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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.
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...
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.
"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
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
... 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
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.
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
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."
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
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!
My CD collection vastly outweighs my mp3 collection. I mostly download mp3's to fill obscure bands like "Captain Beyond" discographies. I do sample *every* band before I buy their CD though, unless they're a local, then I "sample" them live. What the hell is the difference?
Congratulations to Janis Ian for the excellent article she wrote. As a musician myself, I completely empathize. I've said this before, I'm planning on starting an Internet on label. I could use some help. Drop a comment in my journal if you are interested in getting involved.
Sandman, that really strikes home. My other half and I frequently ask each other if our parents are coming home soon. Gotta love being 42...
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
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
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?
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.
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...
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.
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