By Dave Woodhall.
As I mentioned earlier this week, I was recently at the London Book Fair. Unsurprisingly, one of the main topics of conversation amongst visitors was the growing impact of the internet on the publishing trade. It was agreed that the biggest problem faced in this aspect is that many people now expect everything online to be free.
This dilemma is, of course, much worse in the music industry. I mentioned how I don’t buy CDs anymore mainly because of Spotify, which was ironic as the following day saw an announcement that this wonderful (ie free) bit of software was going to be curtailed. Free subscriptions will be severely limited and the only way to get decent access will be by paying £4.99 a month. The announcement, which comes after pressure from the major record companies, has been greeted with outrage by Spotify users, many of whom are saying they will stop using the site in disgust at having to pay to listen to music. “I’m just a student, I can’t afford it,” is a common message on Spotify’s website. Others have said they will move to illegal downloading sites and continue to get free music, while criticising Spotify’s “blatant capitalism”.
That’s a neat idea, and one I might try at the weekend when I have to do the grocery shopping. If the capitalists at Asda try to make me pay I’ll just go and steal everything I need from Tesco. We have to pay for everything else, so what makes music (or for that matter, books, games and films) on the internet exempt? There’s always been an idea that normal rules don’t apply in cyberspace – it’s a place where everyone can say and do as they please. Fine, but in the normal 3D world, things cost. From musicians, writers and games designers to publishers and record companies, they all rely on an income. Listening to a track online free of charge might seem acceptable, but without any revenue from it the song won’t be written, composed, recorded or released.
There are plenty of amateurs on the internet – the citizen journalist concept is well-established and I had my say on that one a few weeks ago. There are some decent bloggers, but many possess nothing more than their own particular obsessions and an over-inflated sense of self-importance. I wouldn’t rely on a citizen journalist to break news stories with any reliability or frequency and I doubt the next big things in the music business will release all their recordings free, either. Quality costs, and with online advertising revenues a fraction of those elsewhere, it’s the end user who has to pay. I don’t have a problem with that at all – £4.99 a month for Spotify works out at around a CD every two months, two or three concert tickets a year or less than a pint a fortnight. It really isn’t much of a price to pay for a top-quality service that those of us brought up on record players and Wonderful Radio One could hardly have dreamt of.
Criticise the corporate end of the music or any other entertainment industry all you like (It’s a bit hard to have much sympathy for U2 manager Paul McGuinness, who recently called for “a bit of generosity from the people who are making money from the internet.” The band’s current tour is the highest-grossing of all time, with estimated total earnings of £460 million), but the fact is that we have to get back into the habit of paying for what we enjoy. After all, I doubt those poor students who are refusing to spend their grants on Spotify will be working for nothing once they graduate.
