If music be the food of love

Music is something that stirs the human spirit. Nobody knows quite how or why it does it but no other animal seems to enjoy music at a conscious level or makes music for sheer pleasure.

There have been experiments in which cows produce more milk when music is played to them and for all we know Prince Charles may play music to his plants to supplement the conversations he reportedly has with them but whichever way you look at it, plants and animals seem to respond only at an instinctive or subconscious level.

If you own a pet, try this small experiment. Play a piece of music that has a beat you can't resist. You know the sort of thing - that favourite music track that has your feet tapping involuntarily. Now look at your pet. Not a twitch! Not even a whisker taps out the rhythm! For some reason, the profound effect the music has on you seems to do nothing at all for your pet.

Our relationship with music seems to have existed since the beginning of the human race. Musical artefacts have been found that pre-date written history and it seems safe to assume that mankind has been making music since we left the trees. For most of the intervening time, the only way to listen to music was to learn to play an instrument - or know someone who could. But in the last hundred years or so two inventions have changed things.

The first was the invention of recording technology. This has changed over the years: wax cylinders gave way to plastic and then vinyl records. These were joined by magnetic tapes and more recently replaced by CDs and DVDs.

The second invention was the computer with its ability to digitise everything - including music. Computers emancipated us from the need to learn an instrument. Software can now allow each and every one of us to create music. Music Factory from Widget is a simple program which allows anyone to create stirring music from basic building blocks whilst Imagine Logo let's you create music from very first principles.

Computers also allow us to record music and this has thrown the music industry into a spin!

Recording a piece of music that we have created ourselves is fine. It's when we record someone else's without paying them that the problem arises. It's called copyright theft and the industry is in an absolute stew about it.

Recording music actually began in the days of tape recorders. People would buy a record and then lend it to their friends who would make a tape recording of it. The industry claimed that every single recording was a lost sale, although most people wouldn't have gone out and bought all the records they copied. The industry is technically correct. When they own the copyright to a piece of music anyone who makes a recording of it breaks the law.

But like most things in life it isn't black and white. For example, it has been proved that music clubs - where a group of people buy music and then share it by making recordings - actually generate sales. Their joint love of music leads them to buy more than they would have done individually. However, the music industry seems to have deaf ears and it insists that every single copy is a lost sale. They have fought and fought this issue over the years.

Then, with the dawning of the Internet, the problem got a whole lot worse.

The Internet changes things. For example it changes the way we shop. Amazon is a good illustration. It maintains a shop-like appearance - the metaphor - but it isn't actually a shop at all. Amazon is more like a broker. It knows where the products are and when you visit the website and place an order it knows where you are. All Amazon has to do is put the two together - in other words, it brokers the deal. It's not shopping in the traditional way but it's hugely successful and it's a sign of how the Internet changes things.

The music industry's problem is more acute. With the advent of peer-to-peer file-sharing software it is now possible to share music more easily than ever and you don't even have to be a member of a club to do it.

How has the music industry responded to this change? Well, the answer is with bluster and blinkers. Refusing to see that their market place is changing, they first tried to sue the companies who produce file-sharing software. When this failed they decided against looking for an alternative solution. This is something they really should have done. After all, if people are sharing music, it means they want music. It doesn't mean they are refusing to pay, it means that what the record companies are offering no longer meets buyers' needs. A CD with fifteen tracks on it that costs £15 is not attractive when only two or three of the tracks will ever be listened to and they can be easily obtained elsewhere. Cheap CDs at the supermarket are one alternative, illegal downloading is another.

A solution might be to sell music tracks separately. It wouldn't make economic sense to create and distribute fifteen separate CDs but making downloads available probably would - look at how much people spend on ring tones!

However, like dinosaurs, the industry keeps its blinkers firmly attached and declares that every single downloaded track is a lost sale. It seems slow to introduce legal downloading and in 2003 the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) decided to sue 532 downloaders. One was a 71-year-old from Texas whose grandchildren had used the computer for downloading at weekends and another was a 12-year-old girl. Many of the others were students - the industry's prime market.

Of course, it will change in time. The only question is how long it will take for the industry to wake up to the fact that it is not in the business of selling CDs any more. The way companies market music and the way consumers buy it has changed and the sooner the industry realises this the better. Mitchel Reichgut, head of the Jun Group says, "The labels have a choice. They can fight and continue losing money, or they can tweak this 100-year-old model and get immediate results."

Consumers are now in the driving seat. The vast majority don't want to steal music, they want to buy it legitimately but in different ways - instantly and track by track. As always, technology changes things and there are only two responses - embrace it and survive or try to block it and fail.