Imagine a futuristic world in which you find yourself in possession of a device that can make a perfect copy of any physical item you put into it. Star Trek fans know this as the replicator, a device that can create food, tools, or anything else you need at the push of a button. It’s sort of a Xerox machine for tangible items. All the replicator needs to operate is a source of energy and raw materials – both of which are, of course, abundant and cheap in the future. The replicator doesn’t even need to start with an object to copy if it has the pattern of an object stored in its memory – sort of like today’s digital copiers which actually scan a document once and produce all the copies from the one scanned image in memory. In the Star Trek universe millions of patterns are kept on file in the computers, and users of the replicator can even request customized items by simple voice command – "Tea, Earl Grey, hot."
I’m not going to delve into a philosophical debate of whether or not money would still exist in a world where the replicator is more common than today’s microwave oven. I will submit, however, that the exchange of money for those items that could be replicated at near zero cost would cease. A pastry chef who just created the best chocolate cake the world has ever known probably won’t try to get people to buy the replicator pattern for it. He’ll probably just distribute the pattern in the hopes that his cake stands out among all the other freely available patterns for chocolate cake. This phenomenon is already observable today when you look at open source software and freeware on the internet. People contribute their time and effort to open source software because they enjoy doing it. They edit Wikipedia because they like sharing their expertise. Humans have always and will always engage in intellectual pursuits for the thrill of discovery, the joy of creativity, and the pride of productivity.
Taking a few steps back from the utopian Star Trek universe we can envision the world during the development of replicator technology. I imagine that the first replicators were probably only able to duplicate small, simple items whose patterns were not too large; a hammer, a golf ball, a pair of socks, a glass of water, a diamond. As time went on and the technology improved the library of items that could be synthesized grew larger and more complex. The energy and raw material cost continued to drop and soon people were replicating foods, chemicals, and electronics. I’m taking the time to illustrate this gradient because mankind has already started heading down this technological road. We have already mastered replicator technology for one kind of good, and that good is information.
Information replication has been in the hands of industry for decades, but tape recorders and copy machines began to put that technology into the hands of everyday people. The personal computer took information digital, and the internet opened up a near-zero cost distribution channel for it. The near zero cost of replicating and distributing information represents a great leap forward for human civilization, but has caused economic problems for certain vendors of information. The recording industry in the United States has experienced a sharp degree of pain in this area. Record companies used to be able to rely on the complexity, expense, and territorial distribution channels of the physical media to maintain price levels and profits. Now all of those control mechanisms have been stripped from them.
The music industry has suffered the greatest because they deal in an information format that is neither large nor complex. Sound, and hence music, is easily digitized and compressed and is therefore easily distributed. A large music collection can be stored in very little space on a personal computer, and an album can very easily and cheaply be put back onto physical media. Video information is not much more complex, but enjoys the advantage of being much larger in size. Computer software and video games also have large information footprints and are more complex in nature. Complexity and size are barriers to easy replication and distribution, but they are only temporary barriers.
The recording industry’s most effective response to the problem has been to begin online distribution and drastically cut prices for music singles. Albeit late in the game, they realized that trying to crush out the internet as a distribution channel was not practical. The have also employed the use of DRM, digital rights management, technology in their distribution. I don’t view this so much as an actual technology, but rather an artificial layer of complexity – as complexity is a barrier to replication and distribution. The combination of lower prices and greater file complexity simply lowers the likelihood that the average consumer will seek out a free copy. If you make piracy a hassle, and the legal route is cheap then more people will take the legal route.
The end of the road is the same for all information products in my opinion. Eventually all creative works will end up like the pattern for the chocolate cake for your replicator. They will be created for their own sake, and shared freely. DRM won’t be around forever, and neither will the record companies or the RIAA – but the musicians will. What we are seeing now with music piracy is the unveiling of a truth: Music is an art, and, like all creative endeavors, it exists for its own sake. Art is intrinsically invaluable while simultaneously being worthless. Money is just a nice fringe benefit, and a function only of the current era of human development -- an era that is ending for some.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
Music You Buy, Music You Don't
Let me date myself by saying that when I was young music was sold on large black discs made of polyvinyl chloride. I was not a spoiled kid by any means, but I always managed to scrape together enough allowance to buy the things I really wanted. This included music albums. Most of the albums I purchased had one song on them that I really enjoyed, and the needle would ride those grooves again and again while the rest of the platter remained untouched. Having other funding priorities, such as comic books and action figures, my album purchases remained a modest one of two every year.
When I got a little older and purchased a cassette deck the shape of my music collection changed. I started using the tape deck to record individual songs off of the radio, saving me the trouble of buying an entire album. No, an eleven-year-old does not care if his recording has DJ banter at the beginning and is cut off at the end by and advertisement. Let’s be honest here, we’re not talking about a nuanced performance of a Beethoven symphony - this is some guy with long hair screaming above the same three power chords for four minutes. Despite the new technology of the tape recorder, I still found myself at the record store buying one or two albums every year.
By the time I reached my early teenage years the dual cassette deck with "high speed dub" was commonplace and my friends and I enjoyed copying each other’s albums and piecing together our own mixes of hits that we liked. We’d trade tapes at school, and copy the copies of other people’s copies. Did we care if the tunes we were sharing were the audio equivalent of a document that had been faxed back and forth too many times, becoming barely legible? Of course not. Nevertheless there would be those one or two albums every year that I actually wanted to own, so I bought them.
The late teens and early twenties are the sweet spot for the recording industry. It’s when the music speaks to you and your generation, and the ratio of disposable income to common sense is peaking. For me this was the era of the Compact Disc: a new standard of audio purity, and the price tag to go with it. My father believed it was all a conspiracy to make him repurchase his entire music collection in order to transition from vinyl. Most of my albums didn’t really interest me anymore so I only had to repurchase a select few. For me the CD basically changed nothing. I still made the same one or two album purchases every year, and I still used my tape recorder to make copies off of other people’s CD’s.
I got my first broadband connection right around the time Napster was created. Napster made me feel like a kid again, waiting for a song to come on the radio so I could record it with my tape deck. In many cases, the songs were probably the same ones I had taped in my youth. Only this was infinitely better. I could simply think of a song I wanted to listen to, do a quick search and download and within minutes I’d be listening to it – and I’d have a decent quality copy to boot. 128kbit MP3 audio isn’t CD quality by any stretch, but one constant through the decades is that popular music doesn’t require high fidelity to be enjoyed. Did my music purchasing habits change during Napster? Of course not. My norm of buying one of two albums per year did not falter.
I don’t know how many songs I downloaded off of Napster, but that hard drive has long since crashed and I don’t really miss it to be honest. I haven’t downloaded any music since the shutdown of Napster because it isn't worth the hassle. I guess as an individual I could be characterized by the RIAA as a success story, in terms of their actions to halt illegal downloading. But have they made any more money from me? I still buy one or two albums every year, which has been the norm throughout my life. If anything I bought more albums during the heyday of Napster.
The CDs that I own, I own for a reason. I want the high quality recording and the liner notes. I want the artist to be rewarded for creating something that I value enough to grant space on my shelf. The whole point here is that the tape recordings of my youth and the downloaded MP3s have always been the crap that I wouldn’t have bought anyway. Imagine an invisible fly on the wall in a movie theater enjoying the show without a ticket. His presence is costing you nothing. He doesn’t care if you if you shoo him out or not, but doing so is a negative revenue scenario for you because you have to buy a swatter.
I probably buy less music than the average American does, but I think there are plenty of people out there like me. We pay the premium prices for the music we really like. There is a larger body of music out there that would be nice to have but isn’t worth the price. If there is a technology that makes it easy to get disposable music for free then I will use it, otherwise I'll simply do without the music.
When I got a little older and purchased a cassette deck the shape of my music collection changed. I started using the tape deck to record individual songs off of the radio, saving me the trouble of buying an entire album. No, an eleven-year-old does not care if his recording has DJ banter at the beginning and is cut off at the end by and advertisement. Let’s be honest here, we’re not talking about a nuanced performance of a Beethoven symphony - this is some guy with long hair screaming above the same three power chords for four minutes. Despite the new technology of the tape recorder, I still found myself at the record store buying one or two albums every year.
By the time I reached my early teenage years the dual cassette deck with "high speed dub" was commonplace and my friends and I enjoyed copying each other’s albums and piecing together our own mixes of hits that we liked. We’d trade tapes at school, and copy the copies of other people’s copies. Did we care if the tunes we were sharing were the audio equivalent of a document that had been faxed back and forth too many times, becoming barely legible? Of course not. Nevertheless there would be those one or two albums every year that I actually wanted to own, so I bought them.
The late teens and early twenties are the sweet spot for the recording industry. It’s when the music speaks to you and your generation, and the ratio of disposable income to common sense is peaking. For me this was the era of the Compact Disc: a new standard of audio purity, and the price tag to go with it. My father believed it was all a conspiracy to make him repurchase his entire music collection in order to transition from vinyl. Most of my albums didn’t really interest me anymore so I only had to repurchase a select few. For me the CD basically changed nothing. I still made the same one or two album purchases every year, and I still used my tape recorder to make copies off of other people’s CD’s.
I got my first broadband connection right around the time Napster was created. Napster made me feel like a kid again, waiting for a song to come on the radio so I could record it with my tape deck. In many cases, the songs were probably the same ones I had taped in my youth. Only this was infinitely better. I could simply think of a song I wanted to listen to, do a quick search and download and within minutes I’d be listening to it – and I’d have a decent quality copy to boot. 128kbit MP3 audio isn’t CD quality by any stretch, but one constant through the decades is that popular music doesn’t require high fidelity to be enjoyed. Did my music purchasing habits change during Napster? Of course not. My norm of buying one of two albums per year did not falter.
I don’t know how many songs I downloaded off of Napster, but that hard drive has long since crashed and I don’t really miss it to be honest. I haven’t downloaded any music since the shutdown of Napster because it isn't worth the hassle. I guess as an individual I could be characterized by the RIAA as a success story, in terms of their actions to halt illegal downloading. But have they made any more money from me? I still buy one or two albums every year, which has been the norm throughout my life. If anything I bought more albums during the heyday of Napster.
The CDs that I own, I own for a reason. I want the high quality recording and the liner notes. I want the artist to be rewarded for creating something that I value enough to grant space on my shelf. The whole point here is that the tape recordings of my youth and the downloaded MP3s have always been the crap that I wouldn’t have bought anyway. Imagine an invisible fly on the wall in a movie theater enjoying the show without a ticket. His presence is costing you nothing. He doesn’t care if you if you shoo him out or not, but doing so is a negative revenue scenario for you because you have to buy a swatter.
I probably buy less music than the average American does, but I think there are plenty of people out there like me. We pay the premium prices for the music we really like. There is a larger body of music out there that would be nice to have but isn’t worth the price. If there is a technology that makes it easy to get disposable music for free then I will use it, otherwise I'll simply do without the music.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)