Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And we have done it. We have
Speaker 1: reached the ultimate episode of our relationship with media and
Speaker 1: its evolution over the years. Episode seven of that arc.
Speaker 1: And uh. When I started down this path, I was
Speaker 1: thinking it might be a three or four part series
Speaker 1: and here we are at episode seven, so let's get
Speaker 1: right into it now. In the last episode, I talked
Speaker 1: about the development of the MP three compression format, which
Speaker 1: would have an enormous impact on both technology and culture,
Speaker 1: as well as business. As it turns out, the MP
Speaker 1: three format is a lossy format that means you lose
Speaker 1: a bit of the information in the original file as
Speaker 1: you compress it down, and that means when you decompress it,
Speaker 1: when you expand it back to its regular size later on,
Speaker 1: you actually don't have the full file. Some of that
Speaker 1: information is just gone now. The goal of the MP
Speaker 1: three compression format is to only cut information that doesn't
Speaker 1: affect the quality of the ultimate sound, but that depends
Speaker 1: not just on the compression algorithm, but also the sample
Speaker 1: rate and the bit depth that you select as you
Speaker 1: compress stuff. As you use the the encoders, typically you
Speaker 1: can set these features and you can use you know,
Speaker 1: more compression, which means you're going to have UH files
Speaker 1: that are of a smaller size. They're easier to handle,
Speaker 1: but they also have more likelihood to have some artifacts
Speaker 1: and distortion in them, or clipping or other elements that
Speaker 1: indicate that, yeah, you really compress that file. Now, a
Speaker 1: few things helped make the MP three and other compressed
Speaker 1: audio file formats and enormous success. They weren't huge successes
Speaker 1: right out of the gate, but it took a little
Speaker 1: time and then once it got to a certain level,
Speaker 1: they really took off. The first thing that helped was
Speaker 1: that Internet download throughput was slowly on the rise, meaning
Speaker 1: it wouldn't take a full day to download a song
Speaker 1: or anything like back in the old days when we
Speaker 1: were all using dial up and we had very slow modems,
Speaker 1: it took ages just to download a small file. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't even dream of trying to tackle something like a
Speaker 1: raw audio file, even the compressed one would have taken
Speaker 1: quite some time. The second element that really helped was
Speaker 1: that hard drive storage space was also climbing, so you
Speaker 1: could fit more files onto your hard drive because the
Speaker 1: hard drives were getting higher in capacity. Some MP three
Speaker 1: players that came along later on after the MP three
Speaker 1: format had been settled, actually had physical hard drives in them.
Speaker 1: They had tiny hard drive platters that actually moved inside
Speaker 1: the portable player. Actually had a creative zen player that
Speaker 1: was like that is a bit of a brick. It
Speaker 1: was heavy and it was a little bulky, largely because
Speaker 1: it was housing a physical hard drive. Later on, most
Speaker 1: of these players would switch over to solid state drives.
Speaker 1: Those are faster, they're lighter, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about physical moving components with those. The third factor
Speaker 1: that made a big impact on the MP three success
Speaker 1: was that the compressed files worked well with both both
Speaker 1: of those first two factors. The first two things uh
Speaker 1: complimented the MP three the file sizes. The MP three's
Speaker 1: were smaller than the raw audio files, so they didn't
Speaker 1: take as much time to transfer over the Internet, and
Speaker 1: they took up less hard drive space, which meant that
Speaker 1: consumers had a chance to carry around an entire music
Speaker 1: library on a portable device. You might be able to
Speaker 1: have a few CDs in your car and thus have
Speaker 1: a selection of maybe a dozen different albums, but on
Speaker 1: a portable MP three player of a sufficient hard drive size,
Speaker 1: you could have hundreds of songs on there, So it
Speaker 1: really changed the game that way. Then there were the
Speaker 1: sharing services like Napster and Khaza and lime wire and
Speaker 1: numerous others. These were the bane of the recording industry,
Speaker 1: and they led to some pretty high profile draconian lawsuits
Speaker 1: that I'll talk about a bit later in this episode.
Speaker 1: The services enabled users to share copies of files with
Speaker 1: each other, and they very quickly became the trading grounds
Speaker 1: for copyrighted material, sometimes unreleased copyrighted material, So stuff was
Speaker 1: leaking on the Internet before it could get officially published
Speaker 1: as c ds. So instead of going out and buying
Speaker 1: a CD and ripping it on a computer to put
Speaker 1: songs on an MP three player, or buying a song
Speaker 1: off an online store like iTunes, which came a little
Speaker 1: bit later, people were instead downloading client software to connect
Speaker 1: to peer to peer networks and to grab that stuff
Speaker 1: for free. And along the way they risked pulling down
Speaker 1: some nasty computer viruses and other malware, because not everything
Speaker 1: was what it claimed to be on those services. You
Speaker 1: might think, oh, there's the new Bruce Springsteen album. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to download it, and it turns out that
Speaker 1: it's a trojan horse for some sort of malware that
Speaker 1: you're completely unaware of. It was not unusual in those
Speaker 1: days to download a file and then try to play
Speaker 1: it so you can listen to the music and nothing
Speaker 1: seems to happen, and you might think, oh, it's a
Speaker 1: corrupted file. The download didn't happen properly. It could also
Speaker 1: be that it was actually malware, So that was a
Speaker 1: risk you had to take um and hopefully you were
Speaker 1: at least aware of that risk if you were engaged
Speaker 1: in that behavior. Now, some people became obsessed with collecting
Speaker 1: music files. They established enormous digital music libraries of their own.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'd even download stuff they never really planned to
Speaker 1: listen to, just so that they could have it. And
Speaker 1: people were purchasing fewer CDs, and that was a huge
Speaker 1: blow to the recording industry. There were multiple reasons for that,
Speaker 1: and again I'll talk about that a little bit more
Speaker 1: in depth later on, but this was this was a
Speaker 1: scary thing for record labels because the profit margin for
Speaker 1: CDs was really good. You know, the CDs were cheap
Speaker 1: to manufacture, you could sell them for a really good profit,
Speaker 1: and companies obviously did not want that cash cow to
Speaker 1: go away. So when they started seeing that trend on
Speaker 1: the decline, companies really freaked out. And there were a
Speaker 1: lot of different reasons that contributed to that decline, but
Speaker 1: the company seemed to really focus on piracy as being
Speaker 1: the one main reason for that happening. Worse than that,
Speaker 1: companies started seeing those albums get leaked, like I said,
Speaker 1: before they could even publish them, and they were wondering,
Speaker 1: how is this happening? How can these songs that haven't
Speaker 1: even published, they haven't played on the radio, they shouldn't
Speaker 1: really be outside the control of the company. How are
Speaker 1: they getting out to get leaked onto these services? Because
Speaker 1: people were downloading the late songs from artists days or
Speaker 1: sometimes even weeks before the album would actually drop. The
Speaker 1: New Yorker did a profile on someone responsible for thousands
Speaker 1: of leaks. He was not the only one, but this
Speaker 1: is a representation of what was going on. It was
Speaker 1: a guy named Dell Glover. He was working at a
Speaker 1: PolyGram c D manufacturing facility in the Carolinas, and Glover
Speaker 1: claimed he never personally smuggled any of those production CDs
Speaker 1: out of the facility, but he had a network of
Speaker 1: employees who would do that for them for him, So
Speaker 1: he would, you know, rely on these people to smuggle
Speaker 1: up brand new CDs that were being produced but not
Speaker 1: yet being sold. One of the ways they would do
Speaker 1: this is they would commonly produce more CDs than they
Speaker 1: actually needed for an order, because sometimes you know, you
Speaker 1: have irregular CDs that are pressed something there might be
Speaker 1: some manufacturing error, something is affecting the quality, uh, And
Speaker 1: sometimes he would just end up with extras anyway. And
Speaker 1: those extras were always meant to go through a shredder
Speaker 1: so that the material could be destroyed and then recycled.
Speaker 1: But you could just secretly, you know, hide one of
Speaker 1: those CDs on your person while you're taking all the
Speaker 1: rest of the shutter because no one was keeping track
Speaker 1: of the shredded disks. So if you did it and
Speaker 1: you were careful and you didn't get caught, you could
Speaker 1: stand to gain from that. So Glover would take the
Speaker 1: smuggled disks home and then he would rip the music
Speaker 1: off of them using his computer and upload the files
Speaker 1: to a ringleader of a piracy ring, who then made
Speaker 1: them available on various peer to peer networks, well first
Speaker 1: on centralized networks and later peer to peer networks. This
Speaker 1: also helped start the idea that the content on the
Speaker 1: Internet is free. It's a It's an idea that's got
Speaker 1: a pretty strong hold on the average Internet users. Psyche
Speaker 1: this these days, this concept that if I, if I
Speaker 1: go online, I should be able to get stuff for free.
Speaker 1: People got used to that idea. They didn't have to
Speaker 1: walk into a store and lay down cash for a purchase. Now,
Speaker 1: in some cases, artists or companies might allow people to
Speaker 1: listen to or even download some content for free. It
Speaker 1: actually becomes something they're welcoming. They might think of it
Speaker 1: as a type of marketing. But in other cases, people
Speaker 1: were just pirating the heck out of stuff. They were
Speaker 1: just copying it because they could not because it was
Speaker 1: allowed and the thought of paying for content was on
Speaker 1: the decline. The revenue model for the web was largely
Speaker 1: ad based. Right if you went to a website, chances
Speaker 1: are that website was making money by using web advertising.
Speaker 1: They were selling space on the web page that advertisers
Speaker 1: would pay money to occupy for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 1: And uh, this was not ideal for content creators necessarily
Speaker 1: because and and for website operators too, because people were
Speaker 1: starting to develop what we largely would refer to as
Speaker 1: as a ad blindness. People would stop pay attention to
Speaker 1: the fact that there even were ads. They're just paying
Speaker 1: attention to the content. That led to some pretty irritating
Speaker 1: trends and advertising things like pop ups and pop unders
Speaker 1: and ads with full sound that just start playing as
Speaker 1: soon as they load on your screen. Irritating stuff like
Speaker 1: that that would uh decrease your enjoyment of the web experience.
Speaker 1: But it also meant that a lot of people would
Speaker 1: install ad blockers so that they could not have that
Speaker 1: experience and still get the content they wanted. The content
Speaker 1: wasn't technically free because it was being paid for by advertising,
Speaker 1: but the end user was not directly paying for the experience, right.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like it was behind a paywall, So for
Speaker 1: the user it felt like everything is free. And when
Speaker 1: everything feels like it's free, it then feels like a
Speaker 1: huge imposition to be told, Hey, if you want access
Speaker 1: to this, you've got to pay for it, and so
Speaker 1: it kind of conditioned people to an expectation that intent
Speaker 1: needs to be free. Um, that's a huge problem, not
Speaker 1: just for music, it's for web content in general, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk about that a little bit later too. But
Speaker 1: this was also a shift away from owning a physical
Speaker 1: copy of a song or a movie or television show,
Speaker 1: as those would follow the same path. If you could
Speaker 1: get a digital version and it was a good enough
Speaker 1: digital version of whatever it was you wanted, there wasn't
Speaker 1: much call for buying something that would take up physical space.
Speaker 1: There are still people who preferred having a physical copy,
Speaker 1: and there still are today. There are people who would
Speaker 1: much prefer to go out and get physical copies of movies,
Speaker 1: largely because it's a good way to guarantee you're getting
Speaker 1: the best uh experience for your money, and that things
Speaker 1: like a Blu ray disk. Like let's say you're going
Speaker 1: to get a four K Ultra high definition disk and uh,
Speaker 1: you want to watch it on a four K television,
Speaker 1: You're probably going to have a better experience than watching
Speaker 1: a digital version that's gone through compression. In the decompression
Speaker 1: that still might be really good, it might be better
Speaker 1: than high definition, but it's probably not going to measure
Speaker 1: up to the physical copy. So there's some people who
Speaker 1: still demand that. They also might want things like the
Speaker 1: cover art or liner notes or special features, or they
Speaker 1: may just want something physical to relate to with the
Speaker 1: music or movies or television that they enjoyed. They might
Speaker 1: have a sort of a psychological attachment to that. And
Speaker 1: then there's the audio file community. They were largely against
Speaker 1: digital files in general, compression in particular, and really lossy formats.
Speaker 1: They hated that idea because they were very passionate and
Speaker 1: arguing that that approach was decreasing the actual quality of
Speaker 1: the music itself. Now, generally speaking, you could tell the
Speaker 1: difference between a good analog recording played on a decent
Speaker 1: stereo system and a digital file of the same piece
Speaker 1: of music played on a comparable sound system, specifically a
Speaker 1: compressed digital file. The more extreme the compression, the easier
Speaker 1: it was to tell the difference between the two. And
Speaker 1: so there was a community of audio files who protested
Speaker 1: how the compressed format was ruining the beauty of the
Speaker 1: experience of listening to music. But for many people, including myself,
Speaker 1: the convenience factor mattered way more than the quality of
Speaker 1: the music. While the difference might be noticeable between the
Speaker 1: perfect sound system and a portable MP three player, most
Speaker 1: people just wanted to be able to hear the songs
Speaker 1: they liked in an easy to carry format, and as
Speaker 1: long as the compression wasn't really ruining the song, it
Speaker 1: was fine. You know, it might not be the best quality.
Speaker 1: You might not get the levels of bass or trouble
Speaker 1: that you would get with a really good stereo system,
Speaker 1: but if the song sounds like the song in general,
Speaker 1: then that was good enough. Meanwhile, things would get worse
Speaker 1: for audio files because of a trend in music that
Speaker 1: was being affected by compression, a front type of compression.
Speaker 1: Online music forums were starting to erupt around the same
Speaker 1: time period, with conversations about music being louder than it
Speaker 1: had been before that the actual recordings being pressed to
Speaker 1: c D we're at a volume greater than previous generations
Speaker 1: of music. So if you put a CD in and
Speaker 1: you set the volume on your CD player, let's say
Speaker 1: five out of ten, and you're playing a CD of
Speaker 1: older music, then it might be a comfortable listening experience.
Speaker 1: But then you put in a more recent album and
Speaker 1: it would suddenly be too loud to listen to you
Speaker 1: would have to adjust the volume. Well, compression was having
Speaker 1: a big effect on the quality of music. See, the
Speaker 1: conversation was really about the dynamic nature of sound and music,
Speaker 1: and most people refer to dynamic as a range of
Speaker 1: sounds and their loudness. It's really kind of a range
Speaker 1: of volume. A dynamic song, therefore, would have quiet components
Speaker 1: and loud components, and there should be a pretty decent
Speaker 1: range between the two, and ideally you should be able
Speaker 1: to hear all of it based on the way the
Speaker 1: music is constructed and recorded. Now, Emmanuel Derrity actually did
Speaker 1: an analysis of music from the nineteen seventies up through
Speaker 1: two thousand ten to see whether or not music as
Speaker 1: a whole really did get louder and less dynamic. He
Speaker 1: published the findings on the website sound on sound dot
Speaker 1: com and found that, yeah, music did get louder. The
Speaker 1: dynamic question is actually a little more complicated. But he
Speaker 1: traced the trends in music, finding that as time went on,
Speaker 1: music recordings were getting louder, and that at the same time,
Speaker 1: the range between the peak loudness and the median loudness
Speaker 1: of the songs was decreasing. So in other words, in
Speaker 1: earlier music, you might get a few moments of loudness,
Speaker 1: but most of the time the the median volume was lower,
Speaker 1: so you had a range there. In later songs, the
Speaker 1: peak wasn't necessarily much higher than the median, so the
Speaker 1: loudest sound was not that different from the median sound,
Speaker 1: and that meant there was less dynamic range, at least
Speaker 1: according to this volume approach, and and some people argued
Speaker 1: it led to a homogeneous, noisy, less interesting sound overall,
Speaker 1: Drudy actually found there was more loudness range than people
Speaker 1: typically imagined in that more recent music. But it gets
Speaker 1: super technical now. The reason for that wasn't just that
Speaker 1: it was a change in taste for music, but that
Speaker 1: was part of it. It was also in the nature
Speaker 1: of compression and what people referred to as digital brick
Speaker 1: walls now. Essentially, to get music that loud, you had
Speaker 1: to put a hard upper limit on the loudest noise
Speaker 1: because the CD could only replicate so loud of a
Speaker 1: noise before you'd start getting a distortion like clipping or
Speaker 1: other artifacts. But that compression would also mean that it
Speaker 1: would square off the peaks in sound. It would create
Speaker 1: a digital version of distortion that would only appear in
Speaker 1: the recorded version. If you were able to listen to
Speaker 1: the original decompressed version, it would sound very, very different.
Speaker 1: So you could do that to create an effect on purpose,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people just found that it was
Speaker 1: having a negative impact on the quality of sound overall. This,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's not the same thing as m
Speaker 1: P three compression. With this recording compression, we're talking about
Speaker 1: compressing the upper and lower limits of a sound's loudness.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about compressing a digital file size. Now.
Speaker 1: I mentioned this because you'll often hear music fans talk
Speaker 1: about how compression has had a negative impact on music,
Speaker 1: but they are frequently talking more about the production side
Speaker 1: of music and not necessarily on the end digital file format.
Speaker 1: But for the record, both processes can have a negative
Speaker 1: impact on the final quality of a sound. And the
Speaker 1: loudness wars were largely brought about because the CD form
Speaker 1: factor and the trend to push the limits of the
Speaker 1: levels of loudness that CD s and CD players could handle.
Speaker 1: It wasn't on the digital file side at all. But
Speaker 1: let's get back to those digital files. That's really what
Speaker 1: I was talking about in this episode. Anyway, the recording
Speaker 1: industry tried lots of different tactics to try and stop
Speaker 1: the flood of leaks and downloads. As album sales began
Speaker 1: to decline, and the industry had been on a trend,
Speaker 1: enjoying a decade of incredibly robust sales. As soon as
Speaker 1: the CD had premiered, it was starting to already gain momentum.
Speaker 1: It would overtake cassettes, and then it would eclipse previous
Speaker 1: sales figures of cassettes and vinyl, doing gang buster business
Speaker 1: for the recording industry. It was and and a great
Speaker 1: time to be the head of a recording label. But
Speaker 1: after that, once those hayed a years had passed, the
Speaker 1: industry started looking at these declines and it was a
Speaker 1: really harsh wake up call to see those numbers go
Speaker 1: the other way. And the companies were not just gonna
Speaker 1: take this lying down. Many tried various digital rights management
Speaker 1: strategies to protect the music under their labels. They tried
Speaker 1: to protect c d s, the famous one being Sony
Speaker 1: when it backfired on them, uh, But there were others
Speaker 1: that tried different methods as well in an effort to
Speaker 1: limit how people could use digital files. But typically that
Speaker 1: would just mean hackers would find the d r M
Speaker 1: and strip it out of the music files and share
Speaker 1: it anyway. The other big move that organizations like the
Speaker 1: Recording Industry Association of America or r I double A
Speaker 1: that they took was was legal action, and boy hawdy,
Speaker 1: did they go all out in that realm. The targets
Speaker 1: didn't just include services like Napster that enabled file sharing
Speaker 1: on a grand scale. They also included regular folks who
Speaker 1: were engaged in some illegal file sharing and some people
Speaker 1: who probably weren't, and the stakes were really high. I'll
Speaker 1: talk about that more in just a second, but first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. The r I double A
Speaker 1: sued Napster in December. The service had only gone live
Speaker 1: in June of n r I double A did not
Speaker 1: waste time about this, and like many legal processes, this
Speaker 1: one took a long time to reconcile. And it was
Speaker 1: tricky because the d m c A did establish that
Speaker 1: service providers are not responsible for how their customers use
Speaker 1: their service as long as the service itself is in
Speaker 1: fact legal and pure to pure distribution is a perfectly
Speaker 1: legal process. The problem wasn't with the method necessarily, but
Speaker 1: the content that users were uploading and sharing. It's it's
Speaker 1: legal to use peer to peer networks to distribute files,
Speaker 1: that's their purpose. It's not legal to use peer to
Speaker 1: peer to distribute files without the authorization of the owner
Speaker 1: of the intellectual property. To use an analogy, it's perfectly
Speaker 1: legal to use the road system to transport stuff from
Speaker 1: one city to another. We do it all the time.
Speaker 1: That's what the road system is for. But it is
Speaker 1: illegal to smuggle contraband. However, if someone were caught smuggling,
Speaker 1: the law wouldn't go after the Federal Highway Administration in
Speaker 1: the United States because it's not the f h W
Speaker 1: as fault that someone was transporting illegal goods using the
Speaker 1: highways that the agency actually oversees. The same concept was
Speaker 1: meant to apply to online providers, but there was a
Speaker 1: caveat The providers had to be willing and able to
Speaker 1: take action against people who are using the services illegally.
Speaker 1: If a copyright holder, such as a music label were
Speaker 1: to contact a service like Napster, that service was supposed
Speaker 1: to help clamp down on illegal behaviors, and in return,
Speaker 1: the service would receive the protection of safe harbor. So
Speaker 1: part of the lawsuit was alleging that Napster was willfully
Speaker 1: turning a blind eye to illegal behavior on the service. Now,
Speaker 1: for the record, Napster did try to comply with this,
Speaker 1: but they were only able to demonstrate that their their
Speaker 1: ability to prevent illegal file sharing was point four percent effective,
Speaker 1: and the prosecution argue that that wasn't good enough. It
Speaker 1: had to be a hundred percent effective, which led some
Speaker 1: people to say, this isn't actually an attack on Napster,
Speaker 1: this is an attack on peer to peer file sharing
Speaker 1: as a strategy in the first place. Um, And so
Speaker 1: it led to a pretty ugly fight. The lawsuit also
Speaker 1: led to Napster shutting down its existing service in two
Speaker 1: thousand one. The lawsuit kept on going at that point.
Speaker 1: The following year, a judge and an appeals court both
Speaker 1: found that Napster was liable for numerous copyright copyright violations
Speaker 1: in separate lawsuits with artists like Dr Dre and Metallica.
Speaker 1: Napster would settle out of court, paying handsomely to do so,
Speaker 1: and Napster would go bankrupt. They would eventually re emerge
Speaker 1: in a very different format as an online music store.
Speaker 1: It was not really the same entity as the original company,
Speaker 1: UM that, like I said, that company had gone bankrupt.
Speaker 1: Another company came in and bought up all the assets. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's actually been a couple of different
Speaker 1: music related services called Napster since the original shut down,
Speaker 1: and Napster wasn't the only entity the r I Double
Speaker 1: A and music artists went after. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: individuals who used these services were also targeted. UM And,
Speaker 1: as my colleague Ben Bolan might say, here's where it
Speaker 1: gets crazy, because the industry went thermonuclear against people, and
Speaker 1: not only did it hurt a lot of people, it
Speaker 1: didn't actually achieve the goal that the industry had set
Speaker 1: out to do, which was essentially to scare off pirates
Speaker 1: so that they wouldn't copy and share music files. As
Speaker 1: it turned out, the actions didn't curtail that behavior at all.
Speaker 1: So to go into all the different lawsuits would take
Speaker 1: a few episodes all by itself. So I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: hit a few highlights, or you might want to call
Speaker 1: them low lights. Now. I'm pulling a lot of this
Speaker 1: information from a white paper that was published in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight by the Electronic Frontier Foundation titled r I
Speaker 1: Double A versus the people. Five years later, in April
Speaker 1: two thousand three, the r I Double A sued four
Speaker 1: college students. The students would ultimately settle out of court,
Speaker 1: not necessarily because they felt they had done something wrong
Speaker 1: were illegal, but because going into the court system would
Speaker 1: be very expensive, much more expensive. Even if they won
Speaker 1: the fight, they might end up having to spend way
Speaker 1: more money in legal fees than if they settled off court,
Speaker 1: and in at least one of those cases, the amount
Speaker 1: of the settlement was exactly the same as the amount
Speaker 1: the student happened to have in his bank account, and
Speaker 1: it effectively wiped out his college fund. The reaction against
Speaker 1: the r I Double A was mostly negative, with many
Speaker 1: people saying that this was an overstep, that it was
Speaker 1: being far too cruel in its pursuit of pirates, and
Speaker 1: the the payments the penalties people were facing were far
Speaker 1: greater than what was justified. On September eight, two thousand three,
Speaker 1: the r I Double A would sue two hundred sixty
Speaker 1: one Americans, alleging that those people were illegally sharing music
Speaker 1: on peer to peer networks, and, as many have written
Speaker 1: in the years since, it was a particularly aggressive and
Speaker 1: confrontational and ultimately stupid move. After all, the industry was
Speaker 1: attacking music fans. The very consumers that supported the industry
Speaker 1: were the ones that the R I double A were
Speaker 1: going after, so in hindsight it seems pretty ere. Then
Speaker 1: this move would alienate a lot of people, even those
Speaker 1: who had never illegally downloaded a song, and industry that
Speaker 1: sues its own customers is not likely to see a
Speaker 1: sales jump as a result. That's not how you build
Speaker 1: customer loyalty. And not only was it aggressive and ineffective,
Speaker 1: it was a faulty process. The R I double A
Speaker 1: was collecting IP addresses by joining the same file sharing
Speaker 1: services that pirates were using, and then searching for people
Speaker 1: who are uploading music that was in the represented record
Speaker 1: labels directories um in the R I double A, but
Speaker 1: an IP address doesn't automatically tell you the physical address
Speaker 1: of a device. To get that information, the I double
Speaker 1: A actually had to go after Internet service providers or
Speaker 1: I s p s. So the I s p s
Speaker 1: have an incentive to withhold that personal information of their customers,
Speaker 1: because the handing over customer data is a great way
Speaker 1: to to lose your customer ors confidence. The R I
Speaker 1: double A leverage the rules of the d m c
Speaker 1: A to force the hands of the Internet service providers.
Speaker 1: If the I s P s didn't comply, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be protected under the rules of the d m c A. Now,
Speaker 1: at first, the r I double A tried to subpoena
Speaker 1: I s P customers names and addresses from the I
Speaker 1: s P s just with allegations of copyright infringement. So
Speaker 1: in other words, this wasn't as the result of a
Speaker 1: lawsuit or even they didn't even present evidence to support
Speaker 1: their claims. They said, we suspect the person using this
Speaker 1: I P address is committing piracy. We want their name
Speaker 1: and address. So they weren't coming forward with any stronger
Speaker 1: request than that. That tactic ultimately failed, as various public
Speaker 1: interest groups and the e f F challenged that practice
Speaker 1: in court, and the court agreed, saying no, you need
Speaker 1: more than just an allegation to get the hold of
Speaker 1: that information. There was a period, though, when the court
Speaker 1: was still deciding this, where the practice was effectively legal,
Speaker 1: or at least it wasn't illegal, and in that period,
Speaker 1: the r I double A issued subpoenas to various I
Speaker 1: s P s. Now, some of those two d sixty
Speaker 1: one people that the I R A A sued in
Speaker 1: September two three. We're probably fairly active in copyright infringement.
Speaker 1: They may very well have been the appropriate people to
Speaker 1: go after, at least from the perspective of these people
Speaker 1: were actively committing this infringing behavior. But there was someone
Speaker 1: that list who won a lot of sympathy from the public,
Speaker 1: like Brianna Lahara. She was twelve years old and the
Speaker 1: R I double A came after her like she was
Speaker 1: some sort of evil super genius. She was living in
Speaker 1: a public housing development in New York City, and her
Speaker 1: mom was a single mother raising this kid, and they
Speaker 1: were targeted by this initial blast of loss, and her
Speaker 1: only real option was to sell the case out of
Speaker 1: court because there's no way she could afford going to
Speaker 1: court and defending herself. That settlement would include a two
Speaker 1: thousand dollar fine and the requirement that she apologized publicly.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. Turns out, having a massive multibillion
Speaker 1: dollar conglomerate of companies come after and force a young,
Speaker 1: poor girl to apologize publicly isn't the best PR movement
Speaker 1: in the world. It seemed pretty clear that Lahara wasn't
Speaker 1: some sort of existential threat to the r I double A,
Speaker 1: and this was a real abuse of the legal system.
Speaker 1: And then there were all the people who were targeted
Speaker 1: who clearly had nothing to do with illegal downloads. Sarah
Speaker 1: Ward was one of those people. She was accused of
Speaker 1: using Kaza to download hardcore rap music, but this grandmother
Speaker 1: probably didn't do that, seeing as how the only computer
Speaker 1: she owned was a Mac computer and Kaza was only
Speaker 1: compatible with Windows machines. She wasn't apparently running a virtual
Speaker 1: Windows machine on her computer, so chances are she was
Speaker 1: not the right person. The r I double A did
Speaker 1: eventually withdraw the lawsuit, but did not apologize for making
Speaker 1: that mistake. And it wasn't the only mistake. The list
Speaker 1: of people that was sued by the R I double
Speaker 1: A also included a family in Georgia then not only
Speaker 1: didn't have an Internet connection, they didn't have a computer
Speaker 1: at all. There was no way for them to commit
Speaker 1: the crime that r I double A accused them of.
Speaker 1: There were even people on that list who were actually deceased,
Speaker 1: so clearly the r I double A was using a
Speaker 1: very wide, very inaccurate net to try and catch a
Speaker 1: few big fish. As a message to pirates everywhere, and
Speaker 1: the two sixty one lawsuits were just the beginning. Over
Speaker 1: the course of several years, nearly thirty thousand Americans were
Speaker 1: targeted by the r I double A in an effort
Speaker 1: to create an environment that would discourage illegal file sharing.
Speaker 1: So why did that accomplish? Mostly they made the r
Speaker 1: I double A look like a vicious, uncarring group of
Speaker 1: greedy corporate jerks who are willing to financially ruin the
Speaker 1: lives of people who are already vulnerable in an effort
Speaker 1: to secure their own bottom line. So it didn't win
Speaker 1: them a whole lot of goodwill, and piracy continued unabated,
Speaker 1: And there's no big shock there. We've seen time and
Speaker 1: time again the more extreme punishments do not discourage crime,
Speaker 1: but for some reason, we keep trying that approach. Anyway,
Speaker 1: while the industries were able to shut down services, you know,
Speaker 1: they were able to target the actual services and not
Speaker 1: necessarily the users. Other services would pop up, and some
Speaker 1: were operating in foreign countries, which made it more difficult
Speaker 1: for the r I double A to go after them
Speaker 1: because they were outside the jurisdiction of the United States
Speaker 1: legal system. It would lead to the industry lobbying for
Speaker 1: new legislation in the US to force I s p
Speaker 1: s to block access to those services that were outside
Speaker 1: the US. But I've covered some of those efforts in
Speaker 1: previous episodes tech Stuff, And as I mentioned before, the
Speaker 1: r I double A wasn't helped by claiming piracy has
Speaker 1: a demonstrable, calculable effect on diminished sales because it's impossible
Speaker 1: to equate every download as a lost sale. It's quite
Speaker 1: possible that the person who illegally downloaded a file would
Speaker 1: have never purchased an album or song. Otherwise, it's just
Speaker 1: as possible that after they downloaded it, they would go
Speaker 1: out and buy the song legally. There were people who
Speaker 1: did that too. They might just download it to listen
Speaker 1: to it to determine whether or not they wanted to
Speaker 1: go buy the album, so it worked both ways. There
Speaker 1: was no way to say a a any single pirated
Speaker 1: instance would lead to a loss in revenue. So the
Speaker 1: justification the R I double A was using when it
Speaker 1: was deciding what damages it should be receiving from people
Speaker 1: was completely unjustifiable. Is based on faulty logic. You can't
Speaker 1: say you owe me X dollars because you cost me
Speaker 1: x dollars when you can't be sure that that's the case.
Speaker 1: So it was a huge issue. Ultimately, the music labels
Speaker 1: that fund the r I double A began to withdraw
Speaker 1: their funding, and this was for a lot of different reasons,
Speaker 1: but one of them was that the country was entering
Speaker 1: a recession and that, coupled with the already established trend
Speaker 1: of lower record sales, was starting to put the squeeze
Speaker 1: on record label company budgets, and there was the possibility
Speaker 1: that our I double A would just dissolve completely due
Speaker 1: to lack of funding. So the industry organization stopped pursuing lawsuits,
Speaker 1: not because it suddenly had a change of heart and said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, we've been real jerks about this. Instead,
Speaker 1: they stopped it because they ran out of cash to
Speaker 1: keep doing it. They did maintain more lawsuits against the services,
Speaker 1: but they stopped going after people. Now, let me be clear,
Speaker 1: I don't think theft is good. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a good thing to share copyrighted material without authorization. I
Speaker 1: do think that artists should be compensated for their work,
Speaker 1: and that if you want to access something that's behind
Speaker 1: a paywall, you should either pay for that access or
Speaker 1: you just do without. You don't work your way around it.
Speaker 1: You don't try and get to the content without paying
Speaker 1: for it. Otherwise, if you do that, then you have
Speaker 1: removed the monetary incentive to create something. And there are
Speaker 1: creative types who want to create no matter what, you know,
Speaker 1: but most of them also want to make a living.
Speaker 1: They have to pay bills, have to be able to eat,
Speaker 1: so they need to earn money. And it's not really
Speaker 1: fair to ask someone who is making the stuff you
Speaker 1: love do it for free and then supplement that somehow
Speaker 1: through numerous other jobs so that they can make a living.
Speaker 1: So I understand where the disconnect is because it's really
Speaker 1: easy to look at mega successful artists and say, well,
Speaker 1: that person is rich. You know, they've got to they've
Speaker 1: got multiple houses, they're always in the headlines for having
Speaker 1: these extravagant parties and stuff, so stealing music doesn't hurt them.
Speaker 1: And that's probably true for those folks, But there are
Speaker 1: a lot of creators out there who are doing what
Speaker 1: they love and they're either barely scraping by or they're
Speaker 1: not even able to live off of that art. So
Speaker 1: the attitude is ultimately really harmful. To those artists. Now
Speaker 1: that being said, the R I double A wasn't exactly
Speaker 1: looking out for the artists, So they're not the good
Speaker 1: guys in this either. That really wasn't part of their equation.
Speaker 1: The R I double A was looking out for the
Speaker 1: record labels. And record labels make their money by exploiting artists.
Speaker 1: Now that's a word with negative connotation. It doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: have to be negative. It doesn't necessarily mean an unfair exploitation.
Speaker 1: But record companies frequently did unfairly exploit artists. So if
Speaker 1: the artists create the music and the record labels produce it,
Speaker 1: publish it, market it, promoted, arrange for distribution, all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff you see where there's this relationship there
Speaker 1: where if the artists didn't and go through a label,
Speaker 1: they'd have to do all of that on their own,
Speaker 1: and that's hard there. They don't necessarily have the infrastructure
Speaker 1: to deal with that and do it themselves, and the
Speaker 1: record labels handle all that. So you understand why the
Speaker 1: record labels deserve a cut. But the record labels had
Speaker 1: most of the power in most of those situations, unless
Speaker 1: an artist got so popular that it was a detriment
Speaker 1: to the record label if they lost that artist, and
Speaker 1: the artist had enough leverage to negotiate a really good
Speaker 1: deal for themselves. Most artists weren't in that category. So
Speaker 1: while the R I double A was going after all
Speaker 1: these file sharing entities and the people using them in
Speaker 1: the name of preserving copyright, the money the R I
Speaker 1: double A was actually getting from those settlements, uh didn't
Speaker 1: make its way to the artists whose work was being
Speaker 1: freely exchanged. So you had artists who are like, my
Speaker 1: music is being shared for free, and I know you're
Speaker 1: getting money from settlements, but I'm not seeing any of
Speaker 1: that cash. So the people downloading music were engaged in
Speaker 1: harmful behavior, the R I double A engaged in devastatingly
Speaker 1: harmful behavior, and artists were caught in the middle. And
Speaker 1: we're starting to get really frustrated now. Some of them
Speaker 1: didn't see the harm and file sharing, and they genuinely
Speaker 1: wanted as many people as possible to hear their work,
Speaker 1: So they were in favor of this. They thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this is disrupting the industry. The industry is filled with corruption.
Speaker 1: I'm cool with it. But some such as Metallica, saw
Speaker 1: piracy as a direct threat to their livelihood. They said,
Speaker 1: how are we supposed to sell our music online? If
Speaker 1: the guy next to us is giving it away for free,
Speaker 1: no one's gonna buy from us. They can just get
Speaker 1: the songs for free right next door. From an internet perspective,
Speaker 1: most artists fell somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.
Speaker 1: You know. They weren't necessarily as extreme as Metallica, but
Speaker 1: not as uh lack of daisical as those who were like,
Speaker 1: let's disrupt the system. And they weren't getting much help
Speaker 1: either way. But while the record labels were worried that
Speaker 1: piracy was going to be the end of them, another
Speaker 1: shift was coming that would change things up. It was
Speaker 1: an approach that would dramatically shift behaviors and do away
Speaker 1: with the idea of owning copies of music in the
Speaker 1: first place. It would be streaming services, which I'll talk
Speaker 1: about more in just a second, right after we take
Speaker 1: this break. Alright, So, year after year, the music industry
Speaker 1: was facing huge cutbacks due to flagging revenues. And it's
Speaker 1: hard to feel much sympathy if I'm being really honest,
Speaker 1: because the industry was also known for not just being
Speaker 1: insanely profitable for many years, but also for a rather
Speaker 1: hedonistic approach to business. There are legendary stories about parties
Speaker 1: and drug use, and lavish offices for record label executives
Speaker 1: and crazy bonuses that they enjoyed, mostly at the expense
Speaker 1: of the musicians who are creating the stuff the record
Speaker 1: labels were selling. And there were some artists who likewise
Speaker 1: enjoyed comparable lifestyles. But for every Madonna, you had hundreds
Speaker 1: of artists who were making maybe a decent living, but
Speaker 1: they were not not getting rich, or some people who
Speaker 1: weren't even able to get by even as being assigned
Speaker 1: artists with a record label. So generally speaking, artists weren't
Speaker 1: being paid anything until an album published, and then they
Speaker 1: would get some money. And in order to make serious money,
Speaker 1: to really make back enough money to justify the amount
Speaker 1: of time you spent recording the album, the album's sales
Speaker 1: had to do really, really well. Then the artists would
Speaker 1: get royalties, which are a percentage of each sale. And
Speaker 1: I think I need to give you a quick word
Speaker 1: on how royalties typically work so you understand how this
Speaker 1: model tends to to work in the entertainment business. So,
Speaker 1: in the negotiation phase, an artists and a label or
Speaker 1: a publisher come to an agreement, and that agreement typically
Speaker 1: includes a guarantee payment on delivery or publication of content.
Speaker 1: So in this case, we're talking about the an album dropping.
Speaker 1: So the artist comes up to the record label and
Speaker 1: they say, all right, when the album drops, the record
Speaker 1: label is going to pay the artist fifty dollars. That's
Speaker 1: a decent chunk of change. Fifty grand is that's nothing
Speaker 1: to sneeze at, but it's not gonna make anyone rich, right,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna make them shop for a brand new
Speaker 1: house in Beverly Hills or anything. Now, along with that
Speaker 1: negotiation is the royalty rate. So let's just say, for
Speaker 1: the purposes of an example, that the rate is five
Speaker 1: cents per copy sold. Now, does that mean when the
Speaker 1: first copy of the album is purchased that the artist
Speaker 1: gets a shiny new nickel. No, because that nickel typically
Speaker 1: actually goes to pay off the fifty thousand dollars that
Speaker 1: the publisher initially paid the artist. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: you have to pay off that fifty guaranteed payment before
Speaker 1: you start accumulating royalties after that. And there are one
Speaker 1: million nickels in fifty thousand dollars. So the record label
Speaker 1: would need to sell a million copies of the album
Speaker 1: before the artist would start to see any money in royalties,
Speaker 1: and then from that point forward they would get a
Speaker 1: nickel off of every sale. So if an album does really,
Speaker 1: really well and stills sells millions and millions of copies,
Speaker 1: and artists can make some serious cash through royalties, And
Speaker 1: as long as the album is in print, the potential
Speaker 1: to earn those royalties continues. You know, as long as
Speaker 1: the album is still available to purchase as new, then
Speaker 1: you could still be making money off a classic album
Speaker 1: or a remaster years after you first publish it, depending
Speaker 1: upon the contract negotiations you went through before. But if
Speaker 1: the album only receives modest sales, then the artists won't
Speaker 1: get any royalties at all. Like if they don't sell
Speaker 1: a million copies, they never pay off that fifty grant. However,
Speaker 1: they also don't have to pay back the difference to
Speaker 1: the publisher. It's not like, oh, well, we only sold
Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars worth of the album. If we look
Speaker 1: at your royalty rate, you don't have to return twenty grand.
Speaker 1: You keep the fifty. After CD sales started to decline
Speaker 1: in two thousand, the record label companies began to face
Speaker 1: some pretty harsh realities. Things got worse year after year.
Speaker 1: They had to start laying off employees. It was a
Speaker 1: very drastic change from the days where it looked like
Speaker 1: there was no end in sight to all the parties
Speaker 1: and all the drugs and all the bad behaviors. UM
Speaker 1: I never occupied that world, so I don't know if
Speaker 1: all of that behavior stopped once things started getting more
Speaker 1: real for the record labels, or if they just kept
Speaker 1: doing it in the hopes that maybe that would help
Speaker 1: ease the pain. I wasn't there, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: But the years from two thousand to two thousand ten
Speaker 1: we're really really rough on the industry in general. Now,
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight, the streaming service Spotify launched and
Speaker 1: it would become one of the most important players in
Speaker 1: the streaming game. At the time, it wasn't seen as
Speaker 1: the savior of the music industry, but things have changed
Speaker 1: since then. The streaming model pays record labels a royalty
Speaker 1: fee per stream, and it's typically a fraction of a
Speaker 1: fraction of a penny per stream. So let's say a
Speaker 1: a play of a recording is a stream. Now, according
Speaker 1: to a survey by Digital Music News in eighteen, the
Speaker 1: royalty rate range from point zero zero three nine seven
Speaker 1: dollars that would be on Spotify to point zero zero
Speaker 1: seven eight three dollars on Apple Music. And it's not
Speaker 1: a one size fits all rate. Record labels could negotiate
Speaker 1: those rates on behalf of artists and influential artists sometimes
Speaker 1: have the clout to demand that their work remain off
Speaker 1: the server services entirely if they think the royalty rates
Speaker 1: are too low. Lots of artists have done this Adell
Speaker 1: for example, um They've said, no, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: allow my music to be on those services because the
Speaker 1: royalty fee they're paying is are too low. A lot
Speaker 1: of artists, however, don't have that cloud and they don't
Speaker 1: really have any option. But what became really clear later
Speaker 1: on was that these tiny fractions of a penny really
Speaker 1: do add up when you start looking at them collectively.
Speaker 1: And the big reason for that is it's not a
Speaker 1: one time occurrence per customer. So the profit margins on
Speaker 1: c d s were great and the royalties were more
Speaker 1: profitable per sale at first glance, But when you go
Speaker 1: out to buy a CD as a customer, you buy
Speaker 1: it just the one time. You aren't going to go
Speaker 1: buy a new copy of the same c D. Every
Speaker 1: time you want to listen to the c D, you
Speaker 1: just listen to the one you've got. So CD sales
Speaker 1: had a natural curve to them. It would peak often
Speaker 1: right around release or if a single from the album
Speaker 1: got a lot of radio play, and then sales would
Speaker 1: drop off gradually. But with streaming, a payment goes through
Speaker 1: with every stream, so every time a person listens to
Speaker 1: the same song, it triggers a payment, a royalty payment.
Speaker 1: So if you put a song on repeat. Let's say
Speaker 1: that you've got a song that you particularly like and
Speaker 1: it's just stuck in your head and you gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta listen to it, like twenty times in a row.
Speaker 1: This happens to me all the time. Well, that's actually
Speaker 1: twenty royalty payments. They end up going to that record
Speaker 1: label and to that artist. A portion of it goes
Speaker 1: to the artist, So while the initial amount is less
Speaker 1: than what you would get with a CD sale, you
Speaker 1: do it way more frequently because it's every time you
Speaker 1: listen to it, not just every time you purchase it.
Speaker 1: So record labels began to shift to support that model
Speaker 1: once the economic realities became clear, and streaming gradually grew
Speaker 1: to become a more prominent component in revenue. Now, it
Speaker 1: also meant that some artists that might have trouble getting
Speaker 1: traction in the world of c d s started finding
Speaker 1: sustainable success through streaming. So it might be an artist that,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe they'd only sell a couple of thousand
Speaker 1: albums in the traditional way, that people would discover them online,
Speaker 1: and they would get very popular that way. Now people
Speaker 1: who usually would be struggling and be unable to live
Speaker 1: just off of their music might even be able to
Speaker 1: make a career out of it. They again might not
Speaker 1: be getting rich, but they might be making a comfortable living.
Speaker 1: Not At the same time, the streaming services themselves were
Speaker 1: actually struggling to become profitable. They were operating, they were popular,
Speaker 1: they just weren't making a lot of money. There was
Speaker 1: clearly a business there, so there were a lot of
Speaker 1: investors who were willing to support these services with the
Speaker 1: thought that eventually they would turn a profit. People wanted
Speaker 1: to listen to music, record labels were willing to play
Speaker 1: ball in return for those royalties, and at least some
Speaker 1: artists were totally on board or powerless if they didn't
Speaker 1: have the influence, but making money as the service was
Speaker 1: a bit of a challenge. It wasn't until very recently
Speaker 1: that Spotify posted a profitable quarter from revenue. They did
Speaker 1: have one profitable quarter earlier, but that was due to
Speaker 1: attacks windfall, and you can't build a business off of that.
Speaker 1: That's some us like a one off event. But they
Speaker 1: did have a profitable quarter recently, so they were able
Speaker 1: to show that maybe now it's actually a revenue model
Speaker 1: that works. These services typically generate revenue through ad supported material.
Speaker 1: They sell advertising time on their services, or they might
Speaker 1: also offer subscription plans to customers. They might do both,
Speaker 1: So a typical service could have a free tier in
Speaker 1: which you can listen to music, but you might have
Speaker 1: limited features and you would have commercials play between every
Speaker 1: few songs, or you might have a selection of subscription
Speaker 1: tiers that might be ad free. They could include other
Speaker 1: features like being able to listen to the same song
Speaker 1: more than once, um, that sort of thing. And many
Speaker 1: also offer digital stores where if you want, you can
Speaker 1: purchase songs and download them, kind of like in the
Speaker 1: old days, or like on iTunes or something like that
Speaker 1: um or you could have a limited cashing feature that
Speaker 1: allows for offline listening. Now, this model caught on with
Speaker 1: the public as well, and there are several streaming services
Speaker 1: that you can subscribe to and the interest of full disclosure,
Speaker 1: I Heart Media has an app that they use the
Speaker 1: where you can listen to streaming music, and they talk
Speaker 1: about how their approach is different from say Spotify, and
Speaker 1: that it's all about curating a an experience and it
Speaker 1: becomes a kind of a uh a collaborative effort between
Speaker 1: the service and the listener. And then other services are
Speaker 1: more about on demand listening. So they're very different approaches here,
Speaker 1: but they're both geared towards having people be able to
Speaker 1: access music through streaming as opposed to downloading. So Pandora
Speaker 1: is another example. They select music for you based on
Speaker 1: an algorithm and some guidance from the individual users. You
Speaker 1: might give it a specific song that you like, and
Speaker 1: it will go out and seek other songs that it
Speaker 1: determines are similar to that one and serve them up
Speaker 1: to you. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't. And
Speaker 1: there are rules that these companies typically have to follow.
Speaker 1: Uh those are rules they're set by recording labels and
Speaker 1: broadcast companies, and it's been a challenge for many of
Speaker 1: those companies to make the business actually earn money, and
Speaker 1: many would exist primarily off of repeated rounds of funding campaigns.
Speaker 1: And while I focused on the music industry in this episode,
Speaker 1: we've seen the same thing happen with media like film
Speaker 1: and television. Took a little longer for those to really
Speaker 1: have that same experience, largely because the file sizes are
Speaker 1: typically much much bigger than with music files, and so
Speaker 1: the limitations of technology gave them a bit more breathing
Speaker 1: space than the recording industry had. But services like Netflix,
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney's upcoming streaming service, and more provide
Speaker 1: users with on demand digital streaming of films and TV
Speaker 1: shows that belong in the libraries of those services. The
Speaker 1: film and TV industries tried working with TV manufacturers to
Speaker 1: push for advancements like ultra high definition, high dynamic range content,
Speaker 1: even three D systems was an effort to help boost
Speaker 1: sales both of hardware and of content and just increased revenues.
Speaker 1: Much of that has had limited success. In the case
Speaker 1: of three D it was pretty much a flop, and
Speaker 1: we've seen cable subscriptions on the decline, streaming services have
Speaker 1: been doing pretty well, so well in fact, that now
Speaker 1: these distribution companies are also production companies. You know, a
Speaker 1: decade ago, it would seem odd to suggest a company
Speaker 1: like Netflix would be able to go toe to toe
Speaker 1: with established, older media companies to produce award winning content,
Speaker 1: and yet that's happened several times in the last few years. Today,
Speaker 1: we have a culture of cord cutters who are canceling
Speaker 1: cable subscriptions in favor of online delivery. You have cord never's.
Speaker 1: Those are people who never had a subscription to pay
Speaker 1: TV in the first place. They've only received things either
Speaker 1: over the air or online. And this trend hasn't been
Speaker 1: so large as to necessitate a complete change in the
Speaker 1: entertain and industry, but it could be the beginning of
Speaker 1: another very large disruption. So if the streaming model continues
Speaker 1: to grow, or at least hold steady, while cable subscriptions
Speaker 1: continue to fall, we might see a drastic change in
Speaker 1: television and film production. Now we're seeing an increased emphasis
Speaker 1: on huge, tent pole blockbusters in film, you know, like
Speaker 1: the vast majority of them are coming from a single
Speaker 1: movie studio that being the Walt Disney Company, which owns
Speaker 1: not just all the Disney I p but Star Wars
Speaker 1: and Marvel, and they just had the acquisition of Fox
Speaker 1: as well. There's still a call for independent films, but
Speaker 1: many of those have sought new ways to reach audiences.
Speaker 1: Some have been released both in theaters and on online
Speaker 1: channels UH and available for streaming, sometimes for a small fee,
Speaker 1: but at the same time when it's out in theaters.
Speaker 1: Others have skipped cinema distribution entirely and struck deals with
Speaker 1: companies like Netflix to get distribution that way. And as
Speaker 1: we head toward the future and which pay TV is
Speaker 1: having this this existential crisis, we are left with a question.
Speaker 1: Are we going to see a future where PayTV goes
Speaker 1: away and movie theaters are only for showing Disney films
Speaker 1: and everything else reaches us on one of a dozen
Speaker 1: streaming services, or will it be possible that the proliferation
Speaker 1: of all these different services, each of which has its
Speaker 1: own selection of exclusive content and features, will ultimately frustrate
Speaker 1: consumers who just want access to all the things they
Speaker 1: like in one place. I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: who said I quit cable because I thought it was
Speaker 1: too expensive, and it was given me too much of
Speaker 1: the stuff that I don't care about and not enough
Speaker 1: of the stuff I do care about. But now there's
Speaker 1: so many different streaming services and no one has everything
Speaker 1: that in order for me to get all the stuff
Speaker 1: I want, I have to subscribe to half a dozen
Speaker 1: streaming services, which doesn't seem like it's any better than
Speaker 1: one single cable service. So there's still a lot of
Speaker 1: frustration out there. These are questions that we can't answer yet.
Speaker 1: We don't know how it's all going to turn out,
Speaker 1: so I'll likely have to do more episode in this
Speaker 1: vein in the future, but for now it's time to
Speaker 1: leave off and move on to other topics. We are
Speaker 1: done talking about the evolution of entertainment media and how
Speaker 1: that has changed our consumption. We have gotten to the
Speaker 1: point now where a lot of people don't bother owning
Speaker 1: music anymore. Instead, they will pay for a subscription to
Speaker 1: or listen to ads in return for access to a
Speaker 1: service that serves up music on demand in streaming format,
Speaker 1: and not purchase it at all. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people who the way they listen to
Speaker 1: music is they just start a YouTube playlist and they
Speaker 1: listen to it that way, So it's it's a very
Speaker 1: different world from the world of vinyl and and c
Speaker 1: D s or even older if we want to go
Speaker 1: with like you know, wax cylinders. So yeah, interesting, interesting story,
Speaker 1: But we're going to now move on to other topics.
Speaker 1: So look forward to something totally to friend in the
Speaker 1: next episode. And if you guys want to reach out
Speaker 1: with your own suggestions, you can email me the addresses
Speaker 1: tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Pop on
Speaker 1: over to tech stuff podcast dot com. That's our website
Speaker 1: where we have an archive of all of our previous episodes,
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Speaker 1: Remember every purchase you make there goes to help the show,
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Speaker 1: again really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I
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