Playing Our Song?

Continued from page 2

By Henry Jenkins

July 2, 2003

I understand why Napster was too good to be true-or at least too good to be legal. Nobody wanted to rip off the artists; we were their fans, for heaven's sake. But in shutting down Napster, the recording industry killed a powerful promotional mechanism that could have helped expand the market for their backlists, create cult followings for obscure artists, and broaden the tastes of demographics underserved by radio. The idiocy continues with recent announcements that the recording industry is going to file massive law suits against individual file-sharers, not willing to trust that iTunes and its like would win over customers to legal downloads. The record companies should have shown real leadership-that is, figure out where the mob was going, run around in front, and shout "follow me." They should have used Napster as market research to discover what people wanted badly enough they would step outside the law to get it.

To some degree, that's what Apple has done with iTunes, recognizing that for a sizable chunk of their market, downloads have become a way of life and recording companies had better catch up with them or lose them as customers altogether. One recent study found that 48 percent of American teens had downloaded an MP3 in the past month and another 30 percent said they would have if they had higher bandwidth. These are consumers of music who prefer to listen on their computer and are informed enough to want to buy only those cuts that rock their world.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that iTunes has "My Bestest Friend" and a good bit of Sumac and Scott. But many of the categories I care about are underrepresented-at least so far-and are likely to remain so since they aren't going to be top sellers and since I fall outside the demographic groups that Apple calculates are going to be early adopters.

iTunes has none of the peer-to-peer features that made Napster so effective at spreading the word about unknown or forgotten artists. iTunes doesn't allow you to share songs, fair enough, but it also doesn't allow any easy way for users to communicate with each other, even to share the titles of the songs on their playlists. People are finding ways around that obstacle, but Apple is aggressively shutting them down as fast as they appear.

This leaves room for a competitor that understands the social dimensions of music distribution. Or perhaps Apple itself will come up with a better way for consumers to interact with each other around their music purchases. But we aren't going to get what we want if we roll over quietly and accept the music industry myth that the only reason we liked Napster was that we could get music for free. Perhaps, in the short run, the most we can hope for is that the major labels will use iTunes to circulate their top-selling titles and then turn their back on the underground trade of MP3s from their backlist. I dream that someday Apple, AOL, Microsoft, or some other company will make me an honest man again and still give me a mechanism to connect with all of those other interesting strangers out there who know something I don't about the hidden treasures of popular music.