The future of digital music
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 8:16 pm by Wally
In the previous post, I drew brief attention to Digital Rights Management software, and the various efforts being made to highlight that it is wrong / immoral / foolish, etc.
Some examples:
- The Sony CD’s that installed “rootkit” software on PC’s. This software attempted to manage access to the material on the CD. It also broke the Windows XP operating system, and hid itself, thus being hard to find. Sony eventually withdrew the offending CDs and offered a clean-up program to affected customers.
- Anything downloaded from Apple’s iTunes can only be played on an iPod. But if I pay for it, why can’t I play it on what I like, when I like, where it like?
- The new Microsoft attempt to unseat the iPod (Zune?) can transfer digital music from one player to another. When you do this, EVERYTHING transferred has the DRM information added – so the recipient is limited in what they can do. Even if the information being send is a home-made recording of great-aunt Betsy singing the national anthem, it still stops working after about 3 playings!
- And now, Windows Vista imposing built-in restrictions on what can be done with digital content.
In the meantime, the encryption used on DVD’s was broken years ago, and the beefier systems used on the replacement formats Blu-Ray and HD-DVD look like they have been cracked as well.
The long term future of digital music is back to the dim and distant past.
Copy protection schemes will fail, eventually, because one of the many laws of nature goes something like this:
What man can do, man can undo
Once upon a time, there was a time before recorded music. Ownership of music at that time was a vastly different concept to now.
Nobody much owned music – for some fairly obvious reasons:
- The only way to listen to music was to have some person perform it; and
- The only way to distribute music was in the form of written sheet music (and going back far enough, not even that).
Even with sheet music, a performer was still required.
Performers, and performances, came in various forms and flavours:
- The keen amateur playing at home, or perhaps in front of a small gathering;
- The traveling troubadour, going from town to town, or inn to inn, playing where they could to earn their supper / board / lodging / whatever;
- The court musicians for the wealthy; and
- The religious or church musicians, composing and performing for the local bishop and for the glory of their chosen deity.
Music, once heard, does not exist (as a sound) any more. It exists only at brief instants in time. Drawings, books, and things which can be passed through the ages are quite different. But the only permanent form of music, until recording, was sheet music – and even that was not universally accessible. Only those who could read music, and play an instrument were able to make use of it. Yes, there was money to be made in selling sheet music, but not a lot of money.
Before recording, their was only a vague idea of ownership – and perhaps that’s how it should be.
It was hard to own a popular tune or song that been around for decades, or hundreds of years. It was hard to own what was heard for a fleeting instant, and then no longer existed. Performers were paid for performing, and after that – no more. More reward for the performer required more performance.
Following the invention of recording machines a whole new industry was created – the record company. The situation with performers has been turned on its head – a single performance can earn a performer little up front, but also a share of the proceeds of ongoing sales – depending on the contract. Record companies have an interest in promoting musicians who come and go – fashion and foolishness in popular music make for more sales, more revenue, more profit.
Some musicians have now become obscenely rich, but many have not.
The record companies, with their attempts to prevent copying, are like King Canute attempting to turn back the tides.
Once upon a time music belonged to everybody and nobody. Cheap, easy, digital copying will make perfect copies available to everybody. The only way performers will survive is to do what they did before the invention of recording – by performing in front of an audience. And sure sorts out the good from the bad!
Eventually the record companies will either die or change the way they do business. They will certainly make less money – a lot less money.
The constant attempts to enforce what are fairly contrived property rights is doomed to failure. The future will belong to the populace, performers with real talent will survive – but probably not with the outrageous amounts of money they rake in now. Record companies will arrange distribution, but for such small fees that anybody will be willing to pay it, and the concept of copyright of music will eventually fade away.
How long? At a guess, somewhere between another 20 and 50 years.