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Can Newspapers Save Local Music?
impaler writes: "Roblimo has posted a great piece over at NewsForge about how the Washington Post and other newspapers are hosting MP3 download sites for local musicians and how the sites are actually very popular. An interesting read." Just because the "music industry" works a certain way right now doesn't mean that all change is bad; Bruce Springsteen is apparently finding that he doesn't need much beyond a lock and key to keep the Internet hordes from passing around his albums before they're released, and the musicians on the Washington Post site seem to like being there.
You've clearly missed the point, all bands start out as local bands, only blind dumb luck gets them to stardom, ..that or they're created. Otherwise do you think Backstreet Boys, NKOTB or N'Sync would've ever seen the light of day? No. This gives musicians everywhere an avenue to be heard on the cheap, by everyone, what more publicity could one ask for? It's a great idea and I'm thrilled to see it in action.
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
Actually - I find local music to be CONSIDERABLY BETTER than the crap fed to the nation and the world by New York and L.A. - I'm glad we have some source other than RIAA minions...
Anything you say will be held against you.
Think about it - nearly every major market has at least one "free" newspaper, and most markets do have some smaller newspaper, not owned by conglomerates (like Canwest/Global here in Canada) that could put forth, gasp, an original viewpoint, a cutting edge playlist, and even just good recommendations for new music, unlike any radio station (college stations excepted) or any major venue.
Now, will we have to worry about ClearChannel buying up North American newspapers if this catches on?
ed
and the musicians on the Washington Post site seem to like being there.
How could they not like this? It's pretty much free advertising... and being on this site means less chance of being passed around P2P..
Newspapers are struggling to keep readers and stay relevant. I see this as a Good Thing. It provides a good service and it's a way to get more eyeballs on their ads, without resorting to charging for internet content, registrations, etc.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
My area is significantly smaller than NY, Chicago, LA, etc.
But we've got a pretty good local music scene (and pretty good local news, for that matter).
I bet if you went out and actually listened to some of the local acts, you might find some pretty good shows. I've found that local acts tend to have excellent stage presence.
Also, the big acts of today were yesterday's local acts, and some from much smaller areas than NY, Chicago, LA, etc. IE: The Tragically Hip, arguably one of the biggest bands to come out of Canada, and quite successful on the world's stage, came out of Kingston, Ontario. I suspect that NY has suburbs bigger than Kingston....
Sure, there's a lot of junk in a local music scene, but just because of that don't discount all of it. Maybe you're just going to the wrong places to experience it.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
What record companies have forgotten is that word of mouth is a very powerful thing
They havn't forgotten, they just know that their canned distribution model is a lot more powerful (at least for profits).
You are exactly what they are afraid of. I don't know if your music is any good or not, but some guy who just came from the ivy league and sits in a chair behind an executive desk at a record company hasn't given you his seal of approval, and therefore a record company can't plug you into a formula (x dollers for promtion, x dollers for a video = y dollers in profits regardless of the bands talent).
I wish you luck on your tour, and am very excited to see a band make it because of the Internet.
The Internet is generally stupid
Yeah exactly. I've been into indie music ever since I was a little kid. To hear non-mainstream bands in the pre-Napster era we would all trade our CDs back and forth to see who we liked and who we'd keep a look out for on tour schedules. There's so many underground bands it's impossible to keep up with what's crap and what deserves the money to go see when they come through town.
Now with MP3s it's so much easier. If I see a band I haven't heard of that's playing in my town I can grab an MP3 and decide if they're worth driving downtown and paying a couple of bucks to see. I can't count the number of CDs and other merch I've bought and shows I've been to that I wouldn't have otherwise because I heard a few MP3s.
The real reason the RIAA should hate MP3s is because of people like me and my friends. MP3s allow us to find out about and support non-RIAA bands that we never would have heard of otherwise.
Way to quote it out of context. The text you're quoting is with respect to sharing 3 songs on the Washington Post site. 3 songs that were chosen by the copyright holder (presumably the band, given that they're unsigned). Not their entire album. Not whatever 3 songs a random P2P user chooses.
Guess what? This is the exact same thing that RIAA acts do, too. Take, for example, Linkin Park. They're big right now, they're signed with Warner Bros. Records, they're on the radio a lot, they're showing up on MTV. You don't get much more RIAA than that.
Yet on mp3.com, they've got their own page with FOUR songs available for anyone to download. That's a whole song more than the band interviewed by Roblimo. But still, it comes back to the fact that it's 4 songs that the copyright holder chose to release. It's only the songs they pick, and it's certainly not the entire CD.
Arguing that giving away a few songs from a CD validates unrestricted P2P filesharing is like arguing that a free demo of the first few levels of a game validates piracy. It's up to the copyright holder to decide how much freebie/give-away advertising to use to promote the product before it starts to cut into sales.
They mention how 'successful' springsteen has been because of his tactics, but in reality, he is catering to a whole different audience and has been for a while. People in the generation that primarily listen to springsteen are not the ones using p2p networks.
Even if he did send out a ton of pre-release albums, you can bet there wouldn't be that many passing around on p2p networks like there would be if a new Limp Bizkit album was out.
Saying that tactic is an effective anti-piracy strategy would be like saying the new Charlie Pride encoded CD they just released was effective because you don't see it on the p2p networks either.
By that logic, I could say a computer monitor will keep tigers away as a natural repellant, I mean has anyone ever been attacked by a tiger while reading something on your screen?
The fallacy in the logic of this article is astounding, especially since it came from the NYT.
-S
-Sternn
That's how it would be if RIAA ran the car industry, and it's a darn good thing that they don't - not just for the customers but for the car makers. Think of all the impulse buys they would lose if potential customers couldn't walk through the lot, seeing, touching, smelling the new car smell . . . . Now, it's true that car dealers have problems with theft off the lot, and they'd have less theft if they kept the cars locked away from potential buyers. But such measures would cut heavily into their sales, so they don't dream of trying it. In most business sectors, the sellers of quality merchandise understand intuitively that knowledge of the product sells the product. Contrast this to the shady used car dealer trying to pass off lemons as good cars -- that's the guy who won't even let you kick the tires, much less test drive.
The counterintuitive, myopic policies of RIAA and its marketing-machine clients stem from their shady used-car dealer psychology. The RIAA machine clearly recognizes that quality music will sell itself to informed listeners. Music that sells itself doesn't need an RIAA machine, so RIAA necessarily becomes the enemy of both quality music and informed listeners, to preserve its own existence. That, in and of itself, explains why the trash the big labels put out keeps getting inexorably worse. If sites like the Washington Post succeed in convincing a critical mass of musicians that they are better off without the RIAA machine, no Fritz Hollings, Bono amendment, or anything else can save this dinosaur industry that exists solely to hard-sell crappy music to malleable children and teens. To speed this day along, I will be making a point of visiting the site, listening to the downloads, and purchasing CDs of bands that I like.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.