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Pirates Steal Negative $1,400,000,000 from Music Industry
In exciting news this week, the RIAA announced that due to the massive piracy of digital music "ripped" from CD's and made available over the Internet, the music industry lost negative $1,400,000,000 in CD sales in 1999. In fact, the damage was so extreme that the industry shipped negative 90 million fewer CD's than the year before.
Oh, I can't keep up the fake news any more... In fact, the RIAA reports that the music industry - especially non-copy-protected CD's - is booming. Not only did the record industry sell 10.8% more CD's than last year, they raised their income on those disks by 12.3% - so not only are you buying more music, but you're paying more for each disk you buy. Income from CD's alone increased by 1.4 billion dollars last year. So where's the crippling damage from evil music pirates? If they're suffering so badly, why does their profit chart look like Microsoft's?
Let's pick up the pace - despite all of our efforts, the RIAA is still firmly in the black.
The RIAA has no idea how to control what could prove to be the biggest thing since CDs.
-------------------------------- |ct2600 | http://www.ct2600.org| --------------------------------
what's with the double negatives?
SHEESH. I think the riaa would be damn surprised at what would happen if they actually LOWERED cd prices... maybe people would ..... BUY MORE OF them...??? nahh... cant be... first post? *shrug*
We need music over the web, micropayable - I'm all for commercial solutions as long as they're not closed standards. If I could buy music for a reasonable amount of money I would - instead of downloading crap quality mp3s (yes, crap quality - people who don't know how to grab without getting click sounds, or mp3-compress with the wrong programs etc)
In fact, I've _stopped_ listening to mp3s - I'm just waiting for the commercial music-over-the-net solutions .. please? Anyone?
it's in my head
Piracy is just pr. You want to demonize people,accuse them of being pirates or whatever. It's all about perception. As in everything else.
Yeah it disgusts me, but...
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
I think that to be a record company executive you have to never grow out of that "No it's mine and you can't have it stage" of childhood developement. My parents taught me to share so I guess I'll never make the cut. I refuse to support the record industry, I'll never pay for their music and I hope that everyone else wakes up and gets tired of being spoon fed the mediocre overpriced crap that they are trying to push on us.
Me a troll, me no gnome, me smash ye head and break ye bones.
I've done my part, and I better get sued for -$25,000!
I'm glad to see that they are doing so well. I actually thought that there may be some impact from audio piracy, but I guess not.
"DVD music video dollar value grew 442 percent from $12.2 million in 1998 to $66.3 million in 1999."
Wow. Now that is great to see. I'm sure that this will mean that we will see more and more titles released for DVD. Looks like VHS sales dropped, I guess that market is moving to DVD.
Gee, I guess that DeCSS didn't have the major impact on the market that it was supposed to have, and that Napster isn't the end of CD audio.
If you subtract a negative number you add a positive number. If they shipped negative 90 million cds, then they shipped 90 million above normal. If they had $1,400,000,000 stolen from them they were given $1,400,000,000. Sorry, for griping, it's just my pet peeve.
I think that the music industry is booming in part because of "pirated" music. Honestly, I've purchased a couple hundred dollars worth of CD's because I really like the MP3s that I've downloaded and I can say that a number of my friends have too.
kwsNI
1. How much more could this have been if there were no piracy?
2. How much less could this have been if people hadn't bought CD's based on hearing pirated music that they liked?
doesn't negative loss = gain?
Oh woe is us! We only made more profit this last year than when the WWW first came out. What are going to do? Those awful, bad, bad, bad, evil Internet pirates are not going to lest us enjoy our near monopoly on popular music. I know, let's create a new media scare and blame it on those awful hackers. We can say that the Linux OS allows these hackers to copy our cd's with out care or concern in the world for our rights to charge outrageous fees and reap incredible profits with no concern about the quality of the schlock we produce.
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
You could say the same thing about the computer industry and hacking, but nobody does, because there are other factors. Fear the flaming goat.
Sheesh, are all you slashdot people high school drop-outs or what? Ever hear of a double negative? If they "lost negative $1,400,000,000 in CD sales", then they actually gained $1,400,000,000. And if they "shipped negative 90 million fewer CD's", they actually shipped 90 million MORE cd's than the year before... why don't you go and buy a fucking holt handbook, or take an english 098 class somewhere.
I don't think mp3s and other pirated music/video have any effect on the amount of cds sold during the year. If a person pirates a particular music/video media he/she probably wasn't going to spend the money on it in the first place. The amount of cds sold really has to do with how well the economy is doing. 1999 saw one of the best years for the economy in history. Since more people have money, more people will be buying cds. Simple as that.
This is funny.
I don't know about the rest of you, but ever since I've started listening to MP3s, I've been buying more CDs. Listening to the MP3 first is great way to know if you want the CD or not.
Just think what kind of income they would have made if the music industry produced more stuff worth listening to, instead of the usual crap they're cranking out.
I'm convinced that the music industry watches the music pirates for valuable info on what kind of music people want. I've noticed several times that old out-of-print vinyl albums I've ripped to mp3 and posted to usenet are suddenly rereleased on CDs. The music pirates are providing free market research on what the studios should resurrect out of the old vaults.
RIAA... now with 90% less evil!
And the sheer number of people completely missing the point of the double negative only proves it.
You always see these figures on piracy. But what I've wanted to know for ages is how they work it out.
Do they assume that every song pirated is a lost CD sale?
Surely noone is stupid enough to suggest that if people didn't pirate it they'd go out and buy it?
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
I've stopped listening to mp3s. I've still got quite a few hundred megs of them, but it's just been too much of a hassle for me, especially now that my system is no unreliable, I don't even know if I'll have time to finish this post before I need to administer the three-finger salute!
Because of this, I picked up a few CDs the other day, because I needed background noise for some mind-numbing work. After I picked them up, I started thinking of the price advantage of the CD clubs, and how badly I was just raped by Target©! It ticks me off, and I'm wanting one of those new DVD players with the Sony Memory Stick slot for playing mp3s on my entertainment center. I just need to muster up the extra $.
Which is more amazing.. that you people bitch and whine about the "corporate" music and the "spoon-fed" attitude, or the fact that you steal said music. Whether or not they're ethical is a personal decision. If they're really the bad bad people you say they are, why don't you 1) not BUY the music, and 2) not DOWNLOAD the music. Its pretty amazing you blasphemize these companies then justify stealing their goods because they're evil.. indeed...
when you're this sexy, do you really need a witty signature?
if the music pirates stole the industry a negative amount of money that woul actually mean they had given the money to them, wouldn't it ?
Okay mp3's are evil I'll admit that ... hehehe now that that's off my chest ... Mp3's are illegal and wrong and bad and easy to download just look at napster and open nap ... Music is a pain anymore because of the commercialization of it. You can't hear a certain type of music on the radio unless the commercialized owners want you to hear it. Mp3's give us the choice back and make it so that we can all enjoy whatever it is we want to listen to. On average EVERYONE buys music so I don't know how much it's really hurting the actual industry. I hold the same theory true today ... if I like the band I buy the album ... simple as that.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Why don't they start doing cool things like putting mpeg copies of the music videos on a separate cd or mail you a cd with the music videos for only the cost of shipping and handling when you buy the album? They need to make the album more than just music, it needs extra content like music videos on it. Eventually the 1.4 billion they announced they lost will look like chicken scratch because no one will buy the albums since they are so bloody expensive. Most of my ska, punk, swing, emo and metal records cost me only around $10-$14.... usually in the $12-$13 range for the more popular ones. However I shudder when I see the prices that people pay for popular rap and rock albums, around $16-$20. I am of the opinion that if they started USING the internet for distribution they could lower the price without lowering their profits. On a side note who does the RIAA think it is kidding by saying that it protects the rights of artists? It only protects the interests of the big labels it represents and their artists. I would be so surprised if they cracked down on a site giving away records from an independent label like epitaph, lookout or moon ska.
Thank you.
I have no sympathy for the music industry.A CD in oz costs $30. At that price i only buy the very few i REALLY want, the rest i get on MP3.
All the whining about MP3's is primarily an attempt to prepare the legal grounds for supression of the format later, when they can force hardware manufacturers to suspend MP3 playback capability in favor of SDMI and/or its latest flavor.
The industry needs to make sure that when digital music is deployed (i.e. when _they_ deploy it), it goes out with the ability to be rented (which they prefer), instead of just bought. They also want the full suite of digital copy protections, such as tying it to the device its stored on so you can't share it. To do this they have to supress MP3.
Since Goebbels was right about telling a big enough lie often enough will eventually make it believable, that is what is happening. The media in this country is pretty much controlled by the same corporations that own the music, so you'll hear numbers like this alot, no matter how absurd they are when you apply basic arithmetic to them.
Essentially, the end of "fair use" as it's been known in copyright law for the last century or so is approaching - UCITA and DMCO are other aspects of this erosion of rights.
Buy yourself a DVX player. Give them your CC number and micro-pay away.
I believe the RIAA should stop whining and fix the problem itself. I for one would pay a small fee for each MP3 that I have a copy of, if that were possible. I hate CD's (a hassle to play compared to MP3's), so I rarely buy them except to support groups I really like. I immediately rip CD's I own so I can play them on my Rio. If the RIAA would institute a fair and reasonably priced system of music vending, I would respect it. Is anyone else with me on this?
reduce the price of CD's.. why would anyone want to pay $18.99 for a new CD at Sam Goody's, when they know they can get the same quality for free or even if I pay $3.99 or whatever some of those new mp3 selling sites charge you. Most of the CD's I've bought over the past 5 years, I only like 4 out of 12 songs.. paying $18.99 or even $15.99 is a rip-off. These people need to realize that MP3 is their competition, and their enemy...fight it on it's merits or lack there of, not because it's costing you money.. thats like AT&T saying everyone who uses Sprint or MCI is a pirate because when the customers switched from AT&T to MCI AT&T lost money, so obviously they're bad.
The RIAA could use all the money they spent on calculating how much they lost to MP3s on finding a format better than MP3 or in making the price of CD's a lot cheaper.. CD's still have their advantages right now.. but if I can find a song for free and download it and burn it on to my own CD, why should I even bother to go to a overpriced store ? This old mentality by the MPAA and the RIAA sickens me.. they are like little chidlren refusing to put on a sweater or wear warm clothes when it's -25 celsius outside, just because they liked the summer and hope they winter will go away because they don't like Winter, and because they want it that way.
PS: Sorry for the run-ons..
subject says all...
Called.... SARCASM?
The industry MADE a ton of money with little or no impact from the vicious hordes of pirates that Dr. Jack (Valente) hates so much.
The proper spelling is "disc," not "disk." Disk is a shortened form of diskette, whereas disc is a round, flat object.
Perhaps I'm the only one reading slashdot who didn't quite get this, but it actually appeared to me that the RIAA incurred a loss in 1999-- until I read the title for the article. I think that the satire, in this case, was grossly uncalled for.
My confusion was aided by the fact that loss is often reported as negative numbers. Check out some public companies' financial results, and you'll see this.
I know my rate of cd purchase has almost gone to 0.00. CD's are just to expensive these days, and most of the stuff pushed on us by the record industry is crap.
My school put these strange TV's everywhere that play nothing but the crappy music videos the industry thinks appeals to college students. As a result I've gotten so tired of hearing the same old crap that you couldn't *pay* me to buy a cd. I guess they had the reverse effect intended.
This sig is false.
Good grief! How are they supposed to be making money on CDs when people are playing this music for free on the radio!?
I mean, this technology could ruin the recording industry, even if it does help the music industry!
--
I noticed
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I noticed
It's getting about time to leave everywhere
Couldn't you guys just report things that happen rather than your opinions on them? Honestly, Michael, if you're going to comment on the article, do it in the thread rather than turning the headlines into a confusing sarcastic rant.
I think the music industry is ethically right in the assumption that the music is there and we shouldn't be trading mp3s. What ethically gets me is that the music industry doesnt seem to get is that it is charging exhorbiant prices for the good they offer, and they have a pseudo monopoly. for instance, if im out to buy a dave matthews cd I can only buy that cd from RCA/BMG. thats right, i could go buy another cd from another company but I want that dave matthews cd, and they are free to charge what they wish on the fans; that is what isnt fair and drives me to trade mp3s.
If what people are suggesting is true, that as more music is pirated, more money will be made by the people who sell the music, this could change commerce as we know it.
Cars, for instance. People would copy cars (using 3d scanners and AutoCatalyst) and post them on ftp sites. Users would get most of the value of the car, without all the space that they normally take up. Along with solving parking problems in many major cities, this would also cause car sales and profit per car to rise.
WinAuto, anyone?
Of _course_ they are experiencing an increase of CD sales despite MP3. But consider what is fashionable in music nowadays: Boy Bands and teeny boppers. It has been said before, but fanatical teenaged girls spend more than any other group when it comes to music and movies. Because of the current music trends, there are more sales and higher prices. Fortunately for the music industry, the same group (teenaged girls) that is making all of these purchases know little or nothing about MP3.
However, when these teeny boppers go out of style (as we all know they will), expect the music industry to get hit hard.
The RIAA is screaming bloody hell over CD pirating. Then the MPAA comes in and says "hey, look at all the problems we've had over people ripping CD's. This is why we need to protect DVD's: So that we don't get the same problem". This is especially true since many of the companies have a vested intrest in both the RIAA and the MPAA (Like Sony).
kwsNI
How can they lose money if they never had it in the first place? It's not like people are stealing CD's off the shelf. If they lowered the average CD price to, say, $4.99 each, I bet sales would boom. Most people would rather buy a CD for a low price than spend time looking for it on the Internet, downloading it, and then finding out that it was a poor quality cd rip or mp3 encoding. Time also has a value. Maybe my opinion will change when everyone has high speed Internet access. Wouldn't take much time then
It's the same reason that people pirate MS applications. They say "they can afford to lose me as a customer, look how big there are".
It's justification, a silly excuse that helps people sleep at night. But the end is the same, whether its software piracy or music piracy, content producers lose out. I know I'm biased because I'm a software producer... but why shouldn't I expect that people pay for my products if they want to use them? It's my right to expect that in a free-market system such as ours. Oh damn, I'm ranting again aren't I? =)
Last point -- if you can't afford something that you want, that doesn't mean you should steal it no matter how big or evil the company may be.
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
For quite some time the RIAA has been telling us that mp3 is destroying its revenue base due to illegal pirating... this data could possibly throw a kink into that argument, but I'm not going to be so compulsive as to say that for sure (though I would like to).
.mp3's and piracy. I mean, if in an age where piracy is rampant and no user who has access to use an mp3 would ever go out and buy a CD (at least according to the worst rhetoric of the RIAA), then this data is apparently an anomoly and we should just ignore it.
;-)
Now we must admit that this really does bring up some of the philosophical debates of
Personally, I think this is a great way to point out that mp3's do not actually stop the purchasing of CD's, but rather promote them in the sample-before-you-buy theory. Technically we could sit around in music shops, listening to each and every CD we can get our hands on (if you happen to have one of those nice CD shops around) to see what we like, or perhaps we can just go online in the comfort of our own home and check out some stuff that other people have recommended to us, or that we have found by happenstance (the same thing that we would do in the record shop, except we can do this at 2:00am, when insomnia rears its ugly head). While the record company will obviously lose some money from people having nothing but pirated music, the overall purchasing of the music could be stimulated by the existance of mp3s.
There is, however, the other point to bring up. Music sales have increased because the economy is booming and people are just out there spending more money, most of whom have no idea what an mp3 actually is and wouldn't know how to operate a computer in order to use them in the first place.
Then again, there is the thought that they are using Britany Spears to spread subliminal messages hidden in her artificial bustline to get more adolescent kids to buy stuff...
But, back to the subject, I don't know what the numbers were from last year, at least I don't remember them being mentioned in the article), so I can't completely compare these ideas (and then again, how can someone truly proove an idea such as this.... but I digress). However, the data leads me to beleive that mp3 isn't the evil that the RIAA makes it out to be (NB - I didn't beleive them in the first place), or so the numbers would have us beleive...
Fooled? I understand relativity and am pretty sure you don't. Was Einstein trying to fool you too?
Theft? I think the term "theft" can be defined by those who have the most dollars to manipulate/bypass the law. In a purely legal sense(pre-trial) Amazon.com can claim the entire world is stealing from them. But is this actually the case? Who is doing the stealing in this case?
Come now, you are using a commercial perspective to preach morality and ethics. Is this really a proper location for you to be placing a soapbox for such things? You aren't fooling me. The executive perspective likes people who are stupid and are in shock that lo and behold they are finally getting their long leashes pulled in.
Shit, I could afford to lose -$1.4 billion.
so i'm sitting here, at work, relolading slashdot, when i see one of the best headlines in a long while. yeah, i laughed out loud in my office. then i read the article, then i read the comments.
i might have guessed that maybe one id10t would post...... "um... i dont get the obvious joke embedded in this headline", but come on people, there are too many comments destroying my illusion that slashdot readers are a bit smater than the average person.
how about we think before we get that first post. slashdot is about sharing knowledge and fun... not about having the most karma, or complaining over bad posts, or repeat posts, or pretending that were more important than posters, linus, or god.
lets try to respect slashdot... and congrats michael for a great post.
//end rant
lexicon
I just thought I'd throw in some discussion not related to music distributors and publicists. What about the artists who we all so enjoy listening to? What happens if they cease to be payed for their efforts and no longer produce the music? While I realize and agree with the opposition to forking over hard-earned to big conglomerate corporations, it is those companies who provide artists with a label and a means by which to earn profit through notoriety.
I don't think music should have to be stolen to prevent our money from getting to the conglomerates. However, the artists must still be payed to continue their great work. Devotion to the art is fine, but it doesn't pay the bills.
With the inexpense of advertising on the internet, as well as the tremendous and diverse audience out there, doesn't it make sense that artists should begin to promote themselves and sell their own music? If artists could somehow distribute their own music via the internet at rates considerably lower than those of major labels, I would not be adverse to purchasing music. Just a thought.
"The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is allev
That was the whole point of the article.
The MPAA had a net Profit of $1,400,000,000.
I thought that that was a clever but simple and straight forward joke on Micheal's part. It is interesting that so many people appeared to be misled by it.
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''When referring to CDs, you're right, disc is correct. But Disk also means a thin circular object and is the more common spelling outside of recorded media. In fact, Webster's just lists "Disc" as a variant of "Disk".
I listen to the radio. I've played with mp3s before, but they would use up too much disk space to hold the variety of music I listen to. I feel RIAA needs to die. Artists should control all aspects of their music. The recording industry in my opinion is, has been and could possibly forever be a negative influence on the art form.
Double negatives were neither necessary for impact, nor added to the readability of the story.
:-)
/prove/ I'm right.
The story should have read: "Pirates cause $1.4 billion gain in CD Sales. Also, 90 million more CDs are shipped.".
Or, better yet, (but without the intended effect, yet more accurate):
"Despite pirates, the RIAA sees a $1.4 billion gain in CD Sales with 90 million more CDs shipped".
I wouldn't have posted this, but there are _way_ too many people bitching on slashdot, supporting the use of double negatives in english language for "impact" in this story. Readability adds impact, double negatives detract from it. That is why "Yo English teecha neva told ya's to use da sentence 'I ain't never gonna come back'".
Flame me on the fact that double negatives are wrong, and I'll
Flame me for bad grammar, and you will be ignored.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Just another eurosocialist pseudo-scientific pseudo-intellectual spouting nonsense to impress the rubes. Not a single scrap of evidence has yet been uncovered to support any of his so-called "theories". Just one more academic welfare program for people incapable of doing real work in the real world.
Those who can't produce, must steal. That would explain your permissive attitude about piracy. You can't make music yourself, and your resentment leads you to crime.
"...People would steal my records, and then after the riot was over, they would go back to the store to return them for store credit. So, at the end of that month, instead of a royalty check, I got a bill."
(I'm not sure if that's an exact quote, but the idea is the same)
Well maybe I'm one of the few people who do this but I actually buy the audio cd/game if I like it enough, how ever I will get an MP3 if there is only one song on the cd I actually want/like. Dunno I spose thats just me. -D_Leary
You know, I always ignored those "I'm leaving Slashdot, I'm sick of all the stupid people / the trolls / etc." posts... but damn, it looks like almost all the intelligent, insightful people really have ditched Slashdot.
I need my geek fix too frequently to give up on slashdot, but you miss so much reading at Score=2, and you see so much garbage reading any lower. And now that the trolls have figured out that they can get accounts just like anyone else for the +1 bonus, and they can post often enough to waste moderator points on marking them down rather than marking insightful stuff, so the Score=3 posts get scarcer and scarcer.
Fuck, I probably need to post this anonymously, too, since the decay of Slashdot (and Western-fucking-Civilization) is "off topic", and will be marked down just like the dozens of legitimate "put software release 2.3.48ac4 in it's own section" complaints in other threads.
Of course, we're stuck with clueless moderators, since the 33% of people who visit slashdot most often make themselves ineligible to become moderators; that way we get "the average reader". Yay, average people.
This is Casey Kasem with a first -- a dedication to an organization.
...
...
And not just one, but two, organizations.
Spinning this one especially for the RIAA and MPAA from Cartman:
Duh danna dan nuh,
I HATE YOU GUYS,
Duh danna dan nuh,
I WISH YOU WERE DEAD
Come on, everybody, you know the words
I have nothing more to add.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
I hit three record stores in Toronto this weekend. An HMV, a Sam's, and small second-hand store on Bloor street. You know what was interesting? They *all* have listening posts where you can ask to listen to an album before buying it.
We all know that if we buy an album, chances are most of it will be crap (except for the song you bought it for.) Of course, there are exceptions.. so could it be mp3s are letting people be more confidant in their purchases?
its the try before you buy shareware concept thingy which kicks in - if those stoopid studios allowed poeple to download a few songs legally from each cd as mp3's more people would like those songs and buy cds.
oddly enough, for music & videos (think movie trailers or even poor quality ripped movies) it does work. for shareware software i dunno tho...shareware seems to have pretty much died in favour of payware or freeware.
Other than the fact that the links aren't my browser's default colour, I find the newly coloured slashdot perfectly useable.
Just my 2 cents...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I can't mention a sign of the "industry" losing any money at all in the link that was posted. In fact, as far as I can tell, they're reporting growth in cd/dvd product sales from the previous year. To quote:
"According to the RIAA, manufacturers saw a 3.2 percent net unit increase in audio and video product shipped to domestic markets (from 1.12 billion units in 1998 to 1.16 billion units in 1999). The corresponding dollar value of those shipments at suggested list price increased 6.3 percent from $13.7 billion in 1998 to $14.6 billion last year. "
Here's another paragraph
"Despite the maturity of the format, in 1999 full-length CD shipments grew nearly 11 percent over the previous year. On the other hand, while shipments of CD singles remained flat at 56 million units, this was a significant improvement over 1998. Growth within the CD singles format is being driven by CD maxi singles, which increased from $35.7 million in 1998 to $65.3 million in 1999. Full-length CD unit shipments grew 10.8 percent from 847 million in 1998 to 939 million in 1999; full-length CD dollar value grew 12.3 percent from $11.4 billion in 1998 to $12.8 billion in 1999."
In fact, the subtitle of this article itself clearly states
"RIAA Reports Recorded Music Market Enjoyed Solid Growth In 1999 DVD Growth Explosive, CDs Solid, Cassettes And Music Videos In Decline"
So I ask you again, does anyone actually read these articles, or do people merely read what other people CLAIM the article says and their OPINIONS on it, and then start a discussion based on that? I mean, if slashdot has degraded that far, thats fine and I'll shut up, but I wasn't aware we had descended that far at this point in time.
Really like the sarcasm, Michael, but doesn't it sound like the bullshit the RIAA is using in its own propaganda? "MP3s hurt music sales... we're selling more music! People place 'intrinsic value' in music!"
What they've been spoon-feeding the media (it's kinda incestual in a way... they've been media-fucking their keepers; e.g., Time-Warner, etc. who have interests in music and news media) is exactly that: a huge contradiction. I'm going to assume that their sales statistics are based on fact. This means that their entire crusade against MP3s is based on non-existant evidence. The RIAA wants us to believe that MP3s are hurting music distribution, when in fact their monetary sales and unit sales are both substantially up? Doesn't make sense.
Of course the few odd pirates will impact the bottom line, but I'm guessing there are a lot of people who get an MP3 from a friend, off the net, etc. and then go buy the album. A friend just turned me on to Neutral Milk Hotel via 200MBs of MP3s that she had up on restricted FTP server. Guess what CDs are going to be in my mail box on Monday? Two Neutral Milk Hotel albums.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Listen..
With napster, my 1.5MBit/sec ADSL downloads, my 8x Plextor CD-R, my cheap 30g IDE HD, and a spindle of blank CDs, I will never buy another CD again unless it's blank. Got me?
Just another pirate.
I just wanted to add to what you said: "compact disc" is the registered trademark for a disk that at the time seemed compact, and so did Compaqs seem compact at that time. It isn't wrong to refer to CDs as "disks" any more than it would be wrong to call those old Compaqs "huge".
Yes, I'm -$100 richer because deCSS allowed me to play DVDs on a Linux box and I'm unemployed.
Every section, such as "Your Rights Online" and "Ask Slashdot" has its own colour scheme. That's been that way for a year. Think.
A CD in oz
Oz? I'm sorry, but where exactly is Oz? I thought that was all a dream.
Also. Does the Lollipop Guild sell the MiniDiscs?
(if you're confused, these are in reference to The Wizard of Oz. That's what I thought of when I read that. Ha..ha..)
Welcome to Slashdot. Please do not feed the trolls.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
One simple reason why selling digital music will never be finacially succesful and why porn is finaccially successfull is that people want to get something they can hold in their hand when they give someone money.
music is just like software. it should be free even if it violates the auothrs rights
The calculations of the RIAA are just rough estimates and assumptions. They think they would sell everything what is being copied which is a serious exaggeration. Most pirates would not buy what they are copying. Forget it. And more importantly the record industry folks mistake their estimates for quiet exact calculations. Which is another mistake. And by their negative actions -all those lawsuits against MP3 and likes- they are just causing netizens to buy less of their products. They are a classic example of how not to deal with piracy.
The nice thing about Windows is: it does not just crash; it displays a nice little dialog box and let's you press 'OK'
This is fake news. /. has a time honored tradition of not posting fake news on April Fool's Day, so why isn't the policy extended to posting any fake news? In fact the article says nothing about piracy. The double negatives were funny, but not informative.
I am not a lawyer.
Things fall not because of some mysterious force of "gravity", but because they are heavy and heavy things fall downwards.
This is a perfect example of the gutting of our educational system in the permissive 1960's. Had you studied phonics, of course, you would be aware of these facts already.
:)
that is ridiculous even for a troll.
Nothing is too ridiculous for a troll!
--80md
so what ?
.... times for listening
the music I really dig, the music which has real value is not in the charts
I go to the shop and hand over the money
I want the CD, I want perfect quality at maximum volume
and mp3 doesn't give me that
the music which is played in radio is ok, 10, 20,
download as mp3 and if you don't like it anymore delete it, no one's hurt
well, expect the "music industry", but why should I pay ridiculous prices for maxi singles with just one song which doesn't last long ???
no more money to Britney, BSB, Christina, whatever.
no more money to "stars"
more money to real musicans, those who deserve it
So how many lawyers will $US1.4 billion buy for stomping on open source authors?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Why is this moderated "funny"? I think he should be taken literally. If we pirate 100% of their sales out from under them, they won't be able to pay their lawyers.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
We need to filter out certian users like the account trolls - so why not make it so that you can filter posts by the user's krama rating?
/. crew to report abuse on the board to the ISPs. You can have the kids kicked off the net - that would be funny. =)
Then after 5 mark downs, they can't be seen.
Also we could get
Will someone please steal negative $1,400,000,000 from me? While you'r at it take negative 90 million CD's. I'd be $1,400,000,000 ritcher and have more CDs than I'd know what to do with :-)
When CDs first came out, they were a little more pricy then most people had hoped. The recording industry stated that the price jump was because the media format was so new, and they needed to up production before they could drop the price without losing money.
Rather then drop the price like they had promised, they saw that people were willing to pay the inflated prices (due to the monopoly by the RIAA.) Hence, they never dropped the prices like they had said they would.
If you look at the prices on mp3.com, thats the price a CD truly should be, $8.99 or so. I dont know about you, but if Music CDs only cost 8 bucks a peice, I would be buying them all the freaking time.
As it is, I am a poor college student, and I pirate most all of my music. That combined with my bitterness towards the Media industry as a whole, I can justify myself.
On a similar note, does anyone know how much the artist gets from a CD sale through the RIAA? I bet its under 1$ per CD. I truly belive that a real artist would prefer my appreciation of their music over my money. And with my complete lack of funds, mp3s have allowed me to appreciate a wide variety of different music.
If i could send squarepusher a cheque for 15$, I would. That would probably be more money then he would get if i bought all of his CDs...
I still dont understand why the RIAA is fighting mp3. They are going to lose.. thats all there is to it. Their best bet is to embrace the mp3 format and figure out a way to make money off of it.. I dont know about you guys, but I would gladly pay a monthly fee for access to an RIAA mp3 ftp with every peice of music ever released on it.
no
Maybe this should be taken to say that the "big money" recoding industry is putting out so much garbage that no one is buying it. How convenient to have a "pirate" scapegoat to defend the junk that commercial artists are producing these days - long live the underground!
The1Genius - Littera Scripta Manet
Fight Spammers!
Arrrr
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The real figures show what a great position the CD industry is in.
Since I got my CD burner 6 months ago I've downloaded and burned over 11,000 MP3's, any CD I've ever wanted by any band I can think of I can now obtain easily for free. Has the record industry lost thousands of dollars due to my piracy? Hardly, they've lost the $200 or so I would have spend at the USED record store. Heh, so I guess they didn't lose anything because they've already made their profit off the used CD's.
Mp3s and Napster will cause the collapse of the music industry as we know it. It will not go away, but it will really change. There will be no way for the recording industry to copyprotect their CDs.
Some suggestions that they'd think of possibly:
1) encrypt the CD.
Effect: Then you'd need an encrypted CD player.
Workaround: cross connect another stereo as the speakers and record it into a wav.
2) encrypt the speakers
Effect: Wouldn't take off.
Face it, the recording industry is in a jam and they're going to grasp at straws by suing companies like mp3.com and Napster. Their lawsuits are unjustified. Is Microsoft suing AbsoluteFTP and wu-ftpd because those pieces of software enable people to download their applications from sites without buying them? No.
Why buy a CD when you can get the mp3 (or next-gen format) within 2 weeks from the net?
Groups will have to add more value to buying a CD. Maybe there is more they can put on there, like video or a website on the making of the CD, hell I dunno. Artists may have to just give up getting paid what they're getting now for the sake of music. Concerts will bigger money makers and you can bet we'll have to pay $100+ to see someone like U2.
The next time I toss off a short, spur-of-the-moment post that I expect to be moderated into a thin greenish smear, I'm doing it logged in.
FWIW: Oz==Austraila
(Say it like Monty Python: "oz-TRAYE-luh"... see?)
but more to the point. My friend and I had a discussion about this yesterday, it's easy to find all the new singles from different bands since thats what people hear on the radio and go download. What you don't find a good deal of is B-sides, smaller bands (even "big" punk bands), and the tracks from the middle of the CD. Look for a full album of Pink Floyd or The Addicts, they are HARD to find as mp3s. Maybe the piracy crap was just reverse psychology...
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
something that Rob and crew have tried very hard to preserve is that you can see EVERY post -- even those modded down all the way. so losing their +1 bonus, yes. even having them start out at -1 (like the +2 bonus for high karma the other way around), yes. however, just erasing their posts seems to go against the intentions so far.
/. crew (and Andover) open themselves up for all sorts of legal action. common carrier status is a precious thing.
:)
and having them kicked off is inappropriate -- not to mention that no ISP would probably do it, except perhaps for NetZero, Frewwweb, etc... however, how would you report them? if you (for example) track IPs, then the whole
perhaps we could just slap em around a bit...
Lea
And they control upgrade paths: every ten or so years, you will get a new, "enhanced" format that requires you to repurchase your entire collection of media.
Contrast that with MP3. Because MP3 is open and media independent, it's archival: if you have paid for some piece of music once, you and your heirs can access it in perpetuity.
Furthermore, with an open format like MP3, you'd get more and more free content, from people who perform music and theater for fun. Much of that isn't going to be very good, but some can be excellent. With the kind of format the RIAA is pushing for, they'd get their cut even from such productions, through license fees and inflated production costs.
Technology promises to bring us, finally, the ability to share artistic content freely, and the established media companies are trying to thwart this. I think, ultimately, the RIAA and MPAA efforts are doomed to failure. But if we don't watch out, we may be in for a very unpleasant few decades where content remains unnecessarily expensive and limited.
I really don't think that all the people who downloaded the latest single off some obscure ftp server would have bought the CD in a parallel universe.
Hi, I would just like to remember people who don't already know that a program called Napster (www.napster.com) can download almost every good mp3 in the world.
First, the RIAA is a group of lawyers - if they're losing money, they have nobody to blame but themselves.
If you think the RIAA MEMBERS were losing money, well, I have a bridge to sell you. Cheap.
I think you should read the article again - nowhere does it say that they lost money - the article says that growth (in list-dollars) was almost 20%.
Hey Micheal! Nowhere in the article does it mention any correlation between Priracy and music sales. Why don't you report on the facts for a change instead of starting unfounded Flame Wars?!
/. and the Linux community.
You're being a Childish Troll and doing more harm than good to
This kind of journalism is called "Editorialization".
This concludes our Sarcasm 101 class for today.
you first posters with your hey look at me i'm so cool i got first post mods waste their points on you so for that i salute you together we will destroy the moderation system here on slash dot
want really sucky computer equipment?
try va linux, they such hard
any pile of junk from 10 years ago would be better that all the junk va linux puts out
pointkilla!
the music still belongs to them. No matter how justified you are in doing whatever the hell you want in your mind, it still belongs to them.
No matter how self-righteously indignant you can make yourself, its still belongs to them.
How you justify the idea that pirating music really isn't pirating music, and that you somehow have a "right" to download it without ever making any pretense of purchasing it, is really amusing.
Andrew Gardner
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
How many of you have made for, or recieved from, your friends tapes containing songs of bands you have not heard before, and as a result gone out and bought albums?
This is surely of benefit to the music industry when radio stations will only play safe, conformist, boring, commercial music.
Call me old-fashioned if you like...
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
(BTW, "yours" in title is impersonal, i.e. does not refer to Trollok specifically)
That's what the recording studios consider radio for, plus there they have much more control over the music.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
It's been years since I have taken an economics course...but I think that the fact that the number of cd sales increased so much implies that the price of a cd is below the market equilibrium and they aren't making the most total amount of money based on market conditions.
:)
I could be way off based here... if I am I apologize. I'm an engineer, not an economist
cheese
Ever since the comment about artificial bustlines and subliminal messages, things are becoming much clearer. It is now clear to me that the compression inherent in the MP3 format likely thwarts the record industry's attempts to hide subliminal messages in the songs of artists.
No longer can the major record companies sell subliminal advertising, or use subliminal techniques to raise revenue. They will be limited to including the AOL 5.0 software on the unused portion of their discs.
erm, also %s/Usenet/the mp3 scene/g
What's really important from the business mind of RIAA is, how does that growth compare to last year's growth? How did we compare to Wall Street's estimates? In fact, their rate of growth could be slowing, due to the expanding use of mp3's.
So, this isolated fact really tells me nothing, and in the larger scheme of things, this fact could be used to boost the RIAA's case in court.
Thats a good question - it would be interesting to compare this with the last few years increases to determine if it is normal market increase or less/more.
-
if they are making so much money where do they get off selling a half-hour cd for $18
why am i here?
Up until about 3 months ago, I did not listen to Trance genre music. I didn't even know what Trance was! However, after downloading an extended set of Paul Oakenfold, I got hooked. Now, I have bought at least $300 worth of CDs containing Oakenfold, Sasha, Nick Warren, Paul van Dyk, as well as many others. Digital downloads like VHS cassesettes before them, EXPAND the pie for companies and industries, it doesnt shrink it. The problem is new business models have to be adopted and used to receive gain from these new opportunities. Scary for record executives approaching 50 and the head of MPAA, a WWII vetetran, Jack Valenti.
Hangtime
One way to improve things would be to allocate a different set of negative and positive points. When I have points, I try to use them all to mark posts up. Occasionally I have to mark something down, but I try to use them positively since most people probably only read 3's anyway.
It would be nice to have a big bag of negative points, because its usually really clear which posts should be moderated down. Finding the good posts is the real trick.
Personally, I think Karma is a bad idea. Why should someone get a 2 just because they posted something interesting in the past? Give out more moderation points, and you won't have to give anyone a head start. The good stuff will filter up quickly.
The cost of a producing a CD is cheap. This includes CD, jewel case, ink, paper, etc. Probably $1.50 US max. Unless the artist is a multi-million album seller, the artist makes very little in royalties from CD's (more on this later). My figures were about $1.00 US a sale. Maybe $1.50. We'll be generous - $2.00. If the artist is big, this can vary wildly, because the artist has real negotiating power when making up a recording contract.
As for the rest (~$15.00 US), that's due to the record company and middlemen. Maybe you should ask record stores how much they pay for CD's from the manufacturer. From my music course days, the record company makes at least $5.00 a sale (more on this in a sec).
Sounds pretty crappy huh? Well, get this...
Say I'm a "starving artist" and a major record company wishes to sign me to their label. Cool. I'm in the big time. Let's even say you have your own studio. Now, what will the record company offer in a standard contract?
You know what the best part is? They own your copyright. Thus, if you become successful, to have control of your songs, you have to buy them back from the record company. That basically sucks and is the same as the software industry. The difference is you are writing the music for yourself and others, whereas you write software for other people. It's similar, but much more personal with music...
Anyway, sparing some gory contract details that I don't recall exactly, it breaks down to this: you pay back the record company out of your royalties. This is the part that really blows.
Let's say I got a loan from the record company for $200,000 US to create and distribute my album that I recorded. I hand over the master recordings to them so they can make the CDs. I now no longer own copyright on them but I get $2 from each sale. After 100,000 CD sales I still have nothing in royalties because that $200,000 in royalty money goes back to pay the record company. I only get money after the 100,000th sale. I don't think it's hard to image that 100,000 sales is tough for a nobody artist and $200,000 is a low estimate on the creation/distribution of records. Note that the record company makes $7 a CD for the first 100,000 sales.
It gets worse: standard contracts have you signed for a few albums - not one. So you can get really in debt if you aren't successful. Add in the cost of a producer, engineer, studio, incremental royalties and it just goes to shit.
There are ways around this, but it's not real easy (hint: proven self-distribution). This is probably not all that far from reality now-a-days. Btw, the artists can make good money via live performances, I believe.
Just a little FYI. (if this is way different now, please fill me/us in)
Woz
gzw@home.com
Why should I care, I've got my Rio, I've got mpg123. 'They' cannot 'suppress' anything.
99% of the population tend to view computers as scary grey boxes. Probably around 50% of the population listens to music. That means a large part of the music-buying audience is afraid of computers. These people probably do not stuff their harddisks with illegal MP3's. I don't know why the majors even bother to complain about MP3's at all. Probably just to open their mouth.
Another reason why this isn't surprising is that CD's and records (food for the enlightened) tend to be seen more as collectible items than as carriers of music. Most people buy CD's/Records because they want something tangible, something they can cuddle and sniff, and something that has liner notes they can read. This also explains why Audio-CD pirating never took off that much (except in Russia and the Far East, where people simply can't afford to buy a CD at the official price). If you like a CD, you want to have an original. Cheap copies are not collectibles. If you just want to hear a certain song, you'll tape it from someone. Nowadays, you'll have someone copy the CD for you or you'll get an MP3 (if you're a member of the digerati). There is no indication, however, that there are more people now ripping and copying cd's than there were people taping records before. It's just that the MP3 "revolution" has made hometaping a little more visible. And just like hometaping never "killed music", MP3 will not either.
Which is a shame, though, because the only "music" MP3 would kill would be major label music (try to find illegal Pan Sonic MP3's. You can't. It's all Britney Spears). And, as we all know, the majors are evil.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Music is public property. All musicians should be patronized by the government. (In my culture all the artists were patronized by the (king not queen!)). Music is integral part of people lives (like water).I would say it is essential for my surivival. So instead letting the greedy(music industry) to interfere with this we should nationalize all the music. What would it be like if we copyrighted all the works of Bible, Shakespeare, etc..?
I leave the settings on 2 for most of the good posts, or ones that make any relevance. But how does one score the 2+ points?
Fuck, I probably need to post this anonymously, too, since the decay of Slashdot (and Western-fucking-Civilization) is "off topic", and will be marked down just like the dozens of legitimate "put software release 2.3.48ac4 in it's own section" complaints in other threads. Of course, we're stuck with clueless moderators, since the 33% of people who visit slashdot most often make themselves ineligible to become moderators; that way we get "the average reader". Yay, average people.
And what is wrong with so-called "average people"? It is not like we are not allowed to have our own opinion on the subject as well. If Slashdot was only exclusive to the elite (or 31337) of the sysadmins, it probably would not have as large base of loyal readers as it does now (yes including people who use Windows, we count , too!).
And this open forum is just icing on the cake.
Isn't loosing negative money a good thing?
"Calling EMACS an editor is like calling the Earth a hunk of dirt" - Chris DiBona
Personally, I think this is a great way to point out that mp3's do not actually stop the purchasing of CD's, but rather promote them in the sample-before-you-buy theory.
Oh gawd. You're in denial. Do you really need to make excuses in order to forgive yourself for "pirating"? If you have a problem with causing the RIAA to profit less, you really shouldn't be supporting mp3, because as little effect as it has, the effect certainly isn't good for them. And it'll only get worse for them when broadband gets popular.
Maybe the record companies should consider two things. Instead of trying to watermark or secure a CD, why not make a compelling reason to buy one? How about good cover art, neat inserts and reasonable priced CD's?
$12.99 - $16.99 is an unreasonable price to pay considering a DVD is not much more. As well tapes and other media have plunged in price but stamped CD's seem to be the only thing that goes up in price as quantity increases.
MP3 has caught on like crazy. There is nothing record companies can do about this. All they can try to do is offer the music legally on MP3 if a legal buyer desires it.
If record companies want to curb piracy, make music affordable, the liner notes worth getting and offer the music in multiple formats.
This is my first post in ages, but this is an issue most people fell pretty strongly about.
...and to do that you need $
Pirating CD's is not the answer.
The villans of the music world are, as stated, the record giants. They have more money than any artist, and have the marketing budgets similar to the GDP of a small nation. They have the power to buy their way up the chart for a "number one" single.
And where do they advertise their wares? On free to air radio. Let's face it, without FTA radio, no artist would ever get anywhere. You have to want the music to go and buy it. To promote the MP3, or net only, scene, we need - MP3 radio.
Australia's youth network, Triple J has an MP3 of the week section where artists can send their tracks and hopefully score some free airplay.
If we had a radio station that operated soley on this, there would be a number of pros and cons.
+ There would be no licensing issues
+ There would be no CD library, just a data vault
+ Songs are able to be called from the library without leaving the chair
+ The songs (or samples of) could me made available to the listeners
- You would haave to pay for some real bandwidth
- Someone would have to go through the deluge of crap to find the gems.
- You have to get people to listen...
-
So when someone starts a MP3 broadcast radio station, that'll be the day the RIAA will actually take out more than a piracy legal suit, and the masses will rejoice.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
What about parallels between the software industry and the music industry? Case in point: people who use MP3s but refuse to use warez/cracks or other illegal pirated software? Obviously, in this case of software, it is not try before you buy, that's what demos are for. Some people view it as a smaller crime when it really is not. There are many arguements to support when they are both illegal, like Photoshop is $600, NT Server is overvalued etc. (GIMP and Linux or BSD are fine solutions, but that is not the point, as the open source community/market isn't exactly dominating the paid software industry.)
When an organization can go into a barber shop and threaten the owner with shutting down his business because he plays his radio during business hours and can tell girl scouts they can't sing their song at a summer camp because they haven't paid a licensing fee. And threaten these people and countless others with harm to to their livleyhood. And be allow to do it in the name of artistic licensing(protecting musicians from the 12 cents they might not be getting)it is racketerring and no body will persue it in a court of law because they are to afraid there is something very wrong here. I agree with copywrite laws as a means of protection from someone taking your image or idea and using as their own and selling it. That is wrong but as a photrographer, I don't have the urge to go after someone because they took a photo of their son and had a copy made and gave it to the grandparents what kind of jerk would that make me. I will not swim in the same swill as the pigs who are the RIAA>
It's plainly obvious that pirating is a healthy earner for record companies. They don't like to admit it, but without pirates, sales would drop. Now, I can hear you all saying, "What is this fool on about?" but just stop to think for a second.
;)
You pirate a few tracks and play them for a friend. That friend may not for various reasons have use for mp3's but decides that (s)he likes the music, so (s)he goes out and buys it.
Alternatively, you could download a track of the net by an unknown artist and decide you like it enough to buy the whole album.
These are but two of the many scenerios where pirating helps the industry through exposure.
Of course, the RIAA and similar organisations will fight this because a) they are clueless and b) by fighting it, they give more focus to the act of pirating, making it more attractive to the "pirates" and thus perpetuating the piracy
Well, that's my little say on the matter...
Dave.
David de Groot Snr Systems Engineer
Recordings are a gold mine, as any collegiate a cappella group could tell you. Releasing a CD for even $10 is in effect a license to print money.
Conversely, commercial artists signed to record deals don't make any money on their recordings -- it goes to the massive overhead (and massive pockets) of the record company itself. Signing a record deal is in effect an insurance policy for an artist -- it guarantees a consistent, if minimal for most non-superstars, revenue stream. A profitable album works the same way as [name your favorite insurance company here]'s investments in stocks and bonds -- it's what keeps the record company in business, not the artist.
Artists make all their money on tours. There's a reason that ticket costs you $45 and the T-shirt $28, and it isn't necessarily because the artist wants to screw you.
So that means they gained that amount as profit, and therefore just making excuses so they can gain more money.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
(I hate giving plugs to websites, but if you must have the music, this is the cheapest solution I've been able to find for new cd's.)
:)
Back when I was buying more cd's, the best place to check was http://www.finditnow.8m.com/ for discounts.
They have links to all kinds of "coupons" at CDNOW. Go for the ones that are $10 off purchases of $14.99 or more (for any cd).
Be careful, some of them are marked for first time customers only, and a lot of them are $10 off purchases of $19.99 or more.
But you can just keep using the $10 off $14.99 until they expire. Use them over and over (last I checked anyway, which was quite a while ago). That drops the price of a cd down to $4.99. So with about $4 for shipping, that is $8.99, and it is delivered to your door.
Hope that helps some.
Or you can do like I do. Don't buy any.
This sig is false.
Is Godwin's Law applicable here?
I am not an employee of Nettwerk, but I run a family law firm (I don't do entertainment law or intellectual property, in other words), hence I am indeed a lawyer.
For nearly seven years, Nettwerk in Vancouver kept Sarah McLachlin afloat, taking her from a teenager who'd never written an album to profitability and an international market. She had the benefit of their money, Canadian Content regulations and a corporation that believed in her. A few years after she turned the corner and started making more money than if she'd taught music in an elementary school, she was able to use her marketing credibility to start up Lilith Fair. Regardless of whether you like her music or not ( I do, but I believe people should develop their own tastes ), Sarah McLachlin would never have been able to go on to such success without Nettwerk backing her, and she's said so again and again. As far as I'm concerned, they both took the risk and so she's entitled to the money, and so is Nettwerk. Don't pirate what someone else has developed privately: you have no right to steal.
Piracy is theft, pure and simple.
If you object to some scumbag trying to circumvent the GPL, you should definately object to piracy.
On the other hand, this DeCSS fiasco is morally repugnant: if I've paid for the damned DVD, fair use allows me to play it on Linux, BeOS and any other damned box I can get it to run on. Someone needs to sue the Norwegian government for malicious prosecution and hit Jack Valenti with a clue stick.
Are you implying there's a right to copying music?
Two ways to look at this:
First, you are paying to listen to the radio even if no one is making any money from it. I don't know how much your time is worth to you, but if I have to hear a 30 second advertisement to listen to a 4 minute song, that song cost me 30 seconds.
Second, advertisers are not paying based solely on how many people their advertisement will reach. They are paying based on statistics they've gathered on how advertising will affect their sales. If only 1% of the people who hear an advertisement go out and buy from the advertiser as a result, the advertiser will take that into account when deciding whether or not to buy advertising time and at what price. In other words, if you ignore every advertisement you hear, you're right: you haven't paid the advertisers. On the other hand, they're still getting their money's worth, because they counted on you.
It was fucking *sarcasm*...
-1.4 Billion $ in LOSSES == +1.4 Billion $ in Profits.
They were showing the claims of horrible impact from piracy are a total load of BULLSHIT, just like your brain.
you're just the kind of person that nullifies 120 honest people's argument. what are you? 12? 13? you cant keep more'n 20 bucks in your pocket but you have ideas on how a whole industry should be run? figures. And i'm sure you'll reply (if you see this) saying you're some affluent person in your mid 20's in the computer/it industry pullin in over 100k/yr etc. so you're whining about the relativly abismal $ the artists get from record co's. how much do they get when you download mp3's and make music cd's? didnt think about that? someday when you go to apply for a patent for the end-all invention, and they say "sorry.. uhm.. we dont do that anymore, because people think its the man tryin to keep them down. so we're gonna take it anyway.. and give it away for free." What would you say to that? that they took your money? that you should have right to the profits from it since you worked to get it where it was? I'd like to see your response..
when you're this sexy, do you really need a witty signature?
"...together we will destroy the moderation system here on slash dot"
And when you do that and the threads are overrun by trolls and flames, everybody else will give up on this place and the advertisers will notice there's no one worth advertising to anymore and then there will be no Slashdot for either you or us. No doubt you'll consider that a great accomplishment on your part.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I would imagine that revenues have been much more impacted by used CD sales then by online piracy. I mean I have been around long enough to remember pre-CD days and I have to say that CDs have created a much more robust used market than every existed in the days of tapes and lps. Now if I think to myself, hmm I won't mind hearing a old stones album for example. I can almost surely find it for six bucks. And you know what none of that six bucks goes to the music industry. There aught to be a law, my god. Now if the could somehow prevert our economic system so that sailing used CDs was illegal, I eventually would brake down and pay fifteen dollars to hear that Stones album. Maybe I would'nt buy as many or as often, maybe about a third as may CD's but the industry would be getting there cut again. As for online music. Bootlegged concerts are much more common in my estimation and a lot of bands are generous about allowing the reproduction of these things. Real "stolen" music requires dealing with annoying warez sites full of popups to finaly usually get top 40 singles that the radio is giving away for free anyway. Finally going over the internet loop results in some ( or a lot depending ) loss of quality. Used CDs retain the original quality. Does your senetor know about this?
What is really bunk about the entire music industry is the fact that tapes are 5-6 dollars cheaper, when the tapes are more expensive to produce, have worse sound quality, and are much easier to copy. Before I got rid of all my tapes, I would have to say 90% of them were dubbed. I mean what was really the purpose of "high speed dubbing" on dual tape decks. Yeah we are really going to use it only to copy tapes of "baby's first words" or "little jhonny singing new kids on the block" to mail out to family........NO. .mp3? Aside from the obvious technological difference, but from a "pirating" standpoint they are not that much different.
The music industry is still using tapes which are a)more expensive media b)more time consuming to make and c)have poor sound quality.
The tape must be dubbed from a master where as the cd is pressd. one takes 5 minutes the other takes oh 4-5 seconds. Is it just me or is somehting wrong here.
I am aware that people will buy new tapes to replace their old worn out tapes, hat is assuming they want to replace the tapes.
So I guess that my over all point is exactly how much different is a tape from a
The only real issue with the recording industry is the application of the ninety percent law- who guves a rats ass about Ricky Martin and Nsynch when you've got bands like Xorcist and Decoded Feedback that are, amzingly enoguh, QUALITY?
The biggest issue with te MP3 sceen on the web is that if you're lucky enough to find what you're looking for [Autechre, Eineterzende Neubauden, Skinny Puppy, Noise Unit, Signal Aout 42, Funkervogt, etc.], the server has a nasty ratio [FTP] or unreliable connection [Napster]. Point of fact: if you like music that's generally hard to find, it's going to be just as hard, if not harder, to find on the internet.
Most of what's availalbe through bitshifting is, IMO, crap. I've got about nine gigs of MP3s, and I downloaded maybe three of that- the rest of the collection I went out and BOUGHT because I couldn't find the like anywhere online. I spend between ten and two hundred dollars a month on CDs, without setting foot in Sam Goody, NRM, or any of the other shitty major chains of stores. I buy music one would never see there- and hence, never see on the web or Napster.
The MP3 thing remains strong due to the fact that I don't like swapping CDs every little bit- I encode the music I buy and back it up, then toss it onto my HD and listen to it in random play mode- three gigs of industrial in shuffled rotation. I'm not about to share it with the rest of the world- I paid good money for the music and after a few months of scouring in my free time, i've realized that no one out there has anything I'm interested in. This may change, but I doubt it. Ricky Martin sure as hell doesn't need my money, but bands like In Strict Confidence and Parvilous Infectus, who are WORTH listening to, DO.
Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Rap-Metal clones...
There just isn't alot of good music being released these days. Many people, including me, have basically saturated their appetite for having "oldies" and classic rock on CD's. I've bought everything I've basically ever wanted to own on CD's, the rest I've gotten off Napster.
If the music industry releases a CD I feel is worth 19$, then I'll shell over the money. But that's a lot of money to waste on teeny-bopper junk and white-boy rap...
I actually think that I have help the music industry. I download a lot of MP3s, and if I like a few song from the new record, I go out and buy the record. If I don't like the song, or songs, I won't go out and buy that record, and I can spend that money on another record. Granted, now I don't buy as many records as I used to, because I don't buy the new one, because I liked the old one, and i am hoping the new one is as good. I think that there is no way to stop the piracy, and any thing that they do will just be circumvented, be it, encryption, or whatever.
Just a survey, if you are given the option to buy a song for lets say $0.30 to $0.50 range in digital format, would you rather 1) Pirate it Digitally 2) Buy it Digitally 3) Buy the CD Slashdot, why not make this a survey?
I personally use LAME (well, not LAME technically, but rather the sample MP3 implimentation with LAME's patch applied); It's slower than most others, but the quality's good (and it supports VBR). And until this whole legal fuss got started, I did indeed buy the CDs corresponding to my MP3s. Probably still would, but I don't like feeding lawyers.
It may be obvious, but companies like the RIAA are in effect huge megalithic middle men. They know this. They have a monopoly to blackmail the artist into accepting their manufacturing / pressing / advertising contracts. They realise that artists can now record their music at CD quality, make their own CDs at budget prices. They can advertise for free on the internet. They can give away samples of their albums to a fan base. They can give chatroom interviews, all of this sickens the RIAA, it's cutting out the middle man, ie, them. Even though they are gaining sales, they are trying to stamp this fledgling threat to their entire existance before it really catches on. Just imagine it, they'd be out of a job if everyone did it that way.
:o)
And, no, I rarely pirate mp3s, I have a lot, but they're almost all mine. I buy the CD of the ones I listen to the most. That's the way it should be.
IMHO, anyway.
Mike.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
Lets put some math in use. If 1.4 billion is divided by 90 million, the average profit/loss for each CD is $15.44
Are they admitting that they are making about 90% to 110% (???) of the CDs at counter price? As in the real CD's production actually cost is actually 10% to -10% (???)
This is assuming they never produced the CD the did not ship. On the other hand if they claim the loss is due to CDs produced which is not sold, then they are admitting each CD cost them $15.44 to produce. Think, if you are really making all the money from factory to storefront, anyone is gonna distribute their products for $15.00 - $18.00 ? What I am suggesting is RIAA really is loosing only about 20-30% if the stated $1.4 billion (if the amount of CDs not shipped is true in any sense which I really doubt).
Either way, the figures seem too extreme and I believe it is a lousy lie exgerated.
Gary
Poor fuckin' suits! Next thing you know they'll be charging 40+ dollars for a concert ticket to make up for the losses. Oh, yeah, I forgot... They were RIPPING US OFF before the internet was even mainstream...
No matter how evil the slaveowners are, the slaves still belong to them. No matter how justified you are in trying to free them, they still belong to the slaveowners.
No matter how self-righteously indignant you can make yourself, the slaves still belong to them.
How you justify the idea that freeing slaves isn't really stealing, and that they somehow have "rights" without purchasing their freedom from their owners, is really amusing.
The laws on the books aren't the definitave guide as to what is right and wrong. There are many people who believe that the music industry is using laws to corrupt, rather than noble, ends, and that by encouraging things like MP3 is a fight to break their monopoly on distributed music.
I am getting more than just a little pissed off at the music racket. And it's not much better than that, I wouldn't dignify it with the term "industry."
First they make 15 billion in revenue by overcharging 3 or 4 times for a CD. But thats not good enough. They also have to screw the musicians out of royalties. You would think that would be evil enough for one institution, but no, these guys also want to enact and enforce repressive copyright law internationally, and are big forces behind UCITA and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
Now on top of this they want to whine that someone *else* is stealing from their patch? Hoo boy, the higher they are the harder they fall, and the music industry is really asking for one...
MOst of the MP3s i have dled i went out and bought the cd because of them. Its a way to find music that one whould never knew was out there. SO RIAA GO SIT ON IT BEFORE YOU SCREW YOURSELF.
This is the problem with Holland schools -- nobody teaches critical thinking.
It is logically fallacious to assume that because record sales increased that therefore the record industry is not harmed by pirating.
Suppose I swiped SlashDot pages and put them up on my site attracing 20 or 30 page views a month. At the end of the month Slashdot lawyers contact me and ask me to cease and desist. I point out that Slashdot page views actually increased over the month, so therefore Slashdot suffered no losses.
Yeah, I bet that would get far (if unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works is so great, how about removing all of the "© 1997-2000 Andover.Net." message at the bottom of each screen.)
I wan't clear... by "not been seen" I implied at level 1. =)
/. address right after posting this where I was more explict. ;)
I sent a letter to the ask
well, if you have users flooding your system you have the right. Ask some of the guys at telefragged.com about this problem. The bot epidemic bot had this problem, and we got a few ISPs to kick some users. If someone is just going to abuse, then put them away.
Are we off topic yet?
just make sure all your friends do the same and we'll have nothing to worry about. Every time I wear my anti-dvd shirt I talk to another person. Markets follow a certain pattern (and the adoption of new technology follows this curve) with the first people to use something being the "early adopters", that's us for MP3, and a bunch of other stuff. This crowd then helps refine the product which eventually moves on to the mass market. I'm sure many of you have taken some marketing classes (unless you avoided them for religious reasons) and know most of this so I'll skip the details.
/., but when talking about it "at large" try and keep the sarcasm and cynicism to a low level and the facts (your version of them will do fine) as the main points.
My point is that as early adopters, we get to define, or at least help guide, what products come out for the mass market (and get mass marketing budgets). Knowing this, make your opinion known, especially to those that make these decisions. Vote with your wallet, express your fears to your peers, write poems about it, whatever. Bitching' about it is fun on
--
+&x
If the MPAA's (so far massively successful) campaign against DeCSS is anything to go by, unprotected systems such as MP3 could be in for a major battle. As soon as anything like SDMI is in place, the RIAA will probably sue makers of unprotected players/encoders for violations of the DMCA and the like. Given recent interpretations of copyright as an absolute zero-sum property right, they could well win and MP3 could be outlawed.
As for the menace of unprotected CDs, DVD-Audio will remedy that, and introduce geographic zoning and other nasties. All they'd need to do once it's on the horizon is start manufacturing their ordinary CDs to deteriorate in a few years, all the while shipping them with a voucher redeemable for a new "enhanced" DVD Audio version. It would make them look generous and aggressively forward-looking and help phase out the fundamentally insecure CD format.
That's just what my twisted little mind could cook up in five minutes. Imagine what the music industry can cook up in a decade.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
All the whining about MP3's is primarily an attempt to prepare the legal grounds for supression of the format later, when they can force hardware manufacturers to suspend MP3 playback capability in favor of SDMI and/or its latest flavor.
The industry needs to make sure that when digital music is deployed (i.e. when _they_ deploy it), it goes out with the ability to be rented (which they prefer), instead of just bought. They also want the full suite of digital copy protections, such as tying it to the device its stored on so you can't share it. To do this they have to supress MP3.
The clear answer to this is to make sure that MP3 is widely used to distribute the other thing that the recording industry doesn't want available: the music of artists who aren't under contract with record companies. The MP3s that I have downloaded have been music that was not available to me anywhere else, mostly live recordings of talented amateurs. They aren't going to get recording contracts because their music doesn't have mass appeal. But now they have a way to get heard. Let's make sure that when they finally succeed in getting MP3 outlawed that there is grounds for a countersuit for restraint of trade.
But I agree, a different solution is needed. More mod points, for example. There aren't enough to go around right now.
And I don't see how this would be any different than USENET abuse, in terms of ISPs' AUPs. Most ISPs prohibit spamming, and trolling == spamming. That way, at least the logged in users will be held accountable for their actions. And the AC's can stay at 0, where they don't bother anyone. Good AC posts will be modded up, as always, and bad AC posts can be safely ignored or modded down. I really don't see why the /. crew shouldn't report abuse of /....
--
The slaves thing goes overboard. The RI people are likely shafting the artists, but does that make it any more ethical to have MP3s of CDs you don't own? While morality, ethics and legality are not always the same, this issue is different from those in the 1860's. Sorry.
Personally I believe it there is a right to intellectual property, but the way big money owners are trying to hoard it isn't good. It's kind of like crap, the more you try to sit on, the more squishes away.
I always wanted to go on Jeopardy! (the game show) and get to final Jeopardy and wager Negative $100,000, and whatever the question was, my answer would be "SNacklecrabbler" or some nonsense. Then I would lose -100,000, which would add $100,000 to my account. I always wondered why nobody did this, and then it occurred to me that they probably have rules against this. Also, most people are stupid and would never think of this.
Anyway, that is my subtracting-a-negative anecdote.
So they weren't just fighting it because they felt so strong about it? They're actually losing money they shouldn't have had anyway?
That works for CDs, but won't work for DVD Audio. And as soon as they can, they will phase out CDs as a medium in favour of DVDs, much as they did with vinyl. And DVD Audio will be unrippable. (And playing it in through your soundcard doesn't count; for one, the quality on consumer gear is crap.)
Half the radio station DJs in America are probably working for minimum wage or thereabouts. Management isn't going to trust them to decide what to play. Or even what to say.
They're going to pay some consultant to tell them. That's why they're going to sound the same as all the other stations of that same format, 'cause all the other stations are getting advice from the same consultants.
Believe it or not, what radio stations want to do is play the songs that their audience wants to hear, or, rather, the songs that those who the stations want to have as their audience (the same people that advertisers will pay lots of money to reach) want to hear. The record companies do more to keep the stations happy than the other way around. (that doesn't mean that it isn't a strange, symbiotic, relationship all the same.)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Try telling ASCAP ,BMI, and SEASAC that you're not going to pay any performance fees to play recorded music on your large commercial radio station and see how fast you learn how many lawyers they can throw at you.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
this is propaganda.
:)
No it isn't. Propaganda is a really cool set of tiled wallpaper!
I wonder what Kennedy has to say on the topic of MP3's (I know I am way offtopic!
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
-insert obligatory anti-Katz snide remark here-
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
how come someone lose on something they didn't sell? Do they really think that people would have bought those cd's instead? nope i don't think so
Now look. If I board a ship, kill and mame people, deprive them of their stuff then you may call it piracy. Otherwise call it what it is. Copying!!!! OK Get it. PS. what makes you so sure that copyrights are a basic right anyhow??
yes it's true. the most profitable years of the slave industry were the years just before the civil war. All this did was reassure them that slavery was a basic right, and galvinize them into fighting and getting massacared for it later on. Now today they assume that copyrights are a basic right. With over a trillion dollars bet on copyrights being a basic right in the US economeny alone, don't be suprised if violent consequences break out when our society refuses to sustain it anymore.
You simply shared some of your favorite media with friends. But the RIAA doesn't want you to do this. They want you to pay for this media along with your friends and everyone else. They don't want you to copy it, it isn't yours, you can't distribute it or change it in any way, because the RIAA owns it. If they could have things their way they would probably rent it to you, everytime you played a song they'd charge you a dollar for usage of their kewl hip media.
I think people need to learn and reallize that this is wrong. They need to think for themselves and look at the bigger picture. If you continue to buy CDs and movies and support he RIAA and MPAA you will continue to be found by them. They will make movies so they can sell you more junk, action figures, soundtracks, taco bell toys, etc. They don't care about the media they create, but only how much money you give them. And they only want more. These type of organizations are created so the founders and owners get rich, but they never give anything back to the community.
We need people to start creating free media. Music, art, movies and software all under licenses similar to the GPL. Where anyone can share this media with their friends or family or whomever they want. If the people like the music they will still go to the store to buy your CD (which you can sell for a lot less, btw), and you will still make lots of $$, look at Redhat. :)
We need more open-source companies!
The CD. The MP3. Crappy computer speakers. "Good" component computer speakers for $50. It's sad that an entire generation is missing out on the rich sound that a good set of speakers can give you. Yes, I believe in the magic of vinyl - laugh if you must. I would pay good money for brand new vinyl records. Perhaps there are enough people like me for the music industry to tap to counter their loss (if indeed it exists) due to mp3 piracy. Until then, I'll continue to download mp3s, but I'll feel bad about it, and I'll covet Magneplanar speakers, and hope that the college students of today, be they fans of Korn, or Mozart, or the Meaty Cheesy Boys, do likewise.
....
--Hey Doctor Jones! No time for love!
20 Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.
26 Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.
28 Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market might see what's really going on inside the company.
And one that seems written just for the RIAA:
29 Elvis said it best: "We can't go on together with suspicious minds."
- The Cluetrain Manifesto
Bad Religion put it nicely: We all pitch in to help it die.
The slave argument is a valid one, not because slavery had anything to do with copyrights, but because the logical arguments they use are the same. : ..., without it society would fall apart..., if you don't like it don't own it ..., those who believe and those who don't can find an even middle ground ..., it's the law - deal with it ... ad nasuim
I have no incentive without it..., america grew because of it..., I put my money into it
Another thing you ought to consider - people have invested over a trillion dollars on the assumption that copyrights (and patnets for that matter) are a basic right. If you don't think people will resort to violence when (and not if) it becomes unsustainable. think again.
the moral and historical foundation of property derives from physical realities, not from reward to the end artist, or from control over distributions
Thank you, caetin. Saved me a rant.
Before we judge them. I think it's only fair to point out that they are just taking the philosophy of copyrights to it's logical conclusion. After all, if you have a right it's only natural and decent to want to secure that right. It's true that these people are being unethical, but they are using an unethical philosophy that millions of people are upholding.
think of it like the slavery issue in the mid 1800's. The problem wasn't just the plantation masters, but also the millions of people who believed that slavery could peacfully and morally exist in a free society.
If only there were a Triple J in America, I wouldn't have to hear the same whiges over and over.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
Actully, the CD's in Australia has dropped alot in the last 12 months, with the opening for stores to import CD's. Now we can get most CD's at around $20.
:).
:)
;) internet laws gone....
:)
Of course, before this legislation was passed, the Australian music industry said the price would rise (lies), and now, they say the import CD's music quaility is lower (again, lies). And they say that piracy would increase (lies AGAIN, 3 out of 3
Anyway, CD's are around $20 in Australia, not $30 anymore (even the "offical" Australian CD's price has dropped to about $25).
But then, I just order online because it's cheaper (and we don't have cool stuff like the Neon Genesis Evangelion soundtracks in stores, but that's another story
Now all we need is this woeful (and completly uninforced, all my porn sites still work
(BTW, I hate the abbrivation OZ, and Down Under.... you Yanks
So, who needs the Recording Industry these days? True Artists may earn a lot more by producing and selling their discs themselves, even if they reach a much smaller group; many will reach their real public directly and feel much better, no need to lower away your quality work in the name of commerce; if you see it clearly, the Recording Industry are parasites eating almost all the revenue earned by the artists; so it quite ironic that some "other parasites" are eating "their" revenue as well. Sayounara RIAA, we will NOT miss you :)
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Does that means the RIAA execs now cannot afford to living in Beverly Hills, and can no longer afforded to drive their Mecerdes, Porsches and Ferraris? A MP3 fan. :-P
Five years ago, U2 was the artist with the best record deal: they received $2.50 per CD while most signed artists received $1 or less per CD. Today, Ani DiFranco makes the most money per album: about $7. She is in this position because she runs her own record label. Any artist who's ever tried to run a label knows it's a lot of work and takes a lot of time away from actually producing art.
I am surprised that CD sales are continuing to grow despite the fact that artists receive progressively smaller percentages of the price tag consumers pay (which is typically about $14 these days--an amount I consider outrageous given how little of that money goes to the artists).
Labels, for the service of distribution and promotion, typically get about half of the price tag you pay in the store. The retail stores mark up music about 100%. On-line music retail companies like CD Now, Music Boulevard, Amazon, etc. are no better in this regard, charging prices similar to or at best pennies less than "traditional" retail music outlets.
The MP3 phenomenon makes a loud statement: something is fundamentally wrong with the manner in which the music industry conducts business. Hopefully some reform to the system will eventually come forth.
Traditional economic analysis is not entirely applicable here because CD's are not indistinguishable and art is not a commodity. But when the music industry gets the message that sales of CD's keep increasing, they will interpret that to mean the industry can and should continue to charge more for CD's.
Is there any doubt that if this system is allowed to continue further the average artist will continue to receive progressively less than 7% of the gross price of the retail price of a CD for doing the great majority of the work?
if i worked for riaa/mpaa/whatever. their palace is crumbling around them.
they might be kicking ass this year, and for a few more, but unless something drastic happens sales will start to drop radically as average bandwidth-to-consumer increases.
when it gets as easy (and fast) to send entire songs or videos as it does to attach a jpeg, they're completely screwed.
i maintained a small sheet music archive for a choir for a short time, and one of my responsibilities was maintaining 75 legal copies of sheet music for the chorale.
It was just a little paperwork -- find the publisher, call them, get the cost, get the check cut/signed and send it in.
While waiting for the order to come in, we did rehearsals with photocopies. Of course, this was a legit org that did things the "right way". I bet a lot of sheet music gets copied all over the place, with no fees paid whatsoever.
Realistally, in the future, i don't see a lot of people paying $1.25 or whatever per song, regardless of format or distribution vehicle. There's a fat ghost in the machine that's getting ready to drop on the music industry.
maybe artists will make their money off touring, or merchandise? dunno. but i think mutimedia (audio/video/whatever) will eventually be free. i don't see a way to stop it.
Maybe they can sell the things through industry websites. $1.00 a song or whatever, and be harsh with unauthorized servers. That seems realistic. They can use the same search tools, and nab the piraters/illegal napsters. Friends sharing mp3's quietly will be something they have to live with.
after all, when the last time you saw a site allowing public downloads of win95, that is easily found by the average surfer?
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Every time I use napster I think about those Qwest commercials where the clerk says "we have every [X] ever made". (Where X is book or movie depending on the commercial).
With napster it's like: 'you have access to every song ever recorded by any artist in any genre.'
Yeah! Could I use the bandwidth to change everything? Hell yeah!! Ride the light, baby!!
As long as the music has to be transformed from its encrypted format to something audible for us to hear it, it will be possible to copy it. It will also be able to filter out audible watermarks. Further, as was shown to be the case with cable television people are willing to pay what they think is a fair price for an item or a service. When they are presented with no choice or all choices that are rip-offs they then feel no compunction about pirating that service or stealing that item. Nobody likes to get ripped off. When a sufficiently large portion of the population are doing something that is technically illegal, what are they going to do arrest everyone?
--locust
I imprinted on the styles of the music I heard when I was growing up. So I don't buy a lot of new CD's (in fact I don't remember the last time I bought a new commercial CD), but I haunt the second-hand stores both in meatspace and the Internet.
Now if you had a convenient way for me to buy that decade-old content on CD's for $3 or $5 a copy, then I would buy dozens of them. And no, I don't want to pay a $1 per track, I just want to buy the album as originally released.
I don't have any patience for the illegal MP3 scene (although I'm starting to get really curious about legal MP3's and new bands).
Ricky Martin will be old. Christina Agularumpus won the "kiss of death" best new artist grammy. Who will scam all the 13 year olds from their money? I say it'll be Brave Combo
Bring on the accordians!
Oliver's army is here to stay Oliver's army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else But here today
The fundamental problem here is that now that Slashdot is owned by a major corporation, its purpose is to generate advertising impressions. To do that, you must dumb down the content. Slashdot used to (like 2 years ago or so) be aimed at somewhere near the 95th percentile. Now, however it's around 75 or 80. People who like to see more thought provoking material, and more informative material are a smaller audience than those who want to see a Linux version of News.com, which is what Slashdot has essentally become. Slashdot (and Linux) has degenerated into mindless dogma and herd mentality, each person desparately wanting to belong to this movement that all logic and temperance disappears in favor of spouting idiotic platitudes.
Listen to people like John Katz talk about how geek culture is defined by pop culture, and Eric Raymond say that all geeks are libertarians, and you see the kernel of truth. Although many geeks think that they're rebels and free-thinkers, most of them are really just subscribers to a set of dogma that is already laid out before them ready for them to hitch a ride onto.
You are no better than anyone else for subscribing to this ideology. You still can't think for yourself any more than "mainstream" people do. You are just parroting what a different segment of society thinks. Just because you read Slashdot or use Linux doesn't mean that you are smarter than anyone else.
This will be my last transmission.
i don't know how old the previous poster is but i'm 30 and I make 80k. I will never pay a record company for music again. i will support musicians through concerts but the RIAA can suck my dick.
Yup. Yup. What you say is true. And yes artists can make money off live performance but it depends on one thing. People need to get _out_ and go to shows. There's a very narrow segment of the population that will go see a small time act or indeed even seek out live entertainment on a regular basis.
The way it stands now, when people go out they're more concerned with A)getting hammered or B)getting laid neither of which is necessrily a bad thing.
Also too, lotta people have similar views WRT music that they do to software. That is to say if they don't know it and nobody told them otherwise, it's gotta suck.
And lets face, it as far as putting a financial hurtin' on either of these organizations, who by the way get their money from _dues_ not royalties, it's like trying to prevent your money from going to AOL or Microsoft, it's just not gonna happen, they're too pervasive.
So remember kiddies, as long as you swallow the pap that gets shoved at you as entertainment, you're part of the problem.
And as for you artiste's out there, stop being dumb-asses, don't piss your money away recording demo's so you can get signed and be a millionaire. You might as well play lotto instead. Put your time/effort/money into building a following (and not sucking BTW), then maybe you can have a real career, you know, like that nameless 3rd chair musician that you think is so lame, with the house in the 'burbs and the 2 cars.
--Bring back Vaudeville!--
I'll say first off that I never buy a CD without first having it as MP3's. The reason I usually buy the CD is because I want to make a better rip of my favorite songs and then I pretty much throw the CD away as it's useless to me. Since getting into MP3's my CD buying has gone up about 500%. I highly resent the high price of CD's and the fact that I'm forced to buy a CD that has songs I don't even like on it. CD's tend to get scratched, cracked, lost, stollen, etc. By ripping the discs I can listen to a huge playlist without switching discs or replacing broken discs and if I decide to I can write my favorite songs in any order I choose to a CD-R. I'd have to agree that I'd rather buy tshirts or concert tickets to fund the artists I like than pay for some shitty CD. Also as a programmer, artist, and inventor I hope the day does come when patents and copyrights no longer exist. I don't care if other people want to keep their copyrighted stuff to themself but patents are just wrong. At least the copyrighted stuff can just be replaced for the most part by others. I'd hope more artists would realize that money is not the end but a means. Do you really want to profit from your work or do you want to be happy because of it? Myself I choose to look for my own happiness and making others happy as much as possible.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Reall, you can get anything you could ever want on IRC, and freenet really dosn't solve the problem of finding information... so whats the point?
[ c h a d   o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Go get a cheapo $150.00 CD burner and hit those MP3 sites. If your conscience bothers you, send a few bucks to the artists directly. They only make change on every CD sold anyway. If you want to support the bands, go see them when they tour, buy t-shirts at their concerts, and so on. If you want to finance the RIAA, then by all means keep buying those CDs.
-Legion
piracy (pr-s)
n., pl. piracies.
1.
2. The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material.
3. The operation of an unlicensed, illegal radio or television station.
someone moderate this joker back down to size.
I've wanted differing levels of negative numbers, complete spam (cut-n-paste fun for example) should get buried at -6, whereas OT posts, or flames, etc should just be -1'd so that people can surf at -1 and get all the off-topic posts, and see moderators being stupid, like nuking pro-gun comments....
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
It's probably more like, "Well, we coulda made $1 Trillion, but instead we had to settle for $.9986 Trillion, poor us." Maybe all those Evil Hackers[tm] should flood the market with local music, promoting the local scenes, and break another monoply. Nevermind, that's all ready happened.
a == !!a does not evaluate to 2.
You never made an assignment, so a retained it's
value for the printf call.
If a != 0, !!a == 1.
If a == 0, !!a == 0.
so, a == !!a is true only in cases where a == 0 || a == 1 (at least in c)
try -
#include
int main() {
int a;
for( a=-5; a 10; a++ )
if( a == !!a )
printf ( "a == !!a for a == %d\n", a );
}
I highly resent... the fact that I'm forced to buy a CD that has songs I don't even like on it.
Why do people keep saying that, as if this argument holds water? Just get the damn single and screw the whole album then. I like getting all the songs that aren't singles, there are many hidden gems to be found. And how do you know you don't like all the songs unless you buy the whole album?
Oh, right, you get the whole thing on MP3 then go buy a CD full of songs you don't like, which you then throw away because you can't take care of them. You are an idiot then.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
It is the truth. I just got done reading a few stories of how the RIAA has harassed many in the past for just having the fucking radio on. That's fucking ridiculous.
in order to make producing records profitable in the long run, the labels have to charge quite a lot just to break even. 9 out of 10 bands don't make it big so the label needs to cover their costs with the one hit. once you add in the market and distribution costs, you see why it costs so much. only people with deep pockets can afford to be in this business. it used to be like this in the movie industry as well, but things changed. and the music industry will change as well for the same reasons: the distribution is easier and the production costs are lower.
the distribution changed because specialty theaters opened up to take independent films. also the multiplexs are so huge now that mainstream theaters often devote one or two screens to small films.
the production costs have changed because they have simply gotten cheaper. a movie company used to spend 10s of thousands of dollars just on the film when they made a movie. today cheap filmstock, cheap video equipment, and cheap computer systems have drastically reduced the cost of making a small film. now anyone can do it.
eventually technology will help out the music makers too. the internet promises to cut out the middle man for small musicians and cheap recording and editing equipment (usually in the form of computers) are reducing the cost of producing the actual album. two guys in a bedroom can record something that sounds better than a $100k studio from 30 years ago. (remember, The Beatles started out on cheap 4 track tape because they didn't have any money).
the music industry is changing, but of course the incumbent players don't like it. they never do. but eventually, just like the dinosaurs, they will adapt or die. if i were a record studio, i would rather slim down and become a bird than die and turn to oil for someone else to burn.
joshy
Prop me up beside the jukebox if I die.
Went to school with Jean (he was student President at York one year), and his sister was my Linguistics TA. I hate the band though.
Does this count?
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Actually, being the person that wrote it, I'm in my mid-20's and have a full time job making a good living. I don't believe in supporting industries that are so corrupt and money hungry that they artificially inflate their prices to gouge consumers. Can I afford $19 for a CD with 12 songs on it? Probably. Would I buy more than 3 or 4 CD's a year at that price? No way. I have better things to spend my money on that building a gleaming new office tower for Time Warner or Geffin. You just didn't get my point did you? Artists don't make their money off of CD's, they make it off their concerts. And yes, I DO go to concerts of groups where I downloaded mp3's and liked their music. Not to mention my city doesn't have one modern music station anymore.. all country, rap, and oldies (60's and 70's hippy shit). Don't give me that shit. If everyone on slashdot pirated ALL their music the RIAA wouldn't blink an eye. They'd still make ungodly amounts of cash off the other fools.
You've got to be joking. There are usually about 3-4 good songs on a CD. I hear these played on the radio or via downloading mp3's or via shoutcast servers. Unfortunately most of the time not all of those songs are on a singles CD so I am forced to buy the whole overpriced piece of crap, rip the 3-4 songs I like, and then toss the rest.
Actually now I live in New York, I don't pay AUD Taxes, but Triple J is still my background programming noise. Listen to it now Non commercial, full of quality programming, sounds like an OS we all know.
An Operating System giant would have a reason, motive and need to generate the anti-Linux firestorm.
MP3 rippers and DVD player is just another soon-to-be-backfired, MS-generated but RIAA-originated FUD.
MS, you didn't get your money's worth from RIAA.
So what you're saying is that your greed is good and theirs is bad because it doesn't benefit you personally. Sadly, that seems to be typical on SlashDot.
Maybe the Uncle Scrooges of the DvD business will take note - but that's perhaps very unrealistic wishful thinking. DvD is such a mess today, compared to what it should have been. One can only hope for the best, and this at least makes the best more probable.
Or maybe they could just pay off Courtney Love to make her go away...
Daltorak.
You can withstand public discontent if you have the power to scare people.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
The music belongs to them.
Who is "them" ? The artist who created the music ?
I know that's not what you mean. You mean the middlemen. The music belongs to the middlemen ? Come off it, dear. You are part of the problem then.
Dang it! I pirate these songs from CDs onto MP3s, give them away to my friends, and what do they do? The idiots like the artists and actually go to buy the CDs for themselves! What is with these morons? Do not they get it? I have been trying to hurt the music industry by doing this! I am so frustrated right now. Whatever am I doing wrong? I am going to have to step up my piracy efforts.
Everybody with German language skills might want to check out this link to the German computer mag CT :
http://www.heise.de/ct/00/05/112/
The meat is that copies for private use are permitted because nobody can real stop you anyway, and recrod company people cannot be permitted to enter your home and check if you have any copies.
Therefore mp3 downloads are legal in Germany and making copies of CDs off your buddy or for your buddy or from CD rented or lent from the library are legal.
It is however illegal to offer unlicenced material to the general public. Libraries buy their CDs, as well as renting shops. And mp3 download sites that carry stuff ripped from CDs and are available to all are illegal too.
Check the article for more info. It's pretty damn good.
Tony
Okay, so we're all evil. The record companies are evil for their practices, we're evil for stealing the music. This is fine, or at least stable. At least it's the least worst type of stealing. You want to do something different? Go for classical music mp3s
Here's an idea that would please both sides...RIAA and company would get their $$$ while John Q. Internetuser would be able to *legally* download any mp3 of his choice without having to worry if he already owns the CD or has paid the royalties...
It involves setting up an internet site and coming up with a large collection of mp3s (using legal means). Internet users would be able to connect to the site and download mp3s of their choice with no per-mp3 charge - the royalties would be compensated for with banner ad revenue. Of course, this would take up a fairly large amount of bandwidth, so it may be some sort of subscription-based service, but even then this could be a fair way to give both sides what they want.
=================================
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Seriously, I just got back from long checkout lines at the grocery store, staring at the Star and the Enquirer, and Weekly World News. And here's this headline, right on the front page of /. How tragically similar...
Personally, I think the satire's better at segfault.
--
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
"This record has been engineered in accordance with standards developed by the recording industry association of america, inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to the betterment of recorded music and literature."
-- Frank Mills & His Orchestra, Music Box Dancer, 1979
ummmmm...has no one picked up on the fact that "stealing negative 1,400,000,000" amounts to taking on $1,400,000,000 of the industry's debt? if i was mr. geffen, i'd be pretty cheery about this. the pirates are just giving back to the industry.
>...made available over the Internet, the music industry lost negative $1,400,000,000 in CD sales in 1999. In fact, the... isn't losing a negative number a positive gain? i.e. +1.4 billion gain?
you mention mp3 quality with clicks and stuff. well the main problem is people with cruddy cd roms and stuff trying to rip albums on a 486. with a decent computer with a digital audio ripping cdrom drive, it can sound great, yes great. also a problem is when people try to copy tapes, which suck anyway. i agree that if people want to make mp3's, make them right.
------- sig goes here
I find the increase in sales proper. When I get to listen to new music via mp3s, I have the urge to buy the actual CD. You cannot expect people to buy music they haven't heard of or only one track off the whole cd and have them buy it. Having the ability to listen to a lot of the tracks on a certain CD gives a buyer more enticement and lures them in to buy it.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Perhaps this is why there is ZERO quality music currently being pumped out of the major music studios. I mean, is there any human being with a slight bit of individuality that thinks Britney Spears or 98 Degrees deserve anything more than a swift backhand?
With a couple exceptions of some bands that have been around for eons, any worthwhile music coming out today is either produced directly by the band or on a label you've never heard of.
The only money of mine that the RIAA gets is when I buy a copy of something made in the 60s for a whopping price of $15 or whatever.
I thought CDs were supposed to be cheaper to make that records?
Forget Microsoft. At least I have the choice of linux or a mac. What choice do I have when I want to buy a CD?
Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin.
A choice of masters is not freedom
CDs are inconvenient and archaic. Jewel cases get broken, things get wet, discs get scratched ... I never used to bother much.
... ARGH!
:)
Then I got on mp3s, and started listening to music more avidly. Well, mp3s are annoying to obtain - searching for obscure pirate sites, getting things in line with your naming scheme, seperating good encodings from poorer and broken ones
So, I find some songs I like, I search out the appropriate CDs on Amazon, then head to a nice local music store and load up, bring 'm back to the ranch, rip'n'encode. Mighty handy.
Why would I want to bother with CDs in the first place, if they weren't a delivery vehicle for getting good tunes in to my computer?
Get into some bands who release worthwhile albums as opposed to single/filler albums. Hint: you're not likely to find them on the radio.
well, napster is always running on my pc/mac. but, i am also buying at least one new cd a week, usually because i've grabbed a single from the cd. i think the whole "mp3" problem is the same as the whole "tape deck problem"... moot. what worries the recording industry is the accesability of these "mp3/tapes" but what they don't realize is that because the music is made more accesable to me i'm more inclined to go out and purchase the whole album. yes i'll do that cause i'm lazy and don't want a cd collection full of cdr's... cover art and liner notes mean something to me. uhhh.
i had the same problem with weird al's new cd. the answer was easy cd creator deluxe's session selector (pirated of course). a beautiful thing, it has helped me many times. you just choose the session with the music instead of the data, and bravo, you got rip!
------- sig goes here
Luckily, they won't succeed. Control of hardware playback doesn't work anymore, since you no longer need special purpose hardware nowadays. MP3 can be played back on almost anything, lately too on PDA's. On PDA's for which anyone can write software. So even if the RIO etc. would get forbidden somehow, it wouldn't make a difference.
I can only laugh about their pathetic attempts to avoid the unavoidable.
The middle men and the brick and mortar store also tack on to the cost too. For instance if you have ever tried to buy computer equipment or anything else in an electronics "superstore" and compare it to the cost at a store online, you might notice that the brick and mortar store charges much more. For instance I was pricing a null modem cable from the local Best Buy and comparing the cost to a similar item from Buy.com. The cable at Best Buy was $20 and $4 at Buy.com. Now I imagine that most new CD's are sold at brick and mortar stores and the mark ups for a CD aren't extreme as for cables. Much of the cost of a CD is in markups along the way though. I mean how many items not on clearance do you think you could find for less $5 at a Best Buy or a similar store? For that matter without rebates how many things are there at a Best Buy that have the same cost as a store online?
Getting back to CDs though, what amazes me is that supposedly the record labels can still lose money on an album. Don't ask me how though.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
I bought -100 shares of MSFT once. It went down $12. I sold my -100 shares at a nice profit!
From the brief description of the contracts, it seems that an artist would have to be a moron to actually sign with a major record company.
:)
Yes and no. (love those kinda answers, huh?
It is pretty crazy to agree to such terms as we outlined (they are really awful if you read the whole contract). However, the Catch-22 here is that it is almost impossible to effectively distribute an album without a major label. The only semi-effective way to do it is to sell CDs at your live shows yourself (after printing them yourself). If you can sell something like 10,000 CDs from playing relatively small venues, you might be able to bring some bargining power to the table with a record company.
Again, I could go on forever here. I think you can see where this is headed (hint: monopoly...).
This is why I think mp3's kick ass. All out distribution without a record company (or even a record company website). Why do you think record companies are mad when their artists release mp3's? It's no wonder they want to stop/control mp3's - loss of distribution stranglehold.
Woz
gzw@home.com
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
.sig. (Sorry, I just hod to be obnoxious about the math joke refrences)
What's with all the christian bashing?
If I had been clever enough to say it myself I would have said "religion" and not been so specific to christianity, but Russell only had occasion to deal with the shit chrisitians throw at Atheists, so he said christianity.
(a) Bertrand Russell was a briliant mathematician and philosopher. (b) A common joke about mathematicians is that they speak in tautologies (i.e. true by definition, perfectly correct but perfectly useless, etc.). (c) Moral progress means research into replacing your current system of morals with a better one. (d) Religious people frequently feal that the system of morals which their god handed down thousands of years ago is absolute. (c) and (d) imply that the above quote is a tautology (modulo those christians who do accept changes in basic morality, but I'd refuse to put words in Russell's mouth just to keep from offending a few people).. and (a) and (b) imply that it is s funny joke to put it in you
The other reason why I keep it in my sig is to remind myself that there are lost of people out there who really do oppose moral progress. Yes, I know many many christians who are just as progressinve as I am about morality and I recognise that this quote may be offencive to them, but this is worth the reminder. Realistically there is no reason to expect that the oppinions of those arround us should not be offencive. We should only expect that they should not attempt to harm us. Now, some insults conotate harm, but this is not one of them. Here is an example of the diffrence: Jesse Ventura's statments about religious people being weak minded is offencive but not really dangerous since we all know Jesse Ventura is a loud mouth who would not pass laws to hurt religous people (he is religious himself), but George W. Bush's speach at Bob Jones university should be very threatening to Catholics and racial minorities since it shows how much he really panders up to extreamist concervatives (like the ones who recently kill that Catholic priest's chances of becoming house chaplin). Note: Your insult to muslims also falls under the harmless but offencive category, just like my quote about christians.
I've got a small collection of 8 CDs full of MP3's. About 80% of them are from mp3.com. I really couldn't care less about the top-40 shit. I mean, if 20 people think the song is cool, will you go out and buy it just because of that?! If I buy music, it has to be music I like. Other people's opinions have nothing to do with them...
I do believe it is generally fair that the record industry try to protect their investment.
It is also fair that they have a lot of money. I want professional musicians spending all their time making great music. Not just amateurs.
The problem right now is that we are paying for the production and distribution af plastic platters that we no longer need.
We are paying for the salary of shop clerks handing the CD's over the counter. Which is also unnessecary.
We are paying for trucking.
We are paying for a lot of stuff that we don't want or need.
A record company today needs no more than a website, record studio and a marketing dept.
Why do we have to pay for all this unnessecary old time infrastructure when it is not nessecary? This is what is really annoying me.
The recording industry could make the same profit by having lower prices, higher sales and less expenses!!!!
I would LOVE to pay for MP3 if it meant always having a site to go to for downloading the songs I want at a fair price. ($1-$2 an album)
I would even pay for all my old Vinyl albums one more time, so that I wouldn't have to rip them myself.
Max M - IT's Mad Science
Unless an artist consistently has gold or platinum selling albums they make no real profits from the album sales. But many make near $100,000 for a good concert show. Even a small show will get them about $40,000. When you consider that you pay $30 to see them for 3 hours in person that is how you really support them. Buying a CD for $16 bucks only benefits the company that sells the CD(ie: Sam Goody) or the Record company(ie:BMG). So if you get mp3s you really don't take anything from the artist. So from the artists point of view they most likely could care less whether you buy the CD or not as long as you go to the shows.
I've got a friend who hangs out with KORN (pretty successful band, huh?).
He said to me that Korn had to sign up for 5!!! almbums to get the first one out (it means that they cannot change the terms of agreement and obligated to make more albums).
After making 4 very successful albums they still getting under a $1 for every cd sold (and were making $0 during first 2). They were living in a small apartment during the success of the first album.
He said that the concerts were the only way of profit. But that's KORN, others less successful ones, getting even less than that.
So here u go, if artists are not getting any money from it, why should I pay >$16 for it?
I would buy many more Cds if they would cost less, but I'm just a student with no extra money.
------------ Internet? Is that thing still around? H.J. Simpson
surely if the sold NEGATIVE 90 million FEWER then that means they sold 90 million MORE
Think about what you just said before you pass so much judgement. In your example the record company spent $200,000. What did you spend? As far as they are concerned you spent $0. That is why you sign over the rights and it is also why you have to pay them back. You had to risk nothing. If your CD doesn't sell you haven't lost a penny. They on the otherhand they are out $200,000.
The truth is that MOST CD's LOSE MONEY! From the publisher's point of view, until you have a hit (most CD's don't) you are a huge risk. They are risking $200,000 on you. Turn it around, if you had $200,000 in the bank would you be willing to risk it all on the next band that asked you for it?
Sure, the industry as a whole posted record profits and I'm NOT arguing that CD's aren't too expensive. They are. The point is those profits were generated by a few big hit CDs. Garth Brooks, Backstreet Boys, etc.
The same is true in the PC game industry. Everybody sees companies like Id with John Carmack in his Ferrari from which people belive there's lots of money to be made and they assume that all publishers are evil and stealing from the developers since developers tell the same stories as above (repaying advances against royalies, signing over rights etc.) The truth is that most developers are stealing from the publishers. The publisher risks $500,000 to $2 million on development and the developer either fails to actually make a product or the product doesn't sell. In this case it's even worse for the publisher. Devleoper loses nothing. In fact they got a $500,000 to $2 million advances. The publisher lost all the money.
The problem is, is that every music artist assumes their CD is going to be a huge hit just as every game developer assumes they are going to write the next Quake or next Half Life or next C&C. From that point of view, it appears that you are getting ripped off. The problem is more likely than not your product/CD is not going to be a hit in which case only the publisher lost money. Only about 10 development groups manage to make huge hits a year. Another 20 make games that just barely make their money back and the other 4000 lose the publisher's money.
Note: 4000 is not an exaggeration. Entertainment titles shipped in 97 were around 5000. I'm going to guess that they are the same or more this year.
-gregg
triple j rules. .. member supported so no ads.
of course everyone can listen to it : here. if you're into jazz a bit then wbgo is a free streaming radio station from new york i think
between these two i don't really listen to much else
1) If I obtain 1000s of tracks I wouldn't
otherwise have bought, they haven't "lost" all the
value of those imaginary purchases.
2) MP3 is advertising, it's the try-before-you-buy
for a lot of music enthusiasts who would rather
have a good sounding original copy.
3) Why don't music CDs have promotional stuff on
them like VHS videos? The average album has at
least 20 mins wasted space. They could edit
together taster segments of other albums in the
same genre - probably with voice-overs by the
usual deep voice blokes (!)
4) The proportion of the population willing to
spend the time (and have knowledge how to)
pirating is probably less than 10%. How many times
have YOU had friends and family ask you if you
could copy their record/CD to tape for their car?
They can't figure out the record button on their
"hifi"s - let alone set the clock on their VCRs!
So why worry about an imagined problem that only
applies to 1 in 10 people? They will still live
their obscenely rich lifestyles off the backs of
the artists and the vast majority of the general
public. That's why they are so perceived as
greedy fsckers!
5) I've always considered that tracks played on
the radio are in the public domain already and
ripe for copying. Heck, if I can hear it for free
on the radio why shouldn't I tape it? Or Minidisc
it... or (my latest technique) record it on the
PC?
RADIO trawling is the answer! (I can't be a****ed
waiting 20 minutes on the dial-up for some lousy
MP3 to download, much less find the damn thing in
the first place)
Here's how it works... when you're at home and
busy doing non-PC things (tiresome things like
"quality time" with the family etc LOL) leave the
PC recording a decent radio station. SB-Live
sounds bloody excellent in its A-D quality. My
PC allows up to 3 hours of recording on an entirely
average half-full hard disk. You will need a good
radio station. Forget FM - that's a load of
commercial crap. I'm talking specialist satellite
channels. Here in Europe there are some good
state-run German stations on the Astra satellite.
Analogue sound with some companded noise artifacts
but not too bad. Optimod-ed to hell and back but
perfectly listenable.
Then, at the end of the evening before going
to bed (or staying up all night at the keyboard)
simply review the 3 hours of tracks and cut-n-keep
the good stuff. Sometimes I get nothing, sometimes
3 or 4 tracks per hour. Sometimes an hour of
decent live concert such as Beck in Cologne, 1999.
A single click in WaveLab (Windoze) advances
playback to another point... so it only takes a
few minutes to whizz around hours of recording
looking for the gems. Stuff to keep is easily
top-n-tailed to remove DJs etc, looping to extend
the track etc, adding reverb to the end of an
abrupt end etc. When I've got 740Megs worth, I
burn to CD, encode to MP3 for use at work on 140
track MP3 CDs, and then delete to free up the
diskspace. I've just burnt my 10th CD of good
stuff this way, since starting in October 99.
Try it!
Half the world is below average
Then join them!
If enough artists got together, they could create their own label (Open Source?!) that did not blackmail artists as much as the others do.
So those profits would actually get back to the artists.
And pigs might fly!
Overdue payments on your student loan. We've come to repossess your education.
more random thoughts...
Having said that, I would happily buy tracks I
like direct from the artist or an agent hired by
them. But only a amount equal to a newspaper for
each track. That seems reasonable to me, given
the actual enjoyment I'd get from the recording.
I have enough ethics to spend more on an artist
if I find I've had a lot of pleasure from their
work.
I don't want to try-before-I-buy in a record
store - putting on scummy headphones laden with
other people's ear grease. Yuk. In years to come
we'll all be walking around with one device which
is a PDA/cellphone/WAP/MP3player/digicam etc. -
then I hope we'll be able to "tune" in to the
record store's listening post on our own device.
Much better!
Secure initiatives? Don't make me laugh! Just how
are they going to control MP3? The genie is out of
the bottle now. Players and encoders will always
be available, even if underground. Even if it was
a criminal offence to possess such items (how can
it be, given legitimate personal use) MP3 will not
vanish. Even if we have to A-D sample from an
analogue point, that will do for me. Face it, any
music you enjoy is analogue at some point. If your
sampling is hi-enough-fi (SB live suits me) then
so bloody what?!! I can't understand the music
snobs - I can enjoy a track I like on AM radio
but I won't listen to crap music even if it sounds
technically awesome.
As for the piracy arguement for keeping prices
high, if they dropped the price to a realistic
level more people would buy the original.
The company that spends 1000,000 developing a
product they believe only has a market of 1000
customers (so it costs 1000 each) might well
sell 10,000 copies if the price was 200 IMHO.
At least they should sell a consumer version
and a pro-version - more people would end up
with a genuine copy that way I'm sure.
Half the world is below average.
No, it does not.
Information cannot be owned. If any law says it can then the law is evil, and it is not only your right to disregard it, but it is your duty to do so. Moral right takes precedent over legal.
The very term "Intellectual property" is an oxymoron. There is no such thing, and the insistence of some that there is is an abomination.
And dont come dragging half-witted comparisons with stealing cars or whatever. Ill take it slowly, so you might understand:
If you steal a car you are depriving the original owner of its use.
In contrast, when you copy something the original owner still keeps his copy, with no degradation of its performance whatsoever.
And yes, the artist (or the programmer when it comes to software) of course has a right to be paid for his/her work. I would be glad to pay the artist directly for the use of their music if I like it; perhaps $5 for a CD:s worth of MP3s or so (which is far more than they are getting from the record companies), but I will not have my $ contributing to the wealth and bloat of these truly evil corporations. In fact, I will copy MP3s of their CDs for myself and my friends for the express reason of hurting them and hastening their downfall.
And BTW, I use the term "copying", not "pirating" since the latter is a Newspeak-word designed to bring about associations of murder and pillaging, something bearing no relation whatsoever to copying.
"Piracy" and "pirating" is the act of attacking ships at sea, with the intent to steal, including threats and/or violence, no matter what newer Newspeak-influenced dictionaries might say.
Keep on copying!
/Dervak
This has to have been mis-posted to /. instead of segfault.
(what is the ASCIIfication of segfault??)
--EEyore
-- Slaveowners didn't create their slaves (Well, they did some of the time, didn't they Mr. Jefferson).
-- Musicians create their music
and,
-- Slaves were humans. Most people agree these days, humans aren't property.
-- Music is not a living entity (unless you've taken an enormous amount of LSD), much less human. The property issue is stickier
These are really, really fundamental differences. This analogy is totally bogus.
You see, it's not about the record companies owning the music, it's about the musicians who created the music owning it.
That's the real issue. Do musicians have the freedom to control what they create? Including economic control? In my view, the musician who created the music is the person that gets to decide that, not you. This includes the freedom to decide what monetary value a copy of their CD (or song) has, and the terms they give you that copy under (Or, give that control to a record company). You've got the freedom to accept the terms and buy the CD, or not.
Heh, i work at best buy, and our CD's are very competatively priced. I know for a fact that we only make $1 on average on a CD. And that's nothing... That means for every CD that gets stolen from our store, we have to sell 12 before we even _break even_! The money is there, it all goes to the reccord companys, the stores see jack.
sig?
Typical slashdottie "we want it all, we want it now, and we want it for free" bollocks.
Shedloads of people are employed in the music industry, from musicians who make music, the engineers who record it, the guy who sweeps the floor in the pressing plant and the girl at the virgin megastore check-out desk
If all music is free on MP3, who pays their wages?
The problem with any music is that you buy the
:)
whole batch/cd for just 1 song you may like...
I just had a friend drop off a batch of CD's so
I can mix one of the "good" songs for him...
The best thing is Music on demand at LOW price
($.25 a listen?) or even a service to put all
your songs on a CD that you like... I haven't
a problem with CD audio space vs MP3 Space saved
but then again, I don't have an Empeg installed
in my car -- YET.
Peace...
... and do something about it!
Seriously, is there anybody who would like to perhaps donate a server and some bandwidth to set up a pay-per-mp3 site? Sure, mp3.com already sells mp3s over the 'net, but there's nothing wrong with a little competition (something the RIAA would most likely disagree with).
I see plenty of people saying "I'd buy the song for $x", but nobody saying "I'll sell the song for $x". This is something that is almost certainly within our power as a community to correct. mp3.slashdot.org anyone?
Perhaps selling mp3s simultaneously at 128kbps (for use with Rio etc) and 256kbps (for PC use), or maybe even do audio burns onto CD or MiniDisc for the neato factor? This would allow for the "mix-n-match" CD's that so many people seem to be wishing for.
I realize that many people would be turned off somewhat working for free on a project designed to make other people money, but that could perhaps be rectified by a *modest* percentage of sales (2.5%? 5? It'd add up eventually :p) going towards paying for bandwidth (initially) and the people working on it.
Getting groups to participate would most likely be dead easy - Triple J (as an example) has their yearly "Unearthed" feature where they call for tapes or CDs from local bands in certain areas, then take the best tracks, rerecord them professionally and put them on a CD. According to their web site they have received over 4000 entries since they started.
You have to admit, it'd look good to be able to have a headline reading something along the lines of "Evil DeCSS and MP3 hackers outsell RIAA", wouldn't it?
I know that I'd certainly be willing to help out if it meant paying less for the music I like, whilst at the same time paying the artist more for their work..
Ah well, that's just my thoughts on the issue. Perhaps here we have a chance to wipe out their intended image of "hackers" and beat them at their own game.
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake..
Reading the associated article tends to help.
3.2% increase in units shipped, 6.3% increase in 'list dollar' value from the previous year.
And also some food for your 'business mind' - if their rate of growth over several years was truly dropping, they'd be screaming about it.
For one thing, I suspect CD sales may be down due to other diversions. I bought a lot less music last year, probably because I spent more time on the Internet and on computer related stuff. As 1999 marked a huge explosion in terms of computer/ internet growth, I wonder whether this is at least partially responsible.
OTOH, maybe I'm a bit more picky nowadays about how I spend $25 on something that costs 50c to make. [UK prices]!!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Pirates. It just sounds like a bad word/action/person doesn't it? Aaarrrrggghhh Billy! If you yank someone, in random, off the street and ask them if they know how to burn a CD, they don't have a clue. They think it has something to do with programming or even worse "hacking". These people have difficulty setting up their email account in MS Outlook. So, I think they're exaggerating just a wee bit. Not as many people are doing this as they wish you to believe. The RIAA wants us to think that the majority of music listeners are smart, devious people. They do this to show that they're working for their money. Doing their job. Seriously, what do the RIAA do? The only time I read/hear anything about them is when they're blowing some steam, complaining about people trying to pull a fast one on them. Whatever. The RIAA is like the typical businessman, using keywords or phrases to make you think they are the good guys.
Lastly:
RIAA ---> Oven
I'm the great, cynic, I'm the indifferent gaze
I'm the great, cynic, I'm the indifferent gaze
Mendacity, betrayal, this is not a phase.
This was printed on a leaflet insert to a cd by a punk band from Albuquerque called Scared of Chaka. They were on 702 records (PO BOX 204 RENO NV 89504 U$A) when I bought this album....there's an alternative to the Industry: live punk, die punk.
-
.92 per disc .30 each .08 each .01 each .25 each*
.25 per CD./
-----------------------------------------------
EVER GET A FUNNY FEELING inside as you forked out $14.98 for a CD? Like something was being shoved up into your asshole? That's probably because you're getting SCREWED!
Cost breakdown for this compact disc:
Pressing:
Covers:
Stickers:
Inserts:
Recording:
_____________________
Total: $1.56 each
*/We spent $1000 on recording, and I expect to sell at least 4000 copies of this album between LP and CD, so we'll say the recording cost is
There are other costs, such as advertising and promotion, but those vary so I'll just say that the total cost of each CD will be $1.75 and that should cover everything.
Now, at $1.75 per CD, how do you justify selling a CD for $14.98?
This CD will be sold wholesale for $4 to stores and distributors. That means that there is $2.75 left over after costs. I give %50 of profits to the band, so Scared of Chaka is getting $1.38 per CD. If you want the band to get the most money, buy it direct from them at show. (They'll get $3-4). If you order it by mail direct from 702, they'll get $1.62 per CD.
SHIT the vinyl's much cooler anyways.
Fuck the "Industry" standard! Buy 702!
------------------------------------
I say we should not only pirate mp3's but do some propaganda of our own...Maybe post "before you buy, get it free, www.napster.com" stickers on record store windows.
"What thou shalt not, I shalt did!" -Bart Simpson
How do you loose a negitive amount of money? Hey I am going to take -$20.00 dollars from you then do I give you $20.00? Or is this more of that accountant language I dont understand.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
MP3 does present a new distribution method for bands outside the clutches of labels, but unfortunately no band distributing free mp3s on the net is going to topple the system. Unless pay-for-mp3 becomes wildly more popular, bands getting any sort of attention will always jump ship to major labels (if given the opportunity) in hopes of making any money. Will micropay for mp3 get that popular? I don't know - but I imagine it will be difficult to convince John Q Public to pay $5 to download a CDs worth of mp3s when his friend already has them all waiting in a windows shared directory just across the cablemodem network.
One of my favorite blues guitar players is a guy named Anson Fundenburgh (he's from Texas) and here is what he said in an interview:
For the artists that are not interested in the current pop-fashions the Internet gives them a means to easily reach a wider audience at a minimal cost.
P.S. Click here for the entire interview.
PPS. I first heard this guy on public radio.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
/ k.d / earth trickle / Monkeys vs. Robots Films /
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Here at the university I work for napster has
:)
been blocked at the boarder routers for a while.
There has been talk about reactivating it...and
putting a bandwidth cap on the studtent segment
:)
I said they should just put 2 28.8 modems back to
back and route the dorms through them...but I
think they will be more generous than that
I find it amusing that people are out there
calling schools evil tyrants when I hear the
network admins talking about what they need to
do so they can turn napster back on without
negativly impacting the network.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Either way, majors do not lose significant dough to failed CDs. The $200,000 figure being thrown around here is way, way, way high for a band that hasn't already proven it has an bigtime audience except in weird, rare cases. Studio costs/tour support(if any)/etc aren't going to add up anywhere near that amount for a fledgling major band.
Of all the bands I've known anything about (or knew people in) who signed with majors (That'd be 311, Stick, Paw, Frogpond, Molly McGuire, and a couple I'm forgetting by now) ALL got jack didly on their first albums/ contracts. Enough for a pro-sounding album, some minimal help for touring, even some really crappy videos. The record companies weren't sweating too hard about breaking even. After all, most of these bands had some sort of decent following before being signed in the first place. This equals guaranteed CD sales. I'd be willing to bet most of those bands broke even or thereabouts given their local/regional support.
Anyway, there are bands that hang around on labels forever selling OK amounts of records per year and continuing on. Sonic Youth is a prime example. They don't make tons of money, but they do make money. Of course the focus is on creating the next one or two hit sensation to make gazillions off in a hurry, but there are some lurkers.
Your figures in the game industry are also a little off. There are way more than 20 games a year that make money! This is not to say there aren't a ton of losers, but sheesh. No one would be in the games industry if it was that tough. I've got an old friend who works at Legend Entertainment, who most recently put out Wheel of Time. However, Legend has been around for awhile longer than that putting out all kinds of stuff you've never heard of. They haven't made megabucks, and probably won't off WoT either, but they've expanded significantly and manage to pay everyones salaries and the bills. There are many companies out there like this (Interactive Magic, UbiSoft, etc), you just don't hear about them like you do with places like id.
Regards
I guess it gives a whole new meaning to the term "Free Market"! ;-)
-- "To ask a question is to show ignorance; Not to ask a question means you'll remain ignorant."
This is not new. The Industries have been up in arms when people started copying cassette tapes. Then the movie industry got its pants in a bunch cause VHS tapes could copy movies. Now if the RCIA wanted to do anything productive they would understand that the free movement is way to strong and the internet to distributed to catch up with anyone, and finally work with MP3 instead of battling it. We have heard this before. We will hear it again.
The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material
To me the two definitions for piracy are not even related.
Listen to what you believe, don't believe in what you read.
I used to have the same problem, but I think the trick is simply mass-market flooding.
Not only do you have to give your friends full albums for free, you have to make sure that they get every album from that artist, search for the cover of the album online, download it and print it out so that the CDs you give them are a near-exact replica of what they'd get at a store (dont forget to do all this at work, off of the company t3, using the company laser-printer and company CDrs).
Also, don't introduce people to new kinds of music...now you're just creating needless consumers. Only give your friends the CDs they were going to buy anyway, otherwise their tastes might expand and they'll start being so damn open-minded that they start liking a wider range of bands, suddenly it's much harder for you to stop them from actually purchasing a CD.
Hope this helps
~~Lofwyr "iLLusive"
Karl versus the "Young Hegelians," from the preface to The German Ideology:
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
try www.shoutcast.com
my university (u of washington) has an ocx where x is some really big number. We have individual building which are recieving internet through 3 T3s themselves. Believe me much faster than any T1 and T3 combination. Any way if you were in some way trying to show off or something I felt that I needed to bring you down a little. If not then on you way.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
I ought to know--I am too! ;)
O'Reilly's draining my bank account. Next theing you know, they're gonna hook up to my credit card, and that will be it. Nothing but O'Reilly books everywhere!
I'll know this has happend when all my cookbooks start sprouting fir and feathers.
Ahh---I just figured it out. PETA must have figured that if they can't free the animals, they might as well have their pictures on all the books in the world. Tim, you shouldn't engage in such comspiracies!
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips---------------- For the real truth, visit
How is this overrated? Its a totally valid point.
The RIAA CPA: "Actually our bottomline is way up. Our stocks are through the roof and this year alone we have sold more CD's than ever before."
RIAA: "Shhhhh! Be Quiet! Do you wan't someone to hear you!?!? I know that, and you know that, but do you want THEM to find out ?"
The RIAA CPA: [blinks twice with a puzzled look on his face]
RIAA: [loud and boisterous again] "These goddam MP3s are killing us! Call the universities! Call the lawers! Call the goverment! (Call Jewel and tell her there's a party next week and to meet me out front in the limo!)...."
that pirates steal,
and should be feared and hated.
I say we're victims of bad press,
it's all exaggerated...
Dr. Frank N. Furter as Long John Silver in the Muppet Treasure Island.
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
Mitsubishi ad
We apologize for the inconvenience.
We've got an Albert fucking Einstein here... hopefully this guy only does the books and does not contribute to society in any other way.
Yeah, sure, whoop-de-doo, so the intellectual property crowd have managed to get that bullshit redefinition into a dictionary somewhere. It's still a load of crap and I refuse to buy it.
Argoff's original post was correct. A guy who copies a computer program or a pop songs is guilty, at worst, of a materially insignificant tort against a property owner. To label such a guy a "pirate" is like calling someone who jaywalks across a city street a "child-molester" or "rapist" or "murderer".
Go read or reread Orwell's Politics and the English Language. It dulls your wits and degrades our language to let common words be misused by these money-hungry propagandists this way.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
If you're into computer programming, you can also write new original software on PCs, which are available everywhere, using GNU development tools, which are free, all the way up to the point where the RIAA dispatches a goon squad to your house to kick your door down, seize your PC and your cell phone, and drag you off to jail. For that matter, you could also, technically speaking, grow a big crop of marijuana in your own back yard.
This isn't a technical problem. It's a legal problem.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
That dollar amount is miniscule compared to the loss of freedom and information and enjoyment the world has suffered at the hands of the RIAA.
By this I mean things like lyrics.ch and olga.net.
The RIAA and Sony and Time-Life-Warner-EMI-AOL are quite obviously not floundering from the "loss" of all that money, but the people of the world are no longer legally able to look up the lyrics or the guitar tabs of a song they PAID the music industry for. We've all been screwed a lot more than the RIAA has.
>The cable at Best Buy was $20 and $4 at Buy.com.
This is a bit OT, but I have a theory why this happens. I've seen this quite a bit where I'm used to ordering things like cables, connectors and the like online and then I need one in a hurry so I go over to BestBuy or (gag) CompUSA and find that something I need is over $20 when I would expect to pay less than $5.
So, my theory is that they do this to make up on discounts on related hardware. They run a sale on a printer, some schmuck comes in a buys one, the saleman points out that he'll need a printer cable. The customer has no idea a 3' printer cable should be $4 so Best Buy gets back $15 dollars of the sale discount of the printer.
I miss Elek Tek. When I run out of RJ45 connectors or need to replace a bad cable, I hate running out to the store 'cause I know I'm gonna get ripped. Elek Tek always had all this stuff at good prices and had good selection. Go to freaking CompUSA looking for a printer cable and they have 500 boxes of 3' DB25 to centronics and nothing else, all for $25 each. (end of off-topic rant)
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
So I say unto you, Rejoice!
HDTV == MPEG -1, -2, & -3
mp3 cannot be killed.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
"This has been a Public Service Announcement from Mr. Obvious. Stay tuned for more obvious observations from Mr. Obvious, such as:
Liquids are wet!
FreeBSD is free!
Black paint is black!
Grits are hot!
And at the fraction of the cost of regular Public Service Announcements! Buy now!"
If you want to give a lucid, reasoned argument why this or any law deserves to be obeyed, I'll be happy to listen to you. But saying that I should obey a law just because it's the law is a slap in the face to the brave people (e.g. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks) who are admired today for breaking laws that they thought were wrong.
No one is saying that current copyright law is a fundamental human rights violation on the same order of magnitude as slavery. Indeed, I think we should all be thankful that the laws of this nation have improved to the point where people are quibbling over money instead of over fundamental human rights.
Although it sounds like I'm advocating piracy, I actually haven't pirated anything for years. In fact, for the past few years I have been protesting the RIAA's tactics by boycotting their products. I've spent well over a thousand dollars on CDs in the last 3 years, and every single one of them was foreign-made. None of them was produced by any record label in North America. The issue for me is not money, it's freedom and attitude. I want to be able to enjoy fair use of my CDs. I want to be able to play them on my Rio and to mix and match favorite tracks on CD-R, and I cannot bring myself to support an organization (RIAA) that wants to deny us those freedoms.
I wish I could LOSE -1.4 Billion. Last I checked, that would mean I made money.....
-da
I feel sorry for you
"Lost Negative." "Ship negative fewer."
I'm trying to imagine micheal trying to find logical bugs in his code...
I can't believe that mp3 will ever replace CDs. Not to say something else wont do it, but it wont be mp3. I can't stand to listen to them. Why would anyone want any sort of lossey compression screwing up their favorite song? I might listen to an mp3 of music I wasn't about to purchase, but if it's music I'm really interested in, I'll want it in of its 44,100 Hz, 16 Bit Stereo glory.
No thanks to you. People used to create music now you spoon feed it to them. But they're recording it remixing sharing it parodying it and generally fuxoring wid you ...
Each and every time I hear some big wig industry asshole talk about "artists" and protecting rights I'm gonna post a ripped MP3 on USENET.
Fuck off. You've been recording OUR folk music and selling it back to us at HUGELY inflated prices for 50 years. Please fade into history you bloated sick fucks and take Bob Dylan and all the other fuckers who ever recorded a traditional Irish melody (or other folk tradition) and then sold it to us - copyrighted for 100 YEARS. You all have less right to be millionaires than a good janitor does.
FUCK YOU.
I'm trying to imagine micheal trying to find logical bugs in his code...
I'm trying to imagine cfish trying to understand subtleties...
I am 100% sure that MP3's are affecting the RIAA's bottom line, but 1.4 billion??
:)
As the world has become more of a global community, with people communicating between each other so easily via the internet, peoples taste in music has been affected. I do not have to listen to the 3 local radio stations that all play crap anymore and then from that decide what to buy (Well that's the way it is where I live). I can search the internet for music. I am not even talking pirated MP3's, just streaming audio from a legit radio station somewhere else around the world or MP3's from MP3.com and other such sites. I am not saying that everyone has stopped listening to the radio and "mainstream" stuff, I am just saying now there are alternative sources of music now, which are expanding peoples tastes in music, and in turn their purchasing habits.
Artists themselves are now being influenced in the same way. One style of music is being mixed with another to create a new style of music, and then that style is mixed with another and so on. This happened in the past, but now the evolution of music is much quicker not only because of the amount and speed of information available, but now even making a home studio is not impossible for many, and so more music can be made independently and distrubuted online or independently.
And last, a little attack on the music I hate.
If the RIAA would just come to terms with the reality that the Spice Girls and Backstreet boys and all their little clone groups have no artistic ability and that we don't like groups that were created by some marketing genius, maybe they would notice one of the reasons that they are losing money. I heard the RIAA bitching about sales drops when U2 was out touring last, saying that there are no more "big bands" like them, and that even U2 now has problems selling records. The demise of the RIAA didn't start with the MP3, but I am glad to say it has made a dent
And how did I find out about them? I downloaded some pirate songs... (How else? I don't know of any stations around here - Seattle - that are likely to play them.)
So there are couple of sales that were caused by pirate MP3s rather than lost to them. Heavens.
More than that, there are labels that manage to put out multiple albums every year, pay the artists higher royalties, and still make a buck. Touch & Go's royalty rate is around 50%; I believe that of DeSoto and Dischord sits at around 40%. The entire feast-famine business model of the major labels is essentially flawed; a band on an independent label--or making professional-quality music themselves, a la the Poster Children--and touring frequently (but without putting out a video or sinking hundreds of thousands of dollars into studio time) can make a living where most bands playing the majors' game can't. It's that simple. Steve Albini broke down the numbers in an essay for The Baffler, and for all his personality issues, I'm inclined to trust his numbers.
--
I didn't know what a meme was, so I asked five friends. They didn't know what a meme was, so they asked five friends.
You ever listen to the business news? Have you ever heard one of these stories? Company X's stock price was down today, they issued a report saying profits grew n% since last year. Wall Street analysts were expecting (n+4)%.
I feal that music pirates should feal morally obligated to try and hurt the music industry by (a) improving promotion for internet only bands and [snip]
How is that neccesarily piracy?
Doesn't piracy imply the illegal distribution of copyrighted material? If the artist or owner gives full license to distribute (hey, free promotion.) then how is it illegal? (IIRC, it's not.)
And what about artists that own their own label? Distributing thier material w/o compensation just rips them off, and not some monolithic company. (nevermind the issue of blanket vilification of companies... one bad apple ruins the bunch?...)
Besides, why take up the mantle of 'pirate'? It entails a lot of negative connotations (being a term for one who engages in illegal conduct) that don't really aid in distributing any sort of message. (Makes the moral obligation bit seem a bit comical, really...)
Free music has been propogating for years now, just check out all the stuff the DemoScene has produced over the years. Originally Mod-format based, but migrating to mp3 recently. Heck, some artists even provide samples for you to compose your own works...
check:
http://www.kosmic.org/
http://www.hornet.org/
http://www.scene.org/
for starters...
there's a plethora of available alternatives ('Scene, MP3 artists, MIDI-stuff, online broadcasts, and various neophyte labels or websites) to Big Media's somewhat limited selection, and you can't really beat "free" for price.
---
mike, hectic
Rich -- If an artist makes an MP3 and gives it away, or it is pirated, they loose profits from however many CDs that would have been sold. If everyone has internet access and pirated music is easy to get to (because funadmentally there is no way the government can really crack down) then guess what. Nobody buys CDs. Artists go hungry. Good, I supose, for all those starving artists, but bad in general.
Famous -- With out money who will pay for radio stations (the MP3 station brought up in another post would involve a lot of bandwidth and capital)? Or basically any coherent form of distribution. The internet money maker, adds, doesn't work as companies paying for addes leave paper trails and the government will kill any company it finds suporting piracy. So distribution becomes fractured. Think about looking up Quake at Yahoo. Lots of sites huh? Which one is best. Well, with some trial and error you wade through the crappy ones (90%) and find a decent one or two. Now imagine that in a month the government forces half the sites to go into hiding or change there addresses (because Quake is outlawed? you get my analogy). Becoming famous not a meaningful term as it relies on what site you are able to put your stuff on and how long it stays up etc. A lot of randomness in the proccess of achieving renown. Hey, that's a lot like it is now!
Ok, I'm finishing up, I just want to address what good can be done with MP3s. As the last post said, they are a great way for new artists to get there stuff out there. By releasing some of their tracks on to public boards volentarily they give people a chance to try them and then buy their music from the artist, not the music company. If you want to stick it to The Man, listen to indie music, don't pirate, that hurts everybody.
--Chris
Clearly, you do not understand the options in the process of making, promoting, and profiting music. I will attempt to spell out a few of the problems with todays music and a few of the millions of options for a musician on the internet.
Music is not a product it is a service. Music lissening today is being degraded by the mass repitions that this product mentality implies. This creats those nasty one-hit-wonders and forces artists to force their fans to lissen to them sing the same song over and ver and over and over on CD. This is a really dumb way to sell music.
The truth is we would be better off lissening to less pollished, but more varied music. Artists *almost* produce a LOT of this less polished music in the form of practicing, jaming, goofing arround with the mixes, and live preformances. I'm talking about a whole wave of "disposable music" that could be produced allongside the more serious studio mixes.
Now, why would an artistgo to the extra work to prouce al lthis disposable music? One reason is that there will be too much of it to pirate. If people want this stuff they will need to pay for it because the pirates can not keep up (and a pirate who can keep up is big enough to sue). An even better reason is: it keeps people comming back for more!
A good way to sell all this stuff is to put some of it up for free download for a limited period of time, but allow fan club members to download any past song at anytime.. and charge like $20 for a yerly fan club membership. This is money directly into the artists pocket just for giving their true fans access to all this stuff.
The musicians don't just need to sell mp3s. Just look at the internet commics like sluggy.com. They appear to do fine by (a) making people come back to their site every day and (b) pushing merchandise on their viewers. An internet musician could do the same thing on a weakly basis. They could sell things like CDs, hats, shirts, etc. Actually, they could make a killing by selling lots of shorter production run CDs (say let people vote on the best of the disposable music) or mp3 CDs of a large amount of the disposable music.
We have all seen how crazy people get about some bands. I don't think there is any question the bands would make a killing off this shit. Especially, if they get things printed themselves.
The catch to all of this is you need to give away enough music to get people interested. There are all kinds of oppertunities for people to charge bands to upload the bands music to large numbers of pirate mp3s site as promotion.
There is one last opertunity for a band to make money by giving away music. Advertising! I would not be surprised to find equipment manufacturs giving good bands equipment just to say "mixed on a Sony BlaBla" at the end of the promotional songs.
If you really think abot the buisness oppertunities you will se that there is plenty of room for an internet savey artist to do MUCH better then an industry artist. The only real problem with the internet is that the small artists will need to know how to build a web site since web work could be very expencive. Especially, for someone who has no idea if they will make it or not. Conversly, an artist who is web savey could make themselves a big name with essentially no outlay of capitol.. just a lot of time.
note: I distinguish between promotional songs which are intended to float arround the internet and get people to visit the artists site and regular songs which are intended to be downloaded from the artists site.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Someone who makes music to be rich and famous is neither a musician nor an artist. Wanting to be rich being the worse of the two evils. If you love producing music then you only want people to hear it regardless of whether they pay for it. Hence the few real musicians in the world that encourage the recording of their concerts and distribution of their bootlegs. Why do we need radio stations? They only inundate us with advertising interspersed with the worst possible music. That said I in no way condone the selling of someone else's work for profit - if people want to make copies of music, movies, books and software and give them away, then fine and good, but when you start selling it then you've crossed the line. Just as with software, being able to get copies of movies and music often leads to buying an original, but given the excessive prices charged for these products we cannot be expected to pay for everything, particularly with music where most of the money you pay goes into the pockets of the executives and their lawyers.
I agree
The truth is we would be better off lissening to less pollished, but more varied music. Artists *almost* produce a LOT of this less polished music in the form of practicing, jaming, goofing arround with the mixes, and live preformances. I'm talking about a whole wave of "disposable music" that could be produced allongside the more serious studio mixes.
Now, why would an artistgo to the extra work to prouce al lthis disposable music? One reason is that there will be too much of it to pirate. If people want this stuff they will need to pay for it because the pirates can not keep up (and a pirate who can keep up is big enough to sue). An even better reason is: it keeps people comming back for more!
Now, you are correct that if artists released all their music (jams, etc) at once that would be too much for a pirate site to keep up with. But why would a pirate site want to do so? The pirate site only needs to keep the 3 or 4 (or for a really good group say 10) tracks that are actually worth listening too. I don't care how much you love a band, except for a few special CDs, *no one* loves every track on a CD.
A good way to sell all this stuff is to put some of it up for free download for a limited period of time
I'm sure you realize once its free once its free forever on pirate sites.
, but allow fan club members to download any past song at anytime.. and charge like $20 for a yerly fan club membership. This is money directly into the artists pocket just for giving their true fans access to all this stuff.
So one fan pays the $20 and the rest copy it from him. Not to mention the problems of server security, the book keeping of running the club. The record companies will be running this fan club, this doesn't break their evil grasp.
The musicians don't just need to sell mp3s. Just look at the internet commics like sluggy.com. They appear to do fine by (a) making people come back to their site every day and (b) pushing merchandise on their viewers. An internet musician could do the same thing on a weakly basis. They could sell things like CDs, hats, shirts, etc. Actually, they could make a killing by selling lots of shorter production run CDs (say let people vote on the best of the disposable music) or mp3 CDs of a large amount of the disposable music.
Pete (author of sluggy freelance (worship the comic)) is a very unique individual. He's been workin' on that thing for two and a half years and is currently barely making a profit. And this is (acording to Web 100 (??? a listing of the most popular 100 foo. Sluggy's been number one more than any other comic on their list (User Friendly is the runner up))) Making a comic that appears daily is also a bit different from having new music on daily (as you sugest). The problem is that if piracy grows (which you've stated you want it to do) then there will be no need to buy any music made publicly avalible. It will all be on line for the taking.
We have all seen how crazy people get about some bands. I don't think there is any question the bands would make a killing off this shit. Especially, if they get things printed themselves.
You previously argued against the "one hit wonders" that the music industry creates but now you are infavor of hype bands. You can't have it both ways. The industry creates mass infatuation with artists.
The catch to all of this is you need to give away enough music to get people interested. There are all kinds of oppertunities for people to charge bands to upload the bands music to large numbers of pirate mp3s site as promotion.
Ok, I'm confused. A pirate site takes music with out asking. A site that is taking money from artists for their music is lawful (and a very natural progression of the free sites we have now). I am infavor of this. What I am against is third parties stealing from the artists and placing music on web sites with out the artist's permission.
There is one last opertunity for a band to make money by giving away music. Advertising! I would not be surprised to find equipment manufacturs giving good bands equipment just to say "mixed on a Sony BlaBla" at the end of the promotional songs.
If you really think abot the buisness oppertunities you will se that there is plenty of room for an internet savey artist to do MUCH better then an industry artist.
Consider the success of internet companies that have tried to duplicate pre-existing services. Even if they do it for free and use Adds for revenue, they generally are not very successful. I'm talking about the difference between Pete Abrams (Sluggy) and Scott Adams (Dilbert). Scott is making a heck of a lot more money from his profession, I can assure you. Main reason, because people buy dilbert books, its the only way to get a comilation. Sluggy is avalible online, there is no need to buy Pete's books.
The only real problem with the internet is that the small artists will need to know how to build a web site since web work could be very expencive. Especially, for someone who has no idea if they will make it or not. Conversly, an artist who is web savey could make themselves a big name with essentially no outlay of capitol.. just a lot of time.
see above.
note: I distinguish between promotional songs which are intended to float arround the internet and get people to visit the artists site and regular songs which are intended to be downloaded from the artists site.
With piracy there is no difference. In your previous post you talked about the community needing to work harder, "more piracy." If that is really what you want then there is no difference between a promotional song and a regular song. The artist's wishes are ignored.
--Chris
1). Editors do have the right to "rewrite" articles so they are more pleasing to read. Newspapers do this all the time.
/. suffering. I for one would jump ship if they ever edited my comment to soothe someone's implacably sensitive ego. Just reject the comment if you think it sucks. Don't get soft one me. I don't like that.
:) You're talking about civilizing the one place people feel at home. They don't care about the grammar. They do care when ppl start trying to sterilize the place. With over a million readrs that is not going to happen.
Didn't you see all the flap about VA taking over Andover and
Yeah, I got the joke too. And it was funny, but I have a feeling that my rewording of the original sentences not only conveyed the joke, but would have been a more satisfying read.
Wrong joke. The part about the gain is no surprise. In fact I'm basing my future businesses on it. There's no other useful content but the double negative.
>Well, yes and no. I got a lot of replies to my post, which was buried within another post about the grammar on slashdot, so someone must have read it. But I do think you are right, the general consensus on slashdot doesn't care too much.
Well, duh.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
if people want to make copies of music, movies, books and software and give them away, then fine and good, but when you start selling it then you've crossed the line
Do play or know any one who plays Quake3? Pretty nifty game. If the people who wrote it didn't think they were going to get paid do you think they would have? Sure, there are good games out there for free, but if you want to play Quake3 you've got to pay for it. If you don't nobody's going to make Quake4. What it comes down to is what we all learned in kindegarden. Treat others as you want to be treated. If everyone stole Quake3 then everyone would loose. So its not ok for you to steal it.
but when you start selling it then you've crossed the line
A question (not an arguement). What counts as selling? Does getting money from banner adds? (and an arguement) Just because you are not making money does not mean you are turning a profit. You are gaining the benifit of the service. If you think that service is worth the cost of an $18 CD buy it. If you don't then don't buy it. It is no ok to steal it.
--Chris
There is no, and has been no, common carrier status for ISP's or anything like 'em.
Insofar as a couple of the backbone companies are also phone companies, *THAT PART OF THEIR BUSINESS* is a common carrier.
That's it. The rest of us are just normal private businesses, large and small, and own our own networks.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
"The news is good for CDs, great for DVD, worrisome for cassettes and music videos. On the whole, though, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) found that the near $15 billion market for recorded music, measured by what manufacturers ship to retail and non-retail channels, continued its upward trend in 1999, enjoying moderate growth."
With piracy there is no difference [between promotional and regular music].
You could not be more wrong about this. The truth is that the artist can influence the pirate scene quite effectivly by uploading their promotional material to the pirate sites. This promotional material should be closer to be the music which iscloser to one-hit-wonders anyway so its what people will pirate. Statistically this should increase the percentage of hits for the promotional material vs. total material which is what the band wants. Also, if we have a large total ammount of music we can assume that very very few people would want to pirate it all. the pirates will have their one-hit-wonders, but the real fans who the pirates turn on to the band will want more.
Now, you are correct that if artists released all their music (jams, etc) at once that would be too much for a pirate site to keep up with. But why would a pirate site want to do so? The pirate site only needs to keep the 3 or 4 (or for a really good group say 10) tracks that are actually worth listening too.
You are thinking about this from the product based mentality. Currently people only want to lissen to the best 3 or 4 songs because that is all they have the option of lissening to. Once people realise that they can have a true variety they will want to lissen to it instead. Hence the term "disposable music." It would probable be a good idea to have mp3 players for the fans which could fandom play from the fan club directories I wass proposing.
Also, It is a lot of work to figure out which of a bands songs are good without having the fan club acess I was suggessting. Remember, part of the survice of the fan club access is to see what other people think of difrent songs. This is just more work then most pirates are willing to do.
I'm talking about the difference between Pete Abrams (Sluggy) and Scott Adams (Dilbert). Scott is making a heck of a lot more money from his profession, I can assure you. Main reason, because people buy dilbert books, its the only way to get a comilation.
This is exactly what I was suggesting artists do, i.e. sell compilation CDs and fan club access. The advertising is very helpful, but not the total solution. I was never proposing that advertising or any one income source would deal with the problem.. just that when combined you could make a better living at it then the industry currently allows. You made a comment about how Pete Abrams is just scrapping by with Sluggy, but most artists are so poorly paid now that they could stand to just scrape by with a good bit less money then Pete. (Realisticaly, most artists will not be as good a buisness man as I suspect Pete is, but that is another discussion)
Ultimatly, we are both taling out of our asses and we wont know the answer untill someone like Pete ABrams to prove a system like what I am talking about is workable. It's a little more ambisious then what the current internet bands are doing, but I expect we will see it happen soon.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I own a few very rare cds that are currently out of production. I copy them an give them to friends to enjoy them as much as I have. I don't think that there is anything wrong with it. If the label wanted to sell more cds then they should have put more in print! For instance, Dave Matthew's Band's Live At Ziggy's album was $23 when I purchased it, and now it can hardly be found aywhere in its origional form. I think that for $23 they not only made their fair share of money from me, but they would have made about one hundred times more then that if they ran off a few more copys. Just my two cents :D
> They do care when ppl start trying to sterilize the place. With over a million readrs that is not going to happen.
Hey, no harm no foul. It isn't like I would have said anything, but, as I said, there are a LOT of posts here suggesting that double negatives are a good use of english grammar. That isn't true - someone needed to tell everyone that (in a clear and concise manner), if not just for the public "re-education".
:-)
I'm almost glad this thread is old. I'm getting mighty tired now of speaking about grammar. Heck, I'm a Technical student, not an English student!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
At present, four companies (BMG, Seagram, AOL/TW and Sony) control about 90% of the music market. They constitute the RIAA and are committed to absolute intellectual property control, by all means necessary. They have monopolies on most of the artists whose CDs people want to buy (the only exceptions are those on small labels, and as soon as they get big they cross over to labels which offer them better marketing, as Nirvana and Sarah McLachlan did, for example).
If the Big Four talk amongst themselves (and they have plenty of opportunities to do so under the auspices of the RIAA), they could collude to phase out Red Book CDs over a period of time (say, 5-10 years to be cautious). They could hype DVD Audio, all the while cutting back CD manufacturing until it's easier to buy a DVD Audio player than to find a record shop that sells CDs. (Other than dance music, not much is sold on vinyl these days, and even that you have to go to specialist shops to find.) Ultimately, CD would be reduced to a legacy format and they'd be able to pull the plug without much protest.
What about the smaller labels? What about them. The "minnows" don't have much weight in the market, and will follow eventually. Once DVD Audio players are common, releasing CDs wouldn't offer them much advantage (other than saving on licensing fees or what have you). The discs would still play in the new players, but would lack DVD features.
I think that you have mistaken musicians for business people. If we wanted to promote ourselves and do all of that marketing crap and sell T-shirts!? -don't you think we would be business people and not musicians? I'd rather spend my time making music thankyou. I don't want people to buy my hats and crap merchandise, I want them to listen to my music. If others like it they can pay me for it. Just as you would for a piece of art. You are paying to listen to my creation. I think I would deserve some money for my talent(?) and work.
I think that you have mistaken musicians for business people. If we wanted to promote ourselves and do all of that marketing crap and sell T-shirts!? -don't you think we would be business people and not musicians?
This is a valid critisism of ANY field (music, history, programming, science, etc.), but the truth is we all need to be partially buisness people or we will all get ripped off. The only diffrence with music is that the industry maintains a monopoly on promotion so that you must let them rip you off.
I think I would deserve some money for my talent(?) and work.
The reality of the situation is that piracy exists and it is not going away. The musicians who harness it for promotion will make more money then the musicians who fight it.
5 years from now people may be complaining about how the music that everyone lissens to is determined not by who is the best musician, but by who promotes themsevles on the internet more effectivly. Clearly, this is not the ideal situation, but it is better then the current situation where the musician who makes money is determined by a record exec who wants another Spice Girls.
Seems to me there's a double negative here.
To say they lost a negative amount of money seems to suggest they made a positive amount.
lost = negative (-)
negative = (-)
A negative times a negative is positive (+) so they made 1.4 billion.
I noticed the topic on the site, the topic makes no sense. "Pirates Steal Negative $1,400,000,000 from Music Industry" If pirates steal a negative amount, aren't they giving? So pirates gave $1,400,000,000 to the music industry? (yes I know how it really is)
-FweE-
Amen...freedom.
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