It's a small world afterall

It's an incredibly small world. I know I've told several people (but haven't talked much on my blog) that I was adopted, and I met my birth mother (Jeanie) for the first time last year up in Anchorage where she lives. On top of that, she had two daughters, Kate and Eli, who would be my half sisters.

So I talked to Jeanie on Saturday for a bit. A friend of Kate's from high school got married, so Kate and Eli were up in Anchorage. A lot of Kate's friends from high school were there for it, and so on one night, Jeanie had all the friends over at the house, much like they did in high school (although they had beer now!), had a bonfire in the pit in the back, made smores, etc. So Kate's friend from high school was looking at pictures and saw the one of the four of us sitting together from my visit. Kate's friend said "I know that guy!" Kate had told him about the story of her mother giving up a son for adoption, and that she met her now half-brother who's living in San Francisco. As it turns out, Kate's friend (I'm blanking on his name) came out a few years ago and moved to San Francisco. And as it turns out, he's actually a friend of a friend, and yes, I've seen him several times. (He's cute too! :-) ) A friend of mine from the East Bay is in The City this week dog sitting for a friend, so we went out to the Lone Star Sunday afternoon, and Kate's friend came up to me and introduced himself. It's actually funny because he had a full beer in his hand and as he tried to tap my arm, part of the beer spilled on my sleeve. Not knowing him (we'd never actually been introduced), I was half tempted to wipe it on him for spilling it on me! :-) Then he introduced himself and I stopped myself! :-)

Small world, huh?

The death of an era?

There was some irony in the last few days. Last week, the Supreme Court announced that software companies could be held liable for the mass copyright infringement done by it's users. The move came as a surprise, in direct opposition of the Betamax decision of the 1980s. The court cited that while there could be legitimate uses for peer-to-peer software, the predominate use of it was illegal, and therefore the software creators could be held liable for it.

This is something that I've always had a personal feeling for, as I'm a fan of dance music, one of two genres that have been traditionally very underrepresented in mainstream music markets (rap being the other). In the past, I simply could not get (legal or otherwise) most of the music that I was interested in. Much of the music I wanted was only available on "For Promo Only" 12" records. Note that "For Promo Only" means they don't sell it to anyone at any price. You basically hope you're on the promo list to get one, or illegally purchase one from someone who is. I refuse to believe that a company can claim they were harmed at all when they weren't selling a product to begin with.

In the pre-peer-to-peer world, I would spend weekends just shopping, hopping from store to store, hoping they had the music I was looking for. All too often, I'd walk out empty-handed, except for a full wallet wanting to spend it on the music I wanted.

Jump forward to Napster. It was an amazing boom. For the first time ever, so much of the music I wanted was available to me, period. Forget paying for it, I could get it at all. Not only current music, but years and years worth of music that I'd been searching for, finally I could get to it. I compiled a CD of disco music for a friend of mine who moved to SF in the 70s. It moved him so much, it brought a tear to his eye, flooding back memories of "back in the day." And not only published music, but tons of unpublished stuff, stuff one DJ in Nebraska had mixed on his own, or New York, or California. Or me.

So for the first time, I could mix together whatever music I wanted.

Jump forward to today. After getting tired of the current CD in my car, I put in "The House That Cosmic Disco Built," a CD I mixed together from music at that time. It still gives me goosebumps. Friends have called it the best CD of all time, "74 minutes of pure esctasy," and bow before me for a copy. And while I mixed the songs together, half of the tracks are not available for purchase. One of the tracks was a remix of "Move Any Mountain", by The Shamen. The original was done in 1991. In addition to the remixes, there were a series of individual tracks separated out with the titles "Mix It Your Damn Self." Someone unknown did exactly that, and it's the mounting finale of the amazing CD.

And I would have gladly paid artists for use of the songs, had they let me. But just like the Soviet Union of the 1980s, in the complete absense of a legal method of purchasing anything, a black market will form. In essence, that's exactly what happened.

Moving forward to today, I buy most of my music on iTunes. The idea of getting in my car, going to the mall, spending half a day in a store to hope to buy music I can't preview, only to walk out disappointed, I find absolutely appauling. And yet, I still can't buy all my music that way. Any music service has only a subset of the music available. Just as I wouldn't have gone to a Sony store, plus a Warner Brothers store, plus a Atlantic Records store (etc., etc.), why would I go to all these different services to get the music I want?

Shawn Fanning, the original creator of Napster, is attempting to create a clearinghouse for music, that combines all music services into a one stop shop. And yet, an underground is still formed. Those DJs from Nebraska (or New York, or California, or me) have no forum to publish their music and their mixes, even if most of the royalties go to the original artist. Same goes for the garage band trying to get a start.

I'm 100% for supporting artists. I'd gladly pay $0.99/track for every track I downloaded then, more for some. (In the day, it wasn't uncommon for me to pay $9.99 for a single 12", although at that price I would have been much more dilligent.) But I think the music industry misses the boat entirely when they assume everyone wants music for free. Everyone just wants music, regardless of the price. What is gone is the days of thinking people will just go back to hoping and praying their local music store has it, and paying $18 a CD when they want one track. (At the beginning of the peer-to-peer software, one statistic said that up to 60% of people who walk into a music store with a certain album in mind, and walk out empty handed because they didn't have it.) It seems like ancient history by comparison.

Besides, peer-to-peer is far from perfect. Much of the time you have no idea what you're getting, what the quality is like, and downloads can take forever, depending on the source. Compare to iTunes, when a full song can download in less than a minute. Still, only a fraction of the music I want is available on it.

But if you can't buy it, people will find a way to get it, whether they pay for it or not. I think the music industry should work to find a legal way for everyone to get (and pay for) the music they want, rather than spending all their time on suing everyone. Supoenas were never a great way to build a market.