The iTunes Music Store launched in Europe today - the first (I think) online music download service to work with the iPod. Which is handy for those of us with iPods. I've had a little play with it, and it seems fairly slick and easy to use, with reasonable pricing at 79p a track. As an experiment, and to check it all works, I downloaded a couple of tracks (don't laugh) - "Four Minute Warning" by Mark Owen, and "I saved the world today" by The Eurythmics. And it all works fine. And more to the point I've not had to buy a whole album by either artist to get the one song I wanted.
Everything is not perfect in the world of iTunes at the moment though. The major record labels are all on board, so chances are that if you want anything mainstream, you'll be fine. Plenty of Dido, Avril Lavigne and even Keane. If you want anything on an independent label however, then you are going to be disappointed. Apple hasn't yet managed to sort out a payment deal with the indies, so no Belle & Sebastian, no Cinerama, no Franz Ferdinand and no Thirteen Senses. Plus many others are not there too, obviously (it's be daft if there were only four bands left on indies!).
I'm hoping that this dispute will be sorted out soon, as the majority of the music I buy tends to be on the smaller labels - for the iTunes Store to be any major use to me, I need Apple to play ball with the indies. Maybe they'll just end up charging more, say 99p for the good stuff.
But this does lead to a wider question, why should I bother to use the iTunes Store at all? If there's stuff I want, I can get it easily using Kazaa, Bit Torrent, Usenet, or several other methods. I can even borrow CDs of friends if I'm really desperate. Or I can buy CDs from the shop and have the nice little case and booklet and maybe some fancy packaging.
So firstly, I'll say that I have no objection to actually paying for music. It is clear to me that if everybody stopped buying music, and just freeloaded off the net, then all the labels would go bust (major and indie), and there'd be nothing produced. Sure, there'd still be some bands who'd put stuff out on their own back, with their own money, and they could make money by doing gigs and selling merchandise, but at the end of the day, if the artists aren't selling music they are not going to make any money. They'll need other jobs, the music may suffer. I just can't see it working. Or maybe the industry would just need to move to a new business model. I don't know.
Anyway, what I was trying to get to there was that I don't mind exchanging my money for someone else's tunes.
The majority of times I have downloaded tunes from the 'net for free, it has been for one of four reasons:
1. The music is not released yet. I couldn't buy it, even though I wanted to. Example: The new They Might Be Giants Album, "The Spine".
2. The music is released, but I can't find it in my local stores. Example: "Castaways and Cutouts" by The Decemberists.
3. The music is avaialble free for download from a band website. Example: "The first word is the hardest" by Four Day Hombre.
4. The music is dull, bland rubbish that I only download because I see it available for free and figure it might be handy to have around one day, maybe if people come round the house. Example: Katie Melua, "Call off the search" (which really is incredibly dull).
In cases 1 and 2, I'll often end up buying the album anyway when it is released, or if I find it. In case 3, it is generally only one or two tracks available, which I'll end up buying on an album at some point. And case 4, we're talking about crap I'd never buy anyway. So in no case, has anyone really lost out.
I seem to have spent a lot of time there justifying myself spending money on tunes if I want to. When it comes down to it, I'm lucky to have a decent job that enables me to earn enough money to buy the tunes I want to, so I do.
So the real issue I have is whether to buy a physical CD, or some less tangible data. And this then mainly reduces to: "Do I want packaging". In the past, I'd have said "yes" straightaway. You get nice booklets, shiny CDs, and maybe some cardboard too if it's a "Special Limited Edition". But for about the last year, and especially since I got the laptop, I have listened to very few actual CDs. As soon as I buy one, it gets copied straight onto the laptop and the iPod, and I then either listen off the lappy, or plug the 'pod into a proper stereo and use that.
I've also pretty much run out of space on my shelves for CDs. I can maybe do another 100, but after that, full, full, full. At some point I'll have to get rid of some of them. Or buy some more shelves. But I think I'm finding that I'm less and less bothered about having the actual physical CDs and cases anymore. And doing things electronically has two more advantages - it's a bit cheaper (maybe... defintely not always), and it has to better environmentally.
So I think I'm going to have to buy a few albums in electric form and see how I go with them. See whether I wake at night, panicking about the lack of a plastic case.
There is one way though in which my behaviour will definitely change - I can't see me buying many physical singles any more. They seem a very natural thing to buy online - buy the tune I want, maybe the b-sides too if they're any good, and then when the album is out, buy a CD then if I want a hard copy.
And hopefully it will encourage people to release albums with tracks that are all good on them. If an album only has two good tracks on it, a lot of people are not going to want to buy the rest of the album.
I suspect some of what I've said above may be flawed, naieve, or just wrong, but I can't really help that. In the meantime a final repeated message - sort things out with the indies, Apple.
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3 comments:
More info on the indies here.
Were you aware that here in rip-off Britain, we're being charged 79p per song, whereas on the continent it's 99c (=65.7p) and in the States it's also 99c (=54.0p)?
Not sure I agree with you about music ceasing to be made. With the price of recording equipment and software nowadays (e.g. 1 back-up hard drive + 1 copy of Garage Band!) you can make some fairly high-quality MP3s (or whatever format you like). Put them up on Kazaa, BitTorrent, whatever and thousands of people can listen to them.
Only sticking point there is how to let people know your music exists (which is really all the record companies do that's of any significance nowadays). A decent P2P recommendation system - simply being able to browse other people's MP3 libraries, say, as Napster and Audiogalaxy used to enable you to do - would solve this. Given a decent band website, they could even have a PayPal donation system where people who want to contribute money can do so.
Bands are not going to stop making music just because there's much less money in it now. There's never been a great deal in it before anyway, unless you get to be pretty big. More money is made on tour or through selling other merchandise (badges, T-shirts, etc.), and this sales channel is unaffected by P2P or the lack of a record industry. How many of the bands that we've been to see at Fibbers over the last year have got day jobs anyway?
The record industry's business model is entirely opposed to this, for obvious reasons (from their point of view). And I'm fairly sure the only thing that's stopping them going the way of the dodo is the fact that not many people have been willing to consider what an alternative to them might look like - the "freeloading" aspect of P2P has been a little too successful.
In the end though, I'm fairly certain what I've suggested will come to pass. People have come to expect music to be mostly free (and I'm talking about radio here, not P2P), and I don't think the "really free" genie can be put back in the bottle.
To change the topic almost completely, be very careful about backing up your AAC files and the license key file. Apple have refused to re-register people's keys when their PCs have died, and without the license key, you've got 6 MB of random numbers. Ditto the AAC files - no replacements will be given. You're not really buying the music, just the right to listen to it for now.
I agree with most of that. I think. A new model is needed for the music industry, we may or may not be part way there.
Time will tell.
Totally agreed re the backing up of songs, and given the problems I've had over the last couple of years with hard drives, I fully intend to make regular backups of everything from now on!
I think "the industry" will fight it for a while yet. And I think ultimately, doing so will kill them ("them" being the giant record labels). I don’t think music will “go away” or die - the making of music is something almost integral to being human.
If they'd realised the potential power and popularity of the mp3 format and the internet as a delivery system, and moved the change their business models to offer cheap and easily accessible music over the net, P2P would never have got as popular as it has. It'd still be there, and you're always going to have freeloaders (ever since we invented tapes and the ability to easily record music in your bedroom we've had people who copied their friends music, and no doubt tapes did the rounds of random strangers in schools and suchlike), but the reason P2P is such an immense problem to the industry is that for a long time it was the only alternative to going to the shop and being ripped off for a couple of good tracks and a bunch of filler tracks (I mean really, how many albums have you got where every track is of the same quality as the first 3 or 4? This comment probably applies less to the stuff Lint and Chip listen to than the "mainstream" pop acts though). The problem they have is that, due to the lack of credible alternatives, P2P has become very popular, and like other "popular" crimes (such as speeding), has slipped from the status of "crime" in the public psyche. As Chip says, I don't think that genie can be rebottled now, just like speeding, many now feel a great injustice has been done if they've caught for doing it. We expect to be able to obtain music for free, it’s moved from being a “crime” to being a “right”. In a way, it's the nature of the Internet. Once something is on there, you can't get rid of it (not that the traditional power mechanisms of industry and government are willing to accept this yet. They like they can just keep closing things down and eventually they'll have got them all. Just like Bush and Sharon think if they keep shooting terrorists (or just random Palestinians in the case of Sharon) eventually they'll have killed them all and won.
If the industry moves to REALLY adjust its business models, it stands a chance. The longer they try to fight the “digital revolution" (much as I hate that term), the more damage they're doing to themselves. They've already managed to cast themselves in the role of "big bad capitalists out to bully the little guys in their ultimate greed", and the longer they try to use heavy handed tactics to stamp out music trading, the worse that's going to get.
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