The Sight of Music

Shakira, the Columbian singer who Gabriel Garcia Marquez was raving about three years ago, understands a thing or two about the state of people's hearts. La Tortura is the name of her latest smash hit in Spanish. And it describes the state of the music industry rather well (emphasis on "industry", the part designed to capitalise on the state of people's hearts). Hearts have been sinking left, right and centre in the music industry ever since musical files began zipping up and down the Internet. The Napster crisis is long over, but much else has happened since. Sales of physical format music albums have simply been unable to recover, even as fully-paid legal internet sales fail to compensate for the loss. Downcast music executives are rumoured to be considering exile to outerspace: where no sound waves can get them.

Andy Lack, CEO of Sony BMG, can sigh a long sigh of relief. He's not among them. Bertelsmann, Sony's joint venture partner in the business, was out to oust him on grounds of non-performance. Now it has modified its demand, asking only that Rolf Schmidt-Holz, Sony BMG's non-executive chairman, to be given an executive role. In a way, this is merely the common tussle for leadership that occurs after every merger.

Pre-merger Sony Music's Lack got the top job, while BMG's chief Schmidt-Holz got the consolation prize in the new entity, the board of which has equal representation from both sides. But it also reflects the pressure the company is under.

At its core job, Sony does not have a problem. Getting some of the world's best talent, that is, to snuggle into the listener's heartspace. Distribution is the issue, what with internet piracy rampant. And all its defence strategy seems to be doing is dragging it into a legal mire. In the US, the company is faced with a battery of lawsuits because of its latest copy protection software on CDs that allegedly turns computers vulnerable to hacker attack.

In California alone, it faces as many as three lawsuits against its DRM systems (DRM stands for digital rights management). This includes the usage of a piece of software called XCP2, created by UK-based First4Internet, that deters casual piracy by making it difficult to decode the digital content for lifting. But according to Kaspersky Labs, a Moscow-based PC security firm, it also puts hardware at risk.

This is no small matter. Meanwhile, a UK-based security company called Sophos claims that the vulnerability is already being exploited electronically. It has found a "trojan" email virus created for the express purpose of sneaking into the "rootkit" that Sony BMG's CDs install on their owners' computers when they are played. News of this has become something of a scandal in the US, where a consumer advocacy front called Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has started protesting loudly. To those who know EFF intimately, this is hardly a surprise, since EFF has long been part of the "freeware' movement ("since at least 1776" as someone once quipped), supported by Grateful Dead fans and assorted frazzle-heads who do not see why anything should cost money on the internet.

This time, however, EFF's contention is rather hardnosed. Sony's software, it alleges, not only opens computers to attack, it slows them down "" and all this without revealing itself to users. This is a property issue, according to Jason Schultz, EFF's lawyer. Companies that think so little of privacy (part of your personal property rights), he argues, are hypocritical in making such a big deal of its own intellectual property rights.

Now that's an interesting way to put it, and as with everything else in California, it is sure to catch people's imagination. Especially those who like to put "information" in the same category as "life", "liberty" and "pursuit of happiness", the stuff nobody should be denied.

Sony, meanwhile, might do itself a favour by thinking less of technology and listening to some of its own artistes. Or looking, rather, at some of its own artistes. Why should it be music and music alone that constitutes "value" for the consumer?

Some of the most arresting fare is actually audio-visual in its finer appeal. And the appeal is such that you'd want to keep it forever, and savour subtle aspects that reach salience only upon repeat listening (and upon engaging other stimulatory aids).

This means two things for music companies. Music needs to be enduring. And CD sleeve-jacket design has to get more enrapturing.

It's a creative challenge, dear Sony, not a technical one.