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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.
Similar things happended when the BBC cut off their World Service shortwave stream to North America and Australia a couple of months ago, their reasoning was that with high Internet proliferation people could tune into the net instead, or listen via XM radio etc.
However, the BBC doesn't have the Internet rights to most sporting events, so whilst you could listen to a footy match before on shortwave you just get a "sorry we can't bring you this event...." on the net. This is not my idea of progress.
of why radio stations buy broadcast licenses of music rather than going down to Sam Goody and buying the $15 comsumer version.
They have no reason to fear prosecution from the DMCA unless their current broadcast licenses specifically state the broadcast medium that the license is good for.
Essentially, radio stations couldn't park a Van mini-station at public events and play music to all to hear unless their broadcast license allowed it.
Basically, this tells me that a lot of radio stations need to either hire better lawyers that aren't afraid to exercise their license rights, or they need to negotiate new licenses that include streaming audio as a valid broadcasting medium.
My guess is the Net as we know it will end up near the bottom of the staggered release cycle for new products. Just as movies generally go from 1) first run theatres 2) dollar houses 3) pay per view 4) DVD 5) VHS 6) Cable 7) broadcast, and books go from hardcover to paperback, songs as well as movies will end up on the Net after the other, more easily limitable distribution methods are milked. Broadcast radio traditionally hasn't fallen into this because it's used as a promotional tool to sell packages, and streaming music *should* also be used the same way. But it will eventually find its position somewhere.
-- Sigs are for losers
I've been saying this ever since the "Big 5" laid out thier plans. Who's going to pay money to "rent" a finite amount of music (lossy compressed at that) for a flat fee each month? Someone did a study (that I can't find right now) showing that the average music fan would pay more to "rent" the music then they would to just buy it on CD. Plus, with a CD I'm free to rip it, make a compilation CD out of it, put it on tape, etc.
The only way digital music will take off is if a) the record companies make it the only avenue of delivery (they're dumb, but they're not that dumb) or b) add value or make it cheaper. Since they're taking away value (compressed, timebombed and player restricted) they better damn well make it cheap.
For the near future I think (legitimate) digital music will only succeed as a promotional item. I.e. free streaming of upcoming albums for a day, free b-sides, etc.
This has been understood by the music industry all along. They are just playing dumb to the matter. The music industry is starving off as much online activity as possible and why not? They have an extremely lucrative monopoly on music distribution and broadcast. Any change from the norm, no matter how positive for the consumer, is nothing but a threat to this money machine.
Since IANAMIG (I am not a music industry guru) I sit back and wonder why more independant music isn't free on the Internet. Like free software it may be the best way to get noticed when another product dominates the commercial market eg. Gimp. I don't know if current laws prevent such distribution or if there are too few artists unwilling to give their work away or if I just haven't been looking in the right places. I have to look at the Grateful Dead policy toward recording concerts (you can record and distribute but you can't profit from the music - you can charge for media, shipping etc.) and wonder why this isn't more prevalent. Are most like my musician friends from high school - just waiting to make millions when they are discovered by a big recording label?
Come on. We hear this constantly. The 'Old-world' media and news organizations telling us how the 'New-world' internet has no future, or how (insert threatened business model here) won't work on the internet, blah blah blah.
SO WHAT?
It's not going away; digital music WILL stay, whether the 'old-school' industries like it or not. Same for most other aspects of the net. Just because your old business models don't fit doesn't mean society won't use or accept it.
Why did we pay more? Because CDs were generally better than records, more durable, smaller, etc. You could argue that digitially distributed music is better because it's eaiser to acquire, you just download it rather than having to trot down to the store or wait three days for the order to arrive via the mail. So you could argue that there's more value in digitally distributed musice, therefore we should pay more for it.
Of course, I don't buy this argument. I still buy very few CDs because I hate being ripped off and I doubt I'd buy digially distributed music. I'm not sure about the renting idea, but if you they could sell music (instead of renting it) I'd bet this would catch on.
When Marilyn Manson's "Holy Wood" was released I had the resources available to download, for free, every song from the CD in a high-quality digital format from a number of sources. I did actually download one of the songs, and after listening to it I purchased the CD.
This is *not* uncommon. MP3 and digital music doesn't give the full experience that we (anyone 18 or over) are used to with an album. You don't get graphics and it's damn near impossible to hear an album as a performance (like Dark Side of the Moon).
I've read that the 18 and younger croud no longer see the album graphics as part of the full package, and lord knows that we don't see concept albums anymore... so maybe this is going to change.
So.. at least for us, MP3 has the same attributes as the radio. We might get a couple of tracks, but when it comes down too it we want the whole package. Maybe when digital music can mimick this (and not sell single tracks for $2) it will be a little more appealing.
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
i am not sure how well known this is - none of the people i work with or know knew about it - but there is a new 'radio' service coming out pretty soon. its called 'xm radio'. they are throwing two geosynchronous (i think thats the term) satellites up - one over the west, the other over the east - that will broadcast content.
from what i can gather it's $10 a month for 100 'stations' - some of the programming looks pretty sweet. plus the devices can move from car to home - sony makes one (thats always a good sign).
the major drawback is probably reception in areas with lots of tall buildings and having to have a view of a particular 'horizon' a la DirecTV.
i read some of their legal-ese and it mentions reverse-engineering along with the other normal stuff. but i am sure that the hardware hackers are going to have a blast with this.
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
for many radio stations (like, for example, ABC affilliate WLS AM, newstalk out of Chicago), the problem had little or nothing to do with music royalties and everything to do with advertising. If you pay the voice talent for a local ad because yours is a local radio station, but then you stream the advertising over the internet, how does the voice talent get reimbursed for the increased potential audience? Do you base the new royalty structure on number of listeners, or is it de facto an international audience? How do you determine "prime time" vs. off hours when your potential audience is global? Additionally, how do you justify this increased ad cost to Bob's Mattress Shoppe, who's not likely to benefit from advertising in Japan?
For WLS AM, apparently, the advertising royalty issue was the driving factor to their taking down the stream. I can't help but assume this was a major factor for most other radio stations, music-oriented or not, albeit one they might not want to discuss. Labor relations are always a sticky wicket, whereas music royalties for digital media is already such a widely discussed topic that it's easy for them to point the finger that way without seeming like a heartless employer.
Basically it comes down to who gets paided what.
What I really find intresting is in the RIAA's faq (http://www.riaa.com/Licensing-Licen-3a.cfm) and read the section on "What are the conditions that a webcaster has to meet in order to qualify for the statutory license?".
Makes you wanna go start your own country.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
TCP can't "broadcast"... it's for bidirectional links. I think what you mean is why don't radio stations broadcast digitally - perhaps with some FEC, perhaps MPEG compressed, so that we can all get perfect CD-quality music over the airwaves in our cars, on our cell phones and PDAs, etc. Of course, this new format would require everyone to replace their 1940's style FM radios, but that's hardly an obstacle here - consumers would love it!
The problem is that the record companies *love* the crappy sound quality of FM radio. Hear a new song you like on radio - go buy the CD if you want to hear it without all the distortion (inherent in analog radio) and "loudness" (deliberately added by the station, as if you don't have a "bass" knob on your radio). It's worked for decades.
Digital audio over radio to the masses may not happen this century, but it has already happened over the 'net. As storage becomes cheaper and more kinds of players hit the market, people will care less and less what's being played on public radio, and there isn't a damn thing the RIAA or the stations can do about it. They're selling ice in an age of refridgerators.
I used to work for a couple of radio stations. Our formats ranged from 'rock' to county to sports-talk. The rock station was all local. The country was all canned from a satellite network. The sports talk had some local programming plus programming from a couple other networks, including a sports team or two. Well, hell...we damned the torpedoes and streamed 'em all 24-7 when I was there. However, soon after I left (and I knew this was coming) that the networks were going to start bitching. They want people to listen from their own sites...not from yours. Problem is, most of the non-do-it-yourself streaming services had the ability to automate turning off and on the streaming or providing a way that the streaming would automatically switch over to the network's stream. There's tons of these companies out there that think they can make money on a model of providing streaming services for radio stations. I had 2 of them go bellyup on me while I was there. Pretty expensive for a radio station to do it on their own. Remember...this is radio where nobody makes money. You sell ads to the autoparts store and they give the GM 4 snow tires for his car. It's only going to get worse. I hope MLB doesn't find out about this station, 'cause I think they still stream the games that their an affiliate for. Which rocks now that you have to PAY to listen to MLB on the internet. The commercialization is beginning as the networks are also jumping on the bandwagon. They see potential profits. Yet, I contend, someone's going to find ways to do it and make money and make people like AFTRA, the RIAA, etc. happy.
... at least in some cases.
I live in a small market (Moscow, Idaho/Pullman, WA). Other than Top 40 and Country, it's pretty tough for anything to be profitable. Because of two universities, there are some "alternative" radio stations, but they aren't playing anything I'm interested in.
But I like jazz. And bluegrass. Neither of those gets played on the radio, and it wouldn't make any sense for anyone to do it. I'm just out of the range of a jazz station run by Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA.
There aren't enough jazz or bluegrass listeners in my area to make for a profitable venture. But on the internet? You better believe it.
The trick, of course, is to come up with a viable revenue model.
Also, I can't listen to internet radio at work, because of "no personal use" rules. That certainly limits my availablity as a customer/listener.
It's a tough market, and there are definitely some obstacles, but the potential is there.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
The point of the article is that the DMCA has provisions that specifically cover webcast radio stations. They can't announce the name of a song before playing it. They can't play two songs by the same artist in a row.
When congress passes a law that covers YOU specifically, it's not at all ridiculous that they are concerned.
We've all heard of that dumb dotcom that went broke after they found people would not buy kitty litter over the web. Now music is definitely easier to deliver over the internet than a 20 pound bag of kitty litter, which cannot be sent using TCP/IP. With kitty litter, your cat continues to make a mess while the UPS guy leaves little yellow notes on your door after not ringing the doorbell. This is the biggest advantage that online music has over online kitty litter. Is that enough to save online music from suffering the same fate?
Well, maybe. The kitty litter doesn't suddenly refuse to clump up if you move it to another litterbox. It doesn't "lock up" and cease to cover odors if you get a new cat. You can use a batch of kitty litter for about twice the amount of time that you're "supposed" to (if there are no women in your household). And, you can stock up on kitty litter- getting 5 or 6 bags- without having to worry about the last few bags not working by the time you need them because of some stupid preprogrammed time limit that is backed up by the force of law. And you need kitty litter if you have a cat. Nobody really needs Britney Spears.
What makes them think they're going to pull this off?
I'm not going to pay money for anything that is more crippled than an MP3. (And if I find that I've bought a crippled CD, I will return it and give up on buying newly released CDs from then on unless I know it's a real Redbook CD.) I have enough crap to deal with in my life. I don't want to have to worry about timebombs and player restrictions on each of a thousand songs in a collection. Are they nuts? I'd have to hire someone to keep track of my frigging music collection! Can you imagine planning a party, or an outing to the beach, and having to worry about how many players each of your CDs has been played in, and whether or not it will refuse to play in your new Walkman CD player that you just bought? CDs would go the way of the laserdisc if they worked like that.
I predict these greedy bozos will lose billions in their own version of a dotcom meltdown before they realize that people will simply not allow themselves to be sodomized for the privilege of buying music online.
Yeah, but how many audiophiles listen to CDs over vinyl? (I paid $50,000 for this hydrodynamic-bearing-stabilized turntable, and I will not have some $1.00 piece of plastic outperform it for wow and flutter!)
You've obviously never seen how much an audiophile will pay for a good CD player. They get these CD players with heavy weights that stabilize the spin to prevent from any errors being read off the CD (I don't understand how that makes sense, but it's true). The electronics are extremely streamlined for perfect audio reproduction. There also exists high fidelity CDs, as there are high fidelity vinyl. Slashdot had an article on the ones Sony makes. They're rare but you can find a lot of jazz recordings on that format.
Audiophiles tend to prefer vinyl. Honestly, I prefer vinyl, but they do use CDs quite a bit as well.
A local talk radio station (WGOW 102.3) had tremendous success via streaming over the Internet. They had people calling constantly who had moved out of the area and listened to keep up with the hometown news, and people calling in that had just come across it. As a matter of fact one day they recieved a call from an English pub that apparently listened daily to one of the programs. (And considering I live in Chattanooga, TN that's a heck of a stretch.) One of the best known callers was a guy from Boston, who always called on their 1-800 line.
Of course that was before the great 'Radio Blackout of 2K1.' They've recently come back up via streaming, but in the time they were down they literally recieved hundreds of messages from people asking where they went. And slowly they're building their streaming base back.
Somehow I imagine that's not an isolated phenomena. However seeing as that most stations aren't as 'interactive' as talk radio is I would imagine that those listeners just wouldn't make their voices heard to the programming directors. And when they went down? The listeners probably just pulled up another station. (Heck I channel-hop in my car, why not on the net)
The listeners are there, just there silently.
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'