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MP3war

There are interesting times ahead for the music industry. The Internet has combined with new technology such as MP3 and CD burners to provide ordinary people with the ability to create/pirate/exchange (delete as appropriate!) music easily and cheaply. The music industry began by simply taking pot shots at various websites such as MP3.com and other small or amateur ventures who seemed to champion this 'pirate' technology. Legal battles have been bubbling away over copyright infringement when along came Napster.

Napster allowed people to search each other's computers for music. Each member of the service contributes their music to be freely copied, and in exchange can help themselves to a copy of anyone else's tracks. It's a distribution system of incredible efficiency and diversity. It's a music library composed of millions of music lover’s individual collections.

The music industry is worried, very worried. Here is a system that threatens their livelihood. It has the potential to remove the middle-man between the artist and the fans.Some argue that it threatens the end of music making, and that unless the music industry can combat this piracy it will die, and with it the artists. No more Britney, Spice Girls or Boyzone. No more Hear’Say. Boo hoo.

Napster has been dragged to court and may not survive. Already several rival music exchange systems and a public domain version, which has no owner to sue, have flourished. The music industry are discovering that stamping out this kind of freedom is not easy. To aid in the anti-piracy struggle, The Coalition for the Future of Music has taken out a series of adverts signed by prominent bands such as Alanis Morissette, and Christina Aguilera. They plead with the public not to steal music, to respect the musicians livelihood, "If a song means a lot to you, imagine what it means to us."

Despite massive repression, using the legal rulings and financial muscle to destroy MP3 sites, the music industry is losing. A recent round of skirmishes involved the music industry’s attempt to release a format they could control; the Secure Digital Music Initiative. This was opened up to hackers, who were invited (hackSDMI.org) to break the code. Some boycotted the invitation on the grounds that this was simply doing the job of testing the system for the music industry, without them having to pay. Others accepted the challenge and utterly smashed the code to the ground. While the SDMI chimps are faffing about in admitting it had been cracked, Salon.com reported an insider’s remarks, “...it’s all broken”.

While the Coalition for the Future of Music's site advocate creative freedom from major labels, member and executive of Artists Against Piracy, Noah Stone said, "There will always be a place for a major label, but it would be nice if they didn't have a stranglehold on the business. But there is a place for them, and you don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water."

But does the industry foster talent or rip people off? Courtney Love, currently filing a lawsuit against the industries' standard draconian contract comments, "Artists who have generated billions of dollars for the music industry die broken and uncared for by the buisness they made wealthy."

To further this point, in the UK an investigation into CD prices is underway, as the Supermarkets accuse the music companies of perventing cheap parallel imports. In the US, the Washington Post carried the story, "Recently, the Federal Trade Commission found that the major record labels had been artificially hiking up the prices of CDs. A group of Connecticut music fans promptly filed a $1.5 billion class action suit that accuses Capitol Records, Universal, Sony, Time Warner and BMG of conspiring to overcharge for CDs."

If we don't buy the bland shit they offer us, how can they afford the luxury offices, the champagne dinners, the company limos, industry parties, PR gurus and all the lawyers and so on? What is more annoying is that their legal persecution is ongoing, despite the fact that nobody yet knows if this type of file sharing service is a good thing for sales or not. Some claim it actually helps music sales. To underline the industries' incompetence all you have to do is look at the sixties. Writer David Sinclair comments in the sleeve to 'The Jimi Hendrix Experience BBC Sessions' where, "it was also widely believed that playing records on the radio too often would actually discourage people from buying those records. After all, went the argument if you can hear them on the radio for free, why bother to go out and buy them?" Not exactly an industry of competence or forward thinking is it?

One argument is that without the music business's investment in music, then the talent they nurture will be stifled. People will stop making music. Lets look closely at this myth. Firstly, the music industry is just that - an industry. It is searching for a formula that it can use and re-use to sell records to us. They don't want to nurture new talent, they want to make money. Witness the endless stream of boy/girl bands with perfect looks and constant cover versions as testimony to this. Secondly, people have made music for thousands of years before the music industry came along and will long after it has died.

There is a future where the music industry is no more, where artists are in control of their own destiny. That destiny may not offer the vast riches that mega-stars enjoy today, but it will be a future where musician's make enough money to earn a living, a livelihood like everyone else. As Chuck D, front man of Public Enemy and Rapstation prophesizes, "A million artists with a million labels."

Is the fact that our cultural spokespeople may never get catapulted into a world removed from reality a bad thing? Is the fact that they'll have to live with the rest of us, write songs about our world and not get lost in self-adoration and mass market sales pressures, a bad thing? Ultimately they will still be able to make a living doing what they love and that can't be bad. Steve Albini, formerly of 'Big Black' said on the sleeve notes to 'Pig Pile', "To us, every moment we remained unfettered and in control was a success. We never had a manager. We never had a booking agent. We never had a lawyer. We never took an advance from a record company. We booked our own tours, paid our own bills, made our own mistakes and never had anybody shield us from either the truth or the consequences. The results of this methodology speak for themselves: Nobody ever told us what to do and nobody took any of our money. We had a fucking blast, and blasted a few ourselves."

More Info Links:
BBC's beginners guide to MP3
BBC's guide to alternatives to Napster
Chuck D on Rapstation and in the Washington Post.
Guardian G2, 16th march 2001.
DMOZ.org's MP3 software links
Wired's MP3 News Archive