The New Music model ( or how to buy something without ever owning it)

Wow.

A lot has happened in the past three or four years with regards to how we obtain and listen to music hasn’t it?

I am astounded at all the ways we can now enjoy our favorite artists and listen to our music.

Just in the last few years we have went from the ability to play a CD version of our song that we went to a brick and mortar store and bought to never actually owning the CD and only having an electronic version we downloaded from the Internet.

New words have shown up as well. iPod, Zune, Mp3, wma, DRM. These words meant virtually nothing 10-15 years ago.

Technology is always changing , sometimes for the better and sometimes not. The only thing you can say about it is that it will change. The rub and what sets new technology apart from the old technology is whether or not you choose to accept it.

Here’s a story to illustrate my point. Back in the good old days ( the late seventies) my Dad had what was considered by our family to be the schniz-nizzle of all music playing equipment. He owned a slick looking , encased in Aluminum, suitcase style, reel to reel sound system. You remember those don’t you? You used to see them all the time in movies and James Bond type flicks of the day. I think they illustrated the point that you were sophisticated and cool if you owned one of these devices. He would sit down and fire that bad boy up and you would have thought Walt Disney or Gunsmoke was on TV. Everybody would stop what they were doing and migrate into the front room with Dad and sit quietly while he fiddled with it trying to get the tape loaded onto the pickup reel correctly. I think we were all silently hoping he had some new music for it, however usually it was more of the same and the speakers he had at the time were pretty low class, but being kids , we didn’t know any better. Then he would get it right and out would come the lovely strains of another John Phillips Sousa march of some kind. (Kids silently depart the room.) Mom wanders back to her kitchen and puzzles or whatever. Dad gets lost in thoughts of Andrews sisters or Benny Goodman or some such topical reference. Seemed then like the machine was the point and the music was pretty much secondary.

I never did have any interest in those contraptions once I turned into a long haired hippie freak teenager. They may have been cool, but you couldn’t carry it around with you and impress girls with it so what was the point. Hell that’s all I cared about at the time.

Then along came the 8 track tape player. Now this was COOL. I could have the worst Junker of a car imaginable yet because I had a 8 track tape player (a miniature version of the reel to reel player I was to find out later) I could drive around and girls would be able to hear my music on my stereo in my car (away from my parents) and maybe , just maybe if I played the right Bee-Gees song, I would get lucky. Meaning my very strong desire as a teenager to see every other teenaged girl I knew naked underneath me, would be satisfied. Or so I thought at the time.

The only problem was it got old quick playing the same music over and over again in the same order. I spent a lot of money buying the latest K-Tell tape to play in that thing. Then something pretty interesting happened. That technology pretty much died a quick death. One day I was bopping along buying and playing 8 tracks and the next something called “CD’s” were all the rage. Or so it seems now in retrospect. Truth is it probably took a few years to change , but in my youth then and my older age now it seems like it was instantaneous. Same with 45’s, LP albums and Cassettes. Here one day and gone tomorrow.

Everything about all of this makes perfect sense to me except for one small thing. I don’t get and no matter how hard I try, I will never understand downloaded, DRM (Digital Rights Management) protected, subscription music. iPod by Apple and their iTunes store technology along with Microsoft and their new Zune would have you believe that it makes perfect sense to buy your tracks 99 cents at a time.

This is the big lie. It really doesn't make any logical sense at all. I guess you could say it is also the newest imperfect technology. Read on and I'll give you my opinion why it appears to be a rip-off. At least to me.

You see the trick of the game they play on you without telling you, is you never really own the songs. You never have full control over what you do with them. You really didn’t ever “buy” them. They want you to think you did, but you didn’t.

Consider the following scenario. You download a song on the subscription model (that they lie to you about and favorably compare to being about the same as having a cable TV account).

Say you use iTunes and download a song to your iPod. Can you play it on any other player? Nope. Can you play it on any other computer? Nope. What is the chance you would be able to get it back in playing condition if your computer crashed? Maybe. Depends on if you used a service that is still in business.

Now ask yourself these basic questions.

Do I have all of these restrictions on Cable TV? Well I don't know, Lets see.

Will cable play on any other TV ? Yeah, Pretty much. Cable doesn’t care what player (TV) is being used. If your cable service goes out during a storm does it come back and just work? Yeah, again, pretty much. Unless the line got torn down, in which case it’ll be back in a day or two once they fix it. No action required on your part , except to pay the bill. Can I record my TV show and play it back on pretty much any television? You ever heard of a VCR? Or a DVR? Or a Tivo? No brainer if you ask me.

You see what you are actually doing with DRM protected music is not buying it. You are not “subscribing” to it. You never, ever really own it, unless you burned it immediately to CD. You will not be able to store it forever and ever and play it when ever you want to 25 years from now. You are leasing it (maybe renting is a better analogy, because like renting a house, when you stop paying for it, you have to give it up) . It will always belong to the place or company who provided the DRM technology in the first place, because the company who supplied it to you controls everything you can do with it.

You don’t believe me ? Stop paying your subscription bill and see what happens to your ability to play the music you have already “paid” for.

Now consider what happened to the 8 track player. When you buy a new computer, how will you access your DRM , subscribed music? Better yet, Can you access it? Can you play it? (The answer here is maybe, but probably not, depending on how technically capable you are, how well you understand licensing and how well you can follow complicated instructions) What happens if your hard drive crashed?

The answer usually is pretty much the same no matter what the problem or question is.

Sorry about your luck pal, you must start over. Your problem, not ours.

Sucks to be you.

This is why I don’t get it. If my CD player dies, I just buy another one. Poof , instant music. If my generic mP3 player dies, I just get another one. Poof, instant music.

If my subscription dies, not Poof, Not instant music. If my computer dies, not Poof, not instant music.

I have a lot of music. I own every bit of it. I bought every CD. I can burn as many copies of it as I want to.

The difference is in how you perceive ownership. When I own it, it is mine to do with what I want, within reason.

Same as owning a book. I can’t copy it and sell it because I would be breaking a perfectly reasonable copyright law. With , DRM (Digital Rights Management) protected music, I can only do what they say I can do with it and then only as long as the technology still works as intended. The decision is never mine to make, so I can't break the law, even if I wanted to.

This concept is called self determination. If I can't decide to abide by the law and can't decide to break it, then I don't own it. If I can't make any decisions about how I can choose to use it, then it is not my product nor is it my choice. Certainly there are ways around this, however every one of them involves a massive compromise, either in the sound quality or the legality.

I’ll be surprised is this is the answer to file sharing. I can’t imagine that this idiocy will still be around in 10 years. Too many flaws. Too many restrictions. Too many problems. Too much crap to put up with.

Who wants to own a music time share?

jmho.

~ bigmike