“If you want to lose a lot of money, current wisdom suggests that opening a record shop would be a good way to do it. Better still, open the biggest music-only shop in Britain and spend a fortune on fitting it out with a top-of-the-range PA system and bespoke furniture created by one of Britain’s top architects � exactly what Rough Trade plans to do when it opens its new, 5,000-square-metre branch, designed by David Adjaye, in east London later this month.” (
What better way to remind people that CDs and vinyl still exist than open a massive record shop through your big ‘indie’ label? I think this was a fine idea. Vinyl enthusiasts are born all of the time, and each one has a significantly different set of discs in mind. I’m a bit of a lazy record hunter myself; I do most of my thumbing-through online. Don’t get me wrong, if I pass a record shop, I’ll go in and spend 10-20 minutes flicking, but if there is something in particular I want, odds are I will go down there and they won’t bloody have it, so I’ll have to go home empty-handed. A record shop as big as the afformentioned Rough Trade store are much more likely to have that plastic I’m after. Another dilemma I face when buying music is that of ‘which format’? To be honest, most of the music I listen to is either from my iTunes library or my iPod. But the vinyl I own, I play a lot. It just so happens there is infinitely more music on my computer than in my record box. I rarely buy digital music - I tend to download it for free. Maybe there is a solution to this though…
I had a little idea (perhaps not an entirely new idea). What if everytime you bought an LP from Rough Trade you got a little card shoved in the bag. You would take that card to your computer, enter the code into a special section on the Rough Trade website and you would be able to download a legal and digital copy of the LP you’ve got spinning on your record deck. That would solve my dilemma, anyway. I don’t know anyone that buys more than one format of an album unless they’re a bit of a fanatic who buys the iTunes version, the LP, the Japanese LP with bonus remix disc and the CD.
Radiohead’s upcoming album, ‘In Rainbows‘ is availible via pre-release digital download or with a boxset including CD, two 12-inch heavyweight vinyls and artwork and a digital download as part of the deal. This isn’t too far from my idea. Perhaps it has already been done to some degree, but I think the idea has potential to bring more people into record shops more frequently.
Ideas and contributions are welcome as always.
In this post I hope to come to some kind of conclusion as to the viability of BitTorrent as a method of online music distribution. I’ll start with a brief explanation of BitTorrent…
“BitTorrent is a protocol designed for transferring files. It is peer-to-peer in nature, as users connect to each other directly to send and receive portions of the file. However, there is a central server (called a tracker) which coordinates the action of all such peers. The tracker only manages connections, it does not have any knowledge of the contents of the files being distributed, and therefore a large number of users can be supported with relatively limited tracker bandwidth. The key philosophy of BitTorrent is that users should upload (transmit outbound) at the same time they are downloading (receiving inbound.) In this manner, network bandwidth is utilized as efficiently as possible.” (from Dessent)
Of course, to actually obtain a torrent file, one needs to visit a torrent website such as The Pirate Bay or ISO Hunt.
The main advantage of BitTorrent lies in the fact that there is no need for a central server on which to store the files, hence removing the cost of hardware, bandwidth and hosting.
BitTorrent has caused much controversy since its rise in popularity in the early 2000s as it was most often used for the illegal distribution of music, movies and software. The fact that files were not stored on a central server meant that there was no great cost in this method of distribution.
With regards to music industry uses of BitTorrent; it is not the most popular method of distribution by a long way. SubPop distribute their online releases via BitTorrent.com. I can fully understand why this distribution technique has not risen in popularity as users have to be fairly cyber-savvy to download a torrent. First, one has to choose and install one of the many torrent clients on offer and then learn how to use it. However, the decision of whether or not to use this method is entirely up to the record company; this is truly a swings and roundabouts kind of affair. During the time of a single or album release, demands on bandwidth are great, so the company would have to invest in a reliable and wide-bandwidth hosting solution. With the BitTorrent technology, the responsibility is shared between the people who wish to download the file.
An interesting case of torrent-style distribution was that of the Libertines/Pete Doherty demos. These demos appeared on various popular torrent sites, but initially appeared on Andrew Kendall’s photography site. Kendall is one of the leading rock photographers in Britain, and a supporter of the Libertines conquest. It was not made clear who initially uploaded these demos, but it gave the fans what they wanted and further strengthened their support. This distribution, like the majority of other torrent activity was free. Users have related torrents with ‘free stuff’, and so it would defy this ideal on some level if they were asked to pay for it. In my opinion, it would be much more sensible to use the existing FTP method of distribution as it is widely perceived to be the superior.
Update!
That lovely site, ‘Oink‘ that I used to babble on about… It was shut down on Tuesday 23rd of October. RIP. Read more about it on Jack Schofield’s Guardian blog. And watch the narrow-minded and rather inaccurate BBC news report.
What is Web 2.0?
Essentially, you can gain an idea of what Web 2.0 is from these three words:
User generated content
With this in mind, the examples are quite obvious. Sites such as MySpace, Wikipedia, Blogger, etc are all children of Web 2.0 as they all rely on you, the user, to do all the work. Wikipedia would not exist without willing contributors; but the web is not short of those. Whereas Web 1.0 was a place where you simply read something, or looked at something, Web 2.0 is a place where you do something. A wiki is a very useful tool which relies heavily on this kind of technology. Wikipedia is the most obvious example but the principle of a wiki is to allow users to collaborate, edit and share information. PBWiki is a good tool if you want to collaborate on some work with several other people remotely (http://pbwiki.com/edu.wiki)
Web 2.0 has a very social aspect to it. The capabilities it has to encourage community and sharing is greater than that of the ‘original incarnation’ of the web. The communicative ability that the web offers us has been greatly improved, which is why social networking sites have experienced such massive popularity. Being able to send messages, comment on pictures, comment on comments, comment on blogs has made social networking a hugely attractive practice for most people we know.
RSS
Rich Site Summary (or RSS) is a tool most commonly found on current affairs websites. One can subscribe to an RSS feed and use it in an application away from the site itself. For example; Windows Vista has an RSS ‘Widget’ on its sidebar. This allows you to view news stories from your desktop in text format and click them for more of the story. It allows the user to customise the news stories they receive. You could use Google Reader to gather together all of your chosen RSS feeds onto one page:
A good reference: http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
Another good reference: http://newmusicstrategies.com/2007/04/02/thing-6-web-20/
Online music retailers have been enjoying a great deal of success in recent times. Online shopping of all kinds has been popular for years now, as people have taken advantage of the great convenience it offers. Online music retailing comes in two forms: provision of physical product and provision of digital product. It is hard to speculate which of the two is the most popular of the two as there is not a great deal of price difference here. Each has its advantages; for example, if you were to buy a CD from an online store such as HMV, you would have a hard copy of an album, however if you bought the M4A version from iTunes you would receive it instantly. On the flipside, both options have their obvious disadvantages. Swings and roundabouts as always.
I cannot think of any big high street music retailers that do not have an online presence… except maybe Music Zone. And look what happened to them – they ceased trading.
I remember 3 or so years ago there was a lot of media attention regarding online music stores such as CD Wow undercutting supermarket CD prices. With the advent of internet shopping this was always going to happen. Supermarkets had to change with the times or get out of the music retailing game. Who would pay £5 extra for a CD when they could get it for £7.99 from a website such as CD Wow back then? Not me. But then I rarely buy CDs.
My consumption of music is quite unfair when I think about it. I download most of my music from a torrent site named ‘oink’. This is quite an exclusive community as you need to be invited by an existing member who has gained a good sharing ratio. The only time I buy music is when I value an album enough to purchase the same album on vinyl. I figure, what’s the point of buying a CD when all I’m going to do is rip it to my iTunes library and carry it around on my iPod? I think about this sometimes and feel a little guilty, but then I pay to see bands live and I pay for merchandise.
This brings me to the idea of the ‘iPod Generation’. Digital music and portable devices have changed the way everyone consumes and indeed gets hold of music. iTunes has had such massive success because of its obvious ties with the iPod, but music purchased from the iTunes store is not exclusively played on iPods. A great many portable jukeboxes are able to playback licensed M4A tunes.
Years ago, Napster was at the forefront of an online music panic but now it sits alongside the likes of iTunes providing legal digital downloads and can communicate with a lot of the portable devices on the market directly. At last, people are willing to pay for digital music and it has become a lucrative – nay, ESSENTIAL business practice.
Get online or get out of the way.
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