Saturday, 27 May 2000
.....
Lars Ulrich, front-man for Metallica, finally submitted to the promised interview for slashdot . Surprisingly, he was right -- and Napster proponents wrong -- about a few aspects of the online MP3 trading server system.
Sure, the music industry is all about profit. It charges too much for its product, probably colludes to keep prices artificially high, and commandeers the airwaves through old-school or neo-payola. It avoids spending much of its profit on supporting risky, new artists, preferring instead to invest in acts that do little more, on a systemic scale, than produce proven-profitable genre commodities.
Napster doesn't change much of that, as Ulrich correctly points out. Online piracy does cut into the distribution and development monopoly of the industry, as well as obscene profits -- hence Ulrich and Dr. Dre's furious reaction. (Sorry Lars, it IS all about money -- you admitted yourself in the slashdot piece that the key difference between Napster and cassette trading was sheer quantity... and your complaint about perfect digital reproduction boils down to the same thing.)
However, Napster does no more than this. It cannot, by its nature, offer an alternative channel for artist development, exposure and distribution. Because a Napster user primarily downloads MP3s for which she has searched by artist or song name, there is little opportunity for a user to discover new talent. Ulrich documented as much in his calling of Napster's bluff on banning users: in the 48 hours Metallica cyber-cops monitored Napster downloads, there was but one download of an unsigned artist's material.
This figure would seem to challenge the rebuttal that word about new artists could be shared via the Napster chat feature. Yes, Napster has a "New Artists" feature -- but this is on their website, not the Napster client software. The New Artists forum allows one to search for new artists by name, which is useless absent some previous avenue of exposure. It also allows one to search for new artists by similarity to another artist's sound. At best, this latter feature also suffers from reliance on some other avenue of new artist promotion; at worst, it simply perpetuates the music industry's profit and genre exploitation.
A better model for a new, alternative music biz is Chuck D's Rapstation.com . Rapstation is a web portal that not only provides downloads of new and established artists, but intriguing and agressive promotion, discussion, controversy and the street-smart cynical politics that marks the best hip-hop and rap. Ironically, this week Rapstation features a Real mini-movie starring Dr. Dre -- Chuck D's philosophical opponent (and Metallica crony) in the MP3 wars. Because Rapstation's entire operation flows through the web portal, it does not suffer from the snatch-and-grab mentality of Napster.
Napster, with a recent $15 million investment from venture capitalists, would do well to shore up its legal and ethical defenses by taking a lesson from Rapstation -- perhaps integrating its client with its web portal. In the alternative, Napster might learn from fellow alterna-server system Hotline . Hotline similarly has a non-WWW client which enables high-speed file exchange to/from dedicated servers, with news and chat.
Hotline's recent client releases have a banner-ad display, which generally feature promos for the ad-hoc sponsors of the server. Importing such a feature to the Napster client would allow promotion of unsigned artists and their works; integrated sound technology could enable pushing of sample clips, as well.
Napster might have to maintain a central repository of new artists' material. This would seem but a natural extension of its professed committment to new artists, yet oddly, Napster currently does no such thing: the New Artist's page (once searched for as above, and found) merely links to the artist's website, if any, and exhorts the user to download the Napster client!
Napster's current committment to its rhetoric is flimsy. Its apologists, at least, claim the moral high road, which is, admittedly, not difficult to do against the music industry. But, upon examination, it is unable to deliver the services that would allow it to posture as a legitimate alternative to music business-as-usual. Napster is not really doing anything "wrong," at least no more wrong than manufacturers of cassettes and cassette recorders were in the 1970s. But in order to make a claim of "right," and earn more than grudging legitimacy, it must do more, and better.
See also Public Enemy # MP3: Napsta rap? <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/536>
This is Lars Gets One Right!?! -- Limitations of Napster <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/543>