Slashdot Mirror
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.
.. from all the 40 year old morons who keep reiterating that 'artists have to be compensated for their work, so filesharing is inherently as bad as stealing' and then, to add insult to injury, accuse me (a musician) of cheating musicians.
I said it before, I'll say it again - absolutely nobody is listening to the musicians. For all the lawyer bashing that goes on here, you'd think some of those 'filesharing is the devils work' posters would clue in that the parties with the megaphones in this debate arnt even remotely interested in the welfare of artists - only the lucrativeness of the music industry.
What a great article. It should be required reading if you want to be a music consumer.
"Old man yells at systemd"
oh, the sweet sweet irony of hearing an AC call somebody, more or less, an anonymous wacko.
*fffsszzzt* hello, kettle, come in, come in, this is the pot *fffsszzzt*
"Old man yells at systemd"
Oh yes. Jacko was complaining that the recording industry was racist (And we all know how proud he is of his black heritage, don't we.) and not trying to bolster his faded career at all...
"Information wants to be paid"
This really boils down to "who's in it for the self-validation" vs "who's in it for the music." It seems that much of the response to the music swapping debate just goes to show where these folks' alliances are. Mettalica was in it for the prestige and decided to suck up to the record company who was promoting them and making them 'famous'. Janis Ian (and others) is showing herself as someone who is in it to make music, not to get famous.
The fame-junkies are going to ally with the record companies no matter how much or little they get paid. But to quote Bowie, "Fame...makes [someone] loose and hard to swallow."
The ironic part is, if they ditched the record companies and made a *real* effort to come up with an internet-based music distribution system with micropayments, they'd all probably make more money, AND get more direct control over their work...which is a much more 'real' power than the record companies' 'fame' they peddle.
I think that the RIAA is just frightened that they are losing control. If they were really worried about the artists, they would be paying them more, and not resorting to some of the more unethical practices that have become standard in the music industry.
If they really wanted to help the consumer, they could lower CD prices everywhere, so that more people could purchase more songs.
If they really wanted to help the artist, they would funnel more money to the artist, rather than their own pockets.
The truth is, though, that they only want to help themselves, and as such, there isn't much we can do about it. We can let our voices be heard, and hope that one day, CD copying will be just as legal as taping something off the radio or television.
And David Bowie had some pretty good stuff to say, too.
Just a thought, but it would be great if more stars of the 60s spoke out against the record companies on this one. Those decrepit baby boomers owe it to us later generations...
Lobby your favorite aging rocker. I bet their back catalogues make up a sizeable portion of record company revenue, and the've already made a fortune so they have less to risk by speaking out. And once we get Ozzy Osbourne et al on the case...
I think the point is, Napster-type services are not destroying the music industry. That's what the big multi-national record labels want you to believe. Rather, it is destroying a specific part of the music industry -- their part of it.
For the vast majority of musicians and performers (the vast majority not being Madonna or Britney...) the Web is a very positive thing - a way for them to promote themselves and distribute their music at very low cost.
One of the ways the big multinational record labels have defended the price of CDs in the past has been by saying that selecting and promoting an artist or band is very expensive. Not any more it's not - bands can promote themselves, and we the collective Joe Public can do the selecting, thank you very much.
Basically, corporations such as Disney and industry groups such as the MPAA and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) cannot seem to fathom the existence of a customer who is both honest enough to not steal, yet smart enough to not let him/herself be ripped off.
The opposing view: A study compiled by the Yankelovich Partners surveyed 16,000 Americans between the ages of 13 and 39 who say they listen to more than 10 hours of music a week and have spent at least $25 on music in the past six months. Among the findings: 59 percent of those who said they heard a certain piece of music for the first time while online ended up purchasing that music as a CD.
What is truly patheitc is how they rant and rave about how they want to "protect the artist", all the while doing just the opposite--and GETTING AWAY WITH IT. What the RIAA does not want you or I to realize is that they most certainly do NOT represent the artists contracted to their labels. They represent nothing more than a coalition of companies milking copyright to its fullest extent.
Copyright is no longer a good thing. It is sad that such a good "idea" has become such a misused and abused facet of corporate ideology and overwhelming greed.
----rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
This must be a new meaning of famous I've never come across before. Come on /., sort it out.
... 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.
It's interesting to note that this is not someone who could be dismissed by an RIAA flack as a no-name musician whining because the Internet might get her recognition that she's not gotten from "The Industry" -- she's had nine Grammy nominations, and her music has been recorded by just about everybody at one time or another.
Need a UNIX/Linux/network guru in the Boulde
damn, thats like 325 Gb per year!
i have a feeling that the numbers are being skewed here
I want 2D games back.
What? He's black?
That may be true. But her point about music downloads increasing sales (even for forgetable artists) is true.
Most music out there is utter crap. I've been burned badly so many times by buying discs by highly-hyped, but untalented "artists" that I'm almost afraid to buy anything.
Enter the Internet.
Now I can preview music and give it a test drive. Do I find a lot of crap? Yep. And I don't buy the discs, nor do I continue to listen to it.
BUT... I do find a fair amount of good stuff and do you know what? I actually BUY the disks. Really!!
I have 20 - 30 CDs full of MP3s that I've downloaded from the 'net and about 1200 CDs that I've purchased from the store (approx 250 since I've been "stealing" music from the Internet).
Are there people who just download the music and never buy a disc (effectivly stealing the music)?
Yes..
They need to pay for the music they listen to in order to reward the artist for producing it. Otherwise, why should the artists continue even trying?
Things need to change. The record companies need to lighten up and people who download and listen to the music need to get some ethics and pay for what they use.
My 2 cents.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
[CD's] do you throw them away?
I always thought they would make really cool wall paper if I had enough junk CD's to throw at the task. I would like to thank MSN, Compuserve, and most of all AOL, for helping me build my collection.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The first batch of rewritables I got could only be read on some computers and not others.
CD-R is a more universal platform.
And the media is cheap and un-reliable enough, why not one time use it?
For perhaps daily backups in business RW media is ok, but for any kind of archival sitation, read only is actually prefered.
The media is cheaper as well.
One word: Macrovision.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
and their competency with money, written by a minor popstar, appeared in The Guardian this weekend.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The article is very good and brings up a point that I have been seeing in my latest cd purchases. I haven't bought a top40 cd in a long time, but now that there is greater access to music online, I'm buying many cd's from bands I have never heard of previously.
The number of cd's that I have bought has gone up, but they aren't any of the one's that are being promoted by these companies. I really wonder if these count in the sales numbers or not...
written, it will be promptly vilified by the RIAA and NARAS (and the MPAA because they always like to attack anyone/anything that might peripherally affect them), but mainstream media will ignore it because it isn't as sexy a story as "pirates on the Internet" (Arghh, matey). Oh well, I shouldn't let facts get in the way. The industry doesn't.
We'll turn into Microsoft if we're not careful
Wow. Anti-RIAA and anti-Microsoft in eight words. The girl can write.
Nope, no sig
I remember when he was. That was a long time ago, mind.
"Information wants to be paid"
Many artists understand now that the RIAA are the real pirates. "I made you a star. YOU owe ME!" has been repeated like a mantra by recording company leeches. Fans, not the leeches, make artists stars. Boycott the recording industry. Don't buy CDs.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
case in point:
went to see movie "Rock Star". heard song "Colorful" by "The Verve Pipe". went home, powered up my favorite P2P App. downloaded "Colorful". listened to it, liked it. went to OLGA and downloaded the tab and learned it. liked it. went back to said P2P App and downloaded a few more "The Verve Pipe" songs. liked them. went to "Barnes and Nobles" and bought "Underneath", latest "The Verve Pipe" album. listened to it a couple times. liked it. went to "The Verve Pipe" web page and checked out their tour schedule, made plans.
have I ever heard "Colorful" on the radio? no. will I ever? probably not. did being able to get "Colorful" for free keep me from buying the CD? far from it, being able to get the song for free is the SOLE reason I eventually bought the CD. and I had a CD burner and all the MP3s for the album already.
MORTAR COMBAT!
No, not to the RIAA.
No, not to Congress/Parliment/whatever your country has either.
That's been done, and frankly, won't do any better now than it did then.
Boycotts won't work well either. They'll just blame it on piracy anyway.
No, I suggest letter writing to the ARTISTS.
If you decided to buy a CD or go to a live show by [insert artist here] after sampling some of their music, but wouldn't have before, let them know! Most bands have websites, with ways to send email to them. Send one letting them know that they got MORE of your money thanks to your being exposed to them through free downloads.
Maybe, just maybe, if enough people do that, then more artists will step up to argue against the RIAA claims that piracy is hurting artists.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
Famous: someone who's written songs that have been remembered for decades. I.e., someone who has written several famous songs. (This ignores her reported continued fame within a subculture that doesn't "benefit" from widespread media coverage.)
Certainly this isn't the only meaning. Famous is frequently used as a synonym for nortorious, though most consider that to be an incorrect usage. It is also sometimes used to mean someone who is widely known at some particular instant in time. This brief and (hopefully) episodic meaning for famous is a correct usage, though many consider it to be less valid than the more enduring meanings. Thus Rodin is still a famous sculptor, though he has been dead for quite awhile.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext02/sochi-REA DME.txt
Janis Ian's "Society's Child" is Project Gutenberg's etext
#3001 (the lyrics) and #3002 (sound files).
The lyrics are short (shorter than the Project Gutenberg header,
unfortunately), and are in sochi10.txt or sochi10.zip
The sound is in 4 different formats, made from the same digital
audio source tape:
sochi-high.mp3 MP3 file, no degradation
sochi-med.mp3 MP3 file, slightly reduced sound quality
sochi22.wav WAV file at 22kHz
sochi11.wav WAV file at 11kHz
** These are copyrighted files, including the sounds and the lyrics!
** Please read the header in sochi10.txt or sochi10.zip before
** redistributing them.
The lyrics are Copyright (c) 1966 Taosongs Two (BMI) Admin. by Bug
The musical performance is Copyright (c) 2000 by Janis Ian
Thanks to Jason Moore and IBiblio (formerly Metalab) for creating
the digital files. Thanks to Janis Ian for donating these files for
distribution by Project Gutenberg.
The machine and software used to create the MP3 and WAV files was:
- Power Mac G4 running at 500Mhz
- Yamaha DSP Factory DS2416 sound
- Bias Peak and Media Cleaner Pro software
Certified Black Helicopter Pilot *** Unwitting Dupe of One World Gov'ment
I recently picked up Frank Zappa's autobiography (The Real Frank Zappa Book) and he had a chapter on failure where he listed all the ideas he had that never took off. One of those ideas (and this was back in the 80s) was to have record companies sell albums using using modems connected directly to home recording decks. His theory was they lose the overhead of packaging and shelf space and would be able open up the industry to new artists (who no longer had to compete for shelf space with more well known people). In addition, there was no concept of out-of-print, and people could get better sound fidelity rather than recording of your buddy's crappy LP. While this probably has little to do with the article, I found it fascinating that this guy was thinking about delivering music directly to people well before Napster and all its clones. Further proof that the man was a genius
his career isn't the only thing that's been fading.... :)
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Janis owes nothing to the labels. You are still believeing the "I made you a star" lie that record companies have been telling artists since the invention of the phonograph. They are leeches. www.dontbuycds.org
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
I don't know "sirslud", but if you take at face value what he wrote in his comment your reply reads simply as flamebait. By painting him as a "20-to whatever moron..." instead of dealing with the content of his post you only damage the credibility of your argument.
He's a musician. I know many professional musicians eking out a meager living off of live performances who will say much the same thing the previous poster wrote, as well as what's in Janis Ian's essay. This music industry is destroying the incentives to "innovate" just as Microsoft -- through their anti-competitive tactics -- has destroyed the very market they feed from. Piss in the communal soup pot and you get the soup all to yourself; of course may taste like piss but it's all yours!
It may seem counterintuitive, but to an undiscovered musician giving out product for free makes the best marketing sense possible. It's a loss leader for the profitable live performance market. That few musicians -- even those signed on label contracts -- make money from CD sales is further proof of a disincentive for musicians to follow the RIAA's lead and break free. Ani DiFranco is a great example of how a talented musician is better off producing and distributing their own music because of onerous and exclusionary recording contracts, ridiculous accounting methods, and blatant payola on radio. It's more profitable for the individual artist to give away selected tracks. This is a real financial incentive from the bottom up, which may be bad for the monopoly positions of the major record labels, but is very much to the benefit of individual artists.
Cheers,
--Maynard
Well, I'm feeding a troll, but now I have a nice little rant to e-mail people on why the RIAA shouldn't get into the Technology and Law business. Here we go... *dons Troll feeding suit*
.......... Thought so, troll.
1. She wouldn't have a career at all if it weren't for the exposure she got on major labels in her early years.
Nice theroy. Proof please?
2. The major labels are being facile if they ever pretend to care what happens to the Janis Ians of the world. Those are the artists they're losing money on. What they really care about is what happens to the Britneys, because that's where the bulk of their revenue is coming from. But the money Britney earns them is their fund for giving other artists a chance.
That's that's a major problem with our "culture", O Large Ugly Green One, when how much money an artist makes a corporation takes precedent over how good they actually are. Taking away my freedoms to protect the musical Pablum from Brtitney? Again, Mr. Troll, you've got your priorities seriously screwed up. Nice tits != Good Music. (No, I know how to spell her name. Think about it.)
If downloading cuts into Britney's sales (and that seems quite possible to me), it will lead to "marginal" artists getting dumped and fewer getting signed in the future. No exposure, no career. Make a list of all the successful professional musicians who have succeeded without any major-label help. Kind of got bogged down after Ani DiFranco, didn't you?
No kidding. Look, I don't wear a tin foil hat or anything, but if you think for one minute that an artist who gets popular on the 'net - without being in a record labels stable - would get any further than that, you're crazy. I'm sure that the RIAA has more than a few A&R people scouring the web for new band that might get popular without needing them. If they let that happen, it would prove just how ridiculous the RIAA's current business model actually is. That's why, troll - Ani DiFranco is the "One That Got Away". Rest assured that there will be others as well, once artists figure out that with the Internet, a CD maker and a bit of exposure, who needs the RIAA?
So yes, until there's a viable promotion infrastructure outside of the current major labels (and efforts at this are underway), downloading can hurt the Janis Ians, and the aspiring Janis Ians, despite her simplistic observation that incremental downloads aren't currently costing her anything.
Other than bandwidth, what, pray tell, are those downloads costing her? You said yourself that the record companies don't care about her, so why should she care about them? Putting up with 30+ years of RIAA Bovine Fecal Matter would not lead to a simplistic opinion. You'd rather trust Brtitney to inform you of what goes on? Now, that would be a simplistic opinion.
I'd better stop feeding you, Mr. Troll, since you're likely already ben stuffed full of RIAA platitudes and pure bullshit. Go away.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I don't know, but I have this great mental image of Ozzy biting off Hilary Rosen's head.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Oh yes. Jacko was complaining that the recording industry was racist (And we all know how proud he is of his black heritage, don't we.)
You ignornant fuck.
Michael Jackson suffers from a rare skin disorder that results in very pale splotches (like reverse birthmarks, big, ugly, and prominent) all over one's body and face. He had the rest of his skin lightened to hide the blotches, not because he had some desire to "be white." To insinuate such is bigotry at its most despicable.
Having said all this, I don't particularly care for Michael Jackson's music and his personal habits are, to put it mildly, questionable. I have no idea if the pedophile accusations had any merit or not, but the skin whitening accusations are totally bogus and profoundly racist.
He is very misguided IMHO to be solely emphesizing the racism of the music industry (though I'm sure it exists, it is clear that you can find labels that actively promote such black music as Hip Hop, Rap, Gangsta Rap, Blues, Jazz, etc. so where it does exist, it can be worked around). The "oppression" he is feeling is likely the oppression virtually every artist, black, white, green, or purple, who has dealt with the recording industry has felt: the cold certaintly that you have been forced into a form of indentured servitude and are being taken, firmly, to the cleaners. This form of artist misuse and abuse is so profound, so widespread, and so dramatic, that one wonders if any racial components aren't dwarfed in comparison.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Janis Ian seems to embrace giving away free music on Napster and such. Stating that it sold more records when some of her songs were downloaded off Napster. On the other hand Courtney Love seems to say that since the record companies are screwing the artists out of money that the artists should sue Napster and Gnutella. Whoever wrote the post for /. didn't seem to read past page 1 of Courtney Love's speech.
In her case, there's no question that the benefit of the exposure (180 CD sales) exceeded the cost having the songs out there (almost nothing, given her obscurity). Unfortunately, it's naive to automatically assume that this extrapolates to any circumstance.
Does this remain true for an already well-known/pop artist? Maybe, maybe not. On one hand, quite a lot of people are already getting bombarded with the artist's work via the radio, MTV, and even TV show soundtracks. On the other hand, there's a definite reinforcement value in that when you're in the store, you're more likely to remember the name of that artist who's mp3 you listened to quite a few times.
Does this remain true for the case where the entire album is available as an mp3? This is even less likely to be true, as the "free download" is rapidly approaching the value of the album. You'll still have people who want to "support the artist", but you've now got a business model that relies on the willingness of your customers not to cheat the system. That's not a very good business model.
Fortunately, getting an entire album off the P2P services currently requires quite a bit of effort. However, I honestly believe that we're just a few engineering tweaks away from achieving it. Pick and choose the best of the P2P features seen so far, throw in freenet's anonymity, and create a wrapper file to keep an entire album together as a continguous chunk -- BAM! You've just negated a lot of the unique value of a retail CD.
As it stands currently, I've already seen people distribute (via non-P2P means) collections of multiple CDs by a single artist, all encoded at a decent bitrate. It's really only a matter of time before it catches on.
The primary reason for the RIAA's position is not the hurting of record sales. After all, when Napster was up record sales were up significantly, as well.
The real reason is that record companies spend a lot of money on generating one hit song and a persona to go with it. If you delve beneath the surface of the album (listen to any other song) you will realize it's a piece of shit and the jig is up. The record companies survive on the top 40 radio songs that convince people to buy the album because the song is so catchy, knowing full well that the rest of the album is crap.
Like any sales practice (including software), it's about vaporware. Any movement to shed some light on the "product" would be squashed by any company.
Can you imagine Microsoft or Oracle allowing people to sample snippets of source code before they buy the product? That'll be the day.
There are basically three sides to this issue:
1. The music industry's that want to control music so that they can maintain their high profits. They don't care about the artists or the fair use rights of individuals.
2. The internet takers who want no controls over music so that they can get what they want without paying for it. They also don't care about the artists or about the law in regards to the rights of the copyright holders.
3. The people in the middle who believe in fair use rights but also know that for good or bad, sharing copyrighted material without the copyright holders permission is just plain stealing.
I fall in the third group. The fact is that if an artist decides to disseminate his music to which he has not already signed the rights away, over the internet for free he has every right to do this and it is perfectly legal to so. However, it is also a fact that the copyright holder has the legal right to decide how his work will be disseminated. It is also important to realize that the artist isn't always the one who controls the copyright. If he has sold the copyright to the recording industry then he has further say in the matter.
The fact that the recording industry is an evil empire is irrelevant to the issue of music stealing.
So, the bottom line is be responsible. Share only the music that you have been given permission from the copyright holder to share.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
This absolutely correct, and Ian seems to not quite get it
All true, and if you think about it, you realize that this is why the music industry is terrified: if you have the internet, you don't need the record labels.Further discussion at How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate .
This is already pretty much their official position. The RIAA thinks you're pirate if you burn a copy of a CD to play in the car. Any recording of a CD distributed by one of their members is contributing to the destruction of their industry. Hell, even loaning a CD to a friend is taboo according to what you see printed on most major label CDs.
What the record companies are failing to realize is that they will eventually make it such a hassle that their potential customers will find silence far preferable to having to deal with the restrictions that are placed on listening to music. Who will they blame for the falloff in sales then?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
so these inverted birthmarks, appeared when he was > 13? hm.
Yes. That is what happens when you contract a disease at > 13. The symptoms (skin blotching in this case) set in at > 13.
Batting about 60 on the IQ test, aren't you.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Yeah, and I bet his nose was accidentally burned off by a jar of acid.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
burris
"I wanted a profession that didn't require my physical presence." - Kinky Friedman, commenting on his decision to become a novelist.
This must be a new meaning of famous I've never come across before. Come on /., sort it out.
/. is making her more famous than her ISP would like ;-)
She says she normally gets 75,000 hits on her website a year. I think
There's an old adage about, "trustworthy people trust others, and untrustworthy people don't." I suspect it may apply in this case. They *know* they're taking both consumers and musicians to the cleaners, and expect no less than the same treatment from both, given the option.
They're trying to remove the option.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
1. She wouldn't have a career at all if it weren't for the exposure she got
But her point is that NOBODY needs the record companies any more. Or are you suggesting that because the record companies made someone famous (and made 100x the money their 'stars' did), that they should be immune from the laws of economics?
2. The major labels are being facile if they ever pretend to care what happens to the Janis Ians of the world. Those are the artists they're losing money on.
You missed the biggest point of the article: the record companies are not losing money on her or any other artist. The recording contracts are set up so that the only way a record company will lose money on someone, is if the artist stops recording, declares bankruptcy (or dies), and nobody every buys any of their material.
In any other case, the record company can't lose money, because the artist's contract says that they must pay back every expense the record company incurs.
What Ms. Love was saying is that the distribtion medium doesn't change the way the artists are NOT compensated anyway. Even if CD's were a buck or even free it wouldn't change the rigged game that is engineered to pay artists nothing and record companies everything. Her point was that legally speaking, if you CAN sue anyone it should be Napster because your rights are already tied up in the record companies.
From Janis Ian's excellent article:
"When Napster was running full-tilt, we received about 100 hits a month from people who'd downloaded Society's Child or At Seventeen for free, then decided they wanted more information. Of those 100 people (and these are only the ones who let us know how they'd found the site), 15 bought CDs."
Anyone else notice this is a 15% successful direct sales rate? ANY marketer would be thrilled to have a 2% contact rate, and delerious with joy if only 5% of those contacts made a purchase. 15% is a solid testament to the power of "free samples" as a sales technique. Try the MP3, buy the CD.
BTW I had no idea she was such a good writer. There are lots of well-considered articles on her site, on all manner of topics. Gotta spend a day there sometime soon!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I have posted a mirror of the article at http://www.birdlandmedia.com/archives/000021.html. The article can be freely distributed, provided that you link back to her site. I'm keeping a copy of it for reference - and since I design web sites for musicians, I can direct them to the article if they are wondering about whether or not they should provide free music downloads.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Um... do you realize the irony of what you just wrote?
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
What will they gain by sueing Napster? Bankrupt a free route for advertising? All the sane information I have read says that Napster and things like it increase peoples awareness of music, introducing them to things they might have never listened to before and hence increasing albumn sales. "Ms. Love" is sueing the wrong party, sueing Napster won't get her more money, if anything it will get her less. What I am saying is sueing Napster because she can't sue the record companies for her lack of forthought in getting crappy record deal isn't going to fix her original problem.
A study compiled by the Yankelovich Partners surveyed...
Holy shit! You mean Wierd Al is doing music industry studies in addition to making music? Now that's diversification!
GMD
watch this
While I think your comment hits very close, it doesn't quite get the bulls eye. Say gold ring. Anyway, you have to remember that the dream of every artist in any media is to be able to devote themselve to their creativity. In a perfect world, an artist would simply create. People would buy art out of a sense of asthetic duty, the state would support them or what have you. Sadly, the world ain't perfect, and artists like everyone else have to make comprimises. A musican may have to think they have to make faustian deals with record companies. A writer may support their works of love through writing crappy genre fiction. And a graphic artist may have to make some easily consumable pieces of art. It's either that, and a whole lot of luck, or they have to have a day job. I know exactly one artist who leads an pure uncomprimised life. She scrapes by on shows, music festivals, and whatever part time job she needs to get. She lives on something like $12-15K a year. She won't ever be big. She knows that, but she gets just enough attention to get by. I admire her for leading that life, but I can't do it. Neither can the other artists(meaning here musicans, writers, and so on) I know. The rest of the bunch have day jobs to support themselves while they find that big break. The downside is that you lead a very sleep deprived, exhausted life that way. It's really hard for me, especially now that I'm married, to sit down and write for four or so hours every night after work, but I do it. I look forward to the big break I know is out there, and I'm heart broken everytime something fails to come through. That heartbreak alone is enough to lead an artist to cut corners and make deals that comprimise them.
Not quite. The label doesn't get paid back out of the proceeds, they get paid back out of the artist's share of the proceeds. Say the artist is getting a 5% royalty, was fronted $20,000 to make the album and each copy sells for $15. Assume a 25% retail mark-up, ie. the label gets $11.25 per copy. Break-even is just short of 1800 copies. But the artist won't start getting a royalty at the 1800-copy point. They won't start getting a royalty until 26,667 copies have been sold, at which point their 5% has paid off the $20K advance. In between those sales points, the label is making a profit but the artist doesn't see a penny from it. The only way the label loses money is if the album doesn't even sell the 1800 copies needed to break even.
Any signed musicians out there, feel free to plug in actual advances and royalty rates. Yes, I've omitted any promotional costs the label might incur, but those come out of the artist's royalties too as I understand it.
I remember one of my history profs saying something about how in Elizabethan England (that's Shakespeare's time for those who want a frame of refference) the audience would pay for the shows after they were leaving, and if they thought it was worth the money. Now I say, what exactly is the problem here? There are plenty of good artists out there who churn out an excellent album once every few years, and for those, I am willing to pay. Then there are the okay musicians who churn out a good song or two once every few years, and for those songs, I am wiling to pay. Then there are the crappy artists who churn out a good song once in their lifetime, and I am willing to pay for that song. Since you can't usually listen to the entire CD before you buy it, I just go to P2P when I'm interested and check out the merchandise.
Why is the RIAA scared of this? Simple, it forces them to be more selective. So far, the marketing trends place quantity over quality, that way you can sell more records. P2P allows me to make sure I want to buy the album in the first place, and if I don't, I keep the songs I like, and will pay for them when there is a sane and stable system in lpace for doing so. Here, I excercise my ultimate power as a consumer, the ability to refuse to pay $20 for 3 or 4 minutes of audio, and P2P allows me to be able to make that informed choice. RIAA is corporate, so they naturally want the consumer to have as little freedom as possible. If these recording industry types just made sure that they were churning out a quality product each time, there would be no need for P2P, as far as I'm concerned.
Then again, if wishes were horses and all that.
Check out some of her other articles in Performing Songwriter. She is very aware of record sales, exposure, and the interrelated cost. For artists who don't sell millions of CD's, the biggest source of revenue is touring, unless another artist has a mega-hit with a song you wrote. The cost of exposure via downloads is worth it if it means larger attendence at concerts.
Christine Lavin had a great article on the cost, and why it was worthwhile in Billboard. She has a copy of the article here at her website
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
A company that doesn't have customers, or doesn't have enough customers to make it profitable, is dead. The corporate graveyards are full of companies that ignored this simple fact and went out of business. The shareholders or owners who insist upon being served before the company's customers often end up holding worthless pieces of paper, or selling at a loss.
The Technology Administration of the US Dept. of Commerce will be holding a public workshop on DRM on Wednesday, July 17, 2002. There are no details as to time, location, etc. on their site, but there is a public comment form.
So even if you can't do anything on the 17th, feel free to send the government your thoughts on DRM and its place in technology.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
It's amazing how many times in this thread people have whined about Janis Ian being "obscure" or words to that effect. You'd maybe think a group of Web Geeks would be able to try a search or two, to start with.
This is a woman with something like nine grammy nominations in at least three different decades, from what I can dig up in a few seconds' searching. She's been a big star, first for a sort of social-issues breakthrough song about interracial love in the sixties and then with a more mainstream hit, "At Seventeen." She's become a "back list" artist, and then a decidedly niche artist. (She released an album more-or-less about coming out as a lesbian.) She's released albums in different styles -- country, pop, folk -- with different labels. Tons of her songs have been recorded by other artists. Basically we're talking about the classic singer songwriter, and one with more than the usual longevity, versatility, class, and eloquence.
Sounds like someone you'd maybe make an effort to listen to rather than trumpeting your own studied ignorance as if it renders her views meaningless. You think?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Let's see: J. S. Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Dvorak, Verdi, Puccini, Offenbach, Wagner, and so on. There are hundreds (thousands!) of famous musicians who became famous before the record label was even invented.
- Musicians need their own Curt Flood
- I just think that the decision of whether to give something away, when, what and how should be at the musician's discretion.
- I don't see how musicians are helped by a world where anybody can take as they please without regard for those who created it.
Agreed on all these counts. The issue is not whether IP owners have rights over the work they create (or own in this case) -- clearly the consitutional framers were right to include protections for inventors and publishers (which have morphed into our current copyright and patent systems). I don't suggest we should remove the traditional IP legal framework in place for the last hundred years or so kids can download free music.However, the question is really: does the situation WRT personal copying warrant the kinds of changes suggested by Hollings, Disney, Sony et all in order to protect their market share? I'm all for prosecutions against commercial duplicators in violation of copyright laws, but the CDPTPA/SSSCA encryption schemes currently on the board will have (I think) a twofold outcome of both reducing music consumption (in much the same way taxation thresholds can reduce total government income either by increasing taxes beyond what is economically sustainable, or reducing taxes below what the economy can support) and decrease "innovation" by destroying incentives for artists to create. They will have created in law a mechanism to exclude competitors, thus having a government sanctioned monopoly on distribution. This can't be a good outcome for the music marketplace, or music consumers.
So, which is better for society all around? A few kids filesharing music (with the outcome of free marketing for individual artists), or a total corporate/government stranglehold on copying through autocratic and onerous new laws and technologies targeted against citizens? Why don't we just enforce the laws as they exist? And how different is this from what the Bush administration is saying about new regulation in the financial markets? If these businesses don't need the regulation, why is it necessary to regulate individual commerce?
Cheers,
--Maynard
Yes, famous.
Her column on the "Monumental Mistakes" she has made in her career is amazing. She talks about taking drugs with Jimi Hendrix, turning down the opportunity to play Woodstock, was offered Rhea Perlman's part on "Cheers"...
Is she curently famous? Nope. But she was very famous at several different points in her career and will make one hell of a "Behind The Music".
By the way, read her article about her stolen guitar for a deeply moving story that will reassure you that there are decent humans on the planet.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I wonder how much of the camera nazi stuff was caused by being pricks about having their photo taken and how much was from getting sick of goddam flashes popping in their faces every 10 seconds.
c-hack.com |
I've sold one, for two bucks in 'royalties'.
That's two bucks more in royalties than Janis Ian has ever been paid for her entire major label career, by her own account. "In 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that didn't show I owed them money." I'm not even 37 years OLD, myself...
As if that's not enough, I can get CDs made pretty cheaply if I made 1000 or so, and can get them one at a time back from Ampcast for 7-10 bucks- and even at that, it's a better deal than BMG artists can get on their own CDs, should they wish to sell 'em at shows: "BMG has a strict policy for artists buying their own CDs to sell at concerts - $11 per CD."
This article is even more damning than the Courtney Love article. My jaw is just dropping, and I was far from uninformed to start with... and I never knew how well off I was as a starving indie with no sales. Funny how I'm owed more royalties than a multiple Grammy winner...
You have to succeed on your own initiative before a major label will get behind you.
Period.
Ask Metallica- few bands ever worked harder to get in a position to get signed. They may have worked so hard that they've been paid royalties- Janis Ian has never been paid one cent in royalties over her entire career.
Which raises the question, if you have to succeed on your own initiative in order to get signed and do serious tonnage of shipped CDs, but you won't get paid even if you do, then what is the point? Is it really all about wanting to play star for a month or a year? Is that enough? How hosed will you be when the month or year is up and the record company is not 'behind' you (if indeed they ever were)?
Really great story, in particular the way the
way they both wanted each other to feel okay about it.
The important question is what would have happened if all the books from that author had been available for free download.
Another possible problem with the comparison is that books on computer are usually much less convenient than regular books. With music, MP3 format is often as convenient as CD format, and it is easy to burn CDs from MP3s.
It's not a free market in any fashion. There are a limited number of radio stations you can fit into the frequency allocated. They're all been assigned and are usually owned by the same few companies in all areas.
These companies are paid to play music by the record companies. Their entire program is basically a paid advertisement. The top 40 is simply a list of the 40 most-played songs; most played on the stations that get paid to play this music.
Some customer-feedback is used in determining the ratings. They aren't going to play a commercial that customer react badly to, but they also aren't going to play a commercial for a product they don't own. They manipulate the ratings to ensure that customers only hear their music, knowing that customers tend to buy only music they have heard samples of.
This is a monopoly. The airwaves are essentially controlled by the record companies, as are the distribution outlets and concert venues. The companies that control these resources make price-dumping type decisions, losing some money in the short term, to hurt potential competitors and/or force them to sign up for an exploitive deal.
This is the exact opposite of an open market, where all products are displayed and judged by a knowledgable consumer.
No. Buy CDs ONLY from artists who are selling their own music, either at gigs or via the Web AT THEIR OWN WEBSITES. Not ones created by major labels for them, ones made by the artists themselves. (or usually, by Web authors paid by the artists) Figuring out which is which isn't rocket science.
That is one of the best ways to make sure that the artist gets compensated, not the drug dealers who sell to the suits at major record labels.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Here are some more grey edges...
Granted, if you download a song off a filesharing service that the artist doesn't want shared, and then burn it onto a CD and listen to it (or play it on your computer) fairly regularly, enjoy the experience, like it, yet never go out and actually buy the product in it's commercial form... yes, that definitely seems like stealing to me.
However, let's say you download a song, and you don't like it. Frankly, you think a series of farts you let out after eating a can of beans is more musical than the crap that this artist put out, and if you had actually paid for it, you would've felt ripped off. You never listen to the song again (or delete it from your computer), or only listen to it when you want to demonstrate to someone just how much this particular artist lacks in talent (in your estimation). Did you steal? Some people may still say yes, but I don't think so. You never use it, you don't listen to this song. Perhaps it physically exists on your hard drive or on some other media like a CD. But even then, the word physically is a bit of a misnomer, since music is pretty intangible -- the only physicality we speak of here is the recording format. It's not like taking someone's car and then never using it (which would still qualify as stealing since the original owner no longer has access to it, and has lost actual value). It's more like eavesdropping on someone explaining a new idea, but never using it. How have you stolen it?
You might say that you've reduced the artist's potential profit by not accidentally buying something that you would've never bought if you had heard it beforehand, and thus have stolen from the artist. Personally, I think as soon as you begin to vocalize that argument you realize how silly it is.
This is even more relevant when you consider one of the arguments in the original article -- filesharing is a boon because it gives immediate, unfettered, and near-universal access to *preview* songs and artistic material. If you preview something, decide you like it, keep it, but don't buy it, you're stealing. Anything less than that, I'd have to disagree.
It is about control. The RIAA record labels want to close down any venue that is easily accessible to the public where the independent (as in unsigned by major record label) artist can upload her own music without having to go through a gatekeeper under record label control.
The ability of RIAA record label suits to make a living depends on their being able to say "You can't make a living without us."
With easily available CD on demand and band merchandise on demand, all a musician needs if his/her material is any good is exposure... a musician no longer needs record labels and record stores to sell CDs and T-shirts.
The last choke point that allows RIAA labels a chance to make money off artists and the public is exposure to masses of people. Internet Radio and P2P allowed an easy way for the independent artist to get to the people.
When people say "I bought CDs from bands I never heard of thanks to Napster, etc.", this doesn't make the RIAA want to keep P2P / Internet Radio open, their business is to make sure you only buy from RIAA artists... to find RIAA artists, turn on any Clear Channel radio station. Where an independent without a major promotion budget isn't going to be heard.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Ok, I get that. I don't think it's the same thing here in that we are talking about (at least to some extent) the "value" in dollars and cents that the artist (or in this case the evil butt monkeys from mars at the record companies) might have/could have/should have made from the creation of the music.
I see it like this.
1. If I download the song and it's crap IMO then I am glad I didn't buy it and it appears to me that the artist lost nothing in my hearing the song and disliking it.
2. If I do the same thing and enjoy it, keep playing it, and don't buy the CD then the artist lost their tiny share and the record companies lost a few bucks. It's then stealing (again IMO).
However if you look at it like the record companies and some artists do then in the first example where I downloaded the song and hated it, was sorry my consciousness was ever touched by it's terrible sound, and didn't buy the record then I have still stolen it because they missed a chance to stick me with a lousy CD at a premium price and niether one gives a damn that I got the shitty end of the stick in the deal.
I've been on the wrong end of a number of bad CD's in my time and I refuse to give up the right to check out what I am getting in advance of purchasing the material. I further insist on the right to do it in my house on my time and think this is non-negotiable.
It's only a matter of time before record labels go the way of that old dinosaur and we find ourselves in a completely changed musical landscape. I don't imagine my children will have a clue what it was like to get a CD with one good single and 11 songs that sound like monkeys fucking grizzly bears in the rain. Lucky them.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Vitaligo is not "Contracted", it's inherited, and many who have it aren't born with the white splotches. Since it's an autoimmune disease, It can be set off by another infection or by getting immunity shots (rabies shot in my case), both of which trigger an immune response.
OK, if we're going to be pedantic you are correct. I should have said "set in" or "became active" at > 13 rather than "contracted." The point remains that the disease didn't become noticable, and the symptoms didn't become apparent, until Michael Jackson was a young adult, and the racist series of posts insinuating that he somehow "wanted to become white" to which I responded remain just as asinine, and profoundly idiotic, as before.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Ah - moving the goalposts.
Chopin made his living primarily through teaching and performing. J.S. also made his living primarily though performing: violinist, organist, and conductor. Mozart, contrary to what you would believe from seeing the film, lived most of his life as a freelance composer and performer: his piano concertos and Don Giovanni were all freelance pieces. Dvorak also made his living through private teaching and composing (winning of competitions as opposed to patronage). Offenbach - guess what - he made his living though composing (mainly for the theatre) with no support from patronage. Puccini - he composed opera on a commerical basis (and became rich doing so). Verdi - strangely enough he was paid by the La Scala opera house to write operas. Wagner - he as also wrote operas commercially.
None of these famous musicians were supported to any degree by patronage - they all worked hard to develop a reputation and then were paid (sometimes well, sometimes not) to perform their trade - either teaching, composing, or conducting (or a combination).
The most notable difference (and what really blows your argument out of the water) is that nobody gets patronage from the nobility until they are famous. Mozart, probably the one on my list that got most, was already famous before any nobility ever came near him. So here we have a list of musicians who became famous without major label support (or any substitute you see fit to drag in). They became famous because they were talented. And that is completely different in spirit to the record label model.
He ran that line of thought recently in User Friendly.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It looks to me as if you missed Ian's point. The only really viable data - from the RIAA itself - indicates a very clear gain for the labels during the heyday of Napster. In other words, sharing sells CDs. It also sells books and other forms of content as well, but that's irrelevant.
As you say the labels are very scared, but not because of the idea that some how the internet will displace them from the market. Remember, Napster made money for them. What they fear is that with time ARTISTS will abandon them. Labels control artists. With the internet and available recording technology any serious artist can begin to build their own "label" and burn and market their own CDS without being subject to contracts that are so thieving they would make Fagin proud. Without artists, the swimming pools dry up, the Mercedes run out of gas, and the estates become low income housing. The members of the RIAA have to get real jobs.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Not content with redefining your definition of musician, you have redefined what they need to have done to satisfy you: from "famous musicians who got famous without major-label support" to "one who has prospered completely outside the major-label system during the period of history in which the major-label system has existed". Which is a fairly substantial change.
In reply to your original definition acts like Genesis (originally Charisma), Pink Floyd (originally Harvest), REM (originally IRS Records) all became famous without the help of a major label.
Now, watch you don't hurt your back dragging your goalposts back under your bridge.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Violating copyright on a sharing network may, or may not increase sales for the artist or decrease such sales (music sales during the life cycle of napster seem to indicate that they increase sales). Taking a CD without permission physically denies the store use of the CD as a sale product and can easily be proven to cost them money (replacement costs and/or one sale now impossible).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Janis Ian's site would never have been seen by most of us had it not been for the posting of this article... Similarly for CDs put out by my friends. Most people don't know where to go to find such things.
P2P networks, on the other hand, are a well-known venue for access to artist's music that do not have any connection to the RIAA. If a budding artists have a choice for the distribution of their music, they might not agree to recording deals that give the record companies effective ownership of all the artist's output for years or decades. That is why the RIIA has been beating these P2P networks into submission despite the fact that they clearly appear to be increasing music sales. ..
They threaten the RIAA's monopoly on the market, and give artists some choice.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
+ or - 10% in sales because of the difference that napster makes doesn't matter to the artist because they don't get any of that money anyways. The RIAA was simply using artists as a shield in their fight for more control of the artists..
"Patriotism is the last refuge of the despot".
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
You don't want government? Fine! The guy with the biggest gun will be in charge, and don't expect him to allow you to appeal to a judge.
I believe the warlord areas of Afghanistan and Somalia have exactly what you are looking for. Why don't you ask those residents how well your system works?
-jon
Remember Amalek.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
The core creed of anarchists. I'm just going to apply it to your stuff. I decided that I want it. So, where's the name and address, oh he who wants to share with the world?
And who are you to decide what makes me an anarchist?
Since you're very dense, why don't we try an existence proof. Please tell me why areas which live under anarchy (Somalia, Afghanistan) aren't paridises, with millions flocking to them? Why is it that absent the rule of law, people have LESS freedom, not more? If you can't answer these questions, then your stupid economic theory is pretty much shot, eh?
I'm guessing that you're a spoiled white kid who lives in a rather rich part of the US and who has never actually had to earn anything that he owns. Mommy and Daddy have give you everything, except a sense of value.
Now, isn't there a McDonald's that you should be looting near your bedroom in Mommy's house?
-jon
Remember Amalek.