When the Only Tool You Have is a Hammer…
The first few times I read David Berlind going on about Apple abusing monopoly power over the refusal to license the Fairplay DRM I responded the same way that my friend Manuel from Barcelona would with a perpelexed “Que?”. I blew it off as just another one of these tech pundits trying to play music biz exec or even perhaps the more charitable passionate music fan with an opinion on the subject. Music ain’t tech and tech ain’t music and as much as the Valley would like to think it is, it sure as hell ain’t Hollywood. Conversely, so it seems, that the music biz is rather slow on the uptake of new technology and doesn’t quite have a grasp on the future. The two are coming together and with any luck the best parts of the two will merge and start offering some services and a means to enjoy music that not only provide value for the consumers but also so the artists and perhaps the labels or whomever is distributing it can make some money.
As I’m trolling the blogosphere (can’t y’all come up with a better name?) for the latest dish on Spitzer subpoenas for Warner, Sony and Universal with regards to alleged (wink, wink) colluding to price fix music downloads, kinda like what they were indicted for with brick and mortar CD sales a couple years back, I noticed Berlind’s most recent piece.
Berlind does have a few really good points though there are a couple of Que? moments in there as well. One such Que? moment is he likens Apple to an abusive monopolist that has some sort of stranglehold on the music biz. Maybe in Jobs’ wet dreams. Say what you will about DRM but the iTMS is just another way to get music onto your iPod. I’d agree that the current DRM strategies are pretty limiting and in some cases, downright dangerous. I don’t know that I’d be too concerned about the future of DRM right now as thanks to Sony, the whole DRM debate has been turned on its head. Possible outcomes of this could be something like a less restrictive DRM or some sort of compuslory licensing that eliminates the need for DRM in the first place.
Another such Que? moment is when Berlind says…
“Down the road, when there are no more CDs and all music is bought online“. (emphasis mine)
I agree that at some point CDs will not be the prevalent physical form factor for retail music just as cylinders gave way to records that gave way to tape that gave way to CDs. Nothing new here that hasn’t been happening for the life of the music biz. It’s the addition of DRM that has the potential to throw a wrench into the works. The current problem, for the labels, anyway, isn’t a format change per se, it’s that they are losing control of the format and distribution. Will there ever not be any sort of physical media for retail music? Maybe, but it may be about the time I finally get a date with Jane Jetson and start working at Spacely Sprockets. To think that music will only be available online as we know it today is the sort of tech tunnelvision that has led to other wild pronouncements that didn’t quite pan out.
Music is enjoyed (notice I didn’t say consumed) in many different ways in many different places by many different people. Working out with an iPod, listening to CDs in the car, rocking out at home on the computer. Not everyone is always connected or always has a computer when they want to enjoy music. One of the big selling points the tech wonks use are “on demand network”, broadband, yada, yada, yada. I’ve had some form of “broadband” for about ten years but not everyone does nor does everyone want that (though most can get it if they want it) to be the only way they interface with other people or products. While I think it’s possible and highly likely that some form of digital distribution will shake out of all this, eliminating point of sale retail for music would be foolish. The market is too big not to sell music in a traditional retail setting. There a need for some sort of media (USB flash, SD,CF?) to carry music from one device or network to the other. You can’t tie music to a network or computer. Music is it’s own thing and needs to be as portable as the people that are enjoying the music are.
One thing in the piece I thought rather poignant was how are we to personalize music gifts in the era of DRM downloads. Giving someone a gift card to buy “our song” is about as romantic as having the Fed Ex guy show up with a certificate for roses from 1-800-Flowers. I’m sure that some industrious chaps and chappettes will come up with a solution but that sort of underscores my point. Buying and listening to music is a human thing. It’s about emotions and feelings. And that is what I think many on both sides, Hollywood and the Valley are missing. We aren’t mearly consuming a data stream or Soundscan numbers, we’re humans enjoying music.
December 28th, 2005 at 1:08 pm
Dave, sounds like you are almost echoing some of my thoughts from a similar /. thread a few months ago. I actually did compare the issue to the field of pro live audio.
From my post on Slashdot:
December 28th, 2005 at 1:10 pm
Dave, sounds like you are almost echoing some of my thoughts from a similar /. thread a few months ago. I actually did compare the issue to the field of pro live audio.
From my post on Slashdot:
In the end I think it all comes down to what the consumer will bear. Someone replied to me that they didn’t think that the music companies will survive if they continue, but it appears that the public is willing to bear their antics and further their over marketed mediocre product. Caveat emptor.
December 28th, 2005 at 11:25 pm
The gift thing is already taken care of on the iTMS. Looks like it’s a pretty new feature. To be honest, it’s not the most intuitive part of the store, but it’s there.
There are a couple of ways you can do the gifting thing. If you just want to give a particular song or album, you need to get to the relevant album page. Then click on “Gift This Music” to the right of the album-cover image. (I’m not sure when “gift” became a verb, but whatever.) From there, you can “gift” the whole album or any of the individual songs.
You can also “gift” a custom playlist of songs. This requires that you haven’t unchecked “Show links -> to the Music Store” in iTunes’ General preferences. You can then click on the arrow next to any of your playlists in the Source pane, and choose Give Playlist in the resulting dialog box.
December 28th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
I should add that you can “gift” a custom playlist of songs even if you don’t necessarily own all of the songs. You can add a song from the iTMS to a playlist without buying it by simply dragging the song from the iTMS to the playlist.
(The simplicity of this process would seem to fly in the face of Dave Winer et al.’s assertions that iTunes is impossible to use….)
Also, the Cancel button on the page that you get when you click “Gift This Music” (on an album page) doesn’t actually work for me. Bug, I guess. The Back button works just as well.
December 28th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
Greetings William. I never knew that feature existed, and BTW, good choice of an album as an example. I just gifted myself Linus and Lucy from that record. I’ve been wanting to learn to play that on the piano to use during line check/ soundcheck. As an aside, for the first time in many, many, many years I watched the original 60’s version of the show this season. I missed the original stop motions of Frosty and Rudolph this year. Enough of middle aged guy memory lane…
The gift is still an email or print out of the transaction and not the tune itself. But still better than a gift cert. I can burn it on a CD and give it to you but I can’t give it to you online unless you have iTunes (v 6.0 at least) and an account at iTMS. As far as Winer is concerned, I’ve seen him speak several times and don’t put too much stock in his ranting though I’m sure lot’s of folks say the same about me…
Good to hear from you William, give your family my regards.
December 29th, 2005 at 12:01 am
Greetings Mikey. The DRM thing is interesting and with Sony stepping on their dick (in golf shoes) it will be interesting to see how it shakes out.
That local band I used to work with has been doing the official “bootleg” thing to the tune of about 3 million units over the course of the last few tours. Available day after show, no DRM, 192k mp3 files. For grins I checked a few of the big P2P nets to see how many of the tracks were being shared freely. It’s easier to get the one hit wonder “Big in Japan” from file sharing than it is these official bootlegs that are available without DRM. I think that shoots down the whole DRM thing.
December 29th, 2005 at 10:46 am
Dave Winer was one of the first developers for the Macintosh, but he has been a little bitter WRT Apple Computer ever since Apple Script knocked the bottom out of Frontier’s market as a scripting environment. He was pretty vocal about what he saw as betrayal back then. Although he has gone on to develope many important new concepts I think he still remembers Frontier.
Mac