Returning to a Pre-Print Culture Understanding of Music :: Web Internet Technology Essays

Returning to a Pre-Print Culture Understanding of Music If the Web technology like Napster is eventually incompatible with the current print based recording industry, which values individual works (i.e. records, CD’s, videos) as commodities, then the paradigm of the current music industry will have to be changed drastically. To bridge the gap, something akin to cable service, which uses a flat rate for basic service and then has add-ons like pay-per-view might be used to curb or at least contain free dissemination of files while still remaining lucrative. This does not change the current industry paradigm so much; it simply awards more commodity status to access than product. Last July, Bertelsmann and Napster CEO's met to discuss a subscription partnership. "Between the two of them, the price for a subscription to the new Napster was floated at somewhere between $4.99 and $15 a month" (Alderman, 171). The problem with this solution is that many people may not be willing to pay for something that they have in the past acquired at no cost. It has been relatively easy to bypass security limitations placed on Napster, and in addition, similar applications have appeared to compete with Napster, or replace it in the event that access is blocked (i.e. Morpheus, Gnutella, Aimster [2]). A more effective solution might be one similar to what Grateful Dead lyricist John Barlow proposed in a 1994 issue of Wired: "Intellectual property law cannot be patched, retrofitted, or expanded to contain the gasses of digitized expression†¦ We will need to develop an entirely new set of methods as befits this entirely new set of circumstances" (Alderman, 20). To completely change the paradigm might involve going back to a pre-individualist, pre-high capitalist system. To keep the industry lucrative, the question that record labels, musicians, and other industry types should be asking themselves is not â€Å"How can we make money using existing copyright laws in the networked environment?† but â€Å"How can we still survive as an industry in an environment where copyright does not?† A possible alternative, and an option that hearkens back to pre-print culture, is that musicians might be salaried on the basis that they provide a service. Their art would be free for public enjoyment, but the musicians themselves would be compensated on salary to ensure that music continued to be made at its current rate.