Embrace file-sharing, or die (part5)
V. Opportunity and the Future
One other word about the 3 billion music downloads each month: That's a lot of music. There aren't 3 billion songs. Music has become fungible. People are going through it faster than toilet paper. Never in the history of the world has there been more music in the air and never have more people listened to music. Out of this incredible desire and need for music, surely some good must come. I think more opportunity than ever is available to the musician and songwriter, and the record company too. They just have to create new ways to deal with this opportunity, and it won't be by the old rules. Janis Ian is a good example. Downloaded music has resurrected her career. She's actually making money because of downloads. I think that if it weren't for all of this activity on the Internet and all of this downloaded music, the CD market would be suffering more than it is. MP3s are lessening the decline of the music business, not creating it.
Record companies are not logical, righteous entities. They are ramshackle, profit-driven enterprises. They act in their perceived best interests, and they act ruthlessly and, in many cases, irrationally. The people who run them still have their e-mail printed out by their secretaries. We have to wait for the next generation to take over, the "software" generation, the generation of people who don't remember growing up without a computer around. I would argue that the future of music is multimedia, the future of multimedia is DVD, and the future of music companies is software. In five years, record labels will be software companies and I don't think they know that yet. The music business will be saved by someone from the software business who can impose a new business model on music assets.
In the future there will be no record stores as we know them, no tangible product as we know it. The CD is going the way of the 8-track and the cassette. Soon there will be no need for the tangible thing. Consumers have made their choice. They want to listen to music while they're working at their computers, on a portable device like an iPod or MiniDisc player, or on a home theater jukebox (similar to a feature of Microsoft's Xbox). Digitally available music has given the consumer choices, and they like those choices. They don't want music just from commercial radio. They also want it from their hard drives and from the Internet. Yet record companies still want to force tangible, overpriced media on consumers who want to obtain data files and temporarily store them on their hard drives or on cheap, disposable discs (CD-Rs). If record labels don't start trying to be part of the future they will be bought up and converted to it by someone who is.
People have always listened to music while they were doing something else. That's almost the essence of "American music." Record companies guessed right on the "something else" for a long time, but that was before the myriad of other choices became available to consumers. At one time in this country, listening to music on the radio was a miracle. It's no longer a miracle, and when you look at the technological developments in the last 70 years, there's little wonder why. It's been one miracle after another. And yet even to this day, radio is the sine qua non of a hit record. This is especially true in the era of radio consolidation, where corporate Goliaths like Clear Channel are allowed to exist. Maybe that's the only way radio can remain relevant: It has to become one big punch. In a world where diversity is an evolutionary step, radio moves furiously towards consolidation, aided and abetted by the FCC. Someone should ask the question, why is this allowed?
The way things are going, a few corporations are going to control access to all digital information, and if the current administration has its way, these activities will be monitored. The reason why the RIAA is screaming bloody murder about little ol' MP3 is because it means that they are losing control. People are making their own individual choices, and they aren't going along with the program of manipulation that has always limited those choices. Now that they're making choices, industry executives and politicians are shocked.
The same argument extends to the television industry with respect to TiVo and other personal video recorders (PVRs). Jamie Kellner, chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting, which encompasses everything from CNN to TNT and is a part of AOL Time Warner, was asked in an interview why PVRs were bad for his industry. He responded that it's "because of the ad skips ... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial ... you're actually stealing the programming." Viewers might find that reasoning less than persuasive, but they'll probably be very persuaded by the threatening, accusatory tone, and dismiss Mr. Kellner and his concerns. This is another example of an old media being unable to adjust to technology. Yes, Jamie, your business is threatened. You will have to change your way of thinking to save it. Abandon failing tactics.
VI. The Role of NARAS
In order for the record industry to remain relevant it will have to determine how to get people to buy something they can get for free. In addition to the cable television business, print publications, and ISPs, there is an industry that has found a solution to this problem, and the music industry should take notice. That industry is the bottled water industry. Bottled water is a growth market. But common sense would indicate that when water is virtually free (i.e., tap water) that people wouldn't want to pay $1 for 16 oz. of water. Yet, most of us frequently do just that. Why? Because it is convenient and because we have been persuaded that it is safer, more pure, that it is "better" water. Convenience becomes necessity, belief becomes profit.
The bottled water industry is built on customer service. If the music business were to take this approach and ally themselves with consumers rather than fight them, it's quite possible that their profits would still be growing. But record companies distrust their customers even more than their customers distrust them. The circle is unlikely to be broken, which in turn creates wide open spaces for the entrepreneur, for a "new" way. NARAS has to appeal to the new, not the old. NARAS supersedes the short-term interests of the record companies. NARAS has an obligation to art and to the artists who create it, to creative excellence in its presentation, and it is those obligations, above all, that should define its actions. The relevance of NARAS exists in direct proportion to its independence.
Charlie Feldman suggested that the board undertake a "study" of the matter. He's right, only we should go further. I think we need a symposium, a gathering of eagles. NARAS should take the lead in this matter. Those who are taking it now are leading us over a cliff. The RIAA has staked out an untenable position that is as unrealistic as it is anti-consumer and anti-artist. Their interests and the interests of NARAS are not the same. Their solutions are not good solutions. They cling unsuccessfully to the past rather than embrace the stunning opportunities offered by the future. They will be unsuccessful in their attempts to criminalize the society, and in their attempts to stretch the drum head of old laws onto the drum of new technology. It is one thing to be unsuccessful, it's one thing to argue a bad position, but it's quite another to be silly and laughed at, and that's where the RIAA has ended up. They appear to be totally irrelevant except as bagmen. It's more than just bad P.R., it's bad science. The RIAA reached its conclusions, then looked for supporting arguments, all the while ignoring reality, opportunity and fact. They overstate their position, misinterpret their own data, and make dubious claims for artists' rights when the biggest abusers of artists' rights are their benefactors, the record companies themselves.
ZDNet reported that the sale of illegal CDs increased 50 percent from 2000 to 2001. This translates into $4.3 billion dollars in sales from 950 million illegally sold CDs. This strikes me as a much more serious and obvious problem than downloaded music. So serious in fact that the problem of MP3s pales by comparison. This is where the record companies and RIAA should be putting their moral outrage, their money and energy. Those bad guys really are bad guys, profiting from the mass counterfeiting of someone else's property, unlike 14-year-old kids, who download music because they can't afford $18 for two songs that are going to be replaced in a couple of weeks anyway. Equating the downloading of music with counterfeiting for profit brings disrepute to the RIAA's more important and necessary efforts to stop counterfeiting. Then again, it's ironic that if the RIAA is successful in shoving everyone back into the CD market, almost half of the CDs they buy will be counterfeits.
With respect to the question of downloaded music, NARAS should embrace new technologies, be the voice of reasoned analysis, and act as an arbiter to reconcile the conflicting views of the various parties involved. In the past, NARAS aligned itself with the RIAA and the record companies. This is a mistake, in my opinion, and I hope that the opinions expressed in this paper will at least give us reason to pause and to thoroughly examine our position, as well as the position, claims and statistics of the RIAA and their corporate backers. Above all else, NARAS must not rubber-stamp what is quite clearly a self-serving position (as happened on last year's Grammy broadcast when Mike Greene berated and branded music consumers as thieves and shoplifters). NARAS must be the independent voice, a voice of objectivity. NARAS should be the "think tank" of the music business, not an enforcer or a PAC. What we have here is the potential to become a leader in the new frontier of intellectual property rights, artists' rights, consumers' rights, the future of music, and the power of the art itself. I say let's seize the day. In my opinion, there is a vacuum of leadership with respect to these pivotal and crucial issues and NARAS should step in and fill that vacuum. It is a golden opportunity.
salon.com
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About the writer
John Snyder is president of Artists House Records, a board member of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences, and a 32-time Grammy nominee.
Ben Snyder, John's son, works for It's a Gas Marketing/Management, a grassroots marketing company that serves the music industry. |
