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Blogcritics Interviews RIAA President Cary Sherman
Lunenburg writes: "Blogcritics has posted an interview they held with RIAA head Cary Sherman. Mr. Sherman took questions on the RIAA's policies on digital rights management, fair use, and the need for the RIAA in the internet age, among others. Great quote by Mr. Sherman from the interview: 'Actually, we're not lobbying for copy-restriction technologies.'" There are some mighty slippery answers in here.
"Record companies have been major beneficiaries of new technology (from wax cylinders to vinyl to LPs to CDs)" is something of an understatement. Just look at the way artists were screwed when CDs were becoming popular. Labels took cuts from their earnings to cover "increased production costs" which were dramatically overstated. Organisations like the RIAA are not out to protect the rights of artists to make music, they want to enhance the ability of labels to make money.
I love his statement:
[I quote the whole thing because I hate snippets of quotes. They almost always mirepresent.]
"I guess you haven't been to a record store lately. A lot of them feature this really cool "wand" that you can swipe across the barcode of any CD in the bins - and you will immediately hear samples from the various tracks on that CD! It's really great.
Most record stores also feature "listening posts" where you can sample the music from CDs, but those are limited to the specific CDs being offered that month.
The Internet presents an unbelievable opportunity for sampling. Go to online music stores (like Tower, or Amazon, or loads of others) and click on the album you're interested in and you'll be able to hear samples all day long.
In short, everyone is better off when you, the consumer, get to know what you're buying before you buy it. You're a happier music fan, and we don't have an unhappy customer who feels ripped off."
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First:
I don't like to listen to 'samples'. I want to listen to the whole song, from beginning to end. and not just once, but several times.
Second: In the second paragraph, he states that there are listening booths that features the music being currently offered. I say that the 200+million files being shared on the net offer a slightly better selection. Besides, who wants to sit through "trash of the month" to find that ONE good track among the piles of BAD cds?
Third:
Going to an online music store entails:
- giving my information (name, email, etc) I hate that.
- Being bombarded with popups and other spurious advertising (thank God for Moz)
- see point one. I don't want to listen to a 30 seconds snippet at 128Kb when the whole song is available on KazaA at 192Kb, or sometimes at 320Kb.
Lastly:
If I just listen to samples, I don't, in fact, know what I'm buying. The only way for me to know if I like a CD is to buy it, get home, turn the lights low, lay back in my sofa, put on the headphones, and listen to the whole album from start to finish. Then I'll be able to tell you if I like it. And if I don't, I want to be able to return it for a full refund.
As long as I can't return a CD for the full price, then I'm not a happy customer. And that's the fault of the recording industry (thanks Sony), and not the fault of the internet. It's a case of shooting oneself in the foot, if you ask me, then blaming everyone else for the bleeding foot when they have the smoking gun in hand.
"Piter, too, is dead."
In the same spirit:
Every morning, my uncle's rooster crows. Shortly after that, the sun comes up. Get the idea?
Is this person really so out of touch with reality so as not to realize that there has been a recession in the U.S. (with effects felt in other economies) at the same time that prices on CDs have gone up? HELLO!? It is not clear at all that P2P have had any discernible effect on CD sales. It may have, but the point is we don't know and neither does the RIAA. (Not that they'd tell us outright that sales were up.)
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Unfortunately, a lot of the arguments just don't hold water. Comments such as the fact where he states that 50% of royalties go to the artists assume that 100% of the money fronted to the artist's project has been recouped. That money comes from where? Sales and, you guessed it, royalties. The artist doesn't see a penny of those royalty cheques until the album begins to make a profit. So, unless you're Celine Dion selling squillions of albums and singles to the unwashed masses, you, as an artist, will get your royalty statements for life indicating how much money you still owe the record company.
The fact of life for most artists is that they make their money from playing live engagements, and those engagements are attended by people familiar with the artist. How better to get the exposure necessary to build and maintain your fan base than by having your music out there in the open for the world to hear?
This whole idea that they're championing the cause of the starving artist just doesn't wash. Nasty stuff that really gets up my ire!
trane