Sunday, April 27, 2003
Only twelve more hours until I'm allowed to pay for my music
I found myself sitting on the fence Sunday afternoon. No really, I was actually sitting on a fence, or at least the unassembled pieces of one, as I took a break from helping someone assemble those pieces. The moment of respite gave me the chance to sit back and consider how Apple's new music download service will affect me personally. In previous columns I've reflected on how it will affect Apple, how it will affect Mac users in general, and how it will affect the music industry. I suppose I could wait one more day and find out the facts before assessing the impact on my own music purchasing, downloading, and listening habits, but once the news breaks tomorrow, I imagine my attention will turn back toward the big picture. So now might be the best time to examine how Apple might be changing my own music experience. Why should you care? Because you just might be in the same situation, whether you realize it or not.
Back in the day, I loved Napster and I frequently used it to download music -- I'll go ahead and say that up front. I've since graduated, as so many have, to underground copycats such as LimeWire and Acquisition, without missing a beat. Now, before a thousand readers get ready to fire off an email calling me a thief, I'll also point out that I usually buy about one music CD per week, which amounts to several hundred dollars per year. Combined with the sheer volume of concerts that I attend, I probably throw more of my money at the music industry each year than ninety percent of the people reading this. So if I'm stealing from the music industry, I'm doing a pretty lousy job of it. But why is it, then, that I still find the need to resort to downloading so much music from lousy services like LimeWire?
Before answering that, I should explain just what is so lousy about these services. Since no one's getting paid and the software is therefore written in people's spare time, you never can quite seem to get your hands on a version that's satisfactorily bug-free. The interface is re-designed constantly, but rarely improves. When you search for a song, there is no guarantee that you'll find it, because you're relying on the hope that someone else on your same subnet will happen to be offering the song you're looking for at the time you're looking for it. If the person you're downloading from happens to sign off before you get the whole song, too bad. And even if you do obtain the entire song, there's a good chance that it will be clipped, distorted, or otherwise mangled, or even the wrong song altogether. I suppose if we were Windows users, we might even have to worry about viruses being transmitted along with the songs. But hey, we're fortunate enough to be Mac users, so at least that's not really an issue. Still, there are fewer things I less enjoy doing on a computer than the act of hunting down a song on LimeWire because the record industry has put me in the position of having no other acceptable way of obtaining it. That's right, this is all the record companies' fault. I'll take full responsibility for what my actions, but none of this mess would have happened if the record execs hadn't gone into the digital era with their eyes wide shut. Even those of us who wish to do the right thing when it comes to paying for our music are not allowed to do it.
My criteria for buying a CD is simple: If I'm a fan of the artist's past work and I expect that the new CD will be equally worthy, I buy it. If I hear one song from a new artist, and from that one song, I can determine that I will probably like other songs by that same artist, I buy the CD. If someone who is familiar with my musical tastes recommends an album to me, I lay out the money for it. But if I hear a new song on the radio and I like it and want to acquire just that song so that I can listen to it more often before deciding whether purchasing the entire CD would be wise, how am I supposed to do this? What legitimate avenue has been provided by the record companies that allows me to ease my way into liking a new artist by buying one song at a time? Astonishingly, the answer is "none".
I could buy the whole CD in order to obtain my one song, but I refuse to go out and pay fifteen dollars (or more) for one song I want and ten that I don't. No other industry practices this kind of lunacy. When I buy a doughnut, does the bakery require me to buy ten other doughnuts of less-popular flavors along with it? If I buy a new Ford Explorer, does the dealership force me to accept a Pinto as part of the deal? If I buy a 12 inch PowerBook, does Apple make me take home a bundle that includes a bunch of flaming PowerBook 5300's just because it would be impossible for Apple to sell the 5300's on their own merit? Of course not. So why does the music industry get away with making me buy all these 5300's and Pinto's when all I wanted was a glazed doughnut? Alright, so the metaphor may have escaped me, but the message is clear enough: rather than work to improve the quality of the music being offered, the record labels expend their efforts trying to find ways to get us to pay for what we don't want.
I suppose the music industry's answer is that I should buy the single. Back in the 1980's, when you could buy a cassette-tape single for $1.99, this made sense. But when the transition to CD's happened, singles suddenly became ten-dollar items. I can just picture the record execs sitting around the boardroom table saying, "Hey, let's make the single nearly as expensive as the whole CD so the kids will just spring for the whole thing." Well, something certainly sprung, but it had nothing to do with money. I don't know how they couldn't have seen it coming. Give any human a lack of reasonable options, and improvisation will rule the day. And ever since the day that two kids, somewhere, realized that they could pass music to each other one song at a time over the Internet, it's become the de facto new method of releasing a single, with or without the record companies' participation. As soon as a CD is released, the music is immediately available worldwide, any time of day or night, to anyone who has a computer and an Internet connection.
If you ignore the legalities, it was actually a heck of an improvisation. It was the kind of innovative idea that comes along so rarely that it allows even a marginal player in the existing paradigm to be the dominant force in the next paradigm, simply by being the first to use the new idea to its own advantage. But rather than seizing the opportunity to launch their own download services before the renegade companies like Napster were ever conceived, the record companies chose to respond, well, like children. They filed lawsuits, they prosecuted everyone they could find, they got entire corporations shut down. Their collective temper tantrum even went so far as threatening to file suit against everyone whom they could prove had ever downloaded a copyrighted song from the internet. Somewhere along the line, their marketing departments forgot to tell them that suing your customers is probably not the best way to gain their future business. Perhaps they're assuming that anyone who downloads music for free isn't one of their paying customers anyway. But in my case at least, they're dead wrong.
Unlike some file-swappers, I've never once downloaded an burned an entire CD. If I'm so confident that I'll want to hear the whole record, I'll just go out and buy it. Ten good songs for fifteen dollars sound fair enough to me. But the record companies still want to label me a crook along with everyone else. Which is a shame, considering how many times I've ended up buying a CD only because I "stole" one song and liked it so much that I was persuaded to go out and buy the whole thing. When I do download a song and don't end up buying the record, I detest the fact that I can't get any money to the artist. Creators of original content should be allowed to profit from it, and I imagine that the vast majority of famous musicians (Lars Ulrich notwithstanding) have been aching for their bosses to offer the public some way of being allowed to pay for a song when downloading it. But the record execs have never allowed anyone other than PressPlay and a few other pathetic companies to even try to give us the chance to pay up for our tunes.
It looks like Apple is going to do for these artists what their own labels never could. For us Mac users, it's just our good luck that it happens to be Apple that's doing this. If it were some other respectable (and respectably powerful) company, like Sony, I'd still be excited. The fact that it is Apple ensures a whole heap of bonuses for us, everything from the fact that Mac users will presumably get the service first, to the fact that it will be so integrated with iTunes and the iPod, right down to the fact that Steve Jobs can go out and personally convince dissenting artists to participate in the service. More than anything, I love the fact that some of the money I spend will be going back to Apple, which will then be used to bring even more innovations to life.
Once the service is online, I'll be a downloading fool. If every song from every label really is available, I doubt I'll ever use LimeWire again. The hassle of using the free method to obtain one song was worth saving the fifteen dollars I would have spent on the CD, but it's not worth the single dollar that I'll now have the privilege of paying. Privilege, you say? How is giving up my money considered a privilege? Because it's well worth a dollar to not have to trudge through the entirely taxing experience of getting the song for "free". My time is worth more than that. Any society will always have freeloaders who will never pass up a chance to get something they didn't pay for, no matter the quality or the fairness of it all. But I believe that there are a sufficient number of people out there like me who, while not saints when it comes to obtaining their music, are honest enough to pay a fair price now that one is finally being offered.
I don't want to spend any more time speculating at this late date as to whether Apple will also announce tomorrow that it has purchased Universal Music, or as to what the new iPods might look like. Actually, some of the rumors have been quite hilarious. The iPod/mouse combination theory is perhaps my favorite insane Apple-related rumor to come along in some time. But even as the rumors continue to fly, I'm going to call it a night. I'll sleep soundly knowing that starting tomorrow, I'll be allowed to pay for all my music. All eyes will be on the newswire tomorrow to see just what's really going to happen, and then I'll take a crack at examining how it all will impact everyone else. But I think I already know how it's going to impact me: my music-listening experience will only get better, my Macintosh experience will only get better, and in the end, the record companies will probably end up with even more of my money than before. I wish I had some way of knowing if any of that increased revenue will actually find its way to the artists themselves, which is something that Apple could make better if they did in fact buy Universal Music...but I won't go there. At least not until after we get the real story on Monday.
Are you like me in thinking that you'll end up spending more money on music once Apple launches its download service? Are you excited by the fact that your money will go to a company, like Apple, that actually spends its profits on research and development and constantly brings us innovative new products? Or will you just keep using "free" services because the price is right? Feel free to service me.
If you enjoy this site and would like to see it grow, you can also feel free to make a donation via PayPal. In the spirit of Apple's new service, I'm only asking for one dollar. Think of it as only paying for one article, without having to pay for the ones you don't want. All you have to do is click here:
Thanks in advance.
I found myself sitting on the fence Sunday afternoon. No really, I was actually sitting on a fence, or at least the unassembled pieces of one, as I took a break from helping someone assemble those pieces. The moment of respite gave me the chance to sit back and consider how Apple's new music download service will affect me personally. In previous columns I've reflected on how it will affect Apple, how it will affect Mac users in general, and how it will affect the music industry. I suppose I could wait one more day and find out the facts before assessing the impact on my own music purchasing, downloading, and listening habits, but once the news breaks tomorrow, I imagine my attention will turn back toward the big picture. So now might be the best time to examine how Apple might be changing my own music experience. Why should you care? Because you just might be in the same situation, whether you realize it or not.
Back in the day, I loved Napster and I frequently used it to download music -- I'll go ahead and say that up front. I've since graduated, as so many have, to underground copycats such as LimeWire and Acquisition, without missing a beat. Now, before a thousand readers get ready to fire off an email calling me a thief, I'll also point out that I usually buy about one music CD per week, which amounts to several hundred dollars per year. Combined with the sheer volume of concerts that I attend, I probably throw more of my money at the music industry each year than ninety percent of the people reading this. So if I'm stealing from the music industry, I'm doing a pretty lousy job of it. But why is it, then, that I still find the need to resort to downloading so much music from lousy services like LimeWire?
Before answering that, I should explain just what is so lousy about these services. Since no one's getting paid and the software is therefore written in people's spare time, you never can quite seem to get your hands on a version that's satisfactorily bug-free. The interface is re-designed constantly, but rarely improves. When you search for a song, there is no guarantee that you'll find it, because you're relying on the hope that someone else on your same subnet will happen to be offering the song you're looking for at the time you're looking for it. If the person you're downloading from happens to sign off before you get the whole song, too bad. And even if you do obtain the entire song, there's a good chance that it will be clipped, distorted, or otherwise mangled, or even the wrong song altogether. I suppose if we were Windows users, we might even have to worry about viruses being transmitted along with the songs. But hey, we're fortunate enough to be Mac users, so at least that's not really an issue. Still, there are fewer things I less enjoy doing on a computer than the act of hunting down a song on LimeWire because the record industry has put me in the position of having no other acceptable way of obtaining it. That's right, this is all the record companies' fault. I'll take full responsibility for what my actions, but none of this mess would have happened if the record execs hadn't gone into the digital era with their eyes wide shut. Even those of us who wish to do the right thing when it comes to paying for our music are not allowed to do it.
My criteria for buying a CD is simple: If I'm a fan of the artist's past work and I expect that the new CD will be equally worthy, I buy it. If I hear one song from a new artist, and from that one song, I can determine that I will probably like other songs by that same artist, I buy the CD. If someone who is familiar with my musical tastes recommends an album to me, I lay out the money for it. But if I hear a new song on the radio and I like it and want to acquire just that song so that I can listen to it more often before deciding whether purchasing the entire CD would be wise, how am I supposed to do this? What legitimate avenue has been provided by the record companies that allows me to ease my way into liking a new artist by buying one song at a time? Astonishingly, the answer is "none".
I could buy the whole CD in order to obtain my one song, but I refuse to go out and pay fifteen dollars (or more) for one song I want and ten that I don't. No other industry practices this kind of lunacy. When I buy a doughnut, does the bakery require me to buy ten other doughnuts of less-popular flavors along with it? If I buy a new Ford Explorer, does the dealership force me to accept a Pinto as part of the deal? If I buy a 12 inch PowerBook, does Apple make me take home a bundle that includes a bunch of flaming PowerBook 5300's just because it would be impossible for Apple to sell the 5300's on their own merit? Of course not. So why does the music industry get away with making me buy all these 5300's and Pinto's when all I wanted was a glazed doughnut? Alright, so the metaphor may have escaped me, but the message is clear enough: rather than work to improve the quality of the music being offered, the record labels expend their efforts trying to find ways to get us to pay for what we don't want.
I suppose the music industry's answer is that I should buy the single. Back in the 1980's, when you could buy a cassette-tape single for $1.99, this made sense. But when the transition to CD's happened, singles suddenly became ten-dollar items. I can just picture the record execs sitting around the boardroom table saying, "Hey, let's make the single nearly as expensive as the whole CD so the kids will just spring for the whole thing." Well, something certainly sprung, but it had nothing to do with money. I don't know how they couldn't have seen it coming. Give any human a lack of reasonable options, and improvisation will rule the day. And ever since the day that two kids, somewhere, realized that they could pass music to each other one song at a time over the Internet, it's become the de facto new method of releasing a single, with or without the record companies' participation. As soon as a CD is released, the music is immediately available worldwide, any time of day or night, to anyone who has a computer and an Internet connection.
If you ignore the legalities, it was actually a heck of an improvisation. It was the kind of innovative idea that comes along so rarely that it allows even a marginal player in the existing paradigm to be the dominant force in the next paradigm, simply by being the first to use the new idea to its own advantage. But rather than seizing the opportunity to launch their own download services before the renegade companies like Napster were ever conceived, the record companies chose to respond, well, like children. They filed lawsuits, they prosecuted everyone they could find, they got entire corporations shut down. Their collective temper tantrum even went so far as threatening to file suit against everyone whom they could prove had ever downloaded a copyrighted song from the internet. Somewhere along the line, their marketing departments forgot to tell them that suing your customers is probably not the best way to gain their future business. Perhaps they're assuming that anyone who downloads music for free isn't one of their paying customers anyway. But in my case at least, they're dead wrong.
Unlike some file-swappers, I've never once downloaded an burned an entire CD. If I'm so confident that I'll want to hear the whole record, I'll just go out and buy it. Ten good songs for fifteen dollars sound fair enough to me. But the record companies still want to label me a crook along with everyone else. Which is a shame, considering how many times I've ended up buying a CD only because I "stole" one song and liked it so much that I was persuaded to go out and buy the whole thing. When I do download a song and don't end up buying the record, I detest the fact that I can't get any money to the artist. Creators of original content should be allowed to profit from it, and I imagine that the vast majority of famous musicians (Lars Ulrich notwithstanding) have been aching for their bosses to offer the public some way of being allowed to pay for a song when downloading it. But the record execs have never allowed anyone other than PressPlay and a few other pathetic companies to even try to give us the chance to pay up for our tunes.
It looks like Apple is going to do for these artists what their own labels never could. For us Mac users, it's just our good luck that it happens to be Apple that's doing this. If it were some other respectable (and respectably powerful) company, like Sony, I'd still be excited. The fact that it is Apple ensures a whole heap of bonuses for us, everything from the fact that Mac users will presumably get the service first, to the fact that it will be so integrated with iTunes and the iPod, right down to the fact that Steve Jobs can go out and personally convince dissenting artists to participate in the service. More than anything, I love the fact that some of the money I spend will be going back to Apple, which will then be used to bring even more innovations to life.
Once the service is online, I'll be a downloading fool. If every song from every label really is available, I doubt I'll ever use LimeWire again. The hassle of using the free method to obtain one song was worth saving the fifteen dollars I would have spent on the CD, but it's not worth the single dollar that I'll now have the privilege of paying. Privilege, you say? How is giving up my money considered a privilege? Because it's well worth a dollar to not have to trudge through the entirely taxing experience of getting the song for "free". My time is worth more than that. Any society will always have freeloaders who will never pass up a chance to get something they didn't pay for, no matter the quality or the fairness of it all. But I believe that there are a sufficient number of people out there like me who, while not saints when it comes to obtaining their music, are honest enough to pay a fair price now that one is finally being offered.
I don't want to spend any more time speculating at this late date as to whether Apple will also announce tomorrow that it has purchased Universal Music, or as to what the new iPods might look like. Actually, some of the rumors have been quite hilarious. The iPod/mouse combination theory is perhaps my favorite insane Apple-related rumor to come along in some time. But even as the rumors continue to fly, I'm going to call it a night. I'll sleep soundly knowing that starting tomorrow, I'll be allowed to pay for all my music. All eyes will be on the newswire tomorrow to see just what's really going to happen, and then I'll take a crack at examining how it all will impact everyone else. But I think I already know how it's going to impact me: my music-listening experience will only get better, my Macintosh experience will only get better, and in the end, the record companies will probably end up with even more of my money than before. I wish I had some way of knowing if any of that increased revenue will actually find its way to the artists themselves, which is something that Apple could make better if they did in fact buy Universal Music...but I won't go there. At least not until after we get the real story on Monday.
Are you like me in thinking that you'll end up spending more money on music once Apple launches its download service? Are you excited by the fact that your money will go to a company, like Apple, that actually spends its profits on research and development and constantly brings us innovative new products? Or will you just keep using "free" services because the price is right? Feel free to service me.
If you enjoy this site and would like to see it grow, you can also feel free to make a donation via PayPal. In the spirit of Apple's new service, I'm only asking for one dollar. Think of it as only paying for one article, without having to pay for the ones you don't want. All you have to do is click here:
Thanks in advance.
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