Slashdot Mirror
Future of Digital Music in Doubt
mlknowle writes: "NPR has an excellent article about the growing trend of 'real' radio stations abandoning streaming media due to concerns about advertising, royalties, and (you guessed it) the DMCA. Basically, stations are finding that web streaming isn't increasing their listener base, but is increasing their costs. It's a good read (or listen.)" Meanwhile, there's a study circulating saying that people don't and won't purchase heavily restricted music online at higher prices for a less useful item. This is apparently a revelation to the music industry.
I think it's ridiculous that radio stations should be concerned about the DMCA. If they have the rights to broadcast the songs, they should be able to do it on whatever media. People can record things off of the radio onto tapes, and people can record things off of digital radio into mp3 files, that's not the radio station's responsibility.
~ now you know
Shouldn't this article be titled something different? AFAIK MP3 is still alive and kicking, and so is the CD, which is certainly digital music. Just because radio stations can't make money streaming doesn't put the future of digital music in doubt.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
It amazes me how often "Industry Pundits" refer to the internet as "New Media," and then post dire warnings about the future of the internet when "Old Media" companies discover that their models don't fit.
So old-school internet radio stations aren't going to continue streaming their broadcasts? This is supposed to spell the end of internet radio?
People turn to internet radio to avoid the homogeneous crap that they're stuck with from "old school" radio stations. I don't want to have to choose between the latest mass-produced alternative and pop crap, I want to be able to hear, say, reggae, or ska, or funk, or whatever other type of music, out of the billions out there, that I can't hear on the rregular radio because it has become so streamlined that it must appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Let's face it, radio sucks. Internet radio, on the other hand, with its ability to stream countless different styles of music, holds a lot of promise to me.
So good riddance to the old school. Let them keep propagating their useless, mindless, repetitive crap for the masses, and lets not waste bandwidth on it.
Mp3's don't sit on your shelf. It's a bit vain, but music defines your personality, and having CDs on your shelf puts your personality on display. No one ever comes to visit and looks through your mp3 collection.
I know that people agree with this, not everyone of course, but in general, people like the ritual of listening to music. I only ever downloaded mp3s because it was free. Rituals are great but free is free. If I liked enough mp3s from an artist, I bought the CD. An mp3 was never a substitute for the Real Thing.
Take all this away from someone, and then restrict it to hell and it just won't work. Mp3s are just not as highly regarded as CDs. How many audiophiles listen to mp3s over CDs? This will fall by the wayside like eBooks for sale. Mp3s will be pirated and the consumers will save their dollars for CDs.
So digital music is being pushed out of the marketplace until someone can make a useful product out of it? Makes sense to me. Why should I listen to streaming radio when I can listen to a real station that has better quality and ads for places that are at least in my vicinity. And no, I don't particularly want to listen to the BBC.
As for digital music sales, someone has to make money there. No one makes money off mp3, so all they will do is fight it. For legitimate sales, they'll have to wait until someone comes out with a product that gives consumers more of what they want. As you mention, that isn't higher prices or more restrictions.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
The reason they don't just go buy the CD and throw it on the air is that if they do that, they're not going to get the next Britney Shlock single a month before it hits the stores, but the other radio station down the street, who played by the RIAA's rules, will. Eventually all your listeners will be tuning into the station that's getting the early releases, and you'll be last year's news.
The music industry stands screaming about artists
royalties, and the fact that they created something
that everyone is trying to get for free.
The industry fails to tell you that typically less
than $1.00 of each $20 cd you buy goes to the
artist for their hard work, and we all know how
much blank cdr's cost (hence labels MUST be paying
a fraction of that cost at the gargantuan quantity
they buy).
Why can't they just come out and tell the world that
they are a bunch of greedy fucks that see their
world and their riches slipping by after decades
of putting out one-hit albums and screwing artists?
The world has fundamentally changed in that people
do NOT feel that the music is worth $20 per cd, and
do NOT feel it's fair to get home after buying
the majority of the cd's out there only to find
TEN filler songs for every hit! Music has become
free in minds, though not in fact.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Even the implementation of schemes to scramble or degrade the signal for copies is ultimately futile. To paraphrase the opinion of Emmanuel Goldstein from his WBAI show, "If you can play it back, it is decoded, and you can copy it." It does not matter what level of encryption is implemented for digital music. The playback necessitates a conversion to an easily copyable form, i.e. sound waves, which can be reencoded in various ways, from placing a microphone next to the playback advice to copying the signal through some kind of analog receiver.
It is a similar situation for e-books. Once the content is viewable, it can be copied, even by retyping or photographing the resultant output. And as soon as a single "pirated" copy is made available, those with access can acquire it for free.
The size and scope of the music industry is a recent phenomenom. Only since the early 1950's were saleable recording considered a lucrative pursuit. The modern behemoths have only existed as such since the late 1960's. Now that they have lost control, we see them flailing about to prevent a loss in market-share and income that will inevitably increase with consumer broadband access and the power of the average desktop computer. After all, who would pay for "intellectual property" when they can receive an exact copy for free over a relatively anonymous file-sharing network?
Copyright and music industry pundits see this trend as an ominous sign of disrespect for music, capitalism, creativity and the hard-work of the creators. Recent trends are likely to improve the situation of the individual artists, who, with cheap, good audio software and fatpipe connections, will be able to distribute directly to consumers and bypass the whole music-industrial complex completely. For a few thousand dollars, a musician can have a decent home studio comprised of professional-level gear, VST audio software and sequencing/sampling packages such as Cubase, ProTools and Logic.
A modern musical group or musician sees something like 10-15% of their profits after all the industry-types take a cut. While some of this is due to the high cost of touring, much of it is for usage of company recording studios, garnering media attention and the production of saleable units such as CD's. Now that each musician or band can be their own cottage industry, we should see an increase in individual musicians' "paychecks" and a decrease in control by corporations. Especially once on-line cash schemes start to proliferate, the market for grassroots types to create their own individual music industries, channels and styles should become easier over time.
I see the current situation as one with vast opportunities. The current "troubles" will be followed by a huge proliferation in both the number and diversity of musical acts eager to distribute their products throughout the world, and I am all for it. If the dominance of the huge mega-bands and stars fades due to copyright-infringement and piracy and a leveling of the current "playing field," so be it. For me, these musical types are more a manifestation of the capitalist and image-oriented facets of popular culture than the expression of any genuine musical artistry or feeling.
Not enough people have broadband yet. That's why the radio stations aren't seeing the increase in listenership they were expecting. They are giving up on their streams too soon. Come back in 5, 3, maybe 2 years and the economics of this will be completely different. Problem is, this has left them with a bad taste in their mouths and they may be disinclined to try streaming again even though the economics would support it.
AFTRA members deserve a somewhat larger fee when their work is streamed -- but not so much larger that it makes streaming unviable. They are just shooting themselves in the foot in that case. Same goes for the RIAA's streaming fee. What do you want to bet those fees were negotiate near the peak of the dot com bubble? Now that the bubble has burst, they should certainly be renegotiated. Better yet, the fee structure should be made a dynamic function of online listenership, so that streaming remains viable whether the online listenership grows as expected or not.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I'll weep about the DMCA and those additional royalties in a second.
Commercial (and even non-commercial) radio in the United States has an extremely serious problem: It all sounds the same.
Where I live (Seattle) has a few stations which are worth listening to. The classical music station, The underground/rock music station, The folk music station, and of course The extremely annoying dance music station. (I'm not a big dance music fan, but if you want to feel like you're in a disco, even when you're not, it's a good thing).
The other 30 stations on the dial are utterly, completely interchangable. There's a station which plays all the hits from 1968-1972. Over and over. Just like every other big city in the US. Imagine that! There's three "alternative" music stations which alternate between K0RN, the Beastie Boys, and Shania Twain (there must be something alternative about her, but God knows what). Even NPR, which I wake up to every morning, does not sound a bit different if I listen in NYC, Atlanta, or San Francisco. They have All Things Considered, they have Car Talk on Saturdays, they have a mid-day call in program to talk about local politics. Who woulda thunk it?
So, if I want to listen to K0RN, or Stairway to Heaven (for the 6.02x10^23rd time!), or even listen to Fresh Air, I have this highly sophisticated device to do that. I call it a "radio". There is no imaginable reason why I would waste bandwidth and hassle to get a streaming media connection to do that.
For Internet Radio to be a success, you must first put out product which is different enough to provide value added. In this way, content is just like every other business.
j.
What do customers want? Ask Napster.
Fast, accurate searching
Comprehensive database of content
Fast download
Fair price -- and only pay for what you use
Compatibility with customer's player of choice
Ease of use
Napster and mp3 set the standard for these things. People often won't pay where a free alternative exists, but they will pay if an alternative is (perceived) better.
You can't have significantly less compatibility than mp3 and expect consumers to embrace it. I'm not going to open Winamp for my personal collection of ripped mp3's and some other player for "secure" music. You can't make it harder to play, where you have to have a key to open, blah, blah. What if I want to play the song somewhere other than my desktop PC? <sarcasm>Oh, it's less portable than mp3 or even a physical CD? Count me in!</sarcasm>
One day, the record companies will start developing a solution around customer needs, not their own. Until then, they'll try to spoon-feed us DivX for music. And fail.
Robotiq.com is heavily tested on animals
To this end, two major groups have been formed. MusicNet and pressplay. MusicNet has support from RealNetworks, AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann AG, EMI Group plc, and Zomba. Pressplay is supported by Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group.
MusicNet says: Our record label partners, BMG, EMI, Warner, and Zomba provide the music that the platform delivers, and RealNetworks, America Online, and Napster will distribute the platform to their subscribers nationwide. MusicNet plans to expand its offerings and is in ongoing discussions with both major and independent labels.
While pressplay claims: The service, which will be available in the U.S. by late summer through a broad array of affiliates, announced its first affiliate relationship in April of this year, joining together with Yahoo! Inc. to form an alliance through which the pressplay service will be marketed to users of Yahoo! network and Yahoo! Music. pressplay is a stand-alone joint venture equally held by Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group.
It's clear that the "future of digital music", will most likely start with the subscription services offered by these two groups. Of course it may take some time for them to refine their business model into something people are eager to pay money for. None the less, the potential is staggering. In the future people are apt to get exactly what they want for a price that's reasonable.
With digital music you can be a lot more flexible in your product offerings. You can sell things on a track level, and you can group these tracks in any way you want. It's not clear what the pricing model for this would be, but what if you only had to pay $0.5 for a digital track. You could get the latest music you actually listen to, instead of getting the latest CD and skipping the tracks that suck. What if you could play a 30 second sound sample of every track in the Sony catalog? This could be huge for music discovery (possibly even more so than radio). What if you belonged to a record club and every piece of music you bought from them was available in digital form for $5/mo. How much would you pay for a subscription to the Pop Top 40?
These are all possibilites for the future, and IMHO show tremendous potential. It's up to them to provide these services at a reasonable price. The problem with Internet radio is that they haven't been able to figure out an attractive pricing model (for users, or advertisers). So while Internet radio may have problems, the future of digital music is very bright indeed.
We believe that the $BIG_MARKET industry leader $REALLY_BIG_COMPANY will dominate. Less established $SMALL_BUT_INTERESTING_COMPANY also competing for the $BIG_MARKET market, will flonder and fail making it's sharholders feel really dumb.
Disclaimer: The Garrner Group recives financial support from $REALLY_BIG_COMPANY the leader in $BIG_MARKET. It is a mere coincdence, we assure you.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath