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. '

Comments

Abuser galore

[October_30th]

And just why are you abusing the free NYT service this way?

Is it really so "lame" to register for a great service that you'd rather abuse it than use it?

where music came from

[perdida]

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.

Re:Who needs registration...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, music was never a verb.

Re:music generation

[Anonymous Coward]

That would suck.
If you were a musician (and no, not some loser who makes their own techno shit) you would realize music requires the creativity and spontanaety only possible with humans.

Why should there be numbers?

[mjfgates]

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.

Interesting, but not well thought out.

[jonesvery]

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.

Re:Interesting, but not well thought out.

[debrain]

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.


P2P with key selection (eg. freenet): the scalability problem is solved. The more popular a key is, the more peers have it. Fight scalability with scalability. The age of big pipes is ending. In "their" model big pipes are necessary. "Their" model is not what the article is advocating.

Some of the other points, that you have not mentioned, in the article seem very insightful, in particular the analogy to evolutionary models, and the economic caste metaphor that provides demand: when the poor had candles, the rich had light bulbs, but now it is considered posh to have candles, given that everyone has light bulbs. I cannot reproduce the idea as well as it was written, but I do believe it to have been well thought out, and worthy of publishing.

The idea of the next stage of musical-society presence: liquidity, as well, is an inventive instrument of explanation. It is a speculative article, as you have pointed out, but the weak points of the article are moot in comparison to the overall themes.

Re:Interesting, but not well thought out.

[jonesvery]

P2P with key selection (eg. freenet): the scalability problem is solved. The more popular a key is, the more peers have it. Fight scalability with scalability. The age of big pipes is ending. In "their" model big pipes are necessary. "Their" model is not what the article is advocating.

It atcually wasn't the scalability of the technology that I was referring to, but the scalability of the business idea: there is a limited number of people who will see value in having something before everyone else has it. Most will continue to wait for the two days that it takes for the concert recording to become available for free.

Some of the other points, that you have not mentioned, in the article seem very insightful, in particular the analogy to evolutionary models, and the economic caste metaphor that provides demand: when the poor had candles, the rich had light bulbs, but now it is considered posh to have candles, given that everyone has light bulbs.

I'm not entirely convinced that there's a strong parallel there. From a sociological perspective burning candles just because you can, as a sign of being cultured, it interesting; this logic seems to explain why we continue to have people obsessed with vinyl records (you're part of an elite, self-defined group).

As far as providing a basis for thinking about how record companies might do business in the future, however, the electricity/candle example is actually really depressing for big content. Think about it this way: prior to the effective implementation of electric light, candlemakers were the electric company -- you wanted light, you talked to them. Now there are quite a few candle companies left around these days, but if you compare combined revenues of power companies against those of candle makers, I think it's clear that you want to be on the electricity side of that balance sheet.

It is all interesting, though. The writer starts from a pretty commonly accepted economic principle: for any commodity, value tends to decline as availability increases. From that basis, he's arguing that content in its current form (a recording of a song, for example) has become so easily available that it no longer holds significant value.

To counteract that decline in value, he (it seems to me) is saying that producers should simply come up with some sort of content that "can't be copied" and therefore holds its economic value. That's a perfectly reasonable position, but it's basically the same approach that record companies have taken by trying to create copy-protected CDs.

I guess what strikes me is that bulleted list of "things me might see" at the end of the piece. Looking at them from the perspective of a record company, I don't see anything that hasn't already failed to make money. (Touring bands give away CDs as advertising? Exactly how much do they charge per ticket to balance that out? How long do they have to stay on the road?)

Just to repeat myself yet again, I do think that the article is interesting, but I'm just not struck by any exciting new ideas coming out of it.

Baseless argument

[stubear]

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.

premise entirely incorrect

[Karrade]

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!

Re:No numbers in business models

[jejones]

Well...in one way, nothing at all. Certainly Charles Ives had a lot to say about composers and other jobs, though one could claim he was rationalizing.

OTOH, let's suppose a musician has the proverbial "day job." Wasn't it Rubenstein who said something to the effect of "If I don't practice for a day, I notice it. If I don't practice for two days, my family notices it. If I don't practice for three days, everybody notices it"? Would Vai or Satriani or [fill in your favorite virtuoso here] have the time to keep their skills honed if they had to have a day job?

Specialization has its benefits. What would you say if we substituted "programmer" for "musician" in your question?

Re:How to do your part and support the revolution

[Chris Johnson]

Never buy music? Ever? While I sympathise with your sentiment, I do have to say what the FSCK are you doing assuming that there is no music other than that controlled by the RIAA?

Speaking as a guy who has just finished remastering CDs for MONTHS, working until past dawn on the remixing and wordlength reduction and getting an ISRC code (for which US indies are forced to go to the RIAA even though it is an INTERNATIONAL STANDARD! hello?!) and getting CD burning software (Jam) that can burn Red Book properly and redoing all the artwork and buying special archival Mitsui CDRs for the masters to be sent, I gotta say what the hell do you think you're doing?

I mean, sure, down with the man, support the EFF, in fact YES share your music, use P2P, you're talking to a guy here who has his indie distributor print "Please copy this CD for your friends" on ALL his CDs, so let's not get snippy about me being mercenary. I think not. But I'm serious: what, exactly, are you trying to accomplish by telling people to "never buy music. Ever."? Do you somehow not realise that you can support people who are NOT the RIAA? People who in some cases (not all) will even support YOUR right to share and trade copies of THEIR music online?

I like your enthusiasm, guy. I _really_ like your determination to go against the RIAA's deeply entrenched hegemony. But you know what?

If you really want to help the revolution in music, MAKE YOUR OWN.

Right now, you're so hung up on hurting the monopoly distribution channel that you don't even see that there is an underground out there- and the more people who say "Never buy music. Ever", the more that starves the underground as well as the RIAA.

I'm with O'Reilly- who, I believe, said in a conference once that if the Internet and copying truly did mean that he couldn't sell books because they were immediately copied, and if he really had no choice and either the Net or his book selling had to go, he'd go with the Net and give up trying to sell books. I'm with him on that.

But let's not jump to conclusions, please?

Re:No numbers in business models

[Abreu]

--This post is NOT to be confused with flamebait--
--I Just couldnt find a more polite way to put it, sorry--

DimitryP, do you consider yourself a guitar virtuoso?

How many hours a day do you practice?

How many hours a day does Yo Yo Ma practice the cello? or Joe Satriany the guitar? or Paganini on his day?

I think jejones had a valid point...