June's Column By New Media Age Editor Mike Nutley
Digital music downloads were back in the headlines last month as the hugely successful launch of Apple's iTunes music store was followed by the entirely predictable discovery that it had already been hacked and was being used for p2p file sharing. Apple quickly closed the loophole, making iTunes 4.0.1 available online, but it seems unlikely that many existing users will choose to upgrade.
Meanwhile Spanish download service Puretunes caused a stir when it launched last month, claiming that its service compensates performers, songwriters and producers through licensing agreements with the Spanish Association of Authors and Editors and the Association of Artists, Performers and Players. It also claims these agreements mean it's complying with Spain's intellectual property laws. But the music industry disagrees, saying that anyone putting downloadable music online without proper authorisation will have to face the consequences.
These two incidents show the crux of the music industry's problem. Its attempts to introduce paid-for services cannot compete with the pirates until the choice on offer is comparable, but none of the labels will risk putting core catalogue online until the security issues are resolved. In the meantime the US and European arms of the industry continue to pull in different directions, with the US seemingly intent on demonising and criminalising its customers and Europe attempting to spread the message that legal downloading is a possibility through events like Digital Download Day.
There are signs that things are changing, particularly in the US, driven by Apple's success. Real Networks last week relaunched its music download service, while CD burning software specialist Roxio plans to use the Pressplay service it bought recently from Sony-Universal as the foundation of a relaunched, legal, Napster. In both these cases, breadth of repertoire will be crucial.
But there are other issues here, not least of which is that time is running out for the music industry. Speaking at a sixth-form college in Brighton earlier this year, I asked how much the students would be prepared to pay for digital downloads. The response I got was along the lines of "If you haven't got any money, what are you supposed to do except download free music?". Jazz Review editor RD Cook highlighted the same point in a recent column for NMA. He argued that by concentrating on the teenage market, the music industry has made itself dependent on a sector that is fundamentally unreliable. And with its heel-dragging in establishing competitive paid-for download services, it has allowed a generation to become accustomed to getting its music for free. To these teenagers, the choice between free and unreliable, and high-quality but paid-for is a no-brainer - these are not audiophiles. What the music industry now has to face up to is that the file-sharing genie is out of bottle, and cannot be forced back in. Decentralised p2p networks mean that an illegal market will continue to exist alongside any legal operations. The best the industry can hope for is that by making legal downloads as cheap, easy and flexible as possible, it can capitalise on all those research reports that suggest that big downloaders buy more music. But the success of iTunes and need for broad repertoire suggests that the real winners will not be the record labels, but a new generation of online music retailers.
Michael Nutley, Editor, New Media Age, http://www.nma.co.uk/