As the owners of iPhones know, the band U2’s latest album, Songs of Innocence, was recently loaded automatically and without charge on all Apple devices with iTunes accounts. U2’s decision to give away this music for free (we’ll discuss that notion in a second) has been met with a variety of reactions. Some people were angry that Apple could simply “load” the music onto their devices without their permission. Some in the music industry have reacted angrily to U2’s doing so as a sign that even they, as artists, placed no commercial value on recorded music. Still others see it as another sign of the slow and painful death of the recorded music industry. Finally, there are those who see U2’s decision as a clever way to create new income streams for themselves, notwithstanding, the “free” giveaway.
It is no secret that sales of recorded music, especially album (CD) sales, have been on a steady decline for many years. The reasons for the decline are varied. For instance, the 33 1/3 LP featured often beautiful artwork covers that were considered an integral part of the album. When CDs became popular, the smaller size seemed to lessen the importance of album artwork and that made the experience of owning an album less enjoyable for some people. Although some felt the sonic clarity of the CD format was a valuable tradeoff to the smaller and less elaborate album covers, others decried the sterile sound of the all-digital format.
A much more profound blow to the traditional “album” came with the advent of mp3s. This new format, which allowed a user to easily carry around hundreds and then thousands of recordings on a device no larger than a cell phone (and later, mostly ON a cell phone) came with some significant costs. For music purists, it spelled poorer quality music because the already sterile digital sound was being compressed in order to allow for larger and larger quantities to be stored and because music was now being played through tiny ear buds instead of large speakers. The digital download craze further diminished the importance of album artwork. From a musical standpoint, because the music could now be readily acquired one song at a time, much less emphasis was placed on creating a cohesive “album” as opposed to a mere aggregation of songs. Artistically, this was a major step backwards to the times before the mid-1960s when thematically cohesive albums (such as The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) raised the album concept to new heights. Even classic jazz albums, like Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, were built on the concept of an album as opposed to a mere aggregation of random compositions.
Digitizing music so that it was translated into a series of 1’s and 0’s not only made it easy to carry around in large quantities, it made it easier to steal. Many people who would never steal a physical object because it was morally wrong saw nothing wrong with downloading and swapping music with their friends without paying the record companies or artists. Gene Simmons, the self-promoting but often astute bass player in the band Kiss, recently proclaimed that “rock music is dead,” blaming it on illegal downloading and file sharing.
Record companies also bear their share of blame. The emphasis on great creative masterworks (think of albums like Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly) was greatly reduced. Nurturing the development of new and existing artists creatively was de-emphasized. For these reasons, many – myself included – feel that the quality of recorded music has declined greatly. Simmons blames record executives for focusing on “mindless, synthetic dance/pop” and claims that the industry’s focus on that formula has discouraged musicians from learning their craft and advancing the art form. Certainly, in the case of the major labels, there is a lot of truth in what he says. Even the so-called “indie labels” are full of releases featuring artists and songs that are indistinguishable from one another.
While illegal downloading still remains a serious problem, even legitimate, legal downloading services, such as iTunes, have continued to erode sales of albums.
On the heels of both illegal and then legal downloading (which failed to generate the same type of artist royalties that had been earned from albums and CDs), the next blow came from streaming music services such as Pandora and Spotify which pay artists even less. These advertiser supported subscription services have become very popular with music fans because of the ready access to enormous variety and quantity of music on any device that connects to the Internet. Unfortunately, the royalties that are paid to recording artists from streaming (as opposed to album sales) are miniscule. The services claim that they cannot afford to pay larger royalties either to the songwriters/music publishers or artists/record labels.
While this ready access to music may seem like the “golden era of recorded music” to fans, I fear that there eventually will be a price to be paid: if artists are no longer fairly compensated for their artistic works, they will cease to produce them.
This brings me back to U2. Bono and company publicly claimed that they were not making money on the sale of physical CDs anyway, so why not just give it away to their fans for free? First, U2’s position is misleading, if not outright deceptive. True, those with the iOS (at least through mid-October) are receiving the album for free. However, the New York Times has reported that in order to obtain the right to release U2’s album free, Apple paid the band and Universal Music an unspecified fee as a blanket royalty and committed to a marketing campaign for the band worth up to $100 million, according to several people briefed on the deal. Considering the very lackluster sales of U2’s previous album and its desire to once again seek to market itself to music fans, perhaps U2 will make a great deal more money on this deal. Even apart from that huge payday, the band hopes that the widespread distribution of the album will serve as a springboard for another mega-tour in which they will make many times that amount from live performances.
The real issue, however, is that the recorded music industry is still struggling to find a sustainable revenue model in the new digital era, and many in the industry are very unhappy with this U2/Apple “Fremium” giveaway. Labels routinely require that recording artists sign so-called “360 Deals” in which the labels share in the artists’ revenues from live touring, merchandising and music publishing—three areas that traditionally were outside of the earnings reach of record labels. They also charge management fees because the labels now claim to be taking a more active role in the overall handling of their artists’ careers. They justify this new position by stating that they are doing more than ever to manage their artists and that the economics of the modern recording business demand it. Many artists have responded to this by self-releasing albums or doing indie releases that are with labels which don’t insist on this type of a 360 deal.
The music business certainly looks dramatically different today than it did twenty or even ten years ago. How things will shake out over the next ten years is anybody’s guess.
