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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.
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!"
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.
"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
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.
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 -----------------------------------
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.
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
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.
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.
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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