Pandora's box, continued

by Laura A. Siegel

Even artists who have rebelled against the major labels often object to free trading of their music. In 1993, the Artist Once Again Known as Prince famously replaced his name with a symbol and tattooed SLAVE on his face to protest the "institutionalized slavery" of his contract with Warner. But in March 1999, he sued several Web sites for unauthorized use of his music, lyrics, and symbol. Metallica, which rose to fame through free tape-sharing, gave Napster a list last May of more than 300,000 people who were sharing their songs electronically and insisted that the users be banned from the service. Metallica and rapper Dr. Dre also joined the RIAA suit against Napster.

And on July 11, a group called Artists Against Piracy launched a series of ads in major newspapers; under the headline IF A SONG MEANS A LOT TO YOU, IMAGINE WHAT IT MEANS TO US, the ads implored consumers to respect artists' intellectual property rights -- that is, to pay for music. Signers of the ad included Alanis Morissette, Barenaked Ladies, Bon Jovi, Faith Hill, Garth Brooks, Hanson, Natalie Imbruglia, and Sarah McLachlan.

But independent musicians -- those on independent labels, and those signed to no label at all -- often have a different take from the big stars'. As Ani DiFranco told the magazine Rockrgrl, "90 percent of all music, art and culture in our country exists below the radar of the mainstream." Plenty of musicians such as DiFranco, who started her own Righteous Babe label, are making a living without any help from the major labels.

By lowering the barriers of distribution and promotion, the Internet puts independent labels such as DiFranco's on a more even footing with the majors. It also helps artists promote themselves. Giving away music has worked for They Might Be Giants, which has an online music archive and e-mails MP3s to its fans. "Finding our own path to having people hear our music has always been key to getting over," says the band's John Flansburgh. "You don't get anywhere in the music business by being stingy. The music culture is about sharing, and that's why MP3 resonates so much with people conceptually."

Probably the biggest fans of Internet music distribution are unsigned musicians. These artists -- who often produce their own CDs, and who often don't make their living from music -- use the Net to get their music out, to build a fan base, and to tell fans about shows and new recordings. "I've got national distribution now for basically nothing, which used to be the ultimate goal for an artist," says Jody Page of the unsigned Detroit-based band Lost Youth.

They may not even care about getting paid, in the short run. "That's not the goal," says bassist Mike Scarlata. "Exposure is number one." Scarlata, of the unsigned North Carolina band Neglected Sheep, even put his own music up on Napster, under file names like "Sounds like Pearl Jam."

"In the past, if you're an independent musician, you're not making money anyway, but at the same time no one's really hearing your stuff," says Cole Gentles, a New York musician who records under the name the Count. "This way, at least people are being exposed to you."

But just because independent artists use the Web for promotion doesn't mean they like listeners swapping tracks freely. "If I put my music on a site and I'm deciding I'm giving this away for free, it's a little different from someone buying my CD and putting it on the Internet and trading it with someone else," Page says. And Aimee Mann echoed the feelings of many musicians when she told Salon, "Artists should get paid for their work."

THE ONLY way to prevent people from trading music files is to encrypt them -- to encode them so only people who paid for them can play them. But that's not easy. The biggest hole in the system is the CD -- the very object the music industry depends on for profits, and the original source of most files exchanged on Napster. CDs are completely unencrypted. Anyone with a CD-ROM drive and free software available online can easily copy a CD onto a personal computer, encode the songs as MP3s, and share them online.

Encrypted CDs could be made, but no one knows whether they would play on today's stereos. Right now the best the music industry could do would be to "watermark" CDs, so files made from them could be traced back to the discs' owners. And though CDs may eventually lose market share to digital music, they'll still be around for a long time.

For digital music files, the music industry has been trying to develop a universal encryption standard through the Secure Digital Music Initiative, but that effort hasn't gotten very far. And available technologies have proven unpopular -- they're restrictive, take too much work on the part of the listener, and aren't all compatible with the same computer-based and hand-held players. MP3s are still much more universal and easy to use -- not to mention available for free. "[The record labels] want to maintain control of what you do with the music after they sell it to you," says Eric Scheirer, media and entertainment analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge. "It's never going to work."

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