DGM HQ.
Broad accents of the Broad Chalke kind began punctually at 08.30 this morning beneath my office floor.
A gentleman from EMI visited at 11.00 to discuss possible re-licensing of the KC/EG/Virgin/EMI album catalogue covering the 1969-84 period. This hinged on EMI acquiring download rights.
On this seemingly simple issue hangs the future of the entire record industry, as currently configured. We were discussing, in principle, not the small matter of a few records sold by former managers to pay off their Lloyds' cash calls. We were looking at how the conventional model of doing-business-with-music deals with the (perceived) problem that personal music use, in the West at least, is presently governed primarily by file-swapping & file-sharing of free downloaded musical material.
EMI, along with other majors, are insisting on transferring their "off-line" rights to "on-line" distribution. This position declares that selling CDs & digital music-streams equivilate. DGM's position is, but they don't.
There is no history of on-line trading to establish an industry standard practice. So, currently, no-one has enough information to make an informed call. But to pay the same royalty on downloads as for manufacturing & distributing a CD seems, in the DGM view, just a little stingy. Whether or not music-users are prepared to pay for the downloaded music they now obtain, simply & for nothing, is unknown. Very little repertoire is available legally (while acknowledging the beginning of the i-Tunes shop) to service (a figure mentioned to me) 40 million free downloaders.
I use the term music-users because these are not "consumers", a loathsome term. Music is not a commercial transaction, although the act of music may take place within a context marked Market Place. Nor are music-users necessarily audients: there are different kinds and qualities of listening. I use the word free because although no money exchanges hands in the downloading, or moves between bank accounts, no action takes place without cost and payment of some kind.
Fundamentally, there are two contrasting world-views.
The pillars of the music industry are control, deceit, exploitation & theft. Exploitation is operated through control. The industry doesn't itself create music so it acts to control those that do, and then to control the outcome of their work. The industry controls the creators in various ways, those ways mostly reliant upon deceit. It controls their work in various ways, those ways mostly reliant upon theft & appropriation. The model is Ownership & Control; a consequence is rigidity.
The (presumed) aim of the downloaders is free, flexible music-use.
There is an argument that downloaded files act as amuse bouches or tasters of available flavours that the "consumers" might then like to acquire "legitimately". Why buy a CD of music you've never heard when the price of that CD is painfully high and you know the artist only gets a pittance anyway? In this sense, file-sharing is comparable to student taping in the 1970s - a pal gave you a feeble-sounding cassette and, if you liked it, you bought the vinyl.
Also this morning: I have declined the offer of an American firm to download KC material. The firm has superb technology but a poor business model. The technology allows CD quality sound on MP3 size. The analogy might be: if you'd like to release a CD, then it has to be on Sony. I'd pay a royalty to use the technology, as a small amount of every analogue cassette went to Phillips, but the "artist-friendly" business policy seems to me very much like business-as-usual.
DGM is embracing its future rapidly. This future remains with small, mobile & independent while aspiring to intelligence, and creative undertakings. The Vicar is moving into a more public space. A Mac G5 arrived this morning with wonder-huge-fabbo screen. Alex is painting the new & about-to-be-becoming DGM SoundWorld II that will house the G5. We are moving into place.
"Address the process rather than the outcome.
Then, the outcome becomes more likely."
