All Music

Compiling discographic information on every artist who's made a record since Enrico Caruso is a herculean task. But now it's online. A report on Michael Erlewine and his 200,000-title obsession.

Compiling discographic information on every artist who's made a record since Enrico Caruso is a herculean task. But now it's online. A report on Michael Erlewine and his 200,000-title obsession.

Michael Erlewine says he's responsible for Iggy Pop's name. "We had a band called the Prime Movers," Erlewine remembers, "and Iggy came over from a band called the Iguanas. He was our drums. We called him Iguana and then we shortened it to Iggy."

In short order, Erlewine and Iggy traveled different routes through the pathways of pop culture. Iggy's route is familiar, Erlewine's less so. Erlewine dropped out of the performance side of the music business and became a computer programmer and the owner of the world's largest electronic database of information about music. When the secret annals of the music industry are compiled, the chapter on Erlewine may prove nearly as entertaining as that of his former bandmate.

First, an axiom: Everybody is in a band. Erlewine was in a band. Iggy was in a band. You're in a band. The ubiquity of bands is the easiest - and the hardest - thing to understand about the music business. There are, let's guess, 10 million bands in the world. The largest music archives possess strong evidence of the existence of over half a million album titles. A very big record store carries only about 10,000 records and CDs. So what's up with those other 9,990,000 bands? Where are the other 490,000 albums?

From this simple mathematical incongruity can be derived many of the fabled horrors of the music industry. Power-mad producers, faithless labels, and avaricious managers guard the narrow bridge that spans from a teenager's garage to the racks of record stores. To digital utopians it seems bizarre that music, which can be sent in electronic form over phone lines or cable, should still be stuck in a production process that requires agents, factories, trucks, plastic packaging, sales clerks, and cash registers. Why not just dial it up? Data compression problems, costly read-write storage media, and licensing snags guarantee that music on demand probably won't make the phrase "I just got signed!" obsolete before the end of the century.

Still, without much fanfare, the revolution has started, and it's taking a strange shape. It is not the digital transfer of music but the transfer of digital information about music that promises to make a difference right away. And because information wants to be free, the people trying to make a buck in the online music industry are confronting, and in the case of Michael Erlewine attempting to harness, some of the more populist and anarchistic tendencies of the network world.

"We are mostly refried hippies, or whatever," says Erlewine. "We don't feel like totally protecting our data." The 50-year-old programmer is explaining why, after painstakingly compiling a database of more than 200,000 music titles - including reviews, ratings, and complete discographies - he is about to make it available to all comers through both CompuServe and a public Internet gateway at Ferris State University in Michigan. Erlewine's project is called the All-Music Guide, and his company is Matrix Software, which also owns a video and movie guide, an astrology database, and an enormous library of Tibetan esoterica.

There is more than a hint of mysticism in Erlewine's plan to profit from giving away his musical data. He hopes that by giving access to the All-Music Guide to the widest possible audience, he will inspire a massive, volunteer "fix-it" effort to close the gaps in his files. Appealing to the know-it-all tendencies of computer users everywhere, he's saying: "Here it is, kids. Now make it better." Erlewine's online database will include explicit requests to users to suggest corrections via e-mail, and no mechanisms will be in place to prevent pirates from downloading the whole huge collection.

Erlewine's information usually goes out over more conventional channels. He has a 1,200-page book, The All-Music Guide, published by Miller Freeman. And there's a big fat CD-ROM coming from Compton's New Media, which will sell for about US$49. To produce the book and the CD-ROM, Erlewine employs a staff of ten people and hires some of the top names in music criticism as regular contributors. The music librarians and freelance critics identify important albums, rate them, trace their influence, and write or reprint musicians' biographies.

Nonetheless, it's hard to fathom a business strategy that basically calls for giving the product away. But that's more or less what Erlewine is doing by loading the database at Ferris State. The All-Music Guide will be available on CompuServe, which, while not free, will include the database among its "extended" rather than "premium" services, meaning income to Erlewine's company will be minimal. Nonetheless, his motive is profit. He is casting his net into the digital seas and hoping the catch multiplies.

"There are countless recordings out there," says Erlewine. "Nobody has them all and nobody knows them all. Taking a database like this to the public is the only way to refine it, because the people have the records."

Compiling discographic information on every artist who's made a record since Enrico Caruso gave the industry its first big boost is a monstrous task. "We got into it before we knew it was impossible, before we knew what a stupid thing it was," he continues, "but now we're deeply into it, and it has to be finished."

There's a personal side to Erlewine's urgency. He sold his extensive record collection in the early '70s and when he tried to replace it, he faced difficulty navigating the maze of rereleased titles, anthologies, and second-rate CDs. But the commercial imperative is perhaps even more compelling. Music databases are the heart of the new interactive kiosks used in record stores to provide better service to customers; they are also in use behind the counter in the stores' electronic inventory systems. The company with the best database will be in a position to license it to the most record stores.

While the electronic inventory systems are more or less invisible to shoppers, the kiosks are not. As retail music stores become larger and more impersonal, the knowledgeable clerk or store owner who can be trusted to recommend new material becomes more rare. Chain stores are turning to electronic databases to fill the gap. Answers to questions a music buyer might have are obtained not from a hip local clerk who has 60 milk crates full of albums stashed away in his or her bedroom, but from a machine that resembles an ATM. Tower Records has its MUZE devices, Musicland is launching its Sound Site system, and many of the country's 10,000 or so record stores are hungry for data. Erlewine has data, and so do several of his competitors, but nobody has anything near a complete set. Total knowledge, posits Erlewine, is only available through exchange with the entire community of listeners, discographers, hobbyists, and collectors.

"Eventually," Erlewine says, "it's going to crystallize. A lot of experts out there are languishing, and this is an area where they can contribute and get their names in lights. When we put it online for everyone to use, people will complain when they find something that is not right. If we get some bad data, it won't be long before somebody points it out. We have the best data around, and it's filthy," Erlewine admits. "Anyone who knows data knows that it is immensely difficult to get clean. We are going to put it out there and let people challenge it. We feel that the data will eventually come into focus."

Erlewine's theory resembles the scenario created by John Brunner for his proto-cyberpunk classic, Shockwave Rider. In Brunner's novel, a government-sponsored gambling system, called Delphi, is used to predict the future. Shifting pari-mutuel odds on such questions as "When will genetic optimization become commercially available?" provide access to the intuitive and analytical wisdom of the entire society. In Brunner's book, however, glitches soon appear. The people in charge can't resist manipulating the odds. Erlewine's avant-garde system of database development faces an even more obvious problem: What if the people are wrong? Even the most transparent facts can become the topic of heated debate, especially in a music database. (Elvis Presley: Born January 8, 1935; died ??) Public wisdom, as anybody who reads a Usenet group can testify, is often laughable, and Erlewine doesn't actually intend to give users control over his material. He's counting on people for pointers, complaints, questions, and criticisms.

"We'll bring what people say in here, evaluate it, possibly add it, then send it back out again," he says. "We are going to set up a convection process that will put the whole database into some kind of motion, some kind of vortex. There will be errors at first, people will see them and point them out. We have a whole library of books and microfilm, and we should be able to check it out. The stuff we're really worried about we can check by having people send us photocopies of album covers."

Erlewine licenses his database with, he hopes, an ever improving data set to companies like MUZE, which supplies kiosks to Tower, and Trade Services Entertainment, the publishers of Phonolog, whose Sound Site will be in Musicland. Record stores are currently paying between $3,000 and $5,000 per kiosk and about $100 per month to these companies.

The atmosphere in the world of commercial music information is combative, with large amounts of cash looming for the database owners who ultimately dominate the market. Both MUZE and Trade Services maintain their own list of currently available CDs; they use Erlewine's data only as a source of ratings and reviews. These companies include only music that is currently available to customers. Erlewine, by contrast, has a more purely musicological project: He wants to list everything. Not only list it, but rate it, describe it, explain it. Ultimately, Erlewine's customer is not only the record store, but also the individual listener who wants to learn more about music.

The attempt to reach individual listeners directly with electronic music data has radical implications - both musicological and commercial. Erlewine is in the vanguard of those attempting to guess what new direction the music industry will take as the digital delivery of music information challenges the dominance of retail stores.

Yes, the digital delivery of music information does pose a challenge to retail stores, and no, you still can't download most albums. But you can order them, quickly and easily, via the Internet through services such as the Compact Disc Connection. The Compact Disc Connection lists more than 60,000 titles, putting even the largest retail stores to shame. Finding any title by any artist usually takes less than two minutes.

The ability to order albums from an easy-to-use online system is a direct answer to the frustration every music fan has felt searching for a particular record in store after store. And the online solution appeals to record companies as well.

"We have a real problem," acknowledges Andy Allen of Island Records, whose company does more than $100 million worth of business. Island is responsible for Bob Marley and U2, whose records can be found in most stores, but it also carries less famous bands whose albums never make it to consumers. "We just had a record out by a band from Haiti," says Allen, "that reached number one on the Billboard World Beat chart. There are ten thousand record stores in the United States, and probably fewer than 250 carried the record. What we've found is that you can capture listeners' imagination when they hear your music on the radio, but they still need access to the album, and retail may not be the answer."

Online record-ordering services like Compact Disc Connection are often compared by industry insiders to clothing catalogs; they are seen as a supplement and not a threat to the retail environment. But there's an important difference between a clothing catalog and an online music service. Compact Disc Connection doesn't show you just a small slice of the total market. It shows you everything or nearly everything. No clothing catalog holds even a fraction of the inventory of Macy's. But CDC holds six times as much as the largest record store. If you want something, especially if it's not on the charts when you want it, your chances of finding it are probably better on CDC than at any store in the world.

As music fans discover these interesting new possibilities, Erlewine's database project is likely to come into its own. When you have the power to order what you want in an instant from your desk, a database that not only tells you what CDs exist but also offers clues as to what they contain becomes very important. In a record store, you can browse any section looking for artists on familiar labels or for CDs with seductive blurbs on their cases. Similarly, on Erlewine's All-Music Guide you can browse by music style, look up specific albums, and find well-known critics' reactions to recommended choices.

"The idea of a guide went out in the '50s," Erlewine preaches, "but the All-Music Guide is just the beginning of the American public's willingness to be guided electronically." Erlewine imagines that when people can choose any CD they want, they will miss the more structured environment of the stores. He believes that without a structured, electronic guide, listeners will get stuck in familiar, boring habits. "It's like with the radio stations becoming more specialized," he explains. "There is a better chance of your hearing more of what you know you like, but less chance of hearing something you didn't know you would like. If we say, 'okay, we can give you any album that was ever made, what do you want to hear?' people will be stuck in one genre and not be able to break out of it." The solution, according to its creator, is the freely available, publicly vetted All-Music Guide.

For now, Erlewine hopes that giving his data away online will improve its worth to purchasers of the book and CD-ROM, as well as to record-store licensees. But, as online sales of albums increase, Erlewine plans to turn his All-Music Guide into a retail outlet similar to the Compact Disc Connection. You will be able to type a few commands and enter your Visa number, just as you can on the Compact Disc Connection (we've tried it, it works great), and a few days later the CD arrives in the mail. The premier online musicologists - all you Usenet gurus not withstanding - will be the newfangled sales clerks, the electronic tastemakers and value-added entrepreneurs of the ether.

If you think about it, there's something highly weird about all this. If Erlewine's strategy of public participation goes according to plan, he and his staff of critics and librarians will be managing and supervising a self-propagating process. In the dreams of this refried-hippy-turned-online-database-manager, the masses will be advertising records to themselves. Erlewine will just supervise the activity, deliver the product, and bill the record companies for his percentage.

The prize at the end of the electronic rainbow is a consumer perpetual motion machine. Erlewine calls his database-development process "a vortex," and it does seem strangely and fascinatingly circular. A snake eating its tail - could this be the future of network commerce?

Compact Disc Connection: holonet.net. Type CDC at opening prompt.