A rchive Date
[ 02-07-2000 ]
Category
[ Information Technologies ]
sub-Categoy
[ Napster ]
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[Napster signals music biz to get with it
By MICHAEL JENKINSON
Edmonton Sun
June 26, 2000
If you've seen any printed news in the past few months, you've probably read about the hand-wringing going on in the music industry over a computer program called Napster, and a digital file format called MP3.
In fact, there have been so many columns written about Napster recently I'm starting to think that the company is paying secret commissions to journalists for the publicity. (Memo to Napster executives: Cheques can be sent to my work address. I like U.S. dollars, please.)
Each Napster column has the obligatory background. Napster allows millions of computer users to share music files by creating a giant database made up of the digital music libraries of everyone else using Napster.
The obligatory background is followed by the real-life example: say you're looking for the new Britney Spears song, and you're too cheap to spring for $17.99 for the CD. You load up Napster, do a search for it, and download it on to your hard drive. Bingo. Free song blaring from your computer's speakers.
Then comes the dire warning, about how the music industry looks at Napster with stark raving terror. If someone can "rip" a CD of music into MP3 files and put them on Napster, there's no reason for anyone else to go buy the CD, when the songs can be downloaded for free.
Metallica went so far as to have some 600,000 Napster users banned from the company's database, claiming they were pirating the band's music. (Of course, all of them immediately went and signed on again with a new user name, but that's Metallica's problem.)
Finally, every Napster piece ever written notes that even if Napster is ultimately forced out of business thanks to lawsuits, there are scads of other programs out there which can recreate the big music-sharing database in an instant.
The inevitable solution of the commentariat to the MP3/Napster conundrum is for record companies to get with the times and let people download songs directly from them, for a price. People are getting used to downloading music to their computer, goes the refrain, so record companies should capitalize on that instead of fearing it.
So it's been suggested that if you want that new Britney Spears single, for instance, you'd download it off her record company's Web site for $1.99. The record company gets its money, Britney gets her royalties, and you get the song you want legally and cheaply. No record company has followed the collective wisdom of the opinion-makers yet, and for good reason. To do so would expose the big open secret of the music business: most CDs suck and we're the suckers.
It's true. There aren't a lot of CDs out there, particularly if they're from the Top 40 pop/rock genre, which have more than two or three good songs on them.
For years record companies have made tons of dough selling us CDs for $17.99 based on the fact we heard the first single on the radio and liked it so much we bought the album - and it turned out the other 10 songs on the CD blew monkey chunks.
The music industry knows that if record labels started putting songs on the Net for purchase, people would only pay for the songs they like. Because why purchase a $17.99 CD when you can get just the two songs you want for a mere $3.98?
Record companies have gotten used to getting the full $17.99 from us because for ages we've been paying it. Receiving just $3.98 for the two songs you download would, on a mass scale, put a big crimp in their revenue.
Yes, Napster is a way to steal music. But more fundamentally, Napster is a grassroots revolt against the over-priced, rather mediocre product being churned out by the music industry.
Right now we're in a game of chicken. Computer users are ripping music off the Net for free with impunity. The recording industry is paralysed because responding to the MP3 threat would mean the current economic structure of the music business would fold like a house of CD jewel cases.
Maybe $1.99 downloads wouldn't work. But maybe pricing the new Britney Spears CD at $5 would take away much of the incentive to pirate the music in the first place.
Michael Jenkinson can be reached by e-mail at mj@the-newsroom.com. His homepage is at http://www.the-newsroom.com. ]
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