Rumours of the death of music are exaggerated
David Crow says the record industry’s attempt to clamp down on illegal downloads is belated and befuddled — but the good news is that live music is thriving again Back in the late 1990s when the music download revolution was gathering pace, sentimentalists predicted the death of music. Those who spent their youth in rented flats littered with LPs before moving to mortgaged houses furnished with neat racks of CDs felt that free and illegal MP3 files would cannibalise the industry. But the huge irony of this revolution is that it has led to a resurgence in live music. CD sales fell by 10.6 per cent in Britain in 2007 — forcing artists to return to the stage. Last year saw more music festivals than ever before; live music revenues were up 8 per cent on 2006. The list of artists who have sold out the O2 arena in the former Millennium Dome includes Prince, Led Zeppelin and Kylie Minogue. The industry hasn’t looked this healthy for 20 years.
That’s why last week’s news that internet service providers such as Tiscali, BT and Virgin are teaming up with record labels to save Britain’s musical soul was so confused. After years of humming and hawing over what to do about illegal filesharing on so-called peer-topeer networks, record companies have come up with a solution that is belated and befuddled. Customers suspected of downloading illegal music will receive a stern letter from their broadband provider warning them that they could be cut off. The theory is that these warnings will drive consumers back to record shops and online music stores such as iTunes.
But for the most part, this is sabre-rattling. Broadband providers use the word ‘suspected’ because they can only identify users who are engaged in lots of file-swapping, which is not illegal in itself. To prove that the files are illegal would require a more expensive surveillance operation, and one that would spark a Big Brother debate about internet privacy.
When customers first developed a taste for sharing music over the internet, the big labels clung to their traditional business model and made no attempt to engage with a sea-change in the way people listen to music. The real solution to illegal filesharing will come from understanding that the old, restrictive model of offering music in just two formats — £1.99 singles and £12.99 albums — is in its death throes. While record companies are still trying to return to the status quo ante, other firms are filling the void and experimenting with new ways of distributing music. Last year Radiohead released a digital version of its album In Rainbows, inviting customers to pay whatever they wanted. The majority of fans chose to pay nothing, but the physical album still shot straight to number one; ultimately, sales were unaffected. The band’s manager, Chris Hufford, knew that the music would be shared illegally anyway, so decided to control the free copies himself.
Radiohead is not alone. Alan McGee, manager of the Charlatans, also gives away his band’s albums for free, estimating that the strategy has boosted live ticket sales by around 400 per cent. Earlier this month a web site called NoiseTrade was launched, offering fledgling bands the tools to distribute their music in the same way.
Other bands have tried different methods of free distribution. Prince released his last album as a free CD on the front of the Mail on Sunday — re-launching his career and lifting the paper’s sales by 600,000 copies. Likewise, Indie boy band McFly shifted an extra 300,000 for the Daily Mail and Ray Davies of the Kinks partnered with the Sunday Times.
If bands can bypass record companies and distribute their music in new ways, it leaves the labels looking redundant. Once it would have been unthinkable to record and release an album without the resources of a music company, but a high-end computer can produce results that will rival a recording studio, as artists such as Damien Rice — who recorded his bestseller O in his bedroom — have proved. Similarly, the advent of MySpace and video sharing sites such as YouTube give bands the wherewithal to market their own offerings.
Of course, bands still need significant capital to break into the mainstream British and American markets, but there’s no rule that says record companies have to provide it. Last week Peter Jones of BBC2’s Dragons’ Den invested £75,000 in indie band Hamfatter in exchange for 30 per cent of their revenues. The band’s manager Jamie Turner is now setting up a music venture capital company, putting angel investors in touch with new artists.
Record firms claim the advantage of special expertise. But today’s artists are less deferential, believing they can use the internet to build their own fan bases. What they need to help them are not traditional recordcompany executives but moneymen who can market brands. Recognising this, EMI has appointed Elio Leoni-Sceti, who made his name marketing Dettol and Harpic for household goods giant Reckitt Benckiser, to head its recorded music business. The elite which has presided over the pop industry for decades is being dismantled.
Freebie distribution doesn’t end with music. Faber and Faber recently collaborated with the Guardian to give away pamphlets of 20thcentury poetry, including works by Sylvia Plath, Siegfried Sassoon and Philip Larkin. With concise introductions from respected critics, this was enough to attract new readers and — crucially — encourage them to buy more.
Much of what has happened in the music industry will, in time, apply to books, albeit on a smaller scale. Devices like Sony’s eBook reader — which uncannily replicates the appearance of a printed page — have already come to market, and publishers will have to engage with new methods of distribution. They could, for example, start selling eBooks by the chapter, returning to the days when Dickens’s Great Expectations was released as a serial.
None of this means musicians and writers will stop making money, or that the businesses who bankroll them will go bust. But the record industry has shown that stubbornly resisting what consumers want inevitably leads to decline. The rack of CDs may have been replaced by the full iPod, but the day the music dies is still some way off.
David Crow writes on technology for City A.M.
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