To set the stage: I was up in Marin County for the day to meet with a company and give them some advice. Anyhow, on the way to Marin from Oakland, I was listening to KFOG (which I do love) and they played back to back: Golden Paliminos “Boy (GO)” with guest vocals from Stipe, and a song I hadn’t heard in a while that Shazam on my iPhone confirmed was “Forgotten Years” by Midnight Oil, from Blue Sky Mine, which was a record I really like when I was younger.
The song is immensely catchy with great minor keyed jangle and some awesome lyrics. I had it in my head all day.
When I got home, I wanted nothing more than to buy the song, or find it on Rhapsody and play it on my good stereo system.
And so the Odyssey began:
iTunes, didn’t have Blue Sky Mine, nor the track.
Amazon Mp3 Store, didn’t have Blue Sky Mine, nor the track. They only have it covered by a Gangsta Rabbi. No shitting.
The band’s website: no dice.
Columbia or Sony Catalog? Nope.
The band’s site had the video, that was it.
I hunted the Internet up and down, back to front for this song in a format I could get legally. I can’t find it. I refuse to pirate it because you know, I do believe in the value of music and all that.
So in the end, I think I’m going to have to donate money to Peter Garrett’s next political campaign and hope he sends me the CD as a thank you or something. Either that or nag Rick Rubin to get Columbia to rerelease the record in some sort of “Legacy Box Set” or what not on Amazon MP3 Store.
I think its sad that the space between desire and actualization is so frustrating sometimes, especially with music, but lately equally with television, movies and books and even news. We are so used to an “instant on” media-scape, that when something has even a 30 second latency between the thought of “want” and the actualization of “have,” our tendency is to find the shortest path to fulfillment regardless of what that means.
I really wanted to buy, for 99 cents, a track by a band today. I could not do that. I couldn’t even give that band the sync-license fee by playing it on iMeem, LastFM or Rhapsody.
I believe that the ultimate challenge for media providers is to make systems of actualization which narrow the gap from desire to the fulfillment of said desire. The only true way to fight one form of ubiquity is with another form of ubiquity. Unfortunately that concept in theory is easier than in practice, but with the pace of adoption of ultra-highspeed broadband on both home and mobile increases, and the ubiquity of connectivity likewise increases, people are going to find anything less than instant intolerable.
The space between instant and annoying will also narrow, and when it narrows to near 0, those that impose artificial barriers because of poor engineering, bad contracts, in-fighting, politics, stupidity or arrogance will find themselves bypassed in a cliff-effect pattern.
Will you suffer through an experience on an airline site, with slow pages, bad Javascript and what not, or will you go to a more “web++” era site that operates cleanly? Or MLS sites for that matter?
Will you tolerate the awful, heavy-weight, advertisement saturation experience of a newspaper site, or go to Google News?
Will you install Silverlight or go to bittorrent for Olympics clips?
And who will hunt for 6 hours for a track from 1988 and in the end be content with just the video?
Comments 10
I am very much against music piracy and purchase every track legally. And, like you, if something I want is not available for purchase, I generally just suck it up and don’t get it. But in a situation where there is no legal method of getting what you want, I certainly understand where the people who do are coming from.
What’s interesting is how much I’ve been relying lately on iTunes and AmazonMP3. There were a couple albums I wanted for months that were only available on CD’s imported from the UK. A couple years ago that would be no problem. But I’ve been so spoiled by digital music sales that having to buy imported CD’s felt borderline offensive. After months of waiting, though, I ended up just buying them anyway.
In short, when music isn’t available at my fingertips within a few seconds, it almost feels to me like it isn’t available at all. That’s how spoiled some of us are by these services.
Posted 24 Aug 2008 at 9:13 am ¶This articulates the exact same frustration I have had in locating obscure (and sometimes not-so-obscure) media. We have become accustomed to the instant-gratification of services like Amazon and Rhapsody but there are clearly gaping holes in their catalogs.
Maybe it would have been easy for you to find what you are looking for on the seedier side of town, but I applaud you for sticking to your principles and not going there. I have friends who honestly _try_ to do the right thing, but when they run up against a wall as you did they resort to other means to acquire what they want. Unfortunately this blurs our ability to quantify the true demand for legitimate media, but I believe that if the legal selection were larger the aggregate amount of piracy would decline.
Posted 24 Aug 2008 at 4:32 pm ¶One advantage of hard-to-find works on physical media is that you can usually find it for resale. Used CD shops, bookstores, vintage stores, even art auctions fulfill this need. Yet it’s not legal to do so with digital media.
Posted 25 Aug 2008 at 11:53 am ¶Well I can’t buy anything from iTunes here(South Africa) even if I wanted to. Therefore the cd with Blue Sky Mine is sitting hapily in my cd collection….
Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 12:53 am ¶You sir, are an idiot. I googled “Midnight Oil Blue Sky Mine rapidshare” and COULD HAVE (but didn’t
)downloaded the album in 5 minutes on a direct download.
If the band is unwilling to put the album on iTunes for sale or on their own site as a paid download, then they have left you no choice.
What is your problem? You heard it on the radio for free. Do you really believe the RADIO STATION PAID FOR THE ALBUM?
Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 11:45 am ¶actually, moron, the radio station pays everytime they play it.
Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 12:04 pm ¶actually, illiterate, I wrote that the radio station didn’t pay for the album. They pay a royalty for public performance… sharing in the revenue they garner through that public performance. But I can guarantee you they got the album for free.
Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 3:51 pm ¶Ameno - in most cases the radio station gets promo. The copy they play however is usually digitally delivered. Its not the same model at all with radio, or video channels, or itunes, etc.
Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 4:16 pm ¶Having been on both the “content” side and the “digital retail” side of this conversation I support your comment that only ubiquity can fight ubiquity.
You’re a well off, content-employed music lover with deep artistic support mores. Of course you settled for the video. The other 99.9% of consumers would simply take what they want from P2P as they were offered no other choice to satisfy themselves. Particularly the fans under 18.
The labels need to deepen their digital catalogs and lower the barrier (cash grabs) for new business models. This will occur once the “old guard” are stop smarting from the MySpace and YouTube cash flow exclusion, remove their protectionist mandates and endorse more innovation.
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 7:04 am ¶yeah–i’m the gangsta rabbi who covered it -on my 2006 cd ‘jewish pirate’-a charity album-raised hundreds for charity.
i remember ‘forgotten years’ from 1990–16 years before i did it–couldn’t find it anywhere either–sorry if my version was off
Posted 14 Sep 2008 at 2:33 pm ¶Post a Comment