Robot Loves Kitten

I’m reading this article on Slate, when I come across this:

My kids understand that if they walk into a Wal-Mart and pilfer an Usher CD, they’re stealing about $12′s worth of somebody else’s property. My kids have a much harder time grasping the notion that if they download all those same Usher songs, they’re also stealing somebody else’s property?maybe not quite the full $12′s worth since the plastic disk, the liner notes, and packaging all count for something, but certainly most of the $12 since the real value rests not in the plastic but the musical performance digitally embedded in it.

Now, I agree that the “real value” rests in the performance, but the $12 is completely arbitrary, a value set by the record company because it’s convenient for them to do so. Clearly, his kids have put a very different value on the performance in digital form, unencumbered by its plastic packaging.

And maybe this is the real digital music argument stripped bare. The value of the CD is in the control it offers the music publisher. The value of digital files is in the control it offers the music consumer. Nobody cares much about liner notes and packaging in the age of the playlist.

That leaves the value of the musical performance in question. Publishers treat the recorded performance as a marketing event, something to be celebrated en masse, even as they target the announcement of said performance to certain demographic groups.

Consumers, on the other hand, don’t naturally act en masse. More and more, we find that we can function, we can purchase, on a very individual level. We listen, we create playlists, individually. Certainly, we come together in small cliques, but these are insignificant to today’s marketers.

If we want the communal Usher experience, for example, we will go see him in concert (an event with lots of clear fixed costs). Otherwise, we’ll value his album or certain songs on a completely personal scale, weighted by our tastes and the tastes of those immediately around us.

Now we see two “individuals” — the publishing company and the consumer — on different ends of a scale, attempting to value this musical performance. The publisher views the world as a calendar of multimillion-dollar marketing events, theirs and their main competitors. The consumer views the world as their tiny individual life: their work, family, friends, likes, and dislikes.

It’s easy to see that we’re going to have a problem here. For while music has emerged (and only very recently) as a powerful publishing business, historically it has served as a vital record of our shared societal history, something that demanded to be shared because of its emotional impact. You can see this history and the tremendous power of music in the songs of any age or genre that you personally connect with.

So the value of music to the consumer really cannot be separated from that consumer’s ability to share it. And while the Internet has recently radically improved our ability to share things, it doesn’t change the fact that sharing is what music compells, that’s what it has been honed to do over thousands of years. The music connects with me; I memorize it, humming the tune and lyrics over and over. (I think you see what’s coming next.)

Yes, music is a virus. So, good luck trying to bottle it. Once you’ve let it out, it’s going to spread on its own, not because of file-sharing technology or pirates, but because that’s exactly what it has been designed to do. And the better you make that music, the more powerful it is, the more likely that it will spread like wildfire, completely out of your control.

That is precisely why musicians start out to make music. And that’s why we listen and love it. To be honest, the whole “$12″ concept just gets in the way.