| David Vest | |||
| Roger McGuinn: Giving It Away | |||
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At the Senate Judiciary Committee
hearings on Napster and the Internet music revolution,
most of the attention was focused on Metallica’s
Lars Ulrich, who likened Internet music downloads to
shoplifting. Also testifying were the CEOs of Napster and
MP3.com and key executives from Sony and Gnutella. Nearly overlooked in most of the media coverage was the statement by Roger McGuinn, the folk rock singer/guitarist who used to front one of the great American bands, the Byrds. This is understandable. Metallica is hugely popular right now, and the Byrds disbanded over 25 years ago. Still, McGuinn, with his granny glasses and Rickenbacker 12-string guitar, was a Sixties icon and still commands deep respect in music circles. McGuinn’s best-known hits include “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Eight Miles High,” “So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star” and “Don’t You Write Her Off.” If you still don’t know who he is, maybe you sit on the Judiciary Committee or something. From my perspective, the most interesting (and newsworthy) thing about the hearings wasn’t Ulrich’s appearance or the Napster controversy. It was what McGuinn said in his modest statement. According to McGuinn’s testimony, a funny thing happened on the way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This important American artist, who had major deals with Columbia, Capitol, Arista and Hollywood Records, selling millions of records, 8-tracks, cassettes and CDs, may in fact have made more money as a result of giving his music away on the Internet: “In 1994 I began making recordings of traditional folk songs that I’d learned as a young folk singer. I was concerned that these wonderful songs would be lost. The commercial music business hasn’t promoted traditional music for many years. These recordings were all available for free download on my website (http://www.mcguinn.com) on the Internet.” Someone from MP3.com approached McGuinn with the idea of offering the recordings for sale on CD as a compilation, more or less as a convenience. Not only did McGuinn make considerable money (at a royalty rate of 50% of gross sales – unheard of in the record industry), the deal offered him “more artistic freedom than any of my previous relationships with mainstream recording companies.” To me, McGuinn’s experience has implications that may well reach far beyond the controversy over music downloads and copyright protection. In fact, it goes directly to the heart of the whole concept of doing business and delivering content online. Consider how Roger McGuinn’s success story clashes with one of the most widely-held Internet truisms (or fears, cliches, assumptions, beliefs) – or is it a plain old myth? Myth: People won’t buy what they can get online for free. What newspaper publisher hasn’t heard this one? Yet thousands have bought McGuinn’s recordings on CD from MP3.com, and those very recordings had been available for free for months and are still available for free (and still selling). People apparently like the convenience of having all the songs together on a CD. Not to mention the fact that they like McGuinn, too. (Go to his web site and listen to his version of the Star-Spangled Banner and you’ll know why.) And by the way, I still subscribe to the Oregonian. Reality: People will buy what they want, so give it to them. Deeper lesson: McGuinn apparently wasn’t even directly thinking about making money when he recorded those old folk songs. He was performing a service, paying back a debt to the music he loved. Doing it because it needed doing. And doing it well enough to call quite a few myths into question. My guess is that it didn’t bother him in the slightest when most of the nation’s media appeared to regard his testimony as irrelevant. Yet for many people trying to establish a foothold in the world of eBusiness, Roger McGuinn’s story may be much more relevant than all the squabbling between Napster and Metallica. In the Sixties, the soaring music of McGuinn and the Byrds led a lot of people to question some of their assumptions. In a new century, flying mainly below radar, he’s still doing it. The complete text of Roger McGuinn’s statement before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee can be found online here. |
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