What iTunes could learn from Sony: Music "Check-Outs"

The music industry is in trouble. No surprise there. CD sales are falling as digital services try to figure out how to entice consumers to buy music they could download for free elsewhere. Interestingly, music fans have again and again said (in survey format) that they'd happily use legal options to listen to music, if any half decent ones existed.

But, they don't.

Enter Sony and the company's new e-book reader, just announced today. The reader itself is nothing special, similar to Amazon's own Kindle DX but minus any sort of web browser. What is impressive is the addition of a "check-out" or "rental" system for borrowing e-books from your local library. Without going into details (find them at Ars Technica here) you can download a DRM'd e-book for a few weeks. At the end of those weeks, the book disappears, just as if you had "returned" it to the library.

This could work for the music industry.

iTunes, or a similar service, could offer music "rentals" or "check-outs" for free -- no strings attached. Users have that music to listen to for two weeks at most (any longer and you might think you actually own that music and it's important that no impression of ownership is imparted, see below). At the end of that time, the DRM yanks the music back into the online library of music, but not before offering to sell you the music for $0.99 or whatever.

Why would this work when previous DRM schemes have failed? Because there's no impression of ownership. When I buy a track for $0.99, I assume I now own that track. In the same way, when I buy a candy bar for $0.99, I eat it because I own it. If someone were to come along and take away my candy bar, I'd be pissed because I paid for it. In the same way, people get pissed when music they paid for gets taken away by DRM for whatever reason.

If they don't pay for it, there's no anger. If a service makes it clear you are "borrowing" music for a limited amount of time, no one complains.

The library service, if replicated properly digitally, could take a bite out of illegal file sharing and -- gasp -- even push music sales by letting people legally try music before buying it. That's what I -- and most other consumers -- want after all.

So, iTunes, where can I apply for my library card?

Free music will lead to me spending too much cash

Free music gets a bad rap, more often than not. When a band releases an album for free, it's viewed as "experimental" and "cutting edge." People ask, "How will you make money?" and get their collective you-know-what's in a bunch. And it's really too bad, because free music is a musician's best tool to leverage bucket-loads of cash their way.

Case in point: Weezer. I don't like Weezer. Or, should I say, I didn't. After working for a physical therapy clinic for a summer -- and hearing "Beverly Hills" no less than 50,000 times on the radio -- Rivers and Co. didn't have a chance. I know they were better in the early days but I wasn't exactly motivated to spend time and money searching for such material. I just decided I wasn't a Weezer fan and went on with my life.

Until today. On Twitter, blogger and music connoisseur extraordinaire @christinajacobs pointed me to a compilation of 8-bit Weezer remixes from Pterodactyl Squad (here). I downloaded it (for free) and listened in. I was blown away. Here was "El Scorcho" redone as if it were the soundtrack to Pokemon on my Gameboy. "You Won't Get With Me Tonight" seemingly straight out of Sonic the Hedgehog. I'm a geek for this sort of stuff and was immediately sucked in.

After listening to the entire compilation album three times, I got to wondering what the real songs actually sound like. Sure, I knew a few, but most were unknown to me. So I headed off to iTunes and bought myself a dozen or so Weezer tracks.

Yesterday I would have laughed if you suggested that I would be buying Weezer songs today, but here we are. And why? Because of free music. Sure, it's not the original versions, but I wouldn't have been interested in those even if they were free. Through free remixes, covers and other "goodies," I became a fan.

I think bands can leverage this kind of approach to their advantage. Of course, more established groups will have an easier time of this, but it's not an impossible route for independent groups too. Provide goodies, B-sides, remixes and other "deeper content" for free that, hopefully, influence people to spend money elsewhere (in this case, in the original content).

Of course, to get people interested in the first place your music has to not suck. You'll notice "Beverly Hills" is not included in the 8-bit compilation.

Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon attacks (sort of) Radiohead's "In Rainbows" pricing plan

"They did a marketing ploy by themselves and then got someone else to put it out," Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon told The Guardian on Friday. "It seemed really community-oriented, but it wasn’t catered towards their musician brothers and sisters, who don’t sell as many records as them. It makes everyone else look bad for not offering their music for whatever...It was a good marketing ploy and I wish I’d thought of it! But we’re not in that position either. We might not have been able to put out a record for another couple of years if we’d done it ourselves: It’s a lot of work. And it takes away from the actual making music."

Wired's Scott Thill had this to say about the episode:

It seems disingenuous to complain that Radiohead’s model is responsible for making other bands — especially ones like Sonic Youth, which admitted in the Guardian interview that it spent many unhappy years on the major label Geffen — look bad...Gordon’s condemnation as a ploy of what by all accounts was a very successful experiment in online distribution just because it didn’t adhere to an imaginary solidarity ("brothers and sisters?") or a traditional model that has obviously come and gone is bad faith...Radiohead, for all its warts and so-called ploys, seems like the band of the future. Especially when compared to Sonic Youth, whose latest effort, The Eternal, has been hailed as a throwback to the days of Evol and Daydream Nation. Good luck turning back the clock, Sonic Youth. I’ll be rooting for you. Musically speaking.

I will say that many local Chicago bands I spoken to (Snowsera for one) feel that they absolutely have to make their music free now. Snowsera's reasoning: no one's heard of us, so why would they pay $5 for an EP of 4 songs?

As a hypothetical response, one may say: "Because your music is good, and if it's not then you won't sell albums and you'll stop playing music." But that's a little unfair -- an unsigned band needs some way to help themselves get noticed, and many see giving their music away free as a great way to do so. They figure they'll then make money from shows, merchandise, or album sales in the future when people are willing to pay for their music.

This, of course, is not exactly what Radiohead did. They were trying to avoid the pains of traditional marketing (as Thill points out). And the pay-whatever scheme worked for Radiohead because, well, they're Radiohead. They don't need that traditional marketing anymore.

But Gordon's argument that this "makes everyone else look bad" for not doing the exactly same thing as Radiohead is wrong. People -- and that includes musicians -- aren't stupid. Independent, unknown bands aren't going to follow exactly in Radiohead's footsteps. They're going to adapt the strategy to their own needs.

In the end, Radiohead's strategy just delivered another tool in the independent artist's toolbox: a way to promote themselves and get themselves noticed without the aid of a major label. I believe that's something Sonic Youth would fully endorse.

Incidentally, we're featuring Sonic Youth on Future Perfect Radio this week for their new album The Eternal. Check it out here.

Is "The Hazards of Love" too pretentious?

You know Hazards of Love, the new album recently released by Portland's The Decemberists, right? The concept album The Crane Wife only hinted at, featuring an overarching story of love and demons and singing zombie-children? With developing melodic themes that intertwine and build until a wonderful conclusion where they all come together? Yes, that album.

Slate took some pot-shots at the album recently (here), listing out the 8 most pretentious lines from it. Author Jody Rosen writes, "The whimsy is suffocating, and the reams of verse seem designed mostly to demonstrate book-learning and to flatter an audience of current and former English majors—listeners who like their pop songs 'literate.'"

I beg to differ. The first 4 or 5 times I listened the album, I paid the lyrics absolutely, positively no heed whatsoever. I do this with most albums--not because of some choice but because I simply can't understand people when they're singing. It's a problem. But this makes me attach myself to the sound of the lyrics and, more importantly, the actual music. And I was immediately drawn into The Hazards of Love. Not because the literary references and intricate storylines made my "pretentious," college-educated heart go a-twitter, but because it's simply good damn music. Maybe if one focused more on the actual music, the at-times high-brow lyrics wouldn't irritate so much.

In a larger-picture argument, I was say the artist's intentions are completely and utterly irrelevant once the song becomes an mp3 on your computer or iPod, or once it starts playing in your CD player or on your turntable. What matters is what's playing. Even if Colin Meloy meant to impress you with his knowledge of "medievalist gobbledygook," so what? If it doesn't have an effect on you, or if it passes you by without you noticing, it doesn't matter. If The Decemberists meant to "puzzle" listeners with confusing lyrical "runes," but listeners (like myself) end up just liking the music for what it is, the "runes" don't matter. That's my two cents at least.

As an aside: why are we attacking bands like The Decemberists and Andrew Bird for adding too much depth or challenging listeners with lyrical puzzles and multisyllabic words? As I recall, I turned to the underground and independent music scene because of the lack of intelligence and original thought in the popular music scene. Let's not throw out records just for having too much depth when many other artists can't even spell "depth" much less add it to their work.

Argue with me in the comment section.

Listen to The Hazards of Love on our New Music, Chamber Pop and Portland channels.

RIAA or students?

I'm a student, so I live in the dormitory of a Chicago university. Around last week, letters appeared on walls and elevator doors warning that any student found violating copyrights online will have their Internet suspended for a week or longer. In other words, stop sharing music because the RIAA is breathing down our backs. Not surprising, a whole bunch of schools have received similar warnings, and Internet-suspension in return for sharing music has been commonplace at my friends' universities for years.

Stealing music is bad. Heck, stealing anything is bad. But what gets me about punishing students caught doing this with Internet suspension is that you're harming their academic progress. Classes are increasingly online affairs -- whether it's accessing lecture notes on Blackboard, turning in papers digitally, or just doing research for a term paper. Suspending the Internet for even a week is not just taking away a luxury, it's a hamper on how well students do in school. And, so far, saying "My Internet was suspended," is not an excuse that's going to fly when professors ask why your term paper is late.

I understand students can't access free music illegally, just as I understand you can't smoke in dorms (in Chicago at least) and you can't start ripping the lights out of their fixtures. But, if you were caught ripping lights out of their fixtures, the university would not punish you by making you stay home from a week of classes, or by taking away your textbooks temporarily. You'd be charged a fee. Yes, a $100 is nasty for students struggling with high tuitions already, but at least they can go get that A in Arts & Urban Life.

As I see it, my university has chosen to follow the RIAA over their students. This is a dangerous position, as the RIAA doesn't pay tuition--students do. My university is threatening to hamper the very thing I paid thousands of dollars to come and do: learn, get good grades, and leave with a shiny diploma. Again, stealing music is wrong, but punishing offenders by hurting their ability to fulfill academic requirements is just as wrong.

So please, universities, let's start caring about students a little more than whiny trade groups representing failing industries, shall we?