Out of tunes

In one of The White Stripes' particularly creepy songs, "You've Got Her In Your Pocket," Jack White sings: "To keep you in my pocket / Where there's no way out now / Put it in a safe and lock it / 'cause it's home sweet home." White's narrator is so consumed with fear at the thought of losing the object of his affection that he's blind to the fact that he's smothering and manipulating her, destroying the very thing he wants most.\nThe titans of the music industry may want to take heed.\nAs digital recording and the Internet dramatically reduce the cost of distributing and reproducing music, record labels are facing a serious challenge: how to recoup the costs of making and marketing albums, much less turn a profit, if anyone can copy them for free? Thus, music producers have seen Napster, Grokster, peer-to-peer networks and CD pirates as fundamental threats to their survival, and deployed the full force of their legal departments to shut them down.\nHonestly, I have no problem with this -- and I think most fair-minded music fans agree with me. I can see the market logic: where's the incentive to produce new music, or inform people about it, if you can't make money at it? Musicians gotta eat, after all. And, while I have no particular love for Sony BMG, Warner Bros., Universal and so on -- I understand the labels' role in bringing otherwise unknown music to a worldwide audience.\nBut, as the industry seals its music in the technological and legal equivalents of Tupperware, it's quickly finding that leak-proof also means airtight. In their drive for complete control over the dissemination of music, the major labels are undermining their very ability to get the music from club, garage or basement to consumers' ears.\nSony BMG seems particularly talented at self-affliction. The latest controversy is that music from its cutting-edge copy-protected CDs cannot be transferred to iPods -- the world's most popular mp3 player, of which 20 million have been sold since 2001 (Reuters, Aug. 5; Guardian, Aug. 4). Yet more worrisome is Sony BMG's efforts to control the radio airwaves. July 25, the company was fined $10 million by the State of New York for bribing music directors and DJs to increase the airplay for selected songs -- a practice called "payola" (Rolling Stone, July 25). As each label engages in payola, it creates an incentive for others to follow suit -- ultimately harming both consumers and themselves by restricting the variety of music while bidding up the cost of bribes. This, at a time when radio stations are already unpopular due to excessive commercials, narrow playlists and widespread homogeneity (Rolling Stone, May 3). \nAnd while undermining old-fashioned radio, the majors are rattling sabers at its Internet heir-apparent, podcasting -- arguing, for example, that as downloads, podcasts require more restrictive contracts than the blanket licenses afforded radio stations (USA Today, Aug. 4).\nIn the end, then, the question becomes: where will consumers hear music that they end up wanting to buy? \nWell, there's always MTV. \n(Snicker)