crackerwax

I’ve never used Kazaa. Ever. I used Napster once or twice back in 2000 for the odd MP3 but have since grown tired of such things. Similarly though I don’t fancy the idea of legitimate ‘e-tailers’ who flog what amounts to expensive pre-ripped music. The reason?

Personal preference.

As this is being typed Liz Phair playing in the background, an MP3 that was ripped from a legitimately purchased CD, being streamed across my wireless network.

Let’s be clear about this, it’s not a copy nor is it a download, it’s a CD that was bought from a shop then put in a computer and converted to an MP3 using iTunes.

I can’t see any reason for anybody to stop me from putting the CDs I bought onto my computer and iPod, yet from time to time they still try it, remember Cactus protection anyone? So easy to get around it was a joke, it threw me for ten minutes. If that.

The music industry claims it is being damaged by the ‘MP3 Revolution’, bollocks. The music industry tried to pull this one in the seventies, anyone remember the tape and crossbones ‘Home Taping Is Killing Music’ stickers? If home taping was killing music it must have had a long term plan, because music ain’t dead, in fact it’s very much alive and even more expensive than ever.

Here’s a quote from the RIAA website:

‘Our companies continually consider new ideas and business models, but only if they respect the intellectual property rights of artists.’

What’s wrong with what they’re saying? Give up? The artists don’t own their intellectual property, the label they work for does! If anyone’s ripping off artists it’s not the 14 year old downloading Creed songs in their bedroom it’s the record companies themselves, chances are the 14 year old would never have bought the album anyway. People who download music don’t love music, they love downloading free music, there’s a subtle but important distinction. If they couldn’t get it for free they simply wouldn’t get it. Record companies and the RIAA miss this point, people can live without music.

It’s this level of hypocrisy that annoys me, the labels have been price fixing for years. A CD doesn’t cost even two pounds to make, sleeve and all, yet they still sell for as much as £15.99 in high street stores.

The answer to all this is not going to be easy. What it isn’t is CDs that cost £15.99, neither is it online downloads at 99p each (£10.89 for an album you can’t do anything with and that doesn’t have a case or artwork? Great!).

My idea is this, monthly subscription that allows you to download music in a choice of bit rates, that you can then play on, say, three devices of your choice and also that you can give to your friends to listen to but it will only play two or three times on ‘foreign’ machines before locking itself and directing the listener to the site where they can download it.

This would be the ideal solution, record companies could trace who bought what, who they let listen to it and should any of the extra listeners subsequently purchase the track or album perhaps have some kind of affiliate program to reward the listener?

If the record companies did this correctly they could grow a business model similar to that of the mobile phone companies by offering subsidised MP3 players that could only play the content from their site. This would tie the consumer to them and would also allow a degree of control that is currently missing from the solutions on offer.

Then again the RIAA is probably keener to intimidate people into capitulation rather than trying to work out a better way of doing things, after all why find a better way when you can just bully people into submission?