Company Mission Statement: The Serenity Prayer
When I first got to college, Napster was all the rage. It was around that time that Lars Ulrich came out and started publicly deriding the company for letting people download their music, or the music of any other artist, without their consent and without paying for it. At the time, I heard the question a lot: "Is it wrong to download music?" I didn't realize it at the time, but this was the wrong question. It was, at best, a distraction.
Lars and the rest of his Metallica buddies didn't read their history books. When the radio first became widespread in the 1920's and 30's, the music industries faced a similar panic. Suddenly, people had a device in their homes that would allow them to get music streamed to them invisibly through the air. Predictably, the companies producing hard copies of music were worried this would dampen sales. They started putting a sticker on their music: "NOT FOR RADIO BROADCAST". They fought the legality of broadcasting their music in court. Legally, they lost the battle in a Supreme Court ruling.
What they didn't realize until a little later was that the radio, as a platform, was actually the best promotion tool to come along in years. It was the best possible way to get new music in front of an audience, increasing exposure and potentially increase the sale of hard copies of music.
First takeaway: popular technology is riddled with inevitability. After the Napster floodgates were opened, it was naive to think they could be litigated shut again.
The world is much different now than when the radio first came onto the scene, and things are changing much quicker than they were back then. My brother plays bass in a band, and given the current state of the music industry, it's unlikely that he's going to be "discovered" by a music industry executive anytime soon. Is this a tragedy? Hardly. He's a smart kid, and he (and others like him) are going to figure out how to leverage the world as it is to pave success for themselves.
Borders is slowly bleeding to death in public as e-readers seem to be taking over the market. Does this mean that bibliophiles (like moi) aren't going to a physical location to spend money on books? The independent bookstores that have been cowering in the shadows for the last 10 or 20 years now have to plot their next move.
Watching movies is a good deal more comfortable at home, and with the technology now, the quality is comprable. Just because you have a large screen, projector, and a movie that I won't be able to buy on DVD for another few months is no reason for me to pay 10 dollars. (But: I do have 10 dollars to spend on something more compelling.)
The radio is a reality. Fight it at your peril.
Lars and the rest of his Metallica buddies didn't read their history books. When the radio first became widespread in the 1920's and 30's, the music industries faced a similar panic. Suddenly, people had a device in their homes that would allow them to get music streamed to them invisibly through the air. Predictably, the companies producing hard copies of music were worried this would dampen sales. They started putting a sticker on their music: "NOT FOR RADIO BROADCAST". They fought the legality of broadcasting their music in court. Legally, they lost the battle in a Supreme Court ruling.
What they didn't realize until a little later was that the radio, as a platform, was actually the best promotion tool to come along in years. It was the best possible way to get new music in front of an audience, increasing exposure and potentially increase the sale of hard copies of music.
First takeaway: popular technology is riddled with inevitability. After the Napster floodgates were opened, it was naive to think they could be litigated shut again.
The world is much different now than when the radio first came onto the scene, and things are changing much quicker than they were back then. My brother plays bass in a band, and given the current state of the music industry, it's unlikely that he's going to be "discovered" by a music industry executive anytime soon. Is this a tragedy? Hardly. He's a smart kid, and he (and others like him) are going to figure out how to leverage the world as it is to pave success for themselves.
Borders is slowly bleeding to death in public as e-readers seem to be taking over the market. Does this mean that bibliophiles (like moi) aren't going to a physical location to spend money on books? The independent bookstores that have been cowering in the shadows for the last 10 or 20 years now have to plot their next move.
Watching movies is a good deal more comfortable at home, and with the technology now, the quality is comprable. Just because you have a large screen, projector, and a movie that I won't be able to buy on DVD for another few months is no reason for me to pay 10 dollars. (But: I do have 10 dollars to spend on something more compelling.)
The radio is a reality. Fight it at your peril.