I Can Almost See a Star

There’s currently a bit of a buzz online about a recent Financial Times piece concerning ‘new’ developments in the music business. Apparently, Apple is in talks with the four remaining Goliath’s (EMI, Universal, Sony, Warner’s) about offering more downloadable content for your buck. This entails exclusive songs, interactive lyric sheets, videos etc. to get listeners over the hump of why the downloading experience is still not that satisfying.

Now, everyone knows that Steve Jobs has single-handedly put a boot up the backside of the music business. Album sales are being killed yearly by downloads, and singles are where money is being generated – there and in live music events. It paints a confusing picture. It seems people ARE willing to get off their asses to stand, sweaty at a gig with over-priced warm beer, pay ridiculous Live Nation/Ticketmaster fees, and endure opening bands that are usually awful, but they’re NOT willing to go into a record store and buy a physical product, even if that product has artwork, lyrics, production credits, and better sound quality. And if downloads are making money, will this stunt generate more?

What is it, anyway, about the idea of barely being able to see an image of Bruce Springsteen three miles away on a JumboTron, at Yankees Stadium, that is motivating to people? It must be a primal, collective urge to feel cheated.

After I finished reading yet another blog about the moribund state of the music business, one interesting point was raised by an author named Damien Joseph. Why doesn’t the industry address the idea that sound quality has been castrated to such an extent with MP3 downloads, that people might eventually realize that Mahler’s 5th doesn’t sound anything like they remember it, or should? The listening experience is lacklustre, therefore the product is as well.

We live in a micro-managing age, where every nuance of a product is poured over. Yet, people are willing to buy an album online that sounds like it’s been filtered through a pair of wet gym socks. Sorry, but it’s still a fast food version of real food to me, and I think people feel that, even if they’re not sound engineers.

Perhaps you think I’m being an audiophile. Ok, take five minutes of your life and listen to an original vinyl version of The Beatles’ White Album, and then play the CD version. A CD that, my friends, has been re-mastered ad nauseam, and yet still sounds pale in comparison. Now listen to an MP3 version. Even worse. If you don’t trust me – here is a quote from T Bone Burnett (a legendary producer in the biz), “an MP3 is like taking a polaroid of a painting, and then faxing the polaroid.” That’s our aural version of Picasso’s Guernica. And yet we don’t, as consumers, seem to care. Downloads are fast, who has time for a full album etc. – snip, snip, chop, chop, ‘til nothing is left but a dull facsimile…and then the industry wonders why no one is buying the album experience anymore. Perhaps, it’s because there isn’t one.

So, Apple and the big four can pack as many outtakes, B-sides, and interactive hooey as it wants on the plate, but ultimately it’s still a meager meal, and not where the real battle of ‘hearts and minds’ should be fought.

…go on, take five, and put that vinyl back on.

By Jonathan Coyer