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At Issue
Philadelphia Freedom – Coming to A Computer Near You
Tuesday, May 6, 2003
From time to time, in my other life as a writer/agricultural economist, I'm asked to speak to various groups. So I'm very used to being "on stage". It doesn't happen that often, which means either one of two things. Either I'm a very boring speaker (probably) or folks pick me as their last resort. (Yep, probably)Whatever it is, you couldn't take it away from me last Saturday night. I was "on stage" with both Elton John and Billy Joel at the Palace of Auburn Hills in Auburn Hills, Michigan. No, I wasn't feeling any Philadelphia freedom and no, I'm no "piano man", but there I was three rows up, just behind the two artists, "face to face."
This is no joke. No, I wasn't right on stage, but I was so close, only 25 feet separated me from both Billy Joel and Elton John. That's what my "behind the stage" ticket got me. I found myself placed in such a way that it felt like I was performing with Elton and Billy. What they saw and felt, I did too. The energy on that stage was incredible. Being at its crucible, only made it more intense.
At its most intense time, you could see the crowd ready to explode. Elton and Billy took 90-minute turns entertaining the audience. At the beginning and end of the evening they appeared together. As they played, the music intensified until it exploded into a crescendo of screams and applause. And there I was, right at its centre lapping it all up.
It was a once in a lifetime experience. Billy Joel and Elton John have toured before. They make up a very potent tandem on today's concert scene. Instead of fighting each other for CD sales, a few years ago they teamed up for this lucrative tour style. Last Saturday night, the place was packed with backslapping, beer buying, and souvenir scarfing music fans. Being an agricultural economist, I couldn't keep myself from counting all the money that was being made.
It surely would be quite a sum. But the music business is changing for everyone, including Elton and Billy. Those rabid fans in front of us last Saturday have been increasingly satisfying their music appetite by downloading music off the internet. Elton and Billy are probably still making out OK, but everybody else underneath them sees it as dollars lost. The music industry is looking at ways of fighting back.
A novel way of doing that was launched last week by Apple computer. Steve Jobs, Apple's cofounder and chief executive, stood up as he has many times and announced Apples' new iTunes Music Store. The store charges 99 cents per song, plus local sales tax, and $9.99 for most albums. It lets Mac OS X users in the United States shop from a catalogue of 200,000 songs in AAC (Advanced Audio Encoding) format, with fewer restrictions than usual. Purchased songs can be burned to CD as often as desired, transferred to an unlimited number of Apple iPod music players, and copied to two other Macs.
For those of you who believe in Bill Gates and his Windows operating system, there are other on-line music services like EMusic, Vivendi Universal (www.emusic.com): MusicNet on AOL, MusicNet (AOL keyword: MusicNet): MusicNow, FullAudio (www.musicnow.com): Pressplay, Pressplay () and Rhapsody, Listen.com (). It is in its infancy, but surely this represents the future of the music industry.
For those of you who say it's no different than the days of using cassette tapes, think again. As computer users, you all know digital is digital, and at this point in time, there is nothing better. Copying to cassettes was an exercise in lost quality. Today with our high-powered computers and CD/DVD burners, you're only a mouse click away from hearing what you want to hear for free.
But of course that's not what all these new services are about. They are about artists making money from their work and at the same time, consumers getting value for their money. From a Canadian perspective, it gets even more complicated. For years, our federal government has subsidized Canadian music by requiring Canadian radio stations to play a certain percentage of Canadian music, which doesn't necessarily mean Celine Dion. Sorting that out in our new digital world, will surely keep some bureaucrats busy.
But in the meantime, think of Elton, Billy, Mick and David Bowie. They are great artists, ones that have transcended time. They are in their 50's and 60's. They made their money the traditional way starting at a time when computers were science fiction. It's hard to say how they'd do if the current music "fiscal environment" was there when they were young. It is a brave new world. We can only hope it continues to spawn new talent.
Philip Shaw, farms 830 acres near Dresden, Ontario. He holds a Masters of Agricultural Economics and Business Degree from the University of Guelph and is a well-known commentator on agricultural issues in print, on radio and over satellite in Canada and the United States. In the Chatham-Kent Times, Phil will use his frank and forthright writing style to address political and economic issues from the local to the international stage. He is a keen observer of political life at all levels, reads widely and has travelled the world to gather fodder for his column. See what's At Issue this week.
