extra notes, "Got To Do What You Should" commentary posted 26 Jan 09 1) And label-mate Randy Newman, too; Toolshed had also posted a couple of songs from his nice Harps & Angels CD, which were also taken down. [return to main essay] 2) Take, for instance, the "cease and desist" letter to blogs that the blog-hosting site Blogger (which is owned by Google) has taken to sending during the last year or so to blogs on which it finds MP3s that are not kosher. The letter, claiming authority based on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, threatens the very existence of one's Blogger-based blog ("Please note that repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in further remedial action taken against your Blogger account"), and announces to the recipient that the offending post has already been removed. This is called guilty until proven innocent--a fine American tradition. (Well, okay: not anymore.) I received one of these letters myself back in October when I had inadvertently posted a song by Annuals ("Confessor") that, although it was right up there on the record company site (Red Music, a division of Sony), was apparently not supposed to be, or was not supposed to be shared from there. (I just looked right here in January and have found that the song is still in fact up there, and that there are blogs that are still actively linking to this song.) Fortunately, of course, Blogger has no authority over the main Fingertips site, but it was a little odd to see my post just disappear on Blogger, particularly when--this is the thing that most stuck in my craw--I did not intend to post an illegally distributed MP3, I never knowingly post illegally distributed MP3s, my enter raison d'etre is to post free and legal MP3s, which I have been doing for five and a half years already. I just loved getting that asinine sledgehammer of a letter, let me tell you. (On the main site, I pulled the link and replaced it with a link to the same song that's posted--legally!--on Stereogum. It's like: WTF??) Google (which generally tries not to be evil, I know), perhaps intimidated by the major record labels, can't in this case be bothered to understand the distinction between a free and legal MP3 blog and an MP3 blog featuring illegally distributed songs. And while on the one hand I can't expect that level of discernment from an automatically generated form letter, on the other hand--why not? Why isn't Google/Blogger more aware of the fact that there are in fact people who are doing their best to play by the rules? They should be encouraging us. We should be getting notes of praise and appreciation. Alas, we are not. [return to main essay] 3) This point in time reminds me of that stretch of years in the early to mid-'60s when most major record companies were run by people who hated rock'n'roll music and therefore would not release rock records. Even as the Beatles were putting out hit after hit in the U.K. on EMI, Capitol Records in the U.S. would not initially release their records here. [return to main essay] 4) This is a point I developed at length in last year's essay on Radiohead's In Rainbows pay-as-you-will experiment, still worth a read if you haven't seen it. [return to main essay] 5) This access to unlimited streaming as described in the Guardian article will cost money, but it may be hidden in the cost of a device you're already buying (e.g. a cellphone) or paid for by advertising. The end result is that you, the music fan, will be able to listen to anything that is commercially available in the gargantuan online "cloud" of networked servers. You can listen however and whenever you want but you won't own anything. Thus do music industry officials appear ready to swarm, in full lemming mode, off yet another cliff. The Guardian starts with the eye-catching question "Is the download dead?," and proceeds from there to assure us that the future of music is in accessing streams, not downloading and owning songs. Because computing is becoming "increasingly cloud-based," says the article, "it no longer seems necessary to download or store music." It no longer seems necessary to whom? Technology pundits? Or actual consumers of actual music? So-called experts and web writers can yammer all they want about how today's consumers don't care about owning songs, they just care about access--thus the belief espoused in this article about streaming sites taking over the world. But rest assured, this is not happening. Once music fans understand the ramifications of a world in which you can access the music you like but not store it where you want it, this fantasy will fall flat on its face. What do you mean my favorite song isn't available any more? Where did it go? What do you mean I can't put this song together with that song on the same playlist? What do you mean I can't put my favorite song on a mix CD? Going from MP3s to streams is not just a format change. It's not just asking people to buy CDs instead of vinyl. It's asking people to change their behavior with music, and if people in charge of streaming sites think that music fans don't want to be able to own and control the songs they listen to at least some of the time, they're in for a nasty surprise when the whole model crashes once streaming companies actually have to earn some revenue versus impress Forrester Research and Gartner. One sure sign that this is a doomed idea is that people who churn out reports for places like Forrester Research think this is the future. "The paid-download model has failed to meet expectations," says a Forrester analyst quoted by the Guardian. "The music industry needed a format-replacement cycle, in much the same way that CDs replaced cassettes," he continued. "It needed to do two things: offset declining CD sales, and fight piracy. The download has failed on both counts." "The music industry needed a format-replacement model?" Um, no. No no no. That's exactly the sort of bottom-line, screw-your-customer thinking that has already sunk the U.S.S. Music Industry. Sure, let's just keep coming up with a new format that'll force people to pay us all over again for what they already have! What the music industry needs is good music. And it needs a practical way to promote its music so that people can and will pay for it. If the paid-download model "has failed to meet expectations" it's because the expectations were set by a music industry that has shown astonishingly little awareness and foresight as the reality of digital distribution arose in the late '90s and into the '00s. To conclude, from here, that no one wants or needs to "store" (i.e. own) the music they like to listen to is to demonstrate a stunning lack of understanding of what music is and how people listen and relate to it, never mind what musicians think and feel and why they make music in the first place. [return to main essay] 6) I'm not sure where or when the major record labels decided that they did not require the goodwill of their customers to be successful, but it's an attitude that goes back at least as far as the introduction of the CD, if not well before. An odd way to do business. Are we tired yet of the historically accepted but interpersonally irresponsible attitude of "whatever it takes to make a buck"? In any case, for those who believe in karma, the tumbly downfall of the music industry sure appears to have a certain poetry about it. And they never saw it coming, and most involved to this day have no idea what they did to deserve it. [return to main essay] 7) In a world run according to the Free and Legal MP3 Manifesto, I believe that rogue bloggers will be less prevalent, more readily identifiable, and easier to deal with appropriately. Here's a suggestion: send out blog tickets, like a parking ticket. Make the illegal posting of a song subject to a small but annoying fine. And create a sliding scale according to the size of the blog's audience. For most run-of-the-mill, small-time bloggers, it could be $25: small enough that people may sometimes choose to do it anyway, and pay the fine, but large enough that most people will want to avoid it. [return to main essay]