Has music had its day?

WHAT'S THE STORY WITH FREE MUSIC DOWNLOADS?

NINE DAYS AGO the second international Record Store Day came and went, largely unnoticed apart from in a handful of independent music shops where small crowds gathered to hear local artists including Paul Noonan, Jape and Lisa Hannigan play.

The musicians were lending their support to a day aimed at highlighting the enormous challenges threatening the very existence of shops which have formed such an integral part of many people’s lives for generations.

Of all the many upheavals wrought by the internet revolution over the last 15 years, the shake-up in the world of music has been amongst the most profound. The consequences of free music downloads could end up destroying not just the shops which used to sell records but an entire industry.

When Napster came along 10 years ago, offering free music file-sharing software to anyone with a semi-decent internet connection, the industry had a conniption and fought hard to shut the service down. Within two years it had succeeded, but not before the genie had fled the bottle. Napster was quickly replaced by other free services; as each one was brought to heel by an increasingly panicked industry, it was replaced. The software became more advanced and better equipped to allow its creators sidestep responsibility.

The latest round of the running battle took place on the day before Record Store Day when four people behind the file-sharing website Pirate Bay were sentenced to a year in prison and fined over €2m for aiding copyright infringement. They had been sued for lost earnings by a host of primarily US-based media companies, who claimed the site allowed users to download copyright films, music and software.

Closer to home, the Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma), which represents EMI, Sony, Warners and Universal, has been targeting internet service providers (ISPs) to stop illegal file sharing. It has agreed a “three strikes” rule with Eircom which will see people accused three times of copyright infringement disconnected from its broadband network. It is trying to get the State’s remaining ISPs to sign up to similar deals.

Pirate Bay’s owners stoutly rejected the verdict and said they did not make copyright material available, but only pointed users in the right direction. “As in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow. That’s the only thing Hollywood ever taught us,” the gang of four said in the immediate aftermath of the sentencing.

While it is tempting to look on the digital download wars of the last 10 years as a good-versus-evil battle with the bad guys in the majors chomping on cigars, exploiting artists and ripping off the kids by demanding they pay over the odds for music, the reality is a lot more complicated.

David O'Grady owns a small Irish label called Independent Records. It is a part-time job and he also manages Mundy. He believes that downloads are so wildly pirated or cheaply available that "it's getting to the point where there is no business any more. I don't think prices can get any lower and for any kind of quality control to continue to exist." He says Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Mooncan be bought for much the same price as a cup of coffee and a sandwich but is considerably more enduring. "Music can have such an influence, it can be a life-changing force, it can change the way you think. It's not like you listen to your €9.99 album once and then dispose of it. We have to place a value on music and if the prices keep going down then the business model won't exist."

SPEAKING AHEADof World Record Store Day, Bruce Springsteen said that while he was "old-school" when it came to buying music, the model had changed irrevocably for a younger generation. "What my kids do is download a lot of things, pay for them, and then if they love something, they'll get the CD. That may be the future." He is on the money; contrary to what record company execs think, pirates may save the industry. According to a study of 2,000 people published by the BI Norwegian School of Management last week, those who download music illegally are 10 times more likely to pay for songs than people who never download illegal songs.

It is not only illegal downloads but cheaper music online which is a threat to record shops. O’Grady is optimistic that events such as Record Store Day will help the penny drop for more music fans.

“People are starting to realise that if you buy from overseas all the time then you’re not going to be left with any record shops,” he says. “Places like Tower Records, the last ‘deep catalogue’ shop in the country, might be a little more expensive but when you look at its location and the number of staff it employs, how could it be anything but more expensive than some overseas website that employs a handful of people and is not subject to the same taxes that businesses here are?”

By far the biggest legitimate retailer of downloads is iTunes which has been playing with its prices lately. Earlier this month it abandoned its long-standing practice of selling all the songs on its platform for a flat fee of 99 cent in favour of a three-tiered pricing structure.

While it was welcomed by the music industry, it was regarded by others as an attempt to introduce higher prices for the most popular tracks sold through the platform. In a heartbeat, the cost of nearly a quarter of chart downloads available through the site increased by 30 per cent to €1.29.

Announcing the move last January, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said that, of the 10 billion tracks iTunes offers to its 75 million users worldwide, there would be many “more songs priced at 69 cents than $1.29”. While that may be true, the most popular songs are inevitably going to be priced in the higher bracket.

In response to Apple’s partial price hike, its biggest rival in the British market, Amazon.co.uk, dropped the price of some songs to 29 pence (32c) although the site does not sell downloads into the Republic. Vodafone and Eircom do, however, with the latter selling songs for 77c.

O’Grady thinks Apple was foolish to mess with the “perfect” pricing structure of 99c for a song and €9.99 for an album. “I think that companies who are putting their prices up now are writing their own suicide note. The whole idea of iTunes was genius and I think the pricing was beautiful. No one had to think about it – it was so simple . . . Apple are messing with perfection.”

INCREASING PRICESis a brave move when the latest online music mover is operating a free music streaming service that, critically, has the backing of the music industry. Spotify (www.spotify.com) is beautifully simple – you install a piece of software and get access to a music library of eight million songs – with around 10,000 songs added every day. It is not yet a year old and already has over a million users, though it's not yet available here. Spotify streams music; downloading the songs to an Mp3 player is not yet possible although it will soon be accessible on a mobile phone which will change the game again. Ads are sold on the site and the record labels are given royalties based on how often a song is played.