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Metallica Remains Silent
As you may already know, 30,000 Napster users have appealed to Napster on the basis that they feel they've done nothing wrong in the recent Metallica-inspired crackdown on accounts. Rap artist Dr. Dre has turned in his list to Napster, and we can only assume that there will be appeals there, too. Also, after numerous attempts and promises from Metallica's publicist, we still haven't gotten Metallica to answer the questions that our readers asked on May 4th. We have made several good-faith efforts to work with Metallica and their publicist, but it looks like they're never going to respond. On the lighter side, The Onion has posted the sad news about Kid Rock, and someone sent this image to us. [Updated 18 May 2000 7:40 GMT by timothy] Metallica's publicists have promised to try to get our questions answered "early next week," and that would be both more fun and more satisfying for all involved, I'm sure, than stony silence and accusations. Attn: Lars: The real debate is online :)
But as will all things, the rebels become conservative. Metallica isn't worried about changing the world, they just want their piece of the pie. They've become part of the status quo.
It's the same with Dr. Dre. Wasn't he supposed to be a bad gansta from da hood? For anyone who didn't know it already, I think these debates have pretty much revealed him to be no different from any of the other so-called artists.
Art is about art, not money. Ask the great painters and composers and sculptors who died poor and alone.
Got Rhinos?
There is nothing wrong advertising MP3 players if they do infact have plans to begin distributing their music *themselves*, from *their* website. Of course since they probably don't.. the point is moot.
My personal thoughts all along have been that;
a) Although it is in contradiction to the stance that the band has taken against commercialism. They do have a right, in our society, to be reimbursed for the work that they do. If they want to ban Napster users, who might or might not (depending if they own the albums), be stealing music, then they should be able to.
b) This stance does them no good publically to appear so advesarial (SP?) to their listening public. What they should offer as a remedy is the ability to download MP3's from a Metallica controlled website. That would require some sort of registration with Metallica, that would also include proof of purchase for the albums that have been bought. Sort of like a fan club distribution.
For those of you who never belonged to a band's fan club, the band usually sends out singles once a year to its members. If they were to distribute such singles off their website they would gain; direct contact with their fanbase; a distribution system that would eventually allow direct to consumer selling, they could double the normal price of a single, and the consumer would still be seeing a savings.... anyway, I'm rambling.. bottom line is Metallica is wrong to be attacking Napster, right to be asking Napster to ban fans, and wrong not to be offering those same fans the opportunity to purchase or recieve copies of those songs directly from Metallica..
anyway just my $0.02, (well 0.01 cents since I'm in Canada.)
Los Angeles, CA -- Today the New Kids On the Block (NKOB)
continued the the record industry's war against Napster. The New Kids
management gave a copy of 5 Napster users who had illeagally put
NKOB songs on their virtual servers. "This probably doesn't even begin
to touch the number of napster users pirating our art!" said former
NKOB member Jordan Knight Thursday. "We have evidence that
their may be as many as 9 people on napster with our songs!" New Kids on the Block
joins Dr. Dre and Metallica in the ongoing war against music piracy.
"I think we're the ones hit hardest" said Knight, "Metallica and
Dr. Dre have sold millions of albums in the last few years; We've
only sold 7 since napsters introduction and I think it's quite
apparent piracy is to blame."
Click here to read too much about my personal life
Rather than a single application, gnutella is a public protocol with numerous independent implementations, and it is architected to survived both nuclear blasts and lawyers - there is no centralized server.
There is some anonymonity, although it is far from perfect (I'd like to see both the downloads and searched done through encrypted channels) but because there is no central server, search engine or user registry there is no central point of control (or chokehold).
There probably aren't as many titles available as through Napster, but that's mainly because it's not as well known. But if I run Gnutella now, let's see how many files there are available this afternoon... well I'm tired of waiting, it's over 3700 hosts, 413,000 files, and 7,700,000 MB. So even though there may be fewer files available than Napster, there's a lot out there.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
In their chatroom appearance recently, Metallica said that one of their goals was to educate fans. [The chat was a lame PR pitty-party which avoided any clued-in questions from the other participants.] More likely, they're receiving a crash course in techology. So I'm hardly surprised that they blew off Slashdot.
Perhaps they're starting to realize that their "Let's fight for Good(tm) by suing pirates" crusade is hopelessly misdirected. Their industry is changing with technology--viewing these technological shifts as a simple piracy issue is hopelessly misguided.
The current model only works because CDs are expensive to produce and distribute. But as music becomes trivially cheap to exchange, is that the end of professional music? Will the artists starve?
Hardly. Painful though it is to use the names Mozart and Metallica in the same post, an even cursory look at history shows that artists have flourished for a very long time without expensive, monopolistic distribution schemes and lawsuit bullying.
Musicians of the future will be supported in the same way Mozart and Beethoven were:
Patronage. In the modern case, it may be corporate or governmental support, perhaps like auto-racing teams, in echange for logo or ad messages. Or think of it like an investment: companies put money into talent in the hope their tours will be profitable. (Isn't this what the record companies do now?)
Comissioned works. Poets and sculptors are often hired to create works for the public. Increasingly, popular bands write ad jingles, for instance. It's easy to imagine a CD sponsored by a company.
Performances. Of course, popular acts already make a good portion of their money from tours.
The new technology kills the costs that necessitated the big companies: 1) access to fans via printing and advertising, and 2) manufacture and distribution of the music. Both are now effectively costless.
Smart bands will figure out that CDs aren't just art, they're also ads for their band. They'll get their word out as far as possible with the Napsters and Gnutellas, then reap the rewards of name recognition and touring fees.
For the "Metallica has all the right in the world" advocates... I agree to this. Metallica does have all the right in the world. However, the wealthier you are, the more responsibility you have to share that wealth. Look at McDonald's, for example - they solved a lot of PR problems just by starting to donate to charities. Microsoft, on the other hand, got a lot of bad press, when Bill Gates commented that they would NOT give ANY money to any charities any time soon.
There is also the other factor, that what you give to the world, you get back threefold. It really is good karma to give things away. Within limits, of course, (gotta maintain that self sustaining balance) but the better off you are, the more you're able to give. And it will only do you good in the long run.
Of course, I am now actively boycotting anything that comes out of RIAA, and I'll be buying my CDs from non-RIAA organizations like mp3.com instead. Not because they are executing their "rights", but because they are being greedy, and are radiating bad karma.
Who Wants To Date A Norwegian?