Signal to Noise

I must confess that when the iTunes movie store originally launched, I was skeptical. I thought, nobody is going to pay a buck a track when they can just hop onto FastTrack and find whatever they want. Then I realized, over time, that the quality and availability of illegally shared music wasn’t ever really as good as it was cracked up to be. And, with the passing of that first iTunes music store year, Apple’s selection got better, and the lesser known labels were well-represented.

But I think Apple is still missing the point of grassroots, community-driven content, as this notion seems to be conspicuously missing even now from their online music store. Sure, people can rate the songs/shows/movies, and make their own favorites lists, and even write reviews. But that’s not what I’m referring to when I say grassroots.

I thought, when GarageBand came out, “Wow, this is so tight. Amateur musicians are going to gain a distribution outlet through iTunes!” I mean the lightbulb went on immediately. There were even rumors of a content-syndication tool that would allow independents to gain access to the iTunes distribution mechanism. Imagine all the DRM, CD cover image processing, and content-rating tools that the big labels have placed in the hands of mere normal musicians with no budget. Imagine YouTube-like publishing tools combined with GarageBand and the iTunes Store. Revolution, right?

Well, apparently not. The rumored syndication tool never made it past vaporware, and all we got was amateur podcast syndication. And while this is certainly very cool, it doesn’t empower the first constituency of iTunes and the recording industry at large: music makers. After all, I hold that the first and most important use of personal recording isn’t Podcasting, it’s music. This is where iTunes’ roots are. Do I like podcasts? Sure. But I listen to about 2155% more music than podcasts. Call me quaint.

Let me make this point a little differently. Rewind your time machine to mid-1999. Napster is scaring the crap out of Warner Bros. and everybody suddenly has access to a music repertoire they wouldn’t have touched otherwise. I discovered organist Conrad Kleiger and RE-discovered Falco. Do you think this would’ve happened without the empowerment of Napster? Not likely. Arista Records wasn’t going to reach into the vault and start hustling “Rock Me Amadeus” back onto the airwaves in mid-1999. But, thanks to Napster, I got to grok Falco in all their English-as-a-second-language glory.

It was BECAUSE music was available through Napster that the consumption of music increased (yes, even Falco), and the spirit of community involvement was what excited people about using Napster. It wasn’t that they could rape Falco out of their 2 cents a copy. It was because people simply cared about rediscovering and sharing music. “Hey look, this guy’s got Owner of a Lonely Heart” or “Hey look, this guy’s got Super Freak.”

Many people hoped that this drive to share and trade would eventually free the lowest ranks of the recording arts from the stranglehold the big labels maintained on distribution. Why can’t the musicians you know make a living off of their music? Because, partly, the distribution apparatus would rather sell 100 million-copy albums per year that 1000 ten-thousand-copy albums per year. And where does this leave the working musician?

Well, it leaves him working in a factory. Or at a Gap store. Or at a McDonald’s.

No, I’m not pinning this unfortunate circumstance on Apple. But it bothers me that iTunes has not lived up to its potential to the music community. Rather than capturing the deep sense of empowerment during the brief “Napster generation”, iTunes has played it safe, cow-towing to the big boys in order to turn a profit. No, I’m not saying iTunes should’ve been a sharing service.

But I am saying that I think Apple views iTunes strictly as a support mechanism for the iPod and for the iTV. OK, this is an honorable strategy, but it’s a strategy that leaves the market as inaccessible to fresh blood as it’s always been. Just imagine the potential of an iTunes that actually embraces the desires of the community it serves: empower content creation and distribution with the 2.0 philiosophy in mind. Rating songs? Rating artists on a 5-star scale? Come on, Amazon’s been doing that stuff since before the iMac came out. I’m talking about placing an unprecedented distribution mechanism within reach of the art production community. Give the GarageBand kid with the techno remix of Beethoven’s sixth symphony a chance to show off a bit, like what MacJams is doing, but better. Copyright worries? No problem. The user indemnifies Apple. RSS feeds for your favorite amateur producer’s latest creations. You’d have a hundred LonelyGirl15-type stars born overnight.  How about that high school kid wondering why he should bother with his violin that his parents have been nagging him to play? Now he’d get a global community to share it with on a higher-profile basis.
Warner Bros. would say that the industry would collapse. I say it would explode.

Instead, we’ve got Wal-Mart threatening to pull distribution from content producers who do business with Apple. We’ve got iTunes dominated by marketing hype for the same ilk of artists  which have been controlled directly by the same power-brokers that boxed out independents for a century,  the RIAA and the confederation of songwriter syndicates such as AMI that keep their lights on by selling “associate memberships” to artists who are ensured an utter lack of the opportunity for distribution. These syndicates dangle royalty opportunities like a carrot for the vast, vast majority of independent artists to chase idealistically and uselessly.

It’s time for a change. And iTunes is the best place to make it happen.