Turn On, iTunes In, Shop Out

iTunes Music StoreYou’d think, from all the hype, that Apple’s foray into the online music business is some kind of spiritual epiphany, so potent is the Apple publicity machine. This new service, which debuted yesterday as a part of iTunes 4, breaks ground in that it has, for the first time, united all five major label record companies behind a single effort to sell and distribute music digitally in a kind of legally blessed Napster. As is to be expected from most Apple endeavors, the service is singularly elegant and overeagerly hyped.

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Ubiquitous, Cheap and Out of Control

Compact DiscsThe problem with the record industry is not piracy, it’s that its primary product — the compact disc — has been completely devalued. There are some pretty convincing arguments for this that the RIAA obstinately refuses to acknowledge: principally, that the cost of CD’s is out of proportion with both recent inflationary history and the cost of competitive entertainment media like, specifically, DVD’s.

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Unfavorable Conditions

Human ConditionsRichard Ashcroft, who was responsible for three of the best albums of the nineties when he was the face and voice of The Verve, has lost it. His latest album, “Human Conditions,” is competent yet soppy and unremarkable, and utterly lacking in the bravura of his older work. It made me glad that I bought it for only five under-the-table dollars from a flea market vendor on Avenue A (I also got a cheap copy of “Run-DMC’s Greatest Hits”).

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Think Gig

There are almost 13,500 posters promoting live performances by over 16,000 bands at gigposters.com, a testament to both the vibrancy of grassroots advertising arts and the futility of trying to break into the big leagues of music. Lots of these posters are terrible of course, and lots of them are great, but the site is suitably ambitious in its attempt to give credit to each poster’s designer. If you have enough patience to wait out the overburdened server, you’ll doubtless dig up some gems.

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Mixed Up

Squat 3 Today I finally mailed out my compilation for Squat, a CD swap club of which I’m a charter member. Way back in the early days, like February 2002, the whole concept of a CD swap club — in which a small group of people each assemble their own compilation of rockin’ tunes, burn it to CD, and mail a copy to each of the other members — was rare and novel. I can’t be positive, but I’m pretty sure our club’s founder was one of the very first pioneers in the concept.

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The Industry That Cried Wolf

030214_compact_disc.gif You’ve got a credibility problem when Business Week — which, to paraphrase “The Insider,” is not exactly a bastion of anti-capitalist sentiment — cries foul over the numbers you use to blame your industry’s poor health on digital piracy. The music business, as embodied by the universally loathed Recording Industry of America, has just that kind of problem, as evidenced in Business Week journalist Jane Black’s scathing examination of their claim that the devastating 7.2% drop in CD sales for the first six months of 2002 can be laid squarely at the feet of, well, you and your damn computer.

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Many Years Later

Did you realize that the compact disc debuted thirty years ago this week? PRI’s Marketplace ran a story on it this past Monday (audio archive available; fast-forward to 20 mins., 45 sec.), in which they interviewed some of the original Sony engineers and marketers who developed the format. There’s been surprisingly little media coverage of this landmark, though it’s admittedly not the stuff of parades or three-day weekends.

Speaking of public radio, music and technological history, NPR’s Morning Edition has a six-part series of reports called “TechnoPop,” looking at the invention of key music technologies. Don’t forget to donate to your local public radio station.

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Hot Squats

SquatSpeaking of media clubs, I can neither confirm nor deny that I’m lucky enough to be able to claim a charter membership in Todd Levin’s clever Squat CD-swapping club. If twenty or so members of this club each made nineteen copies of an eclectic mix CD full of show-offish, esoteric songs and distributed them to the other members, then I may or may not know anything about that. This CD design for Squat is unconfirmed.

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