Chapter Two: Salvage

Wednesday, 11 June 2008

My mother is Malaysian, so as I child, I sometimes had the chance to visit.

I enjoyed Malaysia for a lot of reasons, but I particularly liked the fact that I could get music for next to nothing. As a kid, having just a little money, this meant a lot. The cassettes were obviously pirated copies. The sound quality varied, the printed lyrics were badly - sometimes hilariously – mangled, and the artwork was often missing or incomplete, but at least I could hear the songs. You could hardly even find authorised cassettes. They were treated like imports and were ridiculously expensive.

In my late teens, there came another visit to Malaysia. My interest at that time was in U2’s album, Zooropa. Off I went, down to Central Market to get my cut price cassette. But this time, the price had been marked up about 3 ringgit and it looked kind of … well … authentic. The sound was of a high quality, the artwork was intact, the lyrics made actual sense and it looked official. It cost me a little more than the last time, but it was still far, far cheaper than Australia and the cassette was well manufactured. It was definitely the real deal.

What I suspect the record companies had decided to do between my two visits was to salvage what they could from an uncontrollable market. If some kid in Malaysia wants to pay 5 ringgit for Iron Maiden's album, let them! Some other kid in the USA will pay 10 US dollars for the same product!

For the record companies, something was a hell of a lot better than nothing.

In the current climate though, they are in a panic. Because nothing is not better than nothing. Nobody's making any money. Not even the so-called pirates. They're all kids with broadband internet and iPods who know how Torrents and P2P work and they're running wild! There's no profit margin on nil!

But what they can't see is that it's NOT nothing. It's DISTRIBUTION and PROMOTION. The product is being distributed and promoted, world wide, at no cost to anyone but the parents who pay the ISPs bills. The record companies would be paying the bills on the parent's behalf, if they had any decency.

But instead, they propose monitoring and then terminating internet access to homes if any family member dares download a track. If that control mechanism doesn't come into effect at the ISP level - a move which is at best impractical and at worst downright sinister - they promise litigation and prosecution. They waste time and money producing laughable propaganda which they then have the audacity to distribute to schools, as though they were somehow doing us all a community service.

A friend described the above linked In-Tune video thus:

The only twenty musicians in Australia who are still clinging to the wreckage of the record industry tell us a) that they have a better job than us, b) that they don't have as much money as they pretend to have in video clips, c) that they wish they could make the kids understand that downloading music is damaging a ridiculously outmoded system of marketing and record company profiteering, and d) they don't know what's going to happen next.

Such a succinct and intelligent appraisal. I wish I’d written it myself. Sadly, I was too busy looking for objects to throw at my laptop while I was watching it.

Anyway, back to the primary argument.

Given that the product is now flooding throughout the world, for no money down, the people who should be most worried are not really the record labels, but the distributors! The distributors should be up in arms. Surely, they should be out in public protesting and prosecuting people like the major labels! But they remain silent. And this flows on to other commercial entities in the music industry as well. There is either silence, or covert support for the major label juggernaut of “re-education” followed by swift prosecution.

Why are they so quiet?

Because they are getting on their knees and praying to God nightly that the major labels somehow crush this insurrection, that the majors save the entire industry from obsolescence, that they deal effectively and swiftly with these immoral scum who are "stealing" everyone's product.

And herein lies the fundamental problem with the music industry. It is not about creativity and sharing; it is about fear and greed. Everyone is in everyone else's pocket and they are all terrified to death of each other. Even in their own offices, while their old business model crumbles around them, the sword of Damocles hangs above everybody's head, every single minute of every single day.

That's not dramatic effect I'm employing; it's cold fact. Very recently, a friend of mine walked into his perfectly good job in a music distribution company to witness 50% of his colleagues eliminated from the surrounding area in five hours. Escorted out of the building no less. And being young and full of great ideas, he wasn't far behind them.

So while the rest of the industry waits with bated breath, onward the majors roll, slashing and burning staff and dumping bands from their rosters and threatening anyone they can get their hands on and harassing the government and ISPs and alienating artists and customers and millions of potential audience members. Rolling on towards victory!

Only one word now springs to mind: pyrrhic.

So until the next time ... Stay Tuned.