Fat lady sings

If you’ve any lingering hope that humanity’s nature is essentially good, I need only the music library of any random person with which to prove you wrong. Most people’s playlists read like a trophy room of piracy. Stealing may be a rather black and white concept, but somehow our culture exhibits a dumb agnosticism wherever Internet piracy is concerned.\nBefore you respond that piracy only hurts the rich, I assure you, it isn’t Jay-Z I’m worried about. It’s us. Because if Internet piracy continues, eventually the people who pay Mr. Z to make records aren’t going to see the point anymore. When they pack up their bags and move on, it’s the fans that are going to be screwed. \nThe basic idea is this: You’d never produce anything that you can’t get people to pay for, and you’d never buy something that you could get for free. That’s why capitalism depends so much on property rights. It’s kind of funny, actually – all the time the Soviets spent trying to dismantle our economic system, they could have just given us each a DSL modem. Really, we’re not ready as a culture for the Internet. Most technological advances come in pairs, like when faster cars meet safer airbags, but our inventing the Internet in the 20th century is like Neolithic cave dwellers inventing ballistic missiles. It allows us to spread information without any means to control it, arguably the most lopsided step in the history of man.\nRecord industries are having a notoriously tough time getting people to stop illegally downloading. So much of their business showcases their vulgar wealth, and they had the misfortune of being reduced by the Internet from casually abusing their customers to begging for their mercy. That doesn’t build a strong moral platform. Even if it did, no one is going to stop illegally downloading. We can’t police it, everyone does it, and individual offenses are so minor that no one feels guilty. \nSlowly, record companies are finding that out. Their budgets are hemorrhaging, and because of this, fewer new artists are being signed. Record labels serve chiefly to promote and sign new artists, and without the labels, mainstream music has no heart to circulate its blood. \nAnd this is interesting because, if it keeps getting worse, there will cease to be professional musicians, just part-time amateurs. Without record companies to pay them, people will simply make music if they’ve got the free time and the inward desire. Fans will have to scour the Internet to find these bands, and without a lot of money, production value won’t exist. Imagine a world of only folk songs, an indie golden-age, and while rap and pop would surely die, what’s left would be music the way it was back before electricity. It may sound like a dark forecast, but in a way, it’s sort of nice. In a world increasingly of instant gratification, music will be more of a quest, a resurgence of mystery in an increasingly visible world.