What a thread! I normally don't really get involved in forum discussions but I appreciate the fact that on this forum, a lot of people really make an effort to make an educated and well thought out point.
Here are my two cents. First of all, I am a producer myself and a number of my tracks have been available on vinyl, CD and as digital mp3's for a number of years. So I do think I have some experience in today's music market.
It's impossible to deny that the market for CD's and vinyls (especially the latter) isn't doing well. This has obviously been a hot item for myself and a lot of my friends who are also artists. After all, it is our source of income (well, partly for me as I'm also a full-time student).
Anyway, sales have been dropping like bricks and it's looking worse every day. I'm talking about the electronic dance music scene right now, and I'm not too knowledgeable about the other genres, but I'm quite sure it's the same way with those.
The problem, in my humble opinion, is the music labels. For years, they refused to acknowledge mp3 as a viable means of distributing music and tried to fight it. But how? Lawsuits etc... It almost turned into a fight between the person listening to the music, and the company responsible for bringing it to listeners. That can't be a good thing obviously.
Anyway, the average Joe just read news reports about big lawsuits etc. but they really didn't care. They had two ways of buying music:
1) just downloading it
2) buying CD's, which are, imo, extremely expensive
Whether it's right or wrong for them to do so, most people just chose to download... Not because they are thieves, but because there was absolutely NO comparison in convenience and cost.
I think the music labels made a critical mistake here. Instead of offering legal downloads the MINUTE the mp3 format became such a huge hit, most labels just tried to stop it... Which is a lost cause, and I think most people knew that years ago. I think that music labels could have done a much better job of going with the flow, instead of trying to stop it.
Now, suddenly, because the consumer punished them for refusing to go with the times, every label has legal mp3's. And new, small digital dancelabels pop up every day. But, although legal mp3 as a phenomenon is growing rapidly, the profits for labels are nowhere NEAR what they used to be (before mp3's). But I'll get back to that in a minute.
The problem is... People, by now, have gotten used to downloading the things for free. It's a LOT harder to suddenly convince people to start paying for mp3's, than it would have been to offer legal mp3's to them basically as soon as the format was invented. (I think so, anyway)
So, now music labels have legal mp3's, and what do they do? They invent a thing called DRM. What this is, to me, is simple greed... The fact of the matter is, like I just said, mp3 sales so far aren't that profitable... So, music labels, and stores, try to make more money out of it by trying to control as big a share of the market as they can with DRM's.
Is this legal? I guess so. And, the music labels and distributors lost a lot of money to an illegal practice - it is not unreasonable for them to want to win it back. But is it a good idea to try and get the lost money back from consumers in a different way? Well... I'm not so sure. I really think that labels, as a group, have a lot of catching up to do. They messed up when mp3's were invented, in my opinion. If they want to make good on that, I think it would be best to offer the consumer as much as possible.
I think, that Apple really made a fantastic system with iTunes + iPod. It's the biggest distributor of mp3's at the moment, so kudos to them for making it work. I love Apple, I own an iPod and an MBP.
Like I said, I am a music producer and a DJ, and as such, pretty well-versed in the different file types that are available. Yet, I honestly hadn't a clue that iTunes tracks only worked with an iPod. I never assumed it would be like that. The same goes for a friend of mine, a respected DJ in America, who downloaded tracks from iTunes only to find they were useless in her CD decks.
Whose fault is this? Well, technically, it's mine. I 'should' have read the fine print. But the point I'm trying to make, is that as much as I respect all of you saying "nobody is forcing you to buy an iPod", I think - this is EXACTLY the reason why Apple should be damn glad that people are buying them.
Nobody is forcing us to spend extra money on legal mp3's and iPods but the things are selling like hotcakes. The music scene is finally catching up to mp3's and I think Apple is doing an amazing job at this. But, like I said, music profits on a bigger scale are still going down, and I just don't think that in the long run, DRM's are helping anyone.
In the end, I don't think that governments should get involved in company's business per sé, and I think it should ultimately be Apple's choice. But I applaud any effort to make them, and all other distributors, reconsider (without making a lawsuit out of it... that won't help anyone).
Like someone posted before, right now there is a mass of DRM's out there, and personally, I STILL find it a big chore to just download a damn song and make it work left, right and center, the way you can with illegal networks. I am fully convinced that legal systems can beat the crap out of illegal ones... Provided companies are willing to meet the consumer halfway and provide the best user experience they can.
To anyone still reading this, cheers, thanks for your time
I hope this post made some sense. I'm not really interested in getting into heated debates about this, especially "my country vs. yours". But I'd love to hear if anyone agrees or disagrees with me.
Cheers chaps,
Thomas
