This week’s reading: Burnett & Marshall, Chapters 8 and 9 and Conclusion; Borgmann, Introduction and Part 1
Borgmann’s reading this week promises to grow into a rigorous information-science foundation in which to root information architecture, and next week I’ll begin examining the conjunction of his work with IA. For this week, though, I can’t resist the provocations of Burnett and Marshall as they describe the distinctive characteristics of the online music industry. Since they wrote too early to see the evolution of the iTunes music store, I’ll apply some of their ideas to iTunes and see if any characteristics of online music consumers can be extrapolated.
Burnett and Marshall sum up their critique of the music industry’s response to Napster in three points (p. 193). The first and second are closely related: they are the industry’s underestimation of the impact of the Internet on their business, and the studios’ choice to see MP3 and Napster as threats and not opportunities. Both points exemplify a mistaken and unprofitable philosophy of change: “How can we continue to do business as usual as everything changes around us?” Studios, like other businesses (and like libraries), ought instead to have asked, “How can we stand at the vanguard of this change and be ready when mainstream consumers demand digital services?”
The studios never did develop their own business model to deal with MP3s; other entrepreneurs did it for them. KaZaA, YouTube, and the Pirate Bay have each tolerated or encouraged widespread piracy in their attempts to develop commercial models that would flout the studios entirely. Pandora, Rhapsody, iTunes, and others have taken a different tack, negotiating with studios for the right to play or out-license their songs legally. Stores like iTunes have effectively stepped into the digital niche of the physical retailer, doing the work of salesmanship while artists and studios produce new work to license.
Why iTunes took so long to appear on the music scene is a question that would consume a much longer paper than this weekly response. In large part, however, the answer must be that studios hoped that the Internet and its challenges would go away and leave them to their profits of the 1990s. Even today, studios’ willingness to license music online is only grudging, and came about from desperation to steal market share back from pirate sites rather than from their own innovative proclivities.
But come about it did: piracy is almost as easy today as it was in the days of Napster and KaZaA, yet iTunes has crafted a successful business out of selling songs for $0.69 to $1.29. iTunes does well even though its songs are licensed and not bought. Whether studios and artists do proportionally well is, predictably, a matter of some dispute, but both Metallica and its label Elektra clearly make more money when I buy “Enter Sandman” from iTunes than when I download it from the Pirate Bay.
Why do music fans pay money for licensed music from iTunes rather than downloading music free of license from the Pirate Bay? I suspect that part of the answer – but only a small part – is that fans want to support the artists they listen to. Another part – but again, only a small part – is that fans fear retaliation for piracy, though anti-piracy lawsuits against consumers are still uncommon. The most important part of the answer, by far, must be that iTunes is a nice piece of software. The architecture of iTunes and its store encourage easy navigation, search, and downloading in a way that pirate sites do not. iTunes’ built-in ability to organize and play music likewise advantages it over the Pirate Bay, which operates strictly on a bring-your-own-software basis. In the end, the copyright wars between studios and fans have calmed not because of legal settlements – still ongoing – but because of great information architecture that makes fans able and willing to pay for music.
Perhaps the conclusion of this week’s reading, then, is that when an Apple information architect is asked what he does for a living, he might answer “I end copyright wars!”
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