In this post, I will attempt to understand the value of music, in particular what makes us want to own it. I must say, these are just meant to spark off discussion, so feel free to comment!
Value in medium not information
In the olden days, people bought music on media such as records, cassettes, CDs etc. How much value were they attributing to the media vs. the music they bought? The only way you could listen to music was through record players, cassette players etc. And one record could be heard only within a certain physical space. Yes, a record can be played at a party for a bunch of people, but they have to be at the same place. In other words, every locale that needed a song had to have a medium that contained the information. The information is the same, but the medium had to be replicated. It seems the medium was as valuable if not more valuable than the information itself, the music.
Taste Diversification
In the olden days again, there was no Internet. It was the top 40 countdowns which spread news of music. An artist who couldn't have a hit single never sold anything. So, people literally had a handful of records to choose to buy. It is widely known scarcity increases value. Imagine if there were a record store in every city that had 20000 records. The value of each of these will intrinsically drop and one wouldn't be so compelled to buy any one. If instead the store had 100 records of which say 20 are in the top 40 countdown that month, one would feel the incentive to buy. The incentive here is the ability to listen to hit songs (everyone loves) whenever you want, the ability to at least get close to owning all hit records and the ability to show off your collection (because everyone knows the hits). These incentives have disappeared today. There are too many genres, nobody watches MTV anymore, or listens to countdowns to decide what to buy. Not everybody is on the same page! When the fan following for any particular record is not too many, why do I have to shell out $10 or more to buy it! And can I really show my music collection to visiting friends and expect to impress them? Nobody has the same tastes anymore. Our music tastes have diversified to the point that no one thing is really worth much to too many people. This sort of taste diversification doesn't appear to have happened in other art forms. I can buy any reasonable painting for a couple of grand, hang it up in a hotel lobby and expect it to make the place seem more luxurious.
It's getting easier to experiment
The long tail is easier to get to now. It is easier to test drive new music. It is easier to expand musical horizons. It's getting harder to stick to basics and what we know. Because there's so much choice out there and you don't get penalized for trying.
We get bored
I believe there are 3 kinds of songs,
- Appeals to the core of who we are and we are intrinsically attached to it.
- Is interesting but doesn't connect with the soul
- Hell no
As we grow up, we specialize and diversify and the music in #1 is decreases. We get bored with #2 easily and we never give #3 a second listen. Given this why would we buy a song if we aren't convinced it is in #1?
Digitizing appears to lose intrinsic value
This is tied with my points in "Value in medium not information". Every MP3 anybody ever made is available somewhere on the web. It's just a click and up to 99c out of pocket away. Bits and bytes feel ephemeral. Because,
- They don't feel like real content (unlike a record or CD)
- Not an actual process (unlike software)
- They feel like they could disappear anytime (you have to back it up to make sure you don't lose it)
- They can be shared for free (albeit illegally)!
We can't resell bits and bytes
Can you really try to resell an MP3 you bought online? You can't write it to a MP3 CD and pass it off as the original. Is that even legit? I don't know. But when buying an MP3, I know it is 99c down the pipe. I either keep on listening to it or I've lost that value for ever, worse still I've forgotten I bought the song. But given "We get bored" will we ever keep on listening to it? And if "It's getting easier to experiment" won't I want to listen to something else soon? Having said that, subscription services such as Napster are really "music reselling" services. They license you a song for however long you're a subscriber and when you're done they give that license to another user. And the $5 a month subscription fee could be thought of as transaction costs of selling. While you have infinite choice, you don't have the option of not selling them! Now can we come up with a music marketplace that feels more like a buying/selling/trading scheme? Would that even work?
