously, it's hard to be a Saint in the City. But I guess that's a different download...
It's easy to get distracted by the great back-catalog that is Amazon (and soon, I suspect, just a whole bunch of places). Any idea you might have that the digital revolution automatically trumps the old school of pop filtration is, I must assure you. misconstrued. I'll get there, nevertheless. Promise.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
One of the problems, incidentally, is Amazon.
Example: my recent loss of a significant number of CDs to basic distraction and merciless physics is, in fact, dwarfed by a not-quite-as-recent intentional loss... I sold all of my audio cassettes (aside from the 8-tracks) to a used record store...
Late in high school I took some of my not-insignificant savings (oh how I pine for those long-lost net black ink days) and bought myself a boombox produced under the Realistic brand by Radioshack. In my little rural Minnesota town Radioshack was run by Reed's Music, a sort of one-stop for musical instruments traditional and electronic, as well as the various technical ephemera of ye olde nineteen eightees. Ah, nostalgia. Anyway: 'twas a thing of beauty, dual cassette with hi-speed tape-to-tape dubbing, RCA line in and out, stereo divided line in... a number of my earlier recorded masterpieces were slammed directly to this beast. It was all I had. The first commercial tape I ever bought was Lou Reed's Street Hassle, from some bargain bin in Willmar, the nearest "big" town to my home in the (extraordinarily misnamed) Montevideo. Changed. My. Life.
I never listened to those dozens and dozens and dozens of tapes anymore, the classic rock and odd alternative and heavy metal and psychedelic and blues I collected from off-brand department store bins, from the ever-dwindling tape racks of city music stores. I access my music collection through my computer, and to a lesser extent through my car's CD player. I fooled around a little bit with transcribing tapes and albums to digital but it was too big of a hassle. A novelty, the novelty wore off. I sold them to clear up some space without having to add to the week's landfill quotient. I got an okay price, to my surprise. I probably lost 5 times as much as I did when I let a wallet of CDs blow off the roof of my car in that sale. I had a lot of cassettes. It was my sole format until like my senior year of college, when I bought a cheap portable CD player I could line-into that self-same realistic boombox, and my first CD, Pink Floyd's Meddle (a terrible digital transcription which sounded ten times worse than a tape my brother made me from his used LP).
Bringing us to this: a phrase rose in my mind, just moments ago. "So walk tall.. or baby, don't walk at all." Bruce Springsteen. The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle. Disdain, if you wish. This is my youth, my childhood, that I can't quite believe is gone although I'm (gasp) pushing 40 (I'll turn 37 this year). It's also a great album. I haven't owned it in a couple years, I suspect I haven't heard it in quite a few more. I sold it, it's gone.
I looked it up on iTunes, I guess I still have some grudging allegiance to the Apple. No dice, not Plus, fuck it. Amazon has it, DRM free, and for EXACTLY the same price (Iiinteresting...). I gots me some one-click, which is actually like five click (I have to re-download the Amazon downloader, like, WTF Amazon?) Oh well. And just like that, I'm hearing it again, after so many years, in a matter of minutes. I suppose I date myself that it still amazes me. Delights me.
"Sandy... that waitress I been seeing lost her desire for me... I spoke to her last night, she said she's not going to set herself on fire for me, anymore..."
Seriously, it's hard to be a Saint in the City. But I guess that's a different download...
It's easy to get distracted by the great back-catalog that is Amazon (and soon, I suspect, just a whole bunch of places). Any idea you might have that the digital revolution automatically trumps the old school of pop filtration is, I must assure you. misconstrued. I'll get there, nevertheless. Promise.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Friday, June 13, 2008
Updates at Glacier Speed
Given how this has been going it's worth asking whether I really have the wherewithal, at this point in my life, to maintain this site at all, but I'm going to foster the illusion for at least a little longer. At this point I'm going to have to hit DJ Edna back for a bunch of updates on that interview I keep promising (once I actually finish transcribing it), and I haven't bought anything at a new venue for a couple of months. I sustain the hope that I'll get on top of a few persistent vexations soon.
Only other note, seeing as how they closed down their direct downloads and their recent behavior has been less than inspiring, from a "changing the retail paradigm" perspective, I'm decommissioning Radiohead: downgrading their assessment to "shrugs" and maintaining their review as purely a piece of historical interest. Nothing against them but they've made it evident they're not really about what this thing is about: you want to know about the Radiohead retail experience these days, you know, head over to the Amazon or iTunes review. Or go to Wal-Mart.
Onward and upward.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Only other note, seeing as how they closed down their direct downloads and their recent behavior has been less than inspiring, from a "changing the retail paradigm" perspective, I'm decommissioning Radiohead: downgrading their assessment to "shrugs" and maintaining their review as purely a piece of historical interest. Nothing against them but they've made it evident they're not really about what this thing is about: you want to know about the Radiohead retail experience these days, you know, head over to the Amazon or iTunes review. Or go to Wal-Mart.
Onward and upward.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Saturday, April 12, 2008
iYiYi: shopping in music's Mall of America
Now, I'm not going to waste more than half a sentence rehashing the discussion of whether Apple Computer's "indie cred" is counterfeit, other than to say, sometimes you've got to face facts: when you're the biggest in the U.S., you are not the scrappy underdog. The iTunes Music Store got there first (it didn't, of course, but in all practical respects it did), did it right (relatively speaking) and is reaping its reward.
I resisted the pull of the iTMS for a long time, on principle, mind you, because of the DRM. My relenting on this point was not a principled one. One day I found myself wanting to hear the full length rendition of "The Journey of the Sorcerer," the Eagles' oddball banjo-delic instrumental that has served as the theme song for the dramatization of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in various incarnations. A few years later I may have been able to hear it legally without paying for it through one of the various new social discovery experiments: as it was I succumbed to the lure of immediacy and took my DRM.
And for a while its general transparency seemed fine and once in a while I'd get music off iTunes, until a few everyday hassles reminded me that these weren't ordinary MP3s and that as a result I would have to manage them as long as I retained them. I can't say it was enough to compel me to expunge them from my collection, but it irked me enough that I elected to generally skip the iTMS as a music source.
I was excited when the news of the Music Store's "Plus" collection appeared, the first big breach in the amazingly resistant frontier of DRM-free major label digital downloads. Also I had a gift card. I ordered Dark Side of the Moon right up, firmly sorting me into some sort of approaching-middle-age-dude box, I suspect, and that went just fine. A couple of my former purchases had moved to the Plus collection, available to be unlocked for a small fee. Fair enough, or at least better than nothing, right? Steve Jobs was publicly exhorting the record industry to let his downloads go and it was all very salutary.
Nevertheless it had been a while since, the other day, I decided that I needed a refresher course in the iTMS shopping experience. No, that's a lie. Somewhere along in there I developed a distinct chip on my shoulder about the whole iTMS experience and I set out on my shopping endeavor, purely as fodder for this blog, with a bitter heart. Maybe it was the Amazon thing. Letting Amazon scoop them on a general DRM-free major label catalog continues to strike me as a major business failure. Bending that uniform pricing model to charge more for Plus tracks. Amazon debunking the whole premise of the value of uniform pricing in the first place.
So I fired up iTunes with the intent of buying the first Plus item I saw, for the unvarnished experience, sort of like wandering into Walmart. What I got was...
Well, before I get into that, can I just talk about the virtual retail space? I mean, that is a blog in itself, but these music sites. Why are there so many examples of this: front pages that seem to suggest that God gave them a single sheet of foolscap and a divine injunction to stuff everything they could on it. Here is some of what's occupying real estate in the Music Store's foyer: NEW RELEASES. JUST FOR YOU. WHAT'S HOT. STAFF FAVORITES. FREE. INDIES. Something called QUICK LINKS with links to things like Buy iTunes Gifts on it. A music store menu that ought to be called Quick Links but bears the imaginative title iTunes STORE. OH I THOUGHT I WAS ALREADY IN THE STORE. WHY ARE WE SHOUTING? TOP SO - ahem, Top Songs. Top Rentals. Top TV Episodes and Albums and Ringtones and Music Videos and Podcasts and Audiobooks... all bracketed by clusters of standalone buttons with everything from American Idol promotions to books by Oprah to Ellen Degeneres for what reason I do not know except it has SOMETHING TO DO WITH AMERICAN IDOL. I'm sorry, I'm shouting again. This was supposed to be a short review, I'm aiming for "snappier."
Here's the thing: the iTMS lives in my music player. It sleeps in the same folder as my entire music collection. Is this whole Apple aesthetic not supposed to be about the clean and simple interface? Why am I confronted with what can only be called a link vomit of (at best) postage stamp sized icons? And why is the first thing that this store which lives inside my music collection offers me Yellowcard?
Nothing against Yellowcard, okay, as I have sort of made fun of them a couple times now: I hope their multi-platinum record sales (and I'd never heard of them! So out of touch) will console them. My perusal of my $7.99 album purchase from iTMS Plus, Live from Las Vegas at the Palms, suggests they are generating well-polished punk pop, probably as we speak, much in the hardcore roots vein of Green Day, who I once saw opening for Bad Religion, if you can believe that, and if you want to know about MY indie cred. Anyway, my point is, this is not Yellowcard's bad. Signing some live exclusive deal with iTunes is not a decision I can fault any aspiring musician for.
Offering this to me, as my very first choice on the very first page I see when I enter your store, on the other hand: come one, Apple, I thought we had a relationship. Well you were wrong about that. Apple wants to see other people: LOTS of other people, and if this thing feels increasingly less personal, well, it is business. The point I'm making here is that if Apple has attained Walmart-like retail status as a music seller, no mean feat, it is also delivering a Walmart retail experience. The user interface is a cluttered mess, selections based on personal data are shallow and perfunctory, searching is mediocre, and the location of the store within my music-playing software is actually kind of a pain in the ass. The failure to negotiate equal access with Amazon to DRM free major label catalogs was a big fumble, the pricing is largely uncompetitive, the surcharge on music in the Plus catalog sucks, and frankly, I'll shop there again when everything is DRM free and they offer me free upconversion of all my previously purchased, FairPlay encumbered tracks, which I'll otherwise probably expunge next time a major migration of the catalog is required. Checkouts and downloads generally work fine, at least from inside iTunes on an iMac, the only way I've ever experienced it, but you know, checkout at Sam Goody was generally a pretty trouble free experience. I think the bar is set justifiably higher for Apple and I don't think they cleared it. Congratulations, iTunes Music Store, you are the first review to receive a rating of HATE, heralding in the age of a crueler, rougher Phree Musique digital music download store review blog! A "one thousand points of darkness" sort of digital music download store review blog! How's that? "Snappy" enough for you?
Update, January 2009: Given the recent transition to all DRM-Free tracks, I am upgrading the iTMS rating to Shrugs. Keep up the mediocre work, guys.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
I resisted the pull of the iTMS for a long time, on principle, mind you, because of the DRM. My relenting on this point was not a principled one. One day I found myself wanting to hear the full length rendition of "The Journey of the Sorcerer," the Eagles' oddball banjo-delic instrumental that has served as the theme song for the dramatization of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in various incarnations. A few years later I may have been able to hear it legally without paying for it through one of the various new social discovery experiments: as it was I succumbed to the lure of immediacy and took my DRM.
And for a while its general transparency seemed fine and once in a while I'd get music off iTunes, until a few everyday hassles reminded me that these weren't ordinary MP3s and that as a result I would have to manage them as long as I retained them. I can't say it was enough to compel me to expunge them from my collection, but it irked me enough that I elected to generally skip the iTMS as a music source.
I was excited when the news of the Music Store's "Plus" collection appeared, the first big breach in the amazingly resistant frontier of DRM-free major label digital downloads. Also I had a gift card. I ordered Dark Side of the Moon right up, firmly sorting me into some sort of approaching-middle-age-dude box, I suspect, and that went just fine. A couple of my former purchases had moved to the Plus collection, available to be unlocked for a small fee. Fair enough, or at least better than nothing, right? Steve Jobs was publicly exhorting the record industry to let his downloads go and it was all very salutary.
Nevertheless it had been a while since, the other day, I decided that I needed a refresher course in the iTMS shopping experience. No, that's a lie. Somewhere along in there I developed a distinct chip on my shoulder about the whole iTMS experience and I set out on my shopping endeavor, purely as fodder for this blog, with a bitter heart. Maybe it was the Amazon thing. Letting Amazon scoop them on a general DRM-free major label catalog continues to strike me as a major business failure. Bending that uniform pricing model to charge more for Plus tracks. Amazon debunking the whole premise of the value of uniform pricing in the first place.
So I fired up iTunes with the intent of buying the first Plus item I saw, for the unvarnished experience, sort of like wandering into Walmart. What I got was...
Well, before I get into that, can I just talk about the virtual retail space? I mean, that is a blog in itself, but these music sites. Why are there so many examples of this: front pages that seem to suggest that God gave them a single sheet of foolscap and a divine injunction to stuff everything they could on it. Here is some of what's occupying real estate in the Music Store's foyer: NEW RELEASES. JUST FOR YOU. WHAT'S HOT. STAFF FAVORITES. FREE. INDIES. Something called QUICK LINKS with links to things like Buy iTunes Gifts on it. A music store menu that ought to be called Quick Links but bears the imaginative title iTunes STORE. OH I THOUGHT I WAS ALREADY IN THE STORE. WHY ARE WE SHOUTING? TOP SO - ahem, Top Songs. Top Rentals. Top TV Episodes and Albums and Ringtones and Music Videos and Podcasts and Audiobooks... all bracketed by clusters of standalone buttons with everything from American Idol promotions to books by Oprah to Ellen Degeneres for what reason I do not know except it has SOMETHING TO DO WITH AMERICAN IDOL. I'm sorry, I'm shouting again. This was supposed to be a short review, I'm aiming for "snappier."
Here's the thing: the iTMS lives in my music player. It sleeps in the same folder as my entire music collection. Is this whole Apple aesthetic not supposed to be about the clean and simple interface? Why am I confronted with what can only be called a link vomit of (at best) postage stamp sized icons? And why is the first thing that this store which lives inside my music collection offers me Yellowcard?
Nothing against Yellowcard, okay, as I have sort of made fun of them a couple times now: I hope their multi-platinum record sales (and I'd never heard of them! So out of touch) will console them. My perusal of my $7.99 album purchase from iTMS Plus, Live from Las Vegas at the Palms, suggests they are generating well-polished punk pop, probably as we speak, much in the hardcore roots vein of Green Day, who I once saw opening for Bad Religion, if you can believe that, and if you want to know about MY indie cred. Anyway, my point is, this is not Yellowcard's bad. Signing some live exclusive deal with iTunes is not a decision I can fault any aspiring musician for.
Offering this to me, as my very first choice on the very first page I see when I enter your store, on the other hand: come one, Apple, I thought we had a relationship. Well you were wrong about that. Apple wants to see other people: LOTS of other people, and if this thing feels increasingly less personal, well, it is business. The point I'm making here is that if Apple has attained Walmart-like retail status as a music seller, no mean feat, it is also delivering a Walmart retail experience. The user interface is a cluttered mess, selections based on personal data are shallow and perfunctory, searching is mediocre, and the location of the store within my music-playing software is actually kind of a pain in the ass. The failure to negotiate equal access with Amazon to DRM free major label catalogs was a big fumble, the pricing is largely uncompetitive, the surcharge on music in the Plus catalog sucks, and frankly, I'll shop there again when everything is DRM free and they offer me free upconversion of all my previously purchased, FairPlay encumbered tracks, which I'll otherwise probably expunge next time a major migration of the catalog is required. Checkouts and downloads generally work fine, at least from inside iTunes on an iMac, the only way I've ever experienced it, but you know, checkout at Sam Goody was generally a pretty trouble free experience. I think the bar is set justifiably higher for Apple and I don't think they cleared it. Congratulations, iTunes Music Store, you are the first review to receive a rating of HATE, heralding in the age of a crueler, rougher Phree Musique digital music download store review blog! A "one thousand points of darkness" sort of digital music download store review blog! How's that? "Snappy" enough for you?
Update, January 2009: Given the recent transition to all DRM-Free tracks, I am upgrading the iTMS rating to Shrugs. Keep up the mediocre work, guys.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Epilogue for the Devil
I tend to get in over my head when I get into serial essays like this... The same thing happened when I gamely attacked the history of recorded music. I mean, damn, that's a... lot of text. But I am, perhaps, out of my depth.
But beyond that, and (to me at least) much more importantly, I'm tired of reading, thinking and writing about the pop cartels and their minions. Though it's easy to get distracted from it by current events, my whole purpose in writing this thing is not to talk about the big names and their usual games. iTunes is the last major-label-centric store left for me to review for now and I'm looking forward to getting into all the real alternatives and the solo artists - the true independents. I'm sure plenty of other people will chew over the oscillating fortunes of Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI. I'm going to put the focus back on the reviews - with the occasional interview or essay about the real news in the music business: the pioneers who have long been learning to ride the wave of technological change that the major labels are still trying to control.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
But beyond that, and (to me at least) much more importantly, I'm tired of reading, thinking and writing about the pop cartels and their minions. Though it's easy to get distracted from it by current events, my whole purpose in writing this thing is not to talk about the big names and their usual games. iTunes is the last major-label-centric store left for me to review for now and I'm looking forward to getting into all the real alternatives and the solo artists - the true independents. I'm sure plenty of other people will chew over the oscillating fortunes of Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI. I'm going to put the focus back on the reviews - with the occasional interview or essay about the real news in the music business: the pioneers who have long been learning to ride the wave of technological change that the major labels are still trying to control.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Sympathy for the Devil: the plight of the record industry, Part 4
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
4: Follow the money
During the unavoidable hiatus between when I posted my third installment on U2 Manager Paul McGuinness’ speech on what needs to be done about the declining fortunes of the music industry and now, I kept having these smack-the-forehead moments, thinking of other things that are wrong with the music industry (besides the Devilish Scourge of Piracy) that I should have discussed. I forgot to talk about the theory that the transition to CD caused a one-time wave of library reformatting purchases that created unsustainable expectations of future growth! The unexpectedly robust used market! I’ve already talked some about how the CD killed the album as a desirable physical package - but I was going to get into how innovators like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails were turning this liability into an asset with “super-premium” physical offerings directed at the most dedicated fans. Surely I should have said more about “real” (that is to say commercially motivated) piracy, and why the industry virtually ignores all of the other forms of unauthorized duplication and distribution besides filesharing, and how there’s a prominent 14 dollar and a 10 dollar and a FIVE DOLLAR rack of bargain DVDs in Target, but the only front-of-the-store “bargain” CD rack is like 13 dollars, or how now even Walmart is slapping up the industry for its inflated prices (okay, I couldn’t have mentioned that one because it only came up this week).
I’m pretty sure that list could go on and on. Note only one thing about most of these ideas though: they involve the record industry fixing things that it is doing wrong and doing things on the basis of what their customers want.
Mr. McGuinness has a different notion about the whole business, as I’ve noted, in that it primarily revolves around characterizing his client’s customers as thieves. He does not, however, completely absolve the record industry of blame - though what he does saddle it with is very narrow and particular: mostly, and this is a familiar refrain all over the industry, with not reacting quickly or effectively to the amazing digital audio revolution - or, as Mr. McGuinness likes to think of it, the arising of a “collection of digital industries... that enabled the consumer to steal with impunity.” Mr. McGuinness fingers in particular the failure of the Secure Digital Music Initiative, the pan-industry effort to create universal, unbreakable DRM on digital audio files. Even here, he has a funny way of looking at the situation, laying the blame for SDMI’s failure at the feet of “competition rules,” accusing the U.S. (government, presumably) of being “overzealous in protecting the public from cartel-like behaviour.”
This is a remarkably specious version of the story of the failure of SDMI - beyond omitting its most ignoble side track, it ignores all the major failings of the SDMI: that it promoted a technology that was fundamentally unsound, that would have required a level of cooperative interaction between media and consumer electronics companies that has never been achieved, all in service of forcing the public to make a complete technological transition that no consumer, pirate or not, wanted, and which would serve only one stakeholder, the content industry.
The record industry didn’t learn the lesson of the futility of technological control with the effective collapse of the SDMI in 2001, it didn’t learn it with the Sony BMG rootkit scandal of 2005, and despite recent concessions to the sale of DRM-free MP3s, it apparently hasn’t learned it’s lesson as of 2008. While he avoids mention of the largely discredited concept of digital rights management, McGuinness inserts a plug for some proprietary tracking scheme (and it is worthwhile here to remember that while DRM has become synonymous with anti-copying technology, rights management is a much broader concept that is far from dead) called SIMRAN. There isn’t much readily available information to be had on this at the moment, but the specifics are hardly important. One can almost feel sympathy for the music industry, that after who knows how many millions have been flushed on DRM (SDMI member companies paid millions in combined membership fees alone, for exactly nothing), they are still paying up to these snake oil merchants.
Although even weirder than this aside about some obscure DRM technology is what McGuinness offers it in service of: recommending, apparently, this guy’s opinion that the major labels should create “the ultimate digital-distribution hub, a place where every band can sell its wares at the price point of its choosing” - in order to compete with the Apple iTunes Music Store’s “dominance.” We’ll take a closer look at the sort of thing this might actually be describing at the conclusion of this article: for now it’s worth pointing out the curious failure to make even a nod towards any of the industry’s many failed attempts at harnessing a digital marketplace - as well as Mr. McGuinness’ assumption that the digital marketplace would best be served by essentially having a single provider... but then we already know about his affection for “cartel-like behaviour.” If only that nasty U.S. government doesn’t thwart it! It’s also worth noting that Mr. McGuinness is apparently oblivious to the fact that there is already a very serious contender in the ring making a play for Apple’s position of dominance... Perhaps because it appears that U2 has elected not to make it’s catalog available on the nation’s #2 digital music retailer.
A whole lot more interesting than these perplexing asides about how the record industry might take the reins of selling music online ten years down the road, however, is real meat of Mr. McGuinness’ “solution” for saving the ailing industry. I had a pretty complex assessment of it started, in fact, but screw it: I’m sick of Mr. McGuinness, I’m sick of trying to navigate reality through the distorted lens of the record industry, so let’s nutshell this business and be done with it: basically, McGuinness spends the better part of his conclusion proposing the following set up: revoke the safe-harbor provisions that protect ISPs from being encumbered with the responsibility for preventing copyright transgressions, force them to punish their customers for file sharing, and somehow get some money out of them. He’s even got a snappy summary of what this is all about: “who’s got our money and what can we do?”
All technical and legal and ethical arguments aside, this, I think is the crux of this business. “Our money.” The record industry isn’t asking “what do our customers want.” It isn’t asking “what can we do to become one of the sought-after providers in a new, still-emerging marketplace?” It isn’t asking “what’s next,” it’s just asking “where’s our money.” People like Mr. McGuinness seem to honestly believe that the four billion or so in annual revenues that have vanished since the record industry peaked in the late nineties is in some sense still out there. Again, I find myself almost sympathetic, because in this misapprehension it seems quite likely that the record industry will squander what it’s got left pursuing that very phantom: their mythical missing money, which the McGuinneses of the world so blithely assume they are entitled to and naively aspire to wrest away from the supposed enablers of what is a largely fictional understanding of what happened to the actual money that used to get spent on CDs.
The reality is that digitization, compression and file sharing did not devalue recorded music. The industry devalued it in a dozen different ways, from the content to the cost to the package, and then computers and the internet provided many people with an alternative that allowed them to have their cake and eat it too. But the thing is, even putting aside the technical issue of whether file sharing could ever be effectively thwarted, people would still have the same money to spend and the same choices to make about how to spend it. If it could ever come down to it that they couldn’t have their cake and eat it too, people would just eat the damn cake - which is to say, they would buy their DVDs and video games and find some other path to a music fix. They sure as hell aren’t likely to increase their music budget for what the major labels have on offer.
In a sense, the idea of trying to shake down ISPs for “lost” revenue is a pragmatic response to this reality: CD revenues in the conventional, sell-’em-for-$15 in a big box store model aren’t going to come back ever. It’s probably why, at least as an idea to talk about, versions of this - like a de facto tax on bandwidth - are finding some traction in this discussion.
I suppose there could come to be some reality, however odious, to this sort of approach if the rest of the media - especially television and the movies - were to get involved. As it stands, the idea of the major record labels managing to extort anything like a $5 surcharge out of the ISPs, whose revenues completely dwarf those of the music business, even in its post-21st century heyday, is laughable - as is, for that matter, the idea of them out-lobbying the ISPs to significantly adjust the safe harbor provisions that Mr. McGuinness finds so unfair.
Then again, what do I know?
I’ve been writing intermittently for weeks and over many pages about Mr. McGuinness’ speech because it is a compendious representation of the wrong-headed thinking that has led the music industry into its present revenue spiral. I think that it is in this notion of enforcing some kind of statutory compensation from ISPs that the central failing of the whole industry line is revealed. There is one glaring aspect of this latest record industry boondoggle that really infuriates me - even beyond the idea of getting charged for the ostensible impact of an activity I don’t personally engage in.
It is the justification, given by Mr. McGuinness in his speech and oft repeated in this discussion, that this sort of mechanism is necessary because “whatever business model you are building, you cannot compete with billions of illegal files free on P2P networks.”
“You can’t compete with free” is the cheap, unimaginative protest of an industry that spent a decade trying to figure out how not to change and now wants everyone to pay for the consequences regardless of whether they have any stake in it or not. Independent artists are competing with free right now. High profile experiments like Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV are not only competing with free, they are supplying the free in the same locus as the option to buy. This isn’t about saving making music as a business, whether people like Paul McGuinness really believe it is or not - it is about preserving the former hegemony of the major labels - engineering and controlling a compulsory system to replace real innovation in a new medium that they have never understood or effectively exploited.
And that’s almost enough about that. Next time I’ll tell you how I really feel about it all, in a brief (no, seriously) coda on why I’m going to try really hard not to write any more essays like this. Then, a music store review! Because this is, after all, a digital music store review site. I’ll be critiquing a recent purchase from the still clinging to the number one spot big kahuna, none other than the iTunes Music Store. And coming up after that, an interview with someone who’s not a big jerk like Paul McGuinness. Oh man, it’s going to be great!
Meanwhile, for those pining to read more, here's a selection of some of the more interesting articles I read trying to wrap my head around what’s going on in the business of music.
The Record Industry’s Decline at Rolling Stone
A Brave New World: the music Biz at the Dawn of 2008 at Ars Technica
The music industry: From major to minor at The Economist
DRM, lock-ins and piracy: all red herrings for a music industry in trouble at Ars Technica
Recorded Music and Music Publishing by Enders Analysis (includes link to report pdf)
Fear May Not Spur CD Sales at Wired Magazine
RIAA’s Statistics Don’t Add Up to Piracy
The rest of this essay:
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
4: Follow the money
During the unavoidable hiatus between when I posted my third installment on U2 Manager Paul McGuinness’ speech on what needs to be done about the declining fortunes of the music industry and now, I kept having these smack-the-forehead moments, thinking of other things that are wrong with the music industry (besides the Devilish Scourge of Piracy) that I should have discussed. I forgot to talk about the theory that the transition to CD caused a one-time wave of library reformatting purchases that created unsustainable expectations of future growth! The unexpectedly robust used market! I’ve already talked some about how the CD killed the album as a desirable physical package - but I was going to get into how innovators like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails were turning this liability into an asset with “super-premium” physical offerings directed at the most dedicated fans. Surely I should have said more about “real” (that is to say commercially motivated) piracy, and why the industry virtually ignores all of the other forms of unauthorized duplication and distribution besides filesharing, and how there’s a prominent 14 dollar and a 10 dollar and a FIVE DOLLAR rack of bargain DVDs in Target, but the only front-of-the-store “bargain” CD rack is like 13 dollars, or how now even Walmart is slapping up the industry for its inflated prices (okay, I couldn’t have mentioned that one because it only came up this week).
I’m pretty sure that list could go on and on. Note only one thing about most of these ideas though: they involve the record industry fixing things that it is doing wrong and doing things on the basis of what their customers want.
Mr. McGuinness has a different notion about the whole business, as I’ve noted, in that it primarily revolves around characterizing his client’s customers as thieves. He does not, however, completely absolve the record industry of blame - though what he does saddle it with is very narrow and particular: mostly, and this is a familiar refrain all over the industry, with not reacting quickly or effectively to the amazing digital audio revolution - or, as Mr. McGuinness likes to think of it, the arising of a “collection of digital industries... that enabled the consumer to steal with impunity.” Mr. McGuinness fingers in particular the failure of the Secure Digital Music Initiative, the pan-industry effort to create universal, unbreakable DRM on digital audio files. Even here, he has a funny way of looking at the situation, laying the blame for SDMI’s failure at the feet of “competition rules,” accusing the U.S. (government, presumably) of being “overzealous in protecting the public from cartel-like behaviour.”
This is a remarkably specious version of the story of the failure of SDMI - beyond omitting its most ignoble side track, it ignores all the major failings of the SDMI: that it promoted a technology that was fundamentally unsound, that would have required a level of cooperative interaction between media and consumer electronics companies that has never been achieved, all in service of forcing the public to make a complete technological transition that no consumer, pirate or not, wanted, and which would serve only one stakeholder, the content industry.
The record industry didn’t learn the lesson of the futility of technological control with the effective collapse of the SDMI in 2001, it didn’t learn it with the Sony BMG rootkit scandal of 2005, and despite recent concessions to the sale of DRM-free MP3s, it apparently hasn’t learned it’s lesson as of 2008. While he avoids mention of the largely discredited concept of digital rights management, McGuinness inserts a plug for some proprietary tracking scheme (and it is worthwhile here to remember that while DRM has become synonymous with anti-copying technology, rights management is a much broader concept that is far from dead) called SIMRAN. There isn’t much readily available information to be had on this at the moment, but the specifics are hardly important. One can almost feel sympathy for the music industry, that after who knows how many millions have been flushed on DRM (SDMI member companies paid millions in combined membership fees alone, for exactly nothing), they are still paying up to these snake oil merchants.
Although even weirder than this aside about some obscure DRM technology is what McGuinness offers it in service of: recommending, apparently, this guy’s opinion that the major labels should create “the ultimate digital-distribution hub, a place where every band can sell its wares at the price point of its choosing” - in order to compete with the Apple iTunes Music Store’s “dominance.” We’ll take a closer look at the sort of thing this might actually be describing at the conclusion of this article: for now it’s worth pointing out the curious failure to make even a nod towards any of the industry’s many failed attempts at harnessing a digital marketplace - as well as Mr. McGuinness’ assumption that the digital marketplace would best be served by essentially having a single provider... but then we already know about his affection for “cartel-like behaviour.” If only that nasty U.S. government doesn’t thwart it! It’s also worth noting that Mr. McGuinness is apparently oblivious to the fact that there is already a very serious contender in the ring making a play for Apple’s position of dominance... Perhaps because it appears that U2 has elected not to make it’s catalog available on the nation’s #2 digital music retailer.
A whole lot more interesting than these perplexing asides about how the record industry might take the reins of selling music online ten years down the road, however, is real meat of Mr. McGuinness’ “solution” for saving the ailing industry. I had a pretty complex assessment of it started, in fact, but screw it: I’m sick of Mr. McGuinness, I’m sick of trying to navigate reality through the distorted lens of the record industry, so let’s nutshell this business and be done with it: basically, McGuinness spends the better part of his conclusion proposing the following set up: revoke the safe-harbor provisions that protect ISPs from being encumbered with the responsibility for preventing copyright transgressions, force them to punish their customers for file sharing, and somehow get some money out of them. He’s even got a snappy summary of what this is all about: “who’s got our money and what can we do?”
All technical and legal and ethical arguments aside, this, I think is the crux of this business. “Our money.” The record industry isn’t asking “what do our customers want.” It isn’t asking “what can we do to become one of the sought-after providers in a new, still-emerging marketplace?” It isn’t asking “what’s next,” it’s just asking “where’s our money.” People like Mr. McGuinness seem to honestly believe that the four billion or so in annual revenues that have vanished since the record industry peaked in the late nineties is in some sense still out there. Again, I find myself almost sympathetic, because in this misapprehension it seems quite likely that the record industry will squander what it’s got left pursuing that very phantom: their mythical missing money, which the McGuinneses of the world so blithely assume they are entitled to and naively aspire to wrest away from the supposed enablers of what is a largely fictional understanding of what happened to the actual money that used to get spent on CDs.
The reality is that digitization, compression and file sharing did not devalue recorded music. The industry devalued it in a dozen different ways, from the content to the cost to the package, and then computers and the internet provided many people with an alternative that allowed them to have their cake and eat it too. But the thing is, even putting aside the technical issue of whether file sharing could ever be effectively thwarted, people would still have the same money to spend and the same choices to make about how to spend it. If it could ever come down to it that they couldn’t have their cake and eat it too, people would just eat the damn cake - which is to say, they would buy their DVDs and video games and find some other path to a music fix. They sure as hell aren’t likely to increase their music budget for what the major labels have on offer.
In a sense, the idea of trying to shake down ISPs for “lost” revenue is a pragmatic response to this reality: CD revenues in the conventional, sell-’em-for-$15 in a big box store model aren’t going to come back ever. It’s probably why, at least as an idea to talk about, versions of this - like a de facto tax on bandwidth - are finding some traction in this discussion.
I suppose there could come to be some reality, however odious, to this sort of approach if the rest of the media - especially television and the movies - were to get involved. As it stands, the idea of the major record labels managing to extort anything like a $5 surcharge out of the ISPs, whose revenues completely dwarf those of the music business, even in its post-21st century heyday, is laughable - as is, for that matter, the idea of them out-lobbying the ISPs to significantly adjust the safe harbor provisions that Mr. McGuinness finds so unfair.
Then again, what do I know?
I’ve been writing intermittently for weeks and over many pages about Mr. McGuinness’ speech because it is a compendious representation of the wrong-headed thinking that has led the music industry into its present revenue spiral. I think that it is in this notion of enforcing some kind of statutory compensation from ISPs that the central failing of the whole industry line is revealed. There is one glaring aspect of this latest record industry boondoggle that really infuriates me - even beyond the idea of getting charged for the ostensible impact of an activity I don’t personally engage in.
It is the justification, given by Mr. McGuinness in his speech and oft repeated in this discussion, that this sort of mechanism is necessary because “whatever business model you are building, you cannot compete with billions of illegal files free on P2P networks.”
“You can’t compete with free” is the cheap, unimaginative protest of an industry that spent a decade trying to figure out how not to change and now wants everyone to pay for the consequences regardless of whether they have any stake in it or not. Independent artists are competing with free right now. High profile experiments like Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV are not only competing with free, they are supplying the free in the same locus as the option to buy. This isn’t about saving making music as a business, whether people like Paul McGuinness really believe it is or not - it is about preserving the former hegemony of the major labels - engineering and controlling a compulsory system to replace real innovation in a new medium that they have never understood or effectively exploited.
And that’s almost enough about that. Next time I’ll tell you how I really feel about it all, in a brief (no, seriously) coda on why I’m going to try really hard not to write any more essays like this. Then, a music store review! Because this is, after all, a digital music store review site. I’ll be critiquing a recent purchase from the still clinging to the number one spot big kahuna, none other than the iTunes Music Store. And coming up after that, an interview with someone who’s not a big jerk like Paul McGuinness. Oh man, it’s going to be great!
Meanwhile, for those pining to read more, here's a selection of some of the more interesting articles I read trying to wrap my head around what’s going on in the business of music.
The Record Industry’s Decline at Rolling Stone
A Brave New World: the music Biz at the Dawn of 2008 at Ars Technica
The music industry: From major to minor at The Economist
DRM, lock-ins and piracy: all red herrings for a music industry in trouble at Ars Technica
Recorded Music and Music Publishing by Enders Analysis (includes link to report pdf)
Fear May Not Spur CD Sales at Wired Magazine
RIAA’s Statistics Don’t Add Up to Piracy
The rest of this essay:
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Sympathy for the Devil: the plight of the record industry, Part 3
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
3: There is always an easy solution to every problem — neat, plausible and wrong
I'm going to depart from the meat of U2's manager's speech for a bit to get into the alternatives to the assumptions that are the basis of Mr. McGuinness' assertions: that the music business has been ruined by illegal file sharing.
One part of this is the question of just how badly the industry is doing - indeed whether they are doing badly at all. Although it references only one player in the Australian industry, this opinion piece suggested that industry’s gloomy pronouncements were hiding all-time high sales. While they may bemoan the state of the industry when discussing the impact of file sharing, when discussing their position as publicly traded companies the picture that’s painted tends to be more optimistic. All this can be confusing stuff. There are sales, and then again there are revenues, and then again there are profits. And what the hell is a “margin”?
In general though, since I’m no economist I have to go by the trends in reporting and it seems pretty clear that there is a consensus that the business of selling mainstream CDs is in trouble, revenues have tumbled sharply over the last decade, many retail stores dedicated solely or primarily to music have gone out of business, and the stocks of the publicly traded companies have taken major hits. You’d be hard pressed to find an analysis that suggest that the record business as a whole is doing anything but worse. And while projections are just that, they suggest that the decline will continue and that to the degree digital downloads counter declining CD sales, they won't completely make up for these declines.
Far more uncertain is a core argument at the center of McGuinness’ speech: that the blame, or at least the majority of the blame, for these declining fortunes can be laid at the feet of illegal file sharing. Certainly for an industry insider to hold this position is not surprising. It has been pushed hard by industry representative groups like the RIAA and the IFPI. You can find plenty of research that supports the position (of course, you have to consider the source: SafeMedia is selling technology that purports to remove illicit copyrighted materials from P2P traffic. Nevertheless, many of the cited articles are legitimately argued by relatively unbiased sources). Personally, I think that an important and largely undiscussed element in the prevalence of this argument is that it is driven by uncomplicated causal logic. Napster hit, file sharing became a phenomenon, record sales declined. Do the math, right?
I reviewed a fair amount of both primary research and media interpretations of the situation. My own unsatisfying conclusion is that I’m not equipped to make a particularly sophisticated judgment of the primary research, a situation that makes the scientist in me very leery of coming to conclusions that “happen” to support my personal biases. I think it is fair to say, however, that there is honest disagreement between the better-equipped and less biased researchers on the topic of the role and extent of of filesharing’s impact on the CD business. So I’m not going to argue my own specious conclusion on the subject. Instead, as food for thought I hope I can shine some light on just how complex and ambiguous the situation is.
That file sharing of unauthorized copies of copyrighted songs is occurring at a large scale isn’t a subject of dispute. The essential question - the one that is almost never addressed or indeed acknowledged by the record industry, is the degree to which file sharing is displacing sales. The logic contrary to the party line is simple: the fact that someone will download a song for free does not imply that they would necessarily purchase the song legally if it weren’t otherwise accessible. A trivial demonstration is that an individual could easily download free music worth, if it were purchased legally, far more than the individual has available to spend. Preventing the downloads couldn’t possibly generate the supposed revenue selling them would have generated: the money simply isn’t available.
There are a variety of different approaches to researching the attachment of music revenue losses to illegal file sharing. Data on overall file sharing volumes over time, specific files being shared, and demographics of individuals engaged in file sharing can be compared to similar data for revenue from conventional sales. Furthermore, individuals can be surveyed about their habits and beliefs about how their file sharing and music purchasing intersect.
The problems with this data are numerous. By its nature, illegal file sharing is not exhaustively or accurately tracked. Any specific data on file sharing statistics must involve a significant amount of assumption, and it is not much of a stretch to suggest that the bias of the observer will affect what sorts of assumptions are made (it is fair to point out that the issue of bias cuts both ways - plenty of biased analysis is made to argue that file sharing does not impact conventional music revenues).
Even going directly to the consumer for information provides uncertain conclusions. If individuals projected their own purchasing decisions with absolute accuracy no well-funded movie would ever bomb and no major product would ever fail. The decisions that people make with their wallets in actual consumer venues are notoriously difficult to predict. Frankly, a possible conclusion that merits greater attention is that the impact of file sharing on CD sales cannot be accurately determined.
If the case for a cause and effect relationship yields uncertain conclusions, is is only sensible to look for alternative explanations. In the case of declining music revenues there are many potential causes that have gone largely unexamined by the record industry.
The hardest to prove one way or another, while ironically the most important to correct if it is a serious factor, is the charge that the record industry basically screwed up its product. Critics point out that the major labels have progressively issued fewer new releases, in essence cutting variety and consumer choice. While essentially impossible to quantify, many have pointed to a fundamental decline in the quality of mainstream recorded music, as the age of the video favored image over substance. An interesting corollary to the quality argument is the issue of independently produced music. It is possible that the declines in major label CD sales are being displaced to a greater degree than is commonly recognized by independent music sales. Arguing an increased relevance of independent music meshes well with the Long Tail concept, which asserts that while the traditional media retail model of stock carrying costs and shelf space discourage catering to niche markets, online retail and particularly the sale of digital information via download thrives on them - virtual shelf space is infinite, and carrying “stock” of digital information is virtually costless.
Whether from truly independent self-publishers or independent labels ranging from basement startups to major-minors like Matador and Sub Pop, the true numbers on independent music can be hard to pin down, since not all are tracked by SoundScan, the major music industry data tracker run by Nielsen (of television ratings fame). Even lacking concrete numbers, it can’t be discounted that independent champions like CD Baby and eMusic have quietly risen into the top tiers of online sales of CDs as well as digital downloads. Indeed, there could be no clearer testimony to the increasing importance of this market than the fact that SoundScan is tracking more of these markets - CD Baby recently arranged for artists to have the ability to have their sales tracked, while SoundScan started tracking eMusic’s downloads in 2006, three years after they started tracking legal downloads at all. As the data on these alternative sources of music come together we might seem some very interesting and different presentations of the state of the music business. Already certain aspects of the independent markets are suggestive: eMusic, for example, places the median age of its users in the upper thirties, an underrepresented demographic in mainstream music, and gains more revenue from full album downloads than from singles.
The state of the single is a topic in itself. The CD single experienced some of the earliest and most precipitous drops in sales, and was one of the first and least contested areas where blame was placed at the feet of file sharing. But it isn’t quite so clear cut, since at the same time the industry itself attracted blame for hindering the singles market for its own purposes - namely, because it would prefer to sell more expensive full albums, regardless of whether listeners want the rest of the songs on them or not. So you could argue that the record industry actually drove file sharing trends by restricting access to legitimate singles. The fact that the largest mainstream market in legitimate digital downloads, iTunes, is driven by singles rather than albums purchases supports a common quality argument about mainstream music: that the record industry is frequently selling albums with a few hits padded by filler. And while legal digital downloads may be picking up some of the slack of declining CD sales, the fact that the digital marketplace has made virtually every song available as a single would certainly be consistent with the failure of digital download sales to make up declining CD revenues. People may be literally buying less music because they never wanted all the songs they were compelled to buy for anything that was only available as a full CD in the first place.
Another argument is that the driving force behind declining record sales is that they are being displaced by other media purchases - primarily DVDs and video games. While proving it gets into very similar kinds of complexities as equating file sharing with lost CD revenue, it is a straightforward fact that DVD and gaming revenues have been climbing. If we can assume that consumer entertainment spending has been relatively flat (an assertion I haven’t yet found a good citation for) then it is certainly consistent that declining CD sales would necessarily follow. This is an interesting argument because it again raises the question of whether it would make any difference if file sharing could be prevented. If the money isn’t available it isn’t available, and arguably the cash-strapped file sharer would simply eschew recorded music in favor of their preferred media and seek access to free music through other avenues: in this context it might be considered constructive that the top feature consumers would like in an MP3 player is an FM radio receiver - and that this desire is stronger in the 12-24 age group than it is for those 25 and over. The fact may be that, no matter how much an anathema to the record industry, people - and especially kids - may consider “free” music to be a simple necessity for their entertainment budget - and one that they will find, one way or another.
What’s interesting, and important, about these alternative causes of major label sales declines are that for the most part they suggest realistic solutions - and that these solutions uniformly have to do with acknowledging consumer expectations and desires and responding to them by offering consumers more variety, more options and better values.
But in the next installment we’ll be returning to the alternate universe inhabited by U2’s Mr. McGuinness and take another look at the solutions he’s pinning his hopes on. You’ll find they sum up quite a bit differently. And then hopefully to soon wrap this up with a little coda about whither the Record Industry, and whether I care, and then back to reviews, hurrah!
It’s important that I acknowledge the intelligent input I received from this question I asked in Ask Metafilter - a great resource (and Metafilter has a neat area for members to post their musical creations also - well worth the $5 membership fee).
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
3: There is always an easy solution to every problem — neat, plausible and wrong
I'm going to depart from the meat of U2's manager's speech for a bit to get into the alternatives to the assumptions that are the basis of Mr. McGuinness' assertions: that the music business has been ruined by illegal file sharing.
One part of this is the question of just how badly the industry is doing - indeed whether they are doing badly at all. Although it references only one player in the Australian industry, this opinion piece suggested that industry’s gloomy pronouncements were hiding all-time high sales. While they may bemoan the state of the industry when discussing the impact of file sharing, when discussing their position as publicly traded companies the picture that’s painted tends to be more optimistic. All this can be confusing stuff. There are sales, and then again there are revenues, and then again there are profits. And what the hell is a “margin”?
In general though, since I’m no economist I have to go by the trends in reporting and it seems pretty clear that there is a consensus that the business of selling mainstream CDs is in trouble, revenues have tumbled sharply over the last decade, many retail stores dedicated solely or primarily to music have gone out of business, and the stocks of the publicly traded companies have taken major hits. You’d be hard pressed to find an analysis that suggest that the record business as a whole is doing anything but worse. And while projections are just that, they suggest that the decline will continue and that to the degree digital downloads counter declining CD sales, they won't completely make up for these declines.
Far more uncertain is a core argument at the center of McGuinness’ speech: that the blame, or at least the majority of the blame, for these declining fortunes can be laid at the feet of illegal file sharing. Certainly for an industry insider to hold this position is not surprising. It has been pushed hard by industry representative groups like the RIAA and the IFPI. You can find plenty of research that supports the position (of course, you have to consider the source: SafeMedia is selling technology that purports to remove illicit copyrighted materials from P2P traffic. Nevertheless, many of the cited articles are legitimately argued by relatively unbiased sources). Personally, I think that an important and largely undiscussed element in the prevalence of this argument is that it is driven by uncomplicated causal logic. Napster hit, file sharing became a phenomenon, record sales declined. Do the math, right?
I reviewed a fair amount of both primary research and media interpretations of the situation. My own unsatisfying conclusion is that I’m not equipped to make a particularly sophisticated judgment of the primary research, a situation that makes the scientist in me very leery of coming to conclusions that “happen” to support my personal biases. I think it is fair to say, however, that there is honest disagreement between the better-equipped and less biased researchers on the topic of the role and extent of of filesharing’s impact on the CD business. So I’m not going to argue my own specious conclusion on the subject. Instead, as food for thought I hope I can shine some light on just how complex and ambiguous the situation is.
That file sharing of unauthorized copies of copyrighted songs is occurring at a large scale isn’t a subject of dispute. The essential question - the one that is almost never addressed or indeed acknowledged by the record industry, is the degree to which file sharing is displacing sales. The logic contrary to the party line is simple: the fact that someone will download a song for free does not imply that they would necessarily purchase the song legally if it weren’t otherwise accessible. A trivial demonstration is that an individual could easily download free music worth, if it were purchased legally, far more than the individual has available to spend. Preventing the downloads couldn’t possibly generate the supposed revenue selling them would have generated: the money simply isn’t available.
There are a variety of different approaches to researching the attachment of music revenue losses to illegal file sharing. Data on overall file sharing volumes over time, specific files being shared, and demographics of individuals engaged in file sharing can be compared to similar data for revenue from conventional sales. Furthermore, individuals can be surveyed about their habits and beliefs about how their file sharing and music purchasing intersect.
The problems with this data are numerous. By its nature, illegal file sharing is not exhaustively or accurately tracked. Any specific data on file sharing statistics must involve a significant amount of assumption, and it is not much of a stretch to suggest that the bias of the observer will affect what sorts of assumptions are made (it is fair to point out that the issue of bias cuts both ways - plenty of biased analysis is made to argue that file sharing does not impact conventional music revenues).
Even going directly to the consumer for information provides uncertain conclusions. If individuals projected their own purchasing decisions with absolute accuracy no well-funded movie would ever bomb and no major product would ever fail. The decisions that people make with their wallets in actual consumer venues are notoriously difficult to predict. Frankly, a possible conclusion that merits greater attention is that the impact of file sharing on CD sales cannot be accurately determined.
If the case for a cause and effect relationship yields uncertain conclusions, is is only sensible to look for alternative explanations. In the case of declining music revenues there are many potential causes that have gone largely unexamined by the record industry.
The hardest to prove one way or another, while ironically the most important to correct if it is a serious factor, is the charge that the record industry basically screwed up its product. Critics point out that the major labels have progressively issued fewer new releases, in essence cutting variety and consumer choice. While essentially impossible to quantify, many have pointed to a fundamental decline in the quality of mainstream recorded music, as the age of the video favored image over substance. An interesting corollary to the quality argument is the issue of independently produced music. It is possible that the declines in major label CD sales are being displaced to a greater degree than is commonly recognized by independent music sales. Arguing an increased relevance of independent music meshes well with the Long Tail concept, which asserts that while the traditional media retail model of stock carrying costs and shelf space discourage catering to niche markets, online retail and particularly the sale of digital information via download thrives on them - virtual shelf space is infinite, and carrying “stock” of digital information is virtually costless.
Whether from truly independent self-publishers or independent labels ranging from basement startups to major-minors like Matador and Sub Pop, the true numbers on independent music can be hard to pin down, since not all are tracked by SoundScan, the major music industry data tracker run by Nielsen (of television ratings fame). Even lacking concrete numbers, it can’t be discounted that independent champions like CD Baby and eMusic have quietly risen into the top tiers of online sales of CDs as well as digital downloads. Indeed, there could be no clearer testimony to the increasing importance of this market than the fact that SoundScan is tracking more of these markets - CD Baby recently arranged for artists to have the ability to have their sales tracked, while SoundScan started tracking eMusic’s downloads in 2006, three years after they started tracking legal downloads at all. As the data on these alternative sources of music come together we might seem some very interesting and different presentations of the state of the music business. Already certain aspects of the independent markets are suggestive: eMusic, for example, places the median age of its users in the upper thirties, an underrepresented demographic in mainstream music, and gains more revenue from full album downloads than from singles.
The state of the single is a topic in itself. The CD single experienced some of the earliest and most precipitous drops in sales, and was one of the first and least contested areas where blame was placed at the feet of file sharing. But it isn’t quite so clear cut, since at the same time the industry itself attracted blame for hindering the singles market for its own purposes - namely, because it would prefer to sell more expensive full albums, regardless of whether listeners want the rest of the songs on them or not. So you could argue that the record industry actually drove file sharing trends by restricting access to legitimate singles. The fact that the largest mainstream market in legitimate digital downloads, iTunes, is driven by singles rather than albums purchases supports a common quality argument about mainstream music: that the record industry is frequently selling albums with a few hits padded by filler. And while legal digital downloads may be picking up some of the slack of declining CD sales, the fact that the digital marketplace has made virtually every song available as a single would certainly be consistent with the failure of digital download sales to make up declining CD revenues. People may be literally buying less music because they never wanted all the songs they were compelled to buy for anything that was only available as a full CD in the first place.
Another argument is that the driving force behind declining record sales is that they are being displaced by other media purchases - primarily DVDs and video games. While proving it gets into very similar kinds of complexities as equating file sharing with lost CD revenue, it is a straightforward fact that DVD and gaming revenues have been climbing. If we can assume that consumer entertainment spending has been relatively flat (an assertion I haven’t yet found a good citation for) then it is certainly consistent that declining CD sales would necessarily follow. This is an interesting argument because it again raises the question of whether it would make any difference if file sharing could be prevented. If the money isn’t available it isn’t available, and arguably the cash-strapped file sharer would simply eschew recorded music in favor of their preferred media and seek access to free music through other avenues: in this context it might be considered constructive that the top feature consumers would like in an MP3 player is an FM radio receiver - and that this desire is stronger in the 12-24 age group than it is for those 25 and over. The fact may be that, no matter how much an anathema to the record industry, people - and especially kids - may consider “free” music to be a simple necessity for their entertainment budget - and one that they will find, one way or another.
What’s interesting, and important, about these alternative causes of major label sales declines are that for the most part they suggest realistic solutions - and that these solutions uniformly have to do with acknowledging consumer expectations and desires and responding to them by offering consumers more variety, more options and better values.
But in the next installment we’ll be returning to the alternate universe inhabited by U2’s Mr. McGuinness and take another look at the solutions he’s pinning his hopes on. You’ll find they sum up quite a bit differently. And then hopefully to soon wrap this up with a little coda about whither the Record Industry, and whether I care, and then back to reviews, hurrah!
It’s important that I acknowledge the intelligent input I received from this question I asked in Ask Metafilter - a great resource (and Metafilter has a neat area for members to post their musical creations also - well worth the $5 membership fee).
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Sympathy for the Devil: the plight of the record industry, Part 2
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
2: Thieves, Burglars and Pirates
Before I get into analyzing U2’s manager’s version of the “what went wrong with the record industry” party line, let me clarify some personal stances. I’m not a proponent of file sharing as a method of mass transgression of copyrights. I never used Napster. I’ve never used KaZaA, eMule, Limewire, BitTorrent or any of the many other file sharing networks or applications to access copyrighted content, and I’ve never held an account for any of the networks that require one. I am a proponent of strong and durable copyrights (though not of the duration Disney recently purchased from Congress), I believe in paying copyright owners for their intellectual property (though I am happiest when most of the money goes to the actual creator). To this extent I’d guess I’m substantially in agreement with U2’s Mr. McGuinness.
On the other hand, like the majority of people I have a history of copyright transgression. A clear memory of my history with recorded music is buying a box of Radio Shack 90 minute tapes and recording a couple dozen records from my family’s LP collection the summer before my freshman year of college. I’ve made and received my share of mix tapes (and these days, CDs). I’ve gotten a few copies of CDs burned by friends, although it’s something I don’t ask for and don’t encourage. I’ve downloaded a few oddments that are technically infringing though not copies of commercially available materials, like Danger Mouse’s Grey Album remix, and I’ve downloaded a few (literally, a few) things, via various unorthodox tools, that by my own standards I really should have purchased.
I’m not a saint or a purist about copyright. I’m a realist and occasional opportunist. I bring it up not to proselytize my position or justify my transgressions but to stress that while I’m about to disagree strenuously with most of what Mr. McGuinness has to say about problems in the record industry, my objections are not based on a moral disagreement of what and artist or even that less empathy-inviting organism, the copyright owner, deserves. What I object to is stupid ideas that won’t fix anything and which would cause harm disproportionate to the problem they purport to solve anyway.
Revisit with me a moment the purported motive of Mr. McGuinness’ speech:
What I’m trying do here today is identify a course of action that will benefit all: artists, labels, writers and publishers.
In the first part of this essay I invited examination of this sentiment for what might be missing from it. Of course, the omitted party is the listener, the consumer, the fan.
Is this an inadvertent slip or a rare piece of unvarnished honesty? Have things come to the point that the industry insider sees the listener, the sole and absolute foundation of every iota of their fortunes, as nothing except a problem to be controlled?
I’d argue that whether it is conscious or not, leaving the listener out of the benefits equation is no mistake. One thing that’s clear in this speech is that the party line position is obsessed with the idea of stealing. Mr. McGuinness invokes the idea of stealing (and related concepts like thievery, burglary, crime and of course piracy) sixteen times in this speech. This is critical for two reasons. The first is that it is indicative of how thoroughly the listener experience, listener desires and listener rights have been left out of the equation. Mr. McGuinness does not pay even the smallest lip service to the value consumer of recorded music, or to the solution of the industry’s woes as having anything to do with satisfying the consumer’s desires or expectations. The closest he comes to addressing the fan as anything other than a presumed thief is his argument that people are enjoying live concerts more than ever, as based on the “generally unresisted” trend towards increasing ticket costs.
The second thing this identification of listener as thief illustrates is that it has become fundamentally unquestioned dogma within the record industry that the decline of major-label CD sales has been caused exclusively by illegal file sharing. There is not a hint of alternative or complimentary causes for the declining fortunes of the CD in this speech. And indeed this sentiment has been largely picked up and echoed by most mainstream media coverage. For the most part, the only thing that varies in this assessment are opinions on how the industry let the situation get so out of hand, and what can be done to rectify it now.
Leading the charge on the “what now” front is another commonplace component of the party line: the belief that there is, at least theoretically, a technical fix for the problem of file sharing. The speech invokes the SDMI as an example of what went wrong with the industry’s response to the problem of file sharing in the 90s. It is telling that the only culprit identified for the failure of this initiative is the US government’s “overzealous” protection of the public from “cartel-like behaviour.”
The latest take on DRM isn’t the only technical fix McGuinness proposes. A somewhat new facet of his thesis is the preposterous claim that ISPs could easily detect and disrupt file sharing traffic of unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials if they wished to do so. The examples McGuinness provides in the full speech reveal a depth of ignorance about what the internet is - indeed, what it means to “share files” - that is all too common in the record industry - and that might amuse if it was not the foundation of so much ill-founded and harmful ideas about changing government policy.
Which leads us to the third predictable leg on this tripod of industry-standard arguments. First, the dominant role of the consumer is intrinsically as a thief. Second, that the offending activity - file sharing - could be disrupted by a technical fix. And finally, that if the gatekeepers of this nefarious filesharing paradise, the ISPs, cannot be convinced to voluntarily deny the thieving consumer access to their stolen files via technological intervention, they should be compelled to do so by law.
These are all pretty much versions of arguments that the industry have been pushing for a decade - the relatively new component is the focus on ISPs and digital hardware manufacturers as the primary targets of ire and the perceived source of remedy.
It’s not really a surprising change in position. The industry’s only extant “solution” to the issue of file sharing - civil suits against individuals - have been an extravagant failure, and indeed statements made during the recently publicized first such suit to go to trial suggest that it has been a costly failure.
The shift of focus to players with deep pockets is inevitable. McGuinness takes what is coming to be a common tactic, to lay the blame of the situation at the anarchistic leanings of the silicon valley crowd - their “hippy values.” Of course, the same sort of pejorative assessment of communistic values has been slapped on anyone who has suggested that the increasing accessibility of information is an inevitable outcome of the information age, and that demanding that the technology makers and gatekeepers of the information infrastructure fundamentally alter their business to cater to the content crowd is rather the tail wagging the dog.
And really that part of it is just smoke, anyway, a bit of rhetorical flourish. The real meat of the argument is summed up in one question: “who’s got our money?” It is a sentiment that is mirrored in the idea that music industry “assets are exploited by the buyers” of MP3 players (the legal use of format-shifted tracks from legally owned CDs is ignored as usual), or the response to the existence of premium cost internet access for “heavy downloaders” with the rhetorical question “isn’t that our money?”
While it’s impossible to say for sure, I suspect that this line of reasoning will characterize the next act in this sad farce of the record industry’s decline. In the next chapter, I’ll examine these arguments about the causes and remedies of the record industry’s sad estate, and whether they’re likely to find much relief out of the pockets of Apple and Comcast.
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
2: Thieves, Burglars and Pirates
Before I get into analyzing U2’s manager’s version of the “what went wrong with the record industry” party line, let me clarify some personal stances. I’m not a proponent of file sharing as a method of mass transgression of copyrights. I never used Napster. I’ve never used KaZaA, eMule, Limewire, BitTorrent or any of the many other file sharing networks or applications to access copyrighted content, and I’ve never held an account for any of the networks that require one. I am a proponent of strong and durable copyrights (though not of the duration Disney recently purchased from Congress), I believe in paying copyright owners for their intellectual property (though I am happiest when most of the money goes to the actual creator). To this extent I’d guess I’m substantially in agreement with U2’s Mr. McGuinness.
On the other hand, like the majority of people I have a history of copyright transgression. A clear memory of my history with recorded music is buying a box of Radio Shack 90 minute tapes and recording a couple dozen records from my family’s LP collection the summer before my freshman year of college. I’ve made and received my share of mix tapes (and these days, CDs). I’ve gotten a few copies of CDs burned by friends, although it’s something I don’t ask for and don’t encourage. I’ve downloaded a few oddments that are technically infringing though not copies of commercially available materials, like Danger Mouse’s Grey Album remix, and I’ve downloaded a few (literally, a few) things, via various unorthodox tools, that by my own standards I really should have purchased.
I’m not a saint or a purist about copyright. I’m a realist and occasional opportunist. I bring it up not to proselytize my position or justify my transgressions but to stress that while I’m about to disagree strenuously with most of what Mr. McGuinness has to say about problems in the record industry, my objections are not based on a moral disagreement of what and artist or even that less empathy-inviting organism, the copyright owner, deserves. What I object to is stupid ideas that won’t fix anything and which would cause harm disproportionate to the problem they purport to solve anyway.
Revisit with me a moment the purported motive of Mr. McGuinness’ speech:
What I’m trying do here today is identify a course of action that will benefit all: artists, labels, writers and publishers.
In the first part of this essay I invited examination of this sentiment for what might be missing from it. Of course, the omitted party is the listener, the consumer, the fan.
Is this an inadvertent slip or a rare piece of unvarnished honesty? Have things come to the point that the industry insider sees the listener, the sole and absolute foundation of every iota of their fortunes, as nothing except a problem to be controlled?
I’d argue that whether it is conscious or not, leaving the listener out of the benefits equation is no mistake. One thing that’s clear in this speech is that the party line position is obsessed with the idea of stealing. Mr. McGuinness invokes the idea of stealing (and related concepts like thievery, burglary, crime and of course piracy) sixteen times in this speech. This is critical for two reasons. The first is that it is indicative of how thoroughly the listener experience, listener desires and listener rights have been left out of the equation. Mr. McGuinness does not pay even the smallest lip service to the value consumer of recorded music, or to the solution of the industry’s woes as having anything to do with satisfying the consumer’s desires or expectations. The closest he comes to addressing the fan as anything other than a presumed thief is his argument that people are enjoying live concerts more than ever, as based on the “generally unresisted” trend towards increasing ticket costs.
The second thing this identification of listener as thief illustrates is that it has become fundamentally unquestioned dogma within the record industry that the decline of major-label CD sales has been caused exclusively by illegal file sharing. There is not a hint of alternative or complimentary causes for the declining fortunes of the CD in this speech. And indeed this sentiment has been largely picked up and echoed by most mainstream media coverage. For the most part, the only thing that varies in this assessment are opinions on how the industry let the situation get so out of hand, and what can be done to rectify it now.
Leading the charge on the “what now” front is another commonplace component of the party line: the belief that there is, at least theoretically, a technical fix for the problem of file sharing. The speech invokes the SDMI as an example of what went wrong with the industry’s response to the problem of file sharing in the 90s. It is telling that the only culprit identified for the failure of this initiative is the US government’s “overzealous” protection of the public from “cartel-like behaviour.”
The latest take on DRM isn’t the only technical fix McGuinness proposes. A somewhat new facet of his thesis is the preposterous claim that ISPs could easily detect and disrupt file sharing traffic of unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials if they wished to do so. The examples McGuinness provides in the full speech reveal a depth of ignorance about what the internet is - indeed, what it means to “share files” - that is all too common in the record industry - and that might amuse if it was not the foundation of so much ill-founded and harmful ideas about changing government policy.
Which leads us to the third predictable leg on this tripod of industry-standard arguments. First, the dominant role of the consumer is intrinsically as a thief. Second, that the offending activity - file sharing - could be disrupted by a technical fix. And finally, that if the gatekeepers of this nefarious filesharing paradise, the ISPs, cannot be convinced to voluntarily deny the thieving consumer access to their stolen files via technological intervention, they should be compelled to do so by law.
These are all pretty much versions of arguments that the industry have been pushing for a decade - the relatively new component is the focus on ISPs and digital hardware manufacturers as the primary targets of ire and the perceived source of remedy.
It’s not really a surprising change in position. The industry’s only extant “solution” to the issue of file sharing - civil suits against individuals - have been an extravagant failure, and indeed statements made during the recently publicized first such suit to go to trial suggest that it has been a costly failure.
The shift of focus to players with deep pockets is inevitable. McGuinness takes what is coming to be a common tactic, to lay the blame of the situation at the anarchistic leanings of the silicon valley crowd - their “hippy values.” Of course, the same sort of pejorative assessment of communistic values has been slapped on anyone who has suggested that the increasing accessibility of information is an inevitable outcome of the information age, and that demanding that the technology makers and gatekeepers of the information infrastructure fundamentally alter their business to cater to the content crowd is rather the tail wagging the dog.
And really that part of it is just smoke, anyway, a bit of rhetorical flourish. The real meat of the argument is summed up in one question: “who’s got our money?” It is a sentiment that is mirrored in the idea that music industry “assets are exploited by the buyers” of MP3 players (the legal use of format-shifted tracks from legally owned CDs is ignored as usual), or the response to the existence of premium cost internet access for “heavy downloaders” with the rhetorical question “isn’t that our money?”
While it’s impossible to say for sure, I suspect that this line of reasoning will characterize the next act in this sad farce of the record industry’s decline. In the next chapter, I’ll examine these arguments about the causes and remedies of the record industry’s sad estate, and whether they’re likely to find much relief out of the pockets of Apple and Comcast.
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Sympathy for the Devil: the plight of the record industry, Part 1
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
Prologue
Recently I went looking for commentary about the decline of the record industry. Before anything else, I’ll say that what I’m defining as the “record industry” for these purposes is the Big Four: EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner. My motivation is that there is a tale being told about what’s supposedly gone wrong in the business of music. Indeed it has been repeated so frequently that it is virtually uncontested in the mainstream media. And that’s a shame, because if the story isn’t critically examined the opportunities to learn from it is lost. Lots of other people, many better equipped than me, are examining this story. But the party line is so overwhelmingly over-represented in the media that there is always room for another perspective.
1: U2, Brutus?
What got me thinking about all this again was the transcript of this speech, proudly displayed on U2’s official website [Note - it's since dropped off their front page, and U2 does not seem particularly interested in people accessing older website content, so I've switched this link to a hopefully more stable location], by their longtime manager Paul McGuinness, regarding the woes of the music industry. Mr. McGuinness states his goal in the speech:
What I’m trying do here today is identify a course of action that will benefit all: artists, labels, writers and publishers.
Take a moment to reread that statement and see if you can spot the stake holder that is arguably missing from this assessment, because this omission contains the thesis of my later arguments.
It is very worthwhile to read this entire speech as a representative sample of how an industry insider with every reason to consider himself an expert on the topic understands the declining fortunes of, in particular, the CD business for the 4 major labels. But I’ll highlight what I see as the major points and trends in this analysis. Here’s a excerpted rendition of his speech.
Record companies... allowed an entire collection of digital industries to arise that enabled the consumer to steal with impunity the very recorded music that had previously been paid for...
The SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative)... and similar attempts... have partly been thwarted by competition rules. The US government has sometimes been overzealous in protecting the public from cartel-like behaviour...
...Though I may be critical of the ways in which the digital space has been faced by the industry I am also genuinely sympathetic and moved by the human fallout... it is terrible that a direct effect of piracy and thievery has been the destruction of so many careers...
...There is one effective thing the majors could do... I quote from Josh Tyrangiel in Time Magazine: -“The smartest thing would be for the majors to collaborate on the creation of the ultimate digital-distribution hub...’
There is technology now, that the worldwide industry could adopt, which enables content owners to track every legitimate digital download transaction... This system... is called SIMRAN... I should disclose that I’m one of their investors...
Sadly, the recent innovative Radiohead release... seems to have backfired to some extent. It seems that the majority of downloads were through illegal P2P download services like BitTorrent and LimeWire... Even Radiohead’s honesty box principle showed that if not constrained, the customer will steal music...
It’s interesting to look at the character of the individuals who built the industries that resulted from the arrival of the microprocessor. Most of them came out of the so-called counterculture on the west coast of America. Their values were hippy values...
I’ve met a lot of today’s heroes of Silicon Valley. Most of them don’t really think of themselves as makers of burglary kits... I call on them today to start... taking responsibility for protecting the music they are distributing and... by commercial agreements, sharing their enormous revenues with the content makers and owners...
For ISPs in general, the days of prevaricating over their responsibilities for helping protect music must end... [W]hen the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the EU Electronic Commerce Directive were drawn up, legislators were concerned to offer safe harbours restricting the responsibilities of ISPs who acted as a “mere conduit”... [A]s it turned, the “Safe Harbour” concept was really a Thieves’ Charter... It is time for ISPs to be real partners. The safe harbours of the 1990s are no longer appropriate, and if ISPs do not cooperate voluntarily there will need to be legislation to require them to cooperate.
...The truth is that whatever business model you are building, you cannot compete with billions of illegal files free on P2P networks.
ISPs could implement a policy of disconnection in very quick time. Filtering is also feasible... There are many other examples that prove the ability of ISPs to switch off selectively activity they have a problem with... We must shame [ISPs] into wanting to help us. Their snouts have been at our trough feeding free for too long.
There’s a huge commercial partnership opportunity there as well. For me, the business model of the future is one where music is bundled into an ISP or other subscription service and the revenues are shared between the distributor and the content owners.
I believe this is realistic; the last few years have shown clear proof of the power of ISPs and cable companies to bundle packages of content and get more money out of their subscribers. In the UK, most ISPs offer different tiers of services, with a higher monthly fee for heavy downloaders. Why are there ‘heavy’ downloaders? Isn’t that our money?
Universal – U2’s label - recently struck a deal with Microsoft that sees it receive a cut of the revenues generated by sales of the Zune MP3 player... [it] follows from the U2/Apple deal, the principle that the hardware makers should share with the content owners whose assets are exploited by the buyers of their machines. The record companies should never again allow industries to arise that make billions off their content without looking for a piece of that business.
So, to conclude – Who’s got our money and what can we do?
I suggest we shift the focus of moral pressure away from the individual P2P file thief and on to the multi billion dollar industries that benefit from these countless tiny crimes... the message to government is this: ISP responsibility is not a luxury for possible contemplation in the future. It is a necessity for implementation TODAY – by legislation if voluntary means fail.
All emphasis added.
Oh my, I seem to have consumed the bulk of my first chapter restating Mr. McGuinness’ copyright-protected content. But I’m sure he wouldn’t mind... After all, I’m helping to spread his good word about the salvation of the record industry, right?
The next chapter will be an examination of whether the party line gives a complete picture of the plight of the record industry.
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Prologue
Recently I went looking for commentary about the decline of the record industry. Before anything else, I’ll say that what I’m defining as the “record industry” for these purposes is the Big Four: EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner. My motivation is that there is a tale being told about what’s supposedly gone wrong in the business of music. Indeed it has been repeated so frequently that it is virtually uncontested in the mainstream media. And that’s a shame, because if the story isn’t critically examined the opportunities to learn from it is lost. Lots of other people, many better equipped than me, are examining this story. But the party line is so overwhelmingly over-represented in the media that there is always room for another perspective.
1: U2, Brutus?
What got me thinking about all this again was the transcript of this speech, proudly displayed on U2’s official website [Note - it's since dropped off their front page, and U2 does not seem particularly interested in people accessing older website content, so I've switched this link to a hopefully more stable location], by their longtime manager Paul McGuinness, regarding the woes of the music industry. Mr. McGuinness states his goal in the speech:
What I’m trying do here today is identify a course of action that will benefit all: artists, labels, writers and publishers.
Take a moment to reread that statement and see if you can spot the stake holder that is arguably missing from this assessment, because this omission contains the thesis of my later arguments.
It is very worthwhile to read this entire speech as a representative sample of how an industry insider with every reason to consider himself an expert on the topic understands the declining fortunes of, in particular, the CD business for the 4 major labels. But I’ll highlight what I see as the major points and trends in this analysis. Here’s a excerpted rendition of his speech.
Record companies... allowed an entire collection of digital industries to arise that enabled the consumer to steal with impunity the very recorded music that had previously been paid for...
The SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative)... and similar attempts... have partly been thwarted by competition rules. The US government has sometimes been overzealous in protecting the public from cartel-like behaviour...
...Though I may be critical of the ways in which the digital space has been faced by the industry I am also genuinely sympathetic and moved by the human fallout... it is terrible that a direct effect of piracy and thievery has been the destruction of so many careers...
...There is one effective thing the majors could do... I quote from Josh Tyrangiel in Time Magazine: -“The smartest thing would be for the majors to collaborate on the creation of the ultimate digital-distribution hub...’
There is technology now, that the worldwide industry could adopt, which enables content owners to track every legitimate digital download transaction... This system... is called SIMRAN... I should disclose that I’m one of their investors...
Sadly, the recent innovative Radiohead release... seems to have backfired to some extent. It seems that the majority of downloads were through illegal P2P download services like BitTorrent and LimeWire... Even Radiohead’s honesty box principle showed that if not constrained, the customer will steal music...
It’s interesting to look at the character of the individuals who built the industries that resulted from the arrival of the microprocessor. Most of them came out of the so-called counterculture on the west coast of America. Their values were hippy values...
I’ve met a lot of today’s heroes of Silicon Valley. Most of them don’t really think of themselves as makers of burglary kits... I call on them today to start... taking responsibility for protecting the music they are distributing and... by commercial agreements, sharing their enormous revenues with the content makers and owners...
For ISPs in general, the days of prevaricating over their responsibilities for helping protect music must end... [W]hen the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the EU Electronic Commerce Directive were drawn up, legislators were concerned to offer safe harbours restricting the responsibilities of ISPs who acted as a “mere conduit”... [A]s it turned, the “Safe Harbour” concept was really a Thieves’ Charter... It is time for ISPs to be real partners. The safe harbours of the 1990s are no longer appropriate, and if ISPs do not cooperate voluntarily there will need to be legislation to require them to cooperate.
...The truth is that whatever business model you are building, you cannot compete with billions of illegal files free on P2P networks.
ISPs could implement a policy of disconnection in very quick time. Filtering is also feasible... There are many other examples that prove the ability of ISPs to switch off selectively activity they have a problem with... We must shame [ISPs] into wanting to help us. Their snouts have been at our trough feeding free for too long.
There’s a huge commercial partnership opportunity there as well. For me, the business model of the future is one where music is bundled into an ISP or other subscription service and the revenues are shared between the distributor and the content owners.
I believe this is realistic; the last few years have shown clear proof of the power of ISPs and cable companies to bundle packages of content and get more money out of their subscribers. In the UK, most ISPs offer different tiers of services, with a higher monthly fee for heavy downloaders. Why are there ‘heavy’ downloaders? Isn’t that our money?
Universal – U2’s label - recently struck a deal with Microsoft that sees it receive a cut of the revenues generated by sales of the Zune MP3 player... [it] follows from the U2/Apple deal, the principle that the hardware makers should share with the content owners whose assets are exploited by the buyers of their machines. The record companies should never again allow industries to arise that make billions off their content without looking for a piece of that business.
So, to conclude – Who’s got our money and what can we do?
I suggest we shift the focus of moral pressure away from the individual P2P file thief and on to the multi billion dollar industries that benefit from these countless tiny crimes... the message to government is this: ISP responsibility is not a luxury for possible contemplation in the future. It is a necessity for implementation TODAY – by legislation if voluntary means fail.
All emphasis added.
Oh my, I seem to have consumed the bulk of my first chapter restating Mr. McGuinness’ copyright-protected content. But I’m sure he wouldn’t mind... After all, I’m helping to spread his good word about the salvation of the record industry, right?
The next chapter will be an examination of whether the party line gives a complete picture of the plight of the record industry.
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Thursday, January 24, 2008
If it was about my album it would be a self-link
Only the Very Greatest Hits, a collection of my favorite recordings of my original music from the last 10 years, is available for sale as a digital download. You can preview the whole album here, and here's a sample:
I've been working on this collection for several months, and arranged for it to be published online soon after I finished writing the 2,000th Song of the Day.
In April of 1998 (I'll be announcing a 10 year anniversary event shortly) I began writing the first sequence of the song of the day project (A.K.A. Songs of Days volumes 1-7) which persisted for 1,001 consecutive lyrics. I took a break of about 5 years. On Friday, January 25 2008 I wrote "Beautiful," the 999th song of the current sequence (titled A Song A Day second iteration: The Book of Hours - volumes 1-6 and counting...).
Comics artist Dave Sim wrote: The cliché (which isn't a cliché, it's the truth) is that you have two thousand bad pages in you and until you draw them, you won't start producing good pages.
I realize it's just a number but even so I've been looking forward to it. In celebration of having written my 2,000th bad song, I'm publishing a album of what I feel is my best recorded solo work. The album has 29 tracks of 160 kbps MP3s and comes with artwork and lyrics, and costs $1.35 for an 85-odd MB digital download. That is $1.35 total cost transacted through PayPal. PayPal will accept payments via credit cards from non-PayPal members. If you're determined to have the album but don't want to use PayPal or a credit card, email me and we'll come to an arrangement.
Although it shows many hallmarks of amateur production, I am pleased with and proud of this album, and I feel that it's an excellent value. If you're feeling starved for text you can read a long essay about issues of pricing here.
Buy it here.
The first 5,000 purchasers will receive, absolutely free of charge, a copy via email of the lyrics for the 2,000th song of the day projects song and free access to unlimited copies of it, once it gets recorded, someday. Everyone else will have to wait 1,764 songs (1,764 days plus however many I skip) for it to be published normally in the Fairly Secret Song of the Day blog.
Write a review of your Digital Commerce Experience at Spirit of Salt Dot Com. It could appear on the internet!
Donations Suck! Thank you for supporting the Phree Musique blog, the Fairly Secret Song of the Day blog, and of course the Jonathan Mark Hamlow 2nd Lifetime Memorial Text Museum by purchasing this album.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
I've been working on this collection for several months, and arranged for it to be published online soon after I finished writing the 2,000th Song of the Day.
In April of 1998 (I'll be announcing a 10 year anniversary event shortly) I began writing the first sequence of the song of the day project (A.K.A. Songs of Days volumes 1-7) which persisted for 1,001 consecutive lyrics. I took a break of about 5 years. On Friday, January 25 2008 I wrote "Beautiful," the 999th song of the current sequence (titled A Song A Day second iteration: The Book of Hours - volumes 1-6 and counting...).
Comics artist Dave Sim wrote: The cliché (which isn't a cliché, it's the truth) is that you have two thousand bad pages in you and until you draw them, you won't start producing good pages.
I realize it's just a number but even so I've been looking forward to it. In celebration of having written my 2,000th bad song, I'm publishing a album of what I feel is my best recorded solo work. The album has 29 tracks of 160 kbps MP3s and comes with artwork and lyrics, and costs $1.35 for an 85-odd MB digital download. That is $1.35 total cost transacted through PayPal. PayPal will accept payments via credit cards from non-PayPal members. If you're determined to have the album but don't want to use PayPal or a credit card, email me and we'll come to an arrangement.
Although it shows many hallmarks of amateur production, I am pleased with and proud of this album, and I feel that it's an excellent value. If you're feeling starved for text you can read a long essay about issues of pricing here.
Buy it here.
The first 5,000 purchasers will receive, absolutely free of charge, a copy via email of the lyrics for the 2,000th song of the day projects song and free access to unlimited copies of it, once it gets recorded, someday. Everyone else will have to wait 1,764 songs (1,764 days plus however many I skip) for it to be published normally in the Fairly Secret Song of the Day blog.
Write a review of your Digital Commerce Experience at Spirit of Salt Dot Com. It could appear on the internet!
Donations Suck! Thank you for supporting the Phree Musique blog, the Fairly Secret Song of the Day blog, and of course the Jonathan Mark Hamlow 2nd Lifetime Memorial Text Museum by purchasing this album.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
On Pricing
The cost of my new digital album is $1.35. The simple explanation of how I arrive at this figure is that it nets me about a dollar. If a nobody like me somehow got a record deal it would be a reasonably thrilling to realize a $1 per album royalty. Thus do I explain what would otherwise be an excessively low price by almost any going standard.
For this price you get 29 160 kbps MP3s, a digital cover image and a rich text format file of album notes and lyrics. The album is 47.3 minutes long and the whole package is 86.4 MB of data.
My feelings about pricing for digital downloads of music are complicated but easily summarized: I think they are uniformly far too expensive.
Consider a minute music pricing in the conventional model. Let’s say I head over to the Billboard charts, find the number one album de jour (As I Am by Alicia Keys), and then head over to Sam Goody for the purchase price. It doesn’t get more conventional than that, Right? The price when I engaged in this exercise (well, I didn’t actually purchase it, but you know) is $16.99 for a 14 track album with a duration of about 50 minutes. That works out to $1.21 per track.
As far as I’m concerned $0.99 a track at iTunes is pretty much the same price. The accepted standard for a digital downloads, which can be placed unreservedly at the feet of Apple, falls squarely inside the conventional model. I’ve got a problem with this because I think a number of factors should mitigate the download costs as compared to CDs:
1. Lossy compression (encoding tracks in a lower-fidelity format like MP3) should reduce the price of the digital information
2. Lack of physical media, which serves as a data backup, and is still necessary when a computer or MP3 player isn’t available (e.g. I have to burn copies of my digital downloads on media I pay for to use them in my car), and lack of physical packaging (lyrics and artwork) should reduce the price of the digital information.
These issues are basically built into the digital download package - artwork and lyrics are seldom included and MP3s are the standard format. For these issues alone I think Apple’s $0.99 standard is too high. I also think a number of contextual issues should affect the price of a digital download. This is getting into territory where my opinions are more idiosyncratic.
3. Cultural prevalence and lack of currency. I think newer and rarer materials command a natural premium. They’re fresh, they haven’t been played out in the various public arenas. They tend more to represent an individual’s immediate work and there tend to be production costs that must still be covered. Conversely, the older and more common something is, the less willing I am to pay a premium cost. On a very basic level of practical value, I am comparing the price of the download to the price of a used CD, a comparison more suited to its availability and ubiquity.
This gets into my general rejection of the idea of uniform pricing. It’s another one I blame on Apple and while it might have made sense in the very restricted context of launching the iTunes Music Store it makes no sense in the evolving real marketplace of digital music downloads. If I went into Cheapo Records and found them charging the same price for a used copy of Dark Side of the Moon as for a brand new copy of the latest from, say, Tinariwen (I just picked the first thing of Pitchfork’s top fifty albums of the year list), I'd turn around and walk right out again. Of course I allowed the Apple iTunes Music Store to do just that thing to me not six months ago, but that was a gift card and prices just didn't seem that important.
In any case, I know the analogy doesn’t hold up. For one thing, I’ll download Tinariwen off of eMusic for less than 3 dollars, but that’s a whole other conversation. We’re talking conceptual spaces here, okay? Whatever, anyway:
4. The rare factor is mitigated by music quality, sound quality, and degree of independence of production and distribution. Music and sound quality are easy: less quality should mean less cost. Relatively, of course, all of these value judgments are relative. I’ve paid for plenty of low-fi, home recorded, even somewhat less than professionally played music. Let’s not be coy: if you purchase my greatest “hits” album, you will be purchasing an album of songs that are low-fi, home recorded, and yes, somewhat less than professionally played. I would be loathe to pay full retail CD cost for them, no matter how much I love some of the misbehavers.
Independence, though, can work both ways. On one hand I understand that independents have to support themselves, they do not have an organization to carry them or exploit economies of scale on their behalves. On the other hand, there are less mouths to feed between you and the artist, less overhead. On the other hand, it is almost certainly more work for the artist. I respect and want to support the artist who is starving one of the big four of their corporate graft, of money spent to people who are both stupid and, excuse me, assholes. But I expect them to cut me in on at least a small consideration of that action.
All of these things added up together translate to, you pay $1.35 for my album as opposed to, say, $7.99 for higher quality MP3s of Yellowcard’s Live from Las Vegas at the Palms, which is the first thing I see when I open a window onto the iTunes Music Store. Which is, like, what the fuck, Apple. Yellowcard? I’ve never even heard of it.
But it’s on iTunes Plus meaning I’m going to end up purchasing the goddamn thing, sight unseen (dear iTMS and eMusic, your live previews suck, love Jon). To review it, it’s like, you know, symmetry.
Anyway.
That’s like a saving of $6.64, two cents less than the Discount of the Beast! And may I thank you most kindly for your consideration.
By Sunday, I review my experience purchasing the Yellowjackets ahem, sorry, I mean Yellowcard from the iTunes Music Store iTunes Plus. Let me just drop a slight spoiler here: it’s not going to be a positive review. I’m gonna keep an eye on those Yellowjackets guys, though. I probably need a little jazz-fusion in my collection.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
For this price you get 29 160 kbps MP3s, a digital cover image and a rich text format file of album notes and lyrics. The album is 47.3 minutes long and the whole package is 86.4 MB of data.
My feelings about pricing for digital downloads of music are complicated but easily summarized: I think they are uniformly far too expensive.
Consider a minute music pricing in the conventional model. Let’s say I head over to the Billboard charts, find the number one album de jour (As I Am by Alicia Keys), and then head over to Sam Goody for the purchase price. It doesn’t get more conventional than that, Right? The price when I engaged in this exercise (well, I didn’t actually purchase it, but you know) is $16.99 for a 14 track album with a duration of about 50 minutes. That works out to $1.21 per track.
As far as I’m concerned $0.99 a track at iTunes is pretty much the same price. The accepted standard for a digital downloads, which can be placed unreservedly at the feet of Apple, falls squarely inside the conventional model. I’ve got a problem with this because I think a number of factors should mitigate the download costs as compared to CDs:
1. Lossy compression (encoding tracks in a lower-fidelity format like MP3) should reduce the price of the digital information
2. Lack of physical media, which serves as a data backup, and is still necessary when a computer or MP3 player isn’t available (e.g. I have to burn copies of my digital downloads on media I pay for to use them in my car), and lack of physical packaging (lyrics and artwork) should reduce the price of the digital information.
These issues are basically built into the digital download package - artwork and lyrics are seldom included and MP3s are the standard format. For these issues alone I think Apple’s $0.99 standard is too high. I also think a number of contextual issues should affect the price of a digital download. This is getting into territory where my opinions are more idiosyncratic.
3. Cultural prevalence and lack of currency. I think newer and rarer materials command a natural premium. They’re fresh, they haven’t been played out in the various public arenas. They tend more to represent an individual’s immediate work and there tend to be production costs that must still be covered. Conversely, the older and more common something is, the less willing I am to pay a premium cost. On a very basic level of practical value, I am comparing the price of the download to the price of a used CD, a comparison more suited to its availability and ubiquity.
This gets into my general rejection of the idea of uniform pricing. It’s another one I blame on Apple and while it might have made sense in the very restricted context of launching the iTunes Music Store it makes no sense in the evolving real marketplace of digital music downloads. If I went into Cheapo Records and found them charging the same price for a used copy of Dark Side of the Moon as for a brand new copy of the latest from, say, Tinariwen (I just picked the first thing of Pitchfork’s top fifty albums of the year list), I'd turn around and walk right out again. Of course I allowed the Apple iTunes Music Store to do just that thing to me not six months ago, but that was a gift card and prices just didn't seem that important.
In any case, I know the analogy doesn’t hold up. For one thing, I’ll download Tinariwen off of eMusic for less than 3 dollars, but that’s a whole other conversation. We’re talking conceptual spaces here, okay? Whatever, anyway:
4. The rare factor is mitigated by music quality, sound quality, and degree of independence of production and distribution. Music and sound quality are easy: less quality should mean less cost. Relatively, of course, all of these value judgments are relative. I’ve paid for plenty of low-fi, home recorded, even somewhat less than professionally played music. Let’s not be coy: if you purchase my greatest “hits” album, you will be purchasing an album of songs that are low-fi, home recorded, and yes, somewhat less than professionally played. I would be loathe to pay full retail CD cost for them, no matter how much I love some of the misbehavers.
Independence, though, can work both ways. On one hand I understand that independents have to support themselves, they do not have an organization to carry them or exploit economies of scale on their behalves. On the other hand, there are less mouths to feed between you and the artist, less overhead. On the other hand, it is almost certainly more work for the artist. I respect and want to support the artist who is starving one of the big four of their corporate graft, of money spent to people who are both stupid and, excuse me, assholes. But I expect them to cut me in on at least a small consideration of that action.
All of these things added up together translate to, you pay $1.35 for my album as opposed to, say, $7.99 for higher quality MP3s of Yellowcard’s Live from Las Vegas at the Palms, which is the first thing I see when I open a window onto the iTunes Music Store. Which is, like, what the fuck, Apple. Yellowcard? I’ve never even heard of it.
But it’s on iTunes Plus meaning I’m going to end up purchasing the goddamn thing, sight unseen (dear iTMS and eMusic, your live previews suck, love Jon). To review it, it’s like, you know, symmetry.
Anyway.
That’s like a saving of $6.64, two cents less than the Discount of the Beast! And may I thank you most kindly for your consideration.
By Sunday, I review my experience purchasing the Yellowjackets ahem, sorry, I mean Yellowcard from the iTunes Music Store iTunes Plus. Let me just drop a slight spoiler here: it’s not going to be a positive review. I’m gonna keep an eye on those Yellowjackets guys, though. I probably need a little jazz-fusion in my collection.
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Friday, January 18, 2008
Stupid linear progression of time.
My best intentions founder under the weight of commitment and necessity, overwhelming my schedule so thoroughly that I can't even find the time to buy cheap music. Soon, soon I say! In the meantime, some extracurricular reading - another link roundup in what is surely shaping up to be an unprecedented year for the transformation of commercial music distribution.
Radiohead Revisited: Critics didn't give In Rainbows, the object Radiohead's alternative distribution experiment, a whole lotta love - but while the band was initially cagey with download and sales figures (inspiring a crop of disputed rumors), figures cited in a Wired interview between frontman Thom Yorke and longtime genre-buster David Byrne confirmed that the online album was an unqualified commercial success.
An interesting though less discussed fact is the apparent success of the ultra-atomic alternative to the digital download, the costly discbox with its vinyl 12" 45s (about as old school as it gets) and enhanced CD. While sales figures are again ambiguous, there's little doubt it's in the vicinity of 100,000 - at around $80 a pop, certainly a money-maker. The ironic footnote to the story is that while demonstrating the potential of pure digital distribution Radiohead simultaneously confirmed that the opulent physical package the CD era left behind still has a solid place in the business of music (another Wired article presents an interesting take on the ongoing impact of vinyl). Is the conventional industry really taking note of either lesson?
(Well, EMI is certainly trying, although with disappointingly dickhead timing to coincide with the independent release of the conventional CD of In Rainbows, and attended by total exclusion of the band from the release, and whiny statements to the press about the break with Radiohead being the sole fault of the band's unfair demands in their final negotiations. The thing is, there might be plenty of truth in EMI's side of things. But the devil is in the details, which combine to give the impression that the message EMI wants to put out is, we're certainly willing to try new things if it looks like there's some money in it, but screwing over artists is still Job Number 1! Even the ones that get it don't get it).
Byrne's article on the variety of distribution options available to artists today makes a nice companion to the Yorke interview. While there is nothing particularly earth-shattering in the facts presented (particularly to anyone who has been following these developments in the business of music), it is a nicely organized and presented package of these facts - and Byrne brings both a breadth of experience and a viewpoint that is relatively free of rhetoric and politics that make the article a must-read for this topic.
Moving on: I have mixed feelings about Ian Rogers. He doesn't miss an opportunity to insert the Yahoo! brand into the discussion (to be fair, it sort of is his job), and I think he's overselling the "context as product" message. But he's got interesting things to say, and he's not afraid to repeatedly tell the Industry that they've still got their heads up their asses. He's refined his pitch in this presentation to the Aspen Live Conference, and it's worth a read.
Finally: and then there were none. Second to last DRM-free holdout Warner Brothers announced near the end of the year that they would be allowing the sale of MP3s through Amazon's digital store. And finally, Sony BMG succumbed. The spectacle of the once and future king of failed proprietary formats, stinging from the interminable rootkit CD scandal and the humiliating failure of the once-mighty Walkman brand in the MP3 player market, dragging its ass in dead last in the move to abandon the technical and marketing fiasco of DRM, honestly invites speculation on whether being the biggest douchebag in the room is actually a branding strategy.
You have to keep this in perspective: Napster the First demonstrated an overwhelming demand for a simple, straightforward product, the MP3, almost a decade ago. It is easy to fall for the industry fallacy, which is that all Napster was about was pricing, or the lack thereof. And of course getting things free was attractive, and important to the meteoric rise of Napster. But it wasn't the whole story. People who understood also wanted MP3s because they made a digital music collection manageable by a ordinary home computer possible. Apple understood this and made a pile of money out of the fact with iTunes and iPods. People like me were dreaming a decade ago of a world where there was no need for anything to ever be allowed to fall out of print, and where reasonably priced singles were no longer the sole domain of flavor-of-the-month pop hits. And it was hard to believe it could take more than a couple of years. As I say, it's been almost ten and we're STILL not there. There is nothing impressive or laudable about the record industry's grudging stumble into this marketplace. Anyone will grasp at straws when they're sliding into a ditch.
Enough of that. An elephant in the bedroom that doesn't seem to be getting much discussion is the fact that the majority of tracks available on at Apples iTunes Music Store are still saddled with DRM. I mean, I sure as hell won't buy another FairTunes-encumbered track. If it's not on Amazon yet I'll wait it out. Many are saying the rectification of the entire iTMS catalog is inevitable - and it probably is - but the fact that Amazon has been allowed to scoop Apple so badly on DRM-free major-label downloads has to mean something, and I'm honestly confused there isn't more speculation about it. It is frankly an embarrassment to Apple, particularly in the context of Steve Job's famous essay. Could it really be a general industry move to punish Apple for past hubris? That seems like a Pyrrhic bit of revenge at best. Is it about Apple's notorious resistance to variable pricing? In that case the shame is on Apple, particularly when Amazon is generally undercutting their prices. Or did Amazon quietly cut some sweetheart profit-sharing deals in exchange for at least temporary exclusion of Apple from the lion's share of the DRM free market? If you hear anything, let me know.
Okay, jeeze I'm a windbag. More reviews soon, I promise. I'm thinking about trying out the MySpace/Snocap thing. Anybody got any artist recommendations? Just kidding, I know nobody's reading this. Oh, I laugh through the tears. Back soon!
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
Radiohead Revisited: Critics didn't give In Rainbows, the object Radiohead's alternative distribution experiment, a whole lotta love - but while the band was initially cagey with download and sales figures (inspiring a crop of disputed rumors), figures cited in a Wired interview between frontman Thom Yorke and longtime genre-buster David Byrne confirmed that the online album was an unqualified commercial success.
An interesting though less discussed fact is the apparent success of the ultra-atomic alternative to the digital download, the costly discbox with its vinyl 12" 45s (about as old school as it gets) and enhanced CD. While sales figures are again ambiguous, there's little doubt it's in the vicinity of 100,000 - at around $80 a pop, certainly a money-maker. The ironic footnote to the story is that while demonstrating the potential of pure digital distribution Radiohead simultaneously confirmed that the opulent physical package the CD era left behind still has a solid place in the business of music (another Wired article presents an interesting take on the ongoing impact of vinyl). Is the conventional industry really taking note of either lesson?
(Well, EMI is certainly trying, although with disappointingly dickhead timing to coincide with the independent release of the conventional CD of In Rainbows, and attended by total exclusion of the band from the release, and whiny statements to the press about the break with Radiohead being the sole fault of the band's unfair demands in their final negotiations. The thing is, there might be plenty of truth in EMI's side of things. But the devil is in the details, which combine to give the impression that the message EMI wants to put out is, we're certainly willing to try new things if it looks like there's some money in it, but screwing over artists is still Job Number 1! Even the ones that get it don't get it).
Byrne's article on the variety of distribution options available to artists today makes a nice companion to the Yorke interview. While there is nothing particularly earth-shattering in the facts presented (particularly to anyone who has been following these developments in the business of music), it is a nicely organized and presented package of these facts - and Byrne brings both a breadth of experience and a viewpoint that is relatively free of rhetoric and politics that make the article a must-read for this topic.
Moving on: I have mixed feelings about Ian Rogers. He doesn't miss an opportunity to insert the Yahoo! brand into the discussion (to be fair, it sort of is his job), and I think he's overselling the "context as product" message. But he's got interesting things to say, and he's not afraid to repeatedly tell the Industry that they've still got their heads up their asses. He's refined his pitch in this presentation to the Aspen Live Conference, and it's worth a read.
Finally: and then there were none. Second to last DRM-free holdout Warner Brothers announced near the end of the year that they would be allowing the sale of MP3s through Amazon's digital store. And finally, Sony BMG succumbed. The spectacle of the once and future king of failed proprietary formats, stinging from the interminable rootkit CD scandal and the humiliating failure of the once-mighty Walkman brand in the MP3 player market, dragging its ass in dead last in the move to abandon the technical and marketing fiasco of DRM, honestly invites speculation on whether being the biggest douchebag in the room is actually a branding strategy.
You have to keep this in perspective: Napster the First demonstrated an overwhelming demand for a simple, straightforward product, the MP3, almost a decade ago. It is easy to fall for the industry fallacy, which is that all Napster was about was pricing, or the lack thereof. And of course getting things free was attractive, and important to the meteoric rise of Napster. But it wasn't the whole story. People who understood also wanted MP3s because they made a digital music collection manageable by a ordinary home computer possible. Apple understood this and made a pile of money out of the fact with iTunes and iPods. People like me were dreaming a decade ago of a world where there was no need for anything to ever be allowed to fall out of print, and where reasonably priced singles were no longer the sole domain of flavor-of-the-month pop hits. And it was hard to believe it could take more than a couple of years. As I say, it's been almost ten and we're STILL not there. There is nothing impressive or laudable about the record industry's grudging stumble into this marketplace. Anyone will grasp at straws when they're sliding into a ditch.
Enough of that. An elephant in the bedroom that doesn't seem to be getting much discussion is the fact that the majority of tracks available on at Apples iTunes Music Store are still saddled with DRM. I mean, I sure as hell won't buy another FairTunes-encumbered track. If it's not on Amazon yet I'll wait it out. Many are saying the rectification of the entire iTMS catalog is inevitable - and it probably is - but the fact that Amazon has been allowed to scoop Apple so badly on DRM-free major-label downloads has to mean something, and I'm honestly confused there isn't more speculation about it. It is frankly an embarrassment to Apple, particularly in the context of Steve Job's famous essay. Could it really be a general industry move to punish Apple for past hubris? That seems like a Pyrrhic bit of revenge at best. Is it about Apple's notorious resistance to variable pricing? In that case the shame is on Apple, particularly when Amazon is generally undercutting their prices. Or did Amazon quietly cut some sweetheart profit-sharing deals in exchange for at least temporary exclusion of Apple from the lion's share of the DRM free market? If you hear anything, let me know.
Okay, jeeze I'm a windbag. More reviews soon, I promise. I'm thinking about trying out the MySpace/Snocap thing. Anybody got any artist recommendations? Just kidding, I know nobody's reading this. Oh, I laugh through the tears. Back soon!
See previous reviews and submit sites for review at that Index Page
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