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In principle, I understand the record companies' objection to Napster; it does seem like it's cheating the performers and songwriters... oh, and the record companies... out of the revenues they're entitled to. There are many struggling musicians who really need those royalties, and if Napster prevails in the courts, it will be a blow to many deserving people in the music industry. Above all, though, I think it will be a blow to the record companies; in other words, the greatest losers will be businessmen and executives, not creative artists. And if the record industry executives had treated their customers right all these years, then maybe they wouldn't have so much to fear from Napster, MP3.com, and the like. I think that everyone of my generation can relate to taking their allowance to the record store to buy a 45-rpm single, then discovering, once it was on the record player, that they had purchased the abbreviated "single edit". Presumably, the record companies created single edits because they hoped that the eviscerated songs on 45s (or on "greatest hits" collections) would motivate the buyer to purchase a redundant copy of the song by buying the original album. I remember buying a cd by Don Mclean entitled "American Pie and other hits". Nothing on the cd cover told me that the version of "American Pie" it contained was about half the length of the original (I'm surprised there's not a truth-in-advertising law against that). They didn't abridge the song because of space constraints; the cd contained less than 39 minutes of music. Is it unreasonable to suspect that the record company is just trying to whet my appetite to buy the original cd containing the version of the song I've heard all my life on the radio? An equally atrocious example is an Iron Butterfly greatest-hits cd that condenses their signature opus "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" from about twenty minutes to under four. |
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Suppose book publishers operated by the record industry's principles. Suppose you waited for the paperback version of a best-seller because you didn't want to shell out $28 for the hardcover. Then, when you bought the paperback, you discovered that the publisher had punished your stinginess by arbitrarily omitting chapters of the book. Or maybe they would do their own version of the fade-out: after about three-quarters of the book, the ink would get lighter and lighter until all that remained were blank pages. For those of us who love music, these analogies are appropriate. In my opinion, the record companies haven't done much to earn our loyalty over the years. |
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