by Eli Ewok Brody.
Things change. The Internet, although evil-looking at first, has forced us to perceive everyday activities from a completely different direction and realize that many, many things have to be done differently from now on. This is entirely healthy. One such outlook is the way we believe music must be bought and sold. Today, artists rely on giant distribution companies to get their work to the public at large. The Internet will change this thoroughly. Let's take a closer look at why and how.
Record Companies (distribution firms) have their paws and whiskers everywhere. They have channels of persuasion, antennae in every house - these are MTV, most radio, bad parties, etc. A dangerous mix is hit upon: peer pressure is powerful. everyone watches MTV. You mean you don't?The companies are smart, they tell you what to listen to, and then sell it to you for an extortionary price. That's business.
Artists do not make real money on these expensive records. Alanis Morissette has made two speeches in Congress and the Plugin Conference partially concerning the low royalties paid to artists. So where does this money go? Mixing and Recording gets a good hunk. (Especially the bad singers - they must spend a fortune engineering their voices.) Advertising? Tons. Take a look at MTV: they must be rolling in dough. Every week there are new commercials and promos, fancy 3D animations, talking hairpieces.... you name it. The manufacturing companies are rich, because they're owned by the record companies. (We're talking pennies for the production of a single CD, once it's mass-produced.) And of course, the CEO of the Record Company will take home a large bonus this year.
What about the 97% of bands that don't make it to the public ear, simply because they're not "marketable"? Distribution firms look for where the money's at, "popular" and commercial music leading the race, which comprises a very small percentage of the total availability of artists. Is that justified?
Enter MP3, enter Napster, enter just about everyone else. MP3 may not be the best technology, but it serves very well as a warning of the Doom. Suddenly these big record companies are shaking in their pants. And they should! They finally did manage to get Napster under some sort of wraps, but now there's the indestructable and infinite realm of anonomous Gnutella to deal with.... The Underground is vast.
These companies claim they're protecting the "intellectual property of the artists." Bull. They couldn't care less. They're in it for the power. If Metallica is any indication (the band was used by BMG in its crusade against Napster), the firms must have enormous leverage and control over the artists they sign.
You've seen the sins of the record companies. You've seen their fear. Now you'll see what happens next....
Very shortly, micro-payments will become big on the Internet. Within a year or two. (As of now, you can't buy a 20 cent product with a credit card.) What does that mean? It means that any artist, or artist wanna-be, can put up a web site, and sell music or pictures right off the Internet. Right from his own home, if he has a few thousand bucks. And that's how much you'd pay to kick-start a record anyway. Suddenly: distribution doesn't need a record firm.
But why would anyone buy music off the Internet, when you can easily download it for free?
What if it was convenient? What if it was cheap? 20 cents a song. Right now. From the comfort of your own home, you can buy a song and have it in five or ten minutes (with newer wideband communications, we're talking seconds).
What if you could be sure this is an original? That this is an official source? That this is a high-quality, flawless, error-free original? It might be digitally signed (by the artist) and error-checked after it was downloaded. It would come with album information, lyrics, a subscription to the artist's Email Newsletter, a 5-cent discount on your next purchase, some reccomendations ("If you liked this song, try these other bands...")..... and so on.
What if you had a right to complain? As a paying customer, you have a right to complain and return a product for a wide variety of reasons: I don't like the style. My copy is corrupt. I lost it, could you send a new one?
And finally, what if you knew this was a legal copy? You're legally purchasing this song. It belongs to you. You know the artist has been paid. Hell, you directly paid the artist himself! This is great, your conscience is free, and it can feel almost intimate, that you practically know the artist, you paid him directly, and he gave you a song. It can be very powerful.
Not everyone will pay. That's the nature of the beast. But this is a fact to be embraced. You're gaining unlimited publicity. In other words, if you've gotten to the point that you have to worry about people listening to your music without you paying, then you have nothing to worry about, because you must be popular.
The artist, through his own channels, can gain a gigantic audience and following through the net. People from Australia, Japan, California, and Peru, all listening to your music. People will find music by word of mouth, by endless forums, by infinite reviews. There will not be a mainstream. That's the beauty. You're not competing with other artists, you're forming communities. 200 similar jazz bands team up, and voila! you have an endless following. Sombody looking for the taste you give will find you. So much.
Most people have respect for the intellectual property of other people. I don't believe we're talking about morality here. "MP3 debases teenagers, because it teaches them not to respect intellectual rights" is just a line that makes record companies sound all moral. But tell me, when we're talking about MUSIC, which, of all things, should be the most accessible product to people (morally speaking), who's charging a fortune for a plastic disc? They do it, because they CAN. This is Free America, land of the Gullible. People will pay this money.
But let me tell you. The record companies won't last forever, thanks to the Internet and the hordes of people unjustly condemned for simply sharing music among themselves. What'll go with them? MTV, their main channel. And children and teenagers will see that there is something else. Once they have a choice, once they see that there are other things out there, cookie-cutter pop stars will not be needed anymore.
We never could please "all of the people all of the time," but until recently, we got away with it. No only are we realizing that each human truly is an individual, there are also far too many of us to lump into a single category. A single image isn't enough anymore, which is why the cookie-cutter idea will backfire and disappear. In its place, a confusing myriad of infinite, fractallic choices will make themselves heard. Too much? Take a look at the music we've created over the past few hundred years - "myriad" doesn't begin to describe it. We're in for interesting times.
Lock a 12-year-old in a room, with a CD player and every record ever produced, for a month. I guarantee you that he or she will emerge a cultured, worldly person, not someone who listened to Backstreet Boys the whole time. It's the Choice. The fact that we can choose, and not be spoon-fed, is the key.
This is the era of the garage band. "We recorded this song in the bathroom." Word of mouth, Index By Genre. Endless possibilities, endless benifits. No capital, no middleman record companies. No limit.
Get to it.
Both of Alanis's speeches are at her website (alanismorissette.com). (They include Senate Hearing and Plugin Conference speeches.)
The Open Music movement has come up with many different licenses under which an artist can release free music - and still make money!
Free-Music.org is an attempt to collect information, news, and material concerning free music around the world.
Visit Vorbis.com - Ogg-Vorbis is a high-quality, open-source, unpatented music compression technology (similar to MP3, but free). It is speculated that much of the free music released in the future will be distributed on the internet encoded in Ogg-Vorbis format.