Apple, Digital Music’s Angel, Earns Record Industry’s Scorn – New York Times
Further evidence that the recording industry as a whole is short-sighted? Maybe not. The article paints a more complex picture of the situation than a simple face-off between Apple and the recording industry. And after all, many of the strong words uttered are simply part of strategic posturing.
What’s more interesting is the idea of value, creeping up. As part of the transformation of music into a commodity, the recording industry is emphasizing the idea that some tracks, the most popular ones, are worth more than other tracks. Simple application of supply and demand? Perhaps, but “supply” for music downloads isn’t limited based on those same factors as physical objects. Well, there could be the issue of bandwidth, as more popular downloads require more bandwidth. But that would be Apple’s responsibility, with little effect on the labels. Of course, the labels are also talking about lowering the price of less popular downloads. That strategy has been used in record shops all over. Those albums that don’t sell end up in the Discount bin. And those unpopular albums may end up influencing musicians.
There’s been a lot of talk about the Long Tail. This concept that the market for less popular titles is, as a whole, much bigger than the market for the most popular titles. The pricing schedule proposed by Sony seems to be the reverse of what one might expect from the Long Tail principle. For someone whose musical tastes are mostly in the Long Tail, the new pricing schedule could in fact be very advantageous. Those tracks by obscure musicians have been rather hard to find and fans have often ended paying much more than for the typical album from a commercial artist. Not that the obscure artists were making more money but the intermediaries between artists and fans were numerous and there was a rarity effect as people were moving physical products. Paying less for Étienne Mbappe than for Jessica Simpson? Sweet deal!
Thing is, if the more popular tracks are more expensive, those tracks are even more likely to be traded outside the industry-sanctioned sites (record stores and online music stores). Typically, more obscure artists see more benefit from all forms of downloading (industry-sanctioned or not) than the most visible and widely distributed artists who may think of unsanctioned downloads as eating away their album sales.
There’s certainly something to be said about a diversity of music markets. Not along musical styles or genres but along “product types” and business models. It might not be so surprising for, say, a “jam band” to allow wide distribution of their recordings. Their livelihood depends less on album sales than on ticket sales. Some bands even distribute full recordings of their shows for free knowing fully well that these will only entice more people to attend their shows.
Other artists depend on album sales. Very often, their albums have cost a lot of money to produce and advertise. The music itself didn’t cost more to play but the whole process of getting the album out in the hands of listeners was an expensive proposition. In some cases, the recording is really a “product” to be sold, not just the support for the audio portion of the art form.