Armchair DJs: Napster, Muxtape, and the Dilemmas of Democratization

The online distribution of music has fostered the growth of new commercial and artistic opportunities for both musicians and record companies. However, this has also created a conflict between the traditional arbiters of taste in the music business--major label executives and radio station programmers--and the individual record-buyer, who has wrested a great deal of control and influence away from the industry elite. So while record companies and large broadcasters relish the immediacy and immensity of the Internet as a marketing tool, the democratizing potential of new online tools for the average armchair DJ have threatened to tip the scales in an ongoing music culture war from the corporation to the consumer. The recent sale of Napster, the former illegal fire-sharing network and current online music store and streaming service, to big-box conglomerate Best Buy for $121 million epitomizes the scramble to climb higher in the pecking order amongst online commercial music ventures (the highly successful Apple iTunes service being the alpha dog of the digital music world). But what of the ventures that consider the establishment of self-sustained, eclectic cultural communities as high of a priority as making money? The disappearance of Muxtape, an online playlist-sharing forum, at the end of August due to continuing legal issues with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) (see image below left) illustrates a latent tension in the struggle to adapt old business models to the potential of new media. While corporate attempts to mediate this transition are legally justified and morally sensible, they harm the framework of a great democratization in popular music that is crucial to the continued financial and cultural success of the industry.

Most music lovers have experience in the pleasurable art of the mixtape: a craft of equal parts technique and taste, culling tracks from radio airplay and personal collections to create a sequence of songs with a brand new emotional resonance. Muxtape, founded by entrepreneur Justin Oullette, essentially provided a way for users to replicate this process with their MP3 libraries and disseminate their mixes not only to personal acquaintances but also far-flung strangers. From a commercial standpoint, this type of purely sociological mission enthusiastically invites criticism. Dan Frommer, a technology critic at the Silicon Valley Insider blog, notes that "Muxtape hasn't sold itself -- either to a bigger media company that can shoulder its costs or a record label looking for a hot brand." His broader point about the sustainability of a community like Muxtape is valid enough--the server space to host all those playlists is not cheap--but his solutions are too utilitarian for the online music zeitgeist. Turning a completely independent, democratized environment like Muxtape into a record company sandbox would suffocate the hypertextual, cross-pollinating forces unique to online music ventures. Furthermore, a deal with a larger media conglomerate also complicates and restricts the potential for musical discovery and evolution with issues of exclusivity.

Yet it is also important to consider the issue of legality in the case of Muxtape, a problem that Oullette does not seem close to solving despite vague ideas for monetizing the site and some requisite anti-RIAA fist-shaking. The Best Buy/Napster alliance provides an expedient example of a harmonious democratic promise fulfilled, though this outcome is not without its own contradictions. Napster (see image below right) has remained a player in digital music by adopting a subscription-based business model after its infamous origins as the lawsuit-baiting Wild West of tune-swapping. The concurrent rise of iTunes alongside a tamed Napster points to a winnowing of a generation's rebellious impulse towards the rank injustices of actually paying for music. However, the recent sale has commentators in a rush to display their ambivalence for what is largely analyzed as a mutually desparate business transaction. To Bruce Houghton of WebProNews, the $121 million purchase confirms that "Napster was worth even less than I thought" and a Product Placement News article reports the story as if Napster had not been operating as a legitimate online music store for the past five years. After Napster's own RIAA imbroglio, the perception of the site and the brand has changed, perhaps irrevocably. To the many (including myself) who remember Napster's outlaw salad days, the Best Buy sale inspires nostalgia and, intriguingly, stories of much-appreciated cultural access and eclecticism. Though initially attracted by the smash-and-grab approach to music shopping, the comments at the Geeksugar blog reveal that the new philosophy behind the perpetual motion of the music industry--including leaks, giveaways, and other forms of fan diplomacy--is the power of exposure and appeals to new consumer sophistication.

The goals of free culture and free capitalism, arguably impossible to reconcile, at least now share a commitment to combating homogenization in the online realm. Whereas traditional over-the-air radio gradually becomes saturated by programming "systems" with absolute sets of standards (such as the DJ-free Jack FM), the world of digital music offers a hopeful alternative. Limited-access audio streamers like LastFM and 8tracks (potential heir to Muxtape's recently vacated throne) exemplify the accordion affect of vast online music exposure. The local armchair DJ posits a cultural identity to a global audience, which is then consumed, processed, and shared amongst similar cultural niches. The democratization of online music, the very peer-to-peer immediacy of the act, demonstrates that in our time the local is the global: all that great ideas--and great songs--need is a bandwidth wide enough to transmit them.