Slashdot Mirror
Ebert, Gillmor on the Music Industry
TTop writes "Roger Ebert has weighed in with a scathing critique of the Universal Music Group and its new copy-protection scheme which renders CDs unplayable in non-Windows operating systems, DVD players, and CD-compatible game consoles. It's nice to see the mainstream press start to come out against the idiotic copy-protection war the RIAA is declaring on their best customers, music lovers. Having to agree to a legal contract to hear a CD you've purchased on your own PC? Puh-leeze. Ebert compares these copy-protection schemes to Circuit City's failed DIVX DVD format." Columnist Dan Gillmor wrote a piece a few days ago about drawing a line in the sand.
While it's nice that more people in the public eye are speaking out against copy protection, it's not bound to help much. Money makes the world go round, as long as the RIAA and MPAA see money "lost" that could be theirs, they're not gonna stop. Well, at least not til the money spent on copy protection > the amount of money lost from sales.
:P.
But seriously, pirates hurt software companies just as bad, if not worse than the music industry. Why doesnt the RIAA, MPAA..etc recongonize this? Its not as if Adobe is giving away Photoshop. They only difference is that software companies have adapted to this changed their business model to surive.
I like how he finishes the piece:
...it would be the easiest thing in the world to buy a disc, rip it to your computer through your stereo, post it on the Web, and then return the CD for a refund. Did I just say that?
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
Me too.
But realize this-- the RIAA's spin will claim that any falloff in revenue is due to piracy, not a boycott-- hence their need for the copy protection.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
If you really want to spite the RIAA, involve yourself in open piracy for no profit. Send the artists money directly or go see them in concert (which they get a larger take from, anyhow). That's what I do, personally. Look at free alternatives like Emusic.com - but don't give them another penny.
Canadian law says that the RIAA give up the right to procecute you for piracy done for personal use by your own hand. Make full use of that. The current levy hike they propose is insane, but since the government has decided to transistion music into a public good, you're stupid not to take advantage of it. I know I'll be trumpeting this little factoid at the top of my lungs to anyone who will listen if the price of an iPod goes up by over $100 or $150 because of this!
However, maybe this will give emusic.com and others the ability to break the RIAA stranglehold on music. That's what they're really afraid of.
And for those of you interested in a cool slashdot article, how about someone with a little money and time go out and get one of these copy protected CDs. Then do an analog sample with a nice quality headphone adapter cable into a reasonably standard sound card and then do some comparisons online (although, I'm not even sure if you could put samples up as fair use anymore!). Show them the futility of this first hand.
What, are ADC chips going to get banned next?
..don't panic
Just wondering since Philips did complain that this sort of copy protection that fails to work on some systems violates Red Book. Thus, can these discs carry the Compact Disc logo?
Fortran programmer...oh yeah. Array math for life!
I used to think Ebert was some pompous windbag, who wouldn't know a good movie it it slapped him in the face. But the older he gets, and the more I read stuff he's written, the more I come to realize he's a guy who really "gets it".
It hurts when I pee.
For that to happen, the 12 year old girls will have to be convinced of the importance of the boycott, so that they will stop buying CDs by BoyBandOfTheWeek and J'Britney.
Maybe we could find a way to make buying CDs uncool.
Best Slashdot Co
"And wisely so, since it would be the easiest thing in the world to buy a disc, rip it to your computer through your stereo, post it on the Web, and then return the CD for a refund. Did I just say that?"
OK, my opinion of this guy has changed. I hate his movie reviews, but his writing style is pretty damn good, and he's got a sense of humor.
I think I'll see what else this guy has written.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Physical Commodities - Exchange or Access
What is the fundamental basis on which we deal with the customer?
One's a single-shot deal (mostly): say hello, exchange goods/money, say goodbye.
The other's a deal that lasts for a certain period. In the case of this conference, three days.
In both cases the physicality of the commodity wholly represents the product and the work that went into producing it. The property is clear, the deal is clear.
Non-Physical Commodities? (Digital Content)
An oxymoron surely?
Let's see. Here's some digital content I'd like to make available for you to download (in only twelve bytes of ASCII) - Write the following down on a piece of paper: "A, D, A, M, space, H, A, D, space, apostrophe, E, M". Thus: "Adam Had 'em."
Incidentally, I'm not the copyright holder of this work, Ogden Nash is. So all of you who've made digital copies by writing it down have just become criminals by copying the work in its entirety.
It's called 'Fleas', also known as the shortest poem in the world, and thus highly valuable. I understand that printed copies of this poem currently retail for up to £5,000 and that consequently the punitive damages for illicit copying may be quite substantial.
If literary works of art were this easy to copy a few hundred years ago, no-one would have invented copyright, let alone convinced themselves that digital content was a commodity.
Copying Physical Commodities is not inherently profitable, so it doesn't need to be controlled
There's nothing wrong with copying physical commodities, because in general the copies are just as much work to produce as the originals.
This is except for novel, patentable devices which enjoy a dispensation to retain a legal monopoly on production for a certain period (to enable the development costs to be recouped). This is to foster economic and technological progress, not to create a human right.
If a non-physical commodity doesn't represent the labour that went into it, then either we assign a right to copy it, or we stop treating it like a commodity. If the latter, then the original work represents the work.
Art is slightly different to a commodity, it's an idea given form
Art, whether written, pictorial, or sculpted is a little different though.
Once upon a time (and today if you've got the money) you could commission art, or you could buy art from artists who'd produced it for sale.
Then, forging art didn't so much hurt the artist as hurt the purchaser. Overt copying was fine, it enabled the art to be enjoyed by more people, e.g. the Bible.
In the case of popular but painstakingly original art the economics were difficult, i.e. it's difficult for an artist or author say, to communicate en masse to their potential readership and encourage them to club together in funding a new work (unlike royalty, aristocrats, etc.). So with the advent of the performance of plays and the printing of books designed for a larger audience, we see in retrospect a new revenue mechanism arise: price each performance or copy as though it were a share in funding the original work. This also requires some ability to prevent anyone else producing copies.
Copyright is Artificial, not 'self-evident'
So we see that copyright is also not a human right, it's just another expedient mechanism to enable the copy to act as the share certificate. You bought a book? You're a paid up shareholder.
The thing is though, copyright's a magic purse. It need never stop bringing in revenue (well beyond the original development costs). And in some fortunate cases, for particularly popular art, a few artists and much of the publishing industry can enjoy great wealth.
It's a brave government that would recall all these magic purses from the rich, powerful and popular. However, there is one organization more powerful than both combined.
Widespread Copying is Endemic
What happens, when there are half a billion people online (out of a planet of 6 billion), each of whom can make a copy of any art they fancy in a moment's thought?
We're talking on a scale of mankind. If people, globally, en masse, copy art, it's possible that it's not really wrong. Rather it's that the law, created to enable a revenue mechanism that requires exclusive copy privileges, is now ineffective, irrelevant and redundant. You cannot prosecute the world. It's the revenue mechanisms that must adapt or die.
Loss of Physical Media
We've lost the physical media upon which art was distributed. This served to reinforce general acceptance of the underlying revenue mechanism in people's minds. However, online, the Emperor is now wearing the finest of sheer silks (fully naked if you ask me). There's no scrap of clothing, no wodge of paper, magnetic tape, plastic box, not even an acrylic disc. It's now just a memory. The only thing that reminds us we've paid our share for the pure information that now comprises art, is the click of the I Agree button on the license page.
So what's the answer?
Don't sell the horse after you've let it out of the stable. Or in other words, don't release the digital content and then try to sell it (relying on copyright). You can't sue 5 billion people. Nor can you place a compensating levy on computers (madness!).
And of course the classic: don't try to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted. Here, I'm obviously talking of encryption and digital rights management. If the art can get into people's eyes or ears, it can be copied by a computer. Encryption is fine for keeping things exclusive when the parties concerned wish to. If you're communicating with someone who doesn't care for exclusivity, encryption won't really work, it just hinders.
Deal En Masse
So what should we do?
Sell the horse before you let it out of the stable. Go back a few hundred years and pick up the old revenue mechanisms that weren't quite so good, because it was difficult to do deals en masse.
And this is because something has changed. For the same reason that copyright is becoming ineffectual, so the public commissioning revenue mechanisms are now becoming feasible.
The biggest mental block facing business today, both online and even with interactive TV companies, is to be unable to think of dealing with the market except as a collection of individuals.
The only deal we're particularly familiar with en masse is voting, e.g. democracy, etc. We dabble with this in TV shows, even with online polls, but that's about it.
Who has dared to let people vote with their money? In the same transaction?
The new value chain
Bypass the agents, the publishers, the marketers, the advertisers, the distributors, the retailers, the packagers, etc. The new value chain is the artist and the audience. We're right back at the craftsman and the customer. Except this time, there's nothing stopping the artist doing a deal with a million people at once. Though no one's thought to create the necessary de facto e-commerce web site for such a deal. Still too busy selling to punters one by one...
The Emperor is Naked
Of course, it's very difficult to believe an emperor could possibly be naked.
If you're selling digital art, digital content, digital whatever, reserve a tiny piece of your long term strategy for the inconceivably possibility that King Canute's bottomless purse of copyright will be overrun by a tide of countless tiny infractions.
Even so, the end of copyright is not the end of commercial viability for digital content, it's the end of a particular revenue mechanism.
Consider Revenue Mechanisms that don't need Copyright
Your audience is your market - deal with it!
Check out this site for more info:
The Digital Art Auction
A good article, even if it ends a bit abrubtly. I must disagree with one of his points, however. He says:
Technically they are stealing,
I must disagree with this. They are not stealing, since no-one is deprived of anything. By his own argument, the record companies are not being deprived of sales, and unlike true theft, there is no loss of material possessions. No-one's lost money, no-one's lost a shiny disc with digital data encoded on it, no-one's been stolen from.
A couple of weeks ago, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal did the same thing in his article, "Digital Consumer Takes Up the Fight Against Copyright Plans in Congress".
In the article, he proposes a whole new digital copyright law that gives the user back their priveleges to make copies of the content they have legally obtained.
He proposed the following rights:
- The right to "time-shift" audio or video content; that is, to record it for later playback.
- The right to "space-shift" music or videos; that is, to copy material to blank CDs, multiple PCs, or portable players in different locations.
- The right to make backup copies.
- The right to use the content on any platform they choose: a Windows PC, a Macintosh, a DVD player, whatever.
- The right to translate content into different formats.
I think this, along with Roger Ebert's comments should hopefully catch the eye of Congress and the RIAA and actually get something done. Kudos to the two of them for realizing that our rights are being infringed upon.
You see, it's all great that Ebert came out to say something like this, but let's face it: he's not risking much. And the reason that he's not risking anything is because he's not directly involved.
What we really need are more BANDS (you know, the people that make the music) to stand up and speak for us. All it will take is for a few of them to say "wtf?! People are ripping them off because they don't want to pay $16 for a CD. Let's drop the costs, pass on more to the band, and give up on the protection." Then I'm sure we'd see more people buying more CDs and everyone could be happy. Besides, the greedy RIAA, of course.
Hahaha, oh well. :) If you can't win and can only lose, don't play, I guess!
Steve
..don't panic
He's right, as usual, and the column was an interesting read, although sadly, I think what Ebert has to say is little news to the average Slashdot reader. He talks about the failure of DivX, the new CD copy protection schemes, and how they're bound to fail, because those who are l33t enough will still find ways to get what they want - the way he mentiones in the column is hooking your PC up to your stereo set, yielding a good-enough-for-MP3 copy of the previously copyrighted disc.
And of course, need I remind you, if ONE person does this, then theoretically no-one else has to, they can just leech the song via Audiogalaxy, like the song was never copy-protected in the first place. What this will lead to - and Ebert points this out, as well - is legitimate customers getting upset because the music they paid for won't work in the playback device they want to use. If you ask me, this will boost piracy, not vice versa.
Anyway, the short summary of the column is, interesting read, but nothing new. Always good to see articles in the "mainstream" press about stuff like this.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
I'm tired of the *AA trying to take away our rights in a misguided attempt to protect their profits!
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to put up with it anymore!
So I filled my ears with caulk, and gouged my eyes out with a spoon.
I suggest you all do the same.
That'll show them!
This was an intentionally ludicrious inflammitory post.
as long as the RIAA and MPAA see money "lost" that could be theirs, they're not gonna stop.
n = 1 - $L / $B
n = max efficiency
$L = music bought
$B = music listened to
Seems like the record companies are trying to break the 2nd law!
The Stone Age did not end for lack of stones, and when the oil age ends it will not be for lack of oil. --Bjorn Lomberg
This may be (-1, Redundant) in discussions like this, but still: could this sort of copy protection conceivably provoke a valid "fair use" lawsuit?
To be more specific, do these copy protection schemes violate my right to fair use of copyrighted material that I've purchased legally, by eliminating my ability to make personal backup copies or use the material in a different medium (transfer to an iPod or whatever)? And if they do, would I have a leg to stand on if I sued, say, Universal for this?
If a lawsuit could conceivably be successful, I wish someone like the EFF, ACLU, etc. would get one going. I for one already donate to the ACLU, and would donate to the EFF for this purpose. High-minded (but valid) arguments about treating customers like thieves aside, it seems actionable to me (although, of course, always and forever, IANAL).
-brennan
No, these copy protected CDs come with Windows software which will allow them to be played on PCs. If there is not Mac version of the software Mac users are out of luck.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Used to let their listeners bring recorders into their concerts and "bootleg" them. While JG was alive, the dead had a following you would not belive.
Their reason for allowing this was the band felt that they had "made thier money" Each member had enough to keep their families set for life.
So despite this lesson, why does the RIAA continue to hurt both the artists and listeners that underwrite their business? Lars isn't selling a BILLION copies of your record enough?
A true artist likes money, but that is never their motivation. Most artists starve until they are discovered (if that happens) and are more than happy to let people MP3 their songs just to "get the word out"
Someone somewhere will write some cool little app to circumvent this little bit of copy protection i'm sure. If people are really fed up with the RIAA don't buy any more big label records then. Check out your local hip-hop, grunge, punk scene and buy music from those guys, they ARE starving and are more than happy to let you copy their stuff.
Quantity does not equal quality RIAA, i'm not buying this noise shit crap you try and schleff off as music anymore. Fuck off!
Quote from Roger: Why do people grab music off the Net and download it to CDs, iPods, and other storage devices? Because they like it. They like it a lot. They like it enough to go to the trouble of obtaining it despite the various roadblocks. They are fans. Would they rather have a mint CD from Virgin or Tower, with the original cover art? Of course. Will they eventually be paying customers for the music they are currently sampling? In most cases, yes. Technically they are stealing, but in fact they are an instrumental part of the process by which a lot of real CDs get sold.
He actually gets it!
Wow!
You can't take the sky from me...
I know this is off topic, but with several instances over the past couple days, I'm forced to cry out - would the editors PLEASE fix incorrect uses of "its"/"it's" on the main page?! It's not that hard:
"it's" means "it is"
"its" is the possessive form of "it"
If you can't replace "it's" with "it is," then you're using the wrong word. It just makes the main page look like someone's guestbook. Fix it for my English teacher's sake, please!
But realize this-- the RIAA's spin will claim that any falloff in revenue is due to piracy, not a boycott-- hence their need for the copy protection.
But the RIAA will always use some kind of spaghetti logic to claim that sales are down due to piracy. This is an projecting answer -- it enables them to project business failure onto others, as well as justify copy protection, pay-per-play and other schemes that are unpopular with end users.
The other answers -- the music sucks, the business model is flawed, etc will never be considered or publicly advanced. These are reflective answers -- they reflect on the RIAA member entities poor management and don't allow them to blame forces outside their control.
Here is the part the RIAA and MPAA should be paying attention to:
"Back when I was a member of the prime music-buying demographic, I went into Markland's Record Store on Main Street in Urbana, Illinois, and took the latest 45s into a soundproof listening booth where I could sample them. I sampled them a lot. So did all the other kids. Sometimes we would sample the same song every day for a week. The Marklands knew what we were up to. They also knew that we yearned to own those records, and that when we found the 89 cents for a 45 or the $3.98 for an LP we'd be their customers. We were fueling our enthusiasm."
I remember those days (although I didn't do it as much as some of my friends). You heard these great tunes and the first thing on your mind was "How am I going to make some money to buy this 45?" (lawn mowing, collecting pop bottles, etc.)
Its obvious the video/music cartel - just don't GET IT! They're attacking the wrong side of the
problem (piracy) instead of looking at the future.
Terry
Think it's idiotic the way the labels go about their copy-protected CD strategy?
Now I don't mean the specific technology used, or the fact that it's stupid in general. I'm referring to their choices of *which* CDs to use the copy-protection on.
So far, they've all been big releases that they're going to sell a million or more copies of (N'Sync, Natalie Imbruglia). They don't do it at all to the smaller releases, which basically ensures a lack of success.
All the copy protection does is make it harder for someone to make an illegal copy. It doesn't make it anywhere near impossible. If you want a copy in mp3 bad enough, you just find a CD player that can play the disk (if you can, of course), run a line into the back of your PC, record it to wave files, then encode to mp3. I ripped a record this way, it'll certainly work for CDs. At that point the guy doing it is probably pissed off at the labels enough to make his freshly made mp3's available on a P2P network of his choice, at which time they get copied over and over again, and the whole "copy-protected" CD is all over the net. Thus all you can really accomplish by putting that crap on a blockbluster CD release is a lot of bad press and a few weeks in delay before everyone has a copy on their hard drive.
With smaller releases, however, it could work. There aren't as many people who want a copy of the music, which means less who have the knowledge and desire to rip the stuff correctly. If the labels put protection on the under-500k-sales category, they might make a serious dent in the amount of pirated music out there because it would be a pain in the ass for all the hackers to get it into the mp3 format, so fewer would bother with smaller releases and the copies would never get made that crucial first time.
It astounds me that the record companies are to stupid to even use the technology they undoubtedly paid a mint for in the correct way. I suppose I should just expect any implementation of technology by them to be exactly backwards by now.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
The important rights that are being taken away are:
the right to speak, even if the speech is describing a computer program
the right to run the computer programs of our choice on our own equipment [there is no right to use/hack someone elses equipment]
Someone needs to acknowledge these are essential rights, bound intimately with our first amendment and privacy rights.
When congress and senate just listen to big business ... well thats sad. I keep having these dreams where law makers will listen to the people whose votes they need to get in. Why does it seem like they just don't hear us and don't want to? Thats just dirty, underhanded and shifty.
If they were working for me I'd fire them.
We vote these idiots in and then can't fire them when they turn their backs on us. We vote them in, we should be able to vote them out.
Isn't that the grander problem: How to put pressure on politicians so they will do their damn jobs they already get paid for and ignore lobbyists. How do we put fire in their belly's? That feeling like - OH MY GOD I'm gonna lose my job if I don't listen to voters.
I'd like them to feel that for a change.
Greedy bastards.
It's good to see a mainstream figure like Ebert take on this issue. It's not so good that he did so in a column for Yahoo Internet Life. Really would mean much more for him to put this in his usual newspaper column, or to take up the subject on his television show.
I want a bumper sticker that simply says "I RIP CDs"
Pair up in threes. - Yogi Berra
they include unauthorized recordings made from radio and television and unauthorized compilation cd's containing tracks from more than one artist's cd.
I sure hope they mean the act of "selling" these types of recordings.
I can't imagine who they think they're preaching to if they mean the act of "making" these types of recordings. If they do, I'd like to see them try to haul 98% of the US population into court for violating their rights!
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Now dont think it is a good idea to trun away customers at the cost of stopping ripping. Yet it seems like a logical thing to do.
But that scheme will turn off customers without stopping ripping. I have no idea what the hell they are trying to do. Piss off mac users?
I like Ebert's plan to take that protected CD and play it from your stereo to your computer in jack. However, I own not a single stereo system.
In the car, I listen to NPR. At home, I sometimes listen to music, from CDs that I have bought and subsequently stored in a safe place after turning them into MP3s. If I wish to listen to a radio station, again it is NPR and streamed off of the internet.
I normally never buy music. When Napster was out, I checked it out. Downloaded a few songs, used the chat feature and was turned on to a few more bands and groups. I downloaded their songs and later found myself buying them at the local music store.
Now that Napster is gone. I am back to listening to the music that my friends listen to. Sometimes, I pick up something that they listen. My listening circle has greatly shrunk these days.
All I can say is way to go RIAA! They get less of my money these days. Which works for me as it is always nice to save a few bucks.
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
LOL!
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I guess someone towing the usually whiney l33t /. line had to get modded up. Who are you to tell someone how much money they should be allowed to make? If you don't like how they make their money, don't give them any of yours, and don't take what they have to offer either. But if other people are happy to buy into the system, that's their decision.
I also like when you mention how great it is that starving artists are happy to let you copy their music. I thought the whole point is to actually help those people make a living. I'm sure encouraging people to pass around free digital copies accomplishes that in wonderful fashion.
Finally, did someone appoint you the arbiter of who is a "true artist"? Give me a break.
Back when I worked for House of Blues a couple years ago they started doing Yahoo chats with artists. To test the system and ensure that there were at least a few questions ready to be asked, we always submitted a few questions ourselves. I couldn't tell you if this is still the case, and I couldn't find any of the chat transcripts, but I remember my one standard question was what the artists thought of mp3s and people downloading their music off the internet. All the artists who I asked this to were on a major label, and none of them had any problems with people downloading mp3s. I specifically remember the Indigo Girls had the best answer. They were totally cool with it, but wanted those same people to go to their shows. If only these artists would all stand up together like the Offspring tried to do and try and bring about some change from the inside.
I'm sorry, I can't let such a statement slide.
Think about it! If music lovers were the RIAA's best customers, how do you explain the preponderance of boy bands and Britney Spears? This is hardly music for the real connoisseur, yet it almost entirely fills the major label's profit ledgers.
The sad reality is that most people listen to their CDs in CD players, regardless of how many Slashdotters reply to this telling me something like "oh not me! I only listen to my CD collection on my computer using Linux!" The same goes for Windows. If people listen to CDs on computers, almost all of them will be doing it in Windows, because it dominates a large majority of the desktop and consumer PC market. As long as this market segment is catered to, no one will give a rats ass about the audiophile minority.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
I know it is convenient to refer to a person as they but it is wrong. Even the PC freaks say so.
Nowadays many people use "she". It is linguisticaly correct and it is considered politicaly correct.
It will also have the side effect that no musician can record music without having a contract with one of the record companies!
Like a coked-out rock star being led around by the nose by his manager, the RIAA members are being led around the nose by greedy asswipe lawyers.
Think of it, the lawyers are probably pressing the hardest for these measures, because without a hard-edge stance, there isn't much for them to do. They are trying to justify their own existence.
Does that mean that RIAA members are innocents? Hell no!
What would be cool is if there was a "competing" record company(s) that weren't members of the RIAA that sold CD's at a decent price ($8-$10), didn't do jackass stunts like copy-protection, and actually did something to promote smaller bands instead of the megastars.
I am so surprised that the U.S. government hasn't disbanded the RIAA on the grounds that it's a monopolistic cartel. Get with it, dammit!
Apparently macs can read and burn everything but the first track. Not exactly effective copy protection.
Okay, say I'm a mac user. It's clear that I can't go out and buy the music. Damnit.
But I have an iPod and a Mac, and I REALLY (for some bizarre reason) want to listen to the music from The Fast and the Furious.
Well, if I can't buy it LEGALLY, better turn to the help of my friend the internet, so I CAN get the music. And in the end I won't go out and buy the CD because I sampled it and I liked it. I'll leave it in the store because it's COMPLETELY USELESS to me. Why waste $20?
Go to TidBits (a wonderful Mac resource) and read the following series of articles:
/. the archives)
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06604 (Content is a Pure Public Good) and
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06609 (Why Encryption Doesn't Help) and
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06629 (How to Finance Content Creation) and
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06669 (Are We Just Rationalizing Theft)
All by Dan Kohn, a General Partner with Skymoon Ventures.
These essays put an end to the argument that the current system(s) proposed by content providers will lose - no matter what.
Also, anything Lessig has authored (already in
This is a very compelling series of reads on this issue.
Furthermore, if people like Ebert, Lessig, Dan Kohn and others continue to get the word out, we, and recording artists will be a lot better off in the near long term.
It's beyond me why any well-known act would sign with a major label today, given the raw potential for this medium (the net) to do almost pure 'pull' marketing.
Check http://uk.eurorights.org they have an updated list of known proteced cd's and their labels. It covers mostly European releases. For info on US a good site is http://www.fatchucks.com/corruptcds/index.html.
This is slightly differnt then divx, however, because when Divx you were paying less (like $5.95), and you were getting less (2 days of play time or somesuch, no extra features). With CDs like this you are still paying the full price ($18+) and getting yet getting less.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
Here's something that struck me. Here's a quote from the legal site on the Universal Music Group's site (see the link in the submitted story)
"IF YOU DO NOT OR CANNOT AGREE TO THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO USE THE PLAYER OR CONTENT."
They are saying that this is a legal contract. They are saying that if you cannot agree then you are not allowed to use the content (listen to the music). Minors cannot agree to legal contracts. Tell me if my logic fails me, but does that mean that minors can't listen to copyprotected CD's? Shouldn't they be, therefore, prohibited from buying them?
It sounds ultra stupid, but it's the RIAA.
One wonders if nsync cds would sell worse without the cd's in the jewels cases.
Not that I am a profesional sociologist with reams of rock hard data, or anything other than just shooting from the hip.
But I would bet that having the music on the cd is less important than having the cd itself. I'm not just saying this because nsynch sucks, but that it might be more important for their "fans" to be part of the pop-culture phenomina than to be enjoying whatever entertainment value the music has intrinsicly. As such, 12 year old girls would be one of the last groups to turn away from the music industry, their not buying the music at all.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Roger Ebert has weighed in with a scathing critique of the Universal Music Group and it's new copy-protection scheme which renders CDs unplayable in non-Windows operating systems, DVD players, and CD-compatible game consoles.
Non-Windows operating systems? How did this decision get made I wonder? Has Microsoft leveraged their monopoly in the operating systems market against the music industry to keep out competition from other platforms (Apple) in the music and video markets as well? As one who has used the music and video tools in Windows XP and Apple's OSX, Apple obviously has a better, more refined product and Microsoft knows this. Like just about anything else in their line-up, Microsoft produces third rate products and then leverages their monopoly to prevent better products from getting a fair shake.
I would be most interested if anybody has information that might clarify why non-Windows operating systems are locked out.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Napster and all the other music sharing schemes allowed one to sample music from all over the place: independent stuff as well as from the companies that make up the RIAA and friends. Could it be the real reason that Napster was such a threat was it did just that? People all over the world were exploring their musical interests freely and widely and it wasn't just confined to what got pumped out of (most) radio and MTV.
What the RIAA is afraid of is NOT music piracy, per se, but the threat of the general public's musical tastes growing bigger than the set of bands they happen to be promoting.
So, now we're talking about copy protection. If the RIAA and friends get their way, we will only be able to buy CD players, etc, that will play CDs with their proprietary copy-protection/encryption scheme.
Think about it, if you wanted to listen to music on digital media, you'd have to buy THEIR music. I only hope this is a paraniod fantasy, but I can see where this is going.
If you don't believe me, ask that guy over there.
I bought Shakira's album Laundry Service about a week ago. Unfortunately for me, I didn't notice the small print on the cover and on the CD itself ("will _not_ play on PC/MAC") until I got home and tried to convert it to MP3s. I have encoded all my CDs to MP3 files so that I wouldn't have to change the CD in the CD player whenever I want to listen to some other artists. I have a high stack of CDs, the MP3s are there just for extra convenience. A small hint to everyone: get an Evation IRman infrared receiver so you can control your MP3 player remotely. I couldn't live without it.
Oh, back to copy protection.. I was unable to play or rip that CD with any of the computers that I have at home. I tried various ripping programs, but none of then did the trick. They didn't even recognize that there was a CD in the CD drive. My regular Technics CD player played the disc just fine, along with my DVD player in CD audio mode (this was somewhat surprising). Computers were completely unable to play the CD. Yes, the CD does have the Compact Disc digital audio logo on it. Or actually, it's "Compact Disc digital audio TEXT". However, that additional "text" part hasn't stopped ripping some other CDs that I have. The actual reason why the CD didn't want to cooperate was most probably the fact that it had a nice "SACEM/SDRM" logo right next to the Compact Disc logo. You can see an image of the CD here if you're interested about the details. Unfortunately the image quality isn't very good as my scanner is kind of old and the print quality on the CD itself leaves something to be desired.
Fortunately, a friend of mine at work had the same CD without the copy protection scheme applied so I was able to encode that troublesome CD to MP3. Seems like they released a few copy protected CDs to test how the consumers would react. Both of those CDs were manufactured in Austria.. go figure.
Well, at least I know I'll have to be more careful the next time I go shopping for CDs.. I would have most probably returned the CD if I had found some non-computer device that was unable to play the CD, but as I found none, I guess I'll just keep this as a reference in case someone asks my opinion about copy protected CDs. You can bet I won't buy another CD that won't let me encode it to MP3s.
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
Political action can have results - even with the money.
Here's a little story. It might seem off-topic at first, but keep reading. After September 11th, despite the fact that general aviation had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks, GA (specifically, the smallest and least harmful aircraft involved in aviation) were grounded for a LONG time (on the order of two months).
The airlines and many politicians have always wanted to get rid of light planes. They are considered a "nuisance" - and this was a way to take our freedoms away (despite the fact the FAA wanted to have GA flying again two days after Sept. 11 since the FAA knows that an aircraft weighing less than a compact car isn't a big threat).
What's this got to do with encryption, the RIAA, MPAA, SSSCA (or whatever they renamed it to this week?)
Political action worked for GA. There are only about 300,000 active GA pilots in the entire country - i.e. about the same as the total number of Slashdot readers. AOPA organized a day where all pilots would call up their local congresscritters - all on the same day.
Every representitive's office in the country got HUNDREDS of calls on the issue of VFR pilots still remaining grounded. They were still getting calls the next day. And the next day.
Very quickly, the issue was a hot topic. Not long after that, the restrictions were pretty much totally dropped.
Slashdot has at least as many regular readers as aopa.org - and this issue has MANY more than 300,000 people interested in the SSSCA (or whatever it's now called) being passed as law.
So it's time for political action. Slashdot should do the same as AOPA did - organize a single day where everyone calls their local representitive and spells out this issue. A few hundred thousand phone calls from voters and they WILL listen. It worked for AOPA and GA pilots - it should also work for us!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Is the RIAA on drugs, or do they realize that one of their biggest targets, those under the age of 18, are legally not able to be bound to a contract, license or other legal instrument?
Keep this up and they may as well force their resellers to prohibit the sale of music CDs to minors. Boy, wil that help their bottom line! (NOT)
If you haven't checked out his other collumns, you should. He seems to be a smart guy.b ert&date=011001&page=01 u mnist=eb ert&date=010801&page=01 ...i st=eb ert&date=010101&page=01
In this one: http://www.yil.com/columns/column.asp?columnist=e
he explains why forwarding virus warnings, urban myths etc is a bad idea, and even explains why sending HTML formatted email is bad.
And this one...
http://www.yil.com/columns/column.asp?col
he speaks out on the demise of Yahoo's Adult clubs.
And
http://www.yil.com/columns/column.asp?column
privacy issues at Amazon.com
It almost sounds like he's just a regular geek who likes to watch movies.
The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout Apr 21-27
...dangerous people. They do unpredictable and sometimes violent things when they twig onto the fact that they've been duped.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
There is another way to "fight the man" and resist forced content, at least if you live in, or have access to a decent sized city. Go see a local band, and support musicians in your town. Most sell their cd's on the cheap, or give them away at shows --- they're just happy to have bodies there in the first place. Even if all the copy protection and content control issues are taken care of, you're still supporting Big Music by buying the CD's they offer to you. They've had control of music and musicians for years, feeding us the hits and bands they want us to hear. If you really want choices, why not try to find some in your neighborhood ?
Wine, music and cinema are the three great creations of humanity. -T'Ian Han
We were talking about the latest RIAA atrocities and I offered up my oft-repeated idea of a new record company that's founded with the idea of "Don't screw the artist, don't screw the customer". The foundation of this idea is:
My friend responded to my idea this way: "But if we don't screw the artist and we don't screw the customer, then WHO ARE WE GOING TO SCREW?"
She went on to say "I'm joking of course. but that's how the record companies think. It is completly foreign to them to think that they can make more money by giving up their iron fisted control of the medium. They absolutly believe that if they don't control every aspect of the recording, distribution, promotion, and sale of "their" music then their business will collapse."
This is why the RIAA is not swayed by studies that show that people who describe themselves as "avid Napster users" buy 4 to 6 times more CD's than the average consumer. This is why they don't understand why record sales are this year are 43% of what they were when Napster was alive. This is why they think that Tower records sells more Recordable CDs than pre-recorded CDs because of "piracy".
They don't realize that the reason we're not buying albums is because THE MUSIC SUCKS! I'm sorry but I really don't want to buy any CD by Britney or Cristina or N'Sync or O'Town or any other headphone wearing pop icon manufactured band. And oddly enough, even when they shoot themselves in their own wallet (like when Capitol paid Maria Carey upteen million dollars to "Get The Hell Out Of Our Label") then they STILL don't get it.
So don't be surprised if these articles fall on deaf ears at the record companies. Remember what guitarist Adrian Legg says about record company executives and deafness: "It's actually quite a benefit for them as it allows them to make sound business decisions without being distracted by something so trivial as the tunes".
...that the situation with the MP3 CDs will be the same as the drugs, unfortunately.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Taken from a washington post article archived on rapstation.
The dead's popularity didn't really start spiralling out of control until they released an MTV video in '88 surprisingly enough.
burris
Two examples: 1) I WILL NOT shop at a CDW location because they INSIST in order for you, the customer to enter, that you turn over your bag with YOUR valuables (cell phone, PDA, laptop? $2000 worth?) to a minimum wage shlub in a cheap uniform. I actually had one say to me,"You have to GIVE ME YOUR STUFF if you want to BUY SOMETHING!" I declined that deal and took my money elsewhere.
They practically strip search you on the way out after you buy something. (AFTER you pay, you have the items and the paperwork reviewed by the security guard before you get YOUR stuff back.)
BTW, CDW, my Fortune 50 employer would OK my purchase of a lot of stuff from you. I don't purchase from you. You keep telling me you think I'm a thief.
2) I just wrestled for three weeks with a brand new Directv/TiVo that insisted the Directv access card wasn't valid. It had a bad card reader but it took a attempted card replacement to figure that out. I BOUGHT the thing. As a customer I was arranging to PAY for the service but I couldn't convince it that I wasn't trying to steal.
I walked out of a CD store because of similar "strip search" policy. I had already decided to slow down CD purchases since they're overpriced and now copy protected.
I also hate it when you have to fight with some scheme to activate software that you bought. They need to be less concerned with the possibility that we will use the product without paying for it and more concerned that we want to use the product at all!
We HAVE TO refuse to do business with companies that assume we're thieves!
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Exactly! Give that man a cigar, or a spliff, or whatever floats his boat!
I will not buy new CDs unless the company that puts it out is NOT a member of the RIAA. I will not buy DVDs put out by signatories to the MPAA. This way, I do not have to deprive myself of the music and movies I like. It's great.
Here are some places to check out:
http://www.secondspin.com/
http://www.half.com/
And even more importantly: support indie music! Support indie movies! Create your own music/movies, then SHARE AND ENJOY!!! This is the real reason Big Media is quaking in its boots.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I haven't bought a major-label CD in years. Plenty of indie stuff (that I've immediately ripped for my own use), but the RIAA members don't sell what I want, so I don't buy. I no longer want physical media. I hate physical media. I don't know about other people, but I have way too much media as it is - and being relatively young, single and mobile, too much stuff is nothing but a PITA when you move a lot. I just picked up a couple of DVDs today and thought, geez, I can't wait until I can rip these things to a gigantic mass storage device and ditch this useless, irritating physical packaging (I know I already can, but I want to rip 'em complete with all the features).
I used to think that the media companies would have no choice but to offer a distribution model that would suit my needs, but I guess they don't plan on doing that. It's no one's loss but their own, and frankly, if they don't get paid and the artists don't get paid, then it's their own fault and I have very little sympathy. I'm perfectly willing to give them money. Just sell me what I want and don't treat me like a bitch, and you'll get paid... that's pretty much how this system works, last time I checked.
But it looks like that isn't going to happen any time soon. In fact, if things keep going the way they're going, I predict a lot more people are going to feel this way, and that means one thing: opportunity! Ironically enough, a clampdown from big media might be just the thing that destroys them, because there will be creators who WILL offer what we want, how we want it. The more people who are driven to those alternatives, the better... so I say, let the RIAA do their thing. Worst case scenario: there will always be a hack for whatever they try. But the best case scenario?
We'll route around them like damage, and we'll create new opportunities for creators and distributors.
Either way, they're meaningless in my life.
Even using this scheme, though, there will have to be massive numbers of people returning these CDs for the record companies to take notice. But it's certainly easier for the record companies to take notice that people aren't happy this way.
It's possible that a boycott just makes the record companies think people didn't like the music. By returning the CDs, the record companies will know that it's the technology that the consumers don't like.
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
Um... this is Windows Media. What on earth gives you the idea it's not going to expire next week? Ask yourself why Warner _isn't_ using mp3 for this...
That current storyline bugs me, too. I feel a lecture coming on.
But Alex could ask her dad the same thing she did for the anti-drug lecture: "Didn't you make dub tapes when you were a kid?"
"Uh, yeah...but the weed's stronger these days -- I mean, the digital copies are better!"
--- Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith
Nobody should be allowed to make more than 1000 times the minimum wage.
Reason: Excessive disparity in economic power is harmful to democracy.
In Athens, where democracy survived (as opposed to lots of places where it didn't) the rich folk made about 50 times what the poor folk made. Well, we've got a larger civilization, and the hierarchy has more levels, so we need more degrees of stratification. But this is a power law kind of thing, so allowing 1000 times is actually being quite excessive. A real, unbiased, estimate of what would be best for the country would probably end up closer to 100 times.
OTOH, that estimate for Athens was only for citizens, so women, foreigners, and slaves weren't counted. But then each of those (well, not the foreigners) was a weakness in the Athenian civilization. (Though allowing foreign slaves was a part of the trade-off for the forbidding of Athenian slaves, so it was also a strength.)
I don't see any justification for asserting that it should be allowable to be unlimitedly wealthy. The imbalence of power is destabilizing.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Years ago (back in the 80's) I read an article in Reader's Digest written by a man that complained about how stores were treating their customers like criminals: making them check their bags at the entrance and later on with anti-shoplifting measures. He was saying something to the effect of never again going into such a store. Today, he would have a very difficult time finding one he could still go to.
Just as nowadays we are completely used to those detectors they put at the door and the tabs that stain clothes when removed, we might grow used to copy protection in our cds if we don't take action now. The next generation will take these measures for granted.
BTW, anti-shoplifting measures are a good thing (imo) as long as they are not intrusive to the customer.
No sig
You are missing the point. The DMCA and its relatives will make it illegal to circumvent, or enable the circumvention of, any copy protection device.
So it isn't just about the record industries not making fair use EASY -- it's about them making fair use ILLEGAL -- which certainly compromises our right to fair use, doesn't it?
I have no normal CD player hooked up to my HiFi. If I want to play a CD through my 5 speaker Dolby Prologic Yamaha system I have the choice to put it in a; Sega Mega CD, Sega Saturn or Sega Dreamcast. My Playstation is in storage. The CD drive on the Wintel PC I have connected to the system has recently failed. I have a secondary set of speakers that can be (but aren't usually) connected to an external PCMCIA CD drive connected to my portable (Wintel) PC. Mostly they're just connected to the PC. For listening to portable music I have an old Diamond Rio Special Edition (which I mostly use to load Atari 2600 games through a Cuttle Cart), the Ericsson MP3 handsfree kit, a brand new Imation RipGo! 8cm MP3/WMA/CDA player / CD burner hybrid (yes it does play normal 8cm singles) and finally an normal old Sony Discman.
Please note that any CD I purchase that doesn't play on a CD-based video games console is likely to be returned as faulty.
While I'm posting this I just want to make a request. Please start releasing singles in that cute 8cm format again.
or so he says. Plus I believe that he wrote some cheesy script for one of Roger Corman's movies back in the 60's. He certainly has a history!
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
So how do you plan to go about this? Pass a law mandating a maximum wage? Order people not to work as hard? Have some sort of "rich police" that goes around and confiscates the property of anyone deemed too far above-average?
If you're willing to work hard and you're good at what you do, no one else has any right to tell you your upper limit, so long as you stay within the rights of others as well.
They will experience loss of sales due to the crappy copy protection scheme.
Then they will blame the losses on unlawful copying and distribution of their music!
They can use this as evidence in the future to promote the SSSCA or whatever new bill they want!
--Jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
They're set up so a CD-ROM or DVD drive won't read them right. That means you need to go to that trouble to begin with to copy- they thought about your end-run and crippled it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I think much the same thing as you, only I came to the conclusion a bit differently. I first learned about Roger Ebert a few years ago through his online reviews at the Chicago Sun-Times website, and I came to admire him very much; he was (usually) a very lucid writer, and always had something intelligent to say about the movies he reviewed. And, importantly, he seemed to try at all times to enjoy all the movies he watched. He usually managed to find something good to say, even about a movie he didn't particularly care for. He was very different, refreshingly different, from Pauline Kael and all of her third-rate imitators, who always tried to outdo themselves in finding clever put-downs and insults about the movies they reviewed. Occasionally some movie would not sit well with Ebert, and he'd give it a rare one-star (or even no-star) review; his review of Rob Reiner's North is a classic in this regard.
But then I found older Ebert reviews, in old editions of his books and so forth, and I was impressed by how bad they often were. Just to pick an example, somebody track down his original review of Hal Ashby's Being There from twenty years ago, and then compare it to the recent review of it he wrote for his "Great Movies" column on the Sun-Times website. Ebert has definitely improved with age.
And he's lost some weight, too.
People aren't buying anywhere near as much stuff as they used to. If you have everyone selling at the same price, but have a lower floor, all it'd take is someone to shave into their markup some to undercut the competition and sell a LOT more product (remember, selling product is their goal- so they're going to price things according to how much they think they can gouge out of you...).
What makes more money? One $18 CD with a $12 margin or 3 $10 CD's with a $5 margin... You're more likely to see more purchases with the lower cost; if you can balance things right you can make more money by selling for less.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The music industry is dinky. The entire industry does about $13 billion a year in revenue. Compaq alone is twice as big as the entire music industry. IBM is six times as big. Yet the RIAA is trying to dictate product design to the computer industry. The tail is wagging the dog here.
Congress can control what is copyrightable, and for how long. It's time for the computing industry to tell the RIAA where to get off.
Musicians can still make money. They can still tour. Appear in films and TV shows. Endorse products. The big names will still make big money. Just treat recordings as a promotional item, like radio. People will still buy CDs, although the prices will drop to slightly above manufacturing cost. Yes, recording industry margins will decline. Is that a real problem?
Well I would plan to do this by making the tax rate a log scale so that by the time you reach 1000 times the base level you are being taxed at 99.999%. In fact I would only "allow" people to earn up to 100 times the planetary average wage (yep you got to factor in all those chinese and african paupers) and I would be redistributing the taxation wealth based on "national" average wages so all you Americans would be forking out huge chunks of your money. Bet you that's popular with the capitalists here! (p.s. I'm Irish so I'd expect to become a lot poorer overnight also if this was enacted).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
The RIAA and media companies are using this idea that people of violating copy rights to mask the real objective of their proposed legislation.
Their real goal, is to force independant artists (musicians, videographers, filmmakers) to have to use the big name media companies to get their work to market. The big companies cannot stand the fact that independant artists can produce Hollywood grade material and get it to market without them.
That's what this is really about. They've chosen to use the copyright issue because they feel the general audience (consumers) can understand
such a topic but that consumers would not support such drastic measures if the truth was known.
The people that will feel the suffering the most should all of this crap pass with be those independant artists you find at places like Atom Films or MP3
You can even get my +1 bonus point on /. Roger for me telling you that you are cool. Because frankly, it takes ballz, giant brass ballz, to stand up and say what you just said.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
I care about the sound not who's singing it. In the case of that CD there were a few songs I liked and I saw no reason to return it just because the guys up front weren't the ones singing it. The music still sounded good and I get a chuckle out of the twits on the front cover art. Maybe it'll be collectible one day? (rolleyes)
:-) I guess I and others like me are the RIAA's worst nightmare huh?
Often times I can hum a few bars of a tune I like and remember some of the words but there's no way in heck I know what silly artist it was that sang it! This makes using P2P services a PITA since I actually have to know something about the artist or song title in order to find the music. Those TV commercials where they play the song and scroll the artist\title up the screen are awesome, I scribble down the info as fast as I can sometimes. I've honestly not bought a NEW CD in about 5 years now. If I buy a CD it's always a used one from a local store. The RIAA doesn't get my cash and I get a perfectly good working CD for far less than the extortion they attempt to charge at the record store.
Sad, I can remember driving quite a ways to the record store when I was younger and my favorite store wasn't close by. I was willing to do that then and I spent a good bit - now I refuse simply because I've realized what crooks these guys are. And that used CDs sound just as good
Most of my MP3 collection, all 10+gigs, came from my own CDs. Took me 40+ hours to rip it all. The rest I've gathered from friend's collections and from P2P. It's not usually as well done as the RIPs I did myself and sometimes sounds awful when put back on CD. I've got an Alpine MP3 player for the car that I'm hoping will make using MP3 easier. I never play one of my old original CDs anymore, they're now packed away for safe keeping. I listen to nothing but burned MP3 these days....
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
The concert fund was a fan's idea and completely fan administered. By the time this all came about, marillion was on their 9th or 10th studio album and had already released a double live set. All presumably with Record Label Marketing money getting them advertised and trying to get them some airplay. They had a rabidly loyal, internet savvy fanbase, built up from years of recording and touring.
Now they have a worldwide audience, and can cut out the old middlemen.
I love them, but they had over a decade invested with labels before they went indy.
Without major maketing dollars, you don't have the clout to get on the major outlets (video channels, radio stations, etc). You just have to hope word of mouth gets you a fanbase. Then you're back to how it was before MTV. Start out local, build to regional, hope somebody notices. All the while having to finance your own recordings, promototion, etc.
Evey band can't be Metallica or Marillion. Find a way to make independent promotion via the net work, and you've got something. There's an entire industry devoted to making your web page be first in a search engine's ranking. What's the analogy to indy music promotion? How do you get your music heard?
My Heart Is A Flower
Of course piracy helps the music industry, we all know that, and they know that. The attacks on piracy are just a front to hide their real intentions. What they want is pay-per-play and they want to outlaw the ability for people to distribute entertainment without a contract with them, and they are using piracy as an excuse to force this vision through.
Wow, modded twice as a troll. Who would I have been trolling for? Does Roger Ebert read slashdot?
I guess nobody around here has the ability to detect sarcasm.
Phooey.
Thanks also for correcting my factual inaccuracies (my wife is reading "Next" so I couldn't get to it to check the story, though I think I got the gist of it correct).
You did. I was lucky enough to be there. It was a great time to be a Freak (a non-pejoritive for a Marillion fan). They even financed their next disc by preselling over the internet. They said that they raised more money in presales than they ever got as an advance from any record company, and that by DIYing the whole thing they made all the profit from the disc instead of 10p per unit.
Everybody who preordered got their picture on the liner, and they called the cd marillion.com.
I saw the TV adaptation of "Next". It was way cool to see Marillion featured so prominently.
I was at a Bears concert not to long ago, and I heard a tune over the PA pre-show that I really liked. We asked the sound guy, got the artist's name (Mike Kineally) and the song title (Live in Japan). Next day we got the MP3 of the song from Amazon. Now I can listen for a while, and later, maybe I'll decide to buy one of his CDs.
I still don't know anything about him, and I haven't listened to any more of his tunes (I'm a busy guy), but he's one of the top slots on my "music to explore as time permits" list.
I'm not shelling out for a CD that I have not listened to yet, and I don't have time to listen to the CD at the record store. I need a try before I buy solution, and I will buy what I like.
The record companies are kneekapping themselves by not selling singles, under the misguided idea that it cuts into album sales. Of course, from their point of view. If N'sync's new single is available, then the teenyboppers won't buy the CD and they won't make as much profit. Since they loathe to put more than two good songs on any CD, it is their inablilty to price singles such that 2 singles equals more profit than one full length CD. Bad business is bad for business. I'm sure their astounded when a cd has more than two hits.
In conclusion, I don't think the problem is big label versus indy label. It is the business practices of the label(s). Rober Fripp writes on this topic in the liner notes of all of the CDs releases on his Discipline Global Mobile label.
My Heart Is A Flower
Didn't know there was a tv adaptation of "Next". Do you happen to recall when you saw it & on what channel? I'd like to see it.
I'm going to say that I swaw it a couple of months ago, and it was either on public TV, or on the discovery channel.
I think it more likely that the bands can typically only come up with one or two good songs in the time frame they have to record an album. I'm not a musician though, so the whole creative process there tends to amaze me anyway
That may very well be. But I've heard guys like Dwight Yoakum talking about how his record contract says he can only put 12 songs on a disc, and that he had to pay his record company to put out a 14 song disc. It looks like the record companies are not much into supplying value for the money we spand.
The label's business is selling "units". music on a physical medium. They don't make money unless you buy the media from them, and they aren't smart enough to figure out how to make money using a software licensing model.
They were in a position to be the only ones with enough resources and access to get records made, and they exploited that fact for a long time. They are losing their grip on their market place, and those in power never give up without a fight, and they'll fight dirty as necessary.
My Heart Is A Flower