There could be a light at the end of the tunnel and it looks like nothing’s been learned. So disappointing. A lot of things could’ve been addressed by now, but they haven’t. And it looks like they won’t be.
Currently, it looks like the labels are entertaining a “tax” system (adding a surcharge to phone or internet bills), or an iPod-compatible subscription or all-you-can-eat iTunes plan. The latter holds a lot of promise in my eyes, but the former is fundamentally flawed in several ways.
Regarding the tax system, the recording industry first & foremost seems to be so ridiculously self-involved that they believe themselves to be the only industry impacted by the internet. In truth, any media industry, whether it’s recorded music, movies, software, books, recipes, photographs… almost all media can be replicated digitally practically for free with just the click of a mouse. If even a nominal fee is tacked onto phone or internet bills in order to pay the rights holders of music, it would only be fair to collect money for copyright holders across the board. This would send the price of broadband skyrocketting, of course, impeding the growth of broadband, upon which inarguably rests the future of our society. Our ability to maintain our stature in the global economy depends upon the proliferation of broadband internet. But all of the sudden you’ve got to shell out Y x $60/yr (assuming $5/mo per industry, Y being the number of industries who successfully get a copyright surcharge added to bills) on top of standard phone or internet fees before you can check your weather, order Chinese take-out, or look up the closest library. Seems a bit ridiculous to me.
One would think that if any label would realize this, it would be Warner, with their ties to so many other media industries, but Bronfman & Co. seem to be the main (if not single) proponents.
Furthermore, as more industries move pro-actively to the web (news, television, sports, movies, etc) & broadband becomes more & more common, the idea that the impossibly passive recording industry would receive a proportional increase in revenue strikes me as incredibly unjust. What you end up with is guaranteed revenue. The labels have a set income no matter how many albums they release, no matter the quality of or interest in the releases, so long as a general interest in the internet as a whole is maintained (fueled, of course, by facebook.com, myspace.com, youtube.com, weather.com, wikipedia.com, espn.com, perezhilton.com, etc). Who’s to say that the general public won’t eventually lose interest altogether in the music the labels are shilling? Not unlikely, actually. And yet the labels would still get this huge lump of cash based on market share regardless of interest level.
The alternative to this warped idea actually holds a lot of promise. As it’s been reported thus far, the plan could manifest as a plan option for iPhone users, an extra $5 or so a month, for access to iTunes’ entire catalog. Alternatively, premium iPods would come with the same access for the lifetime of the device. Presumably, this would come out to 1-2 years worth, between $60-$120 above the price of the iPod itself. Universal chief Doug Morris, the jackass that he is, has countered Steve Jobs’ $20 per device offer with an $80 per device demand, the same as he gets with the Universal-exclusive Verizon deal. Reflecting their 25% or so market share, that’s a $320 premium over the price of the already pricey iPod. Doug obviously wants to run the music industry into the ground.
The fact that non-percentage pricing is being discussed definitely raises some flags, I don’t think any label should be guaranteed anything, but I could be expecting too much from such a black-hearted, self-involved industry.
Of course the best case scenario & what probably should’ve happened at least 4 years ago would be that the labels get in touch with changing consumer habits. The value of a digital song is now just a fraction of what a physical song was worth in 2000. Part of this is inherent to the media form. The costs of production, distribution, & storage are at best nominal, the sound quality comes in at just a fraction of it’s physical counterpart, & the flexibility of the product is crippled by label-demanded Digital Rights Management software. On the end of the consumer, this has manifest itself as enormous music collections which are largely acquired illegally.
To illustrate how out of touch the labels are, we must compare a music collection from 2000 with a music collection from 2008. A large music collection at the turn of the century would be a cd book of 350 albums. At a little more than 1 cd per week for 4 years, this collection would weigh in at approximately $5,250 (at $15 per disc) & approximately 4,200 songs (at 12 songs per disc). A large collection in 2008 would be a full 160gb iPod. This is 40,000 songs sold at $.99 each, which lands at $39,600 - a 650% increase & a sum few in my social circle can afford. To find the value of a digital song today, we divide $5,250 (the traditional price of a large music collection) by 40,000 (the number of songs that fit on a 160gb iPod) and we get $.13125 (predictably 2/15ths of the current $.99 price tag).
Dropping the price to reflect a digital song’s true value to the consumer and providing a system of acquisition that bests the p2p systems (not a difficult task, especially with Apple willing to cooperate) could easily get the industry back on it’s feet, allowing it to grow with storage capacity (as portable storage nears 1tb, file format would switch to wav or an equivalent & then expand indefinitely in terms of the amount of songs that could be stored), as opposed to the ceiling offered by the tax system, subscriptions, & the all-you-can-eat plan. Moreover, the artist’s cut is guaranteed. I have a feeling artists are going to get squeezed out when things are being pulled from a pot.
This per-song or per-album pricing structure also forces the labels to satisfy customers in the way that p2p systems do, emphasizing more heavily career & niche artists with solid deep cuts, as opposed to the of-the-moment acts with just one hit single that the industry loves to cater to. It’s not always an immediate return, but that’s where the money is.
But it looks like things will just continue as they were, only divvying cash from a pool. Still, $5 per month or around a $100 premium on an iPod seems very fair to me. It’s a step in the right direction, even if bullshit pseudo-pop stars will continue to drown genuine artists in their marketing dollars.
But as Fall Out Boy mimmick Unskinny Bop & Nickelback put their spin on When I Look Into Your Eyes, I can’t help but feel like there’s a Nirvana approaching the horizon. Maybe there’s still something to look forward to after all.
Michael Trent - Keep Movement
Tags: Doug Morris,
Edgar Bronfman Jr,
Michael Trent,
Music Industry,
The Films,
Universal Music Group,
Warner Music Group
