Paperback Music

Even in the wake of the court decision that is, once and for all, forcing Napster to meet the concerns of copyright holders, it remains hard to discuss digital music without quickly descending into a tedious discussion of copyright law, business models, this or that technology, creative destruction, and all that. But let's try. Begin with "1," last year's compilation of Beatles hits. Nothing could be easier, using Napster or its knockoffs, than tracking down a bunch of Beatles hits, for free. Collected on compact disc, they go for a little north of $13. And yet at the very peak of Napster's popularity, "1" sold more than seven million copies. Why?

Last year I spent close to $700 on CD's, about average for me. Obviously this doesn't mean that I'm an expert on the music business; but it does mean that I know at least a little bit about actually spending money on music. I'll also disclose up front that I have some experience in downloading music without spending any money at all. I mention these things because the time has come, in the long debate over music in the digital age, to stop discussing the actions and motives of those who produce and distribute music and to start considering the actions and motives of those who actually consume it.

In my case, there's one main reason that I've continued to spend all that money on CD's: as a cultural product, they're better than downloads. Even if you have a fast connection, downloading the 27 songs that make up "1" is a time-consuming hassle. Napster's interface is easy to use, but the content is provided by your "peers," who aren't particularly reliable. The audio quality can be uneven, songs are frequently mislabeled, incomplete versions abound and matching up with another user can take several tries. If you’re after something more recent, and, for example, aren’t sure whether you’re getting the radio edit or the explicit version of, say, Eminem’s "Stan," it’s often impossible to know for sure until you’ve downloaded it and listened. It can be worth putting up with such things if the price is right, and maybe Napster will find a way to offer its services (legally), through a subscription or other method, at a price above zero.

Meanwhile, the bottom line is that even a pristine collection of 27 downloaded Beatles hits is inferior to "1" on CD. A new CD release is packaged, labeled, uniform, requiring no "interactive" procedures. It's an official, completed object. It's satisfying.

Unless of course, you've just paid the $18 list price for the Dixie Chicks' "Fly," only to discover that the rest of the disc doesn't really live up to the single "Goodbye Earl." That's the thing about cultural consumption, the thing everyone forgets: It's risky. Most of the time you can't really know whether a CD is worth the price until it's too late. Listening to the radio or relying on critics as consumer guides can soften the risk, but it's still there.

In other media, however, there's a simple and effective way to lessen that risk for consumers. Take books. In "Book Business," Jason Epstein recalls visiting the Eighth Street Bookstore after work every day in the early 1950's, when he was starting out in publishing. He didn't make much money, and it occurred to him that he would buy more of the fine works he saw in hardback if only they existed in some slightly cheaper version. From this rather bland epiphany came the "quality paperbacks" of Anchor Books, which "did, in fact, reshape the publishing industry," according to Epstein. Providing a second tier of consumption allowed readers to trade some of the timeliness and physical durability of the original product for a lower price and lower risk. (There had been paperbacks before, of course, but of a cheap, pulp variety, as ephemeral as magazines; one thing digital improvements to music have done is demote the cassette to the bottom-rung status of a drugstore paperback.)

The videocassette is basically a paperback movie. In giving the consumer a new option, it, too, has provided its industry with a lucrative new revenue stream. It didn't threaten the prestige of first-run movies. In fact it enhanced it. Just think of all the people who, despite their knowledge that it would eventually come out on video, lined up to see "Hannibal" the weekend it opened.

So why not paperback music? In the past, it has been patiently explained to me by record business digital gurus that downloaded music isn’t any cheaper for them to produce than physical CDs, because of the costs of developing talent and marketing and so forth. So they would prefer to see the downloadable version of a given release, maybe souped up with the sort of extras now on the DVD versions of films, priced the same as a physical CD. But you don’t have to buy into the Napsterphiliacs’ music-should-be-free foolishness to realize that what the industry is saying is that it wants you to pay the same money for something that is not as good – paperback quality at hardback prices. (I realize that there are differences between the book and music businesses that make this analogy impure, but we’re talking here about the way consumers think, which you can only ignore for so long.)

All of which leaves you or me as the person wondering whether it’s worth spending $18 or $15 or even $12 to find out whether the rest of the Wheatus album is as cool as "Teenage Dirtbag." Or is it worth piddling around to find good versions of all the tracks on Napster or some other peer-to-peer network? Maybe, maybe not. I never got around to doing either. But what if, six months or so later, you could easily download the whole thing, clearly labeled and with whatever equivalent of liner-note propaganda the record label chooses, for $9, from Amazon or a record-store site? Again, the downloaded version doesn't compete directly with the CD, but rather creates a second tier benefiting a class of buyers who are like Epstein ó willing to buy, but mindful of what they spend. Before you know it Billboard is running a Top 40 download sales chart, and there's a Modern Library equivalent of Parliament Funkadelic's complete works.

Much of the pleasure of pop is in its currency ó getting the new Dave Matthews the moment it appears ó and this will never change. Those who need to be among the Rod Stewart vanguard will be among the Rod Stewart vanguard (and frankly, they'll get what they deserve). And the CD will remain superior, and thus worth more than any second-tier version. Even Epstein, when he started making more money, went back to buying hardcovers again. So who knows? Maybe if I'm impressed enough with the digital version of that Wheatus album, I'll be compelled to make the band's next disc a nice, satisfying addition to my collection.

A similar version of this essay appeared in the April 1, 2001, issue of The New York Times Magazine.