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Thursday, August 03, 2006
KARMA POLICE
Radiohead
Ok Computer
Capitol : 1997
[Buy It]
HOMECOMING
Joe Henry
Real: The Tom T. Hall Project
Sire : 1998
[Buy It]
SHIPS GO OUT
Ron Sexsmith
Real: The Tom T. Hall Project
Sire : 1998
[Buy It]
If you haven't seen it yet, the new la la CD trading site (http://www.lala.com) - now in beta release - is pretty damn nifty. Just register, list your CD collection (or at least the portion you're willing to part with) and you'll see which of your discs have been requested for trade by another member. Then, for each CD that you ship off, you're credited with the right to receive one CD from another member. (You're not trading directly with any single person.) You only pay when you receive a disc and it's just $1 for the transaction plus 75 cents for postage.
The cool part is that as you add to your "have" list, there's a running tally of how many of those discs are wanted by other members, sort of an instant take on your musical tastes. While I'm not planning to part with it, it was a kick to see an immediate request for one of my favorite CDs of the past decade, Real: The Tom T. Hall project. As most tribute albums are, it's something of a mixed bag, but I'll hang onto it just for Joe Henry's mindblowing cover of "Homecoming" and Ron Sexsmith's melancholy "Ships Go Out."
While I can't imagine that the record labels love the la la concept, it seems to be on solid legal ground. Technically, la la isn't doing anything that isn't already happening via eBay and the "sell yours here" option on Amazon.com, not to mention all of the trade in used discs at record stores. And la la talks a lot about "good karma" and promises that for every trade it facilitates, 20 cents from the $1 charge will be distributed back to the recording artist. The karma idea also refers to building up good karma by sending your discs off today for the future payback of discs you will receive.
So what's the rub? In la la land, every CD is treated the same. All of those unwanted copies of the first Hootie and the Blowfish record are, in the eyes of la la, absolutely equal to London Calling, Innervisions, or Revolver. I suppose the theory is that one person's junk is someone else's treasure and, with enough members trading, variances in musical taste will be enough to keep things moving along. But that might be wishful thinking -- when I entered 200 discs into my la la account, I wasn't that surprised at which 72 were flagged as requested. Someone out there wants your Nick Drake discs, no one's asking for that crappy third Oasis album. Unless some sort of system is established to assign relative value to each disc (five points for the classics vs. one point for an old NSYNC disc?) it seems likely that la la will reach the point where the most requested discs are fairly illiquid, while homes can't be found for last year's one-hit wonders.
The potential (and likely) workaround, of course, is that the most-coveted discs will stay in trade because it's easy enough to burn a CD-R or rip the tracks as mp3s and then pass the CD along to someone else. But as part of its good karma pledge, la la makes it explicit that when you trade a CD, you're not supposed to do either. (Both are considered "fair use" under copyright law when you own the original version, though not if you sell or trade the original disc.)
And that's the underlying la la paradox: if all of its members actually follow the rules, the supply of better discs might dry up as members "improve" their CD collections. Or, if everyone flouts the no-burn rule, la la essentially becomes a digital distributor, albeit one with an old-fashioned delivery method and at the expense of all that good karma. After all, $1.75 a CD sure beats the $9.99 iTunes price, even if you have to wait a few days to get the disc.
- posted by David Harrell
posted by Alex
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