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IT’S OBVIOUS. The music industry wants to turn the Net into broadcasting.

Over the past year, the big players have been buying up what used to be the
Web’s rebel music services. Sony bought MP3.com (the site that kicked off the
entire digital download era) in order to jump-start the Duet music service it’s
planning with Vivendi. And MusicNet, the joint venture between AOL Time Warner,
Bertelsmann, EMI and Real Networks, has tentatively made a deal with Napster to
offer a subscription service.

All this after suing each other nearly to death.

What users really want is to be able to listen to anything that takes their
fancy, whenever they feel like it. A kind of giant free-for-all of old radio
shows, salsa, and top-40 hits. What the music industry wants is to make us pay
as much and as often as possible for whatever it feels like letting people have.
The limitations of physical distribution meant that the music industry could
sell us the same music over and over again. Tapes and discs wear out, and anyway
we couldn’t make very good copies if we tried. Physical distribution gave
control. The basic business model of an advance to the musicians against
royalties is one the companies like.

No wonder. As singer Courtney Love pointed out in a rant last year, it means
that record companies can leave even successful bands earning less than they’d
make wearing paper hats and scraping grease off a griddle. Naturally what the
industry wants is to reinvent the Net in its own image. Hey, there are only a
few dishonest geeks to spoil the party, and we can easily get rid of them.

The plan for MusicNet isn’t like that at all. Downloads will expire after 30
days. Want more time? Pay again. Music to rent, not to own. Record companies are
trying to justify this with the claim that digital and physical distribution
cost the same. This is laughable. Digital is much cheaper, especially since
consumers bear more of the costs.

There are many reasons to resist this Net-as-broadcasting scenario. The
Internet’s freedoms are what makes it such a useful way of exchanging
information. There is no way to control what people do with the files they
download without invading their privacy. Is there some reason why the
entertainment industry should have the special right to dictate public
policy?

Look at the lamentable state of commercial broadcasting in the US for an
example of what we could expect—and remember that radio was once hailed as
bringing new freedom, democracy and education to the world. The recording
industry is already talking about how to stop Gnutella, the network former
Napsterites are flocking to, and it involves monitoring exactly who has what
files on their hard disks and sending in the lawyers.

The record industry should forget all this control freakery and get on with
devising a new business model. They should know how—after all, these are
people who used to make their living from selling sheet music.

And this time, folks, pick one that’s fairer to the musicians. Otherwise
you’ll discover the Net’s real threat: it lets artists find their audiences
without your help. And just take a look at Pete Townshend’s website to find out
what that might mean . . .