A week ago I read an article by Stephen Bruce of the UK computermagazine PCPro on the problems suffered by music download services, in spite of their apparent succes. The payload of his analysis:
Stores such as Napster and iTunes can't compete on price against the illegal file-sharing networks, which continue to flourish, and they're beaten on quality by CDs. They're fighting two competitors, and currently losing on both fronts.
Of course, the reasons why still many downloaders do flock to Itunes or OD2: legal and security risks, and the fact that many music is played against the background of street noise, a car engine, the rattle of wheels on the track or the hum of your very own computer. However, that's not my issue here.
For me, one reason in particular makes the legal download services a failure: the lack of rare and not so rare music. Part of the fun of good old Napster, Kazaa and even Edonkey was stumbling on musicians that I'd never find in any record shop within a 500 mile radius. Or, of course, simply getting that music. Don't get me wrong - the musicians that I admire I also consider as a kind of friends, and I don't want to rob my friends. However, you'd be amazed how difficult record companies or so-called free enterprise can make it to get at a legal CD. Of the artists whose music I downloaded in serious quantities, I bought legal CDs later on, if they were available. However, in spite of OD2's alleged 300,000 'going on 1 million' different songs, it was frustratingly easy to hit 'not availables'. I know Itunes has a larger stock, but I have a hunch the results won't be much different. (Let me know if you tried the same music and had a different result!) In several cases a composer or artist was available, but only with a very small or irrelevant part of their work. Here is my rather eclectic list of first tries. (I'm not excluding any hits, but let it be obvious I didn't look for Beyoncé or Westlife.).
* Celia Cruz: the godmother of salsa is represented with no less than one album. One! Wow. Unfortunately, it contained none of the songs I was looking for. This seems to defeat my point that I'd like to see more unknown music, but at the same time it isn't an indication of a balanced stocklist. An artist of her stature deserves full coverage.
* Gabriel Fauré. A 19th century French composer. You've heard some his work probably, even if you didn't know whose it was. He's on OD2 with two albums, but neither contained the pieces I was looking for.
* Noodweer, Amsterdam. Okay, this wasn't a hit song, but the list contained none of the songs of this 80s Dutch-language pop band. (26 million people speak Dutch, it's not like we're talking Andorra here.)
* Golden Earring, another Dutch band. One album, but I looked in vain for 'Ce soir', one of their minor hit songs while you won't find their big international hit 'Radar love'.
* J.S. Bach. One album, the Brandenburg Concertos. At 9,99 Euros reasonably priced for sheer quantity, but who on earth (another niggle) are the performers? I couldn't find out and the print on the cover thumbnail was too small and vague to read. And that's all. Not the Matthäus Passion, not the Hohe Messe, not the Kunst der Fuge, Goldberg Variations... In fact, counting their tracks, there's more Bacharach than Bach available. I have nothing against Austin Power's piano player, I like some if his tunes, but when it comes to all-time relevancy I don't know if we hit the right ratio here.
* Nune Yesayan. I'm probably her only non-Armenian fan, but this singer is typically an artist I discovered through illegal P2P. With some effort I could download a lot of her work, while her albums couldn't be ordered from my local world music shop nor from the internet where I live (until recently, and I own one now). You'll find none of her work on OD2.
* Joe Zawinul. You'll find the some of the work of fusion band Weather Report (not the album I was looking for), but none of their keyboard maestro.
* King Crimson. Nothing. Zilch.
* UK. (the 70s and 80s symphonic rock band). By now I was almost surprised to find their first album, but I already own that one, and I was looking for a song of their admittedly less relevant second album. Not. The first album is under the genre of 'Rap/Hip Hop' but any Hip Hopster trying this one will be in for a big surprise. I wasn't surprised to find none of the albums of their guitar player Allan Holdworth, but availability of the hard-to-get music of this guitarist's guitarist on the service would make things much more interesting on OD2 for me.
* Also unaivalable, for the record: Latin American singers Tania Libertad, Daniela Romo, and more significant, almost all the work of the Buena Vista Social Club, including their famous first album.
So, did I download anything at all?
Actually I did. Moloko is a band that has to join Elvis yet and you can even dance to their music, so their entire work is online. I happily downloaded two tracks from an album with remixes - I'm not enough of a Molokoid to buy an remix-only album - and the song 'Familiar feeling' from the 'Statues' - an album I could buy and bought that very afternoon in a shop, for EUR 6,99, three euros cheaper than the DRM-fraught effort of OD, cover art, liner notes and all. Oh well...
SRR