Group Presentation: Summary + Connections
“Bundles, Big Deals, and the Copyright Wars: What Can Academic Libraries Learn from the Record Industry Crash?”
This article went into great detail about copyright and what we, as students, can do to make sure academic libraries don’t suffer the same fate as record stores. The fall of the Record Industry, according to this article, was because a large number of labels refused to convert to digital music. They wanted to keep their CD format when programs like Napster started to take off and music became digital. This refusal was thought of as 'self-destruction' especially when they kept refusing as the stock started to fall. This activity with the company seemed illegal and far too easy for the label to lose money, even though it already was without converting. The piracy that took over the music market was starting to overwhelm the labels and copyright holders so much that they turned straight to Apple and Warner Bros to ask them how to improve their business models. When libraries and publishing companies started suffering the same fate because of textbooks and scholarly journals becoming digital they started discussing a business model called the Big Deal. The Big Deal is best described as when publishers soon begin to offer almost all of their journal collections online with a pricing structure based on a library’s print subscriptions and an additional e-access fee for the added content. However, consumers began facing the same problem when they were being forced to purchase a whole musical album online, even though consumers were only wanted to purchase a few songs (or singles) on it. So the music piracy continued and went as far as it could. The large issue that befell libraries was that because of the Big Deal they were being forced to push out more money with each year it was their business model. It was getting much harder to keep up with the prices with the funding they were provided. Because of this many libraries started to walk away from the Big Deal. After the Big Deal fallout publishers decided that it would be much better to chop up journals and give the license for them out instead of having libraries pay the whole price for the entire journal. They decided to make this business model in reference to what consumers of the music industry started to do. They were more likely to pay for the smaller sizes than the whole thing instead of illegally downloading the whole album. Copyright violations were toxic to these two industries and still are. Luckily they both have come up with successful business models that are flexible in price and keep customers happy. Because of this academic libraries have a fair agreement with licensing companies that don't push their budget or make students unhappy.
“iTunes: Breaking Barriers and Building Walls” by David Arditi
I wanted to begin this summary and connections post by taking a step back and analyzing some of the various articles and opinions that were already established with the development of internet/online music distribution that we discussed in lecture. Although music piracy isn’t involved in our presentation or in any of our findings, I did notice that in some of the previous articles that dealt with music and online piracy, a lot of those features, such as distributing and archiving music helped to bridge the new concept of transferring and organizing digitized music to consumers more easily. However for our presentation, we wanted to analyze and look at some distinguishing features of how consumers ventured to the record store for listening and purchasing physical copies of music (which retains its own independence) but shifting the focus on where and how consumers get music and how it's personally stored on a centralized digital media store that's located on individual computers.
In the article “iTunes: Breaking Barriers and building Walls” by David Arditi, he begins by exploring some of the many effects that online distribution has had on distributing music to consumers. As well as looking into those effects, our group really wanted to do a cultural studies position that analyzes how as consumers we drifted from everyday record stores found in any major city to using a digital online music storage or a musical archive, to house various musical genres all in one organized structure called the iTunes store.
David Arditi begins his examination of producing and its circulation of music by “its lack of access to retailers” (Arditi, pg 409). Since the establishment of the internet and the connectivity that goes hand and hand with it as a medium of connecting peer-to-peer accounts and networks, this medium of exchange has made it possible to transfer, download, organize, and archive music albums and complications of live performances through a digitized store/library that can be found online. Instead of relying on having to go out and buy a physical copy of an album, we are left at our disposal to crossover media player and library device that can manage any kind of audio file. Surprisingly, as time goes on and as audio and digital technology is beginning to further develop itself, consumers are now seeing the shift from simply accessing their local record shop and physically paying for a full album, to consumers (who now have the capabilities to access the internet freely) downloading and storing all of their music albums on a personalized free media library that anyone can use.
Arditi begins to explore how “iTunes and other online music stores create a platform to direct digital content towards consumers” (Arditi, pg 416). Compared to many of the other online music stores that are also available either through subscriptions (Rhapsody) or can be paid in monthly installments, Apple iTunes quickly gained notoriety by having “13 million songs available to download” (Arditi, pg 417). We can now begin to see that some of the reasons why iTunes takes the edge over its small and overpriced competitors and it’s because “if a consumer knows that iTunes has the largest number of songs available for download, he/she will go to iTunes first; it is not rational to begin searching for a song on a smaller site” (Arditi, pg 417).
Since the development of the iTunes Music Store, Arditi looks more towards how Lawrence Lessig’s four types of content based on his book titled “Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity” show how much of an impact iTunes has on music content. The first type being that “file sharers who download music as a substitute for purchasing it are affected most directly by iTunes”. The second, third, and fourth types suggest that “file sharers become irrelevant with the creation of iTunes...iTunes changes digital music consumption greatly, and copyright owners who want to distribute their music...for free lose the most with the development of iTunes” (Arditi, pg 418 & 419). These four types of content that are serviced through the use of iTunes suggests that consumers are more likely to stay loyal to a major worldwide media library than search for independent that sells music at a much higher rate. This, in turn, will also turn consumers to choosing to go with iTunes as their primary choice of media library then go through the overwhelming online media market.
Simply analyzing and evaluating the concepts and opinions that were expressed in these two articles, it could be suggested that as consumers, we want music to be widely available to us 24/7 at a price that we can both afford and keep. At the beginning, we would go out and leave the privacy of our own homes and venture out for new music. The first place we would go to would be the local record store. These record stores would be considered our primary source for exploring new genres and formats (such as vinyl and CD) of music but at a much higher price. Sadly, with the eventual increase in physical copies of an album, this would turn away consumers. Even those who may be willing to purchase an album, it also comes with the idea that before we buy we have to test out the product itself. Consumers would then turn to the concept of only listening and purchasing the singles rather than a full album. This now raises the question of, if new music is on the rise, is there the chance that it can be archived and saved up for later use at a price that consumers can afford? As technology started to intertwine with the idea of putting music through a connective network online, it allowed for digital distribution to be opened and disrupt record stores worldwide.
