The MUSIC GOES ROUND and ROUND

The prefects are moving in on illegal downloaders. Research revealed by something called the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property calculates that some 4.73bn (yes, billion) items are ripped off each year by illicit filesharers in Britain, let alone the rest of the world. For its part, the International Federation of the Phonograph Industry reckons that for every paid-for download to a British computer, there are six items that are stashed in collections without payment. These statistics, by the way, were stolen from an on-line article in The Guardian. As I have been buying the paper since before most of its New Media correspondents were born, I feel that I have already paid handsomely to make use of this info.



As one who certainly wishes to protect his own intellectual property rights, I don’t for a moment condone naked piracy. At the same time, I daily download material without paying for it and I do so with no compunction whatsoever. Permit me to explain.

I have never sought to watch a movie on-line or in any other circumstance on my iMac because I doubt that my screen (even at 17 x 11 inches) or my sound system will do it justice. I have picked up a couple of torrented episodes of American television drama serials that, for one reason or another, I missed on transmission but, believe me, that isn’t denying anybody any income because I am not about to buy the DVD of the whole of, say, season four of The West Wing just to bag one episode. In fact, if there had been no other way of accessing the missed episode, I would have been more likely to give up on the whole enterprise.



But I do download a lot of music. In the last year or two, I have certainly taken many more copies off filesharers’ sites than the “songs” (as they call each track) that I have paid for on iTunes or, lately, Amazon. Downloading is not anyway my preferred manner of collecting music. I will never love any recording medium the way that I – and those of my generation – loved vinyl but, even with the lack of tactile pleasure and vastly reduced user-friendliness of so-called jewel-cases and their booklets as opposed to album sleeves, I am reconciled to CDs (though I was a very late convert). And I will go out and buy CDs far sooner than download them, paid for or not.



But the music retail trade is in full retreat. It’s of course a chicken-and-egg situation but the fact is that I find it easier and easier to find what I want on-line and harder and harder in shops. Last Tuesday, I asked after classical CDs in the central Bristol branch of HMV and was told that they were to be found as “a sub-section of Easy Listening”. How grotesquely shaming. Mind, as the meagre selection on offer appeared to be dominated by the likes of Katherine Jenkins, Russell Watson and violin-scraping glam group Bond, it was perhaps not an inappropriate arrangement.

HMV originally built its business on selling recordings of classical music. When I first shopped at HMV in the 1960s – what was then its sole outlet, situated on the south side of Oxford Street – classical LPs were what greeted you as you entered the store on the ground floor. “Pop” and other vulgar stuff was relegated to the basement. In their day, I bet HMV made more relative income from the sale of 78s of Richard Tauber, Kathleen Ferrier or Dame Myra Hess than they ever have from CDs by Girls Aloud, Sonic Youth and Eminem.



There are now two branches of HMV on Oxford Street – both of them on the north side – and each does actually carry a very useful if (necessarily) not all that comprehensive range of both recent and standard-repertoire recordings, though not of course on the ground floor. I never leave either branch with fewer than a dozen purchases. London also boasts the legendary Harold Moores Records on Great Marlborough Street (where I rarely find what I’m looking for but discover all manner of other treasures while looking), the specialist Opera Shop on St Martin’s Lane and, in a different part of the forest, the fabulous Dress Circle on Upper St Martin’s Lane. The Virgin stores (which became Zavvi), that often had good selections for those who didn’t just want pop/pap, are gone now.

Down our way, we are pretty lucky with Bath Compact Discs and the timeless Duck, Son & Pinker, also in Bath; Sounds Good in Cheltenham; and Blackwells Music Shop in Oxford. But the internet has really opened up the retail of CDs and indeed LPs for the discriminating, largely because local storage is not an issue if your business is mail order or commercial downloading. These days, on-line shopping has made deleted recordings available in greater profusion than ever before.

And this brings me back to the matter of “pirated” acquisitions. While I am a steady purchaser of current recordings as mp3 downloads from iTunes – and I never dream of seeking free access to new or recent releases – the music I download for nothing is, in the first place, very largely by people (composers, songwriters, arrangers, performers) who are dead, frequently quite a long while dead. I am not denying residuals to these artists and if I am denying income to their descendants and other exploiters of their back catalogues (reissuers, repackagers) then I cannot feel badly about it.



Next, even among those artists who are alive, the examples of their work that I am most apt to download are long deleted. The only way I am likely to encounter this material otherwise is through high-priced specialist dealers or via the serendipity of charity and other junk-type shops. Either way, none of the profit is going to anyone associated with making the music. For the customer, getting what one wants by such means is considerably more of a lottery than is finding a like-minded filesharer on the net and gratefully copying the collection that he – let’s face it, it is always a ‘he’ – uploads to his blog. For the sites I am accessing without money changing hands are those set up by enthusiasts who take pleasure in sharing their interests. And there are hundreds of them.



Now I could go to, for instance, the incomparable Footlight Records store in New York City and spend a fortune on well-preserved long-players of show scores and standards singers but, again, only the store would make any money from it, not the songwriters or performers or musicians. And while I will assuredly always visit the store when I am in Manhattan, I wasn’t there yesterday when I was able, without leaving my study, to download for free a Dinah Washington 10-inch LP that the store might – or of course might not – have had in stock for (you can be sure) a pretty fancy price.

And here’s the crucial point. I am downloading the stuff because I can. It’s a resource that I am availing myself of. Take this treasure trove away and it will benefit the music industry nothing. Because it is there and for free, I am, on the one hand, filling a few gaps in my huge and ancient collection, from Scherchen conducting Mahler or Eleanor Steber singing Samuel Barber to long-deleted LPs of the likes of Lee Wiley and Moondog. On the other hand and much more significantly, I am greatly expanding my knowledge of areas of music on which I have previously had a much slenderer grasp – for example, jazz and blues – as well as widening my view of areas that hitherto I have always cherished – classical music, show tunes and standards. Thanks to the uploading enthusiasts, I have increased my store of stylists of the past, from Mabel Mercer to Johnny Mercer, by way of Carmen McRae, Gordon MacRae, Connee Boswell, Eve Boswell, Judy Holliday, Billie Holiday and all the rest. I have further investigated the music of Bernard Herrmann and Woody Herman, Bill Evans and Gil Evans and so on.



Now, I would never have bought these things, either because finding them would be too much trouble, too fraught with disappointment – imagine rushing home with a precious vinyl recording of Pablo Casals, say, or Luisa Tetrazzini and finding the surface noise was intolerable – or because I knew too little about the work and/or artist and would be reluctant to spend money on spec. I don’t mind a bit downloading for nothing and then investigating an artist whose work I am not familiar with – recently, for instance, Cannonball Adderley, Jane Froman, Charlie Patton – but I’m never going to hand over folding money for them, sight unseen.

So what I’m saying is this: the downloads that I am taking for free are having no effect whatsoever on the economy of the music business. Indeed, by widening the compass of my interests, this “illicit” activity is making it more, not less, likely that I will expand the number and scope of items on my shopping list. So the authorities should beware of jumping to the conclusion that by shutting down the filesharing market they would be righting a wrong. As with most issues, it just isn’t as easy as that. Unless of course the Department of Culture can ensure that CDs at competitive prices by, say, Blind Willie McTell, Sylvia Syms, Lotte Lehmann and Ellis Larkins will be generally available in perpetuity, it seems to me that it would be better all round if that true free market – the internet – were left alone.

ARE WE DOWNLOADED? NO!

As with most technology, I came late to the downloading of music. Ever since VCRs were first on sale and I bought a Phillips instead of a VHS, I’ve been leery of investing in new technology until I’m sure that it’s a lasting development or that the invariable pairing of rivals has rationalized into one top dog (squarial, anyone?). A friend was inordinately proud of his quickly extensive collection of laser discs, then downcast when the system just as quickly became obsolete and he was left with a cache of stuff that no one wanted.

For years I resisted CDs, liking vinyl records much more as pure objects and figuring that the advantages of the CD – resistance to surface damage and wear, reduced demand for space – were outweighed by the down side – cover artwork compressed to a fraction of how it was designed to look, sleeve notes abandoned or rendered so tiny as to be illegible. I no longer remember what changed my mind: probably the record companies ceasing to issue albums I wanted on vinyl or cassette tapes.

I may never have got into downloads, had not a friend given me an iTunes token as a birthday present. To use the token, of course, I had to register with iTunes. I was never able to make the token work, however, and its value reverted to the giver who then spent it on himself, so it turned out to be a proverbial Indian gift.

My own computer is an iMac so there was never any compatibility issue with iTunes. But it took a while to get used to the style of the site. The trouble with iTunes, as with other download sites, is the lack of someone organizing the material who has the appropriate mind-set for the job. To get this right you need people who have anal qualities, the kind that fire librarians and researchers. You need people who are passionate about music and in a geeky, detail-loving way. You need gay people, for god’s sake.

There is no sense in the iTunes ‘store’ that anyone who programmes it has any feel for – or even knowledge of – the broad range of music. Irritatingly, all the individual tracks are referred to as ‘songs’, which tells you eloquently enough that their heads are in pop. They no doubt know what the current best sellers are. But their interaction with their customers is mechanistic rather than imaginative.

I log in and find a section entitled ‘Just for You’. This means me. It lists two albums by each of George Michael, Jamiroquai, Christina Aguilera, Madonna, Eurythmics and (yuk!) Sugababes. I have never downloaded any of these people – nor am ever likely to – but presumably much of it derives from my buying an Annie Lennox album. I have also downloaded albums of Vivian Blaine, CPE Bach, Scissor Sisters, Bernard Herrmann, Manhattan Transfer, Kaija Saariaho, Steely Dan, Lena Horne, Gustav Mahler, Bobby Darin and Blossom Dearie, among others. Does none of these compute?

It’s bizarre and alienating that a computer presumes to “recommend” music to me based on what it imagines my purchases indicate. How does my downloading Modern Times by Bob Dylan suggest that I’d want Elton John’s The Captain and the Kid? Is it just a generational connection? And why would my buying an album of opera arias sung by Cecilia Bartoli suggest that I might want Nikolai Lugansky playing Beethoven Piano Sonatas?

Among the preferences offered for listing in your own ‘library’ of downloads is the identity of the composer of each ‘song’. Not very taxing for the computer if the recording is of Haydn String Quartets. But I downloaded a double album of standards sung by the incomparable Lee Wiley and not one of the tracks is credited to a composer (though I can name pretty much all of them; the ones I can’t I want to know now and not to have to look them up in a reference book). Someone at iTunes just hasn’t put the hours in.

When I first investigated iTunes, I felt sure that I would never use it for classical music. To begin with, all the people in their lists of what is available are organized according to first names. This is an absurdity. Fine of course if you want to download Lulu or Mantovani. But tell me – quick, now – what is Rossini’s first name? And can you spell it? If you don’t know, you’ll find it damned hard to locate a recording of Il Turco in Italia to download.

On another site, eMusic, there’s a different problem when you want to search for a classical recording. Suppose you fancy something by Elgar. You put that name in the search engine and you get this list:

Elgar
Edward Elgar
Elgar, Edward
Sir Edward Elgar
E Elgar
Elgar Howarth

Apart from the last-named (a different composer whose first name happens to be Elgar), all the others refer to the same old master but how are these cross-references differentiated? No doubt it’s to do with the formulation used on the cover of the CD or perhaps in the label’s catalogue. But the customer has no idea which particular recordings are going to be attached to which particular version of Elgar’s name. This is really no help. You can’t blame the poor, philistine computer which has no means of knowing that Elgar, Edward and Sir Edward Elgar are one and the same. But an intervening programmer who knew a modicum about music could sort this out pretty quickly. If you search for Bach in eMusic, you get 34 results, embracing twelve members of JS Bach’s family and a modern composer called Jan Bach. Good luck.

Then again, I wanted to see if eMusic had the recording of Glazunov’s 4th Symphony by the National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Tadaaki Otaka. Of the various sub-divisions of the search engine, I chose Classical Album Title and typed in Glazunov Symphony no 4. The result of the search offered me 1,948 recordings beginning with Beethoven’s 1st and 5th Symphonies. What possible use is that?

I searched eMusic for an album of 14th century French ballades and other French songs by the group called Gothic Voices. It seemed sensible to choose the category Classical Performer and search therein for Gothic Voices. The ‘match’ I was offered was to “Various Artists” and when I clicked on that I was offered a list of 7,211 albums beginning with ‘This is Rock Anthems’. Only a computer could believe this is in any way helpful.

But is it cheaper to download music? Naxos are a famously cheap label, generally retailing in shops at £4.99 a disc. The entire Naxos back catalogue is available through eMusic and, for the deletions alone, that is great news. But is it good value? You can download 40 ‘songs’ per month for £8.99. I have a Naxos CD of John Cage’s Prepared Piano pieces that runs to 19 tracks. Two like that would use up all but two tracks of my entire month’s allowance and would cost me the same as the CDs in a shop but I wouldn’t get the booklet and recording details that come with the CD.

The Naxos collection on eMusic is highlighted in a section called, wearyingly, Naxos Nexus: “it’s a big catalog [sic] to plow [sic] through, so here are some great performance [sic] of the ‘classical canon’.” You soon twig that the writer of this illiterate tosh has never listened to any of these “great performance”. For instance, if you were looking to download a version of Mahler’s 1st Symphony, it certainly wouldn’t be Zdenek Kosler’s. Further on in the list is a mixed album of pieces by Janacek, Enescu and Dvorak credited to ‘Various Artists’. You click on ‘Short Description’, hoping to learn who the various artists might be, and there’s our old friend the list of thousands of albums beginning with ‘This Is Rock Anthems’. Do me a favour. What’s more, the Naxos list has not been updated in over a year.

To test out iTunes, I decided to see what it’s got of one of my favourite contemporary composers, Kagel. Nobody with the first name Mauricio is listed under either ‘Modern Composition’ or ‘avant-garde’, the two ‘subgenres’ (as iTunes are pleased to call them) of ‘classical music’ where you might expect to find him. So I put Kagel in search. This produced someone called Muricio Kagel under Artists. An album of his orchestral works (which I already have as a CD) listed the composer as Mauricio and the conductor – the same man, of course – as Muricio. Sloppy. There’s also a trombone album of modern pieces by various composers but you can’t download the Kagel alone, you have to buy the whole album.

On iTunes, you can buy by the album (each individually priced) or (with exceptions such as that above) by the track. On eMusic, you pay a flat rate per month that allows you to download a number of tracks. This needs careful planning to maximize your value. A big symphony – Bruckner, Mahler, Havergal Brian – is a good buy because the whole album may only be four hefty tracks. An opera may be a poor buy, using up all your allowance in one hit. I didn’t download the Gothic Voices album from eMusic because it comprises 18 tracks, some of them under three minutes long.

What are the advantages of downloading? A few minutes after seeing that an album is available, I can be playing it on my iMac. I can go straight to it on my screen and do other computing tasks while it plays. And I don’t have to shlep around a record store – not, in my view, anything of a chore.

But I can only play the download on my iMac, unless I burn it onto a blank CD or buy myself an iPod (not my style, I think). I don’t get the information that is standard on CDs, though some labels (Naxos, for instance) now expect you to go to a website for opera librettos and the words of long oratorios and song cycles and leave them off the CDs. If it’s from eMusic, I have to apply myself to get the album installed on my iTunes player, at least with the tracks in playing order, and play it all through in one sitting, otherwise the player divides it into separate ‘albums’. This can be tiresome.

Clearly a mixed blessing, then. Perhaps the definitive judgment is this: to download I only need to sit on my arse and get fatter. To buy CDs, I need to walk round shops. Well, I should get out more. I’ll stick to majoring in CDs.

And Rossini’s first name? It’s Gioachino. But you knew that.