How do you own music?
Yesterday at the a2n #camp, together with Petar Djekic from mufin, I facilitated a discussion entitled "The Day Ownership Died - Why still own music?" It was an all-out interesting discussion, and we touched upon a wide range of interesting topics.
A good deal of the time was spent discussing the pros and cons of streaming music versus having a local library of digital sound files. Another recurring theme was the demise of physical, tangible and sensual media to store sound recordings. Participants expressed that the less tangible and the more virtual their sound recordings were, the more people felt that their sense of "ownership" in these items faded away.
During the discussion, I noticed that the distinction between "streaming" and "owning" was a bit misleading, as it focuses too much on technology. There are gray areas, such as owning MP3 files but storing them somewhere in the cloud and retrieving them on demand. So instead I proposed to look at these two concepts as "buying" music versus "renting" it.
But this contrast can also be understood as a dichotomy between permanent versus transient music artifacts: Most of us grew up in an environment where indiviuals owned large music collections, conserved as sound recordings on various media. But of course, it wasn't always like this. Four or so generations ago, the concept of recording sound was unknown. Music was intrinsically for the moment. After the last note was played, the performance was gone. So before we had physical, tangible, sensual media like vinyl with its beautiful cover artwork, we had no media at all!
If you plot these two dimensions – permanent versus transient, and sensual versus virtual, you end up with a picture like this.
It's clear that we somehow started out in the upper right quadrant: Ephemeral, but very sensual musical experiences. We then moved along counter-clockwise, and for a few decades lived primarily in the land of somewhat sensual sound recordings that could be listened to over and over again, and some of which we cherished as rarities, as treasures.
More recently, with the advent of CDs and MP3s, sound recordings have become less physical, and more virtual, even though the sound recordings haven't changed (if you ignore media-inherent artifacts such as vinyl noise). Now with the rise of streaming services such as Last.FM and Spotify, it looks like the pendulum is once again swinging back into the realm of the transient. Consumers have access to music but don't put value into "owning" it anymore. They simply consume it on-demand, and after it's played, it's gone.
But I feel like this picture is misleading. Firstly, it's a short-term extrapolation. We observe streaming services becoming more popular, we look at software services moving to the cloud, and we project a similar future for music. Secondly, I sense a contradiction between die-hard music fans wanting to identify with their favorite band, wanting to own part of what they love, and merely having access to music like turning on a water faucet. I think it's much more reasonable to assume that the two concepts – streaming music and owning sound recordings – will live side by side for a rather long time.
Which brings me to my final point: Can the concept of owning music be redefined? If digital sound recordings are ubiquitous, readily available, and replicable at zero cost and loss of quality, how can we even speak of owning something any more? Which is why I'm so glad to see services like Sellaband enrich the music ecosystem. They provide fans the opportunity to develop a more meaningful connection with their favorite artists, and the fans can feel like they own more than just access to a sound recording.
Of course, with Popcuts, we aim to do just that, as well: We want to extend the sense of ownership. When you buy a song, and it's in your interest that that song does well and becomes popular, it's a whole different game. You can brag about discovering a band early, or silently enjoy the satisfaction of being a great trendspotter. But it's more than the mere, passive "access" to music. Because music's not water.
