I just bought a record player.
Maybe I missed the elaborate packaging, large covers, limited editions and waxy sheen of virgin vinyl-along with its little pops and crackles. Maybe it was just nostalgia, but I like to think of it as my little rebellion-a pithy analog outcry against the digitized and super-soulless Napster culture.
There are thousands of reasons to like Napster. If you could care less about the Cocktail soundtrack but can't get enough of "Kokomo," or if you're harboring a secret hankering for the new single by Sisqo, the song can be yours, free of the pesky $15 price tag. If you hear about a new band and want to check them out, plug their name into Napster and voila!-try before you buy.
So the theory goes, anyway.
Access to new music is what's supposed to be driving the Napster boom-or that's what the program's creators would like you to think. But is Napster really a vehicle for discovering new artists, or a tool for downloading stuff you already know?
Napster operates via a search engine. That means you have to know either the name of the artist or the song you want in order to get it. Online retailers sell new music by directing you to artists who "sound like" the ones you're buying. That's not what Napster does. Napster can get you that obscure R.E.M. single you didn't know existed, but only if you tell it you want R.E.M. first. And, if you don't know what to look for, you're stuck with something else-the musical "product" proffered on MTV and mainstream radio.
Corporate entertainment's music-selling model doesn't rely on artistic development but on gaining listener acceptance of single songs. Jive Records hopes you'll buy No Strings Attached to get "Bye Bye Bye," and Sony hopes you'll stomach the rest of Significant Other for the "Nookie." As long as you like one song enough to buy the whole album, these megacorps could care less what you think of the complete work.
That's why Napster scares the hell out of record companies-it calls their bluff. You don't have to buy a crappy album anymore to get "that one song." This is especially true of soundtracks and compilations-say goodbye to buying MI:2 to get the new Metallica single, which kicked off this latest MP3 debate.
This sounds like a good deal-no more buying crappy music. But most of the music that gets ignored-the "other" songs on the CD-is from new, up-and-coming artists, many of whom don't get things exactly right the first time around. Their albums may be spotty, but they also might be too challenging and innovative to comprehend at first listen. In the world of point-click-delete, a first listen may be all you get. Thus, the bands hurt most by Napster aren't established acts like Metallica and N'Sync that already have a large, stable fan base. A fair number of people prefer to buy their whole records rather than hassle with downloading the 12-15 songs on them. It's the Harvey Dangers and Weezers that take it the worst, worthwhile bands with one or two songs people have heard. Some may buy their albums, but most won't-they'll get "that one song" and be on their way.
You have to wonder how some of last decade's premier artists would have fared in Napsterland. Would Nirvana have become a cultural force if everyone had downloaded "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and moved on? It's hard to remember now, but Nevermind wasn't such an easy listen when it debuted in 1991. Singles-driven listening has hurt hip-hop for years-you can't understand 2Pac without hearing the seething anger of "Hit Em Up," but that song doesn't make most people's playlists. Where would Pavement be today, or Liz Phair or even a band like Korn? Without a raft of hit singles from MTV airplay, nobody would've known to search for them.
Corporate greed, that most consummate of evils, has already sucked the life of mainstream music dry. Napster is merely the technology driving the nails in the coffin. The way we're consuming pop culture right now may be cheap, but that doesn't make it right or even all that cool. By buying into Napster and the singles-driven aesthetic on which it thrives, we're making music more mainstream, less innovative and less financially viable for artists. The solution can't come from record companies-it must come from us, the consumers. The good bands are out there, and the technology for discovering them is better than ever. For now, though, Napster isn't the solution-it's part of the problem.
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