Already The Muddy Waters Of Digital Are Swirling
A friend pointed me to the remarkable Philip Sheppard's weblog, which in turn led to the Future Of Music Book, which I duly ordered and read. The arguments within felt as familiar to me as an old anorak.
There's no doubt that downloads are becoming very mainstream now, and without question there's no going back; this is the way ahead. Finally, the mass media people are realising this too. Well, most of them, anyway.
But there's so much more to it than just what you see now. The floodgates of change may finally be opening, but what we'll experience next is nothing less than a paradigm shift in how we, the human race, consume music. One post in particular on the Future Of Music blog caught my eye (27 Feb): "continued innovation will help to power a $30 billion digital music market ahead, which will consist mainly of transaction-based, subscription, and ad-supported content". Inside the book, there's plenty to suggest that this will be true. I was pleasantly surprised to find plenty of proof that my hunches from January (read new year post) are indeed correct.
The thrust of the argument is that if we can outgrow the limiting, proprietary models of iTunes et al, we'll eventually end up in a world where music is as accessible as water. Why should music be owned? If we were charged by the glass for every cup of water that came out of the tap, how would we react? With anger, I am sure! At the same time, there'll always be a reason to go and buy bottled water from a shop. These analogies and more are discussed in the book, and the resulting conclusions are remarkably convincing.
If you want to see where we'll be ten years from now, go buy yourself a copy. In the meantime, I've updated the front page of Court Lane Music to reflect where we're going. Take a look.
Weirdly, France seems to be the first to strike a major blow against DRM (Digital Rights Management) systems that, unchecked, could maintain the same paralysis for digital that the record industry suffered during its dying days. The response from Apple was fairly predictable, as short term revenue losses from such a move would be significant indeed. But in the long term, a dissolution of the proprietary side of DRM, in favour of a universal system for tracking usage and parcelling out royalties, would be in the best interests of everyone, musicians included. But that's the thing. Universal interchangeability of music distribution systems could only be possible after the destruction of all that proprietariness. If that's a word.
What happens next? Where will all this end up? Impossible to say, of course, but to quote Vint Cerf, Google's 'Chief Internet Evangelist', speaking on BBC Radio 4 recently in response to whether Google's new foothold in China would ever lead to a full penetration of censorship: "You can stand in front of the ocean with your hands up and say 'Stop!', but the sea won't necessarily take any notice" (I paraphrase!). There are some forces that are more powerful than systems arbitrarily imposed by the Powerful People.
As always, it's impossible to tell exactly the destination that we're journeying towards, but the route there just gets clearer and clearer.
There's no doubt that downloads are becoming very mainstream now, and without question there's no going back; this is the way ahead. Finally, the mass media people are realising this too. Well, most of them, anyway.But there's so much more to it than just what you see now. The floodgates of change may finally be opening, but what we'll experience next is nothing less than a paradigm shift in how we, the human race, consume music. One post in particular on the Future Of Music blog caught my eye (27 Feb): "continued innovation will help to power a $30 billion digital music market ahead, which will consist mainly of transaction-based, subscription, and ad-supported content". Inside the book, there's plenty to suggest that this will be true. I was pleasantly surprised to find plenty of proof that my hunches from January (read new year post) are indeed correct.
The thrust of the argument is that if we can outgrow the limiting, proprietary models of iTunes et al, we'll eventually end up in a world where music is as accessible as water. Why should music be owned? If we were charged by the glass for every cup of water that came out of the tap, how would we react? With anger, I am sure! At the same time, there'll always be a reason to go and buy bottled water from a shop. These analogies and more are discussed in the book, and the resulting conclusions are remarkably convincing.
If you want to see where we'll be ten years from now, go buy yourself a copy. In the meantime, I've updated the front page of Court Lane Music to reflect where we're going. Take a look.
Weirdly, France seems to be the first to strike a major blow against DRM (Digital Rights Management) systems that, unchecked, could maintain the same paralysis for digital that the record industry suffered during its dying days. The response from Apple was fairly predictable, as short term revenue losses from such a move would be significant indeed. But in the long term, a dissolution of the proprietary side of DRM, in favour of a universal system for tracking usage and parcelling out royalties, would be in the best interests of everyone, musicians included. But that's the thing. Universal interchangeability of music distribution systems could only be possible after the destruction of all that proprietariness. If that's a word.
What happens next? Where will all this end up? Impossible to say, of course, but to quote Vint Cerf, Google's 'Chief Internet Evangelist', speaking on BBC Radio 4 recently in response to whether Google's new foothold in China would ever lead to a full penetration of censorship: "You can stand in front of the ocean with your hands up and say 'Stop!', but the sea won't necessarily take any notice" (I paraphrase!). There are some forces that are more powerful than systems arbitrarily imposed by the Powerful People.
As always, it's impossible to tell exactly the destination that we're journeying towards, but the route there just gets clearer and clearer.
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