Kids today wouldn’t recognize the internet of the 1990s. Access was metered by service providers and connections were largely made over slow telephone lines. Still, it had taken off as a medium, and people were finding new ways to use it. More to the point, they were finding ways to capitalize on it.
Everyone, that is, except the record labels. At first they ignored it. Then they despised it.
Early on, artists and fans built websites to promote music. Given the lack of usable bandwidth, posting actual music was nearly impossible. A five-minute song consumed 50MB of data, which was completely unworkable over a 56KB connection.
Then a frustrated German engineer introduced a format that could compress that song down to less than 5MB. He distributed the compression program freely, and the MP3 format was born. Music enthusiasts were quick to embrace it, and the next logical step came with file sharing programs, the most famous of which was Napster.
This is where the needle screeches off the record. Remember, for years consumers had been saddled with high prices and restricted access to content. Something had to give, and file sharing provided the outlet.
Consider: a teenager in a rural town hears a cool song by some indie band. He wants to support them, but they don’t come to his town because the situation with ticket marketing killed small venues, and he can’t drive 100 miles and pay $80 to go see them. He can’t get their record because WalMart doesn’t stock it. The labels didn’t ship records to individuals at the time, so there was no legitimate way for him to get their music.
But he does have an internet connection. The labels had every chance to see the opportunity in this situation, but they ignored it. Lacking any other means, he downloads it. Lots of folks did so. Rather than adapting and embracing the new paradigm, the labels settled for suing people for it.
What little goodwill they had left at that point was pretty much gone. People were resentful, and that made them less apprehensive of services like Napster. The thing to remember is, this was all avoidable.
But that would require the music industry to adapt, and they were still trying to run things like they did in the 1930s.
They did manage to shut down many of the file-sharing services, but the technology was getting better. Connections got faster and computers doubled in power. Industry revenues plummeted. By 2008, CD sales were less than half what they’d been at their 1999 peak.
Smaller, smarter labels jumped into the gap and began playing with the idea of digital promotion and distribution. Having been dumped from Warner in 2001, the band Wilco released *Yankee Hotel Foxtrot* online. The record received rave reviews and reached listeners despite a total lack of industry support. In an ironic twist, a bidding war ensued for the physical distribution rights. The winner was Nonesuch, which was a subsidiary of Warner. Yep.
Then Apple got involved. While their distribution model was brilliant, their two biggest achievements were throwbacks: the reintroduction of the single and the design of the 21st-century Walkman. There were other (and some cases, better) MP3 players before the iPod, but Apple’s strategy of coupling it with their distribution service was brilliant. People could once again buy single songs decoupled from entire albums.
The DNA of iTunes runs through modern streaming services like Spotify and Tidal, and platforms like SoundCloud and YouTube allow the sharing of music to an extent we’ve never seen. They allow consumers to have unfettered access to music from the most obscure of sources and to have it instantly.
An example: an electronic artist named Tim Koch released a great record called Faena on Merck records back in 2006. Unless you really followed the scene, you missed out on it. If you didn’t have a good independent record store in your area, you’d never have been able to get a copy. It’s not good for you and it’s not good for the artist.
Last year, I sat in my truck in rural North Dakota browsing the internet (on my mobile phone) when I noticed a review of a new album from him. In seconds, I was able to follow a link to his label’s website, submit payment, and download it. He gets his money (and more of it than under the old model) and I get the music, instantly.
It’s still a surprising thing to me. Over the last few years, there’s been a democratization of music that benefits both the artist and the listener, and there’s no going back. Artists no longer need a giant corporation to produce and market their music, and listeners no longer need one to sell it to them. The major labels are all but irrelevant, and the people who benefit are the ones who should.
I can’t say I’ll miss the music industry one bit.