WHY NAPSTER ISN'T THE EVIL EMPIRE
- Bob Gajarsky
California-based Napster has been making headlines recently, and it isn't the kind the company would prefer. Rather than being heralded for a moonshot IPO pricing, Napster has been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) regarding its software package allowing quick transfer of MP3 files. The point of this article isn't to reflect on the legality or illegality of Napster and sharing MP3 files, but to reflect on the positive uses of Napster - and the many flaws in the RIAA's way of thinking.
Napster serves as a clearinghouse of information - in this case, the information of which MP3s you have in a specific pre-defined directory on your machine. Installing the Napster program allows users around the world to search for songs by title or artist. When a match is made, the user clicks on the song, and in anywhere from several minutes to a couple hours (depending on speed of transfer on both ends), the song has been downloaded from one machine to the other. If one song is downloaded, it may or may not impact record sales. However, if hundreds of thousands of songs are downloaded, no one will buy compact discs, and the label's artists will unfairly suffer. Simple enough?
The crux of the RIAA's argument revolves around a study they completed several months ago. This shows a decline of compact disc sales in college towns. If the major labels aren't getting as much money as before, it must be someone's fault. Ergo, Napster.
RIAA's first fault lies in the implicit assumption that the 'artists' are the number one concern of these labels involved. If the record industry really wants to support their artists, a far greater financial gain (for the artists) would be an elimination of the oppressive contracts (which have been ruled illegal in nearly every court judgment) which have plagued legal offices since rock and roll first became a profitable venture. Instead, replace them with contracts which would reward newer artists for selling a 'measly' 50,000 copies of an album, instead of being in debt to a label for the life of the band's contract. Then, there will be some proof that the record companies do care about their artists. For further information on this subject, check the books by Donald Passman (All You Need To Know About The Music Business) and Stan Soocher (They Fought The Law: Rock Music Goes To Court), both of which cover the subject with far greater eloquence and details than could be covered in this small space.
The next problem - declining CD sales in college towns. I will assume that this is true (and personally, I believe it is true). Why might there be declining sales? It takes about 5 minutes surfing the Internet to find the answer, and it comes in two parts.
The first answer comes from the expansion of online music sites such as (U.S.) Amazon, CDNow and Barnes and Noble, or worldwide from such sites as Boxman or Yalplay. With 'listening booths' allowing 30 second snippets of more than half an album's songs, people don't feel as strong a need to go into the stores and make a purchase of two or three $17 discs (plus tax). Instead, they purchase them online at $12 each - no tax, but $4 shipping. For a college student, the savings of $3-4 per disc can easily justify the cost of waiting an additional 3 days for the disc to arrive in the mail. The merits of indie record stores are a subject for another time and place, but the fact is, these deep-discount online stores that stock ALL indie and major label music are choking the lifeline out of the smaller stores.
The other reason for declining sales comes from online coupons. In an attempt to gain market share, most of the online players have coupons designed to draw newer buyers to their site. However, these coupons are quickly posted to some sites such as Deal of Day (http://www.dealofday.com), which compiles lists of online coupons / freebies for hundreds of different merchandising areas. A common coupon is a "$10 off $40 purchase". So, in the above example, the college student would have saved $6-7 per disc by shopping online with the coupon. One enterprising collegiate bragged that, through the use of online coupons and referral sites, he was able to purchase all his Christmas gifts (several hundred dollars value) for just under $100, and was able to receive a new stereo system for himself as a 'free' bonus. With savings like that, is it any wonder that collegiate store sales might drop?
Now that some of the RIAA's faults have been exposed, let's examine the positive services Napster provides. Looking for out of print songs? There's a good chance if it was recorded in the last 20 years, someone on Napster might have it. A search one night generated the Chicago Bears hit "Super Bowl Shuffle", never available on CD and changing hands on vinyl at $20 a pop, as well as numerous other top 40 hits of the eighties that are no longer available on CD.
There are also other advantages to the Napster program. Miss the British radio broadcast of Fatboy Slim vs the Rolling Stones, "Satisfaction Skank", which was legally broadcast, and is unavailable in stores? Check out Napster. How about some of the rare DJ-only megamixes and remixes, which have never been made commercially available, will never be made commercially available, and usually fetch $50+ upwards, with no compensation to the artists? Napster is your friend. And what about the extra B-sides or Japan-only extra tracks (in Japan, many domestically produced albums include one or two extra songs, to deter the Japanese from purchasing the cheaper import album of the same title)? Chances are, if you're diligent, someone using Napster will have included those.
I talked with some high schoolers recently about this topic. Although they had heard of Napster, they had never used it. However, they also felt they wouldn't have a need for Napster at all. Why? When one of them finds a new album they absolutely must have, they buy it - and burn several copies of it with a CD burner.
And that, my friends, is where the real problem lies. Not with Napster. I'm not proposing any quick fix technological solutions to this problem, but instead of spending millions of dollars on an easy target which won't solve the problem, shouldn't the RIAA be working on a way to 'educate' the public about the wrongs of copying music like this?
If Napster were eliminated, there are still at least a dozen tweaked clones of Napster in the public domain. The best-known of these, Gnutella, doesn't even reside on an individual server, making it impossible to 'shut it down'.
And even if all these clones were eliminated? College students, with plenty of time on their hands and an ability to learn the latest technology far quicker than most, can easily circumvent Napster'fs hypothetical demise.
Before Napster was ever finalized, advance copies of Pearl Jam and Depeche Mode albums had been posted on Web sites and Internet servers around the world - months before their official release, or before critics ever received their advance copies. Users would resort back to posting a message on a Usenet news group (read by hundreds of thousands of people), or on Web sites, announcing where the files are - or that they can be e-mailed directly to your inbox.
What will eventually happen, on the college level, is each dorm student will have their own dedicated IP address on the school's network. They will set up an 'anonymous' area on the machine, which contains any MP3s or similar files that the user wants to 'share'. Then, other people - whether on their campus, their town, or around the world - will 'FTP' to the user's secure machine, download the MP3s, and the same problem will exist - with no one to stop it.
Is the RIAA really going to contact each school and ask them to enforce strict limits on the size of file downloads? A system administrator might (if the college's servers are overloaded), but not the RIAA.
This FTP / IP address wouldn't work for 'professionals' or teens without a high speed dedicated line, but the record industry is telling us "We're losing our income because of college kids!". And I'm telling them that not only is that a lie, but worse, it will be nearly powerless to stop any potential theft of music.
What's the solution to all this? Make the music *available*. If the labels were serious about protecting and generating revenue for the artists, they should keep out of print CDs digitally online, available for purchase via downloading. The incremental additional cost of computer servers would be minimal, and at the same time everyone concerned - label, artist, and fan - could get what they want at a fair price.
And given a choice, most people would prefer to legally buy a CD, complete with liner notes and front / back sleeves, than burn one. Those radio-only dance remix versions of hit songs? Instead of throwing them in the waste-bin or destroying them, why not sell them direct to the consumer (3 months after their issuance to radio) and earn everyone involved a little extra cash? Sell those Japanese-only tracks online. Again - little effort with extra money and appreciation by all involved.
Will people stop swapping MP3 files, and copying music from others? Unfortunately, no. Will Napster weather the legal storm? That remains to be seen. But with a little visionary thinking, record companies could easily survive any potential drains on their bottom line, and attack the real problems instead of a straw man.
