Big Music is fighting a losing battle for rights

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      Both consumers and artists will benefit from the impending death of digital-rights-management efforts by the music industry.

      The digital distribution of music is here to stay. iTunes is now the third-largest seller of music in the U.S., reporting worldwide sales exceeding three billion songs. When Led Zeppelin decided to make some money in the new millennium, it made its entire catalogue available digitally. You can purchase a virtual boxed set, including every Led Zep album, on iTunes for $100.

      However, music downloads are still paltry compared with CD sales. Nielsen SoundScan’s 2007 summary of music sales in Canada found that only 4.7 percent of album sales were digital. But the growth rate of digital-music transactions was significant. In 2005, only 460,000 albums were purchased in digital form. In 2007, the number was two million, a fourfold increase in only two years. More than 25 million single songs were purchased—purchased, not simply downloaded—in 2007. In 2005, that total was only 6.7 million.

      Consumers are choosing the convenience of digital access, and the price doesn’t hurt, either. Two other important factors in purchasing digital music are sound quality and rights management.

      This year, we’ll likely see the death of digital-rights-management efforts by the music industry (which, for instance, can prevent you from ripping a CD to your computer). Driven by the realization that DRM technologies hardly slow the tide of music-sharing, more and more music labels are agreeing to DRM–free digital music files. After CEO Steve Jobs said he preferred digital music files to be free of copy protection, Apple started releasing some songs under an iTunes Plus licence. This licence allows consumers to have more control over the music they buy, since they can copy the file—for personal use—to any device they want to listen on, not just an iPod.

      At first, the extra privilege came at a premium price of $1.29, 30 cents more than the standard 99-cent cost for a single. In October, iTunes dropped the premium because although the dominance of iTunes is well established—in terms of legal downloads, anyway—there’s a new player in town that has iTunes scrambling to maintain its effective monopoly.

      Last September, Amazon.com launched a rival music-download service that provides DRM–free downloads at a higher quality than that of iTunes tracks: 256 kilobits per second, for 89 cents and 99 cents. Not only is music purchased and downloaded from Amazon cheaper in some cases, it can be played on any device you own: MP3 player, computer, or cellphone. You could even put a track on a cassette tape, if you were so inclined.

      Amazon also has an edge because it has a better representation of the major music labels that provide DRM–free tunes. In January, Sony BMG, the fourth and final major label, agreed to join EMI, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group in distributing through Amazon. More than 33,000 independent labels also make music available through Amazon’s MP3 store.

      By contrast, EMI is the only major label participating in iTunes Plus. Some analysts have suggested that the labels, frustrated by the way iPods have taken over the industry and forced a change in the traditional business model, have conceded defeat in the battle to control the digital distribution of music, but are making sure that Apple pays a price.

      The difficulty for people in Canada is that—for now, anyway—Amazon is only selling MP3 downloads to customers in the United States. In an e-mail last fall, Tammy Hovey, Amazon’s public-relations manager, told the Straight that there was “nothing to report” when asked about opening the MP3 store for business in Canada. The reason for the delay is likely that Amazon needed more time to sign contracts with those who hold the rights to the music outside of the U.S. However, in January, Amazon announced that the service will be rolled out internationally later this year.

      But the Internet makes it easy for music fans to get the music they love, and I’m not referring to peer-to-peer networks, pirate bays, or torrents.

      Technology in our digital world has enabled musicians to keep the rights to their music, instead of signing them away to a multinational company. Artists are then free to distribute their music themselves, or to sign distribution deals with music-loving independent labels in each territory they want to make their music available in. Also, independent labels don’t necessarily need to sign distribution deals with the larger labels as a way to get their CDs onto the shelves of record stores.

      So artists can make music more cheaply, because they don’t have to budget for CD manufacturing costs, shipping expenses, or distributor or retail fees. That means they—or the independent label they’ve partnered with—can sell their music for less, and ultimately make more money.

      Most independent record labels sell CDs through their own on-line stores, and many also make digital downloads available. Sub Pop Records, home to the Postal Service, the Shins, and Chad VanGaalen, has made most of its catalogue available as MP3s direct from its Web site.

      Canadian boutique label Arts & Crafts also sells its artists’ music in digital form, including that of Broken Social Scene, Jason Collett, the Dears, Feist, and Stars. Although prices at Arts & Crafts are for digital albums, in a nod to music fetishists everywhere the company also sells CD albums for an extra $2, and if you want to have the CD and the digital tracks, just add $4 to your tab and you can listen now and look at the CD art later.

      It’s a beautiful thing, how music creators and fans can come together so easily. The only ones losing out are the big, multinational record companies. But I don’t feel bad about that at all.

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