Apple lets it rip
Napster success made clear what consumers want
David Kirkpatrick
FORTUNE.com
(FORTUNE.COM) – On Sunday I was flying into LAX. As the plane flew over East Los Angeles, I was reminded of Los Lobos, one of my favorite music groups. One of its superb albums is “Just Another Band from East L.A.” I pulled out my iPod, dialed up the album, and was happily listening as the plane landed and taxied to the gate.
The moment was one of many in my life when I am a concrete beneficiary of the design and marketing brilliance of Steve Jobs. The CEO of Apple Computer has turned his company into the world’s prime innovator in digital entertainment. My iPod, with its 2853 songs from hundreds of artists, travels with me everywhere. (All those songs came from CDs I purchased, by the way.)
On Monday Jobs opened the iTunes Music Store for business. FORTUNE’s latest cover story, ‘Songs in the Key of Steve,’ by my colleague Devin Leonard, is the most thorough account by far you’ll find of the service and what it means for Apple and the music industry. The key fact is this: iTunes represents the first time anybody has given the world an easy way to legally purchase and listen to a broad range of music over the Internet. As Devin writes, “Apple’s timing…could hardly have been better.”
The news brings us almost daily reports about the bitter struggle between the music industry and its customers. I have little but contempt for the music industry. (Listening to the People Who Listen to the Music) And its latest behavior, in particular an effort to sue several college students whose computers have allegedly distributed illegal music, is as idiotic and self-defeating as ever.
The companies are asking for damages in the millions. Since Napster, consumers have made it clear they want simple online access to a wide range of music, and they like the ability to download it from the Internet and carry it around on digital devices like the iPod.
But the record industry has thus far failed to give them a legal forum that serves these needs. So consumers have done it illegally. I think it’s more because they like the new convenience than because they want to be thieves. How ludicrous that even though they haven’t provided a legal alternative for consumers, the companies are nonetheless suing those who are facilitating today’s popular methods!
An industry at war with its customers is obviously heading for disaster. Apple’s breakthrough is that it is finally serving the demonstrated consumer needs in a legal way. People want to obey the law, and no music lover would seriously assert that artists should not be paid for their work.
I suspect Jobs’ new service, or others with a similar model, will improve the quality of the music we hear. iTunes will mostly distribute singles, at 99 cents each. From here on, “hits” will be the songs that people actually like and pay for.
Popularity will be measurable. Artists will also be able to release songs directly, without any record company’s help. We will probably increasingly turn to our computers rather than the radio to learn about new songs.
And the ones we hear won’t have to be selected by quasi-corrupt radio station program directors who are so deeply in bed with the music industry that they seem in general to have lost all sense of quality. Most of the “hits” on the radio are trash.
I have no more affection for the radio industry than I do for music companies. It amazes and disappoints me that there is no station in New York, and few anywhere in the United States, that routinely plays the kind of musically rich, rock-and-folk-derived songs I like — people like Wilco, Steve Earle, The Jayhawks, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, The Flaming Lips, and Coldplay.
I’m just one category of consumer not being served, but it has always seemed strange to me that the customers with the most money — those like me well into their adult years — were the ones the music and radio industry seemed to be most resolutely ignoring.
Among the many virtues of Jobs’ new service is that it addresses such concerns. We simply don’t need the radio — or the music companies — as much as we once did. As these new methods of payment become established, we may enter a new Golden Age for music. And yet again — as in so many other industries — it’s only thanks to the Internet and technology.
