Have you seen the new, shiny cards that look like CDs while waiting for your cappuccino in Starbucks? They’re pretty. They’re about the size of a piece of notebook paper folded in half. But what are they? And will they actually work as a new form of digital media distribution?
They are essentially the ten dollar gift card for iTunes that sold so well last Christmas—stuffed in stockings across the land—picked up alongside bigger purchases while waiting in Best Buy’s long lines. But, they’re marketing specific albums. And did I mention that they’re shiner? Artists like the up and coming KT Tunstall and the ever present Paul McCartney have put their newest albums on the market using this new means of distribution. Oh, and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam has gone solo, and he’s doing it too. Eddie Vedder’s gone solo??? Nevermind. There is always a question with our nanosecond, forward thinking technology how long something will last, and how deeply a new form of technology will take hold of a buying public. The card simply replaces the actual CD as a physical way to sell music. Instead, buyers can download the album from iTunes using a hidden code on the back of the card which is underneath a scratch-off layer. According to the vice president of iTunes, Eddie Cue, the cards are "a way to leverage digital in the physical space."
This form, however, seems like a no brainer. But is it finally a CD killer? The compact disc arrived on the scene in 1982, surprisingly more long ago than I had thought, bringing with it a death blow to audio tapes. Those poor, cool tapes… with which you could just make a compilation of songs for someone you loved without worrying about Digital Rights Management software. However, due to the revolution of CDs, tapes stopped being sold in stores.
There was another potential CD killer out there for a time. It was called the MiniDisc. It was a small, enclosed CD that couldn’t be scratched and held more data. I still have a MiniDisc player lying around in my attic somewhere. So, I can empathize with folks who invest in technology that never takes off. I am talking to you Mark Twain.*
In any case, the CD has been on the shelves at Best Buy for too long, and while the .mp3 is a format that looks promising with record sales through iTunes and elsewhere, CDs can still hold mp3s really well. But then again, so can your computer. So selling you a cheap, but shiny, plastic card might be the new CD. It contains new marketing potential at least. I’ll just be interested about what’s on the shelves at “record” stores in 3 more years. Did I just say “record”? Don’t even get me started… but since you mentioned it, even with all our technological advances. Records are still the most accurate way to replicate sound.
*Mark Twain lost big when he invested in a printing technology that competed with the modern printing press.
Showing posts with label downloading music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label downloading music. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Increase in Technology leads to an Increase in Accessibility: Music
Music is an influential sector of entertainment. Yeah books, movies, and sports have influences on its participants, but these other forms are not as scrutinized by society. Some of these forms are limited to other parts of the world. I’m pretty sure that music is censored in many areas as well, but for the most part it’s not. The advancement of technology has a direct effect on the accessibility of different forms of media, such as music, films, and such. Music is being scrutinized more because it’s more accessible now; but one genre of music more so than others. Hip Hop is the only music genre that’s being blamed for society’s problems.
Why are we using Hip Hop as a scapegoat? Hip Hop is a cultural genre of music that first made its appearance in 1970, New York. It was the block parties in New York that gave hip hop its first “air-time”. Back then it was an instrumental provided by a DJ and someone rapping over the track. This genre was a mix of the African music and the African American music; it was hip and funky at its debut. It made a lasting impression on its listeners because it was wholesome music; a great beat with a positive message. Today’s hip hop is nothing like it was when it appeared on the scene. Hip hop, today, seems to be more about nice clothes, flashy cars, and sex with beautiful women. And it’s because of the more suggestive lyrics that, the genre is constantly under a microscope. I feel that critics have a problem with it because it is widely heard and easily accessible. There are parental advisories on albums containing explicit lyrical content, but with peer to peer sharing children underage can still gain access to it. It’s the younger audience that can’t discern between the music and reality. That’s our main problem.
What’s a possible solution to this problem? Well first let’s agree that hip hop, the producers, the artists, and the record labels are not the only people who are responsible. Parents, communities, bootleggers, and various peer sharing sites are to blame as well. Hip Hop is music just as any other genre of music. Some of it can be superficial and vague; providing false representations of reality, but we have to take the good and the bad. There’s some good music produced from this genre; the music that portrays what really happens in our streets. Is censoring hip hop the solution? No. To censor hip hop would be to censor a cultural; a reality that is real to many people. To censor it would say that it’s not important or ceases to exist. We also need to recognize that there is more to our culture than our music produced. We need to recognize that some music produced is strictly for entertainment reasons. There are many books and movies that entertain us without providing some advice to better ourselves as human beings. To censor one of form of expression would only be justified by censoring all. AND THAT’S NOT HAPPENING. The solution is to have everyone recognize how they’re contributing to the problem, and become a part of solution. We have the parental advisories and there need to be tighter restrictions on these peer sharing sites. Parents need to take active roles in controlling what their children are exposed to. We are not going to stop children from hearing the music, but we can limit their exposure in different ways. At the rate in which technology is advancing, it’s important for people to be aware that music, and other media forms, will become more accessible.
Why are we using Hip Hop as a scapegoat? Hip Hop is a cultural genre of music that first made its appearance in 1970, New York. It was the block parties in New York that gave hip hop its first “air-time”. Back then it was an instrumental provided by a DJ and someone rapping over the track. This genre was a mix of the African music and the African American music; it was hip and funky at its debut. It made a lasting impression on its listeners because it was wholesome music; a great beat with a positive message. Today’s hip hop is nothing like it was when it appeared on the scene. Hip hop, today, seems to be more about nice clothes, flashy cars, and sex with beautiful women. And it’s because of the more suggestive lyrics that, the genre is constantly under a microscope. I feel that critics have a problem with it because it is widely heard and easily accessible. There are parental advisories on albums containing explicit lyrical content, but with peer to peer sharing children underage can still gain access to it. It’s the younger audience that can’t discern between the music and reality. That’s our main problem.
What’s a possible solution to this problem? Well first let’s agree that hip hop, the producers, the artists, and the record labels are not the only people who are responsible. Parents, communities, bootleggers, and various peer sharing sites are to blame as well. Hip Hop is music just as any other genre of music. Some of it can be superficial and vague; providing false representations of reality, but we have to take the good and the bad. There’s some good music produced from this genre; the music that portrays what really happens in our streets. Is censoring hip hop the solution? No. To censor hip hop would be to censor a cultural; a reality that is real to many people. To censor it would say that it’s not important or ceases to exist. We also need to recognize that there is more to our culture than our music produced. We need to recognize that some music produced is strictly for entertainment reasons. There are many books and movies that entertain us without providing some advice to better ourselves as human beings. To censor one of form of expression would only be justified by censoring all. AND THAT’S NOT HAPPENING. The solution is to have everyone recognize how they’re contributing to the problem, and become a part of solution. We have the parental advisories and there need to be tighter restrictions on these peer sharing sites. Parents need to take active roles in controlling what their children are exposed to. We are not going to stop children from hearing the music, but we can limit their exposure in different ways. At the rate in which technology is advancing, it’s important for people to be aware that music, and other media forms, will become more accessible.
The Radiohead Revolution: "In Rainbows" Changes Things
Over the past decade record labels have grown in their ability to control the market, leaving artists with one of two choices: go independent and make very little money because of lack of distribution but maintain creative control over their work, or to go with a large record label like Sony and get large volumes of sales, but still making relatively little money because the label takes up so much of the sales percentage. Radiohead, in our new technological age, has found a new way.
Radiohead is a band that’s been around, for a while, 21 years to be exact. They’re big. They’ve got sway, mainly because they’ve got fans. They’ve had five platinum albums, and four #1 albums in the United Kingdom—and they just put out an album without a label. With this last album, In Rainbows, on October 10th of this year, Radiohead has broken new ground with the music industry, with open-source mediums, and with digital content’s move towards freedom.
I downloaded the album from the site that they put up, for $7.77. You pay whatever you think the album is worth. Interestingly, most artists make less than five bucks an album anyway. So, even though most users downloaded the album for free, Radiohead will probably make as much money through this album as they would've if they had used a record label to distribute In Rainbows. The fact is that record labels make big bucks, while artists, as always, mainly starve. This situation is all complicated by the move towards digital rights management software. DRM is the stuff that’s encoded on your CD so that you can’t burn a copy for your friends. It’s the stuff that got Napster in trouble. It’s the stuff that angered the already angry Lars Ulrich from Metallica about file sharing.
But we’ve moved past all that. We now live in an age of sharing, social networking, and digital community. And Radiohead, the band, knows all of this, so this new album is digital rights management software free, meaning you can copy it however much you want.
Thom Yorke, the singer for Radiohead has always been kind of an anti-establishment kind of guy. But shortly before the band began writing new songs for the album, Yorke told Time, "I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'F---- you' to this decaying business model."
Radiohead is a band that’s been around, for a while, 21 years to be exact. They’re big. They’ve got sway, mainly because they’ve got fans. They’ve had five platinum albums, and four #1 albums in the United Kingdom—and they just put out an album without a label. With this last album, In Rainbows, on October 10th of this year, Radiohead has broken new ground with the music industry, with open-source mediums, and with digital content’s move towards freedom.
I downloaded the album from the site that they put up, for $7.77. You pay whatever you think the album is worth. Interestingly, most artists make less than five bucks an album anyway. So, even though most users downloaded the album for free, Radiohead will probably make as much money through this album as they would've if they had used a record label to distribute In Rainbows. The fact is that record labels make big bucks, while artists, as always, mainly starve. This situation is all complicated by the move towards digital rights management software. DRM is the stuff that’s encoded on your CD so that you can’t burn a copy for your friends. It’s the stuff that got Napster in trouble. It’s the stuff that angered the already angry Lars Ulrich from Metallica about file sharing.
But we’ve moved past all that. We now live in an age of sharing, social networking, and digital community. And Radiohead, the band, knows all of this, so this new album is digital rights management software free, meaning you can copy it however much you want.
Thom Yorke, the singer for Radiohead has always been kind of an anti-establishment kind of guy. But shortly before the band began writing new songs for the album, Yorke told Time, "I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'F---- you' to this decaying business model."
image source: Metro.co.uk
The freedom here is not simply related to the lack of cash that most people didn’t pay when “purchasing” the album online. The freedom here is also directly connected with the freedom that an artist claims when bucking the system that controls their art.
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