APRS NEWS - SPRING BULLETIN 2003

EDITORIAL: ANOTHER FINE MESS...

It seems so easy these days to criticise or despair of the music business for one or other of the often negative developments that crop up. If it's not falling sales, internet piracy, counterfeiting, reductions in artist signings and investment, excessive profits, exorbitantly high prices, corporate mergers or take-overs, legal defeats (and occasional victories) then it is some pop star diligently biting the hand that feeds it by supporting rogue practices that encourage fans to side-step the payment chain.

To be fair to the music business, (who, we must remember are our clients) there has been little respite from doom and gloom scenarios for the last few years and it must be very tiring being an easy target. On the other hand, some would argue they only have themselves to blame.

With the exception of a number of relatively piric victories in the low level courts over mid-ranking counterfeiters and one recent US court fining of a bunch of college students thousands of dollars for letting their computers be accessed for illegal file swapping purposes, the tide of acceptance of the music is available, why not take it culture shows little sign of abating. Indeed, it is arguable that fining college students, whilst it shows the power as well as the long arm of the law also makes martyrs out of a few inpercunious nuts as they are cracked by a very rich and powerful sledgehammer. The overall message does not help the image of music business at all.

Surely we have to question the true commitment of the industry to countering piracy and counterfeiting when the budget allocated in the UK amounts to less than 0.01% of the industry's turnover, enabling human and technical resources way below those allocated for similar purposes in other IT industries such as film, computer games and software. What is also galling is that the record business expects performers to pay for half the meagre investment in anti-piracy, currently being increased to a princely amount around �1.2m. For that you get a very tight crew of under-cover investigators one or two of whom focus on internet piracy. Excuse me, but how can they be expected to counter organised crime syndicates with a staff of less than 15, having to rely upon inexperienced and over-stretched local-authority trading standards officers and a legal system that weighs-in on the side of the accused by paying for high-flying defence barristers with legal aid and, if they are actually found guilty, passing paltry sentences.

Sadly, I hear the sound of plots being lost. I can, just, remember the joy of music, the excitement and community of fandom and the kudos of hearing something first - maybe recording it on the family reel to reel or later on a cassette and sharing (I use the word advisedly) my acquisition with my envious chums. Quite often I would save-up and buy or receive as a gift a particular favourite but most of the music I shared in a spirit of enthusiasm that effectively marketed my and other peoples favourites free-of-charge.

Around that time FM radio was being launched in the US. Some will recall the US music business reaction to FM radio was to try to have music banned from broadcast because the superior quality of the broadcast would allow Hi-Fi copying and thus contribute to the utter demise of the industry. Curiously, the industry was able to refocus, utilise FM radio as a marketing tool and survive. If there is anything analogous in the situation at all then it must be that rear-guard, protectionist, consumer-stifling and half-hearted policies are not only a waste of money but entirely counter-productive.

The most worrying development of recent months is the launch of Apple Computer's music download service which, at a stroke, rendered the much vaunted but feature restrictive, subscription based music business models redundant by offering a one track-at-a-time, buy once, use how you like and own forever service to US consumers. The initial take up was staggering with over 250,000 downloads in the first week and whilst that figure is expected to fall off as time goes on, the music business s first reaction was to cry foul on the grounds that Apple�s marketing was unfairly good. More positively, the latest take on Apple s business model is that it will kick-start the music industry's own. Let's hope it does - otherwise there probably is good reason to worry.