Janis Ian on the Internet Debacle

Datasage writes "Janis Ian, famous songwriter and artist, writes about her views of free music downloads, the music industry and the evils of the RIAA in this article." Yet another artist with substantial first-person experience speaking out, reminiscent of Courtney Love's speech.

Comments

Re:Very interesting article

[rhadamanthus]

So very true. I wrote a letter to several congress-types, in which I wrote:

"Furthermore, the advent of Napster in 1999 was followed by an overall increase in record sales by the RIAA for the next two years! The RIAA sold 10.8 percent more CDs that year even after increasing the price on those discs by over 12.3 percent. In 2000 this trend continued with another increase in CD price (from $13.65 to $14.02 on average) and an increase in sales again by over 3,600,000 CDs. It is worth noting also that in the last nine years the RIAA has tripled their annual income during a supposed economic downturn. For the years 1999 and 2000 the total profit made by the RIAA went from 14,584,500,000 dollars to 14,323,000,000 dollars. However, they lost 579,500,000 dollars on vinyls, cassettes and music videos, areas that Napster cannot possibly have an effect upon! In the formats Napster can trade, the RIAA made 318,500,000 more dollars than before!"

These numbers don't lie....

The fact is that Napster's popularity appears to have spurred CD sales to new levels. This makes sense, if you think about it: The large majority of people are not on fast broadband connections to the Internet. On a 56K modem, downloading an MP3 can take some time, certainly enough to make downloading an entire album seem like a lot of effort. Then, more time is required to get the songs onto the CD. Common sense says that if people using Napster liked a song enough on MP3, they would probably go out and buy the album, just as if they heard it on the radio. Napster gave people the chance to experience music they otherwise might have been loathe to pay money for, only to find out that the music wasn't something they particularly enjoyed. Need more proof? In 2000, CD sales were up 8 percent, even with Napster usage at an almost all-time high. At the same time in 2001, CD sales were down 8 percent, but the RIAA's lawsuit had all but halted Napster usage. See the correlation?

---rhad

For those who don't know ...

[pyramid termite]

... Janis Ian had her first hit in 1967 with a controversial song about interracial dating, "Society's Child". She was a young teenager at the time.

She released several albums on the Verve label in the 60s and gradually sank into obscurity. After signing with Columbia, she made a comeback during the mid-70s with the hit "At Seventeen". Again, she wasn't able to follow it up with another similar hit and sales gradually dwindled until she was dropped. Due to mismanagement and bad accounting she ended up with tax problems and eventually went broke.

She's managed to keep herself going in the music biz in the last few years, although I have no idea what kind of music she's doing now.

Re:For those who don't know ...

[robkill]

Her latest album is "God and the FBI." She spent close to 10 years using the FOIA to see the FBI files collected on her father. It turns out her father was branded a communist. Every 3 or 4 years they'd have to move because her father lost a teaching position. It turns out that the FBI would come by, ask a few questions, and then folks would get scared and fire him.

She's one of the regular columnists for "Performing Songwriter" magazine. She and Christine Lavin have written several good commentaries on the music industry and how the Internet has helped independent singer-songwriters. And she's a big Science Fiction fan to boot!

Re:I fear

[TWR]

Um, the investor you heard was correct: the shareholders of a corporation are its owners. The people running the corporation have a primary responsibility to the owners (shareholders) to run the company such that the owners get a return on their money (through dividends, which are not all that common any more) or to increase the value of what the owners, well, own.

If a corporation is too abstract of a concept, let's do a thought experiment. Pretend you have a child who wants to start a lawn-mowing business. The child needs money to buy a lawn mower, print up fliers, pay for gas, etc. You agree to give your kid the money in exchange for, say, 25% of the profits. In effect, you have just bought 25% of your kid's company.

Who is the kid responsible to? If you have a consciencious child, you hope that he wants to pay back your faith in him by making money. After all, that was the deal. The primary responsibilty, as you can see, is to the person who made this little company possible in the first place.

If screwing customers is a good plan for a company to make money and increase its value, you can hardly fault the company beacuse the customers put up with being screwed. Long-term, companies survive because the put out a product that people want. Generating ill will doesn't work long term. Unfortunately, the Enron/Worldcom/Adelphia/whoever's next bastards don't care about the long term, don't care about their customers, and don't care about their shareholders. If they did care about the shareholders, they wouldn't have been lying to them. The system needs fixes because it's too easy for lying weasels to get away with hiding things from shareholders. After that, everything else will fall into place, including customer satisfaction.

Heck, if you don't like how record companies are currently working, start buying record company shares. Don't like how MS works? Buy MS shares. Set up a fund. Every time you want to buy a CD or DVD or piece of software, use that money to buy stock instead. Let lots of people pool their money, get a large voting bloc of stock. Then change the policies. That's how the system works.

-jon