No Tears for the Recording Industry |
||
|
|
The best argument anyone can make against technologies like mp3 and Napster is that they will ultimately result in less high-quality music. I'm barely holding back the tears. You mean teenagers will have to actually pay attention in physics class? MTV won't have any more material to cram down viewers' throats? Corporate-owned radio stations will go silent? TV commercials will be devoid of hip product-pushing tunes? No more Beatles anthologies? In other words, corporations need hits as much as musicians and listeners do. Anything that is in high demand will be profitable, regardless of black market activity. It's called economics. If Philip-Morris can continue to profit from selling cancer sticks, Time-Warner can do the same with music. The recording industry has no choice but to change their medium. Listeners want to be able to easily and quickly download high-quality mp3 files to the digital player of their choice. So far the recording industry has ignored this huge demand because their executives are too old, too rich, and too lazy to retool their shops. Meanwhile companies like Napster are actually innovating on behalf of these dinosaurs. Napster made a crucial mistake by not letting the industry participate in Napster's advertising-based revenue stream. Idiots. But even if the Internet spells the unlikely demise for the recording behemoths, music will go on. Music predates the RIAA and every other greedy corporation on the planet. Sony didn't invent Rock and Roll. Corporations don't fuel the supply of music. Music comes from inspiration and talent, not money. Somehow the people who lived one hundred years ago -- thousands of years ago -- managed to create enough music to keep themselves going. Profit wasn't their motive. In a future devoid of shopping mall CD stores, artists will continue to make music and post their songs to the Internet, for free. But it isn't going to happen that way. Corporations will find a way to make money off of the Internet -- just watch. It's about meeting demand. Business is always about meeting demand. There's more music at Tower Records than anyone has the time to listen to. Bands that nobody has heard of release albums every month. If you stacked all of the "dance" compilation CDs, "best-of" rip-offs, and live nostalgia-tour recordings, it would reach all the way to Bono's head. The Internet has the potential to bring an audience large enough to listen to the cacophony. Meanwhile children are rarely exposed to John Coltrane, Miles Davis, or Louis Armstrong. Not to mention Mozart. Maybe less is more. |
