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A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

It doesn’t seem that long ago since Radiohead did what was once unimaginable – release an album without being signed to a major record company. On the long march to digital ubiquity as the means of music delivery Radiohead avoided the tar pit that seems to be major label thinking and came out clear winners. Yes, they resorted later to releasing the album as a good old CD into regular retail distribution but they were pioneers and were soon followed with great success by Nine Inch Nails and to lesser success by many others. Both these bands had an understanding of what their fans wanted [price level choice, quality and special packaging] and both bands understood the power of the internet for marketing purposes and direct reach. [NB: Although I believe that the digital music file will rule the day, vinyl still has a role to play and I'll get to that later.]

The most interesting part of this experiment [which at the time, I would argue it was] was not only that it was wildly successful but it laid the groundwork for what I have coined the end of the organizing principle. In other words I suggest that we are now seeing the end of the album-length work as the permenant work, the everlasting body of work that represents the pinnacle of an artists’ creativity. I am fully expecting to hear the howls of derision over this but bear with me.

Radiohead

If you were honest how many albums do you own that demand to be listened to from beginning to end? AV Club recently came up with a list of 25, some of which I agree with and Rolling Stone, Spin and other mags regularly post their lists of the “all time greatest albums” whether its 100 or 50 or less. My band Gang Of Four’s album Entertainment! is often featured on these lists but take it from me it has its flaws. The problem with lists and suggestions is that they are all subjective. Being engaged by music requires too much of a personal commitment on an emotional level for anyone to be able to provide an ultimate list. [Imagine if an art critic attempted to make a top ten list of the world's greatest paintings. Why does popular music suffer from this conceit?]

We live in an era of MP3 players, streaming internet radio, web apps – not to mention the iTunes music application and its ability to shuffle your entire digital music collection – now the cloud and almost-mobile ubiquity, the list goes on; in what part of digital music culture does an album-length piece of work now reside?

I’ll answer that question – I believe it has no place in a digital future.

The original organizing principle of music was of course hand written, composed. It then moved along to sheet music and with that came revenue from sales to the musical public and by so doing helped to move revenue income beyond just ticket sales to the opera or orchestra performances. This wasn’t enough though. It was as if music was demanding to be organized and soon enough inventors jumped in to the fray and began organizing music recording and playback – at first on tin foil.
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Pic from HuffingtonPost.com

I have been an enthusiastic user of Amazon’s MP3 Store ever since it launched. The store challenges the hegemony of the Apple iTunes Store which is the front runner because of savvy marketing and the superior hardware that is the iPod, but there is no reason that music lovers shouldn’t be able to gather up music from other sources whilst reaping the benefits of DRM-free MP3s; people need to be educated about Digital Rights Management or DRM and obviously it isn’t in Apple’s interest to do that. *See footnotes for explanation about DRM.

Here’s the rub – MP3s purchased from Apple’s iTunes store can only be played on an iPod or a computer authorized by the user to play those MP3s, they can not be transferred to other devices. *See footnotes on how to work around Apple’s DRM. Locking down the music to Apple devices is the technological equivalent of the buggy whip manufacturers back in the day, getting laws passed to ensure that anyone driving a Model T Ford had to have someone walk in front of the car to warn pedestrians of its approach….

Steve Jobs has long maintained that the decision to go with DRM in the first place was because the major record labels demanded that their music files be protected. Critics have long pointed out that it is in Apple’s interest to use DRM to lock the music to the iPod as all of Apple’s profits are in the hardware not the content. And now that Amazon has opened its MP3 download store offering major label music at twice the file size, 256kbs to Apple’s 128kbs, and at prices cheaper than iTunes, Jobs’ argument is beginning to wear thin. *See footnotes for an explanation of MP3 file sizes.

And now comes the G1 Android-based phone, every one of which includes Amazon.com’s DRM-free MP3 store pre-loaded. The G1 users may have never understood the benefits of DRM-free songs and they may never have heard of Amazon’s MP3 store, yet it is not a stretch to imagine that once they use the Amazon service on the phone and realize they can move their music downloads freely and easily across all MP3-playing devices it will make them look askance at the iTunes store.

The Amazon MP3 Store works seamlessly with the iTunes application too so there’s no worry of having to use another application to play MP3s. Upon download of MP3s from Amazon its downloader populates the songs into your iTunes folder, it’s that simple. After that if you own a Zune or an iRiver you can simply sync the device up and the MP3s will appear just as they do on an iPod – you no longer need an iPod to play MP3s unless you have purchased MP3s from iTunes with DRM… Once public awareness spreads of the benefits of DRM-Free files, [no doubt by word of mouth as it is not a media-driven story,] iTunes may have to think again about using DRM.

* About DRM

DRM is short for Digital Rights Management. From Wikipedia – Digital rights management (DRM) is a generic term that refers to access control technologies used by hardware manufacturers, publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices. The term is used to describe any technology which makes the unauthorized use of media or devices technically formidable, and generally doesn’t include other forms of copy protection which can be circumvented without modifying the media or device, such as serial numbers or keyfiles. It can also refer to restrictions associated with specific instances of digital works or devices. Digital rights management has been and is being used by content provider companies such as Sony, Apple Inc., Microsoft and the BBC.

* How to remove the DRM from an iTunes purchased MP3:

Simply create a new playlist in your iTunes application. Drag the purchased album or any individual purchased tracks to the playlist. Click ‘Burn CD’ and insert a blank CD-R. After burning the CD click ‘Import CD’ after ensuring that you have set the preferences for importing to ‘MP3.’ The newly imported songs from the CD are now all DRM-Free MP3s. After successfully importing from the CD you can either delete the original MP3s with DRM or keep them for back up.

* An explanation of MP3 file sizes.

In the iTunes applications preferences click on ‘General’ then ‘Import Settings.’ Select ‘MP3 Encoder’ then click on ‘Setting’ below. You now have a choice of file size settings. Apple tags the settings Good Quality – 128kbs, High Quality – 160 kbs and Higher Quality – 192 kbs where the number of kbs refers to the kilobit size of the MP3 file. The higher the number the better quality of the MP3 file for playback. You can also select a custom setting to go higher still. Some people argue that 320kbs is near-CD quality for instance. Apple’s iTunes Store offers downloads at 128kbs while Amazon’s MP3 Store offers files at 256kbs, twice the size in other words.