MP3 Happened – Now What?
13 July 2010
Author: Matt Bentley
It wasn't the beginning of the end, just a harbinger of it. Subsequent formats such as aac, ogg later sprang up based around the same ideas, and the overall concept had already been made a reality by prior formats such as ac3 and mp2 - they just didn't do it as 'well' as MP3 did. Discard psycho-acoustically negligible information to gain a 5-12x reduction in file size - meaning a song could comfortably and easily be ported around the internet, even in the days of dial up.
It's amusing to me now that the idiotic reasons used to justify piracy now were the same idiotic reasons given to me at the outset. In 1999, a fellow
university student told me about this new thing called MP3, which, due to the aforementioned properties, would allowed us to 'stick it to the fat cats of the music industry'. Laughably, sadly, the social experiment that is file sharing has shown a picture of a harsher, not gentler world, wherein the consumer and cohorts-in-trade the anarchist, the internet freedom-fighter, and even the starry-eyed (and easily influenced) teenager, are all as duplicitous as the aforementioned 'fat cats'. Just as ignoble, exactly as precious, demanding, and greedy. If it's taught us anything useful, it would be that the individual in modern society is usually as unjustifiably unethical as the institutions they claim to hate. Leaving aside the archaic social rhetoric used by pirates to justify their means and ends, what does MP3 mean to us?
There are, or were, two music industries, when it comes to online distribution. One based on the old model, one based around the rise of the http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/11/news/economy/pluggedin_gunther.fortune/index.htm?section=money_latest 'long tail' of independent music. The old model propagates the fame and fortune of a select few, based entirely around CD/online sales and extensive advertising. The new model propagates the more sporadic income of lesser-known (usually independent) artists, while eschewing the more wholesale artists. The independent artist, whose monetary benefit previously consisted of minor concert income and CD sales to friends, with the advent of MP3, suddenly had a platform which exposed them to millions of people, if they were any good, without having to rely on the goodwill
or approval of the old model record companies. Witness then the demise of the first 'new industry' music services - MP3.com (in its first incarnation), riffage.com, a host of others. All failed to satisfactorily monetise their services in a way that satisfied both the consumer and the independent artist, and were competing in an uphill battle against another strain of social virus - MP3 piracy.
or approval of the old model record companies. Witness then the demise of the first 'new industry' music services - MP3.com (in its first incarnation), riffage.com, a host of others. All failed to satisfactorily monetise their services in a way that satisfied both the consumer and the independent artist, and were competing in an uphill battle against another strain of social virus - MP3 piracy.
The peer to peer networks (and later, torrent sites) which sprung up almost overnight to enable music-sharing on a super-massive scale, made comparisons to tape or cd piracy irrelevant. With virtually no cost in terms of storage medium (a la tape or CD), negligible waiting-time, and no necessary relationship to the person you were getting the music from, piracy was made accessible to the masses on an unprecedented scale.
It would be years before the http://www.stopmusictheft.com/ extent of thedamage became obvious to industry outsiders, but by 2001 the effect it was having on the new industry was profound. How do you compete with name-brand artists with massive marketing campaigns when they're made available for free? You can't. You might be as good as them, but people are generally pretty lazy - they won't bother trying something new for cheap instead of something they know for free - especially if they're http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10117199 not
made to feel bad for destroying the emerging cottage industries by their friends, peers, and society at large.
Even today, if you manage to 'make it' in the current climate, as soon as an independent gets some sort of recognition their tracks http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=399430282028 are pirated wholesale - usually before they even hit the online shelves. The ‘rebel’ pirate then laughs “sink or swim”, in a strange, mind-meltingly laissez-faire indictment of you not agreeing with their (disingenuous and resource-specific) communistic outlook on ownership. Most pirates are impatient and/or callous... get used to it. While some would urge the
independent artist to capitalise on the relationship with their audience - by selling t-shirts, concert tickets, pre-funding album costs or whatever - they ignore the fact that while t-shirts and everything are... just fantastic, (anyone other than a big-name artist http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10220002 generally loses money playing live BTW), the reasons people buy t-shirts in the first place is because
they like the music - not the other way around. So why aren't people comfortable paying for music and not t-shirts? Because they're not used to it any more. No other reason.
made to feel bad for destroying the emerging cottage industries by their friends, peers, and society at large.
Even today, if you manage to 'make it' in the current climate, as soon as an independent gets some sort of recognition their tracks http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=399430282028 are pirated wholesale - usually before they even hit the online shelves. The ‘rebel’ pirate then laughs “sink or swim”, in a strange, mind-meltingly laissez-faire indictment of you not agreeing with their (disingenuous and resource-specific) communistic outlook on ownership. Most pirates are impatient and/or callous... get used to it. While some would urge the
independent artist to capitalise on the relationship with their audience - by selling t-shirts, concert tickets, pre-funding album costs or whatever - they ignore the fact that while t-shirts and everything are... just fantastic, (anyone other than a big-name artist http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10220002 generally loses money playing live BTW), the reasons people buy t-shirts in the first place is because
they like the music - not the other way around. So why aren't people comfortable paying for music and not t-shirts? Because they're not used to it any more. No other reason.
So now what? Where do we go from here? Assuming of course, that we still want good music to be made, for it to be produced to a level of quality we've become accustomed to since the ‘70s, and that we don't want to have to drill through mounds of http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan09/articles/soundingoff_0109.htm mediocrity to find the few gems at the bottom of the barrel (the very few who, despite there being no future in it, still decide to put time and energy into http://www.ochremusic.com making miraculous music?
As stated there are two music industries - the old, which is supported by radio stations, tv channels, some websites and media, and the new, which is represented by… well, websites, and the strength of the material contained therein.
Here's the thing. They're both failing online. And the second reason they're failing online (piracy being the #1 reason) is by trying to co-exist on the same platforms. Let’s take it down to basic steps - if you want to find something new, different, you go to one of the new websites – http://www.amiestreet.comamiestreet, http://www.emusic.comemusic etc.
What's the problem? Those websites have all compromised their user bases by letting in material from the big four - Sony, BMG, etc - or from smaller but still powerful labels (4ad for example). Now these companies demand, with their financial leverage, that the smaller companies change their pricing models, exploit their customers, lock out markets in given countries. This kills the user base. Emusic.com had a fanatic, and media-hungry user base, all of which were willing to pay good money for good, new, music (hell, even bad new music sometimes). They managed to screw it up by http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/uponsun/2009/06/sony_ruins_emusics_indie_credi.php allowing Sony to spin their spurs. Letting in established industry artist material makes it more difficult for the user to find the less mainstream stuff they want. What does it do for the artists already on the network? It makes it more difficult to compete, and makes their material more expensive to buy. Does it draw in new customers from other networks? Nope, just ruins a perfectly good indie-music cottage industry by trying to merge with the old model. Most of the popular indie networks have gotten greedy and gone down this route - unfortunately, and to the detriment of their network, their artists, their user base, and the industry.
What's the problem? Those websites have all compromised their user bases by letting in material from the big four - Sony, BMG, etc - or from smaller but still powerful labels (4ad for example). Now these companies demand, with their financial leverage, that the smaller companies change their pricing models, exploit their customers, lock out markets in given countries. This kills the user base. Emusic.com had a fanatic, and media-hungry user base, all of which were willing to pay good money for good, new, music (hell, even bad new music sometimes). They managed to screw it up by http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/uponsun/2009/06/sony_ruins_emusics_indie_credi.php allowing Sony to spin their spurs. Letting in established industry artist material makes it more difficult for the user to find the less mainstream stuff they want. What does it do for the artists already on the network? It makes it more difficult to compete, and makes their material more expensive to buy. Does it draw in new customers from other networks? Nope, just ruins a perfectly good indie-music cottage industry by trying to merge with the old model. Most of the popular indie networks have gotten greedy and gone down this route - unfortunately, and to the detriment of their network, their artists, their user base, and the industry.
Now look at iTunes. This is a classic example of the 'old model' thinking - name- brand artists, locked into particular countries (no access outside of iTunes- specified countries), locked into specific media-devices (computers and iPods respectively), locked into a particular software app - and a pretty awful one at that - with the http://media.www.thebv.org/media/storage/paper1111/news/2009/04/03/Opinion/Itunes.Profit.Percentage.Too.High-3694902.shtml store taking 10% of all profit, the record companies or media distributor (in many cases) taking the
majority of the rest, the artist getting... http://www.atomicboysoftware.com/blog/2010/04/graphic-how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/ very little indeed. Why would any self-respecting indie artist, in their right mind, want to get their stuff onto iTunes? It doesn't compute. For one, they lose most of the money that gets made, and secondly they're competing with big names that are better-advertised
than they are, on a platform designed for those artists... So is it any surprise whatsoever, when indies find their iTunes sales - and profits - virtually non-existent?
A complementary problem for internet distribution is playback royalties and localisation. The internet is a global phenomena – http://www.billboard.com/news/michael-jackson-remains-a-global-phenomenon-1003990447.story#/news/michael-jackson-remains-a-global-phenomenon-1003990447.story?page=2 as is music - the independent artist understands and capitalises on this. It's in their favour.
