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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.
When I write code, it's for the GPL, my code is is my hobby, and maybe others will get use/enjoyment out of it. It'd be grand indeed if more music was copy-lefted.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
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)
Artists like Janis (who I happen to have ran into in Maryland), are just what the industry needs. If more artists weren't as concerned with making 11 million that year instead of 10 million, then we would be in alot better shape. You know what artists used to make their money off of? Touring, and making music compelling enough to buy.
I am not for stealing of music, I am the industry as a Producer/Engineer, and realize that people need to make money, but the RIAA, and MPAA are just getting out of hand. The only way that this will be solved is either
a) a Boycott on buying music, buying movies (or renting them), for a period of time (The NoBuy Winter?) or
b) The artists AND record companies and film companies (often the same thing), going against the MPAA and RIAA (most likely only the Arists would do this, as the record companies support the MPAA and RIAA most of the time)...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
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.
Basic macroeconomics tells us that when supply goes up, price comes down (assuming demand stays constant...I'll discuss this in a moment), so if they suddenly released the X number of tracks currently locked away in their archives to be sold, the number of tracks available to be purchased would increase, and therefore the price per track would decrease.
Although this would seem to be a good thing, and in tune with economic theory, the Record Labels work as a cartel, wherein they receive artifically high profit margins by sharply restricting output (in this case, not so much raw numbers of CD's available as the number of different tracks available in the universe of CD's). So it is in their best interests to keep the "old" music locked away and unavailable/unpurchaseable, so people will spend $14.99 on the latest CD of the new hit group.
The other option would be to increase demand so that the increase in supply keeps pace. Unfortunately, that's much more difficult to do (Market theorists have worked for many years on demand side economic theories, and haven't managed to get it right yet), and therefore experiments are dangerous to the cartel.
so, in short...great idea that will never see the light of day...and the world is much the poorer for it.
"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.
Those of us over 30 certainly know her stuff, the old stuff anyway, but I wonder how well-known she was to younger people before this.
She's got downloads of her stuff on the site, without any DRM nonsense attached. Bravo.
She's been on Daypop's blogging top 40 for weeks - by sheer cluefulness, she's probably expanded her audience considerably. She's honest and open and candid. She speaks as one who's seen every aspect of the business since starting as a 15 year old with a controvercial song, way back when.
I would guess that I won't be the only one paying a lot more attention to what she says.
Any chance we can get her to run for Senator?
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
I found out something interesting this weekend: Representative Howard Berman is indeed my representative. (He doesn't represent me or my views but that's just my dumb luck for living in this part of the San Fernando Valley...) Anyway, he will be holding a Town Hall meeting HERE:
Anyway, if anybody lives in the East San Fernando Valley, this would be the opportunity to confront Berman over his MPAA/RIAA hax0r bill.Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
This article off of Janis Ian's site lashes out at the RIAA for "wanting to control everything that the consumer will purchase"
RIAA pre-crime cop:
- We've got a signal that you was downloading banned so-called P2P software. You're under arrest for future illegal download. Your're supposed to download unlicensed Britney Spears song in less than four hours. The fact that we prevented it from happening doesn't change the fact that it was going to happen.
I really gotta ask because she has about as much push in the industry as I do (read: none). Now you might say that she is an influential founder of the sound of blah-blah-blah in the era of the 70's/60's/whenever folk/blues but the current problem is this:
None of the large, influential artists of today are making statements like this. Courtney Love? What, between her "acting" and holding back Nirvana material? Yeah, she is a great advocate to have for P2P... Even the loudest voices are a) still on the industry teat and b) not making any waves other than a post to their website.
And then there is the problem of the Metallicas and Dr Dre's of the world (read: the bands people would listen to if they spoke out) are on the side of the RIAA.
Don't just blame them. A lot of more "with it" artists aren't on the free and open bandwagon. Missy Elliot, the Beastie Boys, and the Chemical Brothers are all notorious for not licensing their material for sampling and willing to fight to protect it. Do you expect any of them to jump for a reasonable P2P system?
They might all be for a free Tibet but as long as it doesn't mess with them getting paid.
So what will happen:
1. RIAA will push out their P2P solution.
2. It will fail.
3. Free P2P will continue to thrive, above the levels of old ratio MP3 ftp sites (remember those days?) but below the heyday of Napster.
4. The industry and its top 100 artists will pat each other on the back and present gifts of ivory backscratchers to each other for a job well done.
What is music when you despise all sound?
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
I think newer artists already realize the promotional value of music online. I read a complementary review of a performance by Norah Jones in the Chicago Reader. I looked on the internet for more info, found out she had samples on her website, and, liking what I heard, bought the CD.
Of course, as an artist, that only works for you of you are good. Maybe that's the problem the RIAA has...it'll never work for promoting manufactured dreck.
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 -----------------------------------
The media will become free after the inital investor gives shares the media with only one who made no payment.
Perhaps. However, it will also be far more difficult to claim the "unfairness of the RIAA" was the motivation.
Should you be found with illegal copies, it would be the same as being found with illegal copies of software. Should your machine be used as a repository, you would be designated a "dealer". Like drugs, a far worse crime.
In this way, the p2p network could be used to police itself. Not hacking your machine, merely locating it and reporting it to local authorities. While this may smack of "big brother" that fact that the system was open for consumption would appear (IANAL) to limit the claim to privacy.
Is it a perfect solution? No, however it is workable and a good start. One that could be refined as we went along.
I really think that the idea of songs for a quarter or a nickel really could work for the RIAA. Sure people are posting that there are still P2P networks and that idea would have worked pre-napster, but I think it still could. The problem with most P2P networks is that you really have no promisses about what you get, or how fast you get it. Usually with songs they are fair rips and are titled correctly. But imagine a site where you had loads of bandwidth, and had every new song (and old) out there. I'd pay money to have access to that. They could have good rips in a variety of formats, and also track better what people are really listening to.
What would I pay? I'd probably pay upto around 5 bucks a month. That's 60 a year, and get enough subscribers, I don't see the problem. Bandwidth costs could be covered easily and you really don't lose a whole lot. That is except the enormous profits from CD sales, what this really is all about. But you could offer so much on a website like this, music videos, interviews, bands could keep websites up there. At least we have one coherant writter among our point of view, which I'm so pleased about. For people who don't RTFA, she got over 2200 emails, and responded to every one. Even got her account suspended twice for spamming while she was responding back. Insane.
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.
...is a few more artists to rally behind Janis Ian. Remember when artists were split pro/anti Napster? Well, it'd be good to see the same kind of thing happening over the RIAA in general. However, I can't help thinking that the pro-Napster bands were, at least partly, doing it for the image.
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
Sharing doesn't have to be prevented. Why would you think so? Only too much sharing should be prevented, and the way to do that is to make the value and cost balanced well enough so as not to force people to share -- simply because the price is way too high.
I don't understand your remark that we need a scarcity mechanism. The only way you can have artificial scarcity in a digital environment is by monstrosities like Hollings' SSSCA/TCPA.
Tke key here is that purchasing a download from the record companies should be more convenient than p2p sharing, because of more complete catalogues, earlier availability, and so on. The value provided for your money is the convenience, just that.
CDs can add more value in the non-digital domain, such as beautifully printed booklets with photographs and lyrics. Again, make it more convenient for the biggest part of the public to buy the CD than to reproduce the contents of the package by burning and printing.
It remains to be seen though wether content companies will want to remove their intellectual property from their balance sheets and keep their distribution network and recording and marketing experience as their only remaining assets. It doesn't seem very likely, but I still think it's the only solution that can be implemented without great harm to the general public (by taking away general purpose digital equipment from it and putting a monopoly over it in the hands of the content- and software industry).
However, it will probably take a while before the US government remembers it should act in the best long term interests of the overall public instead of some short term interests as presented to them by corporate lobbyists.
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)
A Better Revenue Model is an "all-you-can-eat" supscription, much like cable TV or internet access. This will generate much more revenue for the industry - people will get used to paying $19.95 or $29.95 each month for all the music they want to download or stream. The industry will have steady, manageable revenue and their grosses will be higher than they ever have been. And people will have no reason whatsoever to go to P2P unless they absolutely refuse to pay for anything.
.99 cents. (please don't let this be a debate about shitty TV - but last night it was me and Playmate Dog Eat Dog.)
.99 cents.
How many of you pay-per-viewed a movie this week? But I bet most of you watched something on cable; and probably stuff you wouldn't have watched if you had to pay
If your broadband access was metered at $1/hr, would you use it as much as you do or would you be very careful, and some days not use it at all? I remember the days of CompuServe at $8/hr. You got on and off as rapidly as possible. The fact that they didn't change that in time is why it's not called CompuServe Time Warner now.
Just my
...Glad someone has the guts to say it.
3. The American Dream. The promises all of us are made, tacitly or otherwise, throughout our lives as Americans. The dream we inherit as each successive generation enters grade school - that we will be freer than our grandparents, more successful than our parents, and build a better world for our own children. The promises made by our textbooks, our presidents, and our culture, throughout the course of our childhoods: Fair pay for a day's work, and the right to strike. The right to leave a job that doesn't satisfy, or is abusive. Freedom from indentured servitude. The premise that every citizen is allowed a vote, and no one will ever be called "slave" again. The promise that libraries and basic education in this country are free, and will stay so. These are not ideas I came up with on the spur of the moment; this is what we're taught, by the culture we grow up in. And of everything we are taught, one issue is always paramount - in America, it is the people who rule. It is the people who determine our government. We elect our legislators, so they will pass laws designed for us. We elect and pay the thousands of judges, policemen, civil servants who implement the laws we elect our officials to pass. It is the promise that our government supports the will of the people, and not the will of big business, that makes this issue so damning - and at the same time, so hope-inspiring. When Disney are permitted to threaten suit against two clowns who dare to make mice out of three balloons and call them "Mickey", the people are not a part of it. When Senator Hollings accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from entertainment conglomerates, then pretends money has nothing to do with his stance on downloading as he calls his own constituents "thieves", the people are not involved. When Representatives Berman and Coble introduce a bill allowing film studios and record companies to "disable, block or otherwise impair" your computer if they merely suspect you of file-trading, by inserting viruses and worms into your hard drive, it is the people who are imperiled. And when the CEO of RIAA commends this bill as an "innovative approach to combating the serious problem of Internet piracy," rather than admitting that it signifies a giant corporate step into a wasteland even our government security agencies dare not enter unscathed, the people are not represented. (Hilary Rosen, in a statement quoted by Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com June 2002)
Bush Lies Watch
She is proposing that the labels offer their out-of-print catalogue in a high quality, well organized and correctly labeled open format. I'd LOVE to be able to be able to find high quality obscure jazz tunes on the likes of Gnutella and FastTrack but it just doesn't happen. Even if you do find what you are looking for, it's probably an old 128kbit rip that was made the abominable Xing encoder. Pay a quarter to immediately download a correctly labeled, sanely encoded (HQ LAME VBR preset or 160 avg kbit vorbis) track that won't cut off half way through the download? Just where do I sign up? Something like that beats "free" by a long shot.
No one could have stated the issues better, and with more credibility.
And no one could present the statistics that torpedos the RIAA faster.
One of the hardest questions to answer in the American Republic. Perhaps it would help if we realized how difficult it is for the people to understand the perspective of their elected representatives. Most reps were elected because the majority of their district agreed with their veiws enough to vote for them. Or conversely, they disagreed with their rival(s) enough to want to vote for any one else. This causes the electee to take a very 'don't rock the boat' way of doing business on the hill. They don't want to make very many waves with their constituents or at least compared to their apparent rivals. Add that to the fact that most American's have a very short attention span when it comes to politics, they only have to be really careful around election time. During an off year, like this one, they tend to be more controversial because the people by and large will forget when their time to re-run is up. This is what the reps see (mostly).
Assuming that all the people are voting their conscience and putting aside all consipiracy theories about how the system is broken, we would see that the people are just getting what they asked for. If we elect corrupt representatives, we will get corrupt laws. Too bad it's not that simple.
IP laws have come into fruition only since the widespread use of digital technology has increased. The same technology that makes it easier for producers to author their works, makes it easier to transport, copy and store them. As was pointed out in Ms. Ian's article, the industry response has been to attempt control through legislation. That has proven to only infuriate the people as is evidenced by a decrease in their sales and an increase in their use of P2P software to obtain music. While I don't mean to directly coorespond the two, it is an interesting coincidence nontheless.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
The day I went into a music store and it was cheaper to purchase a DVD Movie by $5 then a CD.
You can purchase DVDs now for approx $14.99CAN (approx $8.00US), while CDs still average approx $19.99CAN (approx $11.00US). (This is an average I calculated by going to Walmarts, HMVs, Music Citys, and a few other shops that sell both, and adding up and working out the average. Just so you are aware, music stores get really suspicious of people with graphical calculators. I had to explain to far too many clerks that I am just a mathematician and sometimes even show them my university ID so they would believe me.)
Now, is it just me, or is this absurd? I can buy a DVD that has sound, video, and usually lasts about twice as long (with all the special features) then a CD for less then the CD costs me...
For some reason I don't think the RIAA is hiring mathematicians or economists, just more lawyers.
~ kjrose
I don't think that'd be much of a problem. Look at it this way - under her proposal, the primary benefit is the ability to get anything that's available, and know that it's the one you want. Is that efficiency worth a quarter or nickel per track? Somehow, I think most people would think so.
Think of it as paying for the service of making easy-to-find, reliable tracks available, rather than just paying for the tracks.
It'd be interesting to know which label Janis Ian is / was signed to.....
The trouble is an artist signed to an RIAA member label cant go shouting disapproval of the RIAA - either they'd be offloaded by the label in a hurry or the loving, caring RIAA would unload the label.
I, personally, am getting very tired of listening to the rubbish (and it is rubbish) that the RIAA labels pump out in its neatly packaged form. I'd rather start sawing my legs off than start listening to the rubbish they pipe at us down the radio.
It may interest some of you that I've done a bit of work with a small independent British record label. Their releases are on 12" vinyl in the order of 500 - 2000 copies nationally but at the same time we were making full-length average quality MP3s available originally on audiogalaxy and later on gnutella. This was possibly one of the shrewdest marketing moves ever (this company never had a sell-out release until they tried this)
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
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.
Yeah, if Janis' excellent plan were implemented, certainly some of the paid downloads would wind up on P2P or FTP sites. That's just the nature of the beast.
But for a nickel for low bitrate, or a quarter for high bitrate -- why the hell should I spend the time and effort to track down the same MP3 on some P2P network and hope it comes across at a tolerable speed, or hunt all over hell for the rare non-ratio FTP sites that don't trickle along at 0.1kbps? Easier, and more time-effective, to just cough up the nickel or the quarter, and get a guaranteed good-and-complete rip at a guaranteed good speed, available when I want it instead of after weeks of futile searching.
95% of titles/artists I look for are out of print, and hard to find even as used LPs (let alone as CDs). Which means they're far and few between as MP3s on P2P/FTP as well. Give me a centralized repository of ALL the out of print titles (as Janis suggests) and the RIAA will make money off me that otherwise they'd never see, because otherwise they've got nothing I want to buy.
ISTM that the MPAA has a similar opportunity here -- dredge up all those mouldering old movies no one has seen in decades, and process them to DVD (maybe using a burn-on-demand ordering system to avoid having to store inventory). Their costs will be only the processing, and there again, they'll make money that otherwise simply can't happen. Will some be ripped and P2P'd? Sure. But for $10 or so vs an overnight data haul, who'd friggin' bother doing the download if a complete, clean, cheap DVD is so much easier to come by?
It's the same thing as with videotape. Yeah, anyone can tape movies off broadcast or cable, or get copies from their friends, but the quality often suffers and your friends don't always have what you want when you want it. Easier to just buy the bloody tape. Which is why despite all the movie channels and the proliferation of VCRs that can duplicate tapes, the prerecorded video industry is huge.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
It's a Simpson's quote, how is it negative? My god, if you mention Homer in a reply more than twice you're on the /. payroll.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
I use P2P (LimeWire) every once in a while. Specifically, I recently got Boney M's "Rasputin" and a couple of Tom Lehrer songs. In each case, these were to show my brother some songs that were, well, different, but which I don't have in my collection (at least, not in a usable form).
Would I have bought them for $0.25/song from an industry website? Yes. In a minute. In fact, I would have bought the entire Tom Lehrer catalogue at that price, just because I was thinking about it. But I couldn't do so, because they aren't avaiable. And I couldn't go down to a local record store (and I'm in Dallas, which has a lot of record stores) because none of them would carry this anymore, except maybe Bill's, and probably not even them. In fact, I doubt (hope against?) that Boney M has ever had anything put out on CD, and I am not sure where to find Tom Lehrer's stuff except maybe from Rhino.
Anyway, the point is, I went and got songs from P2P that I would have paid for if I could. During this same time period, I've bought Rush's new CD, and would have bought Def Leppard's if I'd been able to find it in Target. (I'll probably pick it up next time I'm in Best Buy, assuming they have it.)
My point is only that the service Ms. Ian proposes makes sense for a lot of P2P users. It probably wouldn't be used by the hardcore music traders, but I suspect that they are not really in it for the music, anyway.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Offers to help me convert to Linux: 16
Come on...we can top that! Do I hear 17?
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
I think the real issue with the recording and music industry isn't technology, they want a revenue stream like Micro$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.
The current RIAA racket works well for the less than one percent of professional musicians who are "stars". You won't hear a star speak out against the system that made them rich.
If the RIAA loses power, if we kill the restrictions that are killing Internet radio, most of the 99% of working musicians who may not be household names but do have a small following, or who are interesting enough to have a following if only the right people could hear them, will be better off.
I've been following this in a mealy-mouthed kind of way, for years. It's closely aligned with my skinflint nature, but isn't that really part of the problem, here? Already CDs and tapes are pretty much gift-only items, and I postpone movies for either second run (cheap-seats theaters) or matinee.
The problem with a boycott is getting the rest of the family to go along with it. I don't quite see being able to say "no CD's, videos, or movies for Christmas," to the whole family.
OTOH, why don't we pick a period of time *after* Christmas and get a month or two boycott arranged. At the same time, we should try and get people to shut down their P2P sharing, as well. We need to make a political statement here, and it will take time to organize it and effectively communicate the vision. Getting the P2P boycott is an essential and difficult part, and buy-in is essential for this.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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 still haven't forgiven metallica for leading the charge against napster. as i've said before on /., during napster's heyday, i had a nearly unlimited computer budget -- CD burning, new laptops, wireless routers and cards. since napster, there's been almost nothing in the computer budget. my wife wants napster back.
i own about every metallica album. have i bought one since napster? no. will i? no. will i ever support them in any way? no.
when a metallica song comes on the radio, even one i used to like, i change the station. every time. when i'm on-line or by a phone and a metallica song comes on the radio, i change the station, and call or email the station and tell them why i changed the station.
i've never understood what happened to metallica, that turned them from encouraging bootlegs to helping destroy napster. p2p just isn't as good.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Just one week of people refusing to play the radio, buy product, or support our industry in any way, would flex muscles they have no idea are out there.
So when do start implementing an annual and global "Boycot the entertainment industry"-week?
IMO, the best reason for allowing downloadable music is this: the preservation of our musical heritage, and indirectly, our cultural heritage.
Janis says it best here, when envisioning the online catalogue:
"Spread a lot of great old music around - and music, like all art, stands on the bones of those who've gone before. One of the big problems with so much catalogue out of print is that whole generations are growing up never having heard the "originals", but only the clones."
And if a group of people get together to download a bunch of songs they all like from the site and share, so what? Chances are that they'd end up downloading more songs than they would individually, and probably end up spending nearly as much money apiece as they would individually.
After the demise of Audio Galaxy (and even with AG things weren't perfect) getting the tracks you want can take days. Weeks. Months. and sometimes longer.
If I could pay 25 cents and get the mp3 in the time it takes to download (small on a cable modem) they satisfy the convenience criteria.
Sure- people will still trade and warez and whatever as long as its free- the cheapskate/money criteria. But for those of us who work and have some disposable income, I want the most bang for my buck. Sure I can make my own coffee, but its faster and easier to get Starbucks to make a caramel machiatto. Especially when theres one in the frickin' grocery store!
Infact, the true test is to see how this stands up against the P2P networks- there will always be people copying tapes, cds, software, etc. Negative reinforcement classicaly has not worked (look into a psych 101 text book). Give me a reason where I directly benefit (saying "its against the law" will get you laughed out of the cool kids lunch table).
Word out. UP! I mean up!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I read through Janis's article and found it quite well written and extremely introspective. The idea of an out-of-print archive is a stupendous idea, one that I have frequently wished for. His arguments for it are quite good, and such an archive would make a tremendous amount of sense.
That's why it'll never happen.
Consider for a moment just how much music the average person listens to, or more specifically how many minutes/hours per day the average Joe spends listening to music. You can only listen to one thing at a time, so your ears and time are both finite resources. The RIAA wants you to pay them $20/CD for the latest, greatest boy bands, Britney belly-button songs, and clones-of-clones-of-clones bands. If they suddenly gave you the ability to listen to (God forbid) some of the classics, two things would immediately happen:
1. You'd realize how crappy their current, major offerings really are. I mean, if Britney Spears looked like Shelly Duvall, do you really think she'd be as rich as she is today? She's got a great ass, great tits (real or otherwise), and an overall tight little body. Can she sing or write songs? "WHO CARES?" say the music execs, and folks throng to buy her latest stuff.
2. God forbid, some of your money would be spent on buying the good, classic stuff that actually sounds good as opposed to today's trash. Unless the RIAA charged you the same cost to get at a classic that they would normally charge for one of their current releases, they'd (in theory) lose money.
So, it'll never, ever happen. At least, not officially. UNofficially, there's already a site where you can get just about any song ever made, out of print or not, anytime, anywhere. It's called Gnutella, and it's filling the void that the RIAA has created. They will not be able to put this genie back in the bottle, no matter what they try.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
OTOH, why don't we pick a period of time *after* Christmas and get a month or two boycott arranged. At the same time, we should try and get people to shut down their P2P sharing, as well. We need to make a political statement here, and it will take time to organize it and effectively communicate the vision. Getting the P2P boycott is an essential and difficult part, and buy-in is essential for this.
Yea, Christmas season would be hard, but really effective. I agree that it can't be done in that way. But after... hmm, perhaps I will start looking into this. The poster after you and you are both right in that we have to stop the P2P sharing in some way at the same time, because otherwise it will just be "Pirates not buying CDs for 3 months" type headline instead of "Media Boycott". Anyone who wants to can email me and we can talk about this...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I destroyed my radio in a fit of rage last week. Now, every week is "Boycott the Entertainment Industry" week.
Thank you, SlashDot!
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
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.
Funny, my wife just told me the same thing. Paraphrased: "I'm always so disapointed with domestic CD's, I don't even bother unless its from another country."
RIAA, take note.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
I could see telling my family not to get me CDs or videos for Christmas, but I'm not sure I can see forcing my boycott on them, and not getting them any of those.
I can see pushing a post-Christmas boycott across to them, though.
Back on the CD topic, when my son was 4, he was getting into the stereo equipment too much, and I ended up pretty much dropping music. After that, I had neither time nor space to get back into it, and after that I started getting involved in the ??AA copyright issues. But recently I began looking into Indie music. My birthday list this year is going to include Indie CDs. I'm glad to see common usage of "Pink-Floyd-like" to describe music. (Atom Heart Mother rules!)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
That I believe that they're using data from P2P programs for marketing purposes. Look at the Elvis re-release coming out this fall. Gee, I wonder how they came up with that one? Could it be that Elvis is among the top 10 downloads on Kazaa and Win MX? What a herd of hypocrites!
I got fed up with hearing industry types whine about not wanting to come up with a new business model, so I did it for them - mediAgora
mediAgora defines rules for a market in digital media so Creators get credited and paid for their work, and Customers choose to pay a fair price.
Why is this needed? Because the media marketplace is riven by conflict between companies that profit from scarcity of physical goods and access, and those who assume that because works are easy to copy they need not be paid for. In either case, the creators lose out.
mediAgora is GPL-like, as a work sold through it can be incorporated in other works under the same terms - if you use my music as a background to your video, your customers should pay me the price I set for that music, as well as paying you your price for the video. This avoids the endless rights haggling that hinders so many productions.
mediAgora rewards you when you promote a work in a way that leads to a sale. Share new music or movies with your friends, and when they buy their copies, you get a cut. Creators don't see their royalties disappear in unaudited promotion fees - payment is strictly by results.
We all create - free speech and a free market can get us paid.
From the article:
Interesting things about the emails: All but 3 were coherent. Of those, one only seemed to be incoherent, but was in fact written by someone who spoke no English, and used Babblefish.com as a translator. (Sample: "I love your articles and play your music for my babies" became "I love babies and want to touch your articles.")
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
Come to think of it, that is a very suiting comparison, except that prostitutes aren't legally bound to work for their pimps, under duress of heavy financial reparations if they chose to leave.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Of course, Janis Ian is already prone to using the Internet to its full extent. The only top 40 song that Project Gutenberg distributes (just about the only song PG distributes in audio format) is Janis Ian's Society's Child.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
However, there is really nothing technologically preventing record labels from ... providing digital music at a fraction of the current price of singles and CDs.
They have to pay the songwriters a royalty per download, no matter what. The going rate is about 8 cents per track, and it's going up in parallel with the Consumer Price Index. At the commonly quoted 25c/download figure (EUR or USD), what does this leave for the performers, the web developers, and the hosting provider?
a.) providing customized CDs for their target audience (in the same vein as the NOW compilation albums)
This is the only way the RIAA can win back its customers. Pressplay's expansion into unlocked "Portable Downloads" is a step in the right direction. For the price of a single CD at a record store, you can download 20 MP3 files in a month and burn a legit music CD-R with no filler. (Filler is the most commonly quoted reason why $18 for a CD is considered too high.)
Will I retire or break 10K?