When The Music Is Over

“When the music’s over…Turn out the lights.”

—Jim Morrison, The Doors, in the song “When The Music’s Over”

When Prince teamed-up last June with UK’s The Mail newspaper in releasing his Planet Earth album for free to millions of fans, Time Magazine considered it a very good ploy. Good to whom or to what, it is not exactly clear. For certain, record companies were not happy with the Prince move and in fact, one record company executive was so pissed off that he had warned (and perhaps wished) that one day, Prince might just end up being known as “The Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores”, referring in half-jest to the American rockstar’s all too all-too-well-known ploy in the past of not using his known screen name in referring to himself but merely by a symbol he had designed himself and thence was referred only to as “The Artist Formerly Known As Prince” for some time about a decade ago.

Now comes Radiohead with it’s new album release “In Rainbows” being made available online before copies of it would hit record stores shelves (if it would ever will), and guess what, digital version of it could be downloaded starting tomorrow, for everyone to get for “an open price”, where the online customer r customers could decide for themselves on what price to pay. So it’s not so free like that of Prince’s Planet Earth, you might want to ask. It is not. But you got to choose the price, which could be as low as two cents. And that’s virtually free, if you ask me.

Why would a big rock band like Radiohead would do such a thing?

They are a very popular band and have become so rich for that. This perhaps where the answer lies. They could be so rich already that they could afford to do such thing just for fun or for some experimentation. Or perhaps, they just want to thank their fans for making them so rich in the past.

But in general truth, I feel that popular musicians releasing free music online (or virtually free music such as this Radiohead “In Rainbows” album) has become such a gradually descending phenomenon in the international music scene, as a general reaction to the overpowering flow of music file-sharing schemes, which goes on so strongly up to this time despite rigid legal battles that had been waged by big record companies against online file-sharing companies as well as against individuals caught illegally downloading copyrighted materials into their personal computers. Days ago, a Minnesota single-mother was adjudged $220,000 for having been caught with illegal downloads in her PC.

The onset of the digital music, especially in easily downloadable MP3 and MP4 formats has completely changed how music is being sold nowadays, and maybe one day, how music will be made. Perhaps, the days of the CD format music record will be one day gone, sooner than we can ever think, and every music that we ever want and would ever need would be gotten merely from online stores. In our city——small but highly urbanized—-almost all record shops here have closed down, and every music section in department stores and shopping malls has already been scrapped. Such is how music retail has changed so radically in this town as downloading and CD-burning services have started to sprout all over the city. When one wants the latest music, all one has got to do is get to the nearest DSL Internet café and get all the music one wants for a very reasonable price. It is like a buffet table over there. You can eat all you can for one regular price.

Is this good? Is this bad?

For a music lover like me, I like the very salacious idea of having a lot of music in one burned CD for a price so much lower than what I would have gotten if I bought them at record stores. But it’s bad since it would have negative effects for the record music industry, with record stores going bankrupt and becoming a thing of the past, like ice cream parlors and sarsaparilla.

And besides it’s illegal. I do not mean to be hypocritical here and I could not deny that I might have downloaded some of the music I had without paying for it. But what gives. Even if I wanted to pay for it, the record stores here don’t have any new music anymore. Not everyone has a credit card to buy all the music online or a DSL connection to get it through the PC at home.

So where’s music going to in this digital age? I have a feeling that online file sharing schemes would always be an Internet age reality and may not go away completely anymore despite how much the huge record companies are spending in millions to combat and prosecute them. There would always be new ways to download that illegal music copy.

Maybe music artists of today are meant to adjust to the new digital environment anyway. The days of selling millions and millions of albums or CDs through record stores would soon be over. Future record artists would have to find some other way to make real good money. Maybe they need to stage more and more concerts in order to get more and more out of their work. Live concerts or tickets could not in any way be illegally downloaded that’s for sure and they won’t have to worry about Limewire or Bit Torrent putting the ticket concerts for online sharing.

Maybe, music was really like that even in the beginning. Before the phonograph was invented in 1870, one would only be finding music if one gets to the concert or an open field exhibition. No vinyl then, no record tapes, no CDs and for certain, no MP3 players.

Maybe, music is just returning to where it once belongs.

Live and in concert.