Deflating digital downloads
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., June 24, 1999) -- Every week it seems there is another news story about some new plan by a major record label to distribute recorded music over the Internet. If we are to believe what we read, by the end of the year we'll all be downloading new albums off the Internet instead of buying them in old-fashioned record stores.

What no one has yet to address, however, is the question of why. Why would anyone prefer to download the digital code for an album's worth of music to a personal computer's internal memory or to a portable digital player, rather than owning a factory-produced CD?

Up until now, all technological advances in the delivery of recorded music have offered improvements in some or all of the following areas: sound fidelity, recording length and ease of handling. Delicate 78s, which played only 3 minutes of music, gave way to double-sided 45s, which weren't nearly as fragile. These were quickly supplanted by long-playing albums, which typically contained about 40 minutes of music. Pre-recorded cassette tapes allowed for improved portability, although they didn't represent an improvement in sound quality over LPs. Compact disks were a revolutionary advance, introducing up to 70 minutes of digital sound in handy, compact (duh!), virtually unbreakable packages.

In order for downloadable albums to catch on in any way that will supplant CDs, the technology needs to offer some kind of improvement over them, but no one has suggested what this is. Digital music is digital music, and it won't sound any better or different for coming to your home over the phone wires instead of arriving on a platter encased in a jewel box. The path it took to get to you will simply have been more of a hassle, involving you directly in the technological transfer of the data.

There might be some advantage in owning a readily-duplicated digital code of an album, but record companies are doing all that is technically feasible to make such copying impossible. What's worse, downloading the code to one's computer reduces manufacturing costs for the record company - costs that the consumer will now bear in terms of online charges, printing out the accompanying booklet and artwork, and purchasing whatever new equipment will be needed to play the digital code anywhere other than on the lousy speakers that came with your home computer.

The one possible incentive favoring downloads would be if the cost of downloading an entire album's worth of music were to drop so far below the cost of buying a manufactured CD that it compensated for the hassle of running a miniature manufacturing plant in the privacy of one's home. Say, for example, that it only cost $2 to download an entire album. Such a potential savings against a $15 CD might justify the initial capital investment in whatever consumer equipment is needed to take full advantage of the download, plus the pain and suffering that will undoubtedly ensue after many late nights struggling over successive, unsuccessful downloads.

But anyone who has been paying the least bit of attention to the way the recording industry works knows that this is about as probable as Michael Jackson replacing Mick Jagger in the Rolling Stones. The $2 album will never happen. Remember, CDs were much cheaper to manufacture than LPs, but the industry took advantage of a new, exciting technology and upped the list price about 30 percent when they introduced CDs.

It will be harder to justify an increase with Internet downloads, and companies might even be forced to drop the price slightly, given the blatantly obvious savings they will accrue each time someone purchases a download instead of a CD. But mark my words: downloads will cost at least $12 a pop, making them at best even with store-bought CDs when you add home-manufacturing costs, or more, when you figure in the value of your own labor, now that you are a lowly turd in the manufacturing process. (Hip-hop group Public Enemy offers its latest album for download direct to consumers, with no record-label middleman skimming profits off the top, for $8.)

There is definitely a place for sampling music over the Internet in the comfort of one's own home. But nothing beats the convenience of browsing a local retailer's selection (or, gasp!, ordering a CD on the Web and having it delivered to your house within two days) and purchasing a professionally manufactured, digital package of music that sounds good, looks good, and is eminently compact and portable. Until they can beat that, Internet downloads will be the biggest dud the ailing record industry has seen since the eight-track tape.

The week in music:

The first official summer weekend gets off to a rollicking start with several festivals and special events in the Berkshires and the greater region, beginning on Friday night with a swing dance party at Mass MoCA in North Adams featuring New York City swingsters Yallopin' Hounds, at 7:30 (662-2111). The Hounds (www.yallopinhounds.com) were formed by a trio of veterans from the Illinois Jacquet Big Band, and they have a new CD coming out this month called "Extreme Ghetto Swing." Also in North Adams this weekend is the annual June Fest, featuring a huge lineup of entertainment and attractions, culminating in an all-star country music concert on Sunday at 3 featuring Suzy Bogguss and David Ball (663-3782).

The festival season gets under way at the fairgrounds in Altamont, N.Y., with Old Songs (www.oldsongs.org), the annual festival of traditional folk music, this Saturday and Sunday, this year featuring Beppe Gambetta, Josh White Jr., Robin and Linda Williams, Patrick Ball, David Massengill, Chris Newman, David Surette, John Roberts and Tony Barrand, Michael Cooney, Whirligig, Inca Son, John Rossbach, Chanterelle, Faith Petric, Susie Burke, and Clayfoot Strutters (518 765-2815).

Jazz fans will have more music than anyone can handle this Saturday and Sunday at the Saratoga (N.Y.) Performing Arts Center, when the annual Freihofer's Jazz Festival (formerly Newport Jazz - Saratoga) comes to town. This year the festival includes performances by Oscar Peterson, Gerald Albright/Will Downing, Diana Krall, Gato Barbieri, Hendricks and Ross, Joshua Redman, John Pizzarelli, Larry McCray, Sean Sullivan, Donald Harrison Quartet, Sam Newsome and Global Unity, James Brown, Royal Crown Revue, Manhattan Transfer, Buddy Guy, Roy Hargrove Quintet, Keiko Matsui, Gonzalo Rubalcalba, Kyle Eastwood, Chuck Loeb, Doc Scanlon's Rhythm Boys, Wallace Roney Quintet and Shemekia Copeland. The two-stage, morning-to-late-night festival also includes crafts booths and food vendors hawking barbecue and New Orleans specialties like gumbo and jambalaya (518-587-3330).

And Bonnie Raitt, who put on a dynamite show last summer right here in the Berkshires at Tanglewood, performs next Tuesday, June 29, at 7, in nearby Northampton at the Pines Theater (413-586-8686).

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[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on June 24, 1999. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1999. All rights reserved.]