A job in the music industry and a penchant for downloading music
is a fine balancing act. People who work for the big studios
don’t like direct contact with those they accuse of draining
their funding. In fact, in my experience as the humble employee, they
don’t like much contact with regular people at all. The same can
be said for many in the upper echelon of the music labels. In a
business based on segregation of the famous and talented from the
homely and plain, the shock that came with illegal downloading was not
that the industry didn’t have its finger on the pulse of its
market. The shock was that they feigned an interest in the customer in
the first place.
For the past thirty years the music industry
has been a business about money. Image came
second, talent a distant third. It is no wonder that the contented
music giant could not be bothered until it was money that he began to
lose. Prod him with the stick of vacuous pop music, and he’ll
grunt and roll over; give him a whiff of P2P networks and the angry
beast awakens ready for battle.
Since Napster was shut down seven years ago,
the music industry has lumbered through lawsuit after lawsuit
attempting to reclaim the artists’ integrity. Which,
surprisingly, is represented by money. With a few vocal celebrities
on their side (hello, Lars), those in the biz came out swinging against
the very people who support music in the first place. Lawsuits against
programs that allowed file sharing grew into lawsuits against the
people sharing the files. Record sales dropped drastically, causing a
slump in the industry. It’s an odd consequence that as the music
industry rallied against the general public, the general public stopped
buying CDs. Huh.
Consider the facts. Over the past thirty
years the industry has seen two, potentially three, profitable format
changes (vinyl to 8-track to compact cassette to compact disc) that
have forced the music buying public to repeatedly overhaul their
library and invest further cash in the same material. It doesn’t
matter how great Pink Floyd is, no one needs four copies of Dark Side of the Moon. Outside
of relatively minute production costs, these technological improvements
brought pure profit to the companies behind them.
What’s more, the music trends of the past
thirty years have been questionable at best. With the advent of music
channels such as MTV and MuchMusic, image
began to trump talent. The bulk of what entered mainstream music,
whether it was the hair metal and Europop of
the eighties, pop craze of the nineties or the recent appropriation of
the punk rock genre, it was manufactured by those in charge. Not only
that (for that trend isn’t new), it wasn’t even good. Gone
were the days of the respected album. The full length recording became
a vehicle for singles alone. A vehicle for further profit.
The “thievery” of music through
the use of technological advances and yet another new music format
(mp3) came as a surprise to the music industry.
What is it they call corporations who do not pay
attention to the ever-evolving market to which they sell? Ah yes.
Stupid.
The proliferation of music in the mp3 format
across the internet has done absolutely incredible things for an
industry that had largely grown out of touch. The rise of the entire
independent scene can attribute its success to the sharing of music.
Word of mouth has never before been so fast, and with such easily
accessible proof to back it up. Whether sending the songs to peers
directly, or accessing them through sites such as myspace
or New Music Canada, bands are getting music
heard by people whom they could not have reached in the past. Music
acts are finding success and validation that was never before available
to them when the record labels ruled the industry. It is the democratization
of music, and for music fans it has been a godsend.
There is the small matter of copyright to
assess, and outlets such as the iTunes music
store have deftly succeeded at that. As long as free downloads are
available, there will be legalities to comprehend. Legalities that are
so dense the industry is still sorting through them, while in the
meantime the availability of legitimately free music has skyrocketed.
As with any other product on the market, if you provide your customer
with a good enough sample they will come back and purchase the whole
package.
The industry’s real problem? They
can’t spoon feed the public crap anymore.
The focus is back to albums, which
can’t survive without talent. The industry has partly removed its
head from its ass and made steps to join this trend. It is a long way
from healthy, but it is by no means going extinct. Artists continue to
make their money where they always have, through touring, while the
industry looks for the next profit grab.
Everything will be ok.
File downloading was just the kick in the
balls it needed to stop being such an asshole.
