David Emery Online

Books and music

10 July 2007

Firstly, if you’re one of the two people left in the western world that hasn’t read Freakonomics yet, stop reading this and go buy it now.

Finished it yet?

Good – I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You’ll now appreciate, like the rest of us, what good writers S. Levitt and S. Dubner are and hence then also appreciate what a great thing it is that they have a blog. Today’s windfall from their tree of blog-y goodness is this little gem:

If Public Libraries Didn’t Exist, Could You Start One Today?

The answer of course, is no.

Actually, I think the answer would be something much more akin to “No f***ing way, are you out of your mind? We’d let people have all our content for free? What’s in it for us?”. As Dubner raises though, you’d be hard pressed to find someone that dislikes libraries although to be perfectly frank they’re of ever more irrelevant (or at least of niche interest) – I certainly haven’t been in one since University.

Naturally this post got me thinking; the music industry is facing this problem head on, but they don’t get a choice in it. The library, public sharing concept never really caught on for music – although I do remember 10 odd years ago my local library having a very small quantity of CDs. However, in the form of the ubiquitous file sharing networks we now have exactly that, but better; on a pure, information-should-be-free level file sharing networks are the ultimate library – none of the resources needed, with a far greater capacity for data.

It’s very interesting that we as a society not only tolerate but positively encourage the sharing of books, but yet are highly discouraged to do the same with music. Obviously books have the capacity to be educational in a way that music cannot, but the vast majority of books in a library are fiction which negates this argument somewhat. We do also have other medium that books cannot translate to directly, like radio and TV, which are free but hardly supply the full listening experience.

Is it, cynical but entirely possible though it may be, simply a matter that the music industry worked a better PR job then the book industry back when it mattered? Or are there fundamental cultural and physical differences between the two media that means that sharing makes sense for the community for one, and not for the other?