Music is pretty important to me, as you might have seen from my acceptance last month that the CD has finally died for me. So when I was getting close to a project deadline, some non-nonsense rock seemed like the perfect soundtrack, and as my AC/DC CDs are amongst those in the loft, I thought I’d go and pay again to legally download my favourites for the sake of convenience.
It seemed like a good plan.
But then I discovered that apparently AC/DC have said as recently as this week they’ll never authorise their songs to be available legally because they don’t want individual tracks downloaded – they only want to deal in albums.
Now, there are two sides to this. As the creators of the music, AC/DC have a right to try and distribute their work in whatever way they see fit – as much as their insistence on ignoring digital downloads annoys me personally, those same choices allowed bands like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead to embrace new distribution methods.
But.
They’ve made a stupid, stupid, stupid choice here for a number of reasons. Firstly, they could licence their tracks to only be downloaded as a complete album, which would still irritate a number of people, but would at least enable a large number to pay for the full album for the sake of getting the songs they want.
Secondly, I already own ‘Back in Black’ for example on CD. And I’m pretty sure it’s been recorded with individual tracks on it, and not one long 40 minute mixtape-style track for each ‘side’ of the album. So all I need to do is find the desire to go into my loft and rip the CD to my PC, and I have individual tracks to be listened to in isolation.
Thirdly – they’ve released singles for radio play, as they’ve even mention in the linked article. So they’ll comprimise their artistic beliefs for the radio station and record company, but not for a fan?
And fourthly…
It’s utterly pointless. Within seconds I could either choose to search and find illegal copies of whatever individual AC/DC track I wanted, or, as I decided to do, I had a quick look on Youtube, and found enough AC/DC tracks to keep me going all night long.
And that’s the most frustrating thing. If Angus and the boys had wanted me to listen to the whole of ‘Back in Black’, a full album-only download probably would have meant I’d have bought that album and listened to the entire thing on repeat last night. By blocking my purchase, they lost cash, and I ended up listening to the selected greatest hits as supplied by numerous people on Youtube, and as I don’t want to have to buy and store CDs anymore, I’m stuck.
Ironically, given their views on Napster, I’ve ended up buying some Metallica tracks instead…
The lesson for me as a content creator is a simple one – I’ll never know or understand all the ways in which people may wish to use and hopefully enjoy my content, but by choosing the right approach and licences, I stand a reasonable chance of being able to accomodate even things that haven’t yet beeen invented. And that gives me the best chance of gaining new support – not trying to force people into only ever accessing what I do in the strict way I have prescribed as the ‘best. Because there’s no such thing as the perfect content format, just as there’s no perfect piece of music that every single person on the planet enjoys.