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The Truth About File-Sharing
According to the January issue of American Demographics, a magazine which hardly supports radical copyright-infringers, music sites like Napster have created "powerful new opportunities for music marketeers." Despite the best efforts of the greedy record companies and a few recording stars -- Metallica and Dr. Dre come readily to mind -- to alienate a new generation of music lovers, recent figures prove that file-sharing services actually generate sales and put more money in artists' pockets.
This has enormous implications for those making movies, publishing books, or creating any kind of saleable entertainment. It suggests that the Net may work best as a three-step process: first connecting customers with culture, then generating interest in cultural and informational offerings, then keeping track of their tastes through sophisticated new digital marketing research. Theoretically, file-sharing approaches could go beyond shopping to stimulate interest in education, business, even politics, if the music experience is any indicator. And it sure ought to be.
The relationship between new decentralized software programs -- Napster, Freenet, Gnutella, P2P -- and such issues as copyright infringement, artists rights and conventional retailing is complicated. Legal, political, educational and other institutions haven't begun to sort through them. But clearly the music industry's panicky and greedy overreaction will prove one of the most dunder-headed, short-sighted responses in recent business history. The industry couldn't have been more off-base, dishonest or greedy.
Nearly 75 percent of college students have downloaded music from the Net, 58 percent of them using Napster, according to a recent study by Greenfield Online, a Connecticut research firm, and YouthStream Media Networks. Nearly two-thirds of the 1,135 college students surveyed say they download music as a way to sample music before buying it. The proliferation of online music is introducing consumes to artists they don't know, in almost precisely the same way department stores offer samples of food, perfume and other retail items. A survey by Yankelovich Partners for the Digital Media Association found that about half the music fans in the U.S. turn to look for artists they can't or don't hear in other venues, like radio. Nearly two-thirds of those who downloaded music from the Web say that their search ended in a music purchase. Music labels should have been donating money to Napster users, not threatening to sue them and chase the site off of college campuses.
And the much-libeled Napster users are dedicated music buyers, quick to reach for their wallets. Jupiter Research says it found that 45 per cent of online music fans are more likely to have increased their music purchases than online fans who don't use Napster. The Jupiter study of Napster users found that 71 percent of users say they're willing to pay to download an entire album.
Interestingly, reports American Demographics, the Jupiter Study of Napster users found that 71 percent of those who use the site said they were willing to pay to download an entire album. But in a Greenfield Online survey of 5,200 online music shoppers, nearly 70 per cent say that they have not paid -- and will not pay -- for digital music downloads. This suggests that subscription-based services may be more likely and successful than a per-song fee system.
This potentially revolutionary model for marketing culture is about to be dismantled by the new partnership between Napster and Bertelsmann, which is giving the file-sharing site more than $50 million to develop software that will charge users for music. Bertelsmann says it will keep a part of Napster "free," but watch for yourself to see how quickly it shrinks.
These figures, remarkably, demonstrate that almost every assumption about the free music movement, reported in most media outlets and used as justification for a wave of new legislation and legal action like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, is dead wrong:
- Most music downloaders aren't thieves or pirates but music lovers willing to pay for music.
- Artists have made more money from this new generation of music lovers than they would have without them.
- The true significance of file-sharing wasn't an end to intellectual property, but an exciting new way to develop markets.
- Record companies and other corporations should be supporting file-sharing sites ratherthan hiring lobbyists and lawyers to intimidate, sue and enrage new and eager customers. College students have nearly universal access to broadband, and are tomorrow's mainstream consumers. The more information and culture they have access to, the likelier it is that they'll sample new venues, products and information.
- Evidently, file-sharing isn't a dangerous menace but an effective new method of disseminating -- and selling -- content, and culture. Aside from these new findings, the Napster experience also suggests that when it comes to dealing with the Net, businesses often have no idea what's good for them.
And oh, yeah. Don't believe what you read about yourself.
This might have some meaning in today'w world, where the most popular format has an inferior quality and the bandwidth is generally low, but what happens in a world of near-infinite bandwidth and perfect reproduction? Why bother buying any music if there is a cable into the back of your stereo that allows you to play any song anytime?
Hi. I'd like to point out a feature of your post some may have missed: "increased record sales would tend to argue to the contrary." Information about you is anecdotal and irrelevent.
Correlation does not imply causation. This study tried to prove causation, but without it as a valid statistical benchmark (debatable), your argument is bunk. All we have to support this claim are anecdotes, this dubious survey, and increased record sales without a clear explanation why.
-z129
"we're all pirate..."
Speak for yourself, asswipe. I happen to use Napster a lot *and* buy an awful lot of CDs because of it. Just because you are a spineless, half-wit, cheapskate hypocrite doesn't mean we all are.
The Record Labels dont want to change their distribution model. End of story. They will take anyone and everyone to court so they don't have to.
Its an old business model, and no one in the Recording Industry can figure out a way to make MORE money than the current model.
*cry*
is the stock signing bonus for any band on a major label contract. After all, this is technically a loan from the Label Heads. What does it cover? Limo rides for the Million Dollar Producer to the studio to turn a few knobs and make bands sound good. It covers the first part of tour support for some acts (note: I said first part, of about 100 parts). It covers the pressings that will end up in the stores and all of the merch that's needed (posters, handbills, etc). The list goes on, and it's rather tiring.
What does the band get out of $250,000? Well, some would say fame and fortune. Not true. After paying back a $250,000 loan from a recording contract, then and only then, if the band is smart, will they begin to actually make money. This is only after the supposed, or in many cases: hopeful success of the release. By the way, a band is most likely going to receive only about 8% of your $16 that you spent an the CD. The rest goes back to the GODS.
Why are record companies and Some bands against file sharing. It's a direct middle finger to the entire empire that has been built about making money for themselves off of my art. I'll refer back to $250,000 one more time. What does each member receive for a paycheck out of that? Roughly $2000 (that's on a rough yearly salary). This depends of course on how many members are in the band. You think "Yeah right, these guys are signed, they're rich" Bullshit. Do you know how many nbands go broke in a year trying to pay that 1/4 $million back? It's a loan, not a gift.
File Sharing undermines the ultimate goal of most record companies. It's allowing the bands to recognize a little success as an independent venture and not be a part of a conglomerate. As for the signed bands doing well? The ones who get pissed about open sharing of music files I refuse to listen to any more. They are in it for the money, not the music.
I'm a devout sayer of free files for all. Listen to the stuff. If you like it and want to buy it to have for your very own, then I'll point you to where you can buy hard copies of it. It's simple. Bands like Metallica (have been listening to them since about 1985) I refuse to support any more. I have helped them get rich. Filthy rich. And they turn around and tell me to screw myself? No screw them, see if EVER buy another album ever again. Not to mention, their music really hasn't been any thing earth shattering in the last ten years any way. Thank You. Buh Bye.
> What matters is that Napster has removed the artist's say in what happens to their music
This would only be true if they actually had any say in what happens to 'their' music. Since in 99% of all cases they sign over all rights to a recording company, they have no say in what happens to their music anyway.
Does he insist on paying the distributor or the artist? If the latter, he could use fairtunes. Doesn't act as a legal defense, but if it's Doing The Right Thing he's concerned about...
"- copyright exists to ensure musicians get paid."
"This is a very common misconception, perhaps born of IP-industry disinformation and propoganda. But copyright -IP as a whole, actually- exists not for the benefit of the artist/inventor, but for the *benefit of society*."
Actually, the statements that copyright exists to ensure that artists get paid and that copyright exists to benefit society are *both* true. By allowing artists to make a living from their music, artists have an incentive and opportunity to make more music, and the music is supposed to benefit society. It would be fairly accurate to say that the intended end of copyright is to benefit society, and the means to that end is providing a way for artists to get paid.
The geeks of Columbine manufactured media culture in cultured technology media geeks.
It's all about the geeks. And the culture.
The problem is that the music is *not* their property. It doesn't matter whether or not this is a new, dynamic, and beneficial business model, which I too believe it is, it simply matters that it is the *artists*, or the *record company's* music, and NOT anyone elses. They are the ones who have the rights to their own creation, or that which they have financed and purchased the rights too. It's that simple. However, I do think that there is certainly a valid proposition of the new business model for music distribution, but that still does not give anyone the right to steal from musicians and record companies in order to enstate that model. If someone stole $1000 dollars from me, invested it, and came back with $10,000, sure I would be happy, *but* that would NOT make the act of stealing an acceptable or correct action. As a person, I would be stupid not to examine this practice and deem it as being ok, but before I give it my seal of approval, it is wrong.
Think!
I buy real cds for two very simple reasons: 1) mp3's sound like shit, and 2) finding good mp3's is a lot of work.
:)
I don't have a super high quality stereo, and I don't listen to stuff that people would claim needs high quality to hear the distortion in. I listen to ground-pounding metal and thrash with the occasional trance and techno thrown in, and even at 192kbps the distortion is painfully obvious. Even on headphones, the sound is muddy, the cymbals are slurred, and things aren't quite right. Anyone who says mp3 is 'near lossless' has low standards. I notice marked improvement when listening to the actual cds.
And as for finding mp3's, of course they are available on napster, but invariably they are all of differing bitrate, are named funny, are sometimes cut funny, and at least half of the time have the so called 'resume download' errors in them. One particular track I downloaded had 50+ resume errors in it, and all other copies on napster were of that corrupted original.
That is why I buy cds. I make mp3's from them anyway, but at least my own mp3's dont have the resume problems. I have also burned compilations of tracks on 80 minute cds to take with me when I don't have an mp3 player available (like at work.)
And of course, the cover art is neat
-dentin
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
It seems like this model could reward people who produce very little content or content of very poor quality on an equal level as those who produce lots of content or content of an excellent quality. That doesn't seem right.
Welcome to the music business!
-- Yoz
But unlike most companies, this foot-shooting habit doesn't seem to bring these companies down or even slow them up. They just continue to acquire and monopolize culture..Still, these stats are very surprising. There are several credible ones from several different sources and they all add up to the conclusion that these companies have been hurting artists as well missing the whole point of file-sharing.
But the interesting thing is that these companies don't suffer any consequences for this dunderheadedness. In the Corporate Republic, they just get bigger and fatter.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
And the much-libeled Napster users are dedicated music buyers, quick to reach for their wallets. Jupiter Research says it found that 45 per cent of online music fans are more likely to have increased their music purchases than online fans who don't use Napster.
Meanwhile 55% of online fans who used Napster decreased their purchases to zero?
that's an absolutely terrible argument. too bad that the remaining 55 percent only stated that they haven't increased their music purchases. you used an extreme to prove your case, which is normally known as "propaganda".
The Jupiter study of Napster users found that 71 percent of users say they're willing to pay to download an entire album.
They also said that they were willing to pay for a trip to Mars
see, this argument is just sad. that's like saying "so what if people need food to live, they also like to download pics of Natalie Portman, so any data on their need for food is irrelevant." Existential reasoning is still existential.
It means no such thing. It suggests that people want something for free and that they are quicker to lie about their willingness to pay than they are to produce their money.
show us ONE case study that backs up that claim.
The rest of your post is pretty hysterical. you're trying to flame JonKatz by agreeing with everything he says, and putting a small amount of spin on it.
beautiful.
I find it pretty ridiculous how JonKatz is trying to present his opinions as facts. "The Truth About File Sharing"? There's no proven truth in this article. There's just a bunch of statistics and opinions. Let me know when you start presenting your opinions simply as they really are; opinions, and perhaps I'll start taking your articles a little more seriously.
Granted, file sharing has really expanded my music collection, but why file sharing over a network, or file sharing compared to CD sharing?
I've downloaded a lot of stuff, but about half of my MP3's are CD'my friends own. And a lot of them have MP3's of thier friend's CD's and so on. Is it really file sharing, or just the big increase in availability of CD burners and blanks that leads to the "problem" of increased sales?
Short and Sweet. I suggest Katz puts his money, or rather lack thereof, where his mouth is. If he believes so firmly in "try before you buy", then he should try forgoing any compensation from slashdot and have slashdot create an online "tip" jar for him. Likewise, he should open up ALL of so-called books and make them available online, and be happy with a mere link to amazon.com or something....
They could have emailed an offer to buy their CDs to every Napster user that downloads their music.
Except Napster wasn't created with the desire to actually help marketing efforts. It's only purpose is to allow for distribution of music. You don't need a real email address, let alone to supply a physical address so that bands can reach you. And they apparently don't have the infrastructure in place to track files. It's probably intentional, so that bands can't actually request a file no be allowed to be shared over their network, but at the same time, if they can't do that, they can't supply to Metallica or anyone else for that matter, a list of people who are interested in their music.
Um... BBS Spot of a spoof site. Nothing that you read there is real except that they're all original ideas thought up by the authors of the site.
There's also the somewhat sad fact that Western culture profoundly distrusts the person(s) who are not participating in a market or general culture of consumerism. John Katz is forgiven ... he pushed the consumerism angle only to segue into our minds :)
Look somewhere else for a sig.
This article lauds the benefits to be realized from making your music freely available for download via the net. So what if there IS a benefit? Should people be forced to make their music available for download against their will?
If you have a shop selling widgets and you refuse to unlock the door and let customers in, well you are an idiot, and probably not making as much money as you could. But do the customers have a right to break down your door to get in? Should they break the door down and help themselves to free samples of your merchandise (against your will) just because it is widely accepted that free samples promote sales?
I think that an artist should have the right to decide for themselves whether they want to make their music available for free download (and bank on increased sales as a result). Or to only sell to customers who donate a pint of blood as well as paying the money (and watch sales plummet).
It's their choice to make and they should be allowed to make the "wrong" choice if that looks "right" to them.
Uhm. You know that Metallica in no way actually said that comment, right?
File sharing and downloading have slightly different meanings. If I simply download music (and even PAY for it) then I am not sharing anything. Sharing implies that when I download something from someone I then provide that content for someone else to access.
The pay-for-use services may want to preclude this and remove the sharing aspect of file sharing. Why pay for access to Napster (assuming they went fee-based) when openNap servers are widely available. Another point - if you pay for a service, you expect some sort of reliability. If a user disconnects then you loose the file and have to try again. Not an issue for broadband users, but it is an issue (resume downloads?). Quality Assurance is also another issue - how do I know if something is even WORTH downloading or sharing to others?
I have a bad feeling about paying money for the privelage of sharing content. I am not adverse to paying for music but I don't feel that I should have to pay to share something with others. For this reason alone I would never pay for a Napster-like service. Blah.
My problem, not yours.. flame on..
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
This, in a Jon Katz article!
(cheap shot, I know, but I couldn't resist)
__________________________________________________ ___
rooooar
Oh, please. I hear this all the time.
ATTENTION! If you pay $18 for a CD you are a MORON. You know what this means? that you're buying Britney Spears at Border's. Hell, even Border's marks down new releases to $13 or so. (and $13 is still more than you need to pay)
I probably buy 15-20 CDs/year (and pirate none), and have not since the mid 90's paid more than $10 for a CD. rare and import albums exempt. buy used, buy online, use coupons, use ebay, buy something thats not top-40. shop best buy (altho their prices are rising, too). (or move out of canada)
saying that all CDs cost $18 makes you sound like a fool.
vOv
The comment that record companies should have welcomed Napster etc. because cheaper access to music (for evaluation purposes) would increase sales, misses a significant point: Control.
Currently, the marketing machines for these Record companies have the luxury to virtually decide which albums should be popular and which should be relagated to the 'indie' audiences. By controling what the audiences are exposed to, they can better direct the purchasing habits.
Napster removes a level of that control. In many ways, this is like college radio, back before putting out an album was everyone's high-school project. This and a number of related developments lead to punk and indie music on the 70s and 80s. It wasn't until the 90s that music lables managed to pop-ify punk and indie music.
When I was in college, in the early-mid 90s, I saw a very noticable change in the music played by the DJs at my college radio station. It went from people who loved to play good music, especially music that was hard to hear anywhere else, to DJs who wanted to play virtually the exact same songs as the commercial station. (Note: I'm biased. I was a DJ and played mostly techno and industrial, and although I appreciate pop music, am hardly a fan of almost anything which commercial radio stuffs down my throat.)
Do yourself a favor and go out and buy "Coercion", Douglas Ruskoff's latest book. I am not normally one to recomment Rushkoff, but this book is a good into to the realities of just how important control of the consumer has become.
Why not? I mean seriously, how does source get created? In many ways you could say that they are in many ways the same, organised data.
Now you might claim that music is "artistic" and therefore more "valueable" than for instance source code. Why should that be though? I mean there are examples of really good music, but just turn on your hit radio and ou will find that most of todays marketed music is just the equivalent of VB "programmers".
And seriously, if you really do code you know that at least at times it is an art. (Capital A at times.)
I do know that I actually used to agree with you. But perhaps that's just because I'm used to programming, I'm not used to composing. And if you ask the average Joe on the street, which do you would seem as more "magical" writing a song or making a computer do what you want?
I'm perfectly willing to believe people buy the music now, but for how long? ( and how long will techno-utopians like jon katz be so starry eyed about this? ).
When:
1. we've all got nice reliable 100Mbs connections
2. 100s of Gigs of HD space
3. Most importantly, when Joe Average Computer User is used to playing music from a computer/hard drive, do you think they will still buy CDs then?
Everyone with a half a mind knows the music industry is right to afraid. There is no way they can keep up their margins through the 7 layers of middle men they have right now. Yes, pay for download might work eventually, but saying "no no, this is great, people buy more music!" may be true right now, or maybe not, but think about it -- there is no way its going to stay true.
So the music industry will, understandably, flail about with lawsuits and half-assed copy protection before being forced to scale down significantly. If you work in music publishing or distribution, you should be well aware that your job title is not long for this world. (PR, labels, and musicians may or may not be okay, who knows).
I really don't understand how both sides of these debate are so blind, one side thinking lawsuits will fix things, the other thinking that this is only going to help the industry.
I'm interested to see what will happen after 70 percent of Napster's users take off when they go subscription-based. Napster's strength is its huge userbase. Once they lose a few million users, their song selection will drop significantly.
Here's another question: does anyone know anything about what Napster/BMG will be doing to address the problem of mislabeled/poor quality/truncated MP3s? If I were to pay for a service, I would expect problems like these to be addressed.
--= ThreeTee =--
Haven't we all posted this same type of information over and over and over? Isn't it obvious when the Recording Industry had a record year in 2000 with release after release debuting at #1 on billboard and breaking the previous week's SoundScan records?
Any RIAA member who continues to label Napster users as pirates will continue to alienate customers. It's that simple, the revolution has started and will not be stopped.
But, alas, this information is to little to late I'm afraid, as Napster's widespread free service is facing impending doom with the subscription based service... I'll just go back to getting my mp3s old school... off IRC.
"This amp is special, see all the knobs go up to 11, that means it is one louder than other amps"
I agree. I find it silly that people attempt to justify their theft to ease their conscience.
Napster is doing nothing illegal (IMO), in the same way that the warehouse that rents out space to black market operators is also doing nothing illegal. They both simply provide a legal service that happens to be home to many smaller illegal operations.
Fair use does not allow downloading complete songs... fair use specificially states that only small portions of the original work may be used... for example, fair use allows radio DJs to use samples of songs in their ads and shows without having to pay a royalty for that small clip. Burning a complete, near perfect copy of a song is not covered under fair use unless you have already purchased the copyrighted song on CD.
Use of Napster, for 95% or more of the users on it, is illegal. This is not to say that it is necessarily HARMFUL to the artists or record labels... studies regarding music sales and mp3 use have been ambiguous at best. But just because something is not harmful, does not mean it is LEGAL. Downloading and using MP3s you do not own is illegal, period. No ifs, ands, or buts. Should the laws be changed? Maybe. Does that make it legal to use MP3s until the laws are changed? No. It's still illegal. Will people keep doing it? Of course they will. And so will I.
Raven
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
1. About what percentage of songs that you liked were enough cause to buy the CD?
2. Have you started to buy more CD's as a result of hearing it on your computer?
3. If you have a CD-burner, what percentage of songs do you burn rather than buy?
Here were my results:
Question #1:
1 percent: 96 people
between 1% and 10%: 16 people
over 10%: 0 people
Question #2:
yes: 31 people
no: 81 people
Question #3:
100%: 93 people
(the other 19 people didn't have a burner)
So there you have it. All facts have been laid out for you in plain sight. Don't tell me that I'm generalizing or using anecdotal information or calling college people chronic liars. Look at the numbers with your very own eyes.
This is a prefectly valid statement. It's accepted if you like the cd, buy the cd, you'll enjoy it more, however here's the problem, most of the time when people do the above act of only getting a single, it's becuase the band is a one hit wonder (they suck). A "good" band by any reasonable meaning is a band that produce good music. Not all of thier songs will be "good", just most of thier works. A one hit wonder only produce one, maybe two, or even three songs. By no means are they a "good" band. For what reason should you support the people that makes this trash? Oh yeah, someone likes the one song that was specialy designed to appeal to a large group of people to make the most amount of cash while doing the least amount of work and total disregard to any respect to what is "art".
Oh, and all college students lie...
Don't trust anything they say, especially when they want to save their own [or their pockets, in this case] ass. Why would college students say they do it to get free music when that could only be used against Napster, something they want to keep going?
I'm sure joe blow going to college and working full time at the local pizza joint really has the cash to buy every cd joe blow find remotly intresting only to find later, the band he just spent three day of food money is a just a one hit wonder crap band. Oh course, I'm sure he more then willing to spend the 15 bucks on seeing the band he really like, that he found on Napster, for one wild weekend that Joe Blow will remember for the rest of his life which also pays between 20% to 30% directly to the artist.
MarNuke
i know alot of people who use napster who are not in the techno eilte. their careers range from: college professor to mechanic to english grad students to medical doctor to chemical engineer. and those are just off the top of my head. i think the truely elite never quit using netnews and irc.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
i agree that irc has a much higher learning curve, but necessity is the mother of invention. as for netnews. i can sit any schmuck who can use word down and have them downloading cd images in about an hour using agent. the hardest part would be getting him to stop posting to the .d groups.
.binaries, but you can pay supernews 10$ a month for unlimited access. then it's just another tcp request which can be routed through proxies (proxies wouldnt be for joe schmoe). most universities wont start blocking stuff until they at least get some legal threat-even then most dont cave that easily.
i would think that blocking netnews could be a pain. sure the local university servers might not carry the
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
Just to play Devil's Advocate - although USENET is ill-suited to the transmission of large binaries, and although a full feed of .binaries.mp3 is probably around 100G per day...
yeah, but people have adapted well to the limitations of usenet. when i saw alt.bin.cd.images for the first time i was truely lost in disbelief. it was quite orderly and my roomate didnt have too much trouble downloading whatever he wanted. i don't really have much interest in it since almost all of the software i use is free.
it would be more efficient if they got the mp3 feed. it wouldnt be that hard to justify at the school where i did my undergrad-well it would be just as easy as trying to justify the alt.bin.pic.ertoica. which they had alot of.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
i am a college student.
i have a burner(on my second one actually)
i have downloaded alot from napster
the stuff i liked and kept i purchased
None if they have a CD-writer
you are wrong here.
There simply is no way that this survey was accurate.
increased record sales would tend to argue to the contrary.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
what about irc and netnews? you can get just about anything off of usenet's alt.binaries.*
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
you really should have had him sign the original before you photocopied it!
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
| | - copyright exists to ensure musicians get paid.
/ St einer-Social.html
:-P
|
| Wrong. Copyright exists to ensure writers get paid. Contracts exist to
| ensure musicians get paid.
if you read past the next line, you'd see the words:
in practice, many musicians (who play instruments) starve,
while marketing bimbos (spice girls) thrive
the point being made is that: a lot of people justify
copyright (correctly or incorrectly) that it is an (imperfect)
system for somehow getting money to the producers.
that this doesn't actually happen is already said.
but perhaps you didn't read past the first line.
| | - the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the
| | musician's pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
|
| Does Iggy Pop (only 5'4") get the same amount as Meatloaf?
| That's communism!
who are you to decide and say how muhc iggy pop gets?
iggy pop gets as much of the pie as is determined by
the percentage of downloads of his music.
| | - so all software is free - you get mindshare from it.
|
| "Sorry, I can't pay rent this month. Here, have some of my mindshare."
think again guy -- you quote it out of context - you overlook the very
mechanism in this system that gets them paid.
| | - distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
| | - so it comes back and feeds itelf (the most important part).
|
| Why doesn't your "musicians association" (no drummers allowed, I take it)
since when and where was any commennt made
that didn't allow drummers in this?
the exclusion is yours - not the musician's association's.
the whole basis for the 'musicians association' is the development
of an idea contained in the following threefold social-economic
lectures located here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles
| act as middleman and do its own P&D, using college radio and the Internet
| for marketing? Pressing and distribution are easy. Marketing is a bitch,
| especially with commercial radio, TV, and print locked up in a HOT WET 69
| with the Big 4.5.
the idea is precisely to chop current record companies into
TWO independent functioning units. what is gained by this?
currently record companies do two functions:
i) PRODUCE -- sign, record, market, and feed musicians.
ii) DISTRIBUTE -- make money from marketing and selling products
from the musicians they sign.
just as there is a conflict of interest between the RIGHTS
of people, and ECONOMIC involvement (can you truly expect someone
with a vested Economicc interest in a matter to act objectively on
the basis of what someone's RIGHTs are in a given situation?),
so also there a conflict of interest that moves record companies
towards promoting 'marketing bimbos' rather than solely representing
and serving the needs of actual musicians who write and play music.
by severing the connection betweenn i) production of music content,
and ii) making money from distribution, you remove this artificial
pressure that exists when they are coupled, and thus the pressure
for record companies to producce 'spice girl' phenomenon is relieved.
that is not to say that someone couldn't make a spice girl if they
wanted to - just that the field would actually be leveled so that
the promotion of spice girls wouldn't be artificially inflated.
under the 'musicians association' model, current record companies
are given a choice:
A) BECOME A DISTRIBUTOR only:
become strictly a merchandiser (you sell stuff based on the stuff
that every other merchandiser can also get FREELY out of the pool),
and you compete based on whover packages and markets the best.
B) BECOME A PRODUCER only:
become involved in the 'musicians pool' where you are allowed
to record and produce content, but your income comes from the pool
and is dividied up among the producers based on number of downloads.
that way no one can cry foul over a false and arbitrary splitting
of profits.
if they don't want to join, they are still free to distribute
music created by artists belonging to the musician's pool.
however, they will be paying a percentage of profits back to
the pool for every product they sell back into the pool, and
that money will be dividied-up between the artists that ARE
in the musician's pool.
| Hey, nice try though.
i don't see YOU suggesting anything better.
regards,
john.
hmmm - schmo will go with the status quo.
but he doesn't have any better ideas to offer.
> As we move closer to 100% digital distribution, with no physical product,
> where does the money come from?
>
> Also, why would I pay any significant money for a CD when it's legal for
> someone to download and burn the CDs locally, charging only for resources
> consumed (with a slight markup)?
i do not believe the vision that sales of physical goods will diminish
towards zero and be replaced entirely by digital distribution.
as digital distribution goes up, the value-added of merchandising
of 'physical' stuff based around the content will go up. SOMETHING
THAT IS PHYSICAL IS SCARCE, and its value (unlike digital) lies in
that not everyone can have it. thus, collectors will pay a premium
to have something TANGIBLE and official from the band over just a
download of the song.
when anyone can get a copy of a song downloaded for free,
then the merchandisers will 'add value' to the product through
unique packaging, and by inventing desirable things to provide
in addition to 'just the data'. for example:
- you get a printed booklet and poster with your CD - looks nicer than
if you burn it yourself.
- you have all sorts of merchandise: books, fanzines, t-shirts,
it is up to the ingenuity of the merchandisers to make money off of
this stuff - and when they do - a percentage (like a sales tax) goes back
to the musician's pool, and gets divided up by percentage of napster (or
insert your service here) downloads that month.
- i can download a copy of any of shakespeare's worrks TODAY FOR FREE
from PROJECT GUTENBURG - but i still go out to amazon to order a copy.
why? i COULD download it and print it myself on my inkjet printer,
but it would cost me more to download and print then to buy a copy
that's already nicely packaged by a bookseller. in essence - the 'data'
of the book is free, but i'm paying for more than just the content,
i'm also paying for the convenience (over printing on my own inkjet),
and the PRESENTATION.
BINGO!!!
wolf31o2 Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team
What it doesn't say is that if a student downloads a song to "sample and see if they like the album" and find that they only like a few songs, and not the whole album, they simply keep the good songs, trash the old songs, and continue to not by the albums.
Oh, and all college students lie. Don't trust anything they say, especially when they want to save their own [or their pockets, in this case] ass. Why would college students say they do it to get free music when that could only be used against Napster, something they want to keep going?
Gaelen
I have a cable modem, which is probably fairly comparable to your T1, and including downloads and "re-downloads" (that doesn't need to be done nearly as often as you make it seem) it doesn't take me anywhere *near* 5.5 hours to make an mp3 cd.
:)
Download multiple copies of each song, all going at once, in *maybe* 45 minutes, usually less. Quality check randomly throughout songs (just to make sure I didn't download "Disney Silly Songs" labelled as whatever I was interested in, I don't listen to each song all the way through, cdrs cost $1 a piece, I could care less if one or two songs has a pop in it) while converting to wav (that takes you 45 minutes? Give me a break, Winamp does that with lightning speed, convert all of them in maybe 3-4 minutes, and thats if you have a slow machine) and burning (8 minutes for me on my 8x burner per full cd).
That's about an hour, total. Maybe it takes you 5.5 hours to make each mp3 cd, but I would be willing to bet the vast majority of people burning mp3s are more in my category. I don't often make mp3 cds, not because of the "immorality" of doing so, but because I guess I'm one of the rare few to whom MP3 cds (at any bitrate less than 192kbps, and try to find any non-mainstream cd entirely online at 192kbps and up... good luck) sound like complete and utter feces.
Plus there's just that, I dunno, *nice* feeling of unwrapping a new cd and knowing it belongs to you. Blank cdr discs with CD-pen labels on them are so ugly.
I've lived in NYC, the SF Bay Area, and Austin Tx. Now I am in rural SE Kansas...
The radio stations include oldies ('40s and '50s), rock and roll ('50s and '60s), and New Music ('60s, '70s, and some '80s). Seems like each station has at most 300 songs in its play list. I never downloaded when I lived where I could hear new music. I buy stuff now that no one locally has heard of (since it doesn't play here). Then they buy it. I'm sure more CDs are being bought, but the local radio station isn't controling what we are exposed to.
In terms of culture: I'm sure I've spendt more time online at Rolling Stone since I've started using Napster than all the rest of my life. Printing out band photos to tape up on the dorm room halls, etc... What needs to be remembered is not just that music labels compete against each other, but they compete against videos, and fishing gear, and bicycle gear, etc...Increased interest in music will lead to increased sales.
The proliferation of online music is introducing consumes to artists they don't know
What does soup have do with Napster?
Point: a signifigant portion of a poverty-ridden state is aware of Napster (even if they don't use it): with cheap computers and free ISP's becoming more and more common here...who knows? have fun dongoodman
...to start work on a system designed so we can make micropayments to the artists we like. Post the sourceforge address as a reply to this.
--------
Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
in practice, many musicians (who play instruments) starve, while marketing bimbos (spice girls) thrive
You do your theory an injustice with this line of thought.
You may not like the Spice Girls, but there were millions of kids who did. They filled a niche, entertained their fans, and raked in the dough.
There will always be a market for Spice Girls, pulp romance novels, People magazine, Miracle Whip salad dressing, Wonder Bread, Michael Bolton, and Adam Sandler movies.
Not my tastes either, but you can't argue with success.
the point being made is that: a lot of people justify copyright (correctly or incorrectly) that it is an (imperfect) system for somehow getting money to the producers.
That's a secondary effect of copyright. Its primary intent is to protect the rights of the creator and thus make the act of creation worthwhile. All the rest is bizness.
iggy pop gets as much of the pie as is determined by the percentage of downloads of his music.
Another problem: this leaves artists who don't have a wired fan base out in the cold. This skews the numbers towards the young and affluent and away from older and minority populations. It's the same problem with voting exclusively over the internet.
Don't be so proud of this technological terror you're constructing.
the idea is precisely to chop current record companies into TWO independent functioning units. what is gained by this?
Nothing, except a legal shitstorm, lawsuits flying, lobbyists in body armor.
Never happen.
currently record companies do two functions:
i) PRODUCE -- sign, record, market, and feed musicians.
ii) DISTRIBUTE -- make money from marketing and selling products from the musicians they sign.
No. Record companies exist to enhance shareholder value. Britney enhances shareholder value. Momus does not. Which sucks, but what can you do?
since when and where was any commennt made
that didn't allow drummers in this?
It seems like your PRODUCER/DISTRIBUTOR dichotomy already exists: well-known examples would include Prince's Paisley Park label, Madonna's Maverick, The Beatles' Apple, etc. And, yes: expansion of both creative control and artists' share were their motivation for forming these production companies.
In reality, they bled money because they couldn't take advantage of the economy of scale the major labels enjoy. Their promo and publicity people, having but one or two acts to flog to radio and press, couldn't compete with the majors when it came to getting face time with music directors and journalists.
Second, breaking up the majors makes this a non-starter. Much as I'd like to see the Big 4.5 slip slowly into the tarpits, only the DoJ has this sort of clout and the incoming AG makes this highly unlikely. Ashcroft's probably going to let M$ off the hook, even.
Finally, basing your pay scale on "downloads" alone is pretty weak. We already have Soundscan at the POS and automated logging for BMI/ASCAP/SECAM/etc., both of which are a lot less prone to hacking/padding/fraud.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
hmmm - schmo will go with the status quo.
but he doesn't have any better ideas to offer.
John, I'd love to take this to e-mail. I think your heart's in the right place, but that's not enough. ktakki@artcrime.com BTW.
You favor this top-down approach, breaking up the Majors. What do I want to see? A bottom-up approach to re-inventing this $12,000,000,000/year industry.
Robert Fripp had the right idea twenty years ago, with his concept of the "small, mobile, intelligent unit". That was his business model, fifteen years before home pages and
Perhaps I don't have an alternative system in place. That shouldn't prohibit me from critiquing yours. And if I do criticise you, it's with refining your system, making it stronger, in mind. Don't confuse this with a defense of the "old order".
Seriously, bottom-up, not top-down. You won't get anywhere trying to break up multi-national corporations. Instead, find out what the artists want. What the artists need. If the Big 4.5's creative well dries up, you won't need to break them up.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Thank you! You are a scholar and a gentleman!
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Wrong. Copyright exists to ensure writers get paid. Contracts exist to ensure musicians get paid.
Don't conflate the idea (the song) with the expression of that idea (the recording or performance). Two different things.
In real terms, consider the following situations:
Your one-size-fits-all approach does not do everyone justice.
- the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the musician's pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
Does Iggy Pop (only 5'4") get the same amount as Meatloaf? That's communism!
- so all software is free - you get mindshare from it.
"Sorry, I can't pay rent this month. Here, have some of my mindshare."
- distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
- so it comes back and feeds itelf (the most important part).
Why doesn't your "musicians association" (no drummers allowed, I take it) act as middleman and do its own P&D, using college radio and the Internet for marketing? Pressing and distribution are easy. Marketing is a bitch, especially with commercial radio, TV, and print locked up in a HOT WET 69 with the Big 4.5.
Hey, nice try though.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
You cut the quote short:
"They are also a reminder not always to believe what you read. (Read more). "
I read that and almost bust my gut...
The actual Jupiter claim (see this) was that users of music-sharing technology were 45% more likely to have increased their music spending than people who do not use music-sharing technology. This is still simplistic, untrustworthy and inconclusive, but at least it makes sense, which Katz's bizarre mangling of it did not.
Because those commercials were getting annoying I broke down and visited artists against piracy. It was mostly the usual label rhetoric, but they did have this link: http://www.newsbytes.com/news/00/157500.html To yet another survey that talks about how people spend less money on CDs after getting good at using napster. Napster rocks, it lets you get exposed to music that doesn't get played on MTV and commercial radio, lets poor kids like me get music for free, and should be legal, but don't start calling it a 'potentially revolutionary model for marketing culture'.
you know, you can multitask by downloading multiple albums at the same time.
and why convert to WAV? Nero does it automatically, as do many other burning applications.
i am a thief and know what i'm doing is wrong.
unlike many of the people here I don't pretend to believe that what i'm doing is right, legal, ethical, etc.
fucking loser? think i'm above the law? nope. i know i can get away with it, and do. I support artists by paying $40 to see them in concert and buying their stupid tee shirts. but i will never support them by paying $20 for a $0.50 cd.
I have recreated my LP collection at 256kbps or better, have a convenient home jukebox on the laptop and have no intention of ever paying any major record company anything ever again. So there!
There's just no telling....
as digital distribution goes up, the value-added of merchandising
of 'physical' stuff based around the content will go up. SOMETHING
THAT IS PHYSICAL IS SCARCE, and its value (unlike digital) lies in
that not everyone can have it. thus, collectors will pay a premium
to have something TANGIBLE and official from the band over just a
download of the song.
I'd like to give a small real-life example of this idea...
One of my co-workers is a big time Napster user. He downloads lots of files, and even used to do it from work from a computer in the DMZ before Napster was banned company-wide.
Anyway, a few months ago Madonna's new album, 'Music', came out. He spent US$ 180 to get all sorts of versions, LP's, limited packages CD's... For just ONE album. And that's the way it goes everytime there's something new from Madonna.
So yeah, I guess there are ways to tap into that kind of behavior and make money from it. People will always want to have a little something others don't.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
>>In a few years, when digital audio players (MP3 or ogg or whatever) are completely ubiquitious and all connected to the network, I don't think many of us will still be buying CDs.
Uhh.. maybe you will. I'm not paying hard earned cash for something that goes bye-bye when my Western Digital decides to go head farming on the platters.
Sorry.. I dont pay for mp3's because they are transient.. if I am paying money, I want hard media.. (tape, CD, record) not bitstream. I realize a tape can go spaghetti on you, but when it does you lose what, 12 songs? When my HDD goes I lose 13 GIG of mp3's.. and at 1.00 a pop, or whatever they will end up marketed at, that is a *LOAD* of cash to lose because someone at a quality control department didnt watch the o-scope.
My other problem with Metallica, the RIAA, the MPAA, and other critters, is the concept that you dont *own* the music.. you own the *MEDIUM* it is on.. and once that MEDIUM is shot, you must REPURCHASE the medium.. not the music. That is basically what the DMCA says.. you may *not* make digital copies of music.. even if you purchased it the first time.. because you only own a liscence for *one* copy.. if you want a backup, shell out the 18.50 to hear James growl in digital all over again, because your copyright and user liscence ends with that medium. I dont like that.. its far too heavy handed, and it's far too idiotic. Which just goes to show you what kind of geniuii we have in power.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
"They are also a reminder not always to believe what you read."
Ya, that was a *great* way to introduce an essay, Jon.
Rami
--
rJames.org - illustration
IMHO, eventually all bands will release their songs directly onto the net via Napster, etc.
Some bands are already pioneering this approach.
----------------------------
-----------------------
Moderator's essentials
Illegal == Wrong in the U.S. of A
Yawn. Dont be so Americocentric. FYI, I do not reside in the U.S. of A am are not subject to your laws.
isn't exactly the American way to get things done,
On the contrary, it is the American way. The American Revolution was very much illegal, according to the then current British laws, to which George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, et al were subject. All revolutions are illegal, by definition. That doesnt make them necessarily wrong.
/Dervak
Here's an assumption that Jon didn't mention: The musicians involved in the various lawsuits and such disagree with free music distribution. I don't believe that the musicians that have been "bashing" Napster would disagree with Jon. Look at Metallica. From the beginning, Lars Ulrich has been saying that the reason they're upset is that Napster distibuted their music without permission. They don't have a problem with the idea of music distribution as such (proof? Check out their policy of allowing live recordings), but they want to decide how it is done. Don't forget that it isn't just the industries that make faulty assumptions - the web community does it all the time as well.
Skip Franklin
It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black. -- despair.com
Slashdotters have a clue; the same can't be said of the RIAA
the RIAA is an association. associations don't have views. associationss aren't 'clueless'. the people who run it (presumably the ceo's of the record companies) can be clueless or have views. i'm sure there's a whole bunch of people in the RIAA who realise how stupid the whole thing is, but it's the few people at the top who decide these things.
on a side note, do you seriously believe that the people in charge are that stupid? IAN associated in any way with the bunch of assholes, but i think it's far more likely that they're playing for time, trying to come up with a way to maintain their monopoly, than actually being quite this dumb.
of course, sometimes if it looks like a moron, acts like a moron and smells like a moron, it really is a moron.
RIAA (and MPAA) is scared about their future profits too.
This is incorrect. The RIAA is a non-profit organization.
It's disappointing to see these statistics accepted so blindly by Jon Katz. They do confirm his thesis, but raise at least as many questions as they answer.
There are many problems with asking Napster users if they eventually plan to purchase music after using the system, not the least of which is that framing a question in such a manner encourages an affirmative response. It would make sense to also ask, "Will Napster help you save money on music purchases?" This question also encourages an affirmative response, but in the other direction.
But the real problem with these surveys is that everyone knows the "correct" answer to the question, "Do you plan to buy music after downloading it for free." There is a cultural stigma associated with being a freeloader, and no one who is a freeloader (whether there are two or 200 million of them) wants to own up to it.
An alternative approach would be to use a survey method designed to protect survey respondents against giving a stigmatized answer. I heard about one interesting technique in a survey methods class i took at UC Berkeley (Poli Sci 3). This is a loose outline of the technique, I am almost certainly omiting some important controls.
The system was developed for surveying public sentiment on racial integration in housing. Obviously, people started getting wise around the late 1950s that racism was no longer OK, and in survey-land everyone was suddenly a racial Jesus. Even the racists. Hmmm.
So here's the survey. Six questions for the experimental group, five for the control group. Both groups are all-white.
On each question, the respondent is to come up with a score of 0 to 5 for how angry situation X makes her. For instance, her house is robbed. Her car is keyed.
Each respondent in the experimental group gets an extra question -- a black family moves in next door.
The respondent rates each item, keeping the individual scores to herself. She gives the survey-taker only the TOTAL score for all five or six items.
The surveyor determines the average score for each group. If racism is alive and well (gee i wonder), the experimental group will have an average score that is higher by a statistically significant amount.
The differential between average total score of this group and the control is considered a rough guage of how racist people are when it comes to housing.
This framework, IMO, would work well for guaging whether Napster users REALLY are willing to buy as much music as non-napster users. I'm no survey expert, but I'm thinking you'd need four groups -- one control and one experimental for frequent Napster users and for non Napster users. Each group rates 0 to 5 on how much of a fixed available sum they would spend on various items. The experimental groups would be asked about music, the controls wouldn't. Compare the music differentials for Napster users and non Napster users.
I wouldn't consider code to be strictly "data" in that sense either. Both good programming and good music require talent, creativity, and large amounts of time. When someone puts out something nice, to just grab it and feel that you have the right to do whatever you want with it isn't defendable in my opinion. Now, why do OSS people do it? Because software is something that can benefit by being seen and modified and used by many many people. Music doesn't evolve in the same way. (If it did, I bet it'd be pretty interesting.) I started the analogy between them in my previous post, but now looking back at it, I don't think that analogy works that well.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I'd have to say I object to music being refered to as just "data". It's a created thing, and while it may not exist in the most physical tangible sense, it's not just a type of information. It's important to realize the difference here. Music can't be put under the same understanding as something like OSS, it just doesn't work that way. Perhaps I'm not understanding all of your comments correctly. Infact, I'm sure I'm not, cause some of it doesn't make any sense to me. *shrug*
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
The problem with this is that one of those experts will create a piece of software that allows the casual person to copy everything as well, and when they release it, they'll either claim to be forcing the companies to do something about their weak security measures, or they'll spout off something about freedom of information and how they feel like they shouldn't have to pay for anything.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
a reminder not always to believe what you read. (Read more)
the irony of that statement...
-- Hail Eris
Yo ho ho, an excellent take on this Katz guy.
"Many have chosen to follow. They aren't the ones I'm worried about."
Actually, it isn't KNOWN that only the good songs are on the radio, some good songs don't make it to the radio. Heck, some good BANDS don't even make it to the radio.
And sometimes the singles are nothing like the rest of the CD, Everlast's "White Ford Sings the Blues" comes to mind. "Ends" and "What it's like" are really cool blues songs, but the rest of the CD is rap. Too bad the rock station that I heard them on didn't mention that.
As for the arguement about singles, I personally don't own, nor can afford, a cd changer, so that means that once a CD ends, and I want to listen to a new one, I have to stop what I'm doing and change the CD. I'd hate to do that every 3 songs.
I personally think that the ability to test drive a CD is would be a great thing. Maybe somebody should start up a music store with this idea in mind.
Those who don't know me, probably shouldn't trust me. Those that do know me, DEFINITELY shouldn't trust me.
Yes, these college students may lie to protect their downloads, but has anyone found any numbers that reflect actual record sales over the period that Napster was at its most active? versus a similar period of time without Napster, and the other P2P clients? From several of the articles I have read (most have been linked from /. and I do not recall the urls) the sales numbers seem to be much higher than previous periods.
So...if they are losing money, why are sales up?
This leads one to think that the previous comment about monopoly rather than actual sales is the true agenda.
"The way you think it is may not be the way it is at all." St. Oran
You know its always suprised me how many people actually do pay 18 dollars per cd. I hate malls, I try to avoid them. But thats actually the standard charge in mall record stores. Places like Waves, Camelot, and Sam Goody actually charge these outrageous prices. Every time I go into one of these places I see them actually selling cds at this price. These people could go right across the street to Best Buy and buy the same cds for probably 5 or 6 dollars less per cd and usually no more than 13 bucks a cd for almost any cd. But then of course I guess they'd have to leave the mall, god forbid.
your analogy is braindead.
you cut down the tree, jon no longer has the tree.
however, if jonny is running napster and you copy his cover of aretha franklin's "respect" from his box, he didn't lose anything.
Paul
Is to take out the middleman... if you know someone who has stuff that you want, don't even bother. It could take longer to find what you want at a distro site, or they may only provide you want they want you to have or hear. Or they could be charging you. It's mostly common sense, and a good utilitzation of the fair TCP protocol.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Wow. I could have told you all that. Many people have realized that this was true for a few years. Only those who have condemned file sharing as illegal are out of the loop. I'd love to think that these surveys would convince big business to listen to the public, but I'm sure it won't. They would prefer to do focus group studies...
It seems that the major problem here is that groups like the RIAA are afraid or unwilling to change, either because of the expense associated with it, or for some other reason. If, when the MP3 standard was new, they had immediately started trying to create a system for distribution that involved payment, then there would have been no problems. The RIAA would have made some money (assuming that they priced downloads reasonably) and music lovers everywhere would have been grateful.
However, they started a witch hunt to destroy anyone who might have a new idea about how music distribution should work. They felt threatened, and therefore tried to eliminate the threat, rather than realizing the potential of it.Just my two cents. And for the record I've been saying this for at least 2 years...
~i = an imaginary being~
~i = an imaginary being~
True. The record industry has become so concentrated (the big 5 having 80% of the market) because of the high costs of setting up a whole production and distribution network to stamp out the CDs and get them into the shops. Large companies benefit from the economies of scale and small companies are kept out because of the impossibly high cost of building a network. In itself there's nothing sinister about this. But the record industry has good reason to be scared because the possibility of distributing music online knocks out the central pillars of distribution and production. Once these go, the only functions they have left are A&R and marketing. The latter may still give large companies an edge in the market place, but the former is already arguably better done than the Indies. In the long term, I believe you can't fight the technolgy so, QED, the record companies are doomed and will soon be starting their death throes.
Mersault.
Isn't this what the intelligent analysts have been saying all along?
I should have been clearer. I didn't mean to convey that I have any illusions about what most people are doing on Napster. Only that it's convenient for people like me who stacked beer cans on top of CD's in college...:)
100% of college students will lie on polls if they think it will help them get free music.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I wish I was a moderator so I could mod this up.
FallLine makes an excellent point.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Face it....record companys are shafted and will cease to exist as we know them.....
Just think: no more boy bands, no more spice girls, no more over the hill stars, all sustained by massive advertising campaigns and a sycophantic media believing the corporate hype.........
Maybe people will make music because they actually want to make good music.
There is a more efficient way to compensate artists than "grudgingly" purchasing CDs and effectively delivering to them less than 10% of the retail price. As you know, most of the money you pay at the record store goes to distribution and middle men's services that, ironically, because of filesharing, broadband and audio compression, you didn't even use. The music retail establishment is a good distribution mechanism for people without highspeed internet, but a very poor way to deliver money to creator, if you already have instant access to the content.
We started fairtunes.com to address this exact problem. Quite simply, we deliver contributions you make by paypal or credit card directly to any artist you specify. Have a look!
John Cormie
What JonKatz doesn't realize is that 80% of statistics are made up.
The problem, it would seem, is that systems such as file sharing really don't offer a reliable way to ensure the integrity of data. How much longer do you think it will be before there are groups of people that quest to destroy such networks by saturation them with bogus files or even worse viruses. You sacrifice a great deal of trust and integrity when using a file-sharing system.
----------
do { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); } while (alive)
----------
while (alive) { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); }
Bool
--
--
That's absurd. If these users just downloaded one file, why wouldn't they download the remainder of the album? Especially with a band as popular as Metallica, it would not take long to find all tracks from a particular album.
What makes you think that after downloading one file, they'll buy the rest? That's quite optmistic of you.
99% of convicts claimed they were innocent of any wrongdoing - time to let them go.
99% of college kids claimed they bought the 100 CD's worth of MP3 music obtained from Napster during its operation - gotta love that honor system.
Hogwash - pure and utter hogwash. Want to know why? I've been using Napster awhile now and I can safetly say that I don't even come close to owning even a small percentage of the 6 gigs of MP3's I am now hoarding and I seriously doubt anybody else does either.
Yeah sure I've bought a few CD's that I first heard through Napster - but trust me - those artists have not made a single dime off of me and certainly not off of any of those piss-poor broke College students either. Though two weekends ago I was feeling kinda guilty and bought around $400 worth of CDs - because I felt it was worth supporting the artists who wrote all of that wonderful music.
But as usual this article demonstrates to me just how far Mr. Katz is displaced from the reality the rest of us live in. First he's on his "Geek Inquisition" kick (who cares? The Geeks will feel alot better ten years from now when they find the homecoming king/queen working at Mcdonalds), then we wafts in and out of this "Corporations Taking Over the World" kick and now hes on this "Let Me Get all My Shit for Free because I'm sick of Compensating people for all of their hardwork - kinda like most Linux Users" kick.
In a nutshell - shut the hell up Katz. If you don't understand why people should be able to sell goods/services and receive compensation for them - then by all means pack your shit up and move to Cuba or China. Because you aren't doing any honest person here any sort of service worth taking note of.
The fact is - if the artists and record labels dont want their products distributed for free.... hmmmmm.... I dont think they should have to put up with it. Those artists signed those record contracts - they know the score - like it or not.
Gam
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
This is a very common misconception, perhaps born of IP-industry disinformation and propoganda. But copyright -IP as a whole, actually- exists not for the benefit of the artist/inventor, but for the benefit of society. Read the Constitution, it's in there. "To promote progress and the useful arts" or something close to that. To benefit society, not to benefit anyone's pocketbook.
Clearly, current laws are contrary to this idea and instead try to attach full rights of property to what has no tangible form. This is why current IP laws are constitutionally invalid. They are completly counter to the original idea.
That people believe that copyright is to protect profits must be a great coup for copyright holders (which are companies, not artists). Since this is what people believe, how can you oppose them when they say they want to take your rights away for the sake of more profit. To most people, that's the whole idea....
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"Rock over London... Rock on Chicago..." -Wesley Willis
>"with an opportunity to preview it before listening"
hrm... what an idea... preview sound before you listen to it
-aslan
Ye manglers of code
Who twist and scrape the data
The find the motherlode
Blessed be, ye hackers
:-)
Inquisitive lads and lasses
Keep curiosity burning
While you sit there on your asses
--
NO TOUCH MONKEY!
Why not with music and movies? I have a huge VHS collection. Am I going to have to upgrade all this in 5 years because VHS VCRs don't exist anymore, and mine's inevitably dead? That's a completely crappy deal if you ask me.
Same with CDs. No matter how careful you are (and I am pretty damn careful) they scratch like buggery, and are generally useless after 5 years. Why do they even bother selling them, why not just call it a three year license at the end of which you could pay a buck or two and get the media replaced. I've ripped all my CDs (well all the ones that don't suck) for my personal use just so I don't damage the damn things any more.
--
NO TOUCH MONKEY!
In all seriousness, I'm not saying I buy the RIAA's argument that they "own" the songs they have legal title to at the moment. The argument over Napster, though, should proceed (IMHO) along the lines of what is legally, morally, and ethically valid; we shouldn't be able to bypass those concerns by saying, "But it's for your own good!", even if it is.
I don't particularly buy that it is for the RIAA's own good, either. As with DVD/DeCSS, "piracy" is not at all the issue; what is at stake is the collective monopoly on distribution held by the RIAA. If an effective network for distribution of MP3s is allowed to develop, these guys are toast in the long run, and I think they know that (which is why they're ignoring the short-term benefits.) Personally, I'm looking forward to it.
Everything I buy is royalty-free... unless copyright has been extended to cover Tchaikovsky (sp?), Vivaldi, and the Bachs. Anything with lyrics just gets in the way of coding.
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
I use Napster and I like it. I especially like the convenience of carrying around sound as a digital file. But I also have found it (very) easy to record music right off my local FM stations with a jump from my stereo to my sound card. The quality is extremely high. Its very easy to take these digital recordings and edit them however I want with standard open source software. I then end up with mp3's that are (to my ear) the equal of what I can get with Napster.
RM
yes but printing it yourself is more expensive than actually buying it at barnes and nobel on sale.. burning a cd off downloaded music basically costs the price of a blank cd (>$.50) considering you probably would pay for the internet connection and the cd burner anyway.. - i can download a copy of any of shakespeare's worrks TODAY FOR FREE from PROJECT GUTENBURG - but i still go out to amazon to order a copy. why? i COULD download it and print it myself on my inkjet printer, but it would cost me more to download and print then to buy a copy that's already nicely packaged by a bookseller. in essence - the 'data' of the book is free, but i'm paying for more than just the content, i'm also paying for the convenience (over printing on my own inkjet), and the PRESENTATION.
yeh i always wondered if people had ever tried to get a new cds for old scratched or broken ones.. i have serveral cds that wont play correctly because of scatches or cracks.. one of my gfs hard to get misfits cds got caught in the latch of the glove box a while back..
first, its been commonplace for people to buy CDs, records, or tapes after hearing a song on the air.
and its commonplace for people to be disappointed with the cd they bought that only had one of two good songs out of 18 or so.. thats why I personally don't buy much music.. its not worth $10+ for a cd with 2 good songs no matter how good those 2 are or how good the cover art etc is..
I, for one, would prefer to pay directly for the products I consume, and not for the packaging, the shipping, and the marketing tie-ins.
I'm so sick of going to a hockey game where every on-ice event is a product tie-in (e.g. the frito lay power play), sick of having to watch brainless sitcoms because advertisers believe they put teens in a mildy amused (and thus receptive to advertising) state, sick of movies which exist solely as advertisements for the action figures.
Do musicians have to follow the open source model? Should you give away your music for free as a loss-leader for the cover art? Should someone else be able to sell your music (with no profit to you) just because they can design better cover art than you?
The Internet provides a golden opportunity for artists to sell their products direct to the public at a reasonable price. That way, you're not paying the industry fatcats and you're not subsidizing the label's search for new boy bands. You're just paying for the product you want (the music).
BTW, In addition to the singles you hear on the radio, you have ample opportunity to preview the album before you buy it. Many sites provide clips from every song on the album. Plus there are magazine reviews, newsgroups, and word of mouth.
How to rationalize theft.
Hell, Ayn Rand believed that if we abolished income tax then rich citizens would voluntarily pony up the dough to pay for roads, an army, etc.
I'm not a big fan of the bin music companies, and I do think the Internet can have a positive effect on the music industry, but Napster is not the only possible solution.
Most people are honest enough that they will pay a reasonable fee (as opposed to $20 for a cd) for a service so long as the payment mechanism is convenient (no forms to fill out). A system of micropayments would allow this. You could listen to a song on demand for $.05 or buy (i.e. download) the whole album for $1.
Online radio formats like RealAudio help because they do not allow the user to save the downloaded music to disk. Yes, they can be subverted, but this indicates a consciousness of guilt. Micropayments can be easy and automatic. It is still possible to subvert the system, but it requires effort to do so, and you end up feeling like a criminal. Who wants that?
If Napster was illegal then only criminals would use Napster.
How to rationalize theft.
hmmm... I just doubt that existing hard media artists would go for this object model. They (hard media) arent going to support the new (soft media) infrastructure forever, and that's what your object model proposes. CD Sales = incoming revenue. Part of that revenue goes to the money pool. Money pool split up to artists whose songs are downloaded.
If an online artist either a) Is not selling hard media (by design) or b) Just isnt getting their cds bought then they're going to get money from hard media's money pool. And if i was JohnDoe's Band selling two Platinum CDs and not allowing my music for download then there's no way in hell I would want to share my sales with JaneDoe's Band who dont even have a CD available. UNLESS it comes from the cd labels commission. I dont care what they do with *their* money... but by the same token, they'd probably just bump their commission up anyway. who knows.
IANAMA *grin*
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Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Yes. Right. As everyone knows, sending out unrequested to potential customers urging them to purchase your product is a great way to make friends on the Internet.
This is revolutionary! They could patent it as the "Sounds Pretty Awesome, Metallica" system of marketing (SPAM for short, in case you missed that...)
/bluesninja
Well, it's getting close to a year since Jon started going off about the "revolution" in media (music, video, etc.) file sharing, and I have yet to see Katz put his money where his mouth is by making any of his books available online. Where are they Jon? Why aren't you taking advantage of this new type of marketing? Oh, what's that? Your publisher won't allow you to do that? Oh, I see, because you whored yourself out, that let's you off the hook? Hardly.
Jon Katz, Pundit, "Writer", and Hypocrite.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
Jupiter Research says it found that 45 per cent of online music fans are more likely to have increased their music purchases than online fans who don't use Napster.
Can someone please translate this sentence to English for me? The best I can do with it is: 45% of Napster users buy more music than the average non-Napster user (which would mean that 55% buy the same amount or less). This doesn't sound like a positive thing.
It seems to me that if Napster users bought the same amount of music as non-Napster users, that 50% of Napster users would be above the average non-Napster user and 50% would be below. It follows that if Napster users bought more music than non-Napster users, more than 50% would be above the average non-Napsterino, and less than 50% below. This particular statistic (45% are more likely) tells me that Napster users buy approximately 5% less music than non-Napster users. I haven't examined any of Katz's other statistics in detail, but just this one leads me to distrust that the numbers are being interpreted accurately.
I don't like this statistic, because I find Napster a useful tool to find great music. I discovered Nick Cave and Tom Waits through music sharing, and have since purchased 7 albums by each. I also discovered Guster, and have purchased all 3 of their CDs. Without music sharing, I probably would still not know about these fabulous artists, and it saddens me that I may lose this tool in the future.
At the tender age of 18 the compact disc medium (a.k.a. CD) died slowly during the first year of the third millennium. While the medium served many purposes and spawned several thriving offspring (including CDr and DVDs), ultimately mass storage devices, capable of holding trillions of bytes of data and online trading supplanted the CD as the musical medium of choice. During 2001 broadband technology reached more than 10% of US households and small, low-power handheld devices provided storage for hundreds of hours of music and video enjoyment for each user. Compression formats such as MP3, DIVX and Shorten teamed with peer-to-peer trading protocols heightened in reaction to recent corporate attempts by Napster and MP3.com to profit from file exchange. Manufacturers of digital phones and portable digital assistants (PDA's) began to incorporate these microdrives and protocols as "value added" services for their consumers making it very simple to transfer files and create personal playlists. The compact disc leaves behind many known survivors including large recording companies, CD duplicators, industry trade publications and chain record stores (which at the time of this report, where attempting to solicit CDs, vinyl albums and 8 tracks as collectibles). Condolences should be sent directly to the RIAA.
Broadcasting LIVE from a Bonus Room Over the Gara
OK! Give me some cash!
I believe you should get a clue, and I wish you hadn't posted as an AC, as the irony would have you hiding your tail and never posting again.
Metallica, yes I mean *that* Metallica, contracted to have the entire Load album on the radio through some large radio promotion company, when it was first released, in order to increase interest in purchasers. Complete with interviews with the band. No, I am not kidding.
Dork.
Go Kathryn Thurber!
Ok. I have almost 10GB's of mp3's, like many, many people out there. I didn't pay for most of it. I have a burner, too. I decode the mp3's into CDR files and burn them onto a cd so I can listen to them in my car. That's stealing. Yeah, the recording industry is ripping us off BIG TIME for the music we pay for, but that doesn't make it ok for us to take it for free. It's just not ours. We had no contribution to make the music we take. I did, however buy a CD for the first time in about 6 months the other day - I think that about makes up for the music I've stolen... =) I'm not saying what the music industry does is right (not by ANY means) but what we're doing isn't exactly honest either. Oh well - it's a catch-22 I guess.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
For kicks, I downloaded the new Eminem album, not thinking it would be all that, and listened. I thought it was decent, and bought the CD.
I'm not saying that I don't leach the occasional pop song for dance mixes, but if Napster/GNUtella / Bithive (when it gets going. Props to cr0bar who brought us the Maxtix Bastardization) allows me to find music that I like, and then support the artist that created it, I say it's double plus good (and that's not duckspeak. or maybe it is?).
Now if I could just give my money directly to the artist . . .
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
I am a college student that had Napster Killed... That was not nice. Since that has happened I have not bought one new CD(thats about 1 year now). I dont want to buy a whole CD for one song, I want to Download other Songs by an artist and hear the Songs in FULL before I waste $12-$16 on a CD that cost MAYBE $5 to make. I now only support the bands I like, I will buy there new CDS, but as for the rest, I am going to find way to get a taste of there music before I buy.
CS majors, we are the geeks that run it all. Without us things die.
But that's the great part about capitalism... If enough consumers want it, it doesn't matter what the "industry" wants, consumers can vote with their pocketbooks...
Of course, consumers would have to agree on what they wanted... And that hasn't happened, at least not yet.
My personal thoughts on record companies is that they won't make more money (as some have suggested). They'll go out of business or find a new business. Let's look back at other industries that were eliminated or had to adapt due to technological change (and what caused it)
- Pony Express (Telegraph)
- Human Phone Operators (Mechanical Switches)
- Train-based Cargo Service (Highways)
Trains are my favorite comparison... They had been the only real way for farmers (artists) to get their product to the consumer. They were not convenient, so you had to bring your product to them. They could charge what they wanted, nuts to the farmer.Then came the massive infrastructure buildup, interstate highways, long-haul trucks, with competition between trucking lines. All of a sudden the railroad wasn't the best way to transport goods. Trucks could go all the way from producer to consumer, no loading or unloading, no trouble because there wasn't a train station in your town. Trucking was better and cheaper, and competitive speedwise.
So the rail industry began to shrink. Bankruptcy and all sorts of nastiness ensued. But eventually the market stabilized, and trains haul what they do well (big, heavy things long distances), trucks doing what they do well (everything else).
If we want to make this similar to the RIAA, the train lines of the time would have petitioned the government to make hauling corn by truck illegal, or coated the farmers' goods with an epoxy that only the train companies could remove once it was at market (it's a stretch, but gimme a break).
In summary, the RIAA should realize that they are not in control... The artists and consumers are, and the RIAA membership is not really needed anymore. They need to find a new way to add value, instead of these stopgap measures to try to secure a distribution position that shouldn't even exist anymore... Or they won't exist anymore.
Actually, no it's not stealing, or the vast majority of it can't be for a simple reason -- almost all the music on napster is also on the radio. That means that any method of recording and convertion to mp3 could have been used, so it can't possibly be stealing as the radio is free. Also, even if someone downloads some song w/c isn't on the radio and isn't authorized for publishing on Napster by the producer, that isn't stealing either, b/c that person has no way of knowing such(as for the person who originally published it online, that's another matter)
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
So what if what we're doing isn't illegal? They can't launch invesigations against a million people. And they can't ban napster from doing what it does b/c any website can do the same, and they don't ban offering file on webistes, do they? Specifically, they can't prevent napster from being as it is now b/c ppl can offer legit files, and to stop that would be a violation of the constitution. Furthermore, the companies can not prove the source of the music offered on napster. If it is something that was taken off the radio, put ontoa computer, and offered on napster, it's not illegal. As they can't prove that every offering on Napster wasn't on the radio, they can't prove that anything illegal was done.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Actually, '#8 Hot to Death', and '#12 Today (Watch Me Shine-Featuring Bronx Style Bob)' were pretty decent too. But by an large, the rest of the album wasn't quite what I was hoping for either.
-Nez
But my dreams they aren't as empty, as my conscience seems to be...
RIAA (and MPAA) is scared about their future profits too. CDR drives are becoming more and more popular, and so is broadband. The future will only make it easier to download music (and movies/TV shows) and burn them to a CD. The future will only make it easier for people unless something is done now to stop/hinder the current trend.
You misunderstood me (actually I was too blunt to make myself clear). I agree with your post, I don't want to see ANY file sharing means made illegal simply because there is some type of file sharing that is potentially (if not mainly) used for trading music illegally.
My point was merely to illustrate the problem where people say that people who use Napster often go out and buy the CD if they like it. While this may be true, it may be a result of users not having the combination of a CD burner and broadband. When these become more popular (as the current trend) will there be more people taking copyrighted music and making illegal CDs? I think yes, will it be significant to reduce total CD profit for RIAA companies? Don't know. I believe that it would be in RIAA's interest to not wait and see if this becomes true. Obviously they will try and ban any means of file sharing. I would hate to see the day when this happens.
As for another users comment that RIAA is non-profit... yes I know I was just generalizing RIAA as a representation of the member music labels.
College kids are probably the savviest test-takers in the world. all i'm saying is, ASKING them if they buy more shows nothing, except that they like Napster and free music and want it to continue by telling the pollster what Jon Katz wants to hear.
(having said that, of course, i am still in favor of forcing 90% of all musicians into retirement, making all music totally free, and enacting more laws to prevent musicians from reaping monetary rewards for their music .. that oughta get rid of the backstreet boys, britney spears, and most of the rest of the crap .. i think Jello Biafra, Billy Bragg, and I would still be out there though)
i could live a little longer in this prison
They did a study to prove my .sig is the norm and not the exception!
Viv
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I Use Napster. I use DeCSS. I buy over $1000 a year in CD/DVDs.
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
As we move closer to 100% digital distribution, with no physical product, where does the money come from?
Also, why would I pay any significant money for a CD when it's legal for someone to download and burn the CDs locally, charging only for resources consumed (with a slight markup)?
Sure, stealing is stealing. But those guys on MTV with their "FU*K NAPSTER" t-shirts are just using the service as an excuse for poor record sales. Memo to Metalica: you're a VH-1 act now and nobody likes you.
Ridiculopathic Proadnivity
How are we being distracted? Environmental concerns are voiced on a daily basis in mainstream and corporate-owned media. Environmentalist-oriented marketing is unavoidable in our society. Far from being distracted, we are having our noses rubbed in it.
Its all about power and greed in the end.
No, it's about 250 million ordinary human beings who each individually would like to be able to put their kids through college. They are the ones screwing things up, not Mr. Rich Fat Cat.
Whatever happened to old-fashioned desire to listen to good tunes by good artists without all the 'Brittany Spears' marketing hype thrown in?
1) 40 million teenage girls apparently consider Brittany Spears to be a "good artist." Who the hell are we to tell them they are wrong? Maybe they think our music is crap, too.
2) Basic rule of marketing: No amount of hype will sell something that people don't already want. You cannot manufacture demand. Brittany Spears is not the product of hype, she's the product of doing research to find out what teenage girls are naturally into and then selling it to them.
Intellectual property is theft as surely as property itself is theft.
From that point of view, charging people for the labour you perform is theft as well. Hmmm, interesting....
For every 1 CD a user leeched off Napster, there would have to be a >1 number of CD purchases inspired by Napster to make up for the missed gains. The number of CDs that 1 leech can leech in a week is greater than the number of CDs that 1 purchaser can purchase in a week, (forget about subtracting the number of CDs that would have been bought anyway without Napster for a minute) and there is no way in bloody hell you are going to tell me that there is even a 1:1 leech:purchaser ratio on Napster.
So how can Napster possibly increase record sales? It doesn't add up....
I think the >12 gigs worth of pirated music on my HD speaks volumes. I haven't bought a CD in 2 1/2 years. Why buy something I can hear for free?
Uhm...when does Steve give us the balance sheet for the record company and its expenses? And why did his friends not read the damn contract before they signed it?
If books are a needless/useless item, what is music?
It is true, this is a great way to find new music. I was into MIDI files and found one song I liked by a french artist (no free publicity here) and looked to see what else he did. I soon found all his stuff taken down due to the Griffen Records legal team. Due to this action, I now think of the artist as a one trick poney with only one good song. I have never heard his stuff on the Radio, so my message to Greffen Records, is the free advertising that did reach me has been retracted, therefore I know nothing of the artist, and therefore have no reason to seek his music. On the other hand, I have heard other songs on the radio and internet and I have bought the CD's (eg PDQ BACH is very funny and I have most everyting put out my Tomita on LP & CD) I now refuse to buy a Griffen label, Dr IRE and Metalica.
The truth shall set you free!
Wanna know why online sales of digital music have failed while Napster has thrived?? Repeat after me: Consumers puke on pay-per-use services. Divx, hourly ISP plans, pay-by-the-minute cellular - hell, even most restaurants give unlimited refills on pop. The same goes for paying $2.99 for each shitty 128 Kbps MP3 on Sony's website.
Even if Napster costs $19.99 a month to use, myself and millions of other people will still continue to use it. Why? Because it's easy to use, I only pay once, and I won't have to worry about the moral ambiguity of downloading music. If I download two whole albums a month, I'm already recooping the cost. Plus, the record companies will still get my money when I invariably purchase some albums in meatspace b/c I want the cool packaging w/ the cool music.
The record companies would do best if they would stop w/ the ridiculous and gratuitous litigation, the SDMIs and other "secure" digital music formats (that will inevitably fail anyways), and embrace services like Napster.
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We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
You can't force them to agree to something you like because you think it will be good for them anyway. The bottom line is if they don't like it (and the courts agree with them) then you can't do it.
dynamo
While I agree that the system has not changed, technology has, and it now allows a different distribution medium.
Here are the two cases:
1) I'm only paying for the released "good" songs, in which case I can do whatever I want with the bad ones since the record company has deemed them to have no monetary value.
2) I'm paying equally for all songs and I don't want the non-released "bad" songs, so the record company is sticking me for stuff I don't want and didn't have a chance to preview.
Technologies like Napster allow songs to be distributed independently of the album, and with an opportunity to preview it before listening.
Albums are simply a distribution convenience that is quickly becoming antiquated. Ideally, songs should be sold in their own right and bad songs don't get bought.
Nonperiodic Central Trajectory
Having Jon Katz write "the truth" about file sharing is like having him write about Colombine, or asking Slashdot about the pros and cons of the GPL. You already know you'll get something severely biased, so why even bother reading it?
Nothingnes is I.
Merging with the great Void,
that everything and nothing,
all in one,
and one for all!
www.enthea.org
Whatever happened to old-fashioned desire to listen to good tunes by good artists without all the 'Brittany Spears' marketing hype thrown in? Call me an idealist, but it is my deepest desire to see mini-revolutons like P2P file-sharing circumvent draconian ideas like censorship and intellectual property. Intellectual property is theft as surely as property itself is theft. If we are not careful we wll all end up up in Richards Stallman 'Right to Read' world.
www.enthea.org
A survey by Yankelovich Partners for the Digital Media Association found....
Interestingly, reports American Demographics,....
According to me, any survey company can produce statistics to prove anything. Where are the statistics involving money? What is the dollar amount that could have been earned if every song downloaded was paid for?
According to me, surveys are for chumps.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
What's the difference between putting a tape in your tape-deck and recording off the radio and downloading a song from Napster? Quality? Availaiblity? I STILL DIDN'T BUY THE CD!! Um..yes
My other car is first.
If ever having left someone's prescence, you feel as if you lost a quart of plasma, AVOID that prescence -W.H.Burroughs
In our society we seem to have forgotten a very simple concept relating to capitalism. This concept is known as the dollar vote. The record companies will not produce that which you are not willing to pay for, and they will not charge what the consumers are not willing to pay. The fact that they do is evidence of how little an impact Napster and similar applications have had on the record industry. If, as they had claimed, free distribution of music had hurt their industry, then they wouldn't be maintaining sales at upwards of $15/cd. They still have a huge audience, and one that is more than willing to shell out the $15.
What Napster IS allowing is an alternate venue for those who already were not willing to pay $15 for a CD. Those people previously got audio tracks from their friends, used MiniDiscs, etc. Remember mp2? Music sharing is NOT a new concept. Before then it was cassettes. Napster just makes it a little easier to find music. Those who previously purchased CDs will continue to buy CDs even if grudgingly because some people think the artists should get money even if it is just a meager piece of the pie. Others will continue not purchasing CDs. OR, they could hear something they really like and WANT to buy the cd. Imagine that.
Today I grudgingly purchased 4 CDs. I seldom purchase music, but in spite of the record company, I want to show my support for the artists. No profit for the artist means no money with which to produce music. If I hear something good, I want to make sure I hear that same good music in future.
Really, the record companies aren't going to lose their current consumers to napster and they only stand to gain new ones. Antagonizing those who do purchase CDs is not a good way to secure the future of the industry.
I send you this message in order to have your advice.
Holy shit man. This was the same idea I had only you got to it before me =). Beautiful. Just beautiful. Still a little small, but it'll grow huge I have no doubt.
A couple of comments:
1) I couldn't find any option to send money orders. You list cheques but I'd think money orders would be less of a hassle? <shrug>
2) Seems a little dot-com-ish from the outside looking in. I think people might be more keen if it mentioned a little more often that you don't take any cut of the money they send to the artists.
3) You indicate that you do support non-musical artists but I think branching out to all forms of art officially could give you way more coverage. I'll bet art and literature magazines and newsletters in communities could cause this system of payment to blossom.
I'd really like to know if I can get involved in any way other than just tipping artists. Drop me a line at ituil@hotmail.com (you could try the address in the header but it's flaky at the moment).
I send you this message in order to have your advice.
I am far from rich, but I still have a very large music collection. I use napster alot, but I can get entire albumns from friends alot easier (I have about five gigs of mp3's in a collection of 30 over 30 albumns). The strange thing is, even though my friend might give me the cd in mp3's, and I have a burner, I still end up buying the cd. Most of you woulnd't understand, but theres usually more to a cd than the music. Some cd's (like tool's undertow) artwork is worth 10 bucks by its self. For those of you who do nothing but download and pirate music, try buying the cd's of bands/songs you like. Once you get a large enough music collection, then tell me it's honestly not worth is to buy the cds.
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
I only have a 56K modem. I'll be damned if it's worth the time, effort, and even cost of electricity to try to download an entire album. I very often will take 1/2 hour to download one song, and if I like it, I'll buy the album. I have a feeling that I'm not alone.
I am one of the 55% who decreased my purchases to zero. Who wants to pay 14.99 for a CD with only one good song on it, when you can go online and get 12-15 good songs and make the CD yourself? People are cheap by nature, and therefore once Napster starts to charge, there will be a million copycats.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
I haven't bought a single CD since napster came out. I don't have a CD burner, but many of my friends do, and I just burn free CD's of only the songs I like. What really killed me is the fact that I had to pay for a whole album to get ONE SONG. When subscription based Napster starts, I will move on to Gnutella, etc.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
I think the apt analogy here to TicketMaster. It's not as though the sertvice they provide is very difficult or complicated -- it's that they have a lock on distribution that makes them rich. Can you imagine what would happen to their business if they had real competion at the distribution level? I can tell you that you wouldn't see those $5 mystery charges anymore...
Jon, I understand you have to kiss-up to the /. crowd, but this is taking the cake. It so deep here now I have to have stilts.
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Most music downloaders aren't thieves or pirates but music lovers willing to pay for music.
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#1. They are still breaking the law by downloading music they don't have rights too. Regardless if they go out and buy it later they are still breaking the law. You cannot circumvent time here.
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Artists have made more money from this new generation of music lovers than they would have without them.
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#2. Oooh... I would love to see this proven, ain't no way in hell. What may really be the truth is that previously unheard of bands have made more money, but defintely none of the mainstream bands can be said to have made more money this way.
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Record companies and other corporations should be supporting file-sharing sites ratherthan hiring lobbyists and lawyers to intimidate, sue and enrage new and eager customers.
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Yes they should try to promote distribution of LEGALLY DISTRIBUTABLE music and film. However they have every right to shut down any service which does not control the distribution of content that they assist in locating.
Sorry Jon, but distribution of material you don't have copyright to was a crime before the internet and is still a crime.
One other question, just how honest do you think people are who anwser polls? Please tell me, I saw a recent one which the poll asked people who they voted for. The had nearly 80+ percent people who responded to the poll as claiming to have voted, amazing considering less than 40% were registered voters...
So Jon, this article of yours is frightfully stupid. It is a pure kiss-up article, which gleefully ignores facts and instead attempts to pass off as intelligent by blowing smoke up the backsides of readers.
Mod me down, I don't care, but this takes the cake for brown-nosing articles.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"And oh, yeah. Don't believe what you read about yourself. "
I'd just like to mention how pleased I am that Jon Katz always writes witty, incisive, balanced, cutting-edge, and thought-provoking articles.
;-)
I agree with some of the generalizations made here; I think the most important reaction to sharing mp3s, movies, etc, is how it is showing up in the business world. File sharing across the web via apps like Groove, etc, will become prevalent and make working with in groups over long distances easier. Maybe then I could finally work from home!
hawaiianshirt
However, artists do need compensation. Using metallica and dr. dre were a poor choice by the industry to campaign against napster. I can see why they did it - because those bands are widely known and visible - but as we've all seen, lars ulrich admitted in an interview that he'd never even been *ON* napster before. They are also hugely rich and don't suffer much from downloaded MP3's. However, smaller artists *are* hurt by it. Artists such as MDFMK and other lesser known bands.
Napster truly does hurt them financially..BUT it also has the potential to help them by increasing their audience. This is why a small fee ($5-$10 a month) would be ideal for napster.
Don't think it hurts small bands financially? A friend of mine gave me Richard Cheese CD for xmas, and said "I don't know why you wanted this, this is the kind of band that I would just download..."
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Pillock. Wonder why you didn't post under your real name?
As for the moderators, you can kiss my rosy red UK ass.
--------------- Delete Windows before you mail me
I agree with John.. Metallica and dre are a bunch of money hungry pu$$ies.... They should be flattered people even like there music.... And if there not, why dont they go to college so one day they can get a real job.. I use napster to find out about little known dj's... Id rather have piece of mind than money, haha BLOW ME MATTALICA AND DRE!
You're right, I couldn't remember it exactly and I didn't have time to make sure. I was hoping no one would catch it! Guess I should've paid more attention in Economics.
Because of this, then, therefore this! Since the beginning of the Napster war, I've heard the argument that "people who download music, buy more music, therefore downloads lead to sales." Though I can't stand the RIAA, and I completely agree with the existence of music sharing, I think this is another week "statistic" supporting napster. Napster, I think, is bad for big bands like Metallica, but great for many would-be-Metallica's!
You don't own the music. Giant corporations own the music. If you havn't paid the price they set for the products they own, you're a thief, any way you cut it. You can moan all you like about the injustice of the market, but all that would make you is a whiner, or a communist.
Katz is not only pathetic, he's a pathetic appologist for criminal behavior.
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You sure got a purty mouth...
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You sure got a purty mouth...
The Dead built a huge fan base by putting on monster concerts, and oh yeah, free drugs, but thats not whats at issue.
They own their music. If instead they wanted to crush every tye-dyed wearing granola dipper that tried to sneak a recoder into a show, they would be right to do so.
The music doesn't belong to you. It belongs to artists, and huge corporations. If they aren't inclined to give it to you, and you take it anyway, you're a theif.
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You sure got a purty mouth...
I don't like newspeak either. I'll just call you what you are. A theif.
Personally, I think it is an unalienable Right of any man, woman and child to copy any and all released information without any restriction.
So, we can expect you to post your credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and social security information here, right, theif?
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You sure got a purty mouth...
Hatch doesn't speak for the Congress. The Congress is free to file briefs if they want. They didn't. So much for that. But thats besides the point. I want to first touch on the "fair use" issue that you have convientently forgoten in your long winded justification for theivery.
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
Stealing music with napster meets none of these requirements, let alone all four. Note, there is no reference at all to the quality of the reproduction being considered as part of fair use. None. Nada. Do you get that?
Now that I've done your homework for you, I'll continue to disassemble the rest of your pathetic excuses.
Call me what you like (I'm not primarily a computer geek- I'm a musician- and clearly oh such a criminal in putting my music out as mp3s
You are free to do whatever you like with your music. So are the record companies, and their contracted artists. If they want to sue you into oblivion for violating their copyrights, good for them.
I think I know what fair use is better than you, regardless of whether you are a RIAA lawyer or usenet troll or whatever explanation you have for your oddlyfamiliar,takeke no prisoners concede no losses rhetoric.
It is in evidence that you don't know jack shit about fair use. You have the law sitting in front of you right now. Tell me how napster meets the fair use laws. I'd realy like to know. And as far as take no prisoners or conceding no losses, it is hardly necessary to do so when you are so clearly in the wrong, and I am so clearly in the right. Were it simply a matter of opinion, you would be right. But its not. Its a simple matter of fact.
Well, in the music business we have exactly that: it's called digital copying, and we even have quick cheapo copies called mp3s that aren't as good as the real thing but even easier to copy and transmit.
And we have a whole body of law that covers such things. Its called Title 17, US Code, authorized by Article I section 8 of the US Constitution. What you feel about it isn't worth a fart in the wind.
Like it or not (for you, I'd guess it's 'not'), this changes everything
Like it or not, you're dead assed wrong on this, too. It changes things about as much as, oh, say, the radio changed things. Not at all. The issue isn't whether you have stolen a physical copy, its that you have stolen the work itself. A work that someone else owns the rights to. Do you think radio stations play whatever they want without paying the right holders?
Yet what is the product? You don't get the physical media- did you want that?
Write this down. Copyright infringment has nothing to do with physical media. Repeat until it sinks in. You have *no* right to a work you didn't create, regardless of how you got it. Just because something is easy to steal doesn't make it not theft. You are a thief.
Hell, never mind credentials: tell me three books on the music industry that you have read that qualify you to have even half a clue here. I will be happy to give you a list of titles if that will help.
You read a book? That is absolutely laughable. I write software for a living. My mortgage gets payed because there are laws protecting my IP. If some theiving luser living in his parents basement thinks he's some kind of expert on that because he *read a book,* then he's dumber than I thought. You go on and keep looking for your name in Variety. The law will continue to be what it is. Its right up there for your perusal.
Me? I'm going off right now to upload still more music to besonic.com/chrisj:
As long as its your music, that you own the rights for, more power to you. If you upload someone elses tunes, I hope they sue you into non-existance.
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You sure got a purty mouth...
Thats not my defenition, straw boy. Its intelectual property and contractual agreement. You don't own it, they do. I realize that pisses you off, and sends you off into wild machinations attempting to justify your theivery (which, of course, is modded up by the equaly theiving drones that get to do that kind of thing.)
But lets disassemble your little diatribe, anyway. Then you can get back to your lawbreaking.
[Snip many red herrings related to distribution media]
Do they own the 'recipe' for the music: publishing, music, lyrics, the same tune done by a different artist?
Yes, in fact they do own the music, lyrics, and most importantly, the right to publish same. That means if they want you to pay for those things, and you don't, you're a thief.
Do they own that recipe if you cover the tune only to test out your recorder or something and don't try to distribute?
Thats not realy the case now, is it, straw boy? Are you going to now tell me that Naptster's whole purpose for existence isn't distribution? "Gorsh! I just thought it was a fancy pants radio!"
Moron. But lets continue.
Do they own the pattern of _sound_ as presented on CD?
That is precicely what they own. Go head and sing happy birthday on the radio. You'll get a call from the Hill family, who owns the tune, asking for their royalty.
It is exactly this fact that makes all your other lame excuses for theivery just that. Lame excuses.
Many of these situations have been tested in court and found to be fair use.
The law clearly defines what fair use is and isn't. Distributing full copies of a work does not constitute fair use, and Napster clearly falls out of that realm. Napster has been tested in court, too. How did those cases end up?
How is it so difficult to see that copying degraded versions of the music noncommercially without stealing one single CD of physical product off store shelves is equally a natural sort of fair use?
Because it is not fair use. Here is your mission, Sport. Go look up exactly what the law says fair use is and isn't. Distributing whole copies of a work aint it, ever. I'll even give you a hint: Its in Title 17
I realize that another primary attribute of "geeks" is to fantasize that the law says something that it realy doesn't in order to justify their propensity for larceny, but you realy should know what the hell you're talking about before you post on a public forum. It's embarrasing.
And when you're done reporting your findings, go read this: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/docs/napsteramicus.ht ml
So the real answer to your question "how can one not see it's fair use?" is that I know what fair use is, and you don't. Simple!
You're a fool to take the record industry lawyer side of things. Period.
And you're not only a thief, your an idiot thief as well. Period.
I'll be anxiously waiting for your "fair use" report.
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You sure got a purty mouth...
Every pathetic attempt at justifying your larceny gets better and better (or worse and worse.)
But the structure of the industry which does not pay artists trumps that. The fact that the mechanism that distributes the product to the consumer this way or that way and costs less, marginally less or is free will not alter that one fact.
Oh, I get it. If you buy the music, instead of stealing it, the artist may or may not get his fair cut, which justifies your theivery?
Whether artists get a fair shake or not is an issue that artists need to solve when they sign their contracts. I'm qute sure if they wanted your advice, they'd give you a call. All you do when you steal the music is ensure the artist won't get paid.
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You sure got a purty mouth...
I'm a folksinger and songwriter and like most musicians I'm doing it for fun - I need a little money from gigs sometimes to cover my travel expenses, etc. The only reason I would have ever even bothered with a real record contract is so I could reach more people - but this is completely irrelevant now! The cool thing today is that I can make a CD myself, send it off to get gigs, reviews, radio spots, give it away for free or tips (lots of people give me $5 for one even though they cost me about $2 each to make), and distribute it for free online as .mp3s on my website and through MP3.com. I can therefore reach basically as big an audience as I want to without any help from the music industry. The best thing is, of course, I don't have to kiss anyone's ass or accept "production" to make my CD more commercial just to get it out there. So look and see the writing on the wall - as long as I can distribute a mailing list, get reviewers to post my website, etc. I'll _never_ need the record industry. Good riddance, capitalist pigs!
I think that musicians should be rewarded for putting on a good show, and paid for it. But spend a couple of hours in a studio and make a million dollars - sorry, sounds like the lottery, and I don't think anybody ever really had a _right_ to win the lottery! Anybody claims that there won't be good music anymore if the record industry dies really doesn't get it. I'd say, the entire thing could go under right now and none of us would miss a beat.
PEACE LOVE FREEDOM ANARCHY
;) you want free music? Check out Left Hand Circus. Just low brow, in-the-back-room stuff, but we love and make music, and we'd be honored for a handful of /.ers to request a free disc or two. We make music whether we profit or not (but it'd be nice to buy ramen off of the generosity of our fan).
*braces himself for downward moderation*
Try my nuts to your fist style!
I've been disappointed in all of the conversations on Napster that I've seen because they all have left out the key to Napster's legal argument on their service -- under the Home Recording Act (of 1994?) record companies receive a portion of the sale price of blank tapes and cds to compensate them for loss of revenue due to home recording and that home recording and sharing of music is okay as long as it's not done for profit. Therefor, each of the file sharings done through Napster is not an infringement, and, therefor, the sharing done in aggregate isn't an infringement either.
This is key to the understanding of the situation, and adds to the point being well made here -- the record companies are gaining from this experience, and the people sharing the music aren't stealing anything. Big label big name bands benefit because more people buy their CDs. Small (or no) label unheard of bands get exposure to an audience all over the world when they may not be able to get bar gigs out of town, and this can create sufficient demand to give them a chance at success they might not have had otherwise. Everybody's winning here, so why are we using legalities to try to strangle the fowl that keeps leaving those gold eggs behind? Because of the drive for hypermarketing, and the fear that failing to take every possible marketing idea will leave everybody behind.
What is hypermarketing? Hypermarketing is filling every available space with advertising. It's not just newspapers, TV and radio anymore (and billboards, and fliers, and business cards and bulletin boards). It's:
- the carts at the grocery store,
- the little monitors by the register at the corner store,
- the billboards on the sides of busses,
- being asked by your waitress at Denny's if you want Minute Maid >tm< Orange Juice,
- getting Bruce Willis to drink your beer before shooting bad guys in his next film,
- being pushed by your cashier to sign up for an affinity card or credit card every time you make a purchase,
- being buried in jumk mail (snailmail and email) to buy everything imaginable (whether real or not),
- getting phone solicitation calls all hours of the day or night hawking windshields and siding and political candidates,
- mouse-pads,
- ballpoint pens,
- toys,
- little yard signs popping up everyplace, and
- increasingly pushy banner ads and pop-ups on websites.
Wherever you go, wherever you look, the only thing more prevalent than government involvement is some little ad popping up trying to sell you something.Much of the advertising is from new small businesses trying to get their name out and get started -- I've been there, and I'm still there, and I'll be looking for new ways to market my new service shortly. I have some sympathy with these folks, because it's extremely hard to survive long enough that anybody knows what you're doing and that you're good at it if you are. But something critical to keep in mind with this is that targeting your message is harder than blanketing, but it will pay off in this way: People are getting tired of being hypermarketed. Speaking just for me, I don't buy from spammers and I don't buy from phone solicitors, because I don't want to encourage people to spam or phone solicit, and there are other forms of advertising which I will boycott a business for -- I don't make a big deal of it most of the time, but I just don't go there, even if I would otherwise.
But most of the money in advertising comes from very large businesses with established products and services, which pretty much everybody already knows about, and most of the advertising isn't about the merits of their product. Cola commercials, beer commercials, logos popping up all over the place for products and services are there to build brand, so that you will go look for products from this company or that store, rather than, I don't know, decide based on merits or price. Has anybody decided to move from Coke to Pepsi or vice versa based on any marketing paid for by either company?
Hopefully we're close to the end of the pendulum swing toward hypermarketing, and people will begin to target their messages and to be more reasonable about their expectations from their advertising. Hopefully we can get companies to stop trying to grab every possible dime they can grab from their customers, and treat them with some respect again. Maybe we can see a tidal turn away from monolithic record companies and mass media telling us what we do and don't like and toward more of a connection between artist and audience where people can bypass the expenses of producing, marketing, packaging and distributing music if they desire and pass their compensation directly to the artists. This may (but that's not a certainty) result in some loss of jobs for people in the production, marketing, packaging and distribution of music, but that's a natural economic evolution, no more to be avoided than the death of the buggy-whip and bridle industry was a century ago.
Napster is yet another support of the principle of the internet -- great things can be created when many people are willing to share things together much more quickly than if people are trying to sell something and make a buck, and people can make quite a few bucks along the way if they are smart and know how to pick their battles. This is a battle for the record companies to walk away from. They're making money on the status quo they wouldn't make otherwise.
Also, isn't '45 percent of fans more likely to have increased their music purchases' at least a second, if not a third derivative? How likely is 'more likely' and what were the purchasing habits of these people before?
It's nearly meaningless information.
Hay thar.
Sounds like communism. Good in theory...
File sharing, at least in its current form (full version, completely unregulated) may be good for musicians, but it would be a disaster for directors and authors. And even with Napster changing to a subscription based service, all this means is that people will switch to new forms like gnutella, and eventually, Freenet, the next big thing in file sharing.
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
"And oh, yeah. Don't believe what you read about yourself."
Okay, here goes.... I am not a shit head. I am not a shit head. I am not a shit head. I am not a shit head. Cool a few more times and I think I'll get it. Thanks!
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Mr. Johnson,
I must first and fore most explain that my comments do not reflect the views and beliefs of our entire band. These are opinions that are straight off the hip are often times inaccurate in the assumption. If this offended you and warranted your reply, then my appologies to you. Point well taken.
Mark / Chin Ho!
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They are still breaking the law by downloading music they don't have rights too
The only right that they have is the listening priveledges. Not mixtapes, not mix CDS, etc.
"Rights" terms some one who the song writing credits are attributed to, being ASCAP reg'd, and many other copy protection laws. I wrote it. Therefor I own the rights. I say you can listen to it.
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A agree with you... and I would go further. Greedy record labels are not worried about losing record sales, but about being THEM and NO OTHER the ones that get benefit of this new emerging media (Internet)
Basically what they are doing is creating so many barriers and legal problems that only established powerful industries can get a piece of the cake, making it impossible for independent or startup companies.
Anyhoo, if the legal people have their way, it looks as though he will get his wish, and have to pay whether he likes it or not ;)
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
Perhaps I am alone on this, but sitting on a university T3 never stopped me from downloading anything. I have downloaded 1.2GB MPG4 movie files over IRC without a second thought. Sure it takes a damn long time, but who cares? If people want something, they are going to get it.
Sorry.. I dont pay for mp3's because they are transient.. if I am paying money, I want hard media.. (tape, CD, record) not bitstream. I realize a tape can go spaghetti on you, but when it does you lose what, 12 songs? When my HDD goes I lose 13 GIG of mp3's.. and at 1.00 a pop, or whatever they will end up marketed at, that is a *LOAD* of cash to lose because someone at a quality control department didnt watch the o-scope.
So download your mp3s and burn them onto a cd, as mp3s. Or put them onto tape, as mp3s. No-one said you have to keep 'em on your hard drive.
SpatchMonkey
SpatchMonkey
I can only speak for myself. But since Napster's creation, I have *purchased* more CDs than before. Anyone that has been burned by a one hit wonder knows how frustrating it is, to get a CD home, and just love one track and the rest of the CD sucks. Now with Napster, I am more prone to trying different stuff, stuff not played on modern radio, because I get to preview the tracks first. Before Napster, I was a "buy the new album of the few bands you love" kid. Now I am buying 6-8 CDs a month, a lot from new artists too. Napster truely has *made* me buy more CDs.
Umm - this will never work.
Because when digital is free, traditional media will go away even faster. And why would I still purchase media when digital devices will be everywhere.
OTOH, charging from downloaders (as Napster will probably do) will only drive people to "Other" download sources.
So there's the catch...
Besides, Sex & Drug's & Rock'n'roll would have never come int oexistence in such an over-regulated scenario.
My 2cents
Zeropaid.com
Record companies tactics legal? Last I heard, the record companies were being sued for conspiring to inflate the price of CDs by witholding promotional money from retailers who offered lower-priced CDs. There's a reason you're paying $18 for that $.20 piece of plastic. And that's why I blame the record companies for the mess they've gotten themselves into. I just can't sympathize with them.
Dont you presume to speak for me. Im not a pirate. I have never attacked any shipping. However, I do perform unauthorized copying from time to time. And I dont like Newspeak. Whatever dude, you're a pirate. I don't care if you don't like Newspeak, Newsweek, or Cherry-Lime aid, you're still a pirate by 21st century English. If you don't like being called one, stop pirating. So what? Until the 1860s it was perfectly legal to own slaves in many American states. Legal!=Right and Illegal!=Wrong. Well, you're half right. Legal != Right, however Illegal == Wrong in the U.S. of A. Ultimately, despite whatever you beleive to be the "unalienable Right of any man...", it's not currently a right of any man, woman or child to copy released information without restriction in the States. If you think thats wrong, well then bravo! Go do something about it to get the laws changed, but hunkering over a keyboard on Napster isn't exactly the American way to get things done, and furthermore it isn't getting anything changed!
Why do these old ideas keep popping up in new packaging? The points made in this post are elaborate and provocative, but completely wrong (in a moral sense). The key here is transportation. It's an expensive thing, and if you think about it, all the worlds businesses make ALL their money, on one layer of abstraction or another, on transportation. When an engineer designs a product, the reason for the disproportional amount of money between him and his bosses are all a measure of how far he is from the means of production (im sure the poster of the parent comment know this rhetoric very well). So, obviously the engineer is bitter. But who does he strike out against? His Bosses. This is the first mistake, because everything has a balance, and if you remove one thing, without putting another in it's place, something will replace it. But this posting proposes to replace the record company with a collective of recording artists which share profits uniformly. The implications of this model are *even worse* than those of a big business model. You'd have a group of people of unequal talent, unequal production, dissimilar messages, and most often, very different amounts of effort invested in their projects, all receiving the same amount of money. If the fundamental flaw of this arrangement isn't obvious, then we're all fucked. I want an oppressor that is tangible, when my situation is fucked, I want it to be my fault, or some other discreet entity; but kill me before you dare to make everyman my enemy simply because i am not the type of person who can idly sit back and profit on the works of others. We are all *created* somewhat "equal", but it is one of our responsibilities as humans to subjectify and improve ourselves. I think if we were all on a sinking boat, and we had the option to swim, or to tie everyone on the boat together, the natural solution would emerge, and the insanity would sink on it's own premises. Think.
Perhaps the real reason the corporate monoliths hate distributed file sharing is that is exposes "their" consumers to so much more choice?
Marketing a relatively small and homogenous group of artists makes it much easier to stay in control and maximise margins. Money for nothing, and the chicks for free... Napster and friends, conversely, are introducing Joe Sixpack to more and better music than he had ever imagined existed.
File sharing not only threatens today's sale but it erodes the record companies' control over what the mass market hears and wants. In many ways it obsoletes the mass market altogether and we get to be individuals again.
Radio once posed this exact same threat, but it was brought to heel with intimidation and corruption. Now the same script is being played again...
So many people have been taken in by the Rec. Industries FUD!?! Fear of lawsuites. Uncertainty - "This CD now costs HOW much?" Doubt - Lost revenue may be "there" argument. The Recording Industries fear losing control over the musicians and artists. If anyone (ie musicians/video artists) can distribute data, then just having this ability makes the Rec. Ind. non-relavent. Consumers don't need the Rec. Industry. Artist don't need it anymore. It is the future of data distribution that they fear. A future that they can no longer control. OOP! Did I state the obvious? "Don't forget"
All P2P file sharing software is an alternative distribution mechanism to the traditional embedding of digital Intelectual Property in physical objects like CDs that need an entire distribution network.
The revenues of Recoding Companies exist because of the leverage they enjoy from owning and managing world class embedding and distribution networks, this is also the reason that they screw over artists regularly and give them only a very small portion of the sale price of each unit of music. These recording companies also currently shell out most of the money for publicising the performance, and hence are also publicity companies for their roster of artists.
File sharing presents a threat to their business because it will erode the basic competitive deterents (like large investments in distribution relationships and recording equiptment) that these companies have built up over their histories.
Napster will allow artists (or Companies that exist to distribute Itelectual Property over Digital media) to bypass these existing behemoths and deliver their IP for a overall lower cost to the consumer and higher margins for themselves.
Its right! You shouldnt force the artists to have their music published over the internet for free! ;-), I would suggest to donate money to artists you really admire. Remember: If you donate 10$, this is perhaps the equal for the artist to 5-10 CDs sold by the Label. This could make possible more independence of the artist from the label! The artist could even make more cash by publishing the music for free than by a contract with a label!
But are this the artists who dont want this? Mostly not, I think! This are the music labels! They prevent the artists to decide over their own music because they force them to agree to bad contracts that makes them to give up all intellectual property of their work!
This looks for my like modern slavery or working conditions in completely free economy like they were in the age of industrial revolution!
So they not changing the copyright law to ban such slavery! The original creator of the intellectual product should ALWAYS keep the right for his property! EXCLUSIVE contracts should be made illegal because they cheat the artist!
With such a changed copyright law artists could alternatively offer their music over Napster and perhaps make some extra bugs although the recording industry is against this (for good reasons for their own sake).
In the meantime until we get this great law
Wouldnt it be a better world if you get things for free and pay for the things you like?
I know I am utopian - unfortunately
Amen
I just don't get it!
The copyright laws make radio stations pay licensing fees to show the public whats hot.
The record companies claim that Napster makes it difficult for them to enter the online market. Like, yeah, they have no money, or didn't think first.
I'm more than willing to buy stuff online. I do it all the time. I'd buy music. And I'll share music. What's wrong with sharing? And why think small. You don't have to share within just your circle of friends. What's wrong with sharing on a large scale?
That answer is: It hurts capitalists! By their god, they have rights! Well, by my God, I have rights too. Whose god wins?
This is not a question of who benefits. It is a queston of who got hurt. And the pain, is in the pocket book. Napster threatens capitalism.
So, short sighted, yes indeed. If I can share music with my buddies, then I can say everyone is my buddy.
MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY! When I play a CD, I hear music. When record companies hear a CD, they hear how much money they might make on it, or have made on it, or lost on it, or 'why didn't I sign that artist?'
The winner in the Napster case will be the Capitalists. Profiting wins over sharing. That is the nature of Capitalism. Right or wrong, that's the way it is. And right or wrong, society is the way it is. Only society can change the model of how it works, and the Captitalist model is severely flawed with ramifications extending in every direction.
How many employees at the record companies had to piss in a bottle to get their jobs? The next thing you know, they'll be inspecting your teeth (not to provide dental insurance, though)!
Pigs 1, Sharers 0
Success = evil? Depends on what you think success is. "I can see it now .. in the future we'll all leech..."
I can see it now. Many online sites rely on fans to enhance their products for no pay at all. Game companies, Winamp, and many more rely on fans to supply content and downloads to enhance their products. This content and the downloads add value to the product, but the content providers get nothing for their labor. This is happening on a wholesale basis, yet there are no laws preventing the online companies from profiteering on their fans.
"We slowly rot... where no one strives to innovate".
Substantiate this! There is no proof of this. China is thriving. The USSR crumbled due to mismanagement and graft, and economic pressures and sanctions against them by Capitalist countries.
Innovation in the US is motivated by money. You're saying that if you can't line your pockets, then why innovate? That's short sighted. Innovate because you can. Ambition, when motivated by money, is misdirected. That's not ambition at all.
Our rights are deteriorating rapidly. You gotta piss in a bottle to get a job, as if the company hiring you owns ALL of your time. Companies offer 'competitive' wages -- apply now and find out what 'competive wages' means.
You have the right to assemble, as long as you ask for a permit. You have a right to free speech, as long as you don't offend anyone. You have a right to bear arms, as long as the 'arm' is meant for hunting. You have a right to privacy, but you gotta piss in a bottle to be worthy of having privacy.
Money is not everything. Innovation can be applied here. Napster allows me to share music I have bought, and allows me to get music I've already paid for, though it's in a different format (mp3s).
Innovation is not equal to making money, and if you only want to innovate to make money,and believe that making money is all that innovation is good for, you got some thinking to do. Innovation needs to be applied to capitalism! Captitalism is flawed, and severely, with ramifications extending in all directions. The US has the highest crime rate in the world. Corporations maneuver to gain market share, and even maneuver to force other companies out of the market, or take control of another corporation. People buy stocks in companies, in the hopes that other people will later find them more valuable so that they can make a profit. These innovations are motivated by greed. Surely, we need motivations that are not motivated by greed! We need to move toward a sharing, communist society. This 'every man for himself attitude' is not God's law. And the amount of money you make is not a measure of success. If it is, it surely is twisted. And it is, and it surely is twisted!
Success can be measured in many ways. You can measure success by
a. How many smiles it brought to people's faces.
b. How many people some act or action brought together.
c. Pervailing against insurmountable odds.
d. Innovation that makes people happy.
Napster has gained accomplished three out these four.
Recording companies sign contracts with artists for a certain amount of time. After the time has passed, the record companies are the only ones making any profit from sales. The same holds true in television production. After a show is canceled, it can be syndicated, and many performers don't reap benefits from the syndication, but the producers and syndicators do.
Napster is an innovation that allows people to share the music they have. What is wrong with sharing? Pray tell! What in the world is wrong with sharing? Obviously, capitalists find this intrisically evil, and a very threat to their existance. So they have laws written protecting them from people sharing what they have bought. Now, don't you think that this is selfish, if not evil?
Napster is truly innovative! It just presents problems for the people who sell music, and the number of people who sell music are far fewer than the number of people that listen to music. So, the capitalists say this is wrong! By what measure? By the measure of how well they can line their pockets. If you think that thier rights outweigh people's rights to share, then you are truly lost!
The record companies are claiming that people are using Napster to share on a wholesale basis. So? Whats wrong with sharing with everyone? Is sharing with everyone and anyone bad? Or should sharing be limited to only within a small group of people, like close friends and family? What's wrong with saying 'everyone is my friend'?
And finally, the record companies have nothing to fear. The mp3s I've downloaded vary in quality from very good to poor. Thes mp3s' quality follow a bell curve, with the majority of them being mediocre at best. People are recording these mp3's on not so professional sound equipment. If I want to listen to the best recording I can, I gotta revert to the tapes and CD's I've bought, or spend a lotta money on audio mixiing software, then lots of time cleaning up these mp3s to sound as good as the originals. The audio software costs $400, and the time it takes to restore a mp3 to original quality isn't worth it when I can go to the music store and buy a CD for $12 to $15!
So, all this legal maneuvering by the recording industry against Napster is unwarranted and just plain paranoid. If you ask me, Napster is a step in the right direction to distribute the wealth, and bring lots of smiles to lots of people's faces, including musicians! The real trouble is, the only way the record companies can capitalize on Napster (and this is not so innnovative) is to get an injuction to make napster unavailable to people, and sue Napster and Co for damages. They have, by God! Because they have the right! Yet our rights to share go unprotected.
I don't know anything about the Home Recording Act, since I'm not an American, but I do know that under a number of international treaties (which the USA has signed up to), the reproduction of copyrighted material is a crime. There is no theft of physical property involved, but there is theft of intellectual property, which, whether immoral or not, *IS* a crime. The Law is *NOT* on the side of people who copy the files. It does seem as if it *MIGHT* be on the side of companies like Napster, who can prove that they haven't broken copyright. However, Napster have never once tried to claim that none of their users are breaking copyright, they are simply attesting that what their users do is nothing to do with them. You're right, though, that the morallity has nothing to do with the Law. As I'm writing this post, I've got music from a 14 hour play-list coming out of my speakers... Simon. -- E-mail: spiffo@spiffo.co.uk ICQ: 100081043 Web site: http://www.spiffo.co.uk
stealing? i state : stairs are not going up or down! it depends which side you are, up or down! just maybe, our law system is not covering things like this. let me introduce this small technique to you. nowadays it is possible to set up your own audio server, for instance using winamp and shoutcast. this way it is possible to let you listen to music which is on my disk. the music could very well be on my disk legally ,cause i have tons of cd's whith license to share it to you in my own living room.
though, technique is giving us the opportunity to share music all over the world as stated above.
now, you tell me, would you be stealing music if you are logged on at my winamp server, listening to music i have the right to share? .....
then... in near future we could expect a program which keeps databases with online radio servers and the playlists from those servers. the servers might even be remote controlled so you would be able to listen to any music, any time....
what would the riaa say now?, listening to music is okay inside living rooms but you cannot set up a radio server and broadcast copyrighted music which woulb become publicly available ...
hmmm ,so we would make the radio servers not public .........
riaa again->you can only share to people you know .. ?!..?
where is the end of the disscussion?
I know i am stupid as hell guys. but what is this guy thinking spending 5.5 hours of foolling around with his data? steinbergs wavelab 3.0 batch processing and fraunhofer included. small note on checking your sound material, you dont have to if you have the right tools. Bonus quote(seems to be a hype) if the shoe fits, you don't feel it!
small hint, burn your shit on 2 speed. audio uses less overhead data to compensate reading errors. the complete error-compencating structure works until a level is reached. you will not notice this in the beginning when you listen to you cd, but as it lasts and gets filty and scrathed it will begin to give errors which occures in cracks you hear on your cd-set. your software is okay to burn at 8 speed. because of this other error-compensating struvture it will be protected at higher levels.
Some people send instant messages to people that download from them advertising their product or service - I think it is a great way to advertise.
The technology culture of Columbine is media. The media culture of Columbine is technology and culture media media culture Columbine. Media. The culture of media and Columbine technology media media culture media. Media. Culture.
Do they own the physical media in the stores you haven't bought?
Do they own the physical media after you've bought it?
Do they own the 'recipe' for the music: publishing, music, lyrics, the same tune done by a different artist?
Do they own that recipe if you cover the tune only to test out your recorder or something and don't try to distribute?
Do they own the pattern of bits encoded in PCM 44.1K 16 bit encoding?
Do they own the pattern of _sound_ as presented on CD?
Do they own the pattern of sound in the event of your making crude copies (audiocassette, mp3) and selling them as bootlegs?
Do they own the pattern of sound in the event of your making crude copies (audiocassette, mp3) and giving them to your Mom, or your friends?
Do they own the pattern of sound in the event of your making crude copies (audiocassette, mp3) and giving them to strangers on request?
Do they own the pattern of sound if you hum it walking down the street? Do they own the pattern of sound if you sing it at a Girl Scout campfire gathering? Do they own the pattern of sound if you hum it or sing it to yourself? Do they own your _thinking_ of the music to yourself and 'playing' it within the confines of your own head? (thinks of Metallica's 'Sad But True' by way of example. There- if you've heard it and remember it, I have just conspired to make _you_ think the song, without paying the record company >:) )
Many of these situations have been tested in court and found to be fair use. If you side with the record companies unthinkingly, you're just stupid: they push the limits, that is what being a money-grubbing corporation is all about, and you cannot simply take their claims at face value. In the event that they manage to pass laws that forbid you thinking their music without paying per thought, I daresay just about anyone would see it as a moral obligation to resist the situation and deny them that 'right'. How is it so difficult to see that copying degraded versions of the music noncommercially without stealing one single CD of physical product off store shelves is equally a natural sort of fair use? Ask me whether shoplifting CDs is theft, you'll get a different answer. Ask me whether making bit for bit clones and SELLING THEM AS BOOTLEGS is piracy and you'll get no argument.
However, if one person wants to borrow a cheap dub of some commercial music from someone else without money changing hands, it's none of the record companies' business- and if technology has moved music into the 'Star Trek Replicator' era where that person just goes 'poof' and another copy exists without depriving the original owner of his copy, well... that says very obvious things about scarcity and value, and we're seeing the results. You'll notice that the swappers are not GETTING physical media. You'll notice that physical media is not suffering financial losses- business is as good as ever!
You're a fool to take the record industry lawyer side of things. Period. Because you're not making sensible arguments, you're making arguments based on ignoring economic and social realities. It's not a smart position to take.
#2: the artists making that 'more money' ARE THE FREAKING BIG-LABEL ARTISTS, thank you. What gives you the idea that they are not? Do you seriously think sales are hurting? You're wrong. In addition to that, the little indie acts are NOT making more money than they used to- they are just not having to SPEND as much for exposure.
Take me for instance, I've made money off mp3s. I was at mp3.com until they did nasty things to my contract with a fork and I left. (Now I'm at besonic.com/chrisj, still doing noncommercial stuff with very commercial production and engineering.) I made hundreds of dollars which is chicken feed compared to the big label machinery- but unlike the days when I duplicated cassette tapes and printed up J-cards, this time I did not SPEND as much for that level of distribution! That is really the key. It's not even about raking in lots of money as an indie artist- never happened, never will.
Indie is sort of a trial balloon for the REAL value of distributed music. The value of mass media marketing and fads and heavy brick and mortar distribution... is different. Hell, almost half of a CD's list price goes to independent promotion- you might know it as payola, and the record labels don't like being dependent on it one bit, but they tried to kill the independent promoter network in the 80s and totally failed. My chances of cracking that independent promoter network are approximately 2,000,000 percent less than nil, so no matter how much copying goes on, the big labels DO at least have an absolute lock on traditional media. I think they should be grateful for that instead of whining when alternate media turns up.
Oh- and is anyone _ever_ going to do a little tiny bit of homework and clue that noncommercial copying and distribution was formally legalized under the Home Recording Act for the benefit of tape cassette users, and taxation put in place to compensate the RIAA directly? I'm sorry, but 'crime' is not 'that which I think is bad', 'crime' is what's spelled out in the law books, and our government SPECIFICALLY LEGALISED noncommercial copying and exchange when the Philips compact cassette became popular. I just wish, I really wish that people would confine their arguments to reality or stick to emotional squawks. Noncommercial copying and exchange is legal. Period. _Digital_ versions of that are subject to the DMCA and even that has fair use provisions- they just suck, and the guy who put through the DMCA, Orrin Hatch, is very unhappy with what's happened to fair use, and we haven't seen the end of this.
But the bottom line is: crime is what the law says it is. _Morality_ is different, and you may feel it is immoral to copy major label music at no cost and take no money for exchanging it. However, your feelings are _your_ problem because the law does not support you.
First of all, you yourself cite the bit of US Code that specifies purpose and character of the use is to be taken into account: the _first_ concern is whether the use is commercial. That means 'is the exchange being done for money, or for nothing?'. That is the _first_ concern: or if you like, loophole.
More importantly, I can't help but think you intentionally ignore Sec. 1008 of title 17 (you're not the only non-lawyer computer dweeb that can use Google to look up genuine US Code to back his position):
I say Napster is distribution of a digital audio recording medium based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of that medium, and it's on you to explain away the law. Please explain how swapping music on Napster is a commercial act.
I am aware that there are amicus briefs desperately trying to argue that mp3 is not a digital recording medium. I give in, I concede: mp3s are a cassette tape. No, wait, that too is protected! Let me rephrase that: mp3s are a ham sandwich. If you'd like to join me in insisting that mp3s are not a digital recording medium, but a ham sandwich, together we can explain away sec. 1008. On the other hand if you're not a gibbering psychotic you might be more inclined to take the natural view that mp3s are precisely a digital recording medium.
Failing that you may wish to skip over this bit of the argument and lean on another poor bit of argument- that sec 1008 does not make infringing use into non-infringing use: it just permanently exempts that class of users from prosecution or harassment. Which would mean that although you may feel Napster users are thieves, all you _can_ do is taunt them about it, as you are barred from filing suit against them.
Which is just what you're doing, isn't it? I'm glad we understand each other, and no wonder you're upset. Call me a thief some more, maybe it will soothe you despite being an entirely impotent act- and despite the fact that when I talk about putting mp3s on the web I'm talking about my freaking music, which does not even have samples in it.
Honestly, I'd think you'd give up at some point. I can tell you why I don't: what happens to the concept of intellectual property in the music and entertainment industries is of direct interest to me. What's your excuse? Personally, I would like to see intellectual property abolished outright, and for the content creators to fall back on protection against simple fraud and loss of credit: rather than it being illegal to (costlessly, trivially) copy the actual content, it should simply be illegal to claim the content as your own, because that would constitute fraud. I daresay there is considerable justification for prohibiting dilution: I would consider it a violation for someone to take a musical piece of mine, overdub singing munchkins and use it in an advertisement, because that seriously dilutes the recognizability and integrity of my original piece. However, people swapping and checking out my stuff? Sure, not a problem. If there's a black market for people copying and _selling_ my stuff parallel to my own sales, that simply means I'm not competing effectively with their distribution channels.
We can go on like this for weeks: why don't you just give up? You're not winning, you're just pounding the table and referring only to the parts of the US Code you like. That's dishonest. Not that I would expect someone siding noisily with the RIAA of _dishonesty_ :P
Fanzines, books, tshirts - this goes against the beliefs of bands that are trying to convince people that mass consumption of needless/useless items is bad.
Obviously other people don't find these things needless/useless. Tshirts are great. You can wear them just like real clothes! If they have a nice picture or something on them, often band-related, all the better! What's useless about a tshirt? Should we all just wear white tshirts, khaki pants and sensible shoes? Fanzines are another issue. If people derive enjoyment from creating these things, well.. isn't that what life is about? Enjoying yourself and sharing with others? Fugazi seems to be going a tad overboard. Sure, perhaps these things aren't strictly "necessary," but I'm pretty sure I don't want to live in a world where all I can have are the necessities.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like the environmental impacts of such consumption, but I think that can be addressed without actively prohibiting or even discouraging such consumption. Basically if you require that corporations not destroy the environment (or require that they repair any damage they cause or face severe penalties) costs of the merchandise will go up, and production and consumption will go down. The makers can still turn a profit, they just won't be producing or selling on such a large scale.
Actually there's another scenario that would say that instead of production costs just rising, corporations would seek better ways of producing the product without harming the environment (and therefore incurring no cost to repair it, not facing penalties, and not having to reduce production). This could create more incentives for us to come up with better, more environmentally friendly ways of creating the products we want. These methods will probably be more expensive at first, but they always get much cheaper over time.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
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My father who until about 6 months ago HATED computers uses Napster. But I did not tell him about it, he heard it on the news...I have talked to him about it and he said IF he could he would pay for the songs that he has downloaded...
Will you be at the book-signing I want to schedule for my streetside book vendor? We're selling photocopies of all your books now.
Napster is the greastest thing to happen to the music industry (and it is an industry not an art form) since recorded music. Since Napster I have purchased at least 2x as much product than before for the simple reason that I can now sample it and I now know WTF I'm getting for 17 bucks. Whereas before I probably wouldn't have purchased something word of mouth now I can pull a few tracks and decide.
All this money-to-the-artist bullshit is a smoke screen. Artists don't get paid now and changing the distribtion scheme isn't going to change that fact.
The Underground Railroad for example. Ok by the letter of the law which says "if you do this, this and that then you are stealing" then you are stealing.
But the structure of the industry which does not pay artists trumps that. The fact that the mechanism that distributes the product to the consumer this way or that way and costs less, marginally less or is free will not alter that one fact. If CD's were say $40 each would artists all be wealthy?
Even the movies show coming attractions.
As Oscar Wilde said, "I can resis anything but temptation" - if someone /can/ dup a work for a needy friend, they will, it makes the 'supplier' a real nice guy ("Hey, I didn't have enough to buy SO-n-So's latest, but Fred ripped me a copy on his new computer! Gee, Fred's a real great guy!"), nobody will find out, etc. So there MUST be some kind of technical barrier to easy copying, to at lease foil the casual PC pirate, even if the expurt can always break it. I'm sorry, but that's the way it's going to work. Trust you? In business, you trust nobody. In God we trust, all others pay cash.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It took a study from a think tank to figure that one out?
Still, I'm thinking that this new information isn't going to make much difference in the way that the major music companies, and their pet pit bull -- the RIAA, deal with the phenomena? They (the major labels) have the expertise in PR that they can deploy to label file-sharing folk as criminals. How much media attention will be paid to this study? Just think of the potential royalties that could be going back to the musicians if the music labels weren't funding these smear campaigns? Hmm... perhaps emailing a copy of the report to your congressperson would help.
\begin{aside}
I picked up a copy of an audiophile magazine over the holidays and was quite disturbed that the audio electronics industry seems quite prepared to roll over to the wishes of the music distribution megacorporations by planning on incorporating whatever protection schemes they want imposed on consumers. While the magazine didn't tout it as some great new feature, the tone was that ``it's coming so you better be prepared''. What a way to ruin one's holiday cheer! I may be buying new equipment in the future but it looks like I'd better hang on to the old stuff; it may be the only way to playback my existing collection.
\end{aside}
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Yes, I know about IRC. (In fact, I'm one of the founders of #mp3 on undernet...even even efnet for a shortwhile) However, the fact is that the average user can't obtain what they want through IRC. For one, even learning IRC has something of a learning curve for Joe Schmoe. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, getting the mp3s you want requires something of a social network (unless you're talking about one of those xdcc/cdcc type deals), which the average user lacks. In other words, there isn't a great deal of diversity of free music on IRC. The only way you get other music is by knowing the right people...
Usenet is not all that different. Plus the campuses can block that quite easily.
Yes, that might be kind of interesting. But don't forget that there are other relatively easy to use methods of attaining mp3s that many people do use. Like simply, using SMB filesharing, or using one of the other zillion alternatives like iMesh.
- Jupiter Research says it found that 45 per cent of online music fans are more likely to have increased their music purchases than online fans who don't use Napster
This may be a technicality here, but what does the research say about the 55 percent you didn't mention here. If 55 percent of online music fans are less likely to increase or more likely to decrease music purchases then this stat is deceptive.I'll give you the benefit of the doubt Katz, but if you're going to say "don't believe everything you read", you might want to make sure you back your arguments more thoroughly.
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I download a ton of music using Napster, and I buy more CD's now than I ever did before. Primarily because I'm able to listen to entire albums of artists I never would have listened to before.
Most of the time I'll download the whole album as MP3's, burn them to an audio CD and pop them in my changer in my car. The CD's I end up listening to the most are the ones I end up buying. I don't buy everything I download, but it's stuff that I wouldn't have purchased anyway.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Katz "[..] Nearly 70 per cent say that they have not paid -- and will not pay -- for digital music downloads."
Shotgun "It means no such thing. It suggests that people want something for free and that they are quicker to lie about their willingness to pay than they are to produce their money. "
I disagree with your interpretation. An equally valid interpretation is that the current pay for download offerings suck, and that the wording of the survey question was bad. Ie the product is at the same or similar cost but with much greater hassle for an inferior product. My guess is that the individuals would have been willing to pay for download IF the above problems were addressed, but WILL NOT until they are addressed.
LetterRip
here me out. i had a CD, cost $15, how much did it cost to product the CD etc? $2? intellectual property, $13?
Fine!
My CD breaks, I write the Company, my CD is broken, I have it already, I shouldn't pay two times for intellecutal property, I will pay $2 but not more than $3 for the CD. I will send the broken CD back as evidence.
what? no no no! F the RIAA, I have more than 400 CDs, say at $10, that is already $4000. I bought my Fela Kuti CDs for $20 each with a CD containing only 2 tracks! Anyway, down with RIAA, up with mp3, Napster till the greediness is gone.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
What I want to see is hard proof of Napster helping record sales. Not some fuzzy logic from some posters say..."uh, it must be true because I bought a cd yesterday". Not only that, but a lot of people mention an increase in non-mainstream artists. Myself included, I would never have found out names of various Punk & Blues bands if it hadn't been for Napster/newsgroups. However, the RIAA isn't interested in some mythical increase in fringe markets, they're interested in their money bands.
Also, the big record companies might be making more money (in our minds) with this new, open, uncontrolled distribution method, but they're losing something important: A guaranteed stranglehold of their cash cow. Open it up to anyone else, and suddenly they have competition (which they probably don't know how to deal with since they've agreed to a cartel for so long)
So either they continue to make a guaranteed 20 billion a year, or open it up to potential trillions a year? I don't know, but I see that the richer people get, the greedier they get.
Personally I think they should be worried about their artists. And actually I think that is exactly what they're thinking about. Not if some kid spends his allowance on a CD, but that they control the upper-level big-name bands. If only there was an acceptable alternative to "making it big", we'd see more 'big name artists' move away from the big labels. As it is though...you see these nationally no-name bands who work hard for years and years, get a huge city/state following, then get blinded by the big $$$ and move to the dark side. (i'm not blaming them or anything). Unfortuantely mp3.com failed in that regard. I mean to get one 'big star' (if you call a.morrisette a star) they had to give them huge percentage of stock?
(/RAMBLE)
Rader
However, unless the school archives USENET for a period of time, I don't see how getting the new one-hit wonders would work. Most of the alt.bin.mp3 groups I atleast use are full albums. (great for me, just bad for them?)
How long would a person have to wait to get that one song by that one guy in that new commercial on USENET, versus the almost the instant succes and gratification of Napster.
Rader
I would have to agree with you...... and I would also have to say that this statement is total bullshit at the same time. The copying and distribution of copyrighted material is already illegal. The method in which movies and songs are being distributed should not be made illegal, as doing so only crops up a new way for people to do the same thing. The act of distributing the files should be illegal (as it already is...). The *only* thing that Napster distributes is the Napster software. They do not distribute music. Napster should not be held liable for the actions of its users, nor should it be considered the "new wave" of distribution. Had Napster not come around, somebody else would have found some other way to distribute what they wanted when they wanted. The MPAA and RIAA don't give a shit about anything except their pocketbooks. They are concerned about their monopoly powers and their pocketbooks. They know that they are not really losing money in the short run, or at least not much... They are worried about the freedom to screw both artists and consumers that they lose more of daily as more people use digital means of transmitting songs and movies.
wolf31o2 Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team
It seems that if there is something that has not yet been tapped by some corporate source, and it is on the grassroots level (coders, geeks, and the like), then it must have some value in marketing. Since when has DCC and FTP been about marketing? Unless you consider 'selling' the 'name' of Razor1911 or Utopia being about marketing, never.
So, all of a sudden, something that wasn't invented in the 70's and can have a keen acronym (Oooh, let's go from B2C and B2C to P2P!) becomes a new paradigm for marketing!
It all reeks of greed to me.
What about technology for technology's sake? Wait, that doesn't have a place in the Marketeer's Internet. What's happening is that the same Marketeers who wanted some bucks out of the startup phenomenon (invented by geeks) ended up creating the dotCrash. Sites that used to have pure information have become disgusting monstrosities with hot flashing animated java-enabled banners that auto reload the browser every 30 seconds.
And now, the Marketeers have finally understood that their annoying auto-reload hot flashing java-enabled banner ads don't get clicked on. So, they want to have it so we'll either have to wait for the content we want (remember annoying shareware? 10 second countdown to click on 'OK' to get to the goods?), or it'll switch to banner ads every 30 seconds.
If these Marketeers have their way, the Internet is going to turn into the big section of ads that gets thrown away with the Sunday paper.
People want file sharing to get what they want now. They don't want to have to click through ads or go through the load 'Click on this ad, take the first letter of blah blah blah' to get pr0n or warez.
Which, as an avid user of Napster in the past, it's exactly what it's like. Money isn't the issue. I want what I want now. I might share files, I might not. But I want this song now and I don't want to have to go to a store and get it, or go online and wait for it to be delivered. I want it now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still all for the chaos that ensues. It livens things up a little, and brings out the true nature of the parties involved (who would've guessed the MPAA, RIAA, Metallica, et al. were THAT greedy). The thing is, you try and take a transport method or abstract and tack on ads and sell things to people.
Maybe it all isn't about buying. It isn't about the abstract method, either. It's about the information that gets passed over the method. I want the song. I want the warez. I want the pr0n. The method is ignored, and that is the way it should be. File sharing isn't a new thing. But Marketeers hear a buzzword and sell it to other Marketeers which are blindly driving the industry to Core Meltdown.
I don't watch TV. Too many ads. I don't visit sites with plethoras of banner ads -- its disgusting. So much for Tom's Hardware, it used to be nice. Opera was very promising, and I was impressed at what it could do. Wait, version 5 has that nice ad. I understand that people need to make a living off of a webpage or off of a business, but I don't think ads are the answer. Ads end up turning people OFF of something, and people learn to tune them out. Isn't the whole point of advertising to turn people on to a product? And the whole product gets thrown away like the Sunday paper.
I'm glad Marketeers can't understand the acronym that the tech savvy are best at home with: RFC. Else there would be space set aside for a hot flashing java-enabled ActiveX animated banner ad. And probably space for a 'You've got mail!' bit, as well.
-----
Just to play Devil's Advocate - although USENET is ill-suited to the transmission of large binaries, and although a full feed of .binaries.mp3 is probably around 100G per day...
Naturally, if it's only a small percentage of the userbase, it's cheaper to let that population draw down only the portion of USENET they want over the WAN. But when it grows to a large enough segment of the userbase, it just might be cheaper (in terms of number-of-bits-sucked-through-the-big-pipe) to supply it locally.
The best reason of all why "copy-protected" MP3s will never sell.
When you've got 13G of MP3s (as this poster has) at $1.00 a pop, buying a spare hard drive to back up one's collection (and stashing the spare drive in a safety-deposit-box offsite, in the event of fire/earthquake/etc) is a wise investment.
Fortunately, there's not a damn thing RIAA and MPAA can do about my MP3 collection. They're files on hard drives. The operating system doesn't support any form of DRM, and as such, I'll always be able to back 'em up.
The only thing I'd question from the poster:
>if I am paying money, I want hard media.. (tape, CD, record) not bitstream
Tapes are transitory. They'll sound like crap in 10-20 years as the magnetic flux slowly fades away, and/or as the tape itself changes chemically over the years. Vinyl will also degrade over repeated plays, even with spectacular care and expense paid in equipment. The CD (not the CD-R!) is probably the only "it'll last you a lifetime" medium out there.
While MP3s on magnetic media (hard drives) are transitory, at least they can be perfectly replicated from one hard drive to another as part of an ongoing backup strategy. No can-do with tape or vinyl :-(
(Of course, no can-do with MP3s if RIAA and MPAA have their way, but fsck them.)
From my experience here at college, those who have access to Napster are more likely of buying CD's. Of course the CD's they are buying are generally gold colored on one side and anywhere from a yellowish-green to a blue-green color on the other side and come in packs of 100.
Actually, I do know a couple people who do use Napster to sample before they buy the actual CD. These are also generally the people who have REALLY expensive, very accurate sound systems who are music snobs. For the most part though, everyone makes their own, but we all know that.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
stealing is defined in law, and involves loss of property, not loss of prospective property (I would have had XXXXX dollars if all these guys bought it instead of copied it). the correct term is piracy.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
It astounds me how a forward-thinking crowd like slashdot can be so persistently retro when it comes to piracy issues.
When the DeCSS furor was raging, I read many comments dismissing DeCSS as an enhancement to piracy, on the grounds that 1) it is possible to make physical copies regardless and 2) DVD movies are far too large to transfer over the Internet. Nowadays Katz and others rush to the defense of Napster/Gnutella by citing the increased CD purchases they generate.
In both cases, it is only the stody old recording insdustries that seem to understand where technology is going!
Sure, it is impractical to transfer 3Gigabits of film to your friend today, but with the spread of broadband and improvements in compression, in two years it will be conceivable, and in five practical or even common. Similarly, people may buy CD's today for their high quality and ubiquity of playback mechanisms, but MP3 won't last forever, and its successor will surely have higher fidelity and broader support.
Maybe these technologies don't mean the (much deserved) death of the MPAA and RIAA today, but these industries didn't make it to where they are by only responding to immediate threats to their monopolies. They see where technology is heading, when remarkably the slashdot crowd doesn't seem to. And they're hedging their bets.
Yes, they both suck, boo-yaa, etc. But they certainly seem to be several years ahead of the resistance on pure philosophical terms.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
2 Questions.
1. Where do I sign up?
2. How much content am I required to generate per payment cycle in order to get my share?
It seems like this model could reward people who produce very little content or content of very poor quality on an equal level as those who produce lots of content or content of an excellent quality. That doesn't seem right.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Theft? You sucker, don't you know, all property is theft!
So you have a problem with thieves, hey Hog boy? Well how about that there moron G. W. Bush, who just recently nakedly stole the U.S. Presidency?
But he hasn't been convicted in a court of law! Instead the highest court has upheld his right to commit that particular larceny! etc., etc...
OK, I see, you have a problem with thieves who get caught, is that it? Well, forty million or so Napster users haven't been caught yet, and so far as I am concerned, I hope they never do.
The law just isn't half so clear as you claim. It never is. If in general laws were, in this fair land, my U.S.A., alone seven hundred thousand lawyers would be instantly out of jobs, which pray God in Heaven forbid. You know, you yourself talk like a lawyer: specifically, you make bullshit pronunciamenti with flawless self-assurance. That's not only en vogue but de rigueur in court. This here ain't a court though, this is instead the highly intellectual, syntactically sophisticated, logically rigorous /., where we civilized folk sneer as such pretension!
Anyhow, laws don't mean a thing until they have been interpreted in court. Ain't that right? So legally, you can't be a thief until after a court of law has convicted you of thievery under a specific numbered statute. Who's been convicted? For sure, not I! Say now, you might be able legally float wild chartless allegations such as that during the course and flow of passionate jury-rendering argument in the special environment of the courtroom, but out here on the street, harsh unequivocal words like your
are actionable. So y'all watch your dang tongue, lawyer-boy!
Anyway. Fuck the big five record companies. Fuck them right up the ass with a red hot steel poker.
In general, fuck capitalism. You know (or maybe you don't know, in which sad case I pity you for a lost fool) what capitalism claims in terms of moral duties: that I, as just another private individual sadly lacking a large surplus of cash lying around, that is to say, a workie, that I have no rights whatsoever - no right to eat nor to breathe nor to occupy any volume of space, not to live at all. Sans cash, go die - and pay for your interment, or face your estate being sued! At the same moment, and I'm supposed to take this rubbish seriously: here's yet another swollen jerk bearing before him as the escutcheon of his nobility, a lordly cash-wad - hey, look, look! all, kneel and scrape, saints be praised, it's one of the rich! - braying at the front of his procession, here's his high-browed publicist to lecture us over his sponsor's holy property rights, which that moneyswine himself bought from legislators and judges shamelessly unaverse to being bribed, and he lets me know in no uncertain terms that the foundation and entirety of the concept of right and wrong is indentically synonymous with paying a downright religious obeisance to those legal rights, down to the last jot and tittle of legislative detail.
Now I don't know exactly what you mean by "justify," Sir Plato. I probably don't want to know; listening to these depressing circular arguments not only sets me off my dinner but conjures up ugly demons who chase me remorselessly all through the too few hours I sleep. But I got news for you, Hog boy. These are moral questions and I will listen to authorities but I will not yield authority, period. Surely not to that cynical joker Valenti, even unlikelier to IANAL on slashdot. Not even to a judgment at law. Suppose some begowned ass in a court somewhere, interpreting lobbyists's laws, pounds down his big wood hammer and intones, "You lose!" - not in the least would that ever induce me to believe that innocently to swap an mpg should be seen by the sane as the same as the foul sour sin of stealing.
Mr. Hog, I know sin, and Napster is no sin.
would that ever induce
me to believe that
innocently to swap
an mpg
should be seen
by the sane
as the same
as the foul sour sin
of stealing.
What fun! Good night!
Yours WD "happy new year!" K - WKiernan@concentric.net
I agree...I never seemed to listen to music very much and hardly spent much money on CDs until I went to college. Once I started downloading music for free and seeing what all was out there I got interested. It got me starting to listen to more music, buying CDs, and even got me listening to the radio more. Buying CDs and being forced to hear more radio ads has brought nothing but more money to these companies.
FoonDog
Are you really new to the music industry? This is exactly how it has worked for the past 50 years. Britney Spears sells 12 million records, which goes into a pool, and pays for 1,000 other acts which were not popular enough to pay for themselves. Why is this better, and, moreover, why should the current system be replaced?
iggy pop gets as much of the pie as is determined by
the percentage of downloads of his music.
Wow you are clueless. So, if 12 million people download Britney Spears, and 5 people download Koshmi Arguituro, that Spears gets $12,000,000 and Arguituro gets $5 (proportionally correct).
FYI, in the current system Spears gets approximately $500,000 (from record sales) and Arguituro gets approximately $50,000. This is because virtually all of the profits made from Spears are pumped into the 1000 unprofitable acts which went into the production of Spears.
So in the system you are proposing, only the extremely dominant and successful players will get money. Moreover, they will become much more dominant than they are today.
How is this better than the current system? Did you forget to think when you posted that or are you just generally clueless?
that I've heard for a long time....
"They are also a reminder not always to believe what you read. (Read more).
According to the January issue of American Demographics..."
This study does not measure what people do.
It measures what they PURPORT they MIGHT do when questioned on their activities by an authority figure. (the researcher.) Anyone who knows anything about building social psychology studies would dismiss this out of hand.
I will say this for the reference. My wife just finished taking Psychological Research Methods in college. This pointer should be a great one for her ex-TA to play "whats wrong with this study" with.
MP3.com is in the process of blowing this. Their site keeps trying to force users into using their player, so they can send ads at you. If you have JavaScript on, the site won't let you use, say, FreeAmp. (There's also the fact that most of the bands on MP3.com need to go back in the garage and stay there, but that's a separate problem.)
The war has already started. It's RIAA against everyone else. Look at RIAA's history, for these guys, everything is a holy war.
Too bad it's really going to quash this segment for people like me who just download "replacement" songs. Some (most) of my CD's from college are pretty torn up and since I own the fucking things to begin with, I don't feel bad about downloading them again....
First of all, except for song hunting, it's really your computer's time you're using, not your own, unless you sit in your chair and stare mindlessly at progress bars for fun, in which case, buddy, your time is NOT more valuable than that.
Claiming that "45 minutes of quality checking" is part of the recording process is like saying it takes 45 minutes to buy a CD because you have to test it for defects to see if you have to return it. In other words, you're going to be listening to the music you downloaded ANYWAY.. otherwise what the hell did you get it for?
- Go do other things while downloading.
- Go do other things while converting.
- Go do other things while burning.
To summarize, the only real work that requires you to actively participate is song hunting, which with a fast connection and a service like Napster, is practically nil."Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
So, I was gonna flame Katz for once again not being able to create a link, but this time it looks like the article in question just isn't on-line. Still, Katz ought to have mentioned that right after the link that leads only to their main website. I suppose he did say "January issue" and the site shows that it's giving you material from December.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Yes. For a more detailed analysis, see How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate.
And we all know that no college kid would EVER bullshit about something like that right? Right?
Everybody I know who uses Napster uses it for one reason and one reason only: Free music. It is choose-you-own-programming-radio, plain and simple.
I stop short of hyperbolic terms like "stealing", but Mr. Katz's argument ("Hey, we are just marketing your product to ourselves! By listening to your songs without paying for them, we will make you huge piles of money! In fact, you should probably be paying us!") is at least as silly and extreme as what the record executives are saying.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Okay, but picture this: I create a few songs. I join the pool, but I do not release a cd. I generate *NO* profit for the system, I just make music available for download through the system. If everyone downloads my digital music then I am theoretically entitled to a large portion of the money pool when I have contributed none through actual physical sales. Is there some aspect that I have missed to prevent this sort of situation?
---
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
I certainly remember, in my college days, playing a little fast and loose with answers to those "What College Kids Think Abut XYZ" polls. The pollsters were just too easy to mess with!
Still, the survey is probably more right than not.
sulli
RTFJ.
Jon... you're preaching to the choir here. We have been discussing and thinking about these issues for months now. What we need is a real and effective defense against the kind of corporate greed and power that you describe. I would suggest lobbying, but it can be prohibativly expensive. It sucks to keep rehashing this stuff every time a new "survey" comes out. I fail to see what legitemacy this study has over any other. This one just happens to contain exactly what we want to hear.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
But how do you determine which musicians are allowed in the pool?
Is anyone who can sing a note included? Or are only the top acts included? I wouldn't mind doing this for, say, classical musicians, or "non-mainstream" musicians. But I doubt you'll get The Backstreet Boys to share their millions with Yanni! The "Hollywood" aspect of many pop groups sell records. If you see Britney Spears in a skimpy outfit singing at the VMAs, you might go buy her record based on her image and not the quality of her music.
I think I need to better educated on the details of a Musician's Association.
Check out Althea for a stable IMAP email client for X. Now with SSL!
Let's see... Napster is not a 'site' it is software, it is also a protocol [see OpenNap].
/., though never so well supported with honest to goodness statistics]. Hopefully, the industry at large will learn from these facts, rather than dying [though, honestly, their death would be of great use and joy to many]. I know many a former Metallica fan, as an example, who will never purchase anything attached to them ever again due to their heavy hande3d tactics. You'd think the powers that be would've learned, persecution only leads to the destruction of the persecutor.
Otherwise though, the article is on target, if moderately redundent [the same basic arguement has appeaered repeatedly here on
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
Yeah and most college students go to church every Sunday, never download porn, and begin studying for a test as soon as it's announced.
I believe in general that file sharing is more helpful than harmful (and for lawsuits generally the opposite is true) but I'd rather see several months/years of demographic data about spending on CDs vs. other types of spending or entertainment, for the general population and/or college students, etc, percentages of people who say they use napster, etc. Until there is real data, both sides will just massage the data in these surveys to say anything they want!
first, its been commonplace for people to buy CDs, records, or tapes after hearing a song on the air. Nothing has changed since those days, the "evil record" companines haven't changed, albums were not magically better back then. Its always been known that you here the GOOD songs on radio, and you get to hear the other stuff when you buy the CD.
However the car dealership analogy is just inane. You already have your test drive, its called RADIO. If you like the song enough buy the CD or CD Single (if you don't want the whole album). The point is that you cannot justify piracy by declaring you don't like the current system.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
First, most of those stats are interview questions, and as we all know, so many people are not honest on these questions..remember those elementary school sex and drug tests...Aside from that, does this really chnage anything?
I have been and always will be a fan of online music and entertainment, but I still believe it is the artists/recording companies right and choice as to wether they choose to have their product shared online. If they choose not to benefit from person x's dollar by not allowing previews, then that is their bad business move. But I've got at least 2 gigs of "sampled mp3s"
And if the artist/record company refuses to allow sharing, then what you are doing is STEALING. Yes, it is stealing. Let me go out and steal 50 cars, and maybe I'll buy one Kia or maybe I'll influence 10 people to buy a car of a type that I stole. That's not stealing, its encouraging me to buy cars. Come on...this stretch to justify getting stuff for free is ridiculous. Its theft no matter which way you play it. I guess I steal...oooohh...and I break the speed limit too, no...I'm encouraging productivity.
Basically, it is stealing. We are presented with a product that we want, but do not want to buy in the legally presented means. So we take it anyways, and maybe we'll but it.
Where do I want to see the industry go: I want to go to HMV or online and buy a CD full of MP3s for a decent price. That will take time, but its all good.
Just as a final note to all those who claim that record companies screw artists: Record Companies make artists...a lot of them and deserve the proportion they get. Oh yeah, backstreet boys got their on talent and brotherly love alone. Those artists that think they have talent can take their stuff to the street and hope people buy it.
Also, with respect to "intellectual property," the artists/record companies creation is theirs, and they allow you to entertain yourself with it. It is not your right (so many rights, so many conflicts). I believe you have a right to a technology, not an application of it.
SNIP>>----
Sent: 11 December 2000
From: Bill Fuckin' Gates
To: Larry Ellison
Subject: napster-like file sharing corporate collaboration
Dear Larry,
Will you please share your UNIX password files with me?
Love,
Bill
----<<SNIP
SNIP>>----
Received: 12 December 2000
From: Larry Ellison
To: Bill Fuckin' Gates
Subject: Re: napster-like file sharing corporate collaboration
Dear Bill,
No, fooly.
Larry X. Ellison
Oracle Supreme Supervillain
----<<SNIP
See you in hell,
Bill Fuckin' Gates®.
See you in hell,
Bill Fuckin' Gates®.
(This post is ©2001 Microsoft(TM) Corporation.)
What I am trying to say, in my incompetant way (!), is that these figures do not mean that Napster is an assured business model for the future, as far as the Music Industries are concerned, I mean. When Joe & Jane Bloggs have heard of it, and start to use it, the statistics may well change significantly!
All I am trying to say is that they are being to optomistic.
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
Most of these are pretty old (if I recall correctly), but these are all merely claims. Some might be lies. Some might be wishful thinking. Others may simply forget to pay. All certainly value napster and don't want to see if regulated out of existence...so we can assume that they'd want to defend it. Put simply, you can't simply trust this data alone as the last word.
This is the only potentially worthwhile piece of information, but I'd want more information before I really swallow it whole. I question how the data was gatheredm, in what context, and I question what it really means. For instance, if the general trend due to economic up turn is an increased purchasing of music, it would make sense for music fans (which tend to be napster users) to increase their music purchases more than non-napster users--even if their purchases are actually LESS due to the demand that napster sates. Furthermore, this does not address the question of what will happen once (or if) napster and clones become efficient at finding flawless copies of music, or once mp3 players become cheap and improve in quality.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is this first bit of data, that 70% of shoppers have not, and will not, pay for online music terribly relevant to what Bertelsmann is doing? Katz seems to say that people are only willing to pay for a subscription service, yet any attempt to push for such a thing by the industry is met with extreme hostility.
Anyways, I have my doubts from my own experience with mp3s and with others I know. I've simply seen and known far too many people that have reduced or stopped purchasing CDs entirely due to Napster. Others I know would stop, if they could afford a decent mp3 player, or had a faster connection, or knew how to use these services better, etc.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that RIAA people read Slashdot in their efforts to come up with ideas to use in its fight. It makes sense: Slashdotters, as a whole, are more insightful than RIAA people. Slashdotters have a clue; the same can't be said of the RIAA, which continues to wear blinders and refuses to come up better ideas for the future.
Unfortunately, the same can be said of many other industries today. Take the telecom industry, for example....
In a few years, when digital audio players (MP3 or ogg or whatever) are completely ubiquitious and all connected to the network, I don't think many of us will still be buying CDs.
That's what the record companies are afraid of. The lifespan of CDs as the most convenient form for music storage is limited. It's already over for the hardest of the hard core geeks.
While this observation is legit, and should strike terror into the RIAA's heart, it should also be a lesson in how to combat it. Convenience is king and their cludgy protection schemes that make it a pain in the ass for customers to access their music JUST WON'T WORK. They need to make it easy. People love easy, people will pay for easy.
You're point that the execs are dunderheads for their stance is misguided because you refuse to see where they are standing. You cannot defeat an enemy until you understand what they are fighting.
Nearly two-thirds of the 1,135 college students surveyed say they download music as a way to sample music before buying it. The proliferation of online music is introducing consumes to artists they don't know, in almost precisely the same way department stores offer samples of food, perfume and other retail items. A survey by Yankelovich Partners for the Digital Media Association found that about half the music fans in the U.S. turn to look for artists they can't or don't hear in other venues, like radio. Nearly two-thirds of those who downloaded music from the Web say that their search ended in a music purchase. Music labels should have been donating money to Napster users, not threatening to sue them and chase the site off of college campuses.
Here you display your complete lack of the concept of how the big industry music moguls use the limited market for gain. They do not see expanded consumer choice as a way to make money, they see it as a burden of expanded inventory maintainance. Their ideal world would consist of a populace that had exactly one CD to choose from. This would give them only one title and artist to maintain and promote. For the execs more consumer choice only adds up to more discount bin titles as the fads come and go. Their goal is to limit choice to a few 'superstars' (ie, overpromoted mediocre artist).
And the much-libeled Napster users are dedicated music buyers, quick to reach for their wallets. Jupiter Research says it found that 45 per cent of online music fans are more likely to have increased their music purchases than online fans who don't use Napster.
Meanwhile 55% of online fans who used Napster decreased their purchases to zero?
The Jupiter study of Napster users found that 71 percent of users say they're willing to pay to download an entire album.
They also said that they were willing to pay for a trip to Mars; however, none showed the color of their money. My point is that a survey of what people claim they are willing to do is completely meaningless and no marketing exec worth his salt pays any attention to such surveys.
Interestingly, reports American Demographics, the Jupiter Study of Napster users found that 71 percent of those who use the site said they were willing to pay to download an entire album. But in a Greenfield Online survey of 5,200 online music shoppers, nearly 70 per cent say that they have not paid -- and will not pay -- for digital music downloads.
And there is the real proof. People will say that they will pay, but when it comes to actually putting the cash on the table...
This suggests that subscription-based services may be more likely and successful than a per-song fee system.
It means no such thing. It suggests that people want something for free and that they are quicker to lie about their willingness to pay than they are to produce their money.
Face it, Jon, et. al. The music industry execs have had a nice ride over the last few decades. New technologies have a habit of disrupting the ride, causing them to spill their champagne. While the new technologies often enable huge new markets, they very often cause a depression in existing markets. Someone makes it big in the new market, but that someone isn't necessarily the same people who are big in the market that is being disrupted.
New media provides people with the ability to communicate one-to-one the world over. Music execs are distributors who control the one-to-many communication pipelines. Their job is to control who talks to who. Change the pipleline and you change the job that they know and the medium they are able to manipulate. The Net not only changes but removes the exclusivity of the one-to-many pipeline altogether, leaving the execs out in the cold. We know that, and they know that, so cut the bullshit about how they should accept the changes with open arms. They would be fools to do so.
The music industry is on shaky ground that will quickly disappear into an ocean of one-to-one communciation. I won't be throwing out a life-preserver, but I also won't be claiming that they aren't drowning. (Sink, you bastards, SINK!!)
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
What you (and most others on this post) don't seem to understand is that this is *already* how it works. The Backstreet boys share their revenue with Yanni, and Yanni shares his pitiful revenue with Britney Spears. Organizations such as ASCAP and BMI control distribution of royalties for music, whether you buy a CD or hear it on the radio or see a video on TV. Radio stations, clubs, MTV, etc.. all pay a blanket amount to ASCAP and BMI (both, regardless of whose music they play more of) and it is "fairly" distributed among the artists based on who is at the top of the charts this month. If you're very small, and only have a couple of published songs that noone ever plays, you may get specific payments (i.e. my dad had a song that was played at the '86 (?) olympics in LA, and he got a small check for it). This makes a lot of sense for handling digital distribution, because it's about as arbitrary as a jukebox or radio station might be.. keep stats on which songs are downloaded most and pay those artists.. bah-da-bing, bah-da-boom :)
> Okay, but picture this: I create a few songs. I join the pool, but I do
> not release a cd. I generate *NO* profit for the system, I just make music
> available for download through the system. If everyone downloads my
> digital music then I am theoretically entitled to a large portion of the
> money pool when I have contributed none through actual physical sales. Is
> there some aspect that I have missed to prevent this sort of situation?
yes - any distributor out there that wants to can take a copy
of your music. make up some posters, CDs, some fancy packaging
that will make it appeal as a product to your fans.
THEN -- every time they sell a CD (with your, and other stuff on it),
they pay back a percentage into the musician's pool. that musicians
pool sends micropayments into your bank account based on how many
people downloaded your song for free.
the following has to be worked out by those involved - change it
as necessary -- but the basic idea is this: by having your song downloaded
for free, you would have to register an email address -- a place to make
micropayments to -- such that any downloads made in your name get registered
into the 'payment pie' -- which is determined by the number of 'napster'
downloads (doesn't really matter if its napster or something else - that
can be any download service that is willing to participate in this).
RIIGHT... So you are telling me that I am going to hear songs from independant artist on the radio. I live in a very religious part of the USA. Here, music is only played on the radio if the "moral majority" approves of it. You can guess what the radio is like here. As a result of this, I am not exposed to *any* music that I deem worth *my* dollar on the radio.
There is a store here in town that does exactly this. They have a system which uses 320kbps mp3 files and headphones to allow you to listen to any song on any CD in the store. They even have the music sorted by ID3 tag, so it is easily searchable. Needless to say, this store is the *only* place I go to buy a CD. They also play random songs from the mp3 archive in the store, with a scrolling screen to show the Artist's name, CD title, song title, and track number. I have actually purchased quite a few CDs just because I heard a song from it played in the store.
wolf31o2 Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team
Nope. Britney and the Backdoor Boys don't see a penny from BMI or ASCAP unless they have a writing credit. Mike Martin gets the performance royalties for these artists (as writer and producer for these two "acts").
If someone covers a Britney or Backdoor song (gag!), Mike Martin still gets the dosh.
What artists get are mechanical royalties, based on the number of shiny little discs sold (it was 37 1/2 cents/side IIRC), along with a percentage of sales from the record company.
Calling all Karma Whores: will someone please post the links for "Courtney Does the Math" and the Steve Albini rant that's based on?
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
we're all pirates and doing fairly illegal stuff
Dont you presume to speak for me. Im not a pirate. I have never attacked any shipping. However, I do perform unauthorized copying from time to time. And I dont like Newspeak.
not to say that the RIAA is doing stuff fairly, but they are doing it legally.
So what? Until the 1860s it was perfectly legal to own slaves in many American states. Legal!=Right and Illegal!=Wrong.
i'll admit. i've bought 1 new cd in the part 5 months, while i've burned 200 high quality cds from mp3's with a bitrate for 192 or higher that I downloaded from Napster. I download the mp3s, burn the full cd's, then delete the mp3s to make room for more. I use amazon's recommendation system to pick out which cd I want next based on whether I like the one I just downloaded or not.
Cool for you. But if you truly like some of that music, you really should think about supporting that artist, no?
Don't tell me what we're doing is legal. It isn't, and shouldn't be. But I do it anyway because I love music but detest paying $18/cd
Has anyone else noticed this? Every time this subject is discussed on /. the people, who by their own admission copy a lot and never buy the CD, are people who readily say what they are doing is wrong and use the loathsome word "pirating"?
Have you no honor? Im not saying youll have to agree with all laws, or obey them for that matter if you disagree, but you should at least be man or woman enough to follow your own convictions. If you, as you say, think unauthorized copying is wrong, dont do it then. Pay those $18 or go without. At the very least, dont be a hypocrite!
Personally, I think it is an unalienable Right of any man, woman and child to copy any and all released information without any restriction. On the other hand, it is also our solemn Duty to support the artists that we like. I follow my ethics - I copy, and I support.
/Dervak
recorded music purchases from students at college campuses that have banned "napster" programs vs. recorded music purchases from students at colleges that haven't banned it.
In the history of music sales, before Jan 1, 2000, only two albums ever sold 1 million or more copies in their first week of sales. In the year 2000 alone, five albums sold 1 million plus in their first week. It makes me wonder if stockholders should start the class action lawsuits; properly embracing online sales would definately 'enhance shareholder value.' Crushing it, though, probably hurts the bottom line, in so many ways.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
When will people understand that it doesn't matter if Napster users are all angels (and they're not, btw). It doesn't matter if they go out and buy 20 albums for every song they download. It doesn't matter if Napster generates more revenue. It doesn't matter if Napster is their biggest break since the microphone.
What matters is that Napster has removed the artist's say in what happens to their music. If artists want to be stubborn and miss this "great opportunity," that's their right, and it ought to be respected. Pretty simple.
Flat
Big Media has always been quick to shoot itself in the foot. They also said that the VCR would be the end of the film industry. Today's statistics don't quite agree with that viewpoint.
Just because a medium can be used to copy their product, doesn't mean it won't also increase their sales to the point that the lost revenue due to copying is offset a hundred times by the gains in sales.
What's it matter if two people run around with bootlegged copies of oh say a Lard album, when twenty people downloaded "The Power of Lard!", liked it, then ran over to Alternative Tentacles' website or Amazon.com and ordered their CD?
Thieves! Thieves and Liars! Hypocrites and Bastards!
Calling all Karma Whores: will someone please post the links for "Courtney Does the Math" and the Steve Albini rant that's based on?
Here ya go:
Steve Albini's rant
Courtney Love Does the Math
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
And oh, yeah. Don't believe what you read about yourself.
*feeling pretty stupid*
Isn't this reserved for April Fool's?
we're all pirates and doing fairly illegal stuff
not to say that the RIAA is doing stuff fairly, but they are doing it legally.
i'll admit. i've bought 1 new cd in the part 5 months, while i've burned 200 high quality cds from mp3's with a bitrate for 192 or higher that I downloaded from Napster. I download the mp3s, burn the full cd's, then delete the mp3s to make room for more. I use amazon's recommendation system to pick out which cd I want next based on whether I like the one I just downloaded or not.
I bought that 1 cd because I couldn't find it on napster and I had $10 off at BN.com while I was buying books.
Don't tell me what we're doing is legal. It isn't, and shouldn't be. But I do it anyway because I love music but detest paying $18/cd
I believe that the recording industry isn't woried about losing record sales, they're woried about losing their monopoly on distribution. A monopoly is much more valuable than the actual CD's.
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
Ok. This guy has a point. And I did try this out the other day:
A - Find a CD I want.
B - Hunt Napster for songs from that CD.
C - Attempt to download said songs (preferablly from people with connections faster than my 300bps BBS days).
D - After finally putting together the whole album..(A task I can only compare to finishing my Original Star Wars IV "in the box" figure set...Unless you are looking for top 40...which you could just hit hear on the radio anyway) Determine if the songs are actually "whole" songs and not snippets of downloads gone bad in a previous life.
E - Convert to WAV files
F - Burn to CDR
Time spent hunting: 1+ hours
Time spent dload (T1): 1+ hours
Time spent re-dload (people think it's neat to cancel a request 3 megs in: 1+ hours
Time spent quality check: 45 mins (listen to each song)
Time spent convert and burn: 45 mins
Total time: 5.5+ hours for 1 CD (I think my time is a little more valuable than that....I will stick to buying them the old fashioned way thank you...Unless it is OOP or something)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
--| piracy or copyright? the third solution |---
- copyright exists to ensure musicians get paid.
- the other side is that once an artist produces something,
it goes beyond them and many benefit.
- between consumers and producers now stands record companies
- but paying artists is only a step on the way to gaining profit.
in practice, many musicians (who play instruments) starve, while
marketing bimbos (spice girls) thrive - this is wrong.
- a fundemental qualitative difference between physical and
electronic goods is - if i have an apple and give you an apple,
i no longer have an apple; but if i have an idea and give you an idea,
we BOTH have an idea. therefore you cannot treat electronic things as
if they were actually physical goods, because they aren't!
- still, you must compensate producers of the original bits.
so what to do?
> MUSICIANS ASSOCIATIONS:
- the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the musician's
pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
- the musicians pool distributes it equitably among its active producers.
- from the pool comesmore new music. which is given away for free.
unlimited digital copies for everyone, never again a dime paid for
anything that's just DATA.
- distributors get fresh music, and sell and package more STUFF.
- distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
- so it comes back and feeds itelf (the most important part).
> RESULTS:
- so all software is free - you get mindshare from it.
- but if you make a physical whose value lies on the free music on it,
then a percentage goes back.
- but the artist is not paid direct - it goes to the musician's pool,
which doles out shares each month by percentage of overall downloads
from a service such as Napster.
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles
--
The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack;
and the Strength of the Pack is the Wolf.
(Rudyard Kipling)
"Here!" says his neighbor, and thrusts a thick sheaf of statistics at him. "The American Demographic Society says that 81% of passing drivers believe your lawn to look better without this tree!"
"Wha?" says Jon Katz.
"And here! I've got a completely different landscaping model which, according to my calculations, can increase the beauty of your lawn by fifty percent or more! Think of all the new friends you'll have!"
Jon Katz chases the guy away with a stick. His neighbor, while running, shouts, "Short-sighted dunderhead!" and "Closed-minded corporate goon!"