WRMC 91.1 FM On Rotation

Author: Benjamin Golze

The beginning of the year is the time when lazy music writers across the country take the easy way out for one more week by looking back at the year gone by, and then making wild, unsubstantiated claims about the next year's trends. So, without further ado, I present the all-inclusive guide to everything you need to know about music in 2005 and 2006.

The biggest music news story of 2005 was, once again, the record industry giving a big "Up Yours!" to the music - consuming public. The copy protection on Sony BMG's CDs allows only the owner of the album to rip the music and play it on his or her personal computer. In the process, however, the copy protection software imbeds itself as a "rootkit" within the computer's operating system, making it extremely difficult to remove and opening up avenues for viral attacks. It's like paying $20 (the price of the Foo Fighters album) for a swift kick in the pants.

This is just another way that the big players in the recording industry are nailing the lids of their coffins shut. CD sales have tumbled for the fourth straight year while online music sales skyrocketed over 2004. The artists themselves are embracing digital music by posting free MP3 tracks from their newest albums or even making whole live albums available online. The idea behind this being that rational people want to listen to an artist before they decide to buy the music.

For groups that don't get a lot of airplay on MTV or Clear Channel radio stations, the primary conduit of exposure to their music is through personal recommendation. In this day and age, the young'uns are using a newfangled system called the Internet for the vast majority of their communication, be it instant messaging or e-mail. So doesn't it make sense that the music format that is shared the most, and leads to the most buying decisions, is digital?

According to Metacritic.com, which calculates cumulative scores from a large number of prominent music critics, My Morning Jacket's latest album, "Z", was the second best album of 2005. (For the curious, "Illinois" by Sufjan Stevens came in at number one). For on-the-cusp independent records like "Z" that expect to reach a bigger audience than the standard indie release, a major distributor like Sony BMG is a must, which puts the group in a sticky situation. The distributor only makes money from CD sales, so it's in their interest to provide extensive copy protection. ATO, My Morning Jacket's record label, claims that it did not give permission for any copy protection to be used, and Sony BMG claims it didn't need any. Meanwhile, the copy-protected ripped files cannot be played in iTunes or on an iPod. iTunes store purchases cannot be played on all devices or programs. Music fans get mad and throw things. The band is, in a word, screwed.

Sony BMG is in the process of settling a class action lawsuit concerning privacy invasion, but the story has revealed what will be one of the main issues in the next year - the effects of Apple's consolidation of the digital music market. Incompatibility with their iPods was the real problem with the copy-protected CDs for many people before the PC security issue was revealed. If other companies fail to market an alternative to the ever-popular iPod, then the clash between Apple and music distributors is going to result in a downward spiral of an increasingly hard line by distributors, more music downloads and fewer CD sales. Based on the rabid crowds I saw lining up to buy socks for their iPods over break, it is time for companies like Creative to saddle up.