(ilounge.com)The iPod may have been the single most important technology development for music educators that I’ve seen in my career thus far. The ability to load an entire listening library onto a portable device and recall examples instantly for our musicians allows us to give our ensembles concrete examples of musical language and style in a way that simply wasn’t feasible on the fly before that device. While the hardware has been replaced (RIP, iPod), the concept of instant access to recorded examples is still an essential part of teaching from the podium. With the introduction of that hardware, though, Apple became one of the most dominant players in the music distribution industry through iTunes, and in many ways Cupertino still dictates how the digital distribution industry operates.
As both consumers and creators of music, our field has a deep and complex relationship to music ownership, copyright and intellectual property. The industries of music production and distribution are evolving into Internet-based models, and we see these changes both in how we compose and create music as well as how we find and access it as “end users.” We focus more often on the composition and distribution end of this question, particularly with the opportunities that we see on ChoralNet on a daily basis for composers to feature and distribute their work and for conductors to discover new works directly from their creators. Two recent stories about Apple show a shift on the other side of this equation: how we as music consumers purchase and utilize the recordings that we add to those devices, and how absolute our “ownership” of those recordings truly is.
You, Too got U2
Apple loves to make a spectacle, and their September press event was no different. Amongst the announcements of an Apple watch and two very large phones, CEO Tim Cook announced that everyone with an Apple device would get to download U2’s new album for free through iTunes. On its face, it appeared to be a very large but somewhat standard “company rewards customer loyalty” move by allowing users to get access to free music. That’s not actually how it worked, though– the album was downloaded automatically to all users’ devices. If you owned an iPad, iPod or iPhone, you got the album whether you wanted it or not. Furthermore, you couldn’t simply delete it– it would re-download. Apple had to create special instructions to delete the album from your account, which are not particularly quick nor easy.
It’s easy to see where Apple got the idea: “Who wouldn’t want free music?” It turns out that there were a lot of very good reasons, ranging from losing valuable storage space on smaller devices to simply not wanting to have the album clutter up a library or appear and play amongst random shuffle or smart playlists. Many users viewed it as an invasion of privacy and security to have a company inject files and media into a personal account. Particularly in the education world, where iPod, iPhone and iPad programs have exploded in recent years, the ethical impact of having what amounts to promotional advertising dropped onto school devices carefully managed for learning is concerning.
In the end, though, unless these files took up the last bit of free storage on your device, they likely were more of a curiosity or minor annoyance than major damage. Unfortunately, another Apple incident was allegedly much more consequential for users.
iTunes or Bust?
A major antitrust lawsuit against Apple opened this week alleging that Apple used unfair business practices to establish and maintain dominance in digital distribution through iTunes. This case has many parallels to earlier cases against Microsoft for the integration of Internet Explorer and Windows, in that both cases question how far the companies can go to force you to stay within their ecosystem while using their products, and how much choice we as the consumers should have in how those products are used.
From 2007 to 2009, system updates for both iTunes and iPods identified songs that had from non-iTunes sources as security risks and upon discovering them prompted the users to restore the iPod to factory settings. This wipes the iPod clean, although any songs in a user’s iTunes library would be copied back to the clean iPod. The non-iTunes songs, though, would not be copied (and if they were reintroduced, they would again be identified as security risks, prompting the cycle to begin again). The Wall Street Journal reports that prosecutors and Apple disagree on the motives and whether they represent intent to damage competitors such as Amazon, with Apple acknolwedging that the practice occured while stating that they were responding to serious security threats.
Regardless of the validity of the threat or motive to the action, of particular concern to the consumer is the way that Apple took preventative action to effectively block a viable consumer purchase from being copied to the iPod. Where consumers often default to a mentality of “it’s mine, I purchased it, I can do with it what I want,” both these cases demonstrate how our relationship to digital media companies goes well past the point of purchase. In each case, whether by assuming users wanted something (free U2 album!) or assuming we didn’t (avoiding security risk!), Apple took some measure of control over our music libraries on our behalf.
As conductors, scholars, teachers and performers of music, we have a great stake in understanding how music is distributed. We are all also passionate and dedicated consumers of music and have that perspective on the industry as well. While these cases are fairly limited in scope, they demonstrate the changing nature of media distribution. It’s not hard to extend the same line of thinking forward and envision other, more serious, over-reaches by the companies that sell and deliver recorded media. It’s also important to realize that, just as Microsoft before it, these two cases are indicative of one company being the dominant player in the market–the point of citing them is not to highlight Apple’s behavior, but to ask what any company in such a position may do. The same concerns about Apple controlling both a device and the distribution network apply just as well to Amazon and the Kindle, for example. Apple paid U2 a reported $100 million to distribute “Songs of Innocence.” What if artists or recording labels turn the tables and offer money to Apple or Amazon in exchange for pushing promos or singles for an upcoming major album? If a song or recording is found after its sale to be copyright infringement or an intellectual property violation, would Apple or Amazon delete it from user devices rather than be a party to legal action?
For many, the benefits of these devices and services far outweigh the potential risks and hazards, and neither of these cases alone caused people to give up a digital music player or account. The original transformative idea of carrying your entire recorded library in your pocket is still just as powerful, and may even be taken a bit for granted now 13 years after the first iPod. Our understanding of what it means to “own” a digital file, service or account is under constant revision, though, and that can have an effect on how we use and operate these devices as well as how we choose to distribute our own recordings. What do you think about these cases? What does this mean for us as musicians? Do you think these are relevant to us in the choral field? Join in the conversation below!
Jeff Tillinghast says
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