Tuesday, April 13, 2004

The Jefferson Muzzle Awards

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has issued its
2004 Jefferson Muzzle Awards.  Among the winners are:

- The Secret Service for forcing anti-Bush protestors into “free-speech” zones
that are well-removed from Bush while permitting supporters close-in access.

- Baseball Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey for canceling a 15th aniversary
celebration for the movie Bill Durham because Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandan
publically voiced anti-Bush and anti-Iraq war views.

- CBS Television (their third Muzzle) for canceling “The Reagans” in response to
widespread conservative outcry and for refusing to run MoveOn.org’s anti-Bush
advertisement during the Super Bowl while running White House anti-drug ads.

- The South Carolina House of Representatives for passing a resolution calling
on the Dixie Chicks to apologize for Natalie Mains’ anti-Bush statement at a
London concert.

- Jeff Webster of Soldotna, Alaska, and an unnamed 14-year old arsonist in
Harrisonburg, Virginia for punishing the expression of free speech by,
respectively, twice dousing anti-war protestors in sub-zero weather with
buckets of water and for igniting an anti-war sign and ultimately causing
$60,000 damage to the home of the sign’s owners.

For a more detailed description of the Muzzles, here’s the link:
http://www.tjcenter.org/muzzles.html

Monday, April 05, 2004

RIAA - Evolve or Die

Over the last few years, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)has used a variety of legal, and borderline legal, tactics to stop illegal music downloading.  First RIAA got the original Napster shut down.  Then RIAA turned its attention to peer-to-peer (P2P) networks like Grokster and Kazaa, trying to shut them down as well.  When that failed, RIAA fell back on suing individual file sharers, some as young as 12, using arguably unconstitutional “administrative subpoenas” to acquire the individual’s identity.  More recently, recording industry trade groups in Australia, Europe, and Canada have attempted to duplicate RIAA’s successes here in the United States, with varying degrees of success.

And all of this flurry of activity by the global recording industry may be about to come tumbling down like a house of cards.

Last week, Professors Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School and Koleman S. Strumpf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released a draft of a study in which they apply rigorous statistical models and science to the ultimate question behind the recording industry’s legal activity, namely “does music downloading actually reduce CD sales?” According to the new study, the answer is a most emphatic no.

Critics have been saying this for years now.  Some critics claim that the replacement of records and tapes with CDs in the 1990s artificially increased CD sales, and since consumers finished stocking up on the new medium, sales naturally declined dramatically.  Others critics point to the recession’s effects on sales of “luxury” items like music CDs.  And still other critics point to the effects of less variety and the perceived lower quality of the music that has been produced over the last 5-10 years.

I suspect that the critics are correct, at least in part.  But even I swallowed the RIAA party-line that file downloading actually has had a significant impact on the recording industry.  I’ve even blogged on it previously.  If the study is determined to be accurate I may have to revise my initial assumptions.

And then the recording industry may have to stop flogging the downloaders and start addressing the very issues that the critics have pointed out as behind the drop in sales.

[This assumes that the study is accurate and without any significant procedural or modeling errors.  Statistics is notoriously difficult, and a poor model or a data set that’s too small can show relationships between data where none actually exists.  And as Jayne Charneski, currently the head of research for the record label EMI, said in a New York Times article (A Heretical View of File Sharing), “There’s a lot of research out there that’s conducted with an agenda in mind.” Of course, this is just as true of record industry research (which, like much of the research critical of RIAA’s downloading assertions, has not been peer reviewed).]

I must admit that I’m of two minds on this issue.  Part of me wants file downloading to dramatically drain the recording industry’s pocket book, while part of me wants file downloading to be as insignificant as Professors Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf’s study suggests.

Hitting the recording industry in its pocketbook has a great potential for destroying the recording industry as we know it.  From its ashes will likely rise a new system that grants artists far greater personal control over their own music, including the marketing, distribution, and sales of said music.  The Internet has the potential to create a truly level playing field where music and musicians can prosper free of the paralyzing restrictions imposed by the industry giants.

If, on the other hand, downloading truly has almost no effect on CD sales, then the recording industry will be forced to face the reasons why their CD sales have flamed out, crashed, and burned over the last five years or so.  Maybe radio consolidation has stymied musical creativity as radio’s corporate masters maximize quarterly profits by playing only the uber-hit makers.  Maybe the sounds of music are all blurring together, mixing Dave Matthews, Beyonce, 50 Cent, and Brittney Spears into a cacophony of tonal uniformity.  And maybe the recording industry will have to look at actually acquiring new, high quality talent, talent that has grown up appalled at record industry greed and is a LOT more cautious about selling their souls to RIAA for a record deal.

Either way, the downloading issue will be good for the music consumer and the music industry.  If downloading does affect music sales, then downloading may ultimately kill off the RIAA as it’s currently composed and, in the process, free independent and labeled musicians to fill the vacuum left by the deaths of the record industry giants with excellent and inexpensive music.  And if downloading doesn’t dramatically affect music sales, record companies will have to evolve or die, facing their own complicity in the decline of music sales in the process.

Either way, it’s good for us, the music-consuming public, and good for musicians in the long run.

So I say “Let the debate rage on!” We can all sit back and enjoy the battle-royale that will be playing out over the next few years on this issue.  We’ll all enjoy the end result regardless of how it plays out.

Popcorn, anyone?