Pop will eat itself

There was an enormous whoop of panic in the music industry this week when online music provider QTrax announced that it was not only going to provide free downloads, but had several major record labels signed up the service with up to 25 million songs on tap. The story was reported in The Times (London), appearing on page 3 of the paper version, and also making a few waves on the BBC news website.

QTrax had apparently blown 500,000 sheets (sterling) on a glitzy launch for champagne quaffing Cannes Film Festival goers, announcing that the artists would recieve their dues by way of advertising revenue generated from the site.

By Tuesday, common sense finally prevailed amongst the dervish-like hype surrounding what at face value seemed to be a final nail in the coffin of traditional music supply. Oddly reminiscent of the launch of 1994's Rise Of The Robots, QTrax had inflated news of Warner, EMI, Sony etc's participation in talks for the venture as full blown commitment to the service. Needless to say, this had all been quashed by Tuesday.

This latest chapter in the music industry's slow suicide is just another indication that not only have the big providers totally failed to grasp changes that the internet has made to the way we consume media, but that the product they're selling is increasingly commercialised, artisically compromised and culturally bankrupt - and that consumers are getting wise to the fact.

If you think I'm wallowing in schadenfreude, you'd be quite right.

My considerable irk at the music industry comes from my early CD buying experiences, when I first got the disposable income to go to HMV and blow a day's wages on the music of the day. Nowadays, traditional retailers are slashing prices to get people through the doors, but back in those days it was perfectly normal to pay £12.99 for a first-week-of-release CD. If you wanted listen to something a bit more select, prices would be ramped up to £15.99, presumably because you were more likely to have decided before getting in the shop that you wanted it and would cough up the extra coins they were unexpectedly charging when you saw it on the shelves. Let's face it, if you'd had your heart set on Generation Terrorists by the Manic Street Preachers, you were unlikely to get back on the bus empty handed for the sake of a couple of quid.

Being a serious music fan, I spent a lot of money on overpriced albums only to find out that the only decent tracks were the ones I'd already heard, or that there were no decent tracks at all, and that I'd only bought it on the recommendation of some self serving dopehead monthly music journalistic who'd drawn a parallel between Primal Scream's Vanishing Point and Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On.

If the cynical overpricing of so-called 'serious' music was letting down the credible side of the medium, the twin evils of the NME's hegemonic grasp of the weeklies (following the demise of Melody Maker), and the beginning of Pop Stars/Pop Idol/X-Factor's poisonous run in 2000 meant that both indie and mainstream pop were ineffably compromised. With the mainstrem media and the once credible music press on their side, it was all looking good for the music industry.

Of course, they'd failed to reckon with the internet. Even in my darkest moments, my faith in humanity is restored by the human race's ability to triumph in adversity, and the whole try-before-you-buy concept of piracy is our biggest weapon against the forces enticing us to buy unimaginative and exploitative music, recommended by advertorial writing sycophantic journalists and celebrity radio disc-jockeys.

Being honest, I'll admit to scamming a fair bit of music off the internet for an 18 month period earlier on this decade. It was in the days of dial-up, and my crimes were nowhere near as serious as I could commit with my broadband connection. But I look at this philosophically. On the 17th March 2003, I deprived Kelly Osbourne of whatever she got for Shut Up, but I actually saved myself a tenner because the song was rubbish and I only would have found that out if I'd coughed up the dough for the album - and then it would have been the record company who 'd exploited me. However, Elton John, Eminem, Michael Jackson, Rammstein, Electric Six and even Kelly's dad DID subsequently get paid following a cheeky download from Kazaa.

Anyway, it's time to get back to my original point about QTrax. It might have blown up spectacularly in their faces, but the cowardly abandonment by the majors shows that they're still not ready to embrace the new age. If they want to save their skins, they're going to have to start backing artists instead of products, and realise that when people buy an album, they want twelve good tracks, not four singles and eight slices of white bread.

It depends if QTrax recover from their ineptitude, or if someone else learns the mistakes and finds a new way forward. It's as clear an indication that the days of exploitation of consumers AND artists by the music industry does seem to slowly be coming to an end.

Whatever happens, I hopefully won't be buying Ta-dah by the Scissor Sisters again.