Kissing Another Frog

Radiohead leaving copies of their latest album In Rainbows alongside a virtual tip jar may lead to the press dubbing the record business dead, but frankly, it’s hard to eulogize the Big Four who have essentially slit their own wrists to remain relevant.

Kanye West and 50 Cent sold over 1.5 million albums combined in one September week this year to land numbers one and two on the Billboard charts. People will still pay for music, and the labels are right to an extent, increasingly, people want their music digitally; but at the end of the day people want one thing more than anything else, freedom.

Sorry, we never intend to evoke George W., but people want and expect SOME degree of freedom.

People still love music. That will not change. Yes, the iPod Touch is sexy tech, but it’s also, at its core, a screaming validation that people are voracious consumers of music and want to carry as much music as their solid-state chips and mini hard drives will allow. The problem is DRM and closed ecosystems. This is why SpiralFrog will fail.

The ad-supported download service had princely ambitions, but leaves you—as per usual—shackled like an unfortunate peasant in the gallows. Not only does it keep me from listening to my music wherever, whenever thanks it to its DRM; but it’s yet another in a looooooong line of tests by the music industry. The suits need to get a clue, the patient is coding and instead of going for the defibrillators, they’re sending blood samples to their lab a few towns over…by bike messenger.

SpiralFrog’s available catalog boasts 750,000 songs, but it’s, numbers aside, a joke. Searches for the following artists, led to no results or at best unauthorized biography discs: T-Pain, Foo Fighters, Madonna, Rolling Stones, Linkin Park, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, and so on and so on. As we browsed the site, house ads continued to pop up promoting the availability of Kanye’s new album, SpiralFrog has only six tracks available.

iTunes has no problem with the music, it’s got pretty much everything out there, not to mention, its own exclusives. iTunes problem is the software, its proprietary DRM’d AAC leaves you with only two hardware choices...iPod or iPod. Obviously, by the number of white earbuds we’ve all seen over the last few years, we know many people have made that choice with a smile, with many others have searched for someone…ANYONE to give them an alternative that allows them to be forever tied to their favorite songs, instead of Cupertino.

This is why SpiralFrog is disappointing. New ad-supported model or not, they are still tying the music to the same old DRM. Coating your tracks in an inaudible set of terms and conditions is the same reason we can’t take any of the legal download services seriously. Until they get a clue, we’ll continue to get the same DRM-free music that comprises 90% of sales…from CDs.

DRM=DUMB

About three years after the much vaunted launch of "the savior of the record business, but not so much" a.k.a. iTunes, could the record industry finally be getting smart? Probably not, but we have slight reason for hope. It appears the EMI Group, home to the Rolling Stones, Robbie Williams, Coldplay and Gorillaz among others is experimenting with selling unprotected MP3s.

Why this matters:

1. MP3s will play on EVERY music player from the ubiquituous iPod to geek jizz target iRiver. This means you won't be forced to continue buying iPods so you can keep playing music you paid for. Buying MP3 players with stable batteries, who'da thunk it?

2. Unprotected MP3s means you can move your files from one hard drive (or computer) to another as often as you wish and not be locked out of your files. Remember, some of the online music stores only allow you to have your music on 3 computers. So when you quit your job in a blaze of glory (as I pretend to annually), you won't be secretly trying to jack the hard drive in the middle of your lunch break.

3. You can share your music. Microsoft, welcome to the REAL social.

Of course, this aspect of the deal has been what the music companies have been freaking out about since their last major cash cow, the CD, turned out to be the gift horse that kicked its owner in the mouth. (Sorry, for the mixed barnyard metaphors there.)

The reality is, file sharing is a pandora's box that seems impossible to close, but additionally, the labels have all but given justification to the song stealers. It's easier to download an MP3 off a blog than to buy a file at iTunes, burn it to CD, and re-rip it as an Mp3 to play on your non-iPod MP3 player. Or to be fair, to buy a NapsterLive track and follow the same steps to play it in your iPod.

Going directly at iTunes in this space will apparently be Amazon, who are reportedly looking to open a digital music store in the 1st half of 2007 selling unprotected MP3s, potentially with major label support. This represents the first serious challenge to iTunes. Sorry, Zune. Note, the 2nd biggest seller of online music is eMusic, which sells only unprotected MP3s, but primarily of indie artists (most of whom we have only heard--accidentally-- on drunken hikes through the East Village).

The most damning evidence against iTunes and its "closed ecosystem" so far has been a study (OK, less a study than simple math) showing that only approximately 22 tracks have been sold on iTunes for every iPod in existence. That's a paltry number considering the lowest capacity iPod (the 1GB shuffle) can hold up to 250 tracks, the largest can hold 20,000....

Long story short, if done correctly, this could be HUGE. Fact is, it probably won't be. The next year will almost undoubtedly feature more hemming and hawing by the labels when the best thing they could possibly do is keep it simple.

Remember back in 1997, when some label genius had the bright idea to not sell singles. It boosted album sales for maybe a year, then came Napster where people largely traded what? Yes, porn, but also singles!!! Just like nature will find a way, so will music buyers.

We like music. We're willing to pay for it. We also like making mixtapes for our friends, that's not going to change. But if you sell me music the way I want it, maybe I'll respond.

From The Rubble Of The Tower

The announcement that long-troubled Tower Records would close at year's end should have came as little surprise to anyone who has followed the decline of record sales since the turn of the century. On the heels CBGB's having its feeding tube removed, New York City's music fans will see a second legendary institution euthanized in short order when the venerable Greenwich Village outpost of California's greatest export since the fish taco shutters for good next Friday, December 22nd.

Eulogy aside, anyone who wants a copy of Hoobastank's "Every Man For Himself" should walk, not run, to the Village Tower, as it seems every copy of this turkey ever pressed can be accounted for here, ditto for Ashley Parker Angel fans...or fan, for accuracy's sake. It's not ALL that dire though. There are still worthy recordings to be found amongst the vanity projects of any number of delusional housewives and coffeehouse kingpins. As of Saturday, all CDs were 70% off, and I made (presumably) my last offering to the grandaddy of the music megastore, picking up the following:

Hard-Fi - Stars Of CCTV (Import)
Ringside - Ringside
Massive Attack - Collected (Greatest Hits)
Fort Minor - The Rising Tied
Lostprophets - Liberation Transmission

R.I.P. Tower, you (but not your crazy adherence to the $18.99 list price) will be missed.