the lowdown on downloads

I'm just now starting to get a handle on how huge the downloading thing is, partly by interacting w/ other Pitchfork writers & readers. This board has a lot of people roughly my age or older (30s+), and I don't think we can completely wrap our heads around what is happening. Some of these 18 and 19 year olds have downloaded 1000 albums!

I have a hard time comprehending that, for so many reasons, but the upshot is that things are changing fast. In terms of the impact down the road, I honestly can't think of a scenario where music won't just be free in the future, unless its through an internet usage tax, or maybe inserting advertisements into songs like TV shows. It's too huge, too easy, the demand is too great.

Some dinosaurs (myself included) will talk about packaging, the album as fetish object, wanting to support artists, etc., but I have a feeling most people don't give a shit about any of that. It's another commodity, and if you can get it free, why pay?

And some older ones as well, trust me...

I buy the "if someone is going to make $, it might as well be the artist" argument, that makes sense. But with file sharing, NO ONE is getting paid. Isn't this OK?

I've gotten a lot out of Josh Blog over the last two years, and it hasn't cost me a nickel. Josh never thought of charging me for the privilege, either. You could say, "Well bands have to invest in equipment and that costs $" but Josh had to buy a computer for a grand or so to write his blog on.

I think the popcorn farmer should be getting the most generous cut, so I hand out free plain paper bags of crackerjacks that I've taken from your warehouse. Now neither you nor the popcorn farmer are making the money you're used to making.

Is this fair?

If the guy undercutting the popcorn people w/ the free bags had created a machine that could turn one kernal of corn into a hundred trillion kernals without any energy input, then I expect all the other people in the chain would go out of business.

I'm sorta playing devil's advocate here, but my head is swimming w/ ideas about where music production is going to go in light of file sharing. It's a sick fact of capitalisim that "what's right" usually has little to do with what actually happens. If free music in the future is the reality, we should probably try and find to make a world a better place within that. This is all coming from a guy who treasure his vinyl copy of the first GYBE LP and has downloaded 100 MP3s in his life.

Hmm...the economy or the creative impulse? This would appear to affect the culture industry, as opposed to those folks watching robots put cars together, say.

and in a way, literature in mp3 form already exists, at least for the stuff which is now in the public domain (i.e. most of the "classics.") much of my college lit reading was done with the aid of a good school laser printer and the internet. books and music do differ when it comes to packaging though; it's a truism, but a powerful one, that no one gives a shit when a new version of the wizard of oz, or gone with the wind, or alice in wonderland comes out with a new cover (book or film come to think of it, which is why i used these particular examples.) but everyone and their mother would be shitting themselves if sgt. peppers suddenly appeared in a new sleeve. i think - this too - is going to slowly change over time as new generations of kids become less devoted to the physical object. (i couldn't even tell you what, in the last few years, has had a "classic" record cover, even if i cared about such things.)

Hey, I live in the basin where the company town is found -- they're running scared on the subject and have been for some years. Where they're lucky is that it takes a lot more to download a clean VCD ready copy of something like, oh, I don't know, let's say a certain film's Oscar promo DVD release from some months ago (for argument's sake ;-)). But the ability to do this is going to keep increasing.

Being a "star" will always pay, esp. as you get into clothing, merchandising, etc. (all the smart rappers are moving in this direction now), and most people making indie music don't make a living off of it now, except by playing shows.

Surely this will change soon enough?

No way! It's just as interesting to see what people have downloaded on a whim. People have strange stuff on their computers.

One of the main reasons I buy albums is to document my taste. MP3's are short-term - they won't be on your computer forever. If your computer screws off and dies tomorrow, would you want to lose your whole collection? For example, I've mainly been consuming rap as singles for the past three years (almost the entirety of my life as a record collector). On the up-side, I've heard a lot of good hip hop and not paid a cent, but on the down, another three years from now I'll be able to revisit a lot less of what I'd like to.

As for the "cracker jack" argument, I personally plan to be a musician all my life and have no qualms about not making money.

whats proposed next

Do you have a CD burner? All you need to do is burn your collection 700 MBs at a time onto CDs as a backup and you're pretty safe.