Re: [microsound] napster shut down

[_DipthonG_ <kam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

your-annoying.
go-away.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: microsound <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2000 4:08 AM
Subject: Re: [microsound] napster shut down


> At 8:17 AM -0700 7/27/00, anechoic wrote:
> >yesterday Napster was ordered to shut down its operations...what do the
> >people on this list think about this?
> >personally I think its really sad...
> 
> About Napster itself, I cannot shed too many tears; compared with 
> those losing houses and lives in the Taiwanese flooding this week, 
> for example, the officers of another MP3 corporation seem not very 
> pitiful to me.  And for me it is that word - Corporation - which 
> makes the Napster debate so troublesome and ultimately so illusory. 
> The news media, at least in US, broadcasting across channels owned by 
> the same international conglomerates in whose flabby folds the large 
> record companies also warm themselves, have seen fit to cast the 
> debate as a fight between Napster and Metallica, between Sili Valley 
> startup and rockstar establishment, between the fans and the band. 
> But I type this message in San Francisco, in which Metallica - whose 
> "And Justice for All" I must, as a former metalhead (and continuing 
> Judas Priest fan), admit to finding rather pleasurable - have been 
> quite flamboyant about the Pacific Heights mansions and designer 
> clothes signalling their success and in which the neighboring 
> mansions are likely being purchased by the more successful players in 
> the internet startup casino, and to me both "sides" of the debate as 
> it has been conveniently packaged are on the same side:  Metallica is 
> a collection of people who have successfully wrung wealth from their 
> product, and Napster is another collection of people who would like 
> to do the same with their software.  (If anyone doubts the latter 
> claim, note this statement from the Napster website:  "Napster, Inc. 
> recently closed a $15 million Series C venture capital funding 
> round."  That amount could likely fund all of the musicians and 
> labels on this list for next several decades!)  There is, however, a 
> hidden Other Side of the debate, and one toward which Courtney Love, 
> of whom I cannot in general call myself a fan, points in her 
> surprising words in Salon:  the "working" - or perhaps non-working - 
> musicians.  In the Napster case, there are two possible outcomes: 
> (1) Napster wins and becomes a hugely successful internet startup, 
> with luxury mansions and Porsche Boxsters for each and all, or (2) 
> Metallica wins and gets even more money to expand its members' 
> mansions and repair their sportscars.  But for me neither outcome has 
> any impact on working musicians, who remain scurrying about for 
> crumbs beneath the table as the corporate music entities continue 
> their tug-of-war for the large loaves.  The real threat hidden 
> beneath the name Napster is of music recontextualized as freeware in 
> the decentralized realm of the internet rather than as payware in the 
> centralized production and distribution matrix of the Big Five global 
> entertainment leviathans.  For rockstars at the level of Metallica, 
> profits are immense and when chased can indeed be transmuted into 
> cars and houses, but for the musicians at the other end of the 
> continuum - at the level, for example, of artist-run nanolabels and 
> undistributed private editions - the profits barely cover the costs 
> of physically producing and promoting a record, and this on a good 
> day and with honest and nonbankrupt distributors.  But if the 
> record-object and the associated costs of its manufacture and 
> dissemination can be shed in favor of a directory of freeware (or 
> shareware) files posted on line and distributed by way of a 
> scattering of hyperlinks to and from like-minded musicians, the cost 
> of each record for the musician drops to the point at which little or 
> no profit is required to preserve the sustainability of the musically 
> generative activity.  And while a large distributor will likely put a 
> nanolabel at the bottom of its list of priorities, giving it the 
> circulation of a seagul-beshat cinderblock, a decentralized network 
> of mutually-linked websites can give the same music encoded as MP3 
> data far wider circulation among those who might not have taken a 
> chance on a physical record or even have known of that record's 
> existence.  Moreover, as a musician, a label, and a record geek I 
> would argue that anyone obsessive enough about music to dig down 
> toward the sendimental layers at which nanolabels and private issues 
> and CDR-handburns are buried is someone quite happy to buy a record 
> if it is there for the buying.  I have sent cash to Norway and IPMOs 
> to Japan for obscure releases, and some items have lingered on my 
> list of Holy Grails for over a decade.  The pleasure of a record is 
> not just in its sound but also in its package, its design, its paper, 
> the play of light across the grooves or the shine of the silkscreen, 
> and if such can be had I am happy to pay for it.  MP3 files for the 
> musical sub-underground are not a way for fans to cheat musicians of 
> their miniscule revenues but rather a means for those unwilling to 
> spend their money or unfamiliar with a group or a style to hear music 
> otherwise unheard.  So someone takes one of my records and makes it 
> available by way of Napster or one of its decentralized descendants - 
> what happens?  Someone who has not purchased and has no intention of 
> purchasing my record hears it, perhaps even burns it onto CDRs for a 
> few friends, and eventually the music has found its way into new 
> ears, two of which may even have between them the mind of a record 
> geek, who will need the physical record enough to track it down and 
> pay for it.  Meanwhile, I have lost nothing, and yet without 
> promotional tour jackets and lifesize pneumatic action figures and 
> mirror lines with radio reps the music has essentially found its own 
> way around in the world, perhaps even increasing the dreaded "moving 
> of units" in the process.  Yet while the internet and the advent of a 
> compact and high-fidelity audio file format have offered a new 
> metaphor for the production and distribution of music, the record 
> companies (rendered irrelevant in the new scheme) and the rockstars 
> (fearing any alteration of the system feeding housing clothing them) 
> fight in court to force the old exploitive and hierarchical metaphor 
> down our throats for another desperate cycle.  What the two parties 
> to the action fear most is that We on the Other Side will simply 
> ignore them, building a world in which monolithic and centrally 
> controlling musical business entities have no place.  And so perhaps 
> we shall.  But for the moment I will listen to this collection of 
> Simon & Garfunkel - having given my money to Sony for the CD - and 
> let those from Metallica and Napster smile and grimace with their 
> legal teams in their respective hot tubs.
> -- 
> NOTE NEW DOMAIN FOR E-MAIL & WEB:
> joshua maremont / thermal - mailto:thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> boxman [hako otoko] label - http://www.boxmanstudies.com/
> 
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