Will Music Be Free in the Future?

Greg Kot

随着互联网技术的飞速发展，传统唱片业遭受到了始料未及的致命冲击，当前唱片业的没落和萧条毋庸置疑。很多悲观者不禁哀叹，唱片终将被取代，退出音乐的历史舞台。面对这种严峻的形势，国外一些音乐人开始跃跃欲试，掀起了一股革新浪潮。乡村音乐创作型歌手Taylor Swift将自己的全部音乐从全球最大的流媒体音乐服务商Spotify上自行下架。她认为好的音乐值得付费购买，而为此付出心血的歌手应该得到等值的回报，唱片的价值将一直存在。如果一个作品能够真正打动灵魂、让人产生强烈共鸣，那么人们就会愿意为此买单。如果艺术家的潜力和力量是无限的，那么未来的音乐就会充满希望。

As corporations and musicians look for new ways to get our attention—and our money—what does this mean for the fans?

From Taylor Swift and U2 to Garth Brooks and Iggy Pop, there has been a lot of noise recently from artists and bands testing new business mode, slapping others to the kerb, and generally acting like they’re navigating the new music-business economy without a compass—which many of them are.1. 从泰勒·斯威夫特，U2乐队，到加斯·布鲁克斯，再到伊基·波普，近来歌手们和乐队团体开始躁动起来，尝试新的商业模式并置他人于不顾，就好像他们在不明方向地引领新的商业音乐经济，而事实的确如此。Taylor Swift： 泰勒·斯威夫特，美国乡村音乐、流行音乐创作女歌手；U2： 爱尔兰都柏林摇滚乐队；Garth Brooks：加斯·布鲁克斯，20世纪90年代以来最重要的乡村歌手，美国最畅销的艺人之一，仅次于披头士和猫王；Iggy Pop： 伊基·波普，被认为是朋克音乐的教父；slap： 拍击，打；kerb： 路缘。Nobody has the answer to how artists should be compensated in a digital wilderness that has been blowing out of control since Napster took hold in 1999.2. 自从1999年在线音乐软件纳普斯特风行以来，没有人知道在这种失控混乱的数字领域中，歌手该如何获得（他们应得的）报酬。compensate：支付报酬；Napster： 纳普斯特，一种在线音乐软件，它同时能够让自己的机器也成为一台服务器，为其他用户提供下载。

Amid the chaos3. chaos： 混乱。, fans and music lovers look like the only winners in this new world. If things turn one way, they could transform the artists they love into winners too. And if they go the other way—in some sense we’re back where we started, with a new set of corporations in charge.

泰勒·斯威夫特

伊基·波普

From an artist perspective, the free-for-all aspect of the digital economy has a downside,4. perspective： 视角；downside： 负面。summarised during a recent lecture given by the (noted scholar) Iggy Pop. He said that if he depended on recorded-music sales for income, “I’d be tending bars between sets.”5. 他说如果他指着唱片销售收入生活的话，“我就得兼职做酒保了。”tend： 照看； between sets： 在……之间，此处指在做音乐的同时，抽时间兼职做酒保。

In a recent lecture, Iggy Pop described file-sharers as ‘bootleggers’6. file-sharer： 文件共享者；bootlegger： 走私者。(BBC)“Now, everybody’s a bootlegger,” he said, presumably7. presumably： 大概，可能。including many of his own fans in that characterisation. Pop doesn’t advocate prosecuting filesharers, the way the industry did a few years ago to much ridicule, but he says to make ends meet he needs to license his music to commercial advertisers.8. advocate： 提倡，主张；prosecute： 起诉；make ends meet： 收支平衡；license：v. 准许。Many of his fellow middle and lower-tier artists have turned to licensing as one of many small revenue streams to keep their little businesses a float.9. 在他的同行中，有许多二线和三线艺人已经准许音乐作为商业广告用途，以此作为众多小收入的来源之一来保住自己的饭碗。a float： （经济上）应付自如的，免于经济困难的。

Taylor made

They aren’t in the position of someone like Swift, who removed all of her music, including her latest album,1989, from the streaming service Spotify.10. album： 专辑；Spotify： 全球最大的流媒体音乐服务之一。She didn’t want to cannibalise11. cannibalise： 抽取……中的成分以创造另一事业。her sales, she says. “I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers,producers, artists, and creators of this music,” she told Yahoo, amplifying12. amplify： 详述。a position she took in aWall Street Journalcommentary a few weeks earlier.“Valuable things should be paid for,” she declared. As financial windfalls13. windfall： 意外之财。go,her strategy and logic made total sense: the 1.3 million sales for1989(without a single Spotify play!) were the most in one week since 2002.

But Swift represents the privileged 1% among recording artists. Along with acts like Beyoncé and Coldplay, she can afford to do without the exposure afforded by streaming services to raise awareness of her existence.14. 和碧昂丝与酷玩乐队一样，她有能力这么去做，不需要流媒体的曝光来提高自己的认知度。Beyoncé： 碧昂丝，美国歌手，17座格莱美奖得主；Coldplay： 酷玩乐队，英国著名摇滚乐队。With the notable exception of Spotify,1989seemed to be everywhere in the weeks leading up to its release.15. 除了明显未在Spotify上线外，专辑《1989》在发布的前几周似乎无所不在。notable： 显著的；lead up to： 在……之前；release： 发布。

Big hitters

A similar kind of logic guided U2’s latest distribution gambit.16. distribution gambit： 分销策略。They pocketed a reported $100 million from Apple to make their latest album,Songs of Innocence, available for free to hundreds of millions of iTunes users, many of whom objected to the invasion of their music library.17. pocket： v. 赚取，获得（钱财）；object to： 反对；invasion： 入侵。But U2 got what they wanted: most of the world—even the part that doesn’t care about the Irish quartet18. quartet： 四重奏。—know their latest album exists.

But most artists aren’t in a position to strike multimillion-dollar deals as U2 have, or to brush off one of the most prominent streaming services as Swift did.19. be in a position to： 能够；strike： 突然走运，发横财；brush off： 丢弃，撇开；prominent： 重要的，知名的。In dealing with Swift-level superstars, fans are still being treated like consumers, to which the celebrities market their latest product. It’s just another variation of 20th Century business as usual, when corporations and middle men controlled the pipeline20. pipeline： 管道，此处指连接、联系。between artists and fans.

Net worth21. net worth： 资产净值。

The free and open internet made this future tangible, so it’s little wonder that a handful of multinational companies that dominated the business under the old narrow-pipeline system would rather see it go away, or greatly modi fied to tilt the balance once again in their favour.22. 互联网的自由公开使得这一未来切实可见。因此很多仍然操守旧体制、（与乐迷）连接方式狭隘的跨国唱片公司宁愿看到互联网免费音乐的消失或者巨大变革，使得利益的天平再次偏向他们，这也就不足为奇了。tangible： 可以看得见的，可触知的；tilt： 使倾斜。Net neutrality—the notion that the internet is a level playing field accessible to everyone, no matter how deep their pockets—is being threatened by a few power players who are pushing for a hierarchy of access.23. level playing field： 公平竞争的环境；accessible： 可获得的；hierarchy： 等级。

The merger between two of these giants, Time Warner Co and Comcast, is viewed by many net neutrality advocates as the most immediate threat, but it’s hardly the only one.24. 其中时代华纳和康卡斯特两个巨头公司的合并，被网络中立的拥护者认为是最直接的威胁，但这并不是唯一的。merger： 合并；Time Warner Co： 时代华纳公司，互联网时代世界最大的媒体与娱乐公司；Comcast： 康卡斯特，是美国最大的有线电视公司，亦是美国第二大互联网服务供应商。Speaking in general terms at the recent Future of Music Summit in Washington, DC,about the issue, Federal Communications Commissioner25. Federal Communications Commissioner： 联邦通信委员会委员。Mignon Clyburn called the internet a marketplace of diversity, “not just of race and gender, but ideas and content.”

That’s a succinct26. succinct： 简洁的，简明的。explanation of why the net neutrality fight is so critical. It holds the future of the artist-fan relationship, and may determine whether artists without U2-like clout can finally free themselves of pay-to-play corporate control.27. clout： 影响力；free of： 摆脱；pay-to-play： 付费播放。