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Last year it was just the first try; this year it's a tradition.
If you ever wondered what would replace the New Music Seminar as
the leading annual music business convention in the U.S.,
Jupiter Communications'
Plug.in
may be the one, in a few years. Addressing the convergence of New
Music and New Technology, this is the convention that will trace
the impact of online, interactive and other technological advances
on the music business over the impending evolution of the next
several years. It's in a high-growth mode now, and as the online
segment of the music business grows, this convention will be sure
to grow along with it.
Liquid Audio was prominent
at the expo this year, presenting a complete system for downloading
music, much like the system introduced by Eurodat
last year. In fact, this technology had it's first actual consumer
launch during the convention itself, through N2K's "e_mod" system.
That's right, if you purchase a CD-R (recordable CD-ROM) drive, a
few blank CD-Rs and register yourself at Music Boulevard, you can
download music right onto a CD at home, either a full album at a
time, or even track by track to create a custom "album" song by
song.
If you trust it on your hard disk, you don't even need the
CD, but you can't copy it for anyone else, without divulging
extremely personal information in your player, such as Social
Security Number and other identifiers used to verify the
purchases. It will take a huge amount of time through a modem
(more manageable via T1 and higher), but if the title you want is
not in stock locally, this is still faster than mail order by a
long shot. In the broadband world, this will be quick and painless
(well, one hopes it will; skeptics may still raise their eyebrows
until the telcos or cable companies or someone else gets their act
together).
The final panel of the convention was a spirited roundtable
discussion on piracy that pitted itinerant electronic freedom
fighter John Perry Barlow against representatives from NARAS, BMI,
RIAA and Billboard on the topic of just what will piracy do to the
economic structure of the music business in the online era.
Barlow's position is similar to Esther Dyson, claiming that
recorded music as a product is doomed, due to easy duplicability of
digital data. He sees revenue coming only from live appearances
(and perhaps merchandizing) in
the future, to the complete exclusion of recorded "product"
(destined for promotional use only) and the
death of intellectual property itself (aside from, perhaps, brands
and trademarks).
Strange that nobody mentioned Eurodat or Liquid
Audio (well, until this writer presented the point in the Q&A
session following the debate). Barlow claims that online media
destroy the "tangibility of the physical product" however these
technologies are demonstrations that the equivalence of that
tangibility can be recreated using sophisticated encryption schemes
linked to format-specific playback drivers that would be licensed
freely to playback device manufacturers (beginning, of course, with
PCs).
In another respect, however, Barlow is right on the money when he
alludes to major changes coming to the structure of promotion and
distribution in the music business. "The artist formerly known as
Prince" has even begun to market his new albums exclusively through
his own web site (N.Y.Times, Saturday, July 26, p.11); perhaps a
glimpse of things to come for prominent acts that need no extra
brand-building. Combine that
with more robust music selection/recommendation features offered by
some online catalogs such as Tunes
Network, and the light is beginning to appear at the end of the
tunnel.
-- Dan Krimm, 7/97
Addendum, 2001:
It's becoming clear that digital rights management, especially including
encryption schemes, is not entirely effective, and is more of a danger to
fair use than it is useful for creating a business model. Once decrypted
for playback, and especially once converted to an analog signal, the music will
be able to be recaptured/re-recorded, and re-digitized for unencrypted transmission.
A better model, now that personalization is developing, is a service where the
value is in the agregation and personalized service, rather than trying to lock up
something that is inherently ephemeral. The carrot, not the stick, is ultimately
more effective, and providing an overall experience of music that cannot be extracted
from the system, the way the raw content can be, will ultimately be better solution.
Barlow is right that the recorded-music-as-product model is on its last legs, but the
recorded-music-as-service model still seems hopeful at this point. We'd be in bad
shape if recorded music could not generate revenue on its own merits.
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