Napster Til It Dies
Is it our fault the recording industry jumped on the download bandwagon
a little too late? NO!
Is it our fault that we don't want to pay or can't afford to pay $16 to
$20 per CD? Especially if we want to purchase quite a few? NO!
Is it our fault that there's maybe one or two songs on a CD worth
listening to? NO!
Is it our fault Napster is the most widely used and most popular Mp3
download utility around? Okay so the answer to that one is yes.
But the reason it's a yes is because the three previous questions
were all NO!
Let's get real for a couple of minutes. Let's say
you hear a song on the radio or in the mall or in the car and you've
got to have it. You head on over to the local CD establishment to purchase
this gem that you want to treasure for life. But on the way you hear
three more songs that blow you away and you've got to have those, too.
So you figure, "What the hell". You'll purchase all four and
then have these four songs that are bound to be classics in the next ten
years or so. So you plop down your $80, take these babies home and sit
and listen to them all the way through. Come to find out these beauties
weren't worth the money because only one or two tracks hit you like a
ton of bricks. The rest are just fodder for the filling.
Your friend down the road hears the same four songs and instead of
heading to that great CD establishment heads for his keyboard and monitor
and with the click of a mouse has the songs downloaded onto his hard
drive and burned on a CD. Come to find out he's downloaded hundreds of
songs and burned his own CDs. And the cost to him: an ISP connection,
a burner and some blank CDs. Even at two songs per artist that's forty CDs
he didn't buy.
I'm not condoning the action but I'm also not saying that we should
shut Napster down. There has to be a middle ground somewhere. A place
where both sides can meet and everybody comes out ahead.
Prices are too high to begin with. It better be one hell of a good CD
before I plop down my hard earned money. Let's have more than one or
two outstanding tracks to listen to. On the average ten track CD I don't
think having seven good songs is asking much. After all, the band or
singer is supposed to be a creative entity. Let's get creative.
As far as downloading music there should be a price set for it. But
make it reasonable. $5 a month to start with and each download would
cost them a quarter. That's 20 downloads and the money gets divided
evenly between the artist and the provider.
And set up an account so the money can be divided up among the artists
whose music was downloaded. At the end of the month the artist gets
their money and they can see what the buying public is actually listening
to.
But hey, it'll never work. Neither side is willing to give a little. So
after Napster is shut down (at the rate it's going it'll be sometime
after 2002) the downloading public will find another source and the
record industry will start a new lawsuit and we'll be back where we
started from. No closer to a solution and still buying CDs that only
have one or two good tracks on them. Oh, well...Napster til it dies.
- Richard Blaine
Quote of the Week
Courtney Love on her intentions to sue Universal music: "I could end up
being the music industry's worst nightmare: a smart gal
with a fat bank account who is unafraid to go down in flames fighting for a
principle."
* Richard Blaine's views and opinions do not necessarily
reflect the views and opinions of the staff at Twin-Music.