Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

News flash: Led Zeppelin have given the green light to allow their entire back catalog, along with a new anthology and a remixed The Song Remains The Same soundtrack, to be on all legal digital download services, including iTunes. Just in time for their (alleged) one-off reunion show, too, and a smart move on Jimmy Page’s part.

Meanwhile, my mother was complaining to me the other night that Bob Seger’s few digital offerings (Night Moves and his most recent album) disappeared from iTunes entirely. Seger allegedly doesn’t want people to download individual songs anymore, just his full albums, and I am presuming that Apple balked. Any artist that doesn’t allow their music to be available as legal downloads should just have their CDs and vinyl taken out of print. Seger doesn’t seem to grasp the reality that not everybody wants to have to pay for an entire album just to get one or two songs - iTunes’s “Complete My Album” policy for those wanting to take the rest of the plunge be damned.

The recent – and admittedly, controversial and questionable ruling – against a Minnesota woman accused by the RIAA of using Kazaa to file share songs (over $9,200 a song for 24 songs was the “judgment”) seems to have riled up a certain segment of the music-listening populace. That particular part of the populace believes that recorded music should NEVER be paid for.

Excuse me?

The typical refrain from these people. “Don’t pay for recorded music – download it for free instead. If you want to support an artist, go see their live shows and buy a T-shirt from them.”

Wonderful utopian fantasy, huh? Do these people get their food and utilities for free? How about the computer that they use to download music? Can any rational person reading this say TOTAL AND COMPLETE COPOUT?

“But, dude,” these people will say, “it doesn’t matter – the artists don’t get paid by the labels anyway.” or “The artists have enough money.”

Oh, now you want to talk money, huh? Well, here’s a real-life economy lesson:
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The music industry, inside and out, is agog about Radiohead’s plan to release their forthcoming CD, In Rainbows, on their own through their own website, as a digital download next Wednesday and as a box set with both the CD and 2xLP versions of the album and a bonus CD on December 10th. The files will be DRM-free audio files – presumably a high-quality MP3 format between 192 and 320 kbps, although in my opinion, their best bet would be as a CD-quality variable-bit-rate MP3 (which is the exact format eMusic.com uses). They’ve done their time with Capitol/EMI and want to play by their own rules now. The top rule of their new playbook is allowing fans to set their own price for the download-only version (diehard Radiohead fans will no doubt shell £40 – about $80 US – for the CD/2xLP “Discbox”). This is the biggest risk of all because there will be those people who will set a price of zero - or try to. (Since the site is based in Britain and goes by pounds sterling, I placed an order for the download only, setting a price of £5, or $10 US – the equivalent of buying a full album on iTunes; every order has a 45p fee attached no matter how much of an advance donation the customer provides.)
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