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Future of Digital Music in Doubt
mlknowle writes: "NPR has an excellent article about the growing trend of 'real' radio stations abandoning streaming media due to concerns about advertising, royalties, and (you guessed it) the DMCA. Basically, stations are finding that web streaming isn't increasing their listener base, but is increasing their costs. It's a good read (or listen.)" Meanwhile, there's a study circulating saying that people don't and won't purchase heavily restricted music online at higher prices for a less useful item. This is apparently a revelation to the music industry.
It amazes me how often "Industry Pundits" refer to the internet as "New Media," and then post dire warnings about the future of the internet when "Old Media" companies discover that their models don't fit.
So old-school internet radio stations aren't going to continue streaming their broadcasts? This is supposed to spell the end of internet radio?
People turn to internet radio to avoid the homogeneous crap that they're stuck with from "old school" radio stations. I don't want to have to choose between the latest mass-produced alternative and pop crap, I want to be able to hear, say, reggae, or ska, or funk, or whatever other type of music, out of the billions out there, that I can't hear on the rregular radio because it has become so streamlined that it must appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Let's face it, radio sucks. Internet radio, on the other hand, with its ability to stream countless different styles of music, holds a lot of promise to me.
So good riddance to the old school. Let them keep propagating their useless, mindless, repetitive crap for the masses, and lets not waste bandwidth on it.
Mp3's don't sit on your shelf. It's a bit vain, but music defines your personality, and having CDs on your shelf puts your personality on display. No one ever comes to visit and looks through your mp3 collection.
I know that people agree with this, not everyone of course, but in general, people like the ritual of listening to music. I only ever downloaded mp3s because it was free. Rituals are great but free is free. If I liked enough mp3s from an artist, I bought the CD. An mp3 was never a substitute for the Real Thing.
Take all this away from someone, and then restrict it to hell and it just won't work. Mp3s are just not as highly regarded as CDs. How many audiophiles listen to mp3s over CDs? This will fall by the wayside like eBooks for sale. Mp3s will be pirated and the consumers will save their dollars for CDs.
Even the implementation of schemes to scramble or degrade the signal for copies is ultimately futile. To paraphrase the opinion of Emmanuel Goldstein from his WBAI show, "If you can play it back, it is decoded, and you can copy it." It does not matter what level of encryption is implemented for digital music. The playback necessitates a conversion to an easily copyable form, i.e. sound waves, which can be reencoded in various ways, from placing a microphone next to the playback advice to copying the signal through some kind of analog receiver.
It is a similar situation for e-books. Once the content is viewable, it can be copied, even by retyping or photographing the resultant output. And as soon as a single "pirated" copy is made available, those with access can acquire it for free.
The size and scope of the music industry is a recent phenomenom. Only since the early 1950's were saleable recording considered a lucrative pursuit. The modern behemoths have only existed as such since the late 1960's. Now that they have lost control, we see them flailing about to prevent a loss in market-share and income that will inevitably increase with consumer broadband access and the power of the average desktop computer. After all, who would pay for "intellectual property" when they can receive an exact copy for free over a relatively anonymous file-sharing network?
Copyright and music industry pundits see this trend as an ominous sign of disrespect for music, capitalism, creativity and the hard-work of the creators. Recent trends are likely to improve the situation of the individual artists, who, with cheap, good audio software and fatpipe connections, will be able to distribute directly to consumers and bypass the whole music-industrial complex completely. For a few thousand dollars, a musician can have a decent home studio comprised of professional-level gear, VST audio software and sequencing/sampling packages such as Cubase, ProTools and Logic.
A modern musical group or musician sees something like 10-15% of their profits after all the industry-types take a cut. While some of this is due to the high cost of touring, much of it is for usage of company recording studios, garnering media attention and the production of saleable units such as CD's. Now that each musician or band can be their own cottage industry, we should see an increase in individual musicians' "paychecks" and a decrease in control by corporations. Especially once on-line cash schemes start to proliferate, the market for grassroots types to create their own individual music industries, channels and styles should become easier over time.
I see the current situation as one with vast opportunities. The current "troubles" will be followed by a huge proliferation in both the number and diversity of musical acts eager to distribute their products throughout the world, and I am all for it. If the dominance of the huge mega-bands and stars fades due to copyright-infringement and piracy and a leveling of the current "playing field," so be it. For me, these musical types are more a manifestation of the capitalist and image-oriented facets of popular culture than the expression of any genuine musical artistry or feeling.
I'll weep about the DMCA and those additional royalties in a second.
Commercial (and even non-commercial) radio in the United States has an extremely serious problem: It all sounds the same.
Where I live (Seattle) has a few stations which are worth listening to. The classical music station, The underground/rock music station, The folk music station, and of course The extremely annoying dance music station. (I'm not a big dance music fan, but if you want to feel like you're in a disco, even when you're not, it's a good thing).
The other 30 stations on the dial are utterly, completely interchangable. There's a station which plays all the hits from 1968-1972. Over and over. Just like every other big city in the US. Imagine that! There's three "alternative" music stations which alternate between K0RN, the Beastie Boys, and Shania Twain (there must be something alternative about her, but God knows what). Even NPR, which I wake up to every morning, does not sound a bit different if I listen in NYC, Atlanta, or San Francisco. They have All Things Considered, they have Car Talk on Saturdays, they have a mid-day call in program to talk about local politics. Who woulda thunk it?
So, if I want to listen to K0RN, or Stairway to Heaven (for the 6.02x10^23rd time!), or even listen to Fresh Air, I have this highly sophisticated device to do that. I call it a "radio". There is no imaginable reason why I would waste bandwidth and hassle to get a streaming media connection to do that.
For Internet Radio to be a success, you must first put out product which is different enough to provide value added. In this way, content is just like every other business.
j.
What do customers want? Ask Napster.
Fast, accurate searching
Comprehensive database of content
Fast download
Fair price -- and only pay for what you use
Compatibility with customer's player of choice
Ease of use
Napster and mp3 set the standard for these things. People often won't pay where a free alternative exists, but they will pay if an alternative is (perceived) better.
You can't have significantly less compatibility than mp3 and expect consumers to embrace it. I'm not going to open Winamp for my personal collection of ripped mp3's and some other player for "secure" music. You can't make it harder to play, where you have to have a key to open, blah, blah. What if I want to play the song somewhere other than my desktop PC? <sarcasm>Oh, it's less portable than mp3 or even a physical CD? Count me in!</sarcasm>
One day, the record companies will start developing a solution around customer needs, not their own. Until then, they'll try to spoon-feed us DivX for music. And fail.
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