.KEYWORD ceeditorial0800
.FLYINGHEAD FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
.TITLE The battle over Napster
.DEPT
.SUMMARY The only thing Napster grabs more of than MP3s is news headlines. In this month’s editorial, Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz examines the battle over Napster and what it means for the future of music, video, software, books, and any other form of digitized media.
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
At the moment, there’s no bigger technology news than the battle over Napster. If you’ve been living under a rock, here’s a short summary of the issue: Napster is a service/program that allows users to share music over the Internet. So far, so good. What makes it interesting is that it allows users to share MP3 files on their hard drives with anyone else on the Internet running Napster. So, for example, if I want to find a song by The Grateful Dead, I’d type in the name of the song (say, "Casey Jones") and Napster would show all the connected machines that had copies. I could then download the copy to my PC, play it, download it to my MP3 player, your Pocket PC, or even burn it to a CD.
This is obviously sending the music industry into a wig-out fit of epic proportions. And, so, with a lawsuit brought by the music industry, a judge ordered Napster shuttered. (Napster was subsequently granted a temporary reprieve against the injunction.)
But the battle is far from over. First of all, Napster has something like 20 million loyal users. That makes 20 million people seriously pissed off at the music industry. Secondly, Napster has a serious brand name (although severely tarnished by this battle). And third, the idea of easily sharing decentralized digital files is too easy to implement and too good an idea with too compelling a value proposition, resulting in Napster being easily and eagerly cloned.
So, for all intents and purposes, legal system or not, free, shared music is here to stay.
The challenge is now for the music distributors (who make up the bulk of the music industry) and the artists to figure out how to make money in this new paradigm. The fact is, people will continue to buy CDs, so that business isn’t toast. One study says that CD sales around colleges have nose-dived, pointing to Napster use as the culprit), while another study says Napster users tend to buy more music. In other words, the studies don’t mean diddly. People who want to buy will buy, and people who don’t, won’t–and a court judgment in this Internet economy isn’t going to affect that.
On the other hand, public opinion and creative marketing might. Right now, the Napster guys have an interesting idea. They’re advocating a "buycott," suggesting that Napster supporters go out and buy CDs from artists that endorse Napster. There aren’t a lot of these artists, but here’s who Napster currently lists: Chuck D, Limp Bizkit, The Offspring, Ben Folds Five, Sunny Day Real Estate, Social Distortion, Face to Face, Get Up Kids, Less Than Jake, Nextmen, The Coup, Cypress Hill, Dr. Octagon, Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins), DJ Keoki, The Pilfers, Elwood, Anti-pop Consortium, The Grateful Dead, Eve 6, Mix Master Mike, and Marianne Faithfull.
In my opinion, a "buycott" isn’t going to change anything. But it won’t hurt to let artists know they’ll get rewarded for supporting a new distribution channel.
Honestly, I don’t have the answer to how the artists will be fairly compensated in this model. But I do know that tools like Napster are "disintermediating," which means that they’re helping to remove the intermediaries (ah, that’s the "music industry," isn’t it?). And I do know that most musicians don’t make a ton off their work now, so Napster-like file sharing might increase their exposure substantially. My uninformed gut feel (and remember, I’m not much of a music consumer) is that only the brand-name artists will feel an impact. Yet, there’s another thought. Folks who might never have heard a particular artist’s music might hear it, and some new customers might be created.
And now you know why there’s a debate.
One thing to keep in mind: this isn’t just a battle over Napster or music. With higher bandwidth, we’ll soon be easily sharing video, software, books, and any other digitized media. In some future years, we’ll have huge hard drives that can store hundreds of DVD-quality movies. Those can be Napsterized as well. And what about TV shows? I’d sure like to see more Babylon 5 or Crusade. Might this be a way to get those producers an audience and a revenue stream? And then there are ebooks. This technology can easily allow users to download any ebook from anywhere, and our bandwidth today can more than handle it.
So, in conclusion, new mediums require new ways of thinking about revenue. It’s possible that this form of distribution-busting disintermediation is so unaffected by law and copyrights that natural selection will devalue digital content. But I don’t think so. I’d still pay my lump of gold for the next real Tom Clancy novel, and I’d bet you’d pay for the entertainment you really value.
Watch this stuff. It’s not just about music. It’s a battle for the media of the 21st Century.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Napster, visit http://www.napster.com.
My friends at Scripting News are covering this topic in a great deal of depth. To see some additional thinking about Napster, visit http://www.scripting.com.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
