iTunes, Not Tunez

Apple is crowing that they've sold 25 million downloaded songs through their iTunes Music Store since it opened in April (to Mac users only at first, and to Windows 2K/XP users just recently). At nearly a buck a piece (an album of 12 songs usually sells for $9.99, making the per-song price a little cheaper than buying them at 99 cents each), that's close to 25 megabucks in retail sales. (Of course a lot of that is passed on to the record companies that own the music, so it's not all cabbage for Apple.)

I'm glad to see this, because it restores some of my faith in the willingness of the public to actually pay for "creative content" rather than just ripping it off.

I'm something of a born-again copyright believer. In high school and college I routinely made my own copies of friend's LPs or movies I rented. As I started working, and could afford to spend more money on entertainment, I bought more stuff legitimately, but when the opportunity to dupe a movie or CD came along, I still took advantage of it.

Then something happened which changed my attitude. Some friends of mine were a band with a local fanbase, and started recording an album. They were all still starving college students, and I had a full-time job, so I loaned them the money they needed to pay off the recording studio, then did the legwork and spent the money to get the album published. I was a record label.

The shoe was on the other foot. I wasn't an actual member of the band, but I'd been there while they worked at recording their music. So I understood that every unauthorized dupe of the band's new album represented several dollars that weren't coming back to me any time soon. I wasn't in it for the money (I didn't charge the guys interest on the loan, and the contract I'd written for the album production stipulated that I wasn't entitled to profits - if any - from it) but I did want to get my money back.

Some years later, I wrote some software which I made available online as shareware, and that strengthened my discomfort with bootlegging. Programming is work, and the person who does it deserves to be compensated for it. I think that anyone who has actually produced anything worth ripping off can understand what it's like to have that happen to him. (Writing free software to give away as open-source code is another matter. That's a choice that benevolent hackers make, rather than bootleggers making that choice for them.)

From then on, bootlegging just didn't feel right, so I stopped doing it. I try not to be too moralistic about it, because I know that it's a lot easier when you have enough money to easily afford the stuff you want... and I did. But when I "fell on hard times" (as they say) several years ago, I still stuck to my principles. I cut way back on my music purchases, stopped buying movies altogether, and became very selective about buying software. I started taking greater advantage of educational discounts (since I'd gone back to school) and freely licenced software, but the bottom line was that I stuck to the letter of the terms offered. And I quietly squirmed as the "file sharing" phenomenon took off. Unlicenced unauthorised downloads of warez, tunez, vidz, etc. suddenly became commonplace.

There was nothing new about people letting their friends copy their legally-acquired music. But now their "friends" had come to include "anybody on the internet". And people started acting as if they were entitled to make copies of whatever recordings they wanted. To which I say, "bull shit". If you didn't create it, it's not yours. You can't "share" something that doesn't belong to you in the first place. People try to justify it by saying that they're stealing from the evil record labels, but that's missing the point. The evil record labels then respond by giving the artists even less money, so it's not just the RIAA that gets hurt.

The RIAA has resisted the idea of making music available for downloading, and I can actually understand that. It just makes it that much easier for the bootleggers to "share" that music with 6 billion of their close personal friends. The RIAA insisted that people wouldn't pay to download music (because we'd gotten too used to stealing it for free), and I was afraid they were right. But Apple has put together a large enough selection of music, really easy tools for browsing and buying it, and reasonable usage rights (you can transfer the songs to three of your computers, to unlimited iPods, and/or burn them to unlimited CDs for personal use). It's a hit, and now everyone and his brother is rushing to set up their own online music store. (To be fair, a few of them were there before Apple.)

As much as I like Apple, I'm glad they're getting more competition. Right now Apple is considered THE online music store, and that kind of market dominance is never a Good Thing. My main concern is that Apple and its rivals will compete by locking in exclusives, which is just another way of saying "narrower monopolies". I also think they (Apple and the others) need to keep working on enhancing their selection; as I browsed the iTunes store to see if I could fill some holes in my collection (from the lean years), I found gaping holes in their catalog. And an iTunes for Linux would be nice.