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Fallout from the Internet Debacle
gatesh8r writes "This article off of Janis Ian's site lashes out at the RIAA for "wanting to control everything that the consumer will purchase" and then proposes some mild and thoughtful solutions to the problem. Nice to see an artist write up something like this." This is her follow-up to her earlier piece.
I personally would rather trust the government (some think otherwise) than some high ranking executive, who would most likely be controlling things without the government.
But what the heck....
The basic plan sounds good on paper -- get all the tracks in all the major labels available in one place, and sell full-sample-rate tracks for 25centa a pop. Try it for a time and see how it goes.
Only problem is that P2P networks are still up. This idea would have been great pre-napster, but not today. What you'll have is a small percentage of the P2P users spend a small amount of cash to build up libraries, then those libraries are shared and the RIAA site doesn't rake in the fees like they thought they would.
how's that phrase go? "Bzzzt, but thanks for playing!"
I have seen a lot of bitching about the RIAA and record companies, from music fans and "artists" alike. This is the first one I've seen that actually proposes what can be done about it, beyond the casual "fishing for ideas" phase in which most strident RIAA detractors seem mired.
For those who haven't read the article, she basically proposes that the big record companies, rather than waste their time competing with one another, should just cooperate and set up a single web site that offers all of their music for download. Meanwhile, they would stop selling compact discs entirely. They would sell these songs on a nickel-per-download basis (as she points out, if the record industry had a nickel for every time someone stole one of its songs, they'd have made $150 million a year!), and make tons more money than they do selling music the old fashioned way.
While she doesn't mention small labels, or people who lack broadband or computers, I'm sure there are simple ways of dealing with these problems. The gist in the end is that piracy-hungry consumers pose a bigger threat to the record industry as a whole than each record company does to one another. Just as the American colonies once banded together to expel their English masters, to the benefit of England and the United States alike, so must the record industry unite for the benefit of us all.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I say the recording industry should just go with the flow and sell CDs full of MP3s already pre-ripped. Sell the convenience of not having to do it yourself.
Like many people on here there was a time I grew used to paying $15 - $20 for a CD only to end up listening to only 2 or 3 good songs on the album. In fact, I had mentally begun to consider a CD a good buy if it had 3 good songs and anything above that an excellent buy. This was helped by treating each CD purchase as the equivalent of buying 3 singles from the same artist.
Then came the advent of large scale P2P software based, copyright infringement while I was in college. I began being able to avoid what I used to consider "bad" CD purchases by only obtaining the one good song without having to deal with the dreck on the rest of the album or paying for it.
Now in many cases I would love to pay for the one or two album tracks or single remixes that I like but the music industry has steadfastly refused to provide me a mechanism to do this. However, there is really nothing technologically preventing record labels from either a.) providing customized CDs for their target audience (in the same vein as the NOW compilation albums) or b.) providing digital music at a fraction of the current price of singles and CDs.
Unfortunately they don't seem remotely interested in satisfying their customers in this demand. Legislating against technology can only last for so long.
"And of everything we are taught, one issue is always paramount - in America, it is the people who rule"
This is a good point, it's about the majority in this country (or it's "supposed" to be). The Artists and record companies are the minority, the people should have some say. The Artists themselves should definately have some say. I am in the industry, so my livelyhood depends on the record sales and stuff as well, an I am not for stealing, but I am definately sgainst he MPAA/RIAA types.
The industry is still operating under laws and concepts developed during the 1930's and 1940's, before cassettes, before boom boxes, before MP3 and file-sharing and the Internet. It's far easier to insist that all new technologies be judged under old laws, than to craft new laws that embrace all existing technologies. It's much easier to find a scapegoat, than to examine your own practices. As they say, "You can't get fired for saying no."
Janis is also very right in saying that the way that the industry is set up is old, based off a model from the 30's and 40's. We don't use any other markets in the same way that we did in the 30's and 40's, so why should we for music and entertainment.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I don't think that they buy their own arguments, else they would have done this already. What have they got to lose? To hear them tell it, they are already bleeding in the streets from Internet swapping. By their logic, the stuff is already out there, so they might as well provide a method for people to pay for it.
Maybe we don't need digital protection, we just need a scarcity mechanism. That is why people buy things in the first place...
There is a scarcity mechanism. When media moves to an infinite product (there's more music out there than one could hear in a lifetime) the scarce object becomes the consumer's time. Saving the consumer time by building an efficient and convenient product produces the value.
+&x
Movie companies sued over VCR manufacturing and blank video sales, with Jack Valenti (Motion Picture Association of America chairman) testifying to Congress that the VCR is to the movie industry what the Boston Strangler is to a woman alone at night - and yet, video sales now account for more industry profit than movies themselves.
Like the movie industry did with VCR, I think the music business will have to try and live with things like files sharing and the internet. Copyright laws should change to incorporate it too. At the moment money-hungry companies and lobby-controlled governments are trying very very hard to stop/control/forbid these new kinds of information exchange, while (IMHO) it is embarrasingly obvious that the current structures for enforcing and earning money from copyrights will break down. You just cannot stop these changes from happening.
It might not be entirely clear yet how to make money with open source software, or how to use p2p file sharing in the music industry, but i think it will become clear. If not, the industry will break down and something new will appear. This has occurred in history many times, and it will occur again.
For now, i (want to) believe in open source. As for the music industry: i'm not sure yet...
Similarly, give me cheap downloads and I'll rpobably end up spending a whole lot more in the long run for no extra cost to the company supplying the products as I'll download 50 cheap songs before I'll download one expensive one!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
a. Destroy it. And if they cannot,
b. Control it. And if they cannot,
c. Control the consumer...
and control is why the music industry will never implement her "modest proposal": if it succeeds, then they lose control of the market, and with it their monoploy profits.
For further analysis along these lines, see
How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate.
Explain to your friends why they should vote against him.
Convince your friends to explain to their friends why they should vote against him.
Talk to your local newspaper. I'm sure they'd be interested if you had a letter from your rep which states something he now denies ever saying.
Show up at his fundraisers, rallies, public appearances.
Run for office.
If you really care about this issue, it's going to take more than posting rants to slashdot.
But what do I know, I'm just an AC.
as I see it, is that it would be pretty labor intensive. I doubt for instance that Columbia still has masters for most of the stuff they released in the 1960s, much of which was deservedly forgotten by 1975 and wouldn't be able to draw flies nowadays. For the stuff they still have, they'd have to pay a tech to convert the master to digital format, so maybe two people besides me would be able to see what might have been on Chad & Jeremy's album The Ark.
I like it, but somehow I doubt we'll ever see it.
On the other hand there might be a business model here for someone. License the Bluebird jazz catalog from CBS, for instance, clean up the recording and put them up on the web and see if anyone is interested. In fact I could see a charity -- say a retirement home for musicians -- using this as a funding mechanism. Whether CBS would go for it is another story, but since it's a way for them to make money with little to no effort on their part, it might be worth a go.
Someone you trust is one of us.
The reason why something like this would prevail (at least in the meantime), despite the existence of P2P networks, is that such a venture would not be marketing music, but rather the service of providing easy, quick, and safe access to music.
Professor Lessig has mentioned this casually before, its the bottled water business model. Water is essentialy a zero cost commodity, yet the vending of repackaged water is a phenomenally successful business. Consumers, faced with a conveinent, glitzy, and higher quality product will, do often choose it over a free alternative.
If the record companies, a consortium of artists (or some mediary via licensing) were to offer:
- a simplistic/transparent interface
- an immense and highly/easily searchable library
- secure high-speed downloads
- cd quality encoding
- reasonably pricing (subscription or a quarter a song works)
- a guaranteed lack of virii, spyware or drm
and maybe some extras
- bonuses for signing up friends - buy 5 get 1 free - anywhere streaming of your purchases
they *WOULD* be raking it in. No questions. But the Recording Industry isn't in the music business. They are in the CD business.
I couldn't agree with Janis more. Every person I talk to says they would snatch up a subscription instantly. This must happen.
I think the real issue with the recording and music industry isn't technology, they want a revenue stream like Micro$oft. They would really like you to pay every time you listen/view their product, instead of the one-time sale. By killing off the existing download sites and standards, they are free to establish an online business model based on music/videos that expire.
These days due to digital recording, someone can produce an excellent sounding album in their basement for next to nothing. And the internet has built in "advertising" and methods of distributing music. So aren't record companies becoming a bit obsolete?
And being such a big money business, they tend to promote mindless ear-candy rather than real music art. They cheat artists and resort to unethical methods of controlling record stores and radio stations. Why are we trying to find ways for them to stay in business?
Adding a bunch of videos and pictures other junk to an album is just adding fluff and detracting from the art that is (supposed to be) the music.
Artists make most of their money off touring anyway. If you feel bad for downloading, just hand your favorite band a $5 bill after their show. It's more money than they'd ever see if you actually bought the albums...
-Paul
I think this is an excellent idea, but let me play devil's advocate for a minute here. One of the big selling points of Janis' proposal is that it is "no risk" because the music is just sitting in storage, so any income from the $.25 per song would only be a plus. However, there is a risk that people will like this service so much that they will be listening to the old OOP music instead of buying new releases for $17 each. What happens to the music industry's bread and butter when 15 year olds discover they like Bop instead of Pop? I think music industry executives will be afraid of this possibility.
Now personally, I think a download project like this would stimulate listener interest in music and growth in music buying, especially in people who will pay $.25 per song but won't pay $17 for a CD. Imagine the 15 year old discovers that they like Blues by listeing to the OOP stuff, then decides they want to hear more modern stuff, so they go buy a bunch of Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, and Stevie Ray Vaughn, which they never would have considered before. Thats a win for everyone, but getting music executives to take that risk is going to be pretty difficult.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Since when have artists ever done anything just for the love of it? There have been some, but they're few and far between. They've also often ended up going insane or dying pennyless and in ill health at a relatively early age.
Back in the stone age do you think they did cave paintings for fun? The priests had a job to do, and if they didn't make those drawings then the hunt would fail (or so the tribe believed) and the priest wouldn't have had the level of respect that he did in the tribe. He might not even have gotten fed. (of course i am not a sociologist/archaeologist)
In the middle ages artists depended on support from the nobles. They didn't sell their paintings per se, but they depended on the continued production of art that the local noble aproved of in order to remain a part a of the court.
Anyone who thinks that artists have ever (as a rule) not been paid for their work, or thinks that there should ever be a time when they aren't is living in a dream world.
Note that this does _not_ indicate support for the RIAA. There's a difference between thinking that artists deserve compensation for their work, and approving of the way that the RIAA claims that as it's goal while keeping as much of the money to itself as is possible, with no regard to the well being of the artists who produce the stuff they're selling.
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