You Pod, We Pod, I Pod

Everything I predicted would happen in digital music in 2005 (parrot-fashion, after listening to the industry leaders!) came true. If 2004 was the death of the 20th Century record industry, 2005 was the year downloads became mainstream.

But 2006 may be the most significant year of all.

Digital Rights Management is the issue. It sounds boring, but how it is resolved could affect millions of performers worldwide, and even create a fundamental shift in the way people view the 'ownership' of music. So what's the problem?

At the moment, digital downloading is split into two camps: Apple (iTunes and the iPod, by far the market leader) and Everyone Else (Napster, Rhapsody, Zen Creative etc.etc.). Most people don't realise this, but music downloaded from iTunes can only be played on an iPod. Music bought via other services such as Napster is often on a subscription basis, and is not compatible with iPod. For a set 'all-you-can-eat' subscription per month, you can download unlimited tracks from their catalogue of over 1 million songs. The catch? End the subscription, you lose all the music. I finally bought an iPod this Christmas, and bought into the whole iTunes 'thing'. But if I switch to a non-apple player in the future, I'll lose my downloaded music... all several hundred pounds-worth of it. You might argue that the Napster approach is less of a problem - if you never owned the music you downloaded in the first place, maybe it's not such a big deal if you lose it all, because you can just go and download it again from the next service you join, at no extra cost. But when you've downloaded thousands of dollars of music from iTunes, it's a different matter.

The major labels aren't helping. The Sony BMG copy-protection debacle (latest update on the sorry saga here) highlighted the reticence of the majors to supply music in a format that cannot be controlled once it reaches listeners.

There's great background on the whole of this issue on Bill Thompson's BBC News Technology blog: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4568606.stm

There's one file format though, that is not affected by all of this. It doesn't suffer from copyright restrictions, it won't implode or self-destruct, you can play it on any kind of music player, iPods included. You can load it onto as many players or computers as you like.

It's called... the MP3!

There remain people in the distribution industry who believe that, in time, major labels can be persuaded to do the unthinkable, and release music in MP3 format. Will it happen? Nobody knows. But one thing is for sure - these companies are being held to account by musicians and music-lovers like never before.

In the 20th century, the Big Companies 'did stuff', and everyone else swallowed it, whole. But now that we are in a world of 'two-way' converation (see Cluetrain Manifesto, Web 2.0), there's no guarantee that people will accept this kind of behaviour from the gatekeepers as they once would have. That's why Sony BMG could not succeed with copyright-protected CDs. Here's a question: why do you think Google maintains a company blog, for instance?

People at Ryanair and other low cost airlines have spoken of a theoretical future where virtually free travel is the norm, and business revenues come from the consequent opportunities that arise.

Now I'm not for a moment suggesting all music should be free, or even that it should necessarily be distributed in MP3 format. But what would happen if performers and labels relinquished their control-freak instinct and allowed recordings to become more of a means to an end, instead of an end in themselves? What if we changed our attitude to recorded music completely, and saw it less as a 'product' than a 'service'? How would that affect the conversation between artists and audiences? How would that affect attitudes to ownership and copyright? How would that affect Concerts? Education? Arts in the public sector?

And no, I don't have any of the answers ;)

Happy New Year from all of us at Court Lane Music!

Simon