Jazz Odyssey

Eliot Van Buskirk tackles a pet peeve of mine in today’s AnchorDesk….why does so much music remain unavailable on digital music services while being readily available on any number of P2P networks? I can tell you from the label side that in some cases it isn’t as easy as we would like it to be. Some artists or managers are uncomfortable with digital distribution and are reluctant to allow their catalog to be made available digitally. In some cases, they view their albums as entire bodies of work and don’t want them to be merchandised as being available for purchase as individual tracks. Some are unhappy with the sound quality of compressed files. Still others are tied up in legal quagmires so thick that they defy comprehension.

Those are frustrating circumstances to be certain but time, persistance and the ongoing threat of uncontrolled digital distribution through the various P2P networks is slowly but surely chipping away at the problem. The question that baffles many is that the circumstances I just mentioned applies to a very small percentage of music that is currently unavailable, so what’s the holdup with the other music?

In a lot of cases, the perceived demand for much of that music is pretty low so labels are reluctant to putting resources towards clearing it with the artist, obtaining any necessary legal clearances, digitizing it and putting into the digital distribution pipeline. I would argue that in a lot of cases labels don’t have a great grasp of the actual demand for this music. After all, if its “out of stock” how can you really be certain how many you would have sold?

Equally frustrating is that as the master tapes for all of this unavailable music take up real estate in storage facilities all over the world (and unless they’ve been transferred to a digital medium those tapes are slowly deteriorating), those tapes are the tip of the iceberg. For each master recording that is collecting dust on a shelf, there likely exists several (if not dozens and in many cases hundreds) of reels of additional recordings by that artist that may remain unheard forever, including b-sides, alternate takes, outtakes and live recordings. Some of this material began to see the light of day in the form of “bonus tracks” on CD reissues and some of it is being made available as “digital exclusives” with various music services or a “digital box set” such as what Apple and U2 made available on iTunes. Still, there is so much more that exists, yet the resources necessary to locate, identify, catalog, check legal clearances and digitally prep all that music are so enormous that much of it may remain right where it is.

Further complicating matters is the recent lawsuit brought by Tom Waits’ production company against Warner music about the nature of and the fees that should result from a digital download. Warner’s position is that the a digital download is a sale of product while Waits’ production company believes that a digital download is a third party licence which commands a higher payment to Waits. The impact of the decision from the case is enormous, and that decision will impact the entire economic structure of the digital music distribution system. Stay tuned…