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Goodbye, cassettes and CDs
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Cyberspace has become a huge marketplace for music which you can buy and download, bypassing the big recording companies. This is music to ANAND SANKAR's ears and he predicts it is going to be the next big thing right here in India
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PHOTO: AP
TWIN ADVANTAGE When it comes to prices, downloaded music has advantages for both the vendor and the consumer
Dilip Kumar, 25, is a sales and marketing guy at one of Bangalore's software giants. The primary objective of his job is jet setting. One day he is in California and then it's East Asia the next. In between the pitches he has to make to prospective clients, he has to pass time in aircrafts and in transit at airports. His best companion is music. But considering his position in his company, Dilip cannot afford to be caught with a laptop full of pirated Van Halen or Jimi Hendrix. Instead, he has a collection of music downloaded perfectly legally from the Internet.
Yes, distributing music has come a long way since LPs, cassettes and CDs. Now the Internet might consign CDs to just hang as ornaments from autorickshaws.
Sharing of music on the Net can be traced all the way back to 1999 when Napster became the first service which allowed people to freely exchange music on the Internet. Napster was the ultimate bolt from the blue for the recording industry and also a big eye-opener. A series of lawsuits made sharing of copyrighted music using Napster and similar programs illegal but the recording industry realised that selling music over the Internet is capable of raking in megabucks.
The U.S. was the first market for online music and today sales have skyrocketed. Downloads have increased by 77 per cent in the first half of 2006 and traditional album sales (CDs and cassettes) fell by 4.2 per cent. More than 14 million full albums were downloaded in the period.
In the U.K., another big market for the music industry, similar growth has been reported. In fact artistes and their managers are beginning to target Internet sales. Alan McGee, the man who discovered Oasis, recently wrote on his website challenging the monopoly of recording companies: "Downloads will be king within the next couple of years. The majors have lost the football ... CDs are ugly f***ing data invented by the majors. Their game is up."
India is one of the biggest markets waiting to be tapped for the online music industry. The first requisite is broadband Internet and at least in urban India it is penetrating fast. But what is missing is a big player who can set the tempo for the market. Apple's iTunes is the undisputed world leader but its music store service is still unavailable in India, and no dates are known for its launch. So, for now it has been left to the broadband service providers (Tata Indicom and Airtel are big players) to offer music download services for subscribers.
So, what makes digital music so sellable? Sheer convenience, according to Kumar. "I have a few hundred songs on my laptop. Imagine me lugging everything in CDs, or worse, in cassettes."
Pradeep John, student and audiophile, further explains that the ability to organise music easily and then portability between devices are very attractive. "From using MP3s for so many years everyone now knows that any media player comes with a media library. Here you can easily search for your music and play at a click. In most homes today music systems are connected to PCs so the problem of bad speakers has been solved. And with an iPod you can carry your music anywhere with you."
When it comes to prices, downloaded music has advantages for both the vendor and the consumer. For the vendor, there are no headaches of handling physical merchandise and you can choose to buy even a single track if you want. But all providers, including Indian, offer packages. For example, iTunes in the U.K. charges subscribers £8.99 (Rs. 800) for 40 MP3 files a month and for £14.99 (Rs. 1,300), they get 90. Tracks cost less than 23p (Rs. 20) each this way instead of the 79p (Rs. 70) for a one-off purchase. Also, it is claimed package deals encourage listeners to try new music because it is cheaper. Though credit cards are the preferred payment mode abroad, some operators in India offer to bill the songs along with the monthly bill for Internet services.
Finally, the Internet has now become a medium to market niche music and this could be of important for us. Folk songs or even music by a garage band can be sold online, bypassing the entire mainstream recording industry.
Sites are already popular are www.downloadpunk.com for punk, www.classical.com for western classical and www.calabashmusic.com for world music. And DJs who need high-quality tracks also need not lug LPs around wherever they go.
Services such as Bleep, Beatport and DJ Download offer high quality MP3s, WAV or even Flac (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files.
Content protection
The biggest stated goal of having legal online music downloads was to prevent piracy and that is done using a technology called Digital Rights Management (DRM). Put simply, any content that you download to your computer comes with a licence that locks it to your machine and prevents music from being shared illegally. Copying your music to portable audio players is restricted but Apple's iTunes allows music to be copied to its player, the iPod.
As always, there are a number of programs floating around in the Internet that claim to break DRM but you will be in breach of a contract if you use them. But in India, there have been no high-profile cases of people being booked for sharing copyrighted online music as the recording industry here is still trying to stamp out pirated CDs.
The free music movement is also gaining momentum online with artists making use of the Creative Commons License, which is also used by Wikimedia. For more information, visit www.creativecommons.org. Also check out The Freesound Project at http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/
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