Greenwashing

This isn't an attack on Jack Johnson, cause I can't speak to his specific take on music downloading; but it is a call out to an industry leading the way in being green (in words at least). For years, there has been the fear that online stores and music sharing would destroy the music industry. While there are signs that the days of albums going multi-platinum in a week may be over, the music will survive. The suits at the record companies should be sweating about their rights to charge us $15 of 12 songs in the order they choose, by the same artist. It was an inefficient model from the beginning, and the only reason we went along with it is because we loved music enough to give in. But this is America, and competition will always make things better. The music industry had their chance at new technology, but they realized that the profit margin wasn't there if they weren't selling an actual product. So some kid at Northwestern decided he could do it, and it wouldn't even cost anything. The guys in Metallica (bastards) might have stopped Napster, but the tipping point had already been crossed, and nothing was going to push that train off the tracks.

If you break down the $15 for a CD at a retailer, very little goes to the artist. Take out the retailer markup, the packaging, the physical CD, the record companies huge cut, and then the artist is left with the rest (minus whatever Uncle Sam takes from them). Now consider an iTunes purchase. The record company still takes a piece, but after Apple takes it's small share, it's all the artist's. Back in the day it was fun to look at the pictures in the CD inserts, because the were some of the few band images we had available all the time. Now a simple Google search could result in hours wasted, flipping through meaningless photos of your favorite artist. Rap, hip-hop, and country have consistently out-paced the other genres in CD sales. Why? My guess is their target audience is less likely to have the technology and the know-how to buy it online or steal the soft copies.

Now consider the green effect. Since a lot of music will never go onto a CD anymore (it just stays in digital form on an iPod), there is no pollution from creating and shipping the actual product. In all the talk I've heard about musicians encouraging us to be green, I've never heard them say "Please download our music instead of buying the CDs, it will help the planet." This is sort of greenwashing, like the electric company sending out efficient bulbs packaged in foam peanut shells, sure to pack a landfill for eternity.

To give credit where credit is due, artists like Robbie Williams, Annie Lennox, and Radiohead have encouraged fans to download their music. And any up-and-coming artist will beg you to take their music if it means you'll pass it along and pay to see them live. Coldplay recently released a free live concert download, just to say thank you to the fans. I'm sure they could have sold it and made a few bucks, but how much is that goodwill worth? It's priceless of course. Concert tickets may go up on price, but with the money being saved on music, we should have a little more to spare. Eventually, we'll see the download numbers have more significance than the CD sales. And just like those people that still collect LPs, there will always be those people who find value in the tangible product. I'll find something else for my $15.