What are the options? The current .99/song method, $20/month stream-all-you-want, or possibly a per month fee for a universal licence. (Then, instead of suing downloaders, they could just force them to pay the fee--not too onerous.)
The new Napster is $15 a month. I can listen my music on any computer and on my portable mp3 player. The artists and labels get paid based on which music I listen to.
The DRM really isn't a big deal, because I can listen from anywhere with internet without even installing software. It's "Music As A Service" and it seems very fair and reasonable to me.
To be honest, my only complaint with Napster is that Apple refuses to let their hardware be interoperable.
That's it, most likely. Sooner or later this will be the most viable strategy for making money on music. Even if the internet were turned off tomorrow, the continuing presence of rippable media (analog media, if nothing else), the easy availability of ripping tools, the fact that most people can't hear the difference between a really good recording and a merely average one, and the prevalence of terabyte hard drives with ever-falling prices means that sooner or later we will all have the recording industry's entire back catalog stored in our homes. It's just a question of how much time it will take, and whether the primary medium of transmission will be P2P downloading or face-to-face swapping of the contents of physical storage media.
Ironically, perhaps the best way to prevent the music lover of the year 2020 from energetically acquiring his or her own private Universal Music Library is to give out reasonably priced universal licenses. Once I know that I don't have to own my own copy of (e.g.) the complete works of Yanni -- that, if I ever feel some strange desire to listen to them, or to force someone else to listen to them, I can always P2P them from NapTorrent 4.0 in three minutes without any additional cost, difficulty, or risk -- I won't actually have to own them. The cloud can take on that task.
The problem with a per month fee is that it creates no incentives to produce good music. In the old systems artists who produced music people wanted to hear were rewarded with record sales and crappy artists didn't get paid.
With an all-you-can-eat model of music, especially for p2p distributed, how does the record label know whose music is worth more based on downloads. There will be little incentive to sign on new or indie groups and pay them while the consumers will likely download their music anyway, assuming it is covered by the all-you-can-eat license. New artist would be shut out of the system unless the had some sort of connection(corruption, manufactured pop group) to the record label.
And the record labels wouldn't even have to pay current artists in proportion their success if that success can't be measured. Even if they measure success by torrent activity, there would be still little incentive to sign new groups. As always the little guy gets screwed.
Maybe this could be arranged to work and even be better than the current system. But, I don't want to pay a monthly fee that goes to 90% of music that I don't like just to get the 10% I do like.
The problem with a per month fee is that it creates no incentives to produce good music.
Tell that to the countless Indie bands that produce music 10X BETTER than mainstream music. They don't have near the same amount of money as top 40's pop artists, but they don't care. They make the music cause it's what they love to do, I'll be damned if their stuff isn't sometimes better.
My point is that the indie bands would be cut out of the record labels deal. They won't get paid by the record label from the all-you-can-eat deal, but people will still pirate their music assuming it's covered by the deal. They may make good music but they won't get paid as much as they should for it.
My point is that the indie bands would be cut out of the record labels deal.
Obviously sol, it goes along with the entire virtue of being an "INDIE BAND", but the beauty in this is that they all have their own distribution methods, their own labels, and their own little microcosm within the industry. And it's thriving, very well.
* They may make good music but they won't get paid as much as they should for it.*
How much "should" they get paid? They distribute their own music however they deem fit, so if there was a memo that got passed around that says "a musician should be making billions of dollars because we're a society that simply thrives on entertainment", then my entire post here is moot.
The Indie subculture is doing VERY well on it's own, and they are by far more sympathetic to file sharing because they want the exposure.
Lessfinancial incentives to produce good recorded music to be played back by private individuals.
Live music will continue as before. Commissioned music (i.e. movie, TV, and commercial soundtracks) will continue much as before. Every musician whose record sales don't support them financially -- which is a very large percentage of musicians; go read some essays by recording artists on the subject of record contracts -- will continue as before.
Or, who knows, maybe it will all break. It's not as if the future is easily avoided, and it's not as if the current system is all that great. My favorite musicians make almost no money from recordings.
I'd very quickly pay a monthly fee for a universal license, provided it's free of DRM and anything like it, lets me use it how I want and pretty much exhibit the common sense rights that come when you purchase something.
So, after a month, when you've downloaded 10 terabytes worth of music you'd just cancel the subscription. I guess you may have to re-enable it everyone few years to update your collection...
So yeah, I agree, if that were available I'd be the first to sign up and buy my array of hard drives.
I think napster is the most viable existing service that provides a service close to what you are talking about. It has DRM to prevent these types of abuses. It's otherwise affordable. It's not like most people around here don't know how to take DRMed music and rip it...
Being realistic, no. I'm not the kind that downloads gigs upon gigs of music. Honest and truly, I've only downloaded 3 albums at a time, and that's kept me full for a while.
For me Im fine with having all music in the cloud.
Why do i want to buy hard drives and manage a huge collection of mp3s? I use to but got tired of doing so...now with my iPhone I just stream the music I want to hear.
SOme of these iphone apps and services cache the music so when i have no internet I listen to the cache.
