Slashdot Mirror
Napster Not To Blame
enjo13 writes "Slate is running an article on the music industries recent troubles. It articulates exactly what Slashdot has preached all along.. that the Music industry is suffering at its own hands and has no one to blame but itself. All I have to say is... finally." There's actually been a number of pieces like this, but I think this one says it best.
...many many times? The recording industry just wants to blame something other than themselves for the loss in profits.
But we'll ignore them because this one says what we want it to say. Don't fall into the same trap as they do. Just because you may buy more CDs because of downloading music doesn't mean everyone does. Just because you enjoy the ability to download music doesn't mean it's not detrimental to the music industry. I do believe that p2p services harm the music and entertainment industries. However, I believe that the benefit to consumers is greater than the detriment to the industry. The ability to be able to find any music, whether new, old, rare, or common, is wonderful. The music and entertainment industries (although with Congress) need to step up and start giving consumers what they want, because eventually it will end up biting them on the ass.
its not just that... a lot of the 14 year olds who bought her earlier albums are now 16 and much cooler...so they dont buy them, being cool, and peer pressure are a much more dangerous to the 10-second-attention-span-entertainment industy.
"like, you know...like briteny was like my favorite when i was 14...but i'm like sooo much older now and i like listen to cooler stuff now."
dude.
So they are staying away from this trash in droves, and the RIAA is blaming piracy? The truth is more likely that there has been a sudden unexplainable outbreak of good taste by music-listeners.
I used to buy a lot of CDs (40-50 a year), happily laying down $15-20 each, sometimes for a CD I would listen to once - which is my point: Napster may not be hurting the sales of the U2s, Pink Floyds, and Rolling Stones of the industry, as these are quality bands who put out quality albums (mostly). But imagine the effect on the sales of some of the recent spate of flash-in-the-pan acts... I liked Linkin Park's last few singles, but the truth is that I was sick of them long before I bought the CD. The same is true for a lot of acts.
Napster popularized P2P, and really brought about the try-before-you-buy mindset that alot of people have developped since in buying CDs; the effect has been lowered sales of mediocre products. David Bowie will continue to sell millions of CDs despite P2P, good luck to the middle-of-the-road acts though.
Also, P2P brings about lowered "thought-out" purchasing decisions much more than impulse buys. I would think that music that appeals to teenagers who have less disposable income (and thus are more prone to thinking out how to spend $20) will be much harder hit than music which appeals to the more affluent "older" crowds. It's a terrible thought, but I bet Britney Spears would have sold many more albums ten years ago - wheareas I doubt that an artist like Eric Clapton is much affected either way.
Nowhere did the article bother to talk about the woes of the economy.
:wq
Maybe I'm just a freak, but I know if I'm trying to curtail my spending, as many are in the uncertain economy, music purchases would be one of the first things I'd stop.
I know, their sales have been diminishing since before the US economy started heading south, but it's a possibility.
Maybe if the price of a cd was less than 700% profict for RIAA (dont know the number, but I know it's HUGE), and they cost what they were worth they would sell more.
I know this is theory, but I was taught in my econ class back in college that the sale price was where the supply and demand curve met. That point was the price that the consumer considered 'fair'.
Maybe RIAA needs to think about THAT. Maybe more and more consumers are thinking that cd's are just not worth the money and are settling for what's on the radio and not buying cd's. I'm sure some are turning to P2P software too, but I imagine that really is the minority.
I dont download music (used to - delted them all) and I will buy cd's. I've not bought one in almost 6 months because there hasnt been one that I think is worth the money.
Maybe I didnt think there were any worth the money because they are cookie cutter as the article stated. Maybe it's because it's just too damned expensive.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.-Franklin
It's not just new music, but it is caused by the music industry. Haven't you ever noticed how frequently good bands break up and reform into other, newer good bands? Personal conflicts with the other band members are usually cited as the reason for the breakup, but the truth is good bands break up because they get bored doing the same old shit, and they need fresh blood and fresh directions to keep making good music. Band breakups sometimes result in less good music, but I think the new (and different) bands that result are better for music quality on the whole. Think of it as sexual reproduction for music; more genes being passed around means more advantageous adaptations.
Yet at the same time, the music industry wants bands like Aerosmith to stay together for album after ass-like album, and usually, they have legal language in the contracts to enforce it for the first few albums. (After those few, if a band is still popular, they may have the clout to be able to write their own contracts. But they're usually dead by then.)
With very few exceptions, bands that have been around forever suck because they've been around forever, and their sound is tired and dead. But people keep buying their albums, as you just said yourself. The music industry, including the artists, realizes this: big name = more sales. New artists have little choice in the matter but to stay together. Big artists who get greedy try to stay together; big artists who care about the quality of their music go on to try different things. Those different things may not sell as well, but they sound better.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
They didn't however, go the the next stage of the argument -- that P2P networks have provided an avenue for (currently) non-mainstream artists to get exposure and market share.
They also seem to miss the question of whether the rise and fall of Napster coincided with the rise and fall of CD purchases. These seemed like obvious next steps for the article, but then it just seemed to .... stop.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
- Snub the over forty crowd that makes up 44% of your business.
- Make sure you stagnate so that you don't come out with anything fresh.
- During a recession raise your prices.
- Forget any lesson you might have learned from the late 70's when the industry underwent a similar crisis.
The only thing left to do to put that final nail into your coffin is to implement some "creative accounting" practices.I could buy a DVD for that much! Full digital 5.1 audio that is over 2 hrs long! Whats a $15 Audio CD provide? 60 mins of stereo music... Joy.. Their business model has DIED, they need to start selling Audio CDs for $5 to sell them.
Your premise is flawed: "everybody and their dog downloads music and burns it on CD instead of buying it in the store."
Some people download only. Other people download to find new music, which they then purchase. Personally I have bought a lot of CDs because I downloaded music from a band I read about first. In any case the situation is much more complex than you portray, so don't act so confused when it doesn't add up.
this whole recording industry situation has prompted eveyone to play the blame game, but it seems evident to me that it's not possible to single out one single thing as the bad sales turn.
are there people out there downloading music who would have otherwise bought it? yes.
but aren't there people out there downloading music that will spur future purchases? yes.
are cdr's used to copy cds? yes.
but aren't they used for other purposes as well, and doesn't a percentage of cdr sales go to the riaa? yes.
is the nation going through an econonic downturn on the whole? yes.
but aren't other countries' music industries being affected as well? yes.
i'm certainly against the **aa and all for fair use, but i think this situation is much more complicated than most people realize. and i think the best way to figure out what's wrong (if anything), is to conduct more independent (and independently-funded) surveys, especially outside of the united states. we get nowhere by propagating lies/rumors/FUD on either side, so it may be best to get as accurate and truthful a view of the problem as we can, whether we like it or not.
If it can happen, it will. One can copy and move intellectual property at virtually no cost. It was inevitable. "The computer is to intellectual property what a matter replication device is to matter" - me
The mainstream press is finally reporting what sites like dontbuycds have been saying all this time. Maybe Congress will read the article, and stop listening when Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti show up asking for corporate welfare. Manybe they will get it that piracy is a paper tiger.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
The customers' message to the RIAA will get louder and louder until they finally hear it or until they go under. Which one happens is ultimately the RIAA's choice.
The RIAA probably believes that because it's a monopoly (or oligopoly ... same thing from an economic perspective) like Microsoft, that it can get away with the same market tactics that Microsoft does. But what they haven't figured out is that unlike Microsoft's products, which are essentially required to keep a business running (Openoffice and friends aside), the RIAA's products are not required, they are optional. Having a monopoly doesn't help you if your customers can get away with not buying your product -- and that's exactly what's happening now.
So my message to the RIAA is simple: you'd better figure this shit out, and fast, because your number is coming up.
What sucks the most is that the RIAA is going to do a hell of a lot of damage before they either finally learn or go under.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
And they honestly wonder about why nobody is making money? This is the biggest money maker for the industry, and its total crap. I dont think the american public has enough intelligence to finally understand that the stuff that they are spending their money on is crap, so why are they not buying CD's anymore? My guess is that if they actually liked this "music" they dont really care about music in the first place and they just gave up entirely. I dont think it has anything to do with the "new" trend of swapping music, be it over the internet, recording on tapes, or even just listening to the radio. I think the main problem is that people have been spoon fed the same crap (if nothing has changed in the pop world since disco...) for 30 years and they've just gotten bored.
The next question that gets brought up is why then are better bands, who actually do offer something intellectually selling records? Maybe because there arent all that many that exist; I'll still fork out my 13 bucks for a new Fugazi record, or my new favorite band Queens of the Stoneage, but most people dont like to think, and therefore, wouldnt like or even give a good new band a chance.
If the death of pop (please dear god kill it now!!!) is gonna bring the music business down with it, so what, I'll still be strumming away on my guitar, and I know that anyone who had any real interest in music in the first place will too.
But if anybody has any conflicting viewpoint on this, I'd actually like to hear it, unless you liked N'sync or britney spears...
I will not be trained.
I think the larger whole of the music industry is reflecting the trends in society. As a people we are becoming more and more specialized and focused in those things which we want. Music is no different. The days of the single artist making the whole country swoon are gone. Since the labels are still attempting to do business using that model, their sales are dying off. Easy.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Why can't the RIAA and kazaa (for example) work together to bring in the cash? Imagine the following.
Kazaa implements credit card billing features so that whenever you download a song owned by the RIAA, a fee is charged to your account (and for this to succede it'd better be reasonable - around a dollar). Kazaa gets a cut of that dollar, and the rest goes to the RIAA.
This would not only be unbelievably easy for the consumer (any idiot can download a song), but would use an already well established network that, if done correctly, would use the people on the network for distribution. Of course the RIAA would be wise to put up it's own servers sharing the files, too.
The only downside i can see is if you get lamers sharing missnamed or incomplete songs that you end up paying for. Any ideas (checksums, etc?) for fixing that?
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
The music industry really was, for a while, doing quite well in improving music reproduction technology.
First there were '78's made of shellac. Then they came up with vinyl, much easier to handle and able to hold more data, at 33RPM's. Still too pricey for kids, they did 45's.
Now, America was moving towards an automobile culture, and you just can't run an LP in a car (ignoring the Lexus ad).
So, they came up with 8-tracks. Great, an LP in your hand, and shock-proof to boot. But they were awfully clumsy, and apparently not all that cheap to manufacture (which ought to translate to consumer prices, but that's another rant).
So, they came up with cassette tapes. They were small, portable, and dirt cheap. I remember buying albums for $6-7 in the early eighties. But the quality of the cassettes was fairly miserable.
Tape also has a tendency to stretch and wear out, so it's tough to commit to a music collection on 8-track or cassette.
So they came up with CD's. Finally, very high quality, random access, and portable (after a few shakey years). With the advent of the CD it finally made sense again to collect music for the long haul, so the music industry saw a boom in replacement purchases, from all the people who had purchased 8-tracks and cassettes.
But the CD is close to perfect. It doesn't wear out, it has random access, it has really good quality, it's portable, and it's cheap to manufacture. People had their music now, and they didn't need to replace it. This was a new situation for the music industry. They would have to keep producing good new music to keep up the sales or come up with a better format.
What could be better than a CD? Well, what are the CD's weaknesses? You couldn't record on them (before the past few years). You also had to carry quite a stack of CD's around for just a few good songs. Sony recognized this and made a few stabs at the market with MiniDisc. They got portable, small, random-access, and cheap, eventually, but the quality of the first round of MD's was pretty poor. It used a 3-subband lossy coder, and it just didn't compare to CD's. It was also fairly proprietary.
It seems that at this point, the industry just gave up. I don't know what really happened behind the scenes, but the entire industry seemed to undergo a cranial/anal inversion. When DAT tried to get near the market, they got scared and had the Digital Home Recording Act [Tax] enacted. This was the start of viewing the customer as the criminal adversary.
Meanwhile, the personal computer industry was booming. Computers started to get hard disks capable of storing lots of music and good perceptual coders came to market. I remember ripping all my CD's onto my 601-based Mac in '96 (in MP2, at 0.2x, after a separate rip stage, typing all the track names in) and it was just amazing. Soon everybody noticed that you could listen to your music in a form that you wanted. With the advent of CD writers and the iPod, the missing portability element came back. By 2001, the technology provided by the music industry had been totally overtaken by the technology the computer industry provides, and that's when they started sueing everybody in sight.
So, as I see it the music industry has 3 options:
1) Come up with a better technology. If I knew what it was, I'd be doing it, but it obviously involves the internet, probably 3G cell. The only thing I can't do with an iPod is get my music I don't have with me. Note: I don't want SACD's or DVD-A's. They don't solve any problems I have.
2) Put out good music. I doesn't even have to be new, I just bought a box set of remastered Miles Davis on Monday and In a Silent Way is my new favorite CD.
3) Criminalize everything the customers want to do and sue the begezus out of everybody who tries to help them.
What's behind Door #1 and Door #2 are sustainable options. Lurking behind Door #3 is a business model that has outlived its usefullness and is trying to get by on the creation of artificial scarcity. Stockholders ought to be very leery of a management that doesn't want any part of a sustainable market.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The record industry is looking for a government bail out. They look to Congress and the courts to fix ailments that they brought upon themselves. I find it funny that in this day of: "let the marketplace decide", the music industry seems to be seeking (and getting) special treatment. This industry should be left to live (or die) by its own bad decisions. I'm in my fourties, and I find that the 'big five' record companies have completely alienated me. Apparently they don't want me for a customer. All they seem to care about is serving my daughters, who can't afford their exhorbitant prices any more. My attitude is why bail therse clowns out? Let them die and be replaced by better run companies who care about serving their customers. Of course, we all iknow the answer to why this won't happen: $$....the flow of $$ to Congress' pockets that is!
No. No. No. and a final time, No. They are "infringing" -- a well-defined crime, distinct from stealing. How do I know? Leaving aside the single-user issue, let's also consider: No court anywhere has ever set up guidelines for "reasonable theft" of physical property. But for intellectual "property", the courts have -- as much as the RIAA wishes to God they hadn't -- carved out an expanse called "Fair Use", wherein use of copyrighted material without compensation is considered legal. (I am not arguing that Napster was or was not Fair Use. I am just pointing out that Fair Use exists in well-codifed law.) Likewise, real property rights don't expire. If you own a car and never ever sell it to anyone, then guess what? It's yours, forever and ever, world without end, amen. But if you publish a copyrightable item, and never ever sell a copy to anyone else, do you know what happens? Eventually your "property" rights evaporate, again without compensation... it's not a government "taking", it's the (legal) nature of the beast.
So unless you're willing to draw the analogy both ways -- that is, to allow "Fair Use" of your physical property and to recognize that your ownership is time-limited -- then stop BSing and drop the "infringement is stealing" crap.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
If you think the fact that someone trades data is proof that the data has some aspect of quality, then you simply do not understand the draw of illicit data. It doesn't mater if the data is warez, credit card listings, music, or bomb recipes. The draw is that the data in question is illicit... forbidden knowledge... prohibited... or otherwise illegal to own.
Think Eminem is an untalented idiot and his music is audio tripe? That's not the point. The point is that YOU got a copy of his recent album before it was even RELEASED. There's a brand new game that you'll constantly rant bout sucking... but you've got a copy of it in your collection. And whether you know how to use AutoCAD, much less have a desire to ever install it, isn't as important that you HAVE a copy of it.... cracked and dongle-less.
When I was a kid, I used to collect bomb instructions. I was convinced a large portion of it was created by people with just enough knowledge to be dangerous - to the unfortunate who followed the instructions. I never had any interest in actually creating any of the devices and substances described. But it was forbidden data - and I had a lot of it. And that idea alone appealed to me.
Sure. Some people who collect bomb instructions want to make bombs. Some people who download music see value in that music. But I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of file trading is simply a combination of packrat behavior and the thrill of handling illicit data.
I am 47, my son is 18. Both of has have a favorite band: Led Zeppelin. Where is the LZ of this generation ? That is why...