Right to Listen for Free

¶ … Right to Listen for Free One of the most controversial issues in the music business today is the issue of selling music through the Internet. The ongoing and evolving process of selling and disseminating music through the Internet has provoked a number of economic as well as artistic debates for the music business and for the computer and technology businesses that allow such technology to be accessed.

This paper will address some of these concerns with a particular focus on the anti-trust issues that have arisen over the course of this debate.

First of all, the issue of disseminating music over the Internet provokes the perplexing question of who really 'owns' the commercial product of a pieces of music, anyway? Is the owner the person or persons who simply hear the tune and keep humming it? Is the owner the musician who produces the product? Or are the owners the music companies musicians have signed artistic rights to? Clearly, to survive musicians must be able to charge for the product they produce, and the companies have control over the specifics of how to market that product.

But once a song is in the public sphere, do not consumers have a right to 'pass on' that music product in ways that they see fit, even if those ways may inhibit the sales of recordings of that music? The issue of musical downloads on the Internet also raises the question of numerous anti-trust issues.

How can the music industry and recording labels stem the spread of specific kinds technologies, produced by other computer or technological companies, which allow individuals to download music free of charge? These recording labels and musicians wish for those individuals to pay for the privilege of downloading and listening to such music, yet such controls necessitate a kind of collaboration between industries that is unprecedented and possibly in danger of violating anti-trust laws.

Of course, music has never been an easily controlled commodity because of the nature of the artistic medium itself. Even before the invention of the World Wide Web and Napster, the question of controlling music as a commodity has been an issue for recording labels and musicians. 'Bootlegged' recording of concerts has always been a problem for musicians when selling concert tickets and tapes. This has also been true of the circulation of taped music from the radio and CDs.

Even simply the fact that free music is accessible on the radio and on television, has made it difficult for musicians and music companies to exercise full control over a musical product. What is so unique about the current issues provoked by the Internet, however, is that the Internet allows for an unprecedented level of dissemination of music on such a high level of quality and quantity.

Without some sort of regulation it seems that control over the commodity of a musical product could conceivably leave the hands of the musicians, agents, and the music companies that disseminate the product entirely. Yet without monetary rewards, musicians will untimely stop producing music, so it becomes in the interest of fans as well as of musicians and record companies to exercise some regulation.

Recently, the entirely free generation of music was shut down on Napster because of such copyright issues and Napster agreed to work with the music industry to ensure profit for all. But other, smaller companies not in the 'loop' of the industry are working all the time to circumvent such regulations. "The proliferation of illegal playback devices and consumers' embrace of such devices could encourage other electronics firms to develop similar equipment unless there is a coordinated approach to finding an acceptable technology," notes an article in a trade newspaper.

("Music Biz Seeks Security" Variety) But how to organize a cooperative approach between the current interested entities of musicians, fans, record companies, and technology companies, without creating a controlled marketplace? According to the BBC News, the issue of disseminating music over the internet was " given extra urgency with the launch of the handheld Rio MP3 player, which allows users to download more than an hour's worth of music to play at home or on the move.

Record companies have been seeking to agree on a common industry standard to make such broadcasts secure and able to be recorded." (" Sony Launches Internet Music Sales" BBC News) Simply generating a simple, strict technological standard could shut out smaller, cheaper, and better manufactures of particular technological products. "The consequences of launching competing systems was most famously seen in the battle between the Betamax and VHS videotape systems, which were launched almost simultaneously.

Video shops often stocked Beta and VHS tapes of the same films" but individuals chose the "more widely available VHS format despite a widely held belief that Beta technology was superior." Consumers will almost always go for the more easily accessible and technologically popular systems, almost regardless of quality, a phenomenon also witnessed in computer technology with the dominance of Microsoft Windows.

If the standards set by the industry are too rigid, it could lock consumers into buying a singular kind of technology, produced by only one company, to download music. Even if these standards were set to insure copyrights of music, this does not mean that the standards could also be so rigid as to prevent developments of competing technology by other firms.

(" Sony Launches Internet Music Sales" BBC News) The question remains as to how the music industry can regulate the MP3 technology that allows for such unprecedented, high-quality piracy through the medium of the Internet and MP3 recorders. At present, it seems like the only answer would be for the music industry to ban together and to generate forms of online music downloading systems that are only operational when the individuals utilizing them paid a specific fee.

Such a system would also necessitate the computer companies that dominate the net to generate software that would not operational unless the individuals possessing them paid a fee to the musical companies as well. But such inter- and intra-industry cooperation and uniformity inevitably necessitates a breaching of anti-trust regulations that prohibit collusion between companies to the extent that one company dominates the market.