Lots and lots of numbers – MacWizards Music — RIAA Statistics Don’t Add Up to Piracy – analysing the assertion that downloading is killing the music industry. It’s a pretty close analysis in very small type – and given that you can prove anything with numbers, may or may not be correct.
But it got me thinking.
I last bought a CD about four months ago. I think it was a Peter Gabriel release, and cost me about £15. From memory (it’s in a pile somewhere, so forgive me if I don’t indulge in archeology to find it) there were about 10 tracks on it – and to be brutally honest, Peter, only about three of them were really any good. Five were self-indulgent horseshit filler, and the rest I can’t make my mind up about. But anyway, that’s a matter of my opinion, and £15 for 10 tracks it was.
But then this evening I picked up a DVD from the uni library (not having realised before that they have a fairly small range of some interesting classic stuff that’s otherwise probably not the sort of thing I’d buy.) To be specific, it was Moulin Rouge, a film which I remember thinking at the time I’d need to watch at least twice to fully appreciate. In the case there are two DVDs, and there’s probably about 4 hours worth of material – the movie itself, the commentary tracks, the documentary-about-the-making-of-the-movie, the deleted scenes, etc, etc, etc.
And it would have cost – at least last time I looked at a DVD with the thought of buying one – about £15. Maybe slightly more on average, given that this was in Tesco.
£15 for 4 hours of material. Some of it more interesting than the rest, I’ll grant you, but 4 hours nevertheless. Has the lightbulb come on yet?
When the CD replaced the LP, you got a digital version of the LP. You might get slightly more tracks per album – given that it’s at least 10 years since I last handled an LP, forgive me if I can’t remember exactly how much music you could stamp onto one. But basically, a CD is a digital LP. Apart from the form factor, the basic product has remained virtually unchanged. In fact, you could argue that the basic product has actually diminished slightly, because cover art ain’t what it used to be in these days where you don’t have a 12″ x 12″ canvas to worth with.
But the point is, that the CD didn’t add anything to the overall value of the product apart from the format – don’t get me involved with arguments about the sound quality. With DVD on the other hand, not only do I have the film – which I always did with VHS – but I’ve got all this bonus material as well. I’m paying slightly more than I would for a tape – £2 or so? – but the additional material is actually quite valuable if you were, say, an avid Euan McGregor fan and you were interested in the move-making process. The value has been enhanced.
So here we’ve got two situations. On the one hand, the music format’s value has remained fairly static through the change in media, and on the other the film’s value has been enhanced. Whereas I got one tape in the box when I bought a VHS copy, now I get two DVDs. Where I previously had a two-hour film, I’ve now got a two-hour film plus the additional material, for which I’ve paid a premium of a pound or two.
The point I’m trying to make is that this is a completely different way of looking at the world on the part of the movie industry compared to that of the music business. One has taken advantage of the additional abilities of the new medium, and the other has – well, done what exactly? The music industry hasn’t exactly rushed to embrace the possibilities of MP3s and so on, has it? In fact the response has been more akin to a small Dutch boy trying to repair flood defences, or possibly just a collective hiding of heads underneath pillows in the hope that the nasty monster will go away.
Ok, there is a line of argument that says that the movie business hasn’t been hit as hard as the music industry because it’s a lot more painful to download a gigs-worth of movie than it is to download a meg or two of a song. But that’s something that time and technology is going to change, so don’t expect that argument to hold for long. The MPAA don’t strike me as a particularly nice bunch of people, and for all I know they may have their heads under the bedding right now – but somehow, there seems to be more of an appreciation of the fact that times, they are a-changing in Hollywood than in the music studios. Commentary tracks and deleted scenes show at least some innovative appreciation of the possibilities afforded by the new technology, whereas crippling a CD so I can’t play it in the car – let alone exercise my rights of fair use – are demonstrating what, exactly? A slamming of barn doors? A hope that this nasty thing called the internet will go away if they ignore it hard enough? That the vast majority of the music-buying public are economically and technically illiterate?
It’s a minor observation. And when you’re in the middle of an evolving situation, it’s difficult to see what’s an important development and what’s just random noise. But I will be interested to look back in say, five years time and see how the music business developed, and whether the stable doors did get slammed shut in the way that they are trying to be closed now. Sure, the RIAA and the other lobbying groups have a degree of political clout, and what happens in the US tends – although please god, not all of it – to happen here, but I can’t help feeling that this is an industry where those in a position to understand the possibilities and make the changes simply don’t get it. Simply don’t see that there’s a technical and economic shift happening underneath their feet, and they’re simply postponing the inevitable by taking the approach that they are.
Final analogy. When cars first appeared on the roads, a law was introduced to require a man waving a red flag to walk in front to warn pedestrians and other (presumably horse-drawn) traffic that the car was on it’s way. How much of that law was the result of the blacksmiths and the saddlemakers seeing a threat, and trying to nullify it by crippling the core advantage of the new technology – the speed and ease of use of the car compared to horses? In 100 years time, are we going to look back and see the same picture, but this time with the RIAA and the MPAA in the place of the farriers and the feed merchants?
