Practice Management

HuffPo has a good little picture article  or post on the 7 Biggest iTunes Hold-Outs.  AC/DC's lead singer, Brian Johnson, calls iTunes a "monster", and he, like some others are holding out and not allowing their music to be sold online.

To me, that is probably a mistake.  First, it is how people get their music these days.  If you are not online you are probably not selling your music to the larges group possible, but more of your music is being exchanged free of any payment to you.

Sir Paul McCartney blames the stance more on EMI than his desire.

AC/DC claims that iTunes is going to kill music.  I doubt it.  They are killing the way in which music was sold in packages or bundles.  Besides, these groups were complaining about radio killing music before iTunes.  They believe that music can be produced in a vacuum and people will buy into bands song unheard.

One thing that these musicians do not like is a lack of variable pricing.  That is a fancy terms that means they think they are better than everyone else and deserve to charge more for their music than other bands.  The truth of the matter is that the problem of profit to the artist is not an issue of final cost to the purchaser, but the splits for which they have contracted.  Too much goes to the music publishers and others who now do not have the distribution costs associated with Flintstones-type delivery and marketing systems.

There main concern, however, is that they believe their music needs to be only sold in albums.  Bundled, in other words.  The stuff people want with a whole lot of stuff people do not want.  As Garth Books says, "We do albums, we have always done albums".  Well, always is not now, and the past is not the future.

It is clear that the problem is, at least partly, that the deliver system for music is changing.  I cannot tell you when was the last time I bought a CD or a complete album.  I think it was the Paul McCartney album produced and sold by Starbucks.  Now that's a music outlet for you.  However, the contracts, ownership, and ways that music is produced is not changing to meet the new reality.

What I think you tend to see in the iTune holdouts, are a bunch of 60s and 70s guys that did it one way in their youth.  They have turned into Archie Bunker, only most have long hair hanging below their male pattern baldness.

This matters to lawyers in a lot of abstract kind of ways.  We like music.  We buy music.  We are also in the so-called "information age".  The key to success is the open distribution of information.  Music falls into this category as well.  All areas of technology are allowing us to replace mass production with mass customization and we are becoming less consumers and more prosumers.  We look more for unbundled services and products.

I guess every good think has to have a set of enemies to make it worthwhile.  But, as with these musicians, we need not fight too much against the progress that tech is allowing us.  I doubt the grumpy old men are going to stop this iTunes movement.