Grex Music Conference

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Grex Music Item 43: The Twenty-Ninth "Napsterization" Item [linked]
Entered by krj on Fri Jun 29 21:08:45 UTC 2007:

The usual canned introduction:

The original Napster corporation has been destroyed, its trademarks
now owned by an authorized music retailer which does not use
peer-to-peer technology.  But the Napster paradigm, in which computers
and networks give ordinary people unprecedented control over content,
continues.

This is another quarterly installment in a series of weblog and
discussion about the deconstruction of the music industry and other
copyright industries, with side forays into "intellectual property,
freedom of expression, electronic media, corporate control, and
evolving technology," as polygon once phrased it.

Several years of back items are easily found in the music2, music3
and music4 conferences, covering discussions all the way back to 
the initial popularity of the MP3 format.   These items are linked 
between the current Agora conference and the Music conference.

68 responses total.

#1 of 68 by krj on Sun Jul 8 16:17:34 2007:

Prince has thrown the UK retail industry into a screaming fit 
by making a deal with the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday
(aka Daily Mail) to give away free copies of his new album 
with an upcoming edition of the Sunday paper.   That should work
out to over two million free copies.   In response, Prince's 
record label, Columbia (part of Sony BMG) says it will drop plans
to sell the album in the UK.
 
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2114557,00.html
http://idolator.com/tunes/free-stuff-for-everyone,-except-sony-bmg/prince-i
s-causing-his-label-to-break-out-in-a-black-sweat-273554.php

Several spinoff comments:

1)  I'm surprised Prince has the rights to do this, but as nothing
    I have read suggests this giveaway deal is a violation of contract,
    I guess he does.  
 
2)  There are echoes here of Prince's tangle with his previous label
    Warner, when he decided to change his name to <squiggle>.
    Prince's problem that time was that he wanted to release more 
    albums, faster, than the label was willing to put out.

3)  Also echoed here is the reaction of the UK music industry to the 
    BBC's free downloads of all nine Beethoven symphonies.  The music
    biz succeeded in applying so much pressure to the BBC that they 
    promised never again to offer similar downloads.
 
4)  The UK music business continues to complain loudly about 
    "covermounts."  Nearly every British music magazine comes with
    a free CD, usually a sampler, glued to the cover, and the 
    music biz complains that all these freebies "devalue music"
    in the eyes of the customer.   (One wag somewhere suggested 
    that the underlying problem was that AOL had convinced 
    consumers what the true value of a CD was...)  But overall,
    the UK music business has been in much better shape than the 
    USA business, although in 2006 and 2007 the large UK retail
    shops are starting to get into trouble or close.

#2 of 68 by slynne on Sun Jul 8 21:47:52 2007:

I have no sympathy for the whining of the large recording companies.
Tough titties for them that technology changed and they couldnt have a
monopoly on music anymore.

#3 of 68 by nharmon on Sun Jul 8 23:02:33 2007:

Wow, I completely agree with S. Lynne. For literally tens of thousands
of years music was a service, played directly for an audience. The
recording industry, through crude recording technology, has been able to
turn music into a commodity industry. And for a century or so they have
enjoyed a lot of protection from competition beginning initially with
the economic barriers of entry involving the cost of recording
technology, and now later the immense lobbying power of the recording
industry.

But with the internet and the ability of people to transfer large
amounts of data to each other, music as a commodity is starting to be
worth less and less. It's almost like a return to how things were, with
music returning to it's service origins. Digitization has made the
audience worldwide.

#4 of 68 by unicorn on Mon Jul 9 13:45:16 2007:

I have to disagree with you about music returning to its service
origins if you're implying that musicians should make all their
money from public performance and all recorded music should be free,
or are you saying that musicians should no longer be able to make
a living from their art, and should only be allowed to do it as a
sideline, making their living from some other line of work?

The thing is, historically, before the days of recorded music,
musicians could make their living from performing music because if
you wanted to hear music, you had no choice but to pay someone to play
it for you.  You either hired musicians, if you were wealthy, or you
payed to go to a concert where musicians were playing.

Today, that is no longer true.  You can play prerecorded music in the
privacy of your own home or even take it with you wherever you go,
and not have to pay anyone to play it for you.  So why shouldn't the
musicians get paid for producing that music for you.  Some people will
still go to the concerts when they can, but many won't because they
don't have to.  Technically, you could consider the recorded music as
a time-shifted performance, allowing you to listen to the performers
at your convenience, rather than when the performers happen to be
performing in your area.

I've heard some people argue that recorded music should be used to
advertise a band's or solo artist's performances, to draw people to
their concerts, but in reality, it works the other way around.  A
performance works to advertise the recorded music.  Most musicians,
in fact would starve if they had to depend on performances to make
their living.  Much of the time, they may not even make enough gas
money to drive to the venue where they're performing, so they set up
a merchandise table to sell CD's and t-shirts, to try to make enough
money to work as a musician (and most still have to work another job
to make ends meet).

That's not to say I'm in support of the recording industry.  On the
contrary, the recording industry is well-known for screwing musicians
for their own gain.  It has been the recording industry that has made
most of the money off of recorded music, and the musicians have made
very little from their efforts, and musicians often find themselves
losing control over their own music because they unknowingly sign
contracts that take away all of their rights.

I'm all for eliminating the recording industry from the equation
completely, and allowing the musicians to make most of the money.
Today, a musician or band can produce a professional-sounding product
in a home studio for a lot less money than it would take in some fancy
record company's studio.  I think that people who download music from
the internet should be willing to support the artists who produce that
music, without having to support the evil recording industry at the
same time.  I don't think it's a matter of whether or not downloading
music is stealing.  I think it's more a question of whether or not the
people who have put the time and energy and talent into creating a
recording should be compensated for their efforts and abilities.

#5 of 68 by slynne on Mon Jul 9 16:07:16 2007:

I think that we are just seeing a shift in how things have been done. 
In the recent past, there were a very small percentage of musicians who 
became large stars and made tons of money and most musicians didnt earn 
much at all. Now, because of technology, those musicians who are not 
stars and who never would have gotten a recording contract (because of 
luck and not because of lack of talent) are getting more exposure. But 
because those sorts of people havent been able to earn a living from 
their music in the past, it is more of a hobby to them. So they use the 
technology to get recordings of their songs to more people than ever 
before but there are so many of them willing to share their music for 
free that it changes the market dynamics quite a lot.

#6 of 68 by spin on Tue Jul 10 20:49:54 2007: