is a blog by Brendan
Why is Apple trying to sell a “shuffle” feature as a huge megagenius innovation? It’s been available on most mp3 players since there started being mp3 players, and on CD players for about two decades. Maybe they they’re just trying to extend the model of “you don’t know what’s playing now,” since it has no LCD screen, to “you don’t know what’s playing now–or later!”
But I can’t help it. I still want this, if mostly because of the second footnote on that page.
Thinking about the Zappa quote from Leonard and the yesterday’s brilliant perspective-shift post at the iPAC blog brought me to a conclusion this morning, and I think it’s an important one. Just as printer manufacturers are actually in the business of selling toner cartridges, and just as FM radio and broadcast TV are in the business of selling your attention to advertisers, the record industry (like its tagalong, the movie industry) is not in the business of selling records. Their business has nothing to do with sales.
Think of the constituents of the RIAA as a group of investment brokers. Their customers are musicians, from whom they obtain capital in three forms: new music, the rights to that music, and promissory notes on the advances that constitute most of any musician’s pay.
You and I are the stocks in which they invest that capital, by means of advertising, radio and television play, and physical or electronic distribution. Even for the least successful major-label musicians, that investment typically yields a profit in the multi-hundred percentage range. For the most successful, it’s orders of magnitude greater–all the millions of $17.95s people pay for the big names.
Of that profit, the record company takes an eighty-nine percent commission.
Then it gives the remaining two bucks back to its investor, the artist–if it gives anything at all. Most of the time, the artist never even sees that two bucks, because it goes toward paying for the advance they got from the record company (more capital). You’re probably already familiar with this part of the story: it’s often years before the artist begins to see the royalty checks start to trickle in. Meanwhile, he or she is living off the advances with very little actual money to his or her name, and the record company is applying pressure to spend that money to create another, more lavish album (yet more capital).
This model actually helps me better understand the RIAA’s position on their thousands of lawsuits. They know that suing their customers is bad business, but they don’t believe they’re doing that: they’re suing us, the entities from whom they buy money with music, because it seems like we’re taking their capital and giving no return on investment.
Remember, when you “buy” a CD, you aren’t actually purchasing anything. You’re leasing from the record company the right to listen to a certain selection of music in a strictly specified manner of their choosing. The actual piece of plastic itself is basically a perk, with which you are not allowed to do as you please–you can make exactly one copy of it, which you can’t give to anyone else, and they’d rather you not be allowed to make that copy at all. They still want the rights of the lease to be attached to that piece of plastic, though. If you break it, they’re not going to send you a replacement, and you’re not allowed to download another copy of it from someone else (even though you still ought to have those listening rights).
In essence, they want contractual control over their capital after they’ve invested it, just as shareholders have to some degree. When they file lawsuits, they see themselves taking class action against negligent publicly-held corporations who spent their share prices in Bimini instead of running profitable businesses. They feel wronged, and justified for it.
I hope this makes clear how completely insane and backwards the music business model is. Forgive me, but I want to go over the big points again:
This is why they have no qualms about suing grandmothers and Girl Scouts. This is why they are scared to death of Downhill Battle and everything it represents. They’ve already been pushed off the ledge, and bad law is the strawberry plant to which they’re clinging.
You probably already know that when you’re hanging from a strawberry plant with tigers above and tigers below, there’s only one thing to do: eat the strawberries. If the members of the RIAA were smart, they’d do so, by embracing and promoting voluntary collective licensing. But they’re scared, and fear makes people stupid.
It’s silly to assign agency to “the market,” to speak as if it were an active governor of what works and what doesn’t. But it’s useful, nonetheless, to think of it as a force that will eventually flatten any bad business model and replace it with a better one. This is what is happening with the record industry right now. This is why they’re going to fall, and we’re going to win.
Leonard says that it was in fact Zappa, and offers further quotage:
“In every language, the first word after ‘Mama!’ that every kid learns to say is ‘Mine!’ A system that doesn’t allow ownership, that doesn’t allow you to say ‘Mine!’ when you grow up, has — to put it mildly — a fatal design flaw.”
Maria notes that in fact it’s usually more like “no,” then “mine,” then “mama.” I think that only makes the quote more interesting, as does the fact that it relates not at all to free culture, and very well to the MPAA/RIAA model of purchasing and licensing. To quote Leonard himself, “‘own’ ‘it’ ‘on’ ‘DVD!'”
Update 12.09.2004 1615 hrs: Maria wishes me to state that though she has studied development, she is not in fact a developmental psychology student, and that I have never stated any facts about her or quoted her accurately, and also that I should be dragged out in the street and shot.
See? I did it again!
Twenty-four hours ago at this time, I was still talking about the fact that I’d seen Bobby McFerrin and Savion Glover perform, live. Today, at this time, I own Halo 2.
I’d like to have Lisa, Flora, Allison and especially Ken (who turned me on to Halo in the first place) to play the latter with me; I don’t, as they are casualties of my own private diaspora. But I had Maria to go to the show with me, and DC to encounter there. I’ll have the Thursday Night Grandkids to kick my butt at Halo.
Sometimes I feel bad about marking time in my life by video games and concerts, but there are worse ways to do so.
I’ve been listening to my Frou Frou CD a lot. So much, in fact, that if it were a record the needle would probably have damaged it badly by now. The lows would be warmer, but the quality of sound would be degrading, and little peels of vinyl would be poking up like splinters on a fuzz stick, the worst method ever invented to start a fire.
I have had occasion in four separate instances, lately, to play with a new baby puppy. It’s a girl puppy, a Yorkie, who has recently taken up residence at Maria’s family’s house to keep her mom company. Her name is Sadie. She is very small and not at all yappy. We are napping buddies. How it works is this: I pick her up and put her in my lap, and then we both fall asleep almost instantly. This is basically the best of all possible worlds.
In the midst of the most recent puppy-time but one, I got an unexpected phone call from Jon, which at first I believed to be the unintelligible noise of somebody who has accidentally called you by not putting on his key lock. After a moment, though, I perceived it as actually a live bootleg from the BNL concert he and Amanda were attending at that very moment. It was the sound of our collective favorite band playing “Lilac Girl,” which they never play because nobody but us three and Canada knows it–it was on their first release, The Yellow Tape, and nothing else. So it’s a rarity and a great song, and I was really gratified that Mr. and Mrs. Brasfield thought to call and share it with me.
I’m going to buy this album. In fact, I’m not going to stop at just buying it. I’m going to burn extra copies of it, and I’m going to give you one, hell, maybe two or three. I’m going to come over to your house, and we’re going to listen to it. Together. To every. Last. Word.
For the longest time, I was convinced that that Stevie Nicks song was about a “one-winged dove,” which always seemed perversely funny to me.
“Funnier than a one-legged rabbit, Val,” said Peter.
“Of which there are no doubt several in these woods.”
“Hopping in neat little circles.”
I really liked reading about Jake Berendes’s neo-discovery of headphones and what it’s like to have a soundtrack all the time. I wear headphones pretty constantly when I’m outside my apartment, and his description of that experience is one with which I identify well.
“And it’s a hot one
Like seven inches from the midday sun”
Okay, if you’re seven inches from the sun, it doesn’t matter what time of day it is. The sun does not actually go out at night.