Free Music: The MP3 Revolution      The last several years have been a trying time for the world wide community that is known as the Internet. The explosive growth of computer users and the rapid increase in speeds of both the Internet, and the computers that connect to it, has spawned a plethora of applications and formats for the exchange of information. The basis of the Internet is the exchange of information without any geopolitical borders. This model has been the basis of the World Wide Web, Internet Relay Chat, and a host of other public services available to the citizens of the Internet. With this new technology comes a new world of information, as well as a new world of ways to abuse information. Currently one of the hottest topics on the Internet is the debate over the use of mpeg layer-3 audio compression, or "MP3" as it’s most commonly referred to. MP3 defines an algorithm that can compress digital audio data for faster transfer over the Internet and smaller storage requirements. Although MP3 is often implemented for legitimate uses it has also spawned the latest wave of Internet piracy, which is the unauthorized duplicating of intellectual property which is covered by copyright laws in the United States. In response to this latest surge of piracy the major players in the recording industry, primarily the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Broadcasters and Musicians Institute (BMI), have embarked upon major counter-productive campaigns to shut down and prosecute the people who distribute these files. In their attempt to crush the MP3 revolution the recording industry has not done enough to embrace and market this new technology, and by drawing attention to it has thus acted to promote the availability of pirated music on the web, which in turn has done little to stop its explosive growth and acceptance by a demanding public.
     To understand the nature of this witch hunt it is first important to understand the technology itself. The MPEG Layer-3 Audio Compression Project was started in 1987 at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft institute in Germany along with the Moving Picture Experts Group as a way to compress audio for the sound track in digital movies. MP3 allows for up to 112:1 compression ratios with very little loss at lower compression ratios, i.e. under 12:1. In 1997 the MP3 format caught the attention of the Internet and quickly became on of the most abused technologies ever released on the Internet. The possibility of piracy caught the attention of the recording industry early on, but not before thousands of people had already distributed tens of thousands of pirated songs "ripped" from the CD and sent out over the Internet.
     The MP3 revolution has gained interest world wide from both listeners and artists. The lure of MP3 is simple to understand for both parties: free music. While the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) would have you believe that there are no unsigned artists in the world, the fact is that there are many musicians and listeners out there who do not wish to be a part of the large commercial music scene. Anthony Berman, an entertainment lawyer for the firm Idell, Berman & Seitel relates that "[t]he artists see the promise of online delivery as a means to break the stranglehold of a decades-old system in which the creators of the music are lucky to receive ten percent of the sales revenues of the product" (Gross 1). As for the listeners, MP3 offers us the chance to hear those groups which are not found on the store shelves. For every one signed band in a given genre of music there are many unsigned bands who have not been discovered by the labels.
     With the promise of MP3 as a source of unsigned bands to gain fans, and for listeners to expand their musical library, comes the big ugly shadow of abuse. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which is the international sponsor of the RIAA claims that as many as one million copyright protected songs, worth 4.5 billion dollars, have been converted to MP3 format and made public on the Internet (IFPI 1-3). From what I have seen, I can assure you this number is much lower than what is actually available. While this abuse is inevitable however, it is not something that should be dealt with without first considering its possible benefit to the industry. What possible benefits could piracy have for the industry affected? Consider that while piracy will result in a loss, it will also result in a gain as more and more people experience the music free and then decide to buy the album. Christopher Jones, an industry reporter for Wired and Infoweek summarizes this idea nicely in his article "Digital Media is Spinning Towards a Distribution Revolution" written for NewMedia magazine, "[t]hough it’s true that technologies like MP3 are bound to increase the amount of piracy, the question the RIAA and other in the entertainment industries might have to ask is this: Is it better to have a $40 billion business with only 5 percent losses to piracy, or a $100, $200, even $300 billion business with a 10 or 20 percent loss to piracy?" (28). Like many, Jones feels that the RIAA and other major industry players should treat this situation like they did with blank tapes, marketing the benefits of buying the original rather than fight the smaller scale piracy done among friends.
     To really fight piracy and make the large profits mentioned above, the industry needs to focus on and market the many reasons why people would choose to buy an album from a store, even if they can, or already have, download it off the Internet in MP3 format. First and foremost the best reason is quality. Although MP3 files are highly compressed while keeping decent quality, they are not lossless, usually sounding better than a tape, but not as good as a CD. The second reason which comes to mind is the packaging that goes along with a CD. With MP3’s you don’t get a cover, liner notes, and lyrics. Finally, and most importantly to many people, MP3s are not a very portable format, as they require a computer for playback. Although many companies now sell portable playback units, they are expensive and limited in the amount of music they can hold, usually 30-60 minutes.
     The industry, primarily represented by the RIAA and BMI, however was not prepared for this surge of piracy, and has been very slow to respond. Recently they have begun to take action against MP3 pirates, on the grounds of copyright infringement. While that’s fine, they have also gone after legitimate sites and groups for simply being proponents of the MP3 technology. After failing to halt the release the Diamond "Rio," a small lightweight Walkman style MP3 playback device, the RIAA turned to the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). SDMI is a format which is encrypted and requires the listener to connect to a server, and pay for permission to unlock the file for a single or unlimited use. Although it sounds good on paper, SDMI and other pay for play encryption schemes practical implementation by the RIAA will prove more difficult than it’s worth. As John Gilmore, co-founder of the cyber liberties watchdog organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) pointed out at a meeting held earlier this year on the future of the digital music revolution, "industry initiatives such as SDMI often act to restrict free speech by excessively locking up music with technology and laws" (Gross 2). Combine that with the fact that MP3 is an accepted and proven technology, SDMI is going to find it very hard to get a foothold in the world of Internet based digital music distribution.
     So with the foreseeable demise of SDMI looming in the distance, what other options does the industry have? For starters they could embrace the MP3 format and find a way to market it, which is what emusic.com does for the smaller, mainly unsigned artists. This is very effective, and the reasoning behind that is, as an EFF columnist points out is, "given the choice, consumers would choose to purchase music in open formats" (2). As for the lure of artists, EFF also claims that "artists who allowed their work to be distributed in open formats would gain a competitive advantage over artists who locked up their work" (2). Both of these cases have already been proven by sites such as Amazon.com and emusic.com. With emusic.com you can preview songs, download selected tracks for free and if you like the music opt to buy the CD, or just the tracks you want, in MP3 format. On the Amazon website you can preview the first 30-60 seconds of about half the songs on a CD before you buy it. Being that Amazon.com is currently the largest retail distributor of music, one can not question that free mp3 previews has been a major benefit for them.
     So what does the future hold? As for me, I believe that MP3 will become obsolete within a year, replaced by a new, higher quality encoding scheme, which of course will only make it harder for the RIAA to battle. As for the future of piracy, I would keep an eye on the motion picture industry. Already many of this years block busters such as "Star Wars Episode One: the Phantom Menace" and "The Matrix" were available on the Internet weeks before they were in theaters. Although movies over the Internet right now are low quality, they will only continue to get better, and even now many people are willing to settle for lower quality in the never ending pursuit of something for nothing. The only way anyone is going to stop digital piracy in the Information Age is to reconsider the current marketing and delivery of content. For too long people have put up with high prices and poor service. Without accepting and finding a way to effectively market these new forms of digital distribution, the media giants are in for a rough future.



Works Consulted Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF: Digital Audio and Free Expression. May 1999 Electronic Frontier Foundation website 11 Nov. 1999 http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/Audio/EFF_audio_statement.html
Gross, Robin D. Swedish Court Exonerates Teen of Internet Music Piracy. 15 Sep 1999 Electronic Frontier Foundation website 11 Nov. 1999 http://www.eff.org/cafe/gross3.html
Gross, Robin D. Chuck D Challenges RIAA and SF Attorneys Over MP3. 7 Dec. 1998 Electronic Frontier Foundation website 11 Nov. 1999 http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/Audio/challenge.html
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Music Industry Announces Global Crackdown on Internet Pirates. 20 Oct. 1999. MP3.com 3 Nov. 1999 http://www.mp3.com/news/412.html
Jones, Christopher. "Digital Media is Spinning Towards a Distribution Revolution." NewMedia June 1999: 27-34.