On Enjoying Music

April 16th, 2005 • Music

Right now, I’m listening to a song that I haven’t heard in about 6-7 months, High Hopes by Pink Floyd. I was trying to remember this song’s lyrics all day long and couldn’t come up with anything but the chorus:

the grass was greener,
the light was brighter,
with friends surrounded,
the nights of wonder.

I plugged my headphones, clicked on “play”, and suddenly, every single word of its not-so-easy-to-remember lyrics came back, heck, I started singing along and doubting my own mental abilities. But I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it so much that I’m blogging about it and all of my readers are probably going to have a “What the hell’s wrong with this guy?!” moment.

You see, I’m a musician, a pianist to be more accurate. I’ve been playing piano for about 12 years now, and I can’t resist good music, it takes me back to the old days when I used to mix tapes, re-arrange albums’ songs just so they feel new, be frantic about organizing my music library, categorizing, tagging, and generally speaking, being obsessive. I miss those days. Well, not that I’ve changed a lot, I still have obsessively-organized library, only this time it’s encoded with FLAC. Those days still give me warm memories.

The keyword here is “sharing”. I enjoy sharing music and telling others about it as much as listening to it. Some pieces are just filled with so many details, chord combinations, instrument mixing, harmonious melodies. That alone is enough to give you the “I Rule!” feeling (if you still don’t know what that is, go read Creating Passionate Users, although a bit off-topic, but still the same experience).

Sharing music is a culture, it gives a sense of community, I can even stretch that to “It is the community”. It’s not an industry, and it should never be. Music isn’t about making money, that’s just a bonus (well, unless we’re talking about computer-generated clones of semi-hearable POP songs). Personally, I haven’t heard of any musician or band who’s deemed as great when their sole reason for making music was making money, I’m sure they considered it just what it is; a means to improve their music.

What brings me to this is the fact that I can’t stand hearing about DRM, RIAA, copyright violations, meaningless lawsuits, and all that crap. I can’t understand how in the world are these people going to benefit either musicians or their fans, nor can I understand why in the world do they think that sending a song to a friend of mine is like stealing from the government. For the love of God, how much potential profit would I take away by sharing a song I like with somebody else? This person might even like the song a lot, rush to the nearest music store, and get his or her own copy.

If a friend of mine comes by, hears my stereo beating and says “Cool song, can I have it too?”. Well, in this case, I’d have to choose whether to be a “criminal” and favor my friend, or I’d be the perfect candidate for RIAA’s mind-numbing arguments. Who would I choose? Of course I’d choose my friend, that’s a small price to pay to share a mutual passion. I’d be much more happy to see a little smile on somebody’s face than to know that I reserved an extra $0.05 for someone who wants to control my life! I digress.

Those artists and musicians who are in favor of controlling music distribution and, who oppose sharing, simply don’t get it. Music is not a product, and hopefully it won’t turn into one. It’s not like I’m buying goods from a supermarket, it’s in a different category. CD prices (and song prices in general) should be a combination of manufacturing costs, distributions costs if any, storage costs, and a little more. That little more is our way, the fans way to say to the artists “Thank you for making my day, please don’t stop making music I enjoy”.

I’m only worried about the future of music, I don’t want to end up going back to my license agreement just to figure out if I can listen to a song while I’m taking a shower, and whether that would take away the extra pennies I owe.

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