[opendtv] Re: Book: When Labels Fought the Digital, and the Digital Won
- From: "John Willkie" <johnwillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 12:24:46 -0800
This is great news, and I heard it on the radio yesterday. Jobs got what he
said he wanted -- an end to DRM -- and what he didn't -- a recognition that
hits (I think it will actually turn out to be 'new releases') are more
valuable than catalog.
Price reductions are always good. I hope/trust Rhapsody will follow suit.
John Willkie
-----Mensaje original-----
De: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] En
nombre de Craig Birkmaier
Enviado el: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 6:21 AM
Para: OpenDTV Mail List
Asunto: [opendtv] Book: When Labels Fought the Digital, and the Digital Won
I'll save John the effort of a reply. Yesterday Apple announced the
virtual end of DRM on iTunes and a new pricing structure that will
kick in in April. Most catalog songs will drop to 69 cents, although
some "hits" will increase to $1.29.
You can even unlock the songs you have already purchased...for a price.
The music industry is now in full capitulation to a new digital
distribution paradigm. If one agrees with the author that "These
dinosaurs are largely responsible for their own demise," we can only
hope that the remaining dinosaurs in Hollywood are losing weight
faster than Steve Jobs...
Regards
Craig
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
When Labels Fought the Digital, and the Digital Won
By DWIGHT GARNER
Published: January 6, 2009
"You can't roll a joint on an iPod," the singer-songwriter Shelby
Lynne told The New York Times Magazine early last year. And, O.K., I
suppose that's among the iPod's drawbacks. But it's hard to think of
an electronic device released in recent decades that's brought more
pleasure to more people.
APPETITE FOR SELF-DESTRUCTION
The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age
By Steve Knopper
301 pages. Free Press. $26.
Should anyone care that in the process, the iPod has all but killed
the music industry as we've known it? Maybe not, Steve Knopper writes
in "Appetite for Self-Destruction," his stark accounting of the
mistakes major record labels have made since the end of the LP era
and the arrival of digital music. These dinosaurs, he suggests, are
largely responsible for their own demise.
Mr. Knopper, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, provides a
wide-angled, morally complicated view of the current state of the
music business. He doesn't let those rippers and burners among us -
that is, those who download digital songs without paying for them,
and you know who you are - entirely off the hook. But he suggests
that with even a little foresight, record companies could have
adapted to the Internet's brutish and quizzical new realities and
thrived.
This is a story that begins in earnest in the early 1980s, when
digital music first arrived in the form of the compact disc. At
first, Mr. Knopper suggests, almost everyone was frightened of these
small, shiny new toys.
The labels worried about digital piracy and about refitting the
factories that made vinyl LPs. Record stores didn't want to buy new
sales racks. Producers worried about the effects on recording
sessions, now that every footstep and door click would be audible. A
group called MAD (Musicians Against Digital) quickly formed, and
artists like Neil Young declared that CDs were soulless.
"The mind has been tricked," Mr. Young said at the time, sounding a
bit like Yoda, "but the heart is sad."
The labels came around because they could jack up prices. (LPs at the
time sold for about $9; most CDs went for almost twice that. ) Labels
could also renegotiate contracts with artists and force customers to
buy entire new album collections. According to Mr. Knopper,
executives also thought it was cool watching "that little drawer open
and close" on CD players.
Producers and artists came around, Mr. Knopper says, because the CD
"just sounded better than the LP, no matter how much its detractors
complain to this day about losing the rich, warm analog sound." But
record stores remained resistant, and thus the existence of the much
loathed cardboard or plastic "longboxes" - remember those? - until
the early 1990s. (The author reminds us that in the movie "Defending
Your Life" Albert Brooks's character dies as he tries to tear one
open while driving.)
"The CD boom lasted from 1984 to 2000," Mr. Knopper writes. Then the
residue of old mistakes and a wave of new realities began hammering
the music industry from all sides.
One of the first things the labels got wrong, Mr. Knopper says, was
the elimination of the single. It got young people out of the habit
of regularly visiting record stores and forced them to buy an entire
CD to get the one song they craved. In the short term this was good
business practice. In the long term it built up animosity. It was
suicidal.
When Napster and other music-sharing Web sites showed up, the single
came back with a vengeance. Before long MP3 - the commonly used term
for digitally compressed and easily traded audio files - had replaced
sex as the most searched-for term on sites like Yahoo! and AltaVista.
The record industry bungled the coming of Napster. Instead of
striking a deal with a service that had more than 26 million users,
labels sued, forcing it to close. A result, Mr. Knopper writes, was
that users simply splintered, fleeing to many other file-sharing
sites. "That was the last chance," he declares, "for the record
industry as we know it to stave off certain ruin."
Some of the seeds for this debacle were planted much earlier, during
an industry fight in the mid-1980s over Digital Audio Tape (DAT). The
labels, once again worried about illegal copying, installed a widget
on DATs that permitted songs to be copied only once. But they made a
short-sighted allowance for CD-rewrite drives on computers. Users
could copy music almost endlessly there. Oops. "They blew it," a Sony
marketer says. "Completely."
The final sections of "Appetite for Self-Destruction" describe the
arrival of Steve Jobs and Apple on the scene. The release of the iPod
was a kind of coup de grâce for the struggling industry. Before long,
Apple became America's biggest music retailer. Music executives
watched, apoplectic and helpless. "Apple had basically taken over the
entire music business," Mr. Knopper writes.
He paints a devastating picture of the industry's fumbling,
corruption, greed and bad faith over the decades. ("The business
ain't full of Martin Luther Kings," one former music executive
admits.)
It's too bad his interesting arguments and observations are wedged
into such an uningratiating book. The prose in "Appetite for
Self-Destruction" is undercooked, packed with clichés (the stakes are
always high, people constantly take the fall, one-two punches are
thrown) and awkward descriptions. Michael Jackson "danced like a
backwards angel, screeched and squealed"; the Sony executive Tommy
Mottola "wore gold chains and purple leather jackets and looked cool."
What's more, Mr. Knopper apparently did not get access to many of the
major players in this tale, including Mr. Jobs. His account rehashes
material covered in earlier, better books, including "Hit Men" by
Fredric Dannen and "The Perfect Thing" by Steven Levy.
The record labels have, in the last few years, found some new reasons
to believe. Ring tones have become serious business. Computer games
like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have taken off, and need to be fed
with new songs. And there's always the hope that Apple's near
monopoly on music sales will be broken by other devices and services,
allowing the labels to bargain for a better cut on song sales.
That could be a long wait. Apple will always be hard to beat. Mr.
Jobs is probably at work right now on an iPod that will roll Shelby
Lynne's joint for her.
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