On May 30, 2007, iTunes introduced a new segment of their Apple iTunes store: iTunes plus. This addition to the store currently sells songs from EMI Music that have no restrictions on copying, known as Digital Rights Management (DRM). With the digital revolution has come a battle over technology. While the consumers are benefiting from the wide array of advantages that digital media offers, corporations have implemented an attack plan of conquer and control. Apple's break from DRM technology has put them in the limbo between corporations and consumers and raised questions about the practices of control in the digital world. The introduction of DRM-free technology and other non-standard practices of iTunes will be assessed in terms of its influence on the direction of the digital revolution.
Since the arrival of the digital revolution and the practice of accessing music online, music corporations have slowly been losing their control over the industry. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has valued market distribution over innovation and has now been forced to "reevaluate how they offer their products" since music has become available online (Abbot & Brett, 2003: 6). The control over cultural forms of mass communication is not something new. This turns back to the first demonstrations of elite policing of cultural communication: Carnival in Lyons. After the peasants turned against the elites during Carnival in 1559-1560, the elites withdrew from popular society in order to have control over it (Cruz, Lecture 4/5). As Harbinger argued, this was only the beginning (Cruz, Lecture 4/5). This type of policing is only increasing as the society becomes more modern, capitalist, and technological.
The introduction of mass media became the fight between capitalism and morality. According to the Hypodermic Needle Theory (Cruz, Lecture 4/17), media bypassed institutions and acted on the people directly. This weakened institutions that had traditionally been responsible for socializing people - the family, schools, churches, and etcetera. In a way, technology has now become the socializing institution. For example, the Nickelodeons became censored and were used to help immigrants assimilate into American society and films like Birth of a Nation portrayed a "nationalization of imagery," (Cruz, Lecture 4/19) which not only represented a dominant perspective, but instructed people on "American-ness."
The music industry became part of this new media mass communication and like an institution itself with the establishment of Tin Pan Alley. The record industry asserted control over all types of musical cultural production. In this way, they exhibited the domination model of capitalist modernity, which led to social control (Cruz, Lecture 5/1). The record industry also becomes an institution in the same way that television became an institution - they control what music is produced and not produced and therefore they control what is communicated through records - the presentation and regulation of social norms and the description of social deviants.
It was the digital revolution which disrupted this control, the second feature of capitalist modernity (Cruz, Lecture 5/1). Digital music sharing through Napster disrupted the system of control that the recording industry had established since its early stages. Since this social rupture, the industry has been trying to once again dominate and assert control over the institution of the music industry.
Napster's establishment in the digital revolution created a break in the system of the institution of the music industry that had been in existence since Tin Pan Alley. It enabled people to bypass the regulating intuitions of the music industry and the record labels to obtain music from other users across thousands of miles with relative immediacy. This type of sharing was unprecedented and it "evades the cultural and institutional model of music" (Cruz, Lecture 5/24).
The institution, like with the example of Carnival, reacted by trying to dominate music culture. They imposed rules and regulations on the music consumer, which was not a new idea. Not unlike the radio industry's impositions of rules and regulations in "Toddler" (Barnouw 1975), the industry relied on regulations and corporate control to maintain their position as an institution and a profitable company. The industry used legal means to attempt to control the consumers with 1992's Audio Home Recoding Act and 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Baker 2007).
They were successful in some of their legal battles, but not much improvement has been made in their fight to retain music distributing control. The Supreme Court sided with the music industry in June of 2005 and held Gronkster, the manufacturer of a the peer-to-peer network Morpheus, liable for copyright infringement (Hogge 2006) and succeeded in dismanteling Napster through a series of legal battles (Cruz, Lecture 5/24). With the evolution of music-sharing programs into decentralized severs, it has become harder and harder for the music industry to implement laws against copyright violators. "The fight between internet freedom and intellectual property law - the 'copyfight' - is a never-ending one" (Hogge 2006) and has led the record companies down a trail of lost profits and powerlessness.
It is not just illegal file sharing that has been blamed for the crisis. Interest in the CD as a format for containing music has declined significantly since the introduction of the digital format. The New York Times reported that "CD sales have plunged more than 20 percent this year, far outweighing any gains made by digital sales at iTunes and similar services" (Leeds 2007) and even predicted that Christmas of 2007 would be "the last big holiday season for CD sales" before they become practically, if not entirely, obsolete. The comeback of the single has also been a detriment to the profits of the record companies. Because of easy digital access to single songs, people are choosing 99-cent downloads instead of $15 CDs, which results in much less profit ("Revenge of the Single..." 2007). The record industry hasn't done anything to counter this problem, and if anything, they've contributed to it. Some industry members blame the problem on the lack of creativity and motivation on the part of the music executives to develop talent ("Revenge of the Single..." 2007). If there was any hope at salvaging the industry from its current status, Russ Crupnick, a senior entertainment industry analyst says the corporations "missed the boat" (Leeds 2007). The proposed solution to this problem has been to either break up the "big four" of the music industry to stay afloat or to diversify business so that they are not relying on CD sales or downloads.
But even the industry knew that imposing control through lawsuits, diversifying business, and breaking up companies could not restore their control over the music industry with peer-to-peer networks and BitTorrents still in operation. Their solution was to impose restrictions on every song and piece of media purchased online. Digital Rights Management, coupled with End-User License Agreements and Terms of Service Agreements (Baker 2007) were all employed in hopes of regaining lost control over a run-away market and institution.
iTunes, since its introduction, has attempted to appease consumers and the music industry. Through Apple, iTunes offers consumers a better song quality than illegal downloading programs (Abbot and Brett, 2003) and the opportunity to tag music, create playlists, stream others' music, burn CDs and access and iTunes music store (Voida, Grinter, Ducheneaut, Edwards, and Newman 2005) all without the use of a paid subscription. Apple also promises the corporations of the music industry that their files will be safe from illegal sharing when purchased from the iTunes store. Using DRM protection, iTunes controls how many computers and which type of devices that iTunes store songs can play on (Jobs 2007). DRM can even control how many times a song can be played and on how many computers (Baker 2007). Even with the use of DRM, iTunes attempts to accommodate the customer, providing "the most liberal usage rights available in the industry for legally downloaded music" (Jobs 2007)."
iTunes, led by executive Steve Jobs, is now asking the sociological question - why do customers have limited usage rights? Why is the use of the consumers' property controlled through codes and a system of "secrets" (Jobs 2007)? This fundamental question can change the entire foundation of the music industry as the regulating institution of the mass communication through music. The industry has always relied on controls and rules to regulate through copyrights and protection and the question of these rules can lead to their destruction.
How has iTunes proposed to close the gap between the music companies selling of music and music consumers, who find downloading illegal music files worth the risk? The elimination of Digital Rights Management takes the control away from record companies and eliminates the "secrets." The industry would no longer be able to control the way that consumers are able to use their music. But although the music industry has control what music has been promoted and represented, the imposition of controls the music tracks itself is something new in the digital age.
As Steve Jobs of Apple argues, CDs have no DRM protection on their songs and it is easy for songs from CDs to be uploaded onto computers and shared (Jobs 2007). DRM is not impossible to crack and the amount of time and energy Apple exerts to prevent people who are actually willing to pay for music from sharing that music with friends or putting it on an unauthorized device has negligible benefits for the music industry. Music downloads from online stores still accounts for only one-tenth of the purchased music and only an average of 3% of the music on each iPod is purchased from the iTunes music store (Jobs 2007). Pegoraro reminds us that "some of those users will still take music online without paying for it. DRM has yet to make a meaningful dent in that" (2007). These facts prove that the industry's preoccupation with digital rights is not the solution to the problem of illegal downloading.
Digital Rights Management also interferes with the market structure and prevents a consumer from participating in the capitalist economy. With the use of tangible formats of music such as records or CDs, customers were able to treat music as any other property. Once purchased, the music became their property (it was not still under control of the distributing company or corporation) and they could proceed to sell it, give it away, auction it off, or any other form of market exchange. With the use of DRM and control over digital music, the music industry has interfered with the market and the capitalist societal norms. With DRM, even though a song is purchased, it is still the "intellectual property" of the record company and the way that a consumer can use it is restricted. It cannot be re-used or re-sold. With iTunes plan to discharge the use of digital protection, "music buyers can return to treating their purchases as their propert--reselling as they see fit or passing them on to their heirs" (Pegoraro 2007). This is an important market change and a big advantage to the consumers.
With iTunes giving more and more control back to the consumer, one might ask if they are facilitating the break down in power of the institution of the music industry. If the industry's goal is to regain power over the distribution and capital of the music market, how can this occur with the elimination of rights restrictions? Some people speculate that this would "stoke business at iTunes' competitors and generate a surge in sales" (Leeds 2007) and others say that it's too late to regain the run-away industry--that the years record labels wasted managing rights was time lost generating paying consumers (Leeds 2007). Whether iTunes will be the savior of the industry is yet to be seen, but the use of DRM-free media does defy the current standard.
What is created through the introduction of the digital revolution and the new loss of digital control of music is a more human-driven music industry. As illustrated by the presentation of Jason Bohrer, the artist is able to have control over the distribution, the publicity, the booking and every aspect of the music so that they are free of the corporate control. The consumers are also given more power with the music that they buy. While, with the elimination of DRM, they are able to share songs, the digital format also allows them to tag songs to organize them, manipulate them, duplicate them and "manage and share their media in any number of ways" (Baker 2007). The elimination of DRM can facilitate creativity with the new ability to manipulate tracks in ways that were before suppressed, with the example of Dangermouse (Cruz, Lecture 5/29). This also allows music consumers the freedom of choosing the device on which they desire to listen to music.
This elimination of Digital Rights Management gives consumers a lot of freedom. With the elimination of DRM, the record companies would be no longer in control of the distribution of music. The music, however, still functions as a mass communication of culture--it spreads a cultural message while enforcing norms and illuminating deviants. If the record companies do not have control over the music, who regulates the institution?
DRM-free digital music and the evolution of music into an all-digital process can put the control of the institution into the hands of the consumer, eliminating the corporate sources of power. The consumer has the power to distribute music without the knowledge or consent of the music industry. The consumer then becomes the knowledge producer and distributor, bypassing the systems of regulation and power. The consumers create and regulate the institution. This is would be an extraordinary sociological event.
iTunes understands this call for consumer freedom from the controls and "liberal rights" of the oligopoly of music corporations. From my understanding, it appears that Steve Jobs and the other executives at Apple hope that by catering to the desires of the music consumer, they will gain in business what they lose in file sharing. Whether this is a good move for the music industry as a whole and whether this change in direction from rules and regulation to consumer freedom is the most profitable for the industry remains to be seen, but there aren't many options left to try.
The record companies have been headed in a downward spiral since the digital revolution. With the advent of the internet and the ability to trade music files instantaneously across cyberspace, the industry lost its position as an institution that is able to define norms and socialize through control of the music that is released. With the elimination of the newly-instituted "secrets" that limit the way that consumers use the digital music they purchase, iTunes has given control back to the consumers of music. With the record company's control over the music still declining, the consumers can become the new regulators of their own institution of music. Consumers, in the digital age, can create and manage their own culture in an unprecedented way. And this does not have to end with music. With the break-down of corporate power, consumers can continue to gain control over the institutions and manage their own culture and mass communication in a way that, before the digital revolution, could not even have been conceived.
Works Cited
Abbot, Jon and Wade Brett. 2003. "Legal Downloading Services: A Band-Aid for the Music Industry" FAMU-FSU College of Engineering.
Baker, Tracy. 2007. "Under My Thumb: The War for Control of Your Media."
Smart Computing, July, pp. 33
Hogge, Becky. 2006. "Internet Freedom Comes of Age."
Open Democracy, February 28. Retrieved online on May 29 2007. (www.opendemocracy.net)
Jobs, Steve. 2007. "Thoughts on Music." Apple Inc. Retrieved online on May 13, 2007. (
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/)
Leeds, Jeff. 2007. "Plunge in CD Sales Shakes Up Big Labels."
New York Times May 28. Retrieved online (
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Pegoraro, Rob. 2007. "The Sound of Copy Restrictions Crashing"
The Washington Post, May 17. Retrieved online May 29. (
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051602762.html)
"Revenge of the Single: Digital Tracks Now Dominating the Music Industry"
San Jose Mercury News, May 5, 2007.
Voida, Amy, Rebecca E. Grinter, Nicolas Ducheneaut, W. Keith Edwards, and Mark W. Newman. 2005. "Listening In: Practices Surrounding iTunes Music Sharing"
PAPERS: Personal Technologies, April 2-7
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