Pandora no more: The end of a digital music pioneer

For music lovers Pandora.com offers the best of digital music. Pandora is an Internet radio site that allows users to create their own radio stations and listen to music for free without listening to advertisements. The site is incredibly popular, and users can even listen to their stations on their iPhones, eliminating the need to be near a computer. This, of course, had lead to copyright concerns and questions about whether or not royalties need to be paid to the artists represented on Pandora. According to this article from MercuryNews.com, a judge has ruled that the site must pay royalties to 70 percent of the artists on the popular site. This of course could force Pandora to shut down for good.

This is the latest battle in the digital music copyright wars, and we could have predicted the outcome long ago based on the Napster and RIAA lawsuits. However, while Pandora is the most recent free music innovation to be potentially shut down, there will no doubt be other new technologies to circumvent current copyright laws to allow free access to music.

The current popular means of getting free music is through a service called Bit Torrent. Currently, bootlegs of concerts and other hard to find materials appear on the site, while relatively little actual albums appear. This could be the reason that Bit Torrent has remained relatively untouched by the RIAA. However, because the service is essentially a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, we can assume that this too will be shut down before too long.

While the future of Pandora and Bit Torrent remain uncertain, it is a reasonable guess that both will be forced to shut down in the near future. But the "free culture" of the Internet can almost guarantee us that somebody is currently working on a new way to distribute free music.

The "interpersonal divide" and digital music

It is possible to spend hours and hours browsing iTunes. I know because I have done it. The iTunes store allows you to see what else other people who have looked at a particular album have bought, and provides links to other artists that you may enjoy. It is possible to get totally immersed in iTunes just by clicking links to new artists that you may never have heard of previously. Before you know it, the entire afternoon has slipped by. Micheal Bugeja, author of Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age, would argue that this is a negative aspect of the digital music revolution. Rather than spending time interacting with other human beings, we are spending more and more time browsing virtual record libraries on iTunes. He would argue that this total immersion in the digital world erodes our interpersonal relationships.

While it is certainly true that we are spending more time on-line, I take a more optimistic view towards digital technology than Bugeja. iTunes has allowed me to explore a larger number of artists than I would have been exposed if I didn't have Internet access. I am a fan of blues and jazz music, and through iTunes I have discovered artists like Buddy Guy, John Scofield and Susan Tedeschi. I have also downloaded classical music such as Mozart's "Requiem" and the complete Beethoven Symphonies. Many of these artists would be unavailable to me through a traditional brick-and-mortar music store. The argument could be made that digital music has allowed me to expand my cultural awareness.

In addition to expanding my musical horizons, digital music has allowed me to better relate with my friends when we do meet face-to-face. I met one of my best friends because we share a love of blues music, and I "discovered" the blues through iTunes, so contrary to Bugeja's assertion, digital technology has actually increased and enhanced my interpersonal relationships.

Not only has iTunes expanded my musical horizons, but it has actually helped my interaction with others. I met one of my best friends because we both share a love for blues music, and I "discovered" the blues through iTunes. So, contrary to Bugeja's assertion, digital technology has actually help me to forge new relationships rather than aid in the decline of them.

In my previous post I discussed the resurgence of vinyl records. Often times, these records are purchased at traditional record stores. These stores serve as a meeting place, not only for music enthusiasts, but for lovers as vinyl as well. They provide a place where these fans of analog records can discuss the benefits of vinyl over CDs or MP3s. But according to Bugeja, this type of interaction will dwindle in in the future due to the increasing popularity of digital technology. Hopefully other have found the same benefits in digital music that I have, and Bugeja's theory will remain just that - a theory.

The argument against digital music: vinyl makes a comeback

While it seems that the majority of the consumers purchasing music these days believe that digital music is far superior to analog, there is a growing demand for the vinyl records from yesteryear, as this article from The Free Press Online reports. These traditionalist audiophiles believe that many of the classic albums were meant to be heard on old 33s or 88s, and because they were recorded for vinyl, they actually sound better in that format rather than on a CD or MP3. Best Buy even has a vinyl section now. This is counter intuitive given the fact that the digital format has dominated nearly every other form of media.

Part of vinyl's new-found popularity no doubt comes from nostalgic baby-boomers. Records were first marketed to teenagers in the mid and late fifties, when record producers recognized that for the first time, many teenagers now had a disposable income. This led to an entirely new segment of the population that remained untapped, and opened the door for teen-idols like Elvis, Buddy Holly and Little Richard. Those teens feel emotionally attached to vinyl records, and have generated enough demand for the medium that retailers are beginning to carry the records again.

There's no way to tell if this is just a trend, or if the popularity of vinyl records will continue in an increasingly digital age. But one thing is for sure: Many local record stores are experiencing a surge in sales, and have no plans of shutting their doors anytime soon.

Check out this short video about how the vinyl revival is effecting EMI's former record-pressing facility: