Seeing into the future of music

While I was searching for the reason Frank Zappa's music was recently pulled from iTunes (actually not of particular interest to myself musically, but a friend had mentioned it to me and I was interested in the why of the situation), I came across this article written by Zappa in 1983.

In it, Zappa talks about the physical waste associated with the sale of music, and the associated waste of material in promoting these physical representations of music by the colorfully described "cocaine-tweezed A&R Brass." He mentions the advent of the compact disc as a smaller and possibly more efficient way to distribute the music (he doesn't mention any issues regarding sonic fidelity though, fwiw).

Zappa also notes that it is not the medium but the music itself that is of primary concern and interest: "MUSIC CONSUMERS LIKE TO CONSUME MUSIC . . . NOT PIECES OF VINYL WRAPPED IN PIECES OF CARDBOARD."

The next section is of particular interest today, as it relates directly to an attitude that I believe needs to be adopted regarding file sharing and digital music piracy. Zappa, however, was talking about home cassette recording as the issue of the day in 1983:  "It is our proposal to take advantage of the POSITIVE ASPECTS of a NEGATIVE TREND afflicting the record industry today: HOME TAPING via cassette of material released on vinyl. "

All that is very interesting, but what is truly incredible is Zappa's proposal in the face of all of this:

"We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company's difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user's home taping appliances, with the option of direct digital-to-digital transfer to F-1 (SONY consumer level digital tape encoder), Beta Hi-Fi, or ordinary analog cassette (requiring the installation of a rentable D-A converter in the phone itself . . . the main chip is about $12).

All accounting for royalty payments, billing to the customer, etc. would be automatic, built into the initial software for the system.

The consumer has the option of subscribing to one or more Interest Categories, charged at a monthly rate, without regard for the quantity of music he or she decides to tape.

Providing material in such quantity at a reduced cost could actually diminish the desire to duplicate and store it, since it would be available any time day or night.

Monthly listings could be provided by catalog, reducing the on-line storage requirements of the computer.  The entire service would be accessed by phone, even if the local reception is via TV cable. "

That's right, Zappa was touting a monthly fee based music system in 1983, such as the one Rhapsody currently offers (also, the added emphasis was his, not mine). Although Rhapsody still lacks a large base and is still behind the iTunes model of DRM based distribution in the online, landscape, I think the model will catch on with time. Bob Lefsetz explains part of the issue:

"When people tell you subscription is the future, they’re right.  But it’s not rental.  Not for a long long time.  Yes, eventually people will have no need to own the product, but that’s closer to ten years out than five, and I’d say more like fifteen.  Call it human nature, people want to OWN things, call them their own, have them forever.

Rhapsody IS an excellent service, it’s just that Real doesn’t have enough cash to market it properly.  Most people have no idea how it works.  If they did, it would make inroads."

Another related idea is to utilize existing illegal P2P networks and monetize them in the way YouTube has, with advertising and perhaps even a monthly access fee as well to pay the people who own the music. YouTube was built on the backs of copyrighted material and I think distributed music sharing networks could take a lesson from them. The problem is that they're all scared to death of the RIAA and record companies who haven't turned the corner and stopped fighting the inevitable rather than taking advantage of the existing infrastructure of people devouring large amounts of music. It seems to me that they've left money on the table by not trying to capitalize sooner, money that could have made it into the hands of the artists.