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I'm not clicking that XKCD link. But extrapolation was done by the Simpsons much earlier and far better: https://www.billboard.com/file...

That's from 2016 and it peaked at #77 two years ago. Meanwhile we sang the Macarena for about 10 years.

Have you no respect for the dead?
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/504488/christopher-reimer-women-guitarist-dead-at-26

Godwin O'Hitler confessed:

For me, the guys who really broke the mould were underground(US)/progressive(UK) groups like The Doors or King Crimson. That has absolutely nothing to do with pop of course.

The Doors had two singles that reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts - along with a #3 and two others that just missed hitting the Top Ten.

The Court Of The Crimson King - Part 1 actually made it to #80, as well ...

I have proof that Seattle had soul, at least at one time:

https://www.billboard.com/file...

You can't copyright your name. Go ahead and "reclaim" creimer from GitHub, you lying weasely fat fuck.

Have you stopped to consider why I publish content under a pen name? My legal name isn't that unique.

I'm surprised that no one made the connection to the guitarist of Women.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/504488/christopher-reimer-women-guitarist-dead-at-26

Oh. Wait. Germany. Where Spotify is illegal

Lying Nazi

This comes just as a new law is being debated that can fine social media platforms $53 million for not removing 70% of illegal speech...

Exactly $53 million you say... and Zuck had $11.5 million in his checking account and just sold some stock.

Hmmm...

Looking at https://www.riaa.com/wp-conten..., I see that net "value" of shipped units including both physical and digital went up from 2014 to 2015: $6,950.5 to $7,015.9 (in millions) And according to http://www.billboard.com/artic..., ASCAP generated revenues of $1.014 billion, up 1.14 percent from the $1.003 billion generated in 2014. So, if artists and composers/arrangers are making less, either they're spreading the peanut butter around to more participants, or the industries are keeping more of the pot. OR, the artists bellyaching are being misled by their industry as to the real situation...

The problem with this vulnerability is that it provides yet another mechanism for lateral movement within a compromised network. See, e.g., Killing Advanced Threats in Their Tracks: An Intelligent Approach to Attack Prevention.

Just thinking this isn't a problem because "no one exposes SMB ports" is missing the point. This can be very bad. Think about what happened to Sony -- hackers got in, moved data around, and spent their time, using various exploits. This is one that could be very helpful in such an attack.

Let's clarify what happened. Kanye made his album available on his website and Tidal (where he is a part owner). Tidal has no free ad-supported plans. It's expensive compared to other services. When Tidal surged in popularity on Apple's app store, Kanye pulled his album from his own website. Now it's only available from Tidal.

I'm tired of some albums only being available through different services. Instead of subscribing to one service or buying from one store (like iTunes), this pushes consumers to subscribe to multiple services. It's a pain in the ass. And it's because of greed.

According to Billboard Magazine, some users who purchased the album on Kanye's site were charged multiple times while others never received a copy of the album. Now Kanye says it won't be for sale again, only available for streaming. That means instead of buying a copy of an album and being able to listen to it whenever I want without paying again, Kanye wants people to pay each month for the ability to listen to his album. It's fucking greedy.

Because Kanye is a part owner of Tidal, he has two revenue sources. One is royalties from his album being streamed. The other is profits from the service because he has equity in Tidal. That means he collects royalties from his own work but collects profits from subscriptions to listen both to Kanye's music but that of other artists as well. If you're wealthy and powerful enough to be a part owner of Tidal, you get to profit from your own work plus that of other artists. That's as opposed to artists who aren't as wealthy and powerful, who will get paid at a lower rate because they only get royalties.

I always thought Taylor Swift came across as a bit whiny about Spotify. But at least she said she wanted higher royalties for everyone and expressed concern about artists who weren't wealthy like her. Kanye isn't concerned about other artists. Kanye is concerned about Kanye. He's greedy as hell.

I listen to a lot of new and indie artists who put their videos on YouTube. If I like their music, I'll happy buy it on iTunes. I understand that labels and the RIAA help to finance new artists so I'm not really opposed to them getting a cut. I'd certainly be willing to donate to support new artists if their music is good. But I hate the idea that, if I'm subscribing to a service to listen to some artists, that I have to give greedy bastards like Kanye a cut.

It's time for the market to say "fuck you" to Kanye and "fuck you" to Tidal. Don't subscribe. Support artists who aren't greedy bastards. Support artists who make far better music than Kanye. If people were smart, they would not subscribe to Tidal, stop listening to Kanye, and support artists who aren't greedy. The market could put Tidal out of business, but people are too fucking stupid.

Fuck Kanye. Fuck Tidal. Fuck their greed. That's all.

I immediately thought of U2, but there's plenty more.

http://www.billboard.com/chart...

Is what you get if you use Bing or Google to that question. Apple hasn't been this petty in quite some time.

Although perhaps this is happening because Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato have 2 hits in the top twenty.

Perhaps Siri keep throwing up in her digital throat when she tries to read the list.

Sales up 240 per cent, Lies Damn Lies and Statistics Last year they could have sold 10 records this year 24 thats 240% of last year What are the raw numbers ?

Here are the US numbers for vinyl, from Billboard:

https://www.billboard.com/arti...

Fievel Mousekewitz is not a Disney character. Nor is Jerry. Or were you referring to the trademark flap between Disney and Deadmau5?

The "pirates" are obviously giving consumers a better product

"Giving consumers a better product" would be going out and making their own movies that are better than Hollywood's. No laws against that anywhere. It's also not what they're doing. What they're doing would be more akin to me walking into your place of work and offering to do the work you did for the past month, for $50. You've already done the work, you just don't get paid, and I get $50. That's just giving your employer a better product, right? These tired old excuses for piracy are, ironically, from the last century, and I didn't realize people still talked like this in 2014.

To stretch your analogy:
Well, except that, if my employer wanted a copy of the work I've done for the last month, which, BTW, I was already paid for, I wouldn't expect him to pay me my full salary to have it done all over again. Not when he can, and does, have the minimum wage secretary make a Xerox for nothing more than the cost of her time, a little electricity, ink, and paper.

Just because the industry wants to exploit their rape of popular culture and turn every thought or utterance into a money stream for themselves, and has the money and position to get the elected officials to pass laws that are diametrically opposed to the wishes of the electorate that voted them into office, doesn't make it right.

Thanks, I looked it up. http://www.billboard.com/biz/a...

Now that I know what he was talking about, I think he is in the clear until they actually produce a video.

Here in the United States, a performance rights agency (such as ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC) is a private company that represents those songwriters whose publisher is a member of the agency. For example, "Assimilate" is published through Universal Music Publishing, and one of the agencies administers its performance rights. The Billboard article name-drops BMI and ASCAP, the two big U.S. agencies.

Just like last time when they tried to save the french film industry from the pirates, they created a new agency to stop piracy.

After a couple of years and a for a budget of 13,7 million dollars a year, they actually had exactly 2 users convicted, 1 user slapped on the wrist and 1 user who got a fine of 150 Euros.

This will work exactly the same, not at all.

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1483616/frances-hadopi-2-convictions-1-fine-125-million-warnings-since-2009

The problem is that nowadays hardly anybody buys albums if they can avoid it

Your "hardly anybody" bought 204.8 million albums and 1.34 billion individual songs last year.

the musician presented real world figures over the pitiful amounts of money he made off of his more popular songs on Spotify as opposed to CD

Would you pay $20,000 to rent a car for one trip to the store?

No? Then why would you think that people should pay as much to listen to a song one time as they would to buy it on CD? Yet that seems to be the argument the musician was making.

How do Spotify royalties compare to broadcast royalties? Which at least in the U.S. apparently amount to 18 cents per 1000 listeners (or $0.00018/listener, or if my napkin math is right... 1/33 of what Spotify pays per listener?)

Doesn't seem like new media's getting rich, either. Do any of these services turn a profit?

Lets see, over the past 30 years we are seeing declining sales, declining profits, record companies going bankrupt, record companies merging for cost savings, more record companies going bankrupt, fewer albums that are being released, and fewer artists being launch.

The problem with this is that it isn't all necessarily true, never mind whether it is due to a lack of DRM. On most of those metrics, no one really knows what is happening as there aren't accurate global numbers. While some groups (such as the IFPI) produce figures, they have been criticised for overestimating the market share of the major labels and underestimating the impact of independent groups or individual artists/bands. But on the data I could find after a bit of searching;

- the IFPI claimed an increase in sales in 2012, after a steady decline over the last few years,
- some of the majors are still seeing increases in profits, others declines, I don't have exact figures (although they should be available),
- only one major record company has had major financial difficulties in the last 20 years; EMI. This seems to have been due to a bad year, selling ownership of the company, and then mismanagement causing some of the big names to flee,
- the number of albums being released (as recorded by Nielsen) seems to have peaked in 2008 (although that's an old article). However, I'm not sure that is a worthwhile metric now, due to the changes in how music is distributed and consumed,

The music industry is convinced that most of their customers are idiots...

In all fairness to the music industry, have you seen/heard the Billboard Top Ten?

In relation to your thought exercise, you need to give the programmer new abilities to make money. First, the program is now provided as a service. For people to use it, they have to connect to a service, and every time users connect to the service (which would have many programs available on it), the programmer is paid every time that program is opened. Once the work is completed on that program for the task, the program should automatically close so that the programmer is paid for every task completed using said program. If the program has to be opened 10 times in one day by a user, then the programmer is paid 10 times.

If the programmer decides to re-theme the program, it should appear on the service as the "Live 2013" version, and count as a different program.

The software company should also now have the ability to sell a non-streaming version of the program though another electronic storefront at a higher price, which the programmer would also receive payment for (the amount of which would depend on the contract of employment). The software company should also sell DVD-ROMs of the software in retail outlets, which are the software as on the electronic storefront, but with a jewel case and a quick-start guide to the user's favorite functions (if the user is lucky, anyway).

Also, bugs are now sort of a "creative ignorance", so the fixes should come years later and sold again for full price (like so). To be fair though, the original release should be mostly bug free. The software company would probably provide a dedicated tester with some development skills to the programmer in order to assist with this.

The programmer should now also have the ability to travel to various venues (with little to no interference by the software company) and demo his software. The venues would pay for the programmer's time and/or give the programmer a percentage of the ticket sales or entry fee.

The programmer could also sell exclusive versions of the software on the programmer's website. These versions could come with DVDs that document the programmer's creative process and shows the programmer actually in front of the keyboard showcasing the skill that goes into creating pieces of software. The software company may or may not be involved in this. These exclusive and limited production versions would, of course, be sold at a much higher price.

Of course, if the programmer isn't part of a software company, and are not being pushed to do many of these things that most likely would result in more uses on the service or sales of the electronic version and DVD-ROM version, then they are free to code and continue to push that code to the streaming service, do nothing else, and see what happens.

Going back to the real world and talking about music, considering all the effort that musicians put into writing music, recording it, selling it, playing in various venues, merchandising (if they can), and many other things that I probably have no idea they do, the streaming revenue sounds like free coffee at the office to me. Maybe stock dividends or investment returns would be more appropriate comparison. It just doesn't sound like something that one should think of as a primary piece of overall income.

what a ludacris idea

I think so too

The music industry has an even worse problem. Historically, musicians were nobodies - servants and worse. Only during the period when the economics of one to many record manufacturing turned some musicians into "brands" was it a big-money business. Today anybody can make a recording, and the only edge the remaining record companies have is marketing and a back catalog. Billboard points out that the top-grossing band of 2011, Bon Jovi, made 90% of their money touring. Those are the economics of a top performer in the era of Edison wax cylinder recording.

this popular event

Maybe it would be best in consideration of the season and in light of current events for Microsoft's marketing department to reprise this popular event from the launch of Windows Phone.

The free concert series was a big hit for WP7 - it drew big crowds.

does every song have to be about sex and fucking

Most of the popular ones don't appear to be about sex and fucking, at least not directly: http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

Love songs are not the same as songs on sex and fucking. Love songs have been rather popular for ages. Breakup songs are popular too...

Hopefully Righthaven finds more politicians to sue. Lots more. Then maybe - just maybe - will we get some consumer friendly copyright laws. In this case it would appear that Sharron Angle is indeed guilty of willful infringement, but if more politicians get hurt in their own pocket by copyright suits then the chance of them creating laws that states that damages must fit the crime may actually come into effect. That would kill the business model behind the *IAA cartel suits.

Put me down as exceedingly dubious that it'll actually have anything like that effect. What I think is much more likely will be what John McCain proposed when Jackson Browne sued him for using Browne's songs without permission. McCain promptly introduced legislation to exempt politicians from copyright infringement violations when they were using the material for their campaigns. The rest of us would still be just as on the hook. The proposed bill didn't go anywhere that time, but if stuff like this keeps going, I bet we'll see it come back.

I'm just looking forward to being able to definitively call pop music soulless tripe and having hard facts to back it up.

No worries; I found those hard facts you were looking for.

Except people arent, the marketplace IS reacting. Vehemently AGAINST the crap the industry is (over)producing

*Ahem*

The Billboard Top Ten for the week of 3.28.09:

Kelly Clarkson - All I Ever Wanted
The-Dream - Love Vs. Money
U2 - No Line On the Horizon
Nickelback
Beyonce
Jamie Foxx
etc.

No, the marketplace is most certainly *not* against over-production/homogenization. This music is actually popular; people genuinely like this shit.

But if you can't do better than those terrible new DVD releases ...

Eh, I'm not going to insert my own opinion, merely point out that Beast with a Billion Backs was 12th and 6th on the charts for DVD sales according to Billboard. Bender's Game was 10th for a week while Bender's Big Score was only 37th and 11th for its two weeks.

Their sales have put them on charts so while I'm not disagreeing with your assessment, someone out there enjoys them.

Honestly, the DVDs are far above 99% of what's on TV right now so ... I say bring it back--it's a great idea financially.

No, it just proves that a lot of people like the Nintendo products.

The Billboard 100 is full of music *most* people don't like. In fact, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers sell a heck of a lot more records than anything I would consider listening to.

That doesn't mean that Miley Cyrus is what 'normal' people listen to.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest made more money than almost any other film in history. That doesn't mean that 'normal people want to watch idiotic sequels, rather than see a good movie.' It just means that a lot of people paid to see the movie.

Sometimes a system's capabilities DO make a difference!

Just read any review of Rock Band for the Wii. Pretty much every reviewer says it is a crippled, inferior version of the game due to the lower hardware capabilities of the Wii.

"'This is not news nor is it a scoop,' says an Apple Inc. spokesman, declining further comment."

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003722487

Here, check my math:
38% of 1.2 million people pay $6 = $2.736 million.

According to this article http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/search/google/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001017730, their last album sold over 900,000 copies in the US alone, so let's guess they did 1.5 million (which would be a pretty poor showing, internationally). At $2/album from the major that means that they'd get $3 million.

So depending on whether the download cannibalized their CD sales this time around, they might come out slightly ahead.

Ha Ha Ha...no. It's a nice idea but not at all true. Popular music continues to be dominated by RIAA bands, and the only major band I can think of to buck the trend is Radiohead with its current release. Anyway that's not a fair example, as the band built up its currently following entirely under an RIAA label.

Keep in mind contracts usually run out after a set number of albums - the big artists are re-signing up with new record labels, not opting to go independent.

You talk about this as if it's a movement being led by bands, realizing they don't need labels. In reality, labels are instrumental in the promotion and production that is behind basically every well-known band today.

Apple admits that iTunes isn't that profitable, and that mostly its intent is to drive sales of iPods and Macs. To me it seems very reasonable that NBC wouldn't want to be a part of this loss-leader strategy, without some portion of the profit Apple derives from it.

And producing a "Seinfeld" is cheap? What planet are you on? Have you seen Youtube sketch comedy, and how much it sucks? Without the keen writing and star actors and smooth production, the product is shit. Whereas 30 Rock, the Office, et. al, are consistently much better than anything that can be found on Youtube.

(I check several times each day.)

• Billboard.com - "AC/DC Goes Digital Via Verizon Wireless"

That didn't sound right to me. And although I don't have access to the full Billboard charts, who I guess would have all that data, the next best would be wikipedia, which shows Garth selling more then 100 million, but behind Led Zeppelin, selling more the 250 million.

>And in 10 years, someone just like you will be writing, "the 00's? Alternative... but the '10's? Who is any good? NOBODY. Yeah, there are okay artists today, but nothing like the ones we had just ten years ago."

Wrong.... When Michael Jackson was big people knew Michael Jackson would be big. You knew it during his day. When the Who was big you knew that the Who remain big. Queen? U2? When Elton John was big you knew that he would be big. The list continues, Whitney Houston, Celine Dione, etc, etc.

Ok, so who is it today? Let's look at the music charts: http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/charts/chart_displa y.jsp?g=Albums&f=The+Billboard+200

#1 is Various artists...
#2 is sound track to hair spray
#3 is Prince, and well he doesn't count.
#4...

Look at the charts and you would be very hard pressed to find those artists that will stand the test of time. Linken Park maybe.. A couple of others maybe as well. But there are none that scream, "I AM SO GOOD that I will be listened to in 20 years..."

The Internet is not increasing diversity because if it were iTunes would not be #1. The reality is that people are sucking up more packaged artists by the day.

>more widely spent, meaning fewer mega-rock-stars.

Missing the point of Elton John again. Elton John was talking about quality, not mega stars. There are plenty of mega stars... Just not very good mega stars.

Slashdot readers included. Too complicated for a smaller percentage, but still.

Check the billboard charts and see.

Besides that, what is really up with this love theme in music? There is around zero pop songs that isn't about sex, love, boyfriends, breakup etc. If you name one I will give you a cookie.

I've often thought that, myself. On reading your comment, I decided to find out.

Billboard's Top 40 track #2 (was #1 last week) is Nickelback's "If Everyone Cared". It's some hippy crap, saying "everybody be nice to eachother and cooperate and the world will be a better place". It does seem to mention romantic love but that isn't the main theme.

LOL! #3 is Maroon 5's "Makes Me Wonder" and it is about sex and/or love, but the lyrics are so funny that I have to share them.

For comparison, I googled for Pantera lyrics and got this, an album with ten songs, one of which is not about love or sex. Okay, a newer album has not a single song about love.

Metal kicks ass, partly because the usually incomprehensible lyrics can sometimes be interesting, but mostly because of the music. Since you're into non-love lyrics, you might want to consider some alt country music too. There's quite a bit of metal crossover. Hank Williams III has been in lots of metal and punk bands, and has his own metal band Assjack, but his country music with his Damn Band is hardcore. Listen to the song "Bad Magick" by Shooter Jennings to feel like you're hearing a dusty old recording of Led Zeppelin collaborating with Bad Company. Shooter Jennings effortlessly segues from country to metal and back in the song "Busted In Baylor County", playing part of Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" (the Live At Irving Plaza version has a much longer portion of "Sweet Leaf" than the album version). Rebel Meets Rebel is said to be the last project Dimebag Darrel did before he was killed; it has The Cowboys From Hell playing and aging country outlaw David Allan Coe on lead vocals (and the song "Get Out Of My Life" has Hank III in it too). Jay Berndt of Kilgore Smudge now fronts a country band called The Brimstone Assembly, which offers a style of hardcore country similar to that of Hank III.

Holy shit. I need to get a life.

This isn't really a fair characterization of the "battle". Apple Corps existed long before Apple Computers. Apple Corps quite fairly wanted to make sure that this new computer company wasn't going to diminish the value of their name, and that they weren't going to try to compete in the same market (you only get those trademarks as long as you are willing to defend them). back in '80 ot whatever, they came to an agreement that Apple Inc would stay out of the music business. Well, technology marches on and by the end of the 80's computers are beginning inroads into the music industry. Apple Corps feels that Apple Inc is starting to encroach on their area of business, and the two again end up in court. The case is settled, with Apple Inc again agreeing they won't go into the content creation or distribution aspect of the music business. Then along comes iTunes, which is pretty clearly associated with selling music, if not exactly distributing it in the industry Label sense. Now, Apple Corps (from what I have read) had no objection whatsoever to iTunes; what they objected to was it being branded as Apple iTunes. iTunes is and was clearly associated with the music industry, and Apple Corps had a long-standing trademark on the Apple name within that industry. Unfortunately for Apple Corps, a judge decided that since iTunes isn't distributing music in the traditional sense (i.e., they don't sign artists to contracts for sole distribution of music) they aren't infringing the Apple trademark.

This isn't about one company throwing their weight around, nor is it about Apple Corps getting what's coming to them. It is just a story of one company that owns a trademark becoming alarmed that another company seemed to be moving into their area of business while using essentially the same trademarked name. The newer company argued (apparently successfully) that they were not in fact violating the trademark, but they were apparently worried enough about it to purchase the trademark from Apple Corps, and license it back to them at some unknown rate (I'd guess they aren't charging anything - maybe an exclusive deal to release Apple Corps' collection on iTunes).

As for all those that think the Apple Corps label has little value today... according to the Billboard Top 200, a brand new release from Apple Corps is currently at number 22, down from a peak of #4 (not to mention the 6 Beatles albums that have sold 10 million units or more). This is still an extremely valuable library, and I'm sure Apple Inc is eager to try and put a deal together to distribute their music through iTunes now that all the trademark stuff is finally over.

"Apple's move into the music business was a blatant violation of their agreement with Apple Corps"

Apparently no judge seems to agree with this obviously biased opinion. In fact, in the most recent case a British judge ruled in FAVOUR of Apple Inc., not Apple Corps.

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_displa y.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002464164

Ok... you may or may not remember the following item from billboard magazine a few weeks ago:

http://billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.js p?vnu_content_id=1003380831

"Yesterday, Microsoft agreed to share revenue from Zune sales with record labels and artists. Forcing the issue was Universal Music Group, which at deadline is the only label named in the program. UMG refused to license its music to the Zune unless it could receive a percentage of each device sold, in addition to standard music licensing fees for downloads and subscriptions.

"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. "So it's time to get paid for it."

When I saw the headlines on Engadget I thought for sure Universal wouldnt be one of the labels, after all Microsoft chose to pay them off causing good ol' Doug to say he's entitled to a chunk of iPod sales as well. This begs the question: what was the point of the payoff? What did it get them?

quick google search turned this up.

• #17043086 (User: Man in Spandex)
• #17043272 (User: LO0G)
• #17042814 (User: seriv)
• #17043858 (User: j-beda)
• #17043038 (User: Jerry Rivers)
• #17043474, #17043550 (User: pandrijeczko)

link. Just in another article.

The Doug Morris quote is not from this article. His inflammatory remark is from the earlier Microsoft agreement.