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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.
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.
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!
Well of course no one knows how any of these business models would do! Nobody has tried them yet. Until they're tried (i. e. until the RIAA's monopoly is broken to the degree that any of this could be done without it getting sued out of existence), it's impossible to determine how they would work.
Furthermore, what's wrong with a musician working another job?
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'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.
Setting aside the incredibly dumb anachronism in that statement...
People like Bach were paid by patrons (in Bach's case, a Lutheran Church).
The patronage system fell away as the middle class grew, and artists discovered there was more money to be made by entertaining the masses than trying to anticipate the tastes of some snobby duke. Mass distribution of music (first as piano sheet music and player-piano rolls, later as recordings) lead to people copying it without paying for it, which lead to demands for more strident protection. For as long as there has been "popular" music, this has been an issue.
Why can't we be like that today? We need more open-source bands, using a GNU-style contract:
Then form one. Am I the only one getting tired of all these open-source "advocates" who keep talking about what everybody else needs to do for them.
I thought that the whole point of the Open Source software movement was supposed to be so people with ambition could contribute to the improvement of the code and that this would lead to better software. Some people seem to think the whole point of the GNU public license is to provide them with more free stuff.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
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.
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It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
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.
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!
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?
Please don't cut the RIAA any slack. You're arguing like they represent musicians. You're wrong.
Eating lots of poison may be unhealthy but that doesn't mean the goal is to figure out a MODERATE, REASONABLE amount of poison to eat...
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?