Not that this is a big shock or anything, but I download music pretty much all the time.
So when I heard that MTV was going to step into the MP3 retailing ring today, ready to face off Rocky-style with Apple’s iTunes, I was intrigued.
The iTunes service is the defending champ of downloading songs, with sales in the stratosphere and instant recognition thanks to the deservedly ubiquitous iPod. Would this be a “Thrilla in Manila” or a just million-dollar boo-boo?
The new service is called Urge, and it joins the other 5 million or so downloading services competing for your hard-earned 99 cents.
Aside from the juggernaut that is iTunes (“Don’t know they who I am?”), there’s Rhapsody, eMusic and the reformed Napster, which now offers MP3s for free – at least until you listen to them five times.
It would be one thing if these services were competing record stores (although Los Angeles shops haven’t been doing so hot lately). The problem is that each of the various shops has access to different music – and all of it comes in different formats.
Want to download Radiohead on iTunes? Sorry, no can do. And good luck finding The Beatles.
Even when you’ve got what you want (acoustic Avril Lavigne sessions in my case), you have to deal with proprietary file types.
If you’re using a subscription service and cancel it, the songs will just stop working. The buy-once iTunes tracks are AACs, not MP3s – meaning they’ll work with iTunes, but not much else.
Assuming you do decide to get some tracks, you’re paying for an inferior product. The act of creating an MP3 from an album track shrinks the file size, causing a reduction in quality.
At high enough bit rates, it’s virtually impossible to tell the difference, but at the pretty mediocre encoding rate of 128 kilobytes per second, what you can buy from iTunes is much lower quality than what you can find for free (albeit illegally) elsewhere.
So back to Urge. It’s a bit of a new direction for MTV, including writing and recommendations from Internet indie luminaries such as Matthew Perpetua, the writer of Fluxblog. Like iTunes, Urge will offer exclusive content (gleaned from past MTV performances). But unlike iTunes, the songs won’t play on your iPod.
This is thanks to Urge being a collaboration with Microsoft likely intended to topple Apple’s stranglehold over the downloadable music industry.
Great idea, fellas. Except that selling tracks I can’t put on my iPod is like making CDs that won’t play on a Walkman.
On one level, this is all the fault of the Recording Industry Association of America. Many indie labels, from well-known companies such as Anti- (home to Elliott Smith and Neko Case) and Sub Pop Records (The Shins, Iron and Wine) to tinier outfits like Team Love Records, offer high-quality sample MP3s on their sites.
In Team Love’s case, the latest Jenny Lewis release can be downloaded in its entirety for free.
While this embracing of technology has helped spearhead the increased prominence and popularity of non-major label artists, the big labels are as far behind as ever.
If the so-called Big Four (formerly the Big Five – and more accurately the Big Three, unless EMI has a new Coldplay album coming down the pipe) ever put their gray-haired heads together and talked the thing over, they’d realize they’ve been shooting each other in the face with full-on hunting rifles. Dick Cheney’s got nothing on these guys.
In all seriousness, how hard would it be for the industry to digitize every album and offer standardized, no-strings-attached MP3s?
It’s not like thousands of college students aren’t downloading them anyway, so why not provide a legal, legitimate alternative.
The newfound availability of older, out-of-print albums would be pure profit for the labels, and putting a high-quality product on the market might actually cut down on illegal downloading.
I mean, no offense guys, but I only want my MTV if I can put it on my iPod and listen to it as many times as I want.
Greenwald has 99 problems but downloading music ain’t one. E-mail him at dgreenwald@media.ucla.edu.