A month or so ago, Cracker
front man (and music business school academic) David Lowery wrote "An Open
Letter to Emily" which, as most people know by now was a response to a
blog by Emily White, a not quite 21-year-old intern at NPR's "All Songs
Considered".
Lowery's piece is a well reasoned, measured and documented
explanation of how stealing music has hurt musicians and songwriters. The article went viral and was "shared"
by everyone I know.
I read Lowery's piece before I read Emily White's blog
post so I decided that in all fairness I needed to see exactly what she had to
say. It turns out that as good as the “open
letter” is, Lowery almost completely misses White's point. White's blog "I Never Owned any Music to
Begin With" reveals an honest portrait of a young person growing up in the
internet world. White is not championing
stealing music (although she admits to having done so). She is also refreshingly not one of those
people who jump on the bandwagon of "the new paradigm" (e.g. give the
music away for free so you can sell a ticket and/or a t-shirt).
As an aside, the
part of White's blog that probably irks Lowery and others is the section where
she describes "sitting on the floor of my college radio station ripping
music onto my laptop" from the promotional album sent to the radio
stations by record companies. I submit
that this has been done forever (through various forms of media) and that
anybody who works in the music business at any level will admit that they love
getting free stuff. Also, I think that
people like Emily White are this
generation's culture vultures – they love music, they absorb it and in some
ways help illuminate what's good and bad for the rest of us. That's what college radio did before colleges
started shutting down these stations. But, I digress.
White's major point is that while she has 11,000 songs in
her iTunes library, she has only purchased 15 physical CDs in her
lifetime. Her point is that she doesn't
care about owning the physical artifact.
For someone who grew up in the album era and still obsesses over his
record collection, this is shocking.
However I have witnessed the same phenomenon in my teenage daughter, who
is a huge music fan and whose tastes are as eclectic as they come. She listens to music constantly, primarily
through Pandora and songs purchased from iTunes. I just counted and she has exactly 30 CDs in
her collection.
White is not arguing that music should be free and that
David Lowery should not be paid. She is
asking for "one massive Spotify-like catalogue of music that will sync to
my phone and various home entertainment devices". I can remember fantasizing about the same
thing as a kid – now it is very nearly a reality.
To those who argue that Spotify's payment system is
unfair – I am not sure that the issue has been fully and finally determined ,yet
but I can think of two initial responses.
First at least someone is providing a mechanism that pays for music and therefore combats piracy and
second, as old line music publishers used to say, music is "a penny
business". For better or worse
there are more sources of pennies now.
Also, Spotify is now second to iTunes in terms of generating revenue for
record companies – so it's not going anywhere.
It has been said so many times before, we are witnessing a huge change
in the way the music business is structured.
It is painful for a lot of people, from performers to studio owners to
lawyers but I can't help thinking that the core components of the business –
artists and their fans are in a healthy position. The rest of us need to learn to adapt. I don’t
like it any more than David Lowery but it is reality.
