PressPlay and MusicNet vs. Artists

gilroy writes: "According to a New York Times article (free registration, yadda yadda), despite taking the moral high ground (that they want to see artists compensated, as opposed to all those evil downloaders), the record companies have actually set up pay schedules so as to -- wait for it -- rip off the artists who record the music. Some figure they will earn less than $0.0023 per download -- yes, that's hundredths of a penny. Best quote from the article: 'For many acts, suddenly there appears to be little difference between the illicit file-sharing system and record-label services.' Good to see they're fighting for the artists, n'est-ce pas?"

Comments

This is actually good...

[Sixyphe]

The greedier the industry gets, the better it is for the artists and the public in general, simply because it will eventually reach the point where everybody (and, hopefully, Metallica too) will just want to bypass them. The nice thing is, we now have the means to do so. It's much easier to convince a judge that a publisher does not deserve protection if it's obviously ripping everybody off.

Re:This is actually good...

[Znork]

Guess who pays for it today? The artist.

The recording industry forwards an advance to the artist, which is then used for recording and marketing costs, and the artist gets to live on whatever is left (a helluva lot less than what you make on most computer industry jobs). This money is then recouped out of the artists share of the profits (the few cents they get from the record, or in this case out of the 0.00fraction cent they get per download). When an albums sells about half a million records, the artist will begin getting any money at all. Needless to say, artists getting paid doesnt happen very often.

End result for most artists: An interesting adventure in getting screwed that makes them less money than a job asking if people want fries with that.

With the costs for recording and marketing getting much lower with cheaper technology and the net, it's likely that the artists would make very much more money by going independent. You dont have to be independently wealthy anymore.

Someone has to

[SilentChris]

"Good to see they're fighting for the artists, n'est-ce pas?"

I'm glad someone is. Though I agree with the idea that record companies aren't the elite "doers of good" in the industry, the fact remains that many geeks (myself included) have basically been fucking over the artists by downloading free music. Admit it. The first time you saw someone download something from Napster/GNUtella/whatever, you had a pang in your gut that said "Isn't there something wrong with this?" It's called guilt.

There are hundreds of record labels that get screwed over by these practices - there are millions of artists who get the same. Unfortunately, without a massive revamping of the entire industry, you can't fuck one and not the other.

Re:Someone has to

[SilentChris]

I'd consider you more the minority than the majority. Most prior Napster users were teenagers who simply didn't want to shell out a few bucks to get the latest Britney album. Most aren't adults, and most certainly DO NOT share your view of expanding one's musical horizon.

It's almost answer a realistic problem with a philosophic argument. It looks nice on paper, but real life dictates otherwise.

Re:Someone has to

[ToLu the Happy Furby]

Most prior Napster users were teenagers who simply didn't want to shell out a few bucks to get the latest Britney album. Most aren't adults, and most certainly DO NOT share your view of expanding one's musical horizon.

There were upwards of 60 million Napster users when it got shut down. "Most" of them were not anything. ("Most" of them were certainly not teenagers; there are only ~12 million teenagers in the US total!) And, as there were something like 40 million unique mp3s floating around Napster, I guess "most" of them actually were listening to more than just the latest Britney album. (Otherwise that's a pretty long album...)

If you want a "most", here it is: most Americans with Internet access in early 2001 used Napster. The overwhelming majority of those who could feasibly use it (i.e. those with broadband connections) used Napster. And while I can't speak for all or even "most" of them, I know I have never, not once, felt guilty for downloading music from the Internet, nor has anyone I've spoken to about the subject.

And, like the original poster, I most certainly increased my CD buying as a direct result of Napster. I can't say whether such behavior reflected the majority or minority of Napster users, but considering the almost precise correspondence between growing (then suddenly falling in spring 2001) online music trading and growing (then suddenly falling in spring 2001) record sales, the statistics strongly support the former.

Laws are supposed to arise from the consent of the governed. When most of the governed are engaging in an activity with a clear conscience, it probably shouldn't be illegal, unless it carries some hidden negative consequences unseen by the uneducated majority. In the case of Napster, though, there were two hugely positive consequences: free access to the largest cultural repository the world had ever seen, and increasing CD sales to boot.

The argument that we should suddenly rewrite and reinterpret the past 200 years of copyright law (in which noncommercial infringement was generally held to be inactionable) just to kowtow to what the misguided oligopoly trying to retain their control over mass expression and culture mistakenly feels is their own self-interest is utterly absurd. The fact that you feel "guilty" about it (and project that guilt onto 60 million others) is just pathetic.

Re:It's a sad thing..

[night_flyer]

I do think that file sharing is a good thing, but it is also destructive to the current economic structure of the music industry.

It needs to be destroyed, with a LARGE number of people on the net, there is NO reason a new promotional system cant be set up. I hardly listen to the radio anymore, but I do check out new music on the net...

Submitted this yesterday

[Krelnik]

Yeah, I know, its pointless to post this, but I guess I like tilting at windmills.

I submitted this yesterday and it was rejected:
2002-02-18 15:32:33 Record Companies Facing Revolt of Artists (articles,music) (rejected)

I've read all the FAQ's on submitting (several times) and try as I might I cannot get a story accepted on this site. It makes one wonder what other stuff gets overlooked in the submission queue.

More to the point, it makes me wonder what issues are important to the editors of this site but which are not being clearly articulated in the FAQ's on submitting. I.e. I must be doing something wrong, but for the life of me I can't figure out what.