WHO BENEFITS FROM MP3?
The fact is that the new digital world could be very good for artists and
consumers, eliminating a number of middlemen and marketers and allowing more
direct contact. It may even restore to artists some of the power they've typically
had to sign away to get distribution; the music industry has a notorious reputation
of ripping off artists. Recording companies, with their superior ability to
afford high-quality recording and production and to finance tours, also have
a chance to find ways of exploiting the new medium. They could sell handsomely
boxed, personalized love songs for Valentine's Day, offer tune snippets for
use as computer sounds or design customized greatest-hits compilations.
Building the infrastructure to do those kinds of things and building goodwill in the Net community would be a better way to spend millions than trying to secure a technology that has already escaped. The hard part will be not so much making money, because distribution in general will be so much cheaper. Nor will it be, as some suggest, finding the money to invest in developing artists, because most musicians make their first waves through live performances rather than through recordings. The hard part will be preserving the notion of an artist's vision: an album is, or should be, more than a collection of singles.
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