The Digital Music Era, Part one

So, here we are, at the beginning of the digital of the digital music era. I say beginning because we have, quite obviously, passed the dawn, which saw the birth of file sharing and Digital Audio Players. However we still have many hardships to pass. Namely the concept of Digital Rights. Who owns the music, who controls the music, how much should a user pay for it, and what rights do they have over that purchased music.

Let's start with that last point. What do we, as the consumer, have as rights in terms of what we can do with the music that we purchased? For example, when we would be to buy a CD or vinyl record, we can resell it should we loose interest in that music. With online music, however, we cannot resell that music, at least not with the current state of DRM technologies. However, the music purchased online does in fact hold an advantage. The problems with store bought music is that you may not like all the song presented on the album, and that if you accidentally wreck that CD, you are not entitled to a free, or reduced cost replacement, whilst with online music, there are no adverse legal implications to backing up one's music. This is why I use a combination of Napster To Go and Puretracks to fill my Zen Micro.

On the other hand, there are no adverse effects of backing up your music to your hard drive in Canada. At least not yet. Certain corporate identities are lobbying the government, and there is a new law being read by our parliament that would restrict our use of media that we have bought and want to either make a backup copy, or have another copy so that you could have one for your car, home stereo and such. A petition to stop this from happening is also being put forward. a link is available in my previous post. When you buy music, you should be able to do with it what you want as long as it remains in your possession, and that no copies should be made for other people outside your family. If you resell the music, all copies should go to the buyer, or the extras should be destroyed.

Who owns the music? We, the consumer, do not. Like PC software, we have a sort of license that allows us to enjoy the music. Sadly though, many artists and bands do not own the music either. Often, it is the recording label that the band or artist has a contract with. What this means is that the label dictates the cost of the album, what kind of air time it gets, and how much the artist gets per CD sale. It also hampers the artist's ability to leave that label, and join another one, or to sell and distribute their music themselves. Truly this is a problem, as I feel that the only owners of the copyright, and therefore the original material, should be the person or people that created it, and it should be they who choose the price of their music, alongside an entity to make sure that prices do not get to high.

Well this is all or this post. I need to get to sleep, more parts of this to come later.

--the_sidewinder
(Song of the day: Flower by Moby, on the album Play, The B Sides)