Sour notes

Sinnreich, the music analyst, says that some people in the industry are fine with their anti-consumer line. "They think the only way to go against file trading is to bash consumers into submission," he says. Perhaps that's not an unreasonable initial reaction to the scourge of file trading. After all, it's obvious that music buyers don't have any qualms about stealing music -- and what business person wouldn't want to stop the outright theft of product? But after a while, says Sinnreich, "You have to think 50 million consumers can't be wrong. Actually, you're talking about half a billion application downloads of file traders. How can half a billion downloaders be wrong? They can't. The consumers set the tone for the marketplace."

In other words, there's no way out of this mess for the recording industry other than to implement real subscription services. And with all these many rifts in the music industry, it's amazing how many people seem to agree that legitimate music subscription services can become a viable alternative to free trading. According to the RIAA, there are now nine such pay services, and as they become "more and more appealing to consumers, they will draw users away from the illegitimate sites," Lamy wrote.

Civil libertarians, too, say the same thing. "The reason the [Berman bill] is not a long-term solution to the problem," says the EFF's von Lohmann, "is that if you want to stop casual piracy you have to offer a compelling legal alternative." Sinnreich says that there's "overwhelming year-over-year survey data" to show that people will pay for a subscription service that has all the perks, and none of the hassles, of a free system. "We've asked them in 10 different ways, in ways that they didn't even know they were being asked, and always there's a huge number saying they'll sign up."

But fewer than 5 million people have tried such systems, and it's easy to see why. The services differ widely, with varying price scales, music catalogs and options for downloading, and none offer both the range and flexibility of the free file traders.

Some services, like Listen.com's Rhapsody service, offer "streaming," meaning that the music doesn't reside on your computer. Others, like Pressplay and MusicNet, offer downloads instead, but they limit the number you can have each month.

"None of these services seems to know what the consumer demand is for," Sinnreich says. For a subscription service to work, he thinks it needs to offer four features: content from all five record labels; the capacity to play songs from as many computers as you like; CD burning, for an incremental fee; and "no limitation on the number of songs you listen to in a month -- you have to make them feel like they're getting a lot."

As they're currently designed, none of the services let you feel that way. Listen's $10-per-month Rhapsody service has a fantastic interface, and, since it has content from all five labels, you can find much of what you'd like on it. The Norah Jones CD was there, and with a broadband connection it streamed over beautifully. You can listen to any song as often as you'd like -- an option that gives a taste of what a perfect subscription service would feel like. The only trouble is, Listen won't let you burn -- and, as one file trader asked, "Who wants to be stuck listening to shit at their computer?"

A Listen spokesman says that the company is working on offering CD burning, but the licensing issues make it difficult right now. Pressplay, on the other hand, does let you burn a limited number of tracks, depending on how much you pay. The $15-per-month plan, for example, lets you burn 10 tracks, though you can't have more than two from the same artists per disc. (Though he didn't provide details, a representative for Pressplay said that the company would soon unveil a new version, and the company's pricing model would change "significantly.") Pressplay's catalog is lean, though, too lean to pay much for. And its many rules, like the many rules of all these systems, have a way of sticking in your craw; as you keep using the system, and it keeps telling you how much less "credit" you have, it's hard not to get annoyed and wonder why you ever left the land of the free.

According to the subscription services, their limitations can be traced back to licensing deals with the record labels. There isn't any uniformity to it; different labels release different catalogs to different services, with varying restrictions and at confusing price scales. For example, subscription services must pay more to the labels to offer a download than a stream, even though, on a broadband connection, there is hardly a difference between the two -- and the stream, which can be played on many machines, may in fact be preferable if the download can only be played on one machine, which is a common restriction. Why do the labels have these restrictions? It smacks of old-style thinking -- an inability to recognize that the longer they delay these services, the bigger, and more out of control, trading will become.

You can understand why the music business is frightened. In 2001, CD sales declined 10 percent. Musicians -- and not just the crazy ones -- are accusing labels of placing them under "indentured servitude." Perhaps a tad unfairly, music critics blame the industry for the quality of today's music. (It's probably more appropriate to blame Carson Daly.) And fans? Music fans, for a litany of slights, some perceived and many real, can't stomach the labels.

For the music industry, file trading has become the convenient cause of all its ills. CD sales down? Must be due to Napster. Fans don't like us? Must be Morpheus. It's come to the point that even some artists believe that line. Moby, a guy known for his business and techno savvy, recently blamed the poor sales of his latest album, "18," on his fans' facility with trading apps. "I described the 'Pearl Jam Effect' as being a phenomenon wherein bands who have very technically savvy fans will see their records do poorly in the charts, whereas bands/artists who have less technically savvy fans will do quite well on the charts," he wrote on his blog. "This is owing to the fact that bands/artists with technically savvy fans will have a lot of fans who will end up downloading music or burning CDs where as less tech-savvy fans will end up buying their CDs ... Pink outsells Weezer in the States not so much because she's more popular, but because her fans are more likely to buy, as opposed to burn, her CDs." It couldn't possibly be that "18" just isn't as good as his previous release, "Play." Nope -- it's gotta be those CD burners out there.

The downturn in CD sales could just as easily be explained by the overall economic downturn, and the end of the boy band teen-pop cycle. But that's not to say there isn't a real threat to the way the recording industry does business right now.

"Obviously, any market can become a zero-dollar market if the supplier ceases to provide to the demanders what they want -- and there is danger of that occurring here," Sinnreich says. On the other hand, people like music and they're willing to pay for music. But will they pay for something they can get for free?

Christopher Allen, an executive at MusicMatch, a company that offers a subscription radio service, answers that question this way: "You can get free coffee at work, but there's a ton of people going to Starbucks."

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