HISTORY

Some ten or twelve years ago, when the German Frauenhofer-Institut for physics developed the mpeg-encoding technology together with the “motion picture experts group” they offered to provide this technology with an inherent safety-mechanism that would make unrightful copying impossible. The music industry, back then high on an enormous flight businesswise, declined. They were currently making fortunes because they had successfully introduced a new format for music which made everyone buy the records they already had once more for about 60 % higher prices. Yes, say a heartily welcome to the Compact Disc (CD). Moreover, they were rocketing mainstream-stars like Mariah Carey or the Backstreet Boys globally through each and every radiochannel, music-distribution channel and media there was. Millions of millions of dollars flew into their offices as if by miracle. What did they care about some wacky scientists who were working on some useless, technical shit that was developed to make the life of some experts easier?

Unfortunately for the music industry, technical progress didn’t stop were it was. Digitalisation – such as the compact disc - , computers and the internet started to spread globally. Anyone able to count to three and to sum up the facts should have seen what was to come, and really is happening now, but hey, we are talking about a business in which companies give a 60 million-Euro contract to Robbie Williams and at the same time sack 6.000 people – where is the counting there? Anyway, soon a lot of people realized, that if you put a CD in a computer you can copy it without losing any quality. Great, so lets do that. All it took was the CD-Rom-burner. People also realized that they could exchange datafiles via the internet for almost no costs. All it took was the development of enough bandwidth, such as ADSL. Or to reduce the size of these files, such as the development of the mp3-code. Soon someone realised, that he could write a program that would check harddisks from all over the world and make them searchable for any member. Say a hearty welcome to Napster and offspring.

THE CURRENT SITUATION

Actually, the exchange of data-files via the internet is not the big threat to the music industry. It is the one that they can point to the easiest. They can say it is illegal to copy files. (You could argue, that you are not copying any files, you are “downloading” them.) Peer-to-peer-networks are a welcome scapegoat for the music-industry to hide their own faults and errors. For years they have wallowed in their own pride and made a lot of money. Now their negligence of technical facts is coming back on them.

The music business’ core is based on three pillars: production, distribution and artists. They have lost in each and every respect. Ever since computers and digital recording techniques have become cheap and easily available, everyone can make music at home that sounds just as good as the one produced in major studios that cost 10.000 dollars a day or more. Sure, bands like Metallica still depend on studios the old way, but for instance artists allied with the Abstract-Hip Hop Genre, electronic musicians of any kind and a lot more, can do great stuff in their little basements (which are not so little anymore with some of them, but that is a whole different story.) This is how the music industry lost their monopoly on good sounding records. Please remember, it is not illegal to produce music and send it to friends over the internet, which brings me to the next point.

With the internet and the digitalisation of music-files the music business lost its next pillar: distribution. Everywhere on any point of the world where I have internet-access I can download a new album, legally or not for actually no cost at all. Why should anyone want to pay for packaging and transport, the margins for distributors and second-level-distributors and so on, when he can download the music directly from the producer. Up to now, the music-industry has not managed to provide a service where I can do that under the circumstances which seem to be the norm for every consumer. Downloading songs from the internet should be much cheaper than buying music in a store. The whole production for the CDs and their covers, the graphic artists and all of the costs for distribution fall away. An average CD costs 17 Euros at local stores in Austria. I don’t think that a price of 9,99 for an album or 0,99 for a song is reduced by these costs.

Moreover, what exactly do I get? Ever since the music industry started to bang on their copyrights they have argued about how to retain these rights for their products. So they came up with DRM, digital rights management, a sort of tag that comes with the mp3-file and shows where and how and to what purposes the consumer has purchased the track. These are only playable on computers or mp3-players equipped with a DRM-software and library. Next, you are only allowed to play these tracks on DRM-able players and computers. You may not burn them onto a CD, you may not make a copy for your own safety. Which means that if your harddisk crashes, those files are gone and you can pay for them again. Some providers even want to make you pay 99 cents for streaming a track! Pay per listen. That is not at all comparable to what you get if you buy a CD in a store.

So why, please tell me, would anyone consider doing that? Especially if he can turn to Kazaar or WinMX and download these tracks nice and easy. Sure, there are a lot of fakes and bad-sounding mp3s out there, but you can always start a second try, the costs are almost nil anyway. Especially if most music you can listen to nowadays is mediocre crap anyway? And most people feel like that. “There are no good musicians anymore” or “the only good musicians are 50 years or older” is something you hear a lot. Why is that so?

Because the music industry has lost their abilities in the third pillar: artists management. First, please don’t call the popstars of today artists. They are content. The songs sound the same, the formulas and images are the same, their songs and choreographies come from specialists, they are marketed, promoted, brand-tagged and sold in tiny pieces via every media available. Sure, there is a cheesy appeal to “stars” like Pink, Christina Aguilera or Ricky Martin, very much like “Charlie’s Angels” or “Terminator 3” in the movies. But people know that they are being treated to some mediocre stuff. As one who knows put it: if you tell people that this shit is important enough times, they’ll start to think that this shit is important and so they’ll buy it. Or try to get it as cheap as possible. Promotional sales, taped from the radio or as a data-file from the internet.

People have grown wary of the shit that is spread out in front of them in TV, radio and magazines. They start to look for stuff that has real meaning, or at least try to get the stuff they have been stuffed with for free. Why pay for something that is not worth a thing. The current hype of casting-shows, Popstars, Starsearch, Superstar, whatever they are being called, is the last gasp for air by the music industry to not loose their power of producing stars. Unfortunately, TV has the quality that whatever is en vogue this year is mediocre next year and completely forgotten the year after. What will happen to the music industry if it loses its promotional power?

THE VICIOUS CIRCLE

At the moment the music industry has to book losses of 15 % to 20 % per year compared to the year before in revenue. That is hard. But it is the music industries’ own fault. You can’t sell crappy stuff for a high price forever. CDs have always been much too expensive. Their production is cheaper than those of vinyl records, yet their price is ca. 60 % over that of a vinyl record. There should be enough money in the vaults of the music industry to get through a few more years. What will come next?

My guesses are: more ways to try and promote new “stars”? There will be a hell of a lot to watch on TV musicwise in the next years. Then they will try to establish DVDs as the main format to sell music and all its special features, because these can’t be copied easily. (At the moment.) Concerts by these “stars” will get bigger and bigger and more expensive, just like Robbie Williams charged 150 € for tickets to his show. Anything that can set them apart from a music-file burned on a CDR.

And they will sue the hell out of everyone they can find and possible charge with infringement of copyrights. Just like they have already put a 90 milliondollar-charge at one college student who had a ftp-server filled with mp3s. All of this won’t stop people from doing it. And damn right they are. The music industry has destroyed an important artform for long enough, whored it as content and measured its worth only on pieces sold.

EPILOGUE

In-between all the arguments the music-industry had against mp3s was that mp3s-downloading destroys independent labels as well. Of course, they are talking about those “independent” labels which are affiliated with major labels, their alternative offspring, so to speak. But what about real independent labels, such as Dhyana records or Trost records? They have always been working on a very personal level and never have sold tons of records. They have never counted the merit of music on the turnover it produced. I have a simple rule for that: downloading mp3 to check out a band is okay, but if you find that you like the music, like the band and that they are putting a lot of emotions and heart in there, then try to buy the record. Checking music out via mp3 is, to me, like reading about a band in a magazine, hearing it on alternative radio or getting a CD with a magazine. Or even listening to the record in a store.

Please keep in mind, that these smallest of all labels, who usually produce the best music there is, are really suffering underneath the major companies. If there were only small labels, like the two mentioned, there would be much more music everywhere. The world would be a much better place. Is there a possibility to make this dream come true. Well, let’s just wait and see. In the meantime I will keep on downloading major stuff and buying real independent stuff in the record store or distro of my trust.