Will The Web No Longer Be Free?
Who can we blame but ourselves for this music industry collapse? From misfired lawsuits against grandmothers to imprisonment of the creators of The Pirate Bay, I’d prefer to believe we are a people of ideas rather than a people who cave into fear and top-down, market controls.
I can sympathize with those who have held onto traditional business models, uncertain of the potentiality of e-commerce. However futurists who have looked beyond the “long tail” concept (free or not) have recognized an eventual filter would have to be instated to weed out premium content versus the kind not so urbane. This could apply to the big and emerging players like Facebook and YouTube who could install such controls similar to what we do (We handpick our music and choose only what we like.).
What’s interesting though is how desperate we may rely on finance for content creation and mobility. And our economic collapse only magnifies that. The consolidation–mergers and acquisitions–of the majors may be a signal to the oncoming times that people will no longer create content as freely as we once had in the late 90’s and early 2000’s when money and credit was let loose. And creativity would become a lot worse or monotonous until it gets out of that cycle to get any better.
I do wonder what the realities would be? Because there wouldn’t be as much financial incentive to create “free content” like personal blogs, podcasts, and videos would that mean only the majors would have the wherewithal to do what’s best only for their bottom-line?
But if we are to assume that content creativity is the initial layer that ever give business heads the idea to formulate bottom-line commercialization, then more creativity is what we need not less. APRA (the equivalent of our ASCAP/BMI/SESAC in Australia) seems to have the right mindset to bend their business models to the music and not the other way around.
We can dig forever to pinpoint the root of the current music industry crisis and set up sign posts where we can say “shoulda”, “coulda”, and “didn’t” but taxing product manufacturers or slapping a licensing fee on all electronic devices that could aide the transfer of music to and from the Internet would have been one of the better ways to transition into this digital marketplace while encouraging innovative business models and continuing the creation of good music (Read The Future Of The Music Business by Steve Gordon.). APRA has done this, while domestically we have only achieved the enactment of the Audio Home Recording Act. Under this Act, we’ve only able to collect licensing fees on recording equipment purchased and designed specifically for audio transfers for our songwriters. CD-R’s unfortunately got lost in the mix and so did the revenue.
If the web becomes no longer free, due to industry consolidation, that could have mixed meanings depending on who you talk to. To me it just means there are gaping “holes” in content to be filled that the majors would not and the indies could not. Hang on for the ride!
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