I’ve never done that before.
To be honest, I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been sleeping much lately and that might have very well impaired my judgment. However, I feel pretty happy with my purchase.
Why?
Well, it was music that I wanted and had no other way to get. Considering this particular item was a special-edition reissue of an album that I already own, I was concerned with the second disc of unreleased songs, live recordings and alternate takes. I could have bought the new version, I guess, but then I would have been paying for a brand-spanking new copy of something I already had, and under the circumstances, forgoing the liner notes didn’t bother me that much. (one of my major complaints about the digital music market)
It was cheaper than the cd, it came in full-quality audio files, and I had it instantly. A minute after I decided I wanted it, it was playing on my computer. (high-speed internet has totally redifined the nature of “impulse-buys”) I’m glad that I didn’t, and it ws cheap enough that I haven’t had any buyer’s remorse yet – at least, not in my wallet.
If it was cheap and easy, why don’t I feel good about my purchase?
Because the way the music business has handled the internet revolution has been sloppy, insulting, recidivist, and in many cases downright predatory. The intimidation methods that these companies employ to extract settlements are ridiculous for a mainstream American business, and the strategical targeting of college students, who they assume can afford a legal settlement if they can afford an education, strikes me as truly shameful.
What bothers me most is the way in which this debate has transformed the average music fan into a nameless, faceless “customer.” The music business and the careers of countless artists have been built upon the passionate support and selfless promotion of dedicated fans. These companies are not selling groceries or hardware – they traffic in intellectual property to which people develop intense emotional developments. In my mind, their profit-margins, if not their ethics, should dictate an appreciation and amicable relationship with the fans. Instead, all this has proven is that the fat-cats and rock stars view their adoring public with a thick air of entitlement and a measure of contempt that I’d challenge you to find in any other billion-dollar industry (except maybe oil.)
The fans who buy albums, records, posters, shirts and concert tickets are what keep these guys’ yachts afloat. If they wanted to keep living that way, they could have shown a little gratitude and understanding towards the people who put them there. I’m not advocating that the record companies should have sat back and allowed the wholesale piracy of their product – I simply think that it was their duty to their fans to adjust their pricing, distribution and business models to account for the changing technology of the times. If the fans decided the time had come to get their music through the internet, and that the price at which that music was being offered was too steep, it was the industry’s prerogative to make the music digitally available and to bring the prices down – that’s pretty basic economics, if you assume they wanted to stay in business.
Instead, the legal battle the companies have initiated have shown that they’re no longer in the business of shaping our culture, but in the commodification and diminishment of the human spirit in which they traffic. Make no mistake – the file-sharing lawsuits are not to recompense lost profits for the artists or anyone involved in the creative aspect of the business. They’re not even to cover basic operating fees for the companies in question. These lawsuits are an intimidation tactic intended to bully the public back into order and to preserve an outdated business model that the industry is too lazy to change.
They’re terrified of the new technology – they know they’re obsolete, and what’s more, the industry executives are well aware that the horizontal integration of internet society and the ease of distribution that the internet allows have made their roles utterly redundan. Gone are the days of A&R representatives and “talent scouts.” The world of independent music is available at our fingertips and the internet users will be the new “taste-makers” – only, it will be more democratic and more representative of the tastes of the generation than ever before in our culture’s history. They know this and they’re trying to squeeze every drop of water out of the stone.
Photo courtesy of fensterbme
