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 June 15, 2005 The Sound of Freedom The tentacles of technological change spread in many directions, but almost all of the developments of the past few decades have had one thing in common: they increase the consumer’s ability to choose what and when he will watch or listen to.The VCR, for example, freed viewers from rigid network TV programming, both by allowing them to time-shift regular shows, and by letting them rent or buy programming the broadcasters didn’t choose to air. The personal digital video recorder now takes that process a step further. It’s perhaps not surprising that the entertainment conglomerates hate this, as it reduces their ability to dictate how we are entertained and how they can profit from it, but many of the things they have feared have turned out to be extremely profitable for them. As the technology has permitted it, the public has demanded its right to choose, sometimes in spectacular ways. As a child of the 1950s, my early record-buying involved mostly 45rpm singles (and even some 78s). That was partly a matter of cost, but mostly it was a matter of choice. The freedom to buy songs one at a time was vastly preferable to being forced to buy a dozen cuts to get one that I liked. There was a chance that the same flexibility might have been offered by the compact disc, in the form of the 3" CD, which could have functioned as a 45-like single. But although the record companies initially pushed for the small disc, they abandoned it almost immediately in favor of full-length CDs. Certainly there have been some CD singles on 5" discs, but these are rarities; mostly we have to buy the full disc to get what we want. Many music fans have very vocally refused to do that, and have turned to downloading songs from the Internet, one at a time. At first, with things like the original Napster, the music was free, and there is still a lot of free downloading going on. But listeners have proved quite willing to pay to get just the music they want. In many cases, if you were to download all the tracks on a particular CD at a buck a pop, you’d be better off buying the disc. This is one of the arguments for relatively unrestricted downloading, which allows potential CD buyers to sample individual songs before laying out the cash for an entire album. Eventually, the record companies will realize that the downloading of music can be their most effective marketing tool. The practice will not go away; music buyers will continue to insist on freedom of choice, and the record companies will undoubtedly find a way to accommodate them. It should be sooner rather than later. …Ian G. Masters
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