Slashdot Mirror
Where Music Will Come From
em.a18 writes "There is a good article in the NYTimes about how we use music and how it changes after Napster. The article even suggests some good business models. Nicely done!"
Yeah you need a free registration to read it, but it's a good piece. I like
the quote 'With digitization, music went from being a noun, to a verb, once again. '
... when you can just go here?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
I was disappointed by the list of business models. There were no back of the envelope calculations to suggest whether a musician could earn his living, or whether he would have to keep his day job.
The story, no registration required.
You can all find this yourselves by going to this page and looking for the same headline. They have all of the NYT articles without any registration required.
you should try Windows XP, it has high cohesion and doesn't look like the Frankenstein of operating systems.
Where Music Will Be Coming From By KEVIN KELLY echnology is changing music. But then again, it always has. The invention of the piano 300 years ago centered Western music on the keyboard. Electricity's arrival in the late 19th century enabled the duplication of performances and, later, the amplification of instruments. With digitization, the pace of upheaval has further accelerated. Digital file-sharing technologies -- Napster and its offspring -- are now undermining the established economics of music. And everything we know about digital technologies suggests that Napster is only the beginning. There is no music made today that has not been shaped by the fact of recording and duplication. In fact, the ability to copy music has been deeply disruptive ever since the invention of the gramophone. When John D. Smoot, an engineer for the European company Odeon, carted primitive recording equipment to the Indonesian archipelago in 1904 to record the gamelan orchestras, local musicians were perplexed. Why copy a performance? The popular local tunes that circulated in their villages had a half-life of a few weeks. Why would anyone want to listen to a stale rendition of an obsolete piece when it was so easy to get fresh music? As phonographs spread throughout the world, they had a surprising effect: folk tunes, which had always been malleable, changing with each performer and in each performance, were transformed by the advent of recording into fixed songs that could be endlessly and exactly repeated. Music became shorter, more melodic and more precise. Early equipment could make recordings that contained no more than four and a half minutes, so musicians truncated old works to fit and created new music abbreviated to adapt to the phonograph. Because the first sound recordings were of unamplified music, recording emphasized the loud sounds of singers and de-emphasized quiet instrumentals. The musicologist Timothy Day notes that once pianists began recording they tried, for the first time, to ''distinguish carefully between every quaver and semiquaver -- eighth note and sixteenth note -- throughout the piece.'' Musicians played the way technology listened. When the legendary recordist Frederick Gaisberg arrived in Calcutta in 1902, only two decades after the phonograph was invented, he found that Indian musicians were already learning to imitate recorded music and lamented that there was ''no traditional music left to record.'' As the technologies of reproduction bloomed in the last century, consumerism boomed. What consumers consumed -- whether in the form of a book, a CD or a can of Coke -- were exact copies. The ability to make copies in mind-boggling quantities, ceaselessly and perfectly, was the chief ingredient of mass culture. Music rapidly adapted to the culture of the copy. Reproductions were made exact, while copies were multiplied vigorously. Music lived in its constant reproduction. he grand upset that music is now experiencing -- the transformation that Napster signaled -- is the shift from analog copies to digital copies. The industrial age was driven by analog copies; analog copies are perfect and cheap. The information age is driven by digital copies; digital copies are perfect, fluid and free. Free is hard to ignore. It propels duplication at a scale that would previously have been unbelievable. In only 10 months, 71million copies of the music-sharing software Morpheus were downloaded. Of course, it's not just music that is being copied freely. It is text, pictures, movies, entire Web sites. In this new online world, anything that can be copied will be copied, free. But the moment something becomes free and ubiquitous, its position in the economic equation is suddenly inverted. When nighttime electrical lighting was new, it was the poor who burned common candles. When electricity became easily accessible and practically free, candles at dinner became a sign of luxury. In this new supersaturated online universe of infinite free digital duplication, the axis of value has flipped. In the industrial age, copies often were more valuable than the original. (Who wanted the ''original'' prototype refrigerator that the one in your kitchen was based on?) Most people wanted a perfect working clone. The more common the clone, the more desirable, since it would then come with a brand name respected by others and a network of service and repair outlets. But now, in a brave new world of abundant and free copies, the order has inverted. Copies are so ubiquitous, so cheap (free, in fact) that the only things truly valuable are those which cannot be copied. What kinds of things can't be copied? Well, for instance: trust, immediacy, personalization. There is no way to download these qualities from existing copies or to install them from a friend's CD. So while you can score a copy free of charge, if you want something authenticated, or immediately, or personalized, you'll have to pay. In the domain of the plentifully free, music will do the only thing it can do: charge for things that can't be copied easily. A friend of a friend may eventually pass on to you the concert recording of a band you like, but if you pay, the band itself will e-mail it to you seconds after the performance. Sure, you can find a copy of that hit dance track, but if you want the mix approved by the legendary D.J., then you'll want to pay for it. Anyone can grab a free copy of Beethoven's Ninth, but if you want it customized for the audio parameters of your room or car, you'll pay for it. You may have downloaded that Cuban-Chinese rock band from the Morpheus site without paying, but the only way to get all that cool meta-information about each track, which lets you search for chords and lyrics, is to establish a relationship with the band by paying. The quality least plentiful in a world of rampant free copies is attention. Each year more than 30,000 new music titles are released (or rereleased) into a very cluttered head space of new movies, new TV shows, new books, new games, new Web sites. No matter what your musical appetite, there are not enough hours in a lifetime to listen to but a tiny fraction of the global supply. People will pay simply to have someone edit the music and recommend and present selected material to them in an easy and fun manner. That is why producers, labels and the related ecology of reviewers, catalogers and guides will continue to make a living: they counter our natural lack of attention for the 10 million albums we can expect to see in another 50 years. In the end, an awful lot of music will be sold in the territory of the free because it will be easier to buy music you really like than to find it for free. Free is overrated as a destiny. It is only the second phase of the three stages of copydom. The first phase -- perfection -- is experienced in both analog and digital. Perfect duplication made the modern world and modern music. The second stage is freeness. Costless duplication made Napster possible and a music revolution thinkable. Yet it is in the third level of digital copy-ness that the real revolution lies. This third power is liquidity, and it will take music beyond Napster. Digital copies are not only perfect and free, they are also fluid. Once music is digitized it becomes a liquid that can be morphed and migrated and flexed and linked. You can filter it, bend it, archive it, rearrange it, remix it, mess with it. And you can do this to music that you write, or music that you listen to, or music that you borrow. At first glance it seems audiences were drawn to online music because of the power of the free, but in reality the rush to online music came from digitized sound's ever-expanding power of liquidity. Once music could swirl around one's life unencumbered, the millions of people who downloaded peer-to-peer file-sharing software suddenly and simultaneously imagined a thousand ways to conjure with music's liquidity. It wasn't only that it was free; it was all the things you could do with it. Once music is digitized, new behaviors emerge. With liquid music you have the power to reorder the sequence of tunes on an album, or among albums. To surgically morph a sound until it is suitable for a new use. To precisely extract from someone else's music a sample of notes to use oneself. To X-ray the guts of music and outline its structure, and then alter it. To substitute new lyrics. To rearrange a piece so that its parts yield a different voice. To re-engineer a piece so that it sounds better on a car woofer. To meld and marry music together into hybrid breeds. To shorten a piece, or to draw it out so that it takes twice as long to play. With digitization, music went from being a noun, to a verb, once again. If this third power of the digital copy were to play out in full, the world would be full of people messing around with sound and music much as they dabble in taking snapshots and shaping Web pages. The typical skepticism toward a scenario of ubiquitous creation and recreation of music is that it is always easier to read than to write, to listen than to play, to see than to make. That is true. Yet 10 years ago, anyone claiming that ordinary people would flock to expensive computers to take time from watching TV in order to create three billion or more Web pages -- well, that person would have been laughed out of the room as idealistic, utopian. People just aren't that creative or willing to take time to create, went the argument. Yet, against all odds, three billion Web pages exist. The growth of the Web is probably the largest creative spell that civilization has witnessed. Music could experience a similarly exuberant, irrational flowering of the amateur spirit. Part of the reason people have been inspired to create text, graphics and action in the digital realm has been the arrival of new tools. Fans of music are already shuffling playlists, remixing tracks, sampling sounds, laying music with automatic drums and other instruments. They are already making music in the way that a camera makes an image -- by starting with what is there and adding a unique view to it. Just as the introduction of the Brownie camera changed photography from an expert's art to a ubiquitous public expression, with the right tools in hand it is not a very long hop from now to a time when everyone makes music in a small, amateur way. uch of the friction about Napster is cast as a question about the future of music. But no matter what happens, the world of the future will have lots of music, listened to by lots of people. The question is not about the future of music but about the future of musicians. The role of the professional musician is in flux. But again, it has always been so. The rules for making a living making music have been remade over and over, from the first drumbeat. Until the 20th century, musicians in Western societies were generally held in contempt, their status approximating that of a vagabond. Even the most successful musicians were mistrusted. Recording technology redeemed the professional musician. The machinery of recording and duplication steadily elevated the role of musicians during this century until many of them now have reached celebrity status and riches. This was a status only a handful of musicians could have dreamed of a few hundred years ago. Mozart never had it so good. The arrival of perfect, free and liquid copies of music means that new economic models of making music will be forced upon musicians. Will the model of the future be to give away copies in order to sell out a performance? Or to rapidly issue new work from the studio faster than it can spread online? Or to release music in such wonderful packaging that it is cheaper to buy it than to copy it? The probable answer: all of the above and more. If there is any lesson that should be taken from the online world, it is that options multiply. I am willing to bet that within the next 10 years a young band will come along that will be primarily and generously supported by a commercial sponsor. The band will write and play whatever music it feels like, but it will grant first option to the sponsor to use the sponsor's materials in commercials. The sponsor gets cool, hip music, and the band gets its stuff heard by millions, and anything the company doesn't use is the company's to pass out, free of charge. Creating music is hard work. Creating music that is widely appreciated and constantly in demand is harder still. It may seem ludicrous to suggest to a working musician that in this new online world, music is becoming a commodity that is traded, cocreated and coproduced by a networked audience. How can an unskilled population create something that will be appreciated by many? The partial answer is that most of us won't. It will still be a rare person who can write and play music that everyone swoons over. Those hit musicians will have their own economics. But most music, like most photography, needn't appeal to everyone. Most photographs taken in the world are taken by amateurs, and the images are of interest only to themselves or their families. Music does not have to be widely popular to be desired. The future of music is unknown. But whatever it is, it will be swayed, as usual, by technology. Carver Mead, a computer-chip pioneer, advises us to ''listen to the technology'' to see where it is headed. If we listen to the technology of music, we might hear these possibilities: Songs are cheap; what's expensive are the indexable, searchable, official lyrics. On auction sites, music lovers buy and sell active playlists, which arrange hundreds of songs in creative sequences. The lists are templates that reorder songs on your own disc. You subscribe to a private record label whose agents troll the bars, filtering out the garbage, and send you the best underground music based on your own preferences. The most popular band in the world produces only very good ''jingles,'' just as some of the best directors today produce only very good commercials. The catalog of all musical titles makes more money than any of the record companies. A generator box breeds background music tailored to your personal tastes; the music is supplied by third-party companies that buy the original songs from the artists. Because you like to remix dance tunes, you buy the versions of songs that are remix-ready in all 24 tracks. You'll pay your favorite band to stream you its concert as it is playing it, even though you could wait and copy it at no cost later. The varieties of musical styles explode. They increase faster than we can name them, so a musical Dewey Decimal System is applied to each work to aid in categorizing it. For a small fee, the producers of your favorite musician will tweak her performance to exquisitely match the acoustics of your living room. So many amateur remixed versions of a hit tune are circulating on the Net that it's worth $5 to you to buy an authenticated official version. For bands that tour, giving away their music becomes a form of cheap advertising. The more free copies that are passed around, the more tickets they sell. Musicians with the highest status are those who have a 24-hour Net channel devoted to streaming only their music. Royalty-free stock music (like stock photography), available for any use, takes off with the invention of a great music search engine, which makes it possible to find music ''similar to this music'' in mood, tempo and sound. The best-selling item for most musicians is the ''whole package deal,'' which contains video clips, liner notes, segregated musical tracks, reviews, ads and artwork -- all stored on a well-designed artifact in limited editions. Despite the fact that with some effort you can freely download the song you think you want in a format you think will work for your system, most people choose to go to a reliable retailer online and use the retailer's wonderful search tools and expert testimonials to purchase what they want because it is simply easier and a better experience all around. In the end, the future of music is simple: more choices. As the possibilities of music expand, so do our own. Kevin Kelly is the author, most recently, of ''New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World.''
Almost every reading this is probably an open-source/GNU proponent, and if you're not, then you should be.
Why can't we be the same way with music?
Hundreds of years ago, people like Bach didn't care who played their music, and I'm sure they wouldn't care who played recordings of their music if that had been at all possible.
Why can't we be like that today? We need more open-source bands, using a GNU-style contract: "This recording is free, you can use it how you want to, but any works derived from it (re-mixes, soundtracks, etc.) must use this same contract."
I know I'd love to have (and use) a contract like that, how about others?
Very insightful article. I wrote this for MSNBC.COM.
s p? /news/720946.asp
=========
The record industry should stop blaming its customers for decreased sales. Had the industry cut a deal with Napster, it might have avoided the ungovernable chaos of decentralized peer-to-peer services now taking over the Internet, writes Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian, media scholar and author of a book on copyrights.
http://www.msnbc.com/modules/exports/ct_email.a
Siva Vaidhyanathan is the author of Copyrights and Copyrwrongs (2001) and The Anarchist in the Library (2004).
Utter nonsense.
This article on online music has these lines "In the industrial age, copies often were more valuable than the original. (Who wanted the ''original'' prototype refrigerator that the one in your kitchen was based on?) Most people wanted a perfect working clone. The more common the clone, the more desirable, since it would then come with a brand name respected by others and a network of service and repair outlets." it's better not read.
The article is patheticly written. Freeness and copyness properties of music!!!
Forget all this RIAA crap. What I'm really interested in is seeing true digital music; that is, music composed and generated by algorithms, or better yet, by artifical intelligence. Already there has been some progress made in this field. Will the musicians of tomorrow be particularly adept programmers collaborating with computers to produce a new breed of euphony? I find the prospect titillating. Not in a dirty way.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
- Never buy music. Ever. Every dollar that you pump into the
RIAA is 50 cents spent suppressing free speech on the net, and 50 cents
spent promoting the latest boy band. If you want to support an artist,
send them money directly.
- Share all of your music. Most users on today's peer-to-peer
networks take a lot, but don't want to give back to the community. This is
a selfish and rude attitude to take toward the people who save you from
having to pay for music. I even go as far as to download music I don't
even listen to, just so that I can share it with everyone else. At work, I
have access to an OC-192, and am proud to say that at any given time there
are at least 75+ clients downloading from my song library. Share, and you
will be rewarded tenfold.
- Encourage others to join the networks. Not only does this
assist the PTP networks in achieving financial solvency, but it increases
the selection of music on the networks and makes it easier on large servers
like mine. ^_^ When I worked as a PC tech a few years back, I made a point
of installing Napster on every single Windows client machine I serviced and
making it load on startup. The clients loved me for it, and I felt
great for helping the cause.
- Support the EFF. The EFF diligently defends the rights of the
average citizen to make full use of the materials in his possession.
Without the EFF on our side, large companies would have no problem
installing DRM on all of our new PCs and making it almost impossible to
share music that we have the fundamental right to listen to.
This is a good start; if anyone has any other ideas on helping the Revolution, please post them here.Cd.
Is it really so "lame" to register for a great service that you'd rather abuse it than use it?
The owls are not what they seem
P2P, Music as availible...........albeit semi-legally................
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I see a good and a bad to the computer music developments.
I was just listening to some old Smithsonian recordings at work. They are old blues, country and mountain music from the Depression-era recorders who went around with huge trunk sized machines to rcord the music of people without radios who made music on their porches.
Now, we can make music together on a virtual porch. We can sample and produce music easily, and our tastes are, perhaps, less likely to be influenced by the hit machine. Unfortunately, though, most music as of yet from the Net has been derivative..
Perhaps there is still a solitary nature to music made remotely, designed for Napster-style release only, not for performance. Musicmaking, for me, takes a real audience into account. I couldn't make music without a real crowd in mind when I make it.
Goat sex free since 2001
I'LL MUSIC YOU!
from the article:
Songs are cheap; what's expensive are the indexable, searchable, official lyrics.
There's money in serving up the lyrics for songs?!? Who the heck would pay for that, given that you presumably already had a copy of the actual song in the first place...
This one works.? /news/720946.asp
http://www.msnbc.com/modules/exports/ct_email.asp
-
Remember, very few musicians make enough money to earn a living off of selling copies of music now. It's possible that one of these new things will turn out to make playing music a good way to pay the rent, but even if none of them do, musicians won't be worse off. The people who would benefit from most of the ideas the author sets forth are listeners.
Oh, and middlemen... we'll get a whole new set of middlemen providing the catalogs, lyrics, running the live webcasts, etc, and they'll make out like bandits. One way or another, faceless corporate goons will suck up ninety percent of your music-listening dollar.
Regarding this portion of the article:
"Or to release music in such wonderful packaging that it is cheaper to buy it than to copy it?"
I still hold fond memories of Infocom's games, especially The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The whole package came with a ridiculous assortment of paraphernalia, including "peril-sensing sunglasses", a "subatomic space fleet" (which was too small to see and came in a small clear plastic bag) and, of course, "no towel".
I recently downloaded a copy of THGTTG to play using a Frotz emulator, and I must admit...it was OK, but I missed the physical objects that accompanied the game. I have to wonder what an original boxed version of the game, with all original items, would go for on e-bay.
In light of this, it does not seem unreasonable to expect that packaging tangible items with a CD could make that CD worth paying for over and above the (nonexistent) cost of downloading the songs over the Internet.
i won't even bring up a certain artist getting paid millions to - well ... not sign anymore.
In your post, the words "quality music" were linked to the Dave Matthews Band website. Huh?
Dave Matthews is a no-talent assclown. His nasal voice makes my sphincter constrict of its own accord. His fans are all a bunch of Abercrombie & Fitch-wearing preppy douchebags, and it cracks me up that they think they're better than someone who likes Britney Spears (who also stinks).
.. Is this biggest problem with reguards to Mp3 file Sharing. I live in a rural area and 56k is the fastest connection I can get (without buying a Satellite) and in Urban areas a lot of people who are online don't exploit DSL or cable (or T1) because of whatever reasons. Otherwise I (and a lot of other people) would gladly download album after album of our favorite arists (Still, I don't buy from RIAA, their actions disgust me and I sit long downloads out). In the future Peoples' bandwidth is only going to increase as uptake of faster connections increases and becomes available in more areas, so the end of RIAA's stranglehold on music is in sight.
The varieties of musical styles explode. They increase faster than we can name them, so a musical Dewey Decimal System is applied to each work to aid in categorizing it.
There are already more musical styles than we could possibly name.
For a small fee, the producers of your favorite musician will tweak her performance to exquisitely match the acoustics of your living room.
It would have to be a very small fee, as there is no reason this shouldn't be done by the playback equipment (it already is, but is still expensive).
I've seen various research projects and half-completed products for dissecting music -- finding the chords, pulling out the melodies, profiling the rhythmic structures -- but imagine if the sort of "music processor" implied by this work was as ubiquitous as vi, Emacs or Wordpad. Then we'd really see some remarkable (and remarkably awful) music variations floating around.
Then I might be willing to pay just to get someone's digital certificate of authenticity. But I'd still be looking for the best comic variations on everything, of course.
I wonder if we can't apply this to other media. Slashdot is a bit like the sea of hacks and edits the author imagined. Most of the posts suck (except for the ones we make, right?
So, I like the author's idea of charging for value-add to quality. (Charging for better quality of service, less spam ads, etc., is not the same, and merely presents a technical challenge for geeks to provide these qualities to their friends for free.)
One of the things the article says is that music, once digitized, becomes malleable (''liquid''). This isn't yet true, except in the crudest sense.
The current music formats (mp3, ogg, wma, etc.) are finished products. You can't add your own lyrics to an mp3, or do karaoke to a rip of (say) B.Spears latest.
If there was a digital format that was multi-tracked, i.e. the form in which the producer mixes music, then you'd see people take the lyrics of one tune, the bass from another, etc., and create something other. But we don't have that, and what's more, the way things are going, we probably never will.
It seems like most of the suggestions of possible business models given by the author boil down to paying attention to the cutomers and treating them like they matter. I agree with this approach. I (and surely others) would be most willing to pay for products and services that are designed to fit my specific wants/needs.
This guy fails to grasp that most of the stuff he suggests for alternative revenue can be just as free as the music itself. The instant any of these extra materials are sold they'll be passed on for free also. "Convenience" is rarely sufficient for a determined user, especially when the only slightly more difficult alternatives are free.
All the focus on recordings misses the settings where music and recordings still don't mix easily. I buy the recordings of my favorite dance bands, and I'll listen to them as background or to learn tunes, but it's the participatory setting that makes this kind of music worthwhile, and not even a DJ can produce that kind of effect at a contra dance.
That's a LOT of mp3's! Where do you find the time?
in your own home via hologram projectors :)
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Most ppl don't give a shit about the "meta" information. They don't want to remix from 24 tracks. Free is all that matters. I don't care about the other crap. I've paid for Abbey Road 5 times and I'm owed some free music.
The article makes some nice points, and a lot of them I agree with. Personally, I think they should have brought up the monetary concerns a bit more, namely the fact that studio time costs a pretty penny, as well as does the distribution process for CDs, but that's forgivable.
The main problem I see with this pseudo-utopia of free information is the copyrights. Or rather, that the artists don't own them.
Copyrights, as far as I know, seemed to originate so as to promote creative and scientific work. Namely, being able to reap the rewards of coming up with something that people would want to buy. Now with the media moguls, the only thing promoting new work is that it's usually specifically stated in the artist's contract. "Make more or we'll sue", or something along those lines.
Now as far as I know, the bands still make most of their money from concerts and going on tour (as they should). With the digital age and the prospect of infinte supply, the media companies' business models are doomed to fail.
How about this for an idea: Force the distributors to give up the copyrights and give them back to the artist. Tear up all the old contracts. Now, instead of the monopolistic practices that they're using now, they may actually have to fight one another. Come up with new ways of making money from the distribution process that doesn't involve shafting both the consumer and the artist.
I'm sure everybody would be surprized at how quickly and effeciently the companies would change their business model if they knew they had to fight with one another to get contracts. And they would have to stay competitive or the artist could just pick up and leave.
I'm sure some of you more monetarily gifted than me can figure out a way to make money without actually holding the contracts. A percentage of sales, perhaps? Or maybe the artist paying the company to provide a service? There will still be the problem of who has the last say when it comes to media exposure, but I think that's what agents are for anyway. Take that job away from the Universals as well.
An idealized notion, I'm sure, but from my understanding of the situation, that's the key problem at this point in time...
An interesting article, but parts of it really don't seem well thought out. For example, the proposed business model of "charging for things that are difficult to copy:"
In the domain of the plentifully free, music will do the only thing it can do: charge for things that can't be copied easily. A friend of a friend may eventually pass on to you the concert recording of a band you like, but if you pay, the band itself will e-mail it to you seconds after the performance.
Ignoring the fact that current technology makes this specific example infeasible. (Send 90 minutes of audio data to thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of people by email seconds after the recording is completed? No.) That said, this business model is "people will pay to get something immediately rather than getting it for free by waiting a couple of days." On a very limited scale this holds true, but it's not a scalable idea. Hardcore fans who must have recordings as soon as they're available are only a relatively small percentage of record sales.
Sure, you can find a copy of that hit dance track, but if you want the mix approved by the legendary D.J., then you'll want to pay for it.
What does "approved" mean in this context? If that specific mix is made available to the public, then it is possible for the public to share that recording. Why would one be able to find one version of the track but not another?
Anyone can grab a free copy of Beethoven's Ninth, but if you want it customized for the audio parameters of your room or car, you'll pay for it.
This too, is likely a very limited market...customized audio for your car or living room? Are you going to tell me where to place my $20 audiovox speakers for the best sound, as well? The bigger problem with this idea is that it's an extremely cost-intensive service model. You'll have to hire a lot of people who know audio and audio technology very well to produce all of those custom mixes; each one of those expensive people had better produce a lot of $10 custom mixes every single day to keep the business afloat.
You may have downloaded that Cuban-Chinese rock band from the Morpheus site without paying, but the only way to get all that cool meta-information about each track, which lets you search for chords and lyrics, is to establish a relationship with the band by paying.
This example might be referred to as "the situation that we already have." If I download MP3s of an album I don't get the lyric sheet that is included with the CD, nor any non-audio content that they might choose to put on one of those "enhanced CD jobs." I can live with that. Apparently a lot of other people can as well, which is what started this whole discussion.
As I said, this is an interesting peice, but it hasn't really been thought out. Most of the "business models" that the poster referred to amount to something like "maybe people will buy stuff if it's easier to buy it than to find it for free." This is true. This is also, I suspect, why record companies still post significant profits...if you want an entire album, it is still (for the moment) easier to go buy the CD than to find all of the tracks (ripped with reasonable sound quality) online.
Basically, the author seems to be at the same place as everyone else right now: we know that business has to change to reflect changes in technology, but we have absolutely no idea what form that change should or will take.
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
WTF is a "contra dance"? Do you fight in the jungle against Sandanistas while you're dancing?
What's the big deal about N.Y. Times Registration? Jeez, if it means so much to you, fill out some fake demographic information (oh, boy, that'll fix 'em) and get on your life!
--- When I grow up, I want to be a legislator of scientific laws.
Actually studio equipment is pretty cheap. The same issue of NYT magazine about Moby and his at home studio. He produces all his music at home.
It probably costs few thousand dollars to set up really nicely equiped studio in your basement. I have a four track recorder that cost $300 when I bought it. Today you can use a $1000 PC as a multitrack recorder.
So studio costs are not a real factor.
Distribution over the net is free - if you use P2P systems and avoid centralized servers. Let the listeners make their own CDs.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
The author mentions commercial sponsorship, but I am surprised he doesn't mention other tried and true models for allocating economic resources towards activities whose products are non-scarce. Music development could be funded by:
1) Direct grants from agencies funded by the citizenry through mandatory taxation
2) Direct grants from foundations established by individuals who happened to get a lot of dollars in their names during their lifetimes
3) Grants from nonprofits whose management aggregates contributions from millions of ordinary people.
4) Careers that have other responsibilities but also expect creative content creation as a condition of advancement. (Think college professors.)
5) Direct aggregation of micro-grants through massively parallel funding agencies with micro-voting to make decisions.
Or more likely, a combination of all of the above funding models. Except for (5) above, a variant of these is already used to produce the contents of PBS and NPR.
I guess so but what the hell does this quote mean?
I like the quote 'With digitization, music went from being a noun, to a verb, once again. '
Verb?
"I just musiced the mutherfuckers!"?
How the hell would you use it as a verb... well as a verb and not sound like a schwanz? Or is this just some cute language mangling that looks good but is devoid of meaning (ala Annie Proulx)?
What is music when you despise all sound?
This is from a fellow whose book I will be reviewing in the near future:
" 'The record industry should stop blaming its customers for decreased sales. Had the industry cut a deal with Napster, it might have avoided the ungovernable chaos of decentralized peer-to-peer services now taking over the Internet,' writes Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian, media scholar and author of a book on copyrights."
Check the story out over over here.
-- haaz.
This article missed the main problem altogether. All this extra information is going to distributed digitally as well. Many people who use Morpheus or Napster don't care enough about quality, what makes the author think they care about waiting an extra couple of weeks for the stuff to wind up on the P2P networks? What makes the author think it will take that long to even wind up on the P2P networks? Many movies have made it onto VCD long before the DVD or video is released meaning there are leaks elsewhere in the production chain that need to be addressed. This guy makes far too many assumptions without any data to back up his claims that these methods of consumer distribution will work.
I find this article mostly nonsense. Its very premise is flawed:
The industrial age was driven by analog copies; analog copies are perfect and cheap. The information age is driven by digital copies; digital copies are perfect, fluid and free.
The problem with the current distribution of "analog" copies is that they are not cheap and they are not perfect.
The crux of RIAA's problems with Napster comes from the fact that the digital copies are all perfect. No matter how many generations of copies you make each copy is as perfect as the original. Trying making analog copies and after even 4 generations you can hear obvious quality loss. The Recording industry's original purpose was that they owned the originals and could make their reproductions from that. Since digital copies are cheap (not free, computing time, equipment and bandwidth all have costs those close to zero) and perfect their is no need to "go to the source". In other words, they are no longer necessary. Anyone who has any digital copy, can do exactly what the recording companies can do, and cheaply.
Napster isn't driven by people who want to edit music. Napster is driven by people who want exact same piece of music for a price thats more reasonable than what Recording Industry provides. Making good music is still hard. Making copies is now easy. Napster not a musical revolution, it is a distribution revolution.
And is it just me, or do all the ideas at the end sound like some kind of dot-com fantasy. The same people who believed in loosing money per unit but making it up in volume.
Songs are cheap; what's expensive are the indexable, searchable, official lyrics.
Searching and indexing music is far cheaper than making music! Its also cheaper than distributing music. Indexes take up less space and bandwidth than the material itself.
On auction sites, music lovers buy and sell active playlists, which arrange hundreds of songs in creative sequences. The lists are templates that reorder songs on your own disc.
If you can copy music for free, why on earth would you not be able to do the same for playlists?
The most popular band in the world produces only very good ''jingles,'' just as some of the best directors today produce only very good commercials.
What does this have to do with anything? If you're not paying for digital music (author's premise) why would you pay for "jingles". And I don't see commercials edging out movies.
Musicians with the highest status are those who have a 24-hour Net channel devoted to streaming only their music.
If I stream 24 hours of crap and U2 streams 10 minutes of Joshua Tree, who do you think is going to get the most hits and have the most "status".
Despite the fact that with some effort you can freely download the song you think you want in a format you think will work for your system, most people choose to go to a reliable retailer online and use the retailer's wonderful search tools and expert testimonials to purchase what they want because it is simply easier and a better experience all around.
This I think is makes sense. BUT, would you pay $20 for 8 tracks? That is why are willing to sit on their 56k and search for songs. Because $20/cd is too expensive! And the retailer does not want you to use your music on any system. If you want to use it in your car and home, they want you to buy another copy! Too bad if its inconvient and expensive for you. If they have no competition they can do whatever you want.
I think the best analogy I heard about Napster is this: Imagine if we had a duplicator. So lets say we could duplicate apples from one original apple. Farmer's would be out business. Would we stamp out such technology on the basis that we are pirating apples and destroying a farmer's ability to make an income?
If farmer's took a cue from the software industry they would probably include a EULA to the effect that they are licensing use of the apple to us for eating purposes, but we would not actually own what we eat!
Put flame jacket on... Let's face facts, people. The fairest way for these moviemakers and musicians to get their royalties IS through levies on blank CD-R, CD-RW and DVD-R. I know for a fact that when the majority of people go out and buy a CD recorder, they're thinking "I need a place to put my pron, warez, music and video-CDs" NOT "I need 650Megs to make a backup of my system files because hard disks have a finite MTBF, viruses, etc.".
My computer repair consultant friend was telling me the vast majority of his clients have 50 CDRs of music, vid, pron but no backups of their data whatsoever. I'd guesstimate that 80% of all CD-Rs are used solely to store copyrighted music and vids. Come on people, the media is real cheap compared to tape streamers. Levy exemption can be given to schools, charities.
If levies aren't applied, then the industry will push for SSSCA on CPUs, RAM, Apps (maybe by implementing .NET-DRM by installing RIAA libraries that use encryption, and in Java (import java.DRM.memoryencryptedandprotectedMP3)) just off the top of my head. If you think this is *magically* not gonna happen then go talk to some lawyers and hear them drool on about "artist's property"... property this... property that, some lawyers that are my friends have been hostile to me for even suggesting that music isn't the artist's property they're not gonna change their minds on this. I think we all know that if DRM/SSSCA happens we'll be seeing performance drops by a factor of 10 on tomshardware, new computer will be slower than old ones for a long while. Plus the following 3 scenarios:
Please people, cut the RIAA/MPAA just a little slack so that they don't bring the DOJ down on our heads, especially now. If they can take down Microsoft then they can definitely slow us down or take us down as well :-( And if you think Freenet can't be blocked then talk to those Cisco people about what you can really do with layer 4 switching.
Take flame jacket off arrrrggghhhhhh Ouch! Put flame jacket back on
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
What kinds of things can't be copied? Well, for instance: trust, immediacy, personalization. There is no way to download these qualities from existing copies or to install them from a friend's CD. So while you can score a copy free of charge, if you want something authenticated, or immediately, or personalized, you'll have to pay.
Trust: think digital pgp type signature.
Immediacy: Download it now, go to shop later.
Personalized: Download only what I like, not entire album.
The point is about brand names, I'd rather have a GEC Fridge then an orignal (read prototype) from an unknown manufacturer.
for Christ's sake you didn't even provide a critque, simply quoting 3 lines, and saying the article ain't worth the effort of reading, is spazzy! It's not worth the post it's written in.
Please explain how these lines invalidate the document.
RandomAction
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four- week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
.. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun- revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down
If you're not paying for digital music (author's premise) why would you pay for "jingles".
Then try not buying any products. For every dollar of any product you buy, a few cents goes to marketing, and some percent of that to the poor fellow who wrote the jingle for the commercial.
And I don't see commercials edging out movies.
Ever gone to a movie and seen 15 minutes of trailers? Ever tried pressing fast-forward on a DVD, only to find that the publisher has blocked that action?
Will I retire or break 10K?
A review of this author's latest book can also be found at:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.09/newrules.h tml
A business model that will work even without copyright:
http://www.cyberspaceengineers.org/tda/tda.html
Live shows... even at local pubs. you can make a good living that way.
When will people learn that the internet did not come about as a method of making money. And the way it's designed it was never intended to be a money making medium.
The earliest forms of the internet were simply methods of distributing information from one area of a business (of the government) to another.
It's other aspects came out off BBS's which were *FREE* services designed to make communication and the transfer of information easier. The only cost was the cost of connecting to the board.
Why then should the information which gets placed on a medium designed for the free distribution of information then get charged for. If the NYT want's to make money off of their stories, they should go sell newspapers. (and yes I know they do)
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
[Karrade]: I find this article mostly nonsense. Its very premise is flawed:
[Kelly]: The industrial age was driven by analog copies; analog copies are perfect and cheap. The information age is driven by digital copies; digital copies are perfect, fluid and free.
[Karrade]: The problem with the current distribution of "analog" copies is that they are not cheap and they are not perfect.
Both Karrade ("not perfect") and Kelly ("perfect") are right, of course. Karrade appearantly - appearant from the context - takes perfect to mean technically identical. No hum, noise or other sounds added, no dynamics, or tonal content lost. Kelly - also appearant from the context - takes perfect to mean musically identical: no verses, tones lost, same lyrics, no variations added, same interpretation.
Kelly could have explained that - and he should have if he were writing for a technical audience, but he did not (explain) and he was not (writing for a technical audience).
The article may have been written from a viewpoint Karrade - and many other people here, hence my comment - are not used to, but the premise is of course entirely correct.
Why are some of you so ready to flush the article because you don't like some of the details? The idea of what this article saying still stands. There are other ways of making money off it. NYT had it right that having tunes alone isn't so valuable. There's too much music out there. It's hard for me to find music I like, so the idea of paying a site for the service of 'find me songs I might like' doesn't sound so bad, provided I can go download found songs on the web. $10 a month tho help me find music on Morpheus that I'd like would be worth it!
The point of making music 'liquid' was another good point that basically illustrates our desire to have our fair use act back. As an animator, I like being able to download music it and edit it in to my movies so I can make a cool vid to show me friends. I have no interest in making money from it (I can't without licesning the music anyway), but I do like the idea of having fun with my hobby.
If somebody likes a band well enough, they are willing to pay a small fee to get a hold of the lyrics, or a greater fee to get the 24-track information so they can do their own remix. It doesn't take that many people for it to be profitable. It's certainly a better idea than trying to pass laws that'll make it so digital music isn't possible.
In any case, listen to the idea instead of nitpicking the details. There's a whole new revenue model for the RIAA out there (Or any other musician) if they realize that the songs themselves may be made free. The RIAA should be ashamed of themselves for not trying to figure that out.
"Derp de derp."
Musicians. We're just ordinary people with a hobby--nothing worth making a big fuss over. I do music because I enjoy it, because it's a great feeling to watch other people enjoy the performance, and because it gives the left half of my brain a rest. I could give a care about making any money from my tunes. My daytime job is a primarily Open Source-based freelance software consultant and it pays the bills adequately. Right now, I'm working on setting up some digital recording equipment--half of it built myself with a soldering iron in one hand and a grounded heat-sink utensil in the other. When I'm done, I'll put all my work online in MIDI, OGG and FLAC formats for anyone who cares to enjoy or enhance--using a GPL style license so that it can't be commercialized too much. Just for fun I'll also put the work out on Gnutella and OpenNap servers.
This sorely-needed article is interesting and well thought. I firmly agree with the notion that the future of music will, above all, be more diverse. I also expect to see the power of labels fall dramatically. When the walls come down and markets are set free, monopolies do not survive. And when enough free music is available, there's no need for a market anyhow--just a culture. Maybe somebody will set up a site where the community can rank their favorite tunes. Who knows. Anything is possible.
Please mod the parent (now 1) up. This is the stuff that really matters. Insightfull, interesting, funny, relevant, you name it. Not wether or not to register at NYTimes(on top, 4! and long spun threads), or nit-picking details on numbers(same), or even people suggesting that Kevin Kelly does not know the difference between a noun and a verb. Djeez. RSI before there is some post ON-topic.
Mod this one up. It is your your duty, mandate, whatever.
What makes something posh is it's uniqueness - a print of a pretty picture looks good, but there were another 500,000 identical copies produced at the same time, so it's just not particularly classy. The original is a one-of-a-kind, and derives it's value from that.
/performance/ is unique - recordings are all identical. So imagine a world where the rich pay bands to perform for them, or create their own personal edition of their work, or something like that . . . The value to the person requesting the piece is it's uniqueness, and the uniqueness comes from it being a specific, unique, performance.
.
In music, any given
It's an extension of the value of live performances, and I think it's probably quite viable - perform live to get money to eat, record stuff and give it away so people get to hear about you, and top it off by selling individual performances to those who are willing to pay.
Ignore record companies and so forth - they likely won't have anything much to do with this. Big companies are great for selling commodities, but generally not so good for selling uniqueness. That type of transaction is generally more personal, if only as a way to guarantee that the result is unique.
Hmmmm . . . I'm not being very coherent . . . I need coffee . .
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
After looking at the released figures of a huge disparity between the consumer hardware and the music industry, I'm wondering why the two don't take advantage of what should be a symbiotic relationship and not an atagonistic one.
Why not make all music available for free in mp3 format in exchange for set payments from the hardware industry? The labels and artists could retain control over non-mp3 distribution and would continue to own the copyright. The amount paid by consumer electronics companies would be agreed upon industry-wide and would be more than the current amount demanded by law.
The consumer electronics division would be happy because there would be an unlimited supply of music easily available which would guarantee high sales of ipods, rios, and cd-r walkmans. The music labels will be happy because they'll have a large revenue stream independent of how their artists sell. And consumers will be ecstastic and have rather favourable opinions about all companies involved, thus leading to more sales. Strangely enough, when you treat your customers like friends instead of criminals, you usually get more sales.
Then there's additional money to be made in various value-adds. For example, Apple wants to be known as a progressive, bleeding-edge, hip company, so, in order to solidify that image, they'd pay banks like Aphex Twin to stick his new album on your iDisk account a couple of days before it hits the store. Various pointless boy bands make a similar deal with AOL or Microsoft in order to drive traffic to their online services.
And there would be new services popping up which would replace the music review sections in yr fave pop rags. I personally would pay for a site to offer recommendations and highly extensive mp3 downloads of gothic, industrial, and abstract albums.
Until the 20th century, musicians in Western societies were generally held in contempt, their status approximating that of a vagabond. Even the most successful musicians were mistrusted.
Apparently there is a slight shortage of study in music history here. Composers were widely sought by noble courts and commissioned to produce new music regularly. In Italy, star operatic leads were treated almost as well as royalty for decades, if not centuries.
A far cry from "general contempt," despite the anecdotal support.
One thing that cannot be downloaded is the experience of being at a live performance. A musician or group of musicians that can actually perform music live will always have this as an economic option.
A group of musicians that can provide a unique experience at each show don't need to sell albums.
Just concert tickets.
Eating is for wimps.
music first of all is a form of human expression and human communication. in this respect I hope the musicians of tomorrow will be the same as today - relying mostly on themselves, to express their feelings and emotions and to communicate them to us, listeners. let robots listen AI-generated music.
with MP3 downloads. This is my blessing.
You did get the dick in your ass & enjoy it.
You will see a picture of Dave Matthews.
This NY Times article appears in the 3/16 Magazine, along with an extended interview with Moby and notes on the NY music scene. What's somewhat remarkable here is that one is given a picture of where music might be going (nothing particularly new to /. readers) but with no mention of the fact that the RIAA, etc. is fighting tooth and nail to prevent all this from happening. The editors obviously made the choice to leave that aspect out!
A sample:
About 90% of those new business models involved selling copies of something (lyrics, 24 track regordings, fancy graphics, etc). Not even getting into the issue of whether very many people would actually pay for it, it's all stuff that can be copied. How can that make money when copying is free?
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
...It comes down to a "hold something back" scenario in which "the authorized seller" (the musician/label/RIAA) makes you pay for something that is most likely already obtainable somewhere else. Or the items to be sold are not worth the cost of purchasing.
.02 on the matter.
The worst part is that the RIAA passed up on every opportunity to embrace the "digital" revolution (with its lawsuits of MP3.com, Napster, KaZaa, Gnutella, et. al.). Even with the billions spent on detection, lawsuits, advertising, threats, etc. - and this sounds too much like the same strategy the US has used in the "War on Drugs" in the 80s and 90s - the situation has not really changed all that much.
Come to think about it, because of the money, political peddling, and legal setup which brought them into the position of a virtual monopoly on major distribution of music in the US, any change in the business structure would mean the end of at least one or more of their business segments.
Just my
Tenkawa
"Oh I see. You resort to brute force when you can't get something by arguing for it..." - Xellos
On a different track related to your message, there's a ~bimonthly ballroom dance in Oakland www.gaskellball.com/
with live music played by The Brassworks. As with your contra dances, the live band makes the experience much different than canned music.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Remember who's writing it. It's not your average stuffy New York Times article - so don't be surprised if the opinions and attitudes are more like what you'd expect to read in Wired :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
There's a whole music scene out there would love this. What would YA DJ pay to have a multi-tracked version of his favorites? Imagine the beat-mixing that could happen.
Get it through your thick head: music costs money. Sometimes millions of dollars to write, rehearse, record, master, and distribute A SINGLE ALBUM! How do you expect this to be paid when leeches like you share and share alike?
It's the tragedy of the commons all over again. When the music dies, and the artists go silent because they have to become tech-industry middle managers, then what will you think of your little Fight-The-Power move?
I say pay up and buy the damn albums already. The music you save may be your own.
Pay the fuck up!