|
April 2, 2006
Here's what we know about the changes in music towards a digital world according to Alan Kohler:
Music and video are going entirely digital. It won't be long before CDs and DVDs are obsolete as storage. The new device of choice is the iPod, which is in the midst of an incredible global boom that is enriching Apple and its shareholders. The only place you can easily buy material for your iPod, as opposed to stealing it, is the iTunes online store.
I have yet to buy an iPod, even though I find the platform quite seductive and very desirable.
I'm holding off, though I''m not sure why. I suspect that it is because Steve Jobs has again stuck with closed architecture and total control , given the vertical monopoly to lock iPod users into using the iTunes Music Store exclusively. Or maybe it is because I was burned badly with the early and very expensive Apple computers that crashed on me. Or maybe it is because we Australians cannot buy TV shows on iTunes as Americans do. For the moment I will stay with my CD's and stereo and watch what happens.
Kohler captures the attractivness of the platform, when he says:
With iPods and iTunes, Steve Jobs and his team at Apple have created a beautifully functional closed system for selling and consuming digital music and video that looks to be heading for total dominance...The record labels have to deal with iTunes or face oblivion as the iPod population grows...iTunes is efficient and seductive. You register with Apple and provide your credit card details. Then you browse the store or search for the song or artist you want. One song is $1.69, albums $16.99 or $17.99. You click it, and --- zip ---you've bought it, credit card debited. Plug your iPod into your computer and the music is automatically loaded.
Kohler says that he no longer uses a stereo that plays CDs as I still do. He just sticks his iPod in the top of a box of speakers that he bought from Apple's iTunes Music Store. He says that the sound quality is great and his entire record collection is now in the iPod.
Hmm. I'm still not convinced., despite the great marketing campaign by Apple. Kohler then adds:
I might be wrong, but it seems to me the ability to easily buy a single, new episode of a TV show (and repeats), as well as single songs, albums, movies and music videos in a form that is easy to watch or listen, will change everything.
I reckon he's right there. I cannot wait for it to happen.
|
Things are changing but as always the consumer will win over the closed systems people.
An iPod plugged into an Apple "HiFi" is about as far from real HiFi as your average boom box for $100. It will suit many or most people but not at its current price of $550 for a box. Calling 80mm drivers mid range rather than the more accurate tweeters and a 130 mm driver being called a woofer is material for the ACCC in my view. I suppose this suits the people who live (or imagine or wish they do) in minimalist polished floor boards stainless steel kitchen(ettes) inner urbans apartments. But it aint HiFi.
This is the first era whereby the artists, producers and hardware sellers and punters are not pursuing higher fidelity. For the first time ever we aren't all in a rough coalition together toward better sound capture, transport, storage and reproduction.
Closed source will satisfy the mass market as always. (As a sideline it's interesting how long Apple particulaly will be able to position its mass market strategy as "cool", "leading edge" and somehow "edgy" and niche). But open source will be what endures and undermines closed.
As well as ceasing to pursue greater fidelity we are now faced with the music coming the the listener without effort. The iPod pops in the pocket with 80 gigs of MP3s and walks with us to work, train, toilet, whilst reading, bushwalking and making sexual horticulture. It arrives via broadband downloads easily searched without any great effort or even screening for taste and talent.
Once music required handling 12 " LPs in and out of covers, balancing tone arms, setting needles / stylus tracking,eliminating hum and rumble and feedback and not scratching the holy discs. It involved getting up and down from seating every 40 minutes or so at least. Maybe more frequently. It involved building speakers with drivers 10" or more as woofer, midranges 6 " and tweeters 3" or less. In a box that was solid and didn't rattle. Then it had to be positioned to get true stereo sound staging, depth and clarity and the sitting in the right spot, triangulated. Effort.
Finding the music to play meant chasing down old albums, reading obscure magazines, acting on the word of someone to be trusted, scouring record shops, meeting a fellow nerd, swapping treasured albums, ordering in from overseas without hearing, trading live concerts in a secret underground cabal of tape mixing geeks and fans. And concerts. It meant going to the music . Now the music comes to us. And I think its less exciting and rewarding for that. Certainly less community building.
Despite the convenience of the iPod (I use iPod as a generic term for iRiver and any MP3 or compressed such as flac, .shn, monkeys, transport and listening device, which I believe will increasingly come to be dominated by the non moving USB plug) the convenience which brings the music to the listener without effort there is still a satisfaction to be found rummaging in old record bins and handling cover art whilst dropping the needle on an old Stylistics hit. Who would want to play Cage's 4'33" on anything but vinyl.
eThings will indeed change - in the mainstream. They have already. There will be no more Rolling STones who will sell stadiums (at least for a few years until a retro backlash hits) it will all be low-ish fi bedroom, earphones on train music.
But who would have guessed it - the big resurgence, on the streets, in my small world, is guitar bands, usually but not only neo-heavey metal and not suited to bedrooms or personal space - it demands to be performed - it demands you go to meet it - in a bar or somewhere. Yes it changes. But it always changes in uncontrollable ways. And those ways it splashes in will not be controlled closed source ways. Apple will make money, but fresh music will survive in spite of and because of.