Big Music's Last Waltz

Byline: Robert MacMillan

The Who declared that rock is dead, so long live rock. Elvis Costello named the murderer -- high-speed Internet.

Liverpool's second-most acerbic pop star isn't the first person to make this observation, but after nearly three decades of paying the rent on vinyl, tape and silicon, he is familiar enough with the way the music industry works to know when the vital signs are off. Costello, who made his remarks at the just-concluded South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin, Texas, said the end was nearer than many think.

"As soon as broadband is big enough, the record (retailing) business is over," Costello said, according to the Hollywood Reporter . "They will have to change or die ... It's going to be about five minutes to the end. All bets are off." Costello also said that "music chains like Tower Records had 'let the spirit go out of it.'"

There are a lot of doomsayers out there preaching from the laptops about the end of music, but Costello bears listening to; after all, he's the one who writes the book .

OK, that was a bit cute. But the artists and industry bigwigs who gathered at SXSW last week certainly accomplished much hand-wringing in the few hours a day they weren't hitting the music clubs along Sixth Street, as Michael Grebb reported for Wired.com . "In some cases, talk focused on opportunities. But in many other instances, panelists warned about the perils and uncertainty that face both the artistic and business sides of the industry -- especially when it comes to peer-to-peer file sharing," Grebb wrote.

It's a familiar lyric for anyone who's followed the whole file-sharing/P2P/piracy debate over the past few years. There's the concerned voice of the music industry, claiming also to speak for the poor (or rich) artists trying to make or keep their daily bread: "It's stopping new artists from coming forward, and it's killing mid-level artists across the board," said Jay Rosenthal , a music attorney at Washington, D.C.-based Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe and a board member of the Recording Artists Coalition . And then there's Wendy Seltzer from the live-free-or-die school at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who, Grebb reported, said "lawsuits against those who trade or enable the trading of copyright music files online will continue to have little effect on P2P traffic."

That's just a fine impasse, isn't it? Hopefully, we tech writers and reporters can keep it in place for a few more years or else there won't be anything cool in technology to argue about anymore. That might not happen, though, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments next week about whether Internet music-swapping services like Grokster and Morpheus break the law simply by existing.

Whatever the outcome in the case, all the posturing and arguing at events like SXSW is well-intentioned but ultimately irrelevant. I'm not a lawyer. I don't compose or play music for money and my livelihood doesn't depend on the survival of the music industry, so I'm at liberty to be cavalier about this: Composers will continue to compose, musicians will continue to play. The smart ones among them will find ways to get rich or at least make a living, and smart businesspeople will find new ways to exploit the ones who can read a score but not a balance sheet. That in turn will preserve the centuries-old tradition of singers writing songs about getting screwed because they're singers. And that will give Jay Rosenthal, Wendy Seltzer and others like them reason to keep fighting over the future.

See? Pete Townshend was right. Rock IS dead -- long live rock.

Now for some quick sidenotes from SXSW:

* Wired's Mike Grebb also reported that lots of folks in the business are putting their faith in ringtones: " Scott Andrews , senior director of internet and mobile entertainment for royalty collection agency BMI , said ring-tone revenues are expected to double from $250 million in 2004 to $500 million in 2005. 'This is a business that has scaled very quickly,' Andrews said. He added that potential synergies with other mobile technologies such as Bluetooth wireless could create even more opportunities for artists. 'Can you imagine being at a concert and saying, "OK, everyone turn on your Bluetooth. We're going to send you a ring tone for free just for being here at the concert"?' Andrews said."

* Amy Phillips spotted a hip 2005 take on how we viewed technology in 1977 with a quick review of Hot Chip playing at the Elysium. She posted it on this blog maintained at the Village Voice Web site : "They sound a lot like the Junior Boys (smooth R& B meets IDM lap-pop), but they are also way goofy. One guy is about 5 feet tall and looks like Gary Wilson, one guy looks like a football thug, everybody else is skinnindie. They all stand in a row at the front of the stage playing synthesizers, which reminded me of Kraftwerk. And their dancing was so bad it made mine look good." Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!

* Former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant ought to rejoice in the endless variety offered by the Internet. At one point during his sojourn to Austin, he pined over the narrowcasting of modern music, the Hollywood Reporter noted: "I hate the idea that the jukebox is based on five songs, mass popularity," Plant said. Yeah, Bob, and if they would just stop playing "The Immigrant Song" every time I go to the bar then they could make room for something else. Oh well, it would probably just be Billy Joel anyway.

You'll Never Have Lunch in This Town Again

Oh, to be a chimpanzee. You never have to worry about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act , phishing or Lawrence Lessig 's latest blog entry . Well, think again.

The Los Angeles Times reported today that technology is making life tough on Hollywood's trusty legion of pan troglodytes . "Producers turn to them because of their human-like qualities. They can smile on cue, perform basic tasks and look sharp in human outfits," the Times wrote. "But in recent years, the demand for live chimps and other simians has declined as digital animation allows filmmakers and TV producers to create their likenesses on computers. The chimps and other animals in Eddie Murphy's remake of ' Dr. Dolittle ,' for example, were computer-generated."

The L.A. Times piece, which focuses on a few chimps that were shot and killed after attacking their owners earlier this month, proves that their existence in Norma Desmond-like twilight isn't so hot for them in Tinseltown after all.

Now here's a thought: If chimps had unions, they would picket Jim Henson's Creature Shop , the animation effects lab that took the "Dr. Dolittle" job. Pigeons won't be so hot about that outfit either -- the Times noted that the company just finished developing ersatz birds for the remake of Mel Brooks's "The Producers."

Porn, Provo and Spam

Never underestimate the power of Utah. The state's governor, Jon Huntsman (R), signed a bill that would require Internet service providers to block access to Web sites considered to be pornographic. According to the new law, "Internet providers in Utah must provide their customers with a way to disable access to sites on the list or face felony charges," CNET's News.com reported .

News.com quoted several sources saying that there is no way that such a law could stand up to a court challenge. I'll spare you the trouble of reproducing all that here, but can tell you that, based on reporting on this topic for the better part of a decade, News.com is almost certainly right.

The Wall Street Journal , meanwhile, reported on IBM 's new way to defend computer users against spam: "International Business Machines Corp. is expected to unveil today its first major foray into the anti-spam market with a service, based on a new IBM technology called FairUCE , that uses a giant database to identify computers that are sending spam. One key feature: E-mails coming from a computer on the spam list are sent directly back to the machine, not just the e-mail account, that sent them. The more spam that comes out, the more vigorous the response." And proving that there really is a German word for everything, the practice of trapping spammers is known by the term "teergrubing ," the Journal reported. That's a "verbified" translation of the word "tar pit."

How to Minimize Solitaire

I ran an item in yesterday's column about a North Carolina legislator who wants to prohibit state employees from playing solitaire, Minesweeper and other games that come bundled free on many personal computers. That prompted this alternate suggestion from reader Mark Colan : "When I was a developer at Lotus some time ago, we were under the gun for an important project. One team member spent entirely too much time playing Solitaire for our tastes. Someone came up with a Windows resource-editing program, exchanged the images for two cards, and installed it on his machine."

The result? Every time he pulled a black 7, it would behave like a red 7 and vice-versa. "It did the trick," Colan said.

Send links and comments to robertDOTmacmillanATwashingtonpost.com .

COPYRIGHT 2005 Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group