Maxime's Reflections on Sandy Pearlman

In his presentation, M. Pearlman presented two theses: the first concerns the collision of two technological trend lines, while the second relates to a new business model for the music industry. I will examine these two theses successively.

1. The Cloud v. The Paradise of Infinite Storage
Pearlman argues that two opposite technology trend lines are evolving in the same time and will soon collide.
The first trend is the Cloud Computing, which describes a new model for IT services based on internet rather than on personal hardwares. Applied to music, this model would lead to the storage of digital music in the Cloud. Users would therefore access music directly on the Cloud and would not have to store them on their personal computers. Streaming on You Tube or Music Me is a good example of this trend. Pearlman criticizes this model because it leads to the concentration of information on corporate servers, which are behind the cloud, at the expense of users’ autonomy and anonymity. This concentration would also facilitate the enforcement of IP rights over the internet, which Pearlman sees as a threat since he conceives contemporary IP rights as an archaic artifact of the 18th century.
Pearlman calls the second trend “The Paradise of Infinite Storage”. This trend is based on innovation in engineering which leads to the development of small material devices that have the potential to store the totality of the music ever made. This trend makes the cloud useless because all users will eventually have the possibility to store everything they need on a single device, the size of a guitar pick. It also reinforces autonomy and anonymity, at the expense of the enforcement of IP rights.

2. Recommendation Engines and the 5 Cents Solution
Pearlman proposed a new model for the music industry. His idea is that songs should be sold over the internet for 5 cents rather than 99 cents. Pearlman argues that most consumers of free and illegal music would be ready to pay 5 cents for their music just to ensure that their download is safe and reliable. The economic value would therefore lie in the guarantees of reliability and safety rather than on the music itself.
To support this proposal, Pearlman also militates for the creation of powerful recommendation engines which would “lead anyone in the world to all the music in the world they would love if only they knew it existed”. This engine would in theory exponentially increase music’s demand, a necessary prerequisite to sustain the industry if it adopts the 5 cents model which needs a huge amount of music consumption to be profitable. But this model is based on the assumption that music consumers are, in their vast majority, eager to discover new music. The actual situation of the music industry indicates, however, that demand is often concentrated on a very small number of artists and songs. The viability of this model for marginal artists with a small fan base is therefore highly questionable.