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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.
The RIAA found that young consumers are less likely to forge strong bonds to the music that they buy and are unlikely to either buy previous albums from an artist or subsequent albums.
So. Music today basically blows. The major component of the music market are less likely to buy a ton of CDs from one artist and are instead more likely to just hop the bandwagon for a short time...
It'd be nice not to have to go and find another job....
Napster and its successors are obviously not the problem...its just like the article says...its those damn cassette tapes! Ban them!
Britney Spears' latest album has moved 4 million copies--a big number, but less than half what its predecessor did.
That's one statement that sums it all up: music industry's slumping sales are not because of the pirates, it's because of the crappier cookie-cutting kind of music that's being rewarmed over and over and over.
I won't believe that Britney's albums are not selling as well as they used to because everyone wants to get them for free.
(aside from the obvious, why would anyone listen to it, not mentioning OWNING a cd with her music???)
Looks like Ford is getting into the act.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It is much easier to download something than to go to the store and pay for it.
I think the "easier" part is the crux of the issue. If record companies make it easy to download and pay (a reasonable price mind you) for your music then a majority of folks would. The key is to make it easy and cheap and this will destroy any blackmarket or free file sharing communities. Make so easy and cheap that it is not even worth saving it your disk in most cases.
The video rental market is a great analogy. There was a lot of concern that when video rentals people would just copy video's and share them with their friend and sales would plummet. The opposite is true because it is just not worth the hassle and space.
Yes, you are exactly right. Last time I pirated music i made sure it was shit music that I would never even consider purchasing.
Nice logic.
Even if that CD costs $4242 in the store, it's a product. If you want it, buy it.
Personally, I can definitely say that the labels are getting less money from me than they used to.
The main reasons are:
1) Very often I want to listen to just something very particular, and I believe it is silly to pay (and ask) $15 for just one song.
2) Convenience. Using file-sharing programs, I can get anything I want in a minute or two, in a convenient format that I can copy to my laptop and listen in my car or whatever. Buying a CD will never give me that. And yes, I know that there are ways to buy single songs online etc but the choice tends to be crappy, (the late) Napster and its clones have always had a better and more interesting choice.
I believe that there are many people who share these reasons and there's going to be more and more every day. Now, the point is that the music industry could definitely do a better job here by making it cheaper and more convenient to get what I want but it is also wrong to say that online music sharing has no effect on their revenue.
When men used to be men
Even proven acts that I've been a long-time fan of have been getting worse and worse. Two prime examples: Bad Religion and Public Enemy. (I like my music with a social/political bent.) Bad Religion hasn't put out a *solid* album since 1991's Stranger Than Fiction, but I buy them anyway, in hopes that they've gotten back to their ass-kicking roots. The newest Public Enemy album (Revolverlution), which I purchased yesterday, is worse than Bad Religion's recent efforts -- there are a few original, new songs on the disc, but there's also live performances of old songs, remixes of old songs, an interview track, and two PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS by Chuck D and Flava Flav.
Don't get me started on the dogshit that passes for Aerosmith music as of late.
The point is, it's not just new artists targetted at the 18-25 market...all of music is sucking ass lately. Sometimes, I think that there was more to the move to ban Napster and other P2P systems than just the "loss of sales" argument. I found some real gems on Napster -- stuff I'd never listen to before, Napster started me on a blues kick that continues to this day, for example. God forbid that the record companies should have to start dropping their NuMetal Poserbands and Bling-Bling Flash-in-the-Pan Rap Acts in favor of signing some bands with real musical talent, because real musical acts are harder to sell than a prepackaged pseudo-lifestyle.
I guess part of why music sucks is that the idiots in the RIAA know they have a losing formula, but stick to it because it's all they know.
blog |
Now don't tell me that you can look back and say "well, it isn't napsters fault".
You CAN'T. You need a study that shows what happened when Napster came around. We have plenty of those. Now you need a study that shows what happened, in the exact same time period as napster, without napster. Anyone got a time machine?
Napster (and other file sharing programs/piracy) MAY OF done the music industry bad. Napster (and other file sharing programs/piracy) MAY OF done the music industry good.
But there is no possible way you can say it is one way for sure. File sharing still exists and is still widely used (KaZaA and Morpheus come to mind), so there is no possible way we can look at stats and compare.
So take this article with a grain of salt, not with absolute conviction.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Yeah, really. And Duh! According to the current poll it's the screaming dancing guy from MS. Sheesh.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
beginning to happen..... The Dark Ages again....
Was watching a Voyager rerun last nite - it was broadcast in digital and had more digital corruption in it and the analog air wave static..
First time I saw that epsoide, it wasn't being broadcast in digital format and look fine...
Like music I guess TV is going down hill too.
All in the name of anti-piracy.....
It works too......if nobody wants it.....who's gonna pirate it?
The ultimate in piracy protection!!!! yeah buddy.....happy now?
Sorry dude, there's a diff.
Anyone sharing Britney doesn't claim that it's their own work (who would *want* to, but that's another item).
SigmaDesigns copied code and claimed it as their own work.
See the diff?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
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.
...making new pop and rock music. If we arbitrarily assign 1957 as the first year of Rock and Roll, then we've got 45 years' worth of music we can all go back through and mine for gems (as long as it all stays in print, of course.) I mean, until everyone owns "Marquee Moon" by Television, and at least one album by Nick Lowe, The Clash, Argent, 10cc, Pilot, The Soft Boys, The Undertones, The Velvet Underground, The Sex Pistols, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Costello, XTC, Radiohead, Badfinger, The Who, The Flaming Lips, and Love, why do we need anything new?
The Big News Page
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.
What are you, twelve years old?
Slate has been around for years. Almost as long as Salon (if not longer.)
Michael Kinsley used to edit it. (The same Kinsley who used to sit off to the side of Buckley's _Firing Line_ and goad good ol' Bill with nuggets o' thought.)
Wait, if you don't know Slate, you probably have no idea who W F Buckley is either, right? Or his National Review?
Last time I saw WFB was on Charlie Rose. WFB hosting for Rose. My god. What a painful experience that was.
Anyway, do yourself a favor. Even if you think NR is fulla shit and WFB is fulla shit then hop on over to (a) Slate (occasionally), (b) National Review (occasionally), and (c) the New Republic (occasionally).
You don't need to agree with the views -- but dear god, my boy, get yourself at least a respectable smidgeon of political knowledge -- and awareness of the "standard" political rags -- so you can refrain from posting bizarre stuff like "What is this Slate thing?"
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
of course not... we've known all along - its Canada!
She likes the teen-pop stuff, but it doesn't stick. She figures out that the new album from band A sounds just like their last album, so she moves on. Pretty much the same stuff with a slightly different twist, but she sure wants a lot fewer CD's now than she did a year ago.
Hmmmmmmmm. I could buy the Shrek soundtrack for $19 or I could buy the Shrek DVD for the same $19. Whats wrong here? Seems we get a lot more content on the DVD. I can download movies from the net, why isn't that hurting the studios? Perhaps, and this is just a hunch.......there are far fewer stupid people willing to buy the crap that the record companies are trying to shove down out throats? Could it have anything to do with content? Now I now that there are some DVD's that I just "must have" the first week they are out. I can't remember the last time I anticipated such a CD (OK, I bought the last Chili Peppers CD on the first day it was out, BUT, that is partially because Best Buy sould it for $13 for the first day of release only)
People don't rip? Myself, and 4 other people I know with mp3 players in our cars or portable mp3 players sure as hell do. Granted, I download some songs here and there, but also rip 10x more than I download from purchased cds. I don't want my cds sitting in the car melting from the heat, or getting scratched because some fool doesn't know how to handle them correctly. I love groups like 311, and have gone to great lengths to even purchase their unreleased stuff off their own website. Don't tell me people don't rip music just because you don't, and as a result end up stealing everything you listen to.
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.
OK so we got a story on Slate. Slashdot says this all the time. Big Woop.
Let me know when it shows up in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, or some of Jack Valenti's ti^Hrade mags.
The issue really isn't about "someone else just joined our bandwagon." It's about who just joined your bandwagon, and if the who doesn't include the folks making, marketing, and distributing the music, then it really doesn't make a whole hill of beans worth of difference, does it?
What is your Slash Rating?
She even does things like put *full* sample tracks on her website. *gasp*
And her sales and profits climb...
And her music continues to be her own...
And her music continues to kick ass.
Are you reading, RIAA?
It costs a lot of money to manufacture a CD...
Yeah, if you think $0.50 is a lot of money - and I've seen that kind of pricing in quantities of a few thousand, I can only guess how low it gets if you press millions.
Perhaps you meant to include the cost of recording, mixing, mastering, graphic design, and such, but those are one-time expenditures and get spread over all the CDs, adding another fraction of a dollar to the cost (at least for major labels).
That said, you're probably right that folks would be willing to pay $0.50/song for downloads, but only if none of their friends had already downloaded it and copied it for them.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
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.
you obviously aren't involved in downloading music and never really were.
sure the kids download stuff instead of buying it, but they wouldn't buy as many anyway. sure when people were introduced to napster, they downloaded tons of music. i'll bet most of it is a listened once or twice and never touched again. i wouldn't buy a cd i would only listen to once or twice.
but i have downloaded music. if i like a song or a band, i buy the cd. if i don't like it, i erase it. it's more of a try before you buy thing than not paying at all.
i hope all of the corporate propaganda tasted good when you swallowed it all.
on an aside, it would be interesting to see how the sales of blank cassette tapes have changed since the sales of blank cd media has increased. i'd like to see them compared on a minutes of storage basis, as well as dollars.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
When I was a kid back in the late '60s (yeah, I AM that old) everybody wanted a guitar, or drums, or a PA. We all wanted to be rock stars.
Now, instead of instruments, all the kids I hang out with are buying mixing decks. They all want to be club DJs.
They play four hour sets of techno. House, trance, bass&drums, whatever. It's got no lyrics. It's got no melody. It's got a GREAT groove. And without a melody, or lyrics, it's REALLY HARD to copyright. I like a lot of it.
They've done it again. Rock, punk, whatever it takes to take the music back from the corporations. The kids are alright.
Fuck the RIAA. Just wait, they WILL try to copyright 120 beats per minute.
Tim, you are wrong, and that explains why you have been moderated into oblivion. I find it so much easier to drive across town and spend NZ$30 on a CD than to download it for free using one of the many P2P apps available. I am sure that the vast majority of slashdotters would hold the same opinion.
- 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.You hit the nail on the head!! Their wet dream is to charge us each time we hear a song. They're not alone: software companies want to move to a application server environment where you'd pay per for each use. Cable/movie industry would probably put all content up if they could charge per-show, per-movie watched. (with commercials of cours)
Reminds me of Futurama with the commercials shoved into your dreams... Would the Music Industry throw you in jail if you hummed a song to work? Or dreamed about music?
As far as "loss of sales" last year.. give me a break. It was a recession. Some companies actually lost REAL sales. Not some made up, "wish we made 9 billion" dollar sales.
And believe it or not, some companies go out of business when their services are too expensive or simply suck ass. The music industry as a business shouldn't be immune to this.
For some reason, downloading music never appealed to me. I like to browse music stores, pick up and handle CDs. But I always balked at paying over $12.00 for a cd if it wasn't a greatest hit's CD or I hadn't heard most of the songs before. I had downloaded a couple of pieces, but found it to be too much of a bother and the quality was too unpredictable. Music on the Internet?? It just wasn't worth it.
.. this was cool. Now, my music collection is growing a couple of CDs a month, even though I still hate paying over $12. Internet music (which I paid for) was STIMULATING me to buy CDs. It really dawned on me then how stupid RIAA is for not encouraging access to music over the Internet. I was proof that the Internet actually increase music sales.
Recent events have changed all that. I had put my CD collection on my hard drive so I could listen to them while I worked. But, through a series of events, I had to rebuild my entire system. Unfortunatly, I couldn't reinstall my purchased copy of RealPlayer/RealOne/Real and didn't want the new one because of their stupid subscription based service.
I dumped Real and bought MusicMatch at a real store, intending to dump my CDs to my new 40GB hard drive. In the box was an offer for MusicMatch radio. I had done Winamp before, but again, the quality just wasn't there. To my surprise, I discovered that for $4 a month, I can get crisp, clear music delivered over my broadband, and was able to create my own 'stations' based on the music I liked. I could skip tracks too if I wanted. The best part was I could click on the playlist and create lists of CDs to buy later, or buy them right on the spot. Wow
Then, a few days ago, RIAA announced their legal action regarding list4ever.com. Curiosity got the best of me, so I fired up Google and started looking around. Know what I discovered?? Hundreds of sites where I can download music and videos, sites I never knew about before. I still haven't downloaded anything, but now I know where to go if I want to, all thanks to RIAA.
I never did dump my CDs to the new hard drive.....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
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.
I've always thought that I'd very enthusiastically pay for music if it were sold at $0.25 a track. The music companies don't want to do this, because presumably it devalues the music that they've tried so hard do inflate to over five times that value.
What I'd like to know is, if they did start selling tracks at a quarter apiece, how much more music would people have to buy to make up for the drop in price? (Not taking production or bandwidth costs into account, it people would need to download about 60 songs for every CD they purchase now). Is it plausiable that you'd buy five times as much music if it were a fifth the price? I probably would myself, but I very rarely buy CDs.
I dislike the politics of the content industry so much that I avoid full price movies and I mostly content myself with the music I already have. This is an effective form of protest which I would like to see more people employ.
Except. Except that the content industry is pointing to their loss of sales as evidence that everyone not giving them money is a crook and that they are therefore justified in destroying the PC as an open platform.
Who needs clever accounting with logic like that?
...is now blocked because of the RIAA.
No, it's blocked because Napster set up a service specifically designed to allow people to "share" their MP3's. You can't honestly tell me they were trying to capitalize on legal trading. There isn't (yet) much of a market for that. Same thing with AG. If Napster, AG, et al were really into legal trading, they'd make a Napster-like frontend to MP3.com.
The Free desktop that Just Works
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.
I will be the first to admit it. I do not buy cd's because I can download all the music I like for free and burn them.
/. has already posted a fair number of stories over the years showing that even listening to RIAA music helps further its popularity and eventually the RIAA's revenues.
And I'll be the first to admit (well ok not likely the first) that I just don't even LISTEN TO RIAA crap.
Well, I do occasionally accidently overhear a bit of RIAA produced drudge, but it is not willingly. ^_^
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
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.
- Expand your taste to include a wider range of musical forms through exploration.
- Seek out new local acts by attending live performances at small clubs, bars, and concert halls.
- Purchase CDs directly from those performers and bands whom you have enjoyed seeing live.
Not only does buying CDs directly from the artist provide them better compensation, but since you've already heard his/her music you know you'll enjoy much of what's on the CD. And to top it off the music cartels don't get a dime of your money. SCORE!This is primarily how I buy music now. I haven't purchased a big label pop disc in well over a year -- because the music sucks. I don't "steal" music across the net; I don't tape or burn CDs to trade with friends; I don't tape off the radio. I go to shows and if I like the act I buy some music. Fuck the RIAA and all their noise about "piracy".
--Maynard
Except that what you describe existed a long time ago. It was a service hosted at, unsuprisingly, my.mp3.com. You could download anything from a huge library, the only catch was that before the server would give you a digital copy of your CD you had to provide it with a checksum of the data off your CD. Sure you could hack around this, but for 90% of people it meant that you had to prove you already owned it before you could download it. Legal sharing.
3 guesses what service was the first target of the RIAA, long before Napster even existed, and the first two don't count.
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.
Well, I don't know about it costing less then $1.00 to produce an album, but I agree that $20 is rediculous.
I haven't bought a CD from an RIAA member company since 1998. It wasn't so bad for a while, because there was an excelent independant radio station in my area (WAAF, Boston), but just over a year ago they sold the station and have been playing crap ever since*. I was pissed for a while, but I soon found that there are lots of good bands around that you and a friend can go and see play over a few beers for less then the cost of one ticket (or CD) to some "major" rock group, and the music is as good or better. The best part is, when you buy their CD you're handing cash to the artist (usually literally), not to a glorified lobying group that is trying to take away your rights.
If you don't live in an area with a good local music scene you can still find almost all of these bands on the internet. Download their songs, if you like them buy the CD, and you can go back to loving music again.
* If I turn on the radio and flip to AAF nowadays there's like a 10% chance that they'll be playing "Rooster" by Alice In Chains, a 20% chance that it'll be something by the Beastie Boys, and a 50% chance it'll be a commercial. They never play anything that's not on the 30 song long playlist on their website. I don't understand why they still have listeners.
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?
* what a laughable term for what Napster was about. Yeah, it wasn't "stealing" in the traditional dictionary definition, but what would you have said if someone were "sharing" binary-only modified copies of GPL'd software? Would that still be sharing? Or would it now be stealing?
Its not stealing in neither case (See definition's emphasis on stealing being the removal of something from its rightful owner), in the first case it would surely be copyright infringment, and in the second case, a license violation, perhaps too a copyright infringment.
As long as copyrights are used against their explicitly mentioned goal ("To Promote Science and Useful Arts") and as such have unlimited times [in practice] and do not require publishing the information (keeping programs closed, etc), they will not be honored and protected.
That is, I will not respect copyright in its current form - to make profit for the large companies that funded its legislation.
Not all new music sucks, you just have to look around a bit harder to find it, as it's not all over MTV or the radio.
If you want a political bend to go along with your new music, a good place to start is with Radiohead. Another one is Mos Def and Blackstar (which is Mos and Talib Kwali) who are this generation's Public Enemy, and they are incredible.
As far as I know, the punk scene has degenerated politically, but Joe Strummer (of the Clash) is putting out incredible new stuff with his new band The Mescaleros. There's a band I happened to catch live at a music festival called The International Noise Conspiracy, who are a really fun act to see (communist/socialst propaganda from Sweden, how can you not love a song named "Capitalism Stole My Virginity"?)
Also, if you've looked at the American radioscape lately, a lot of the Nu-Metal junk has faded away. The focus these days is on more standard rock, with bands like Jimmy Eat World, the Strokes, the White Stripes, and the Hives all doing a great job kicking the crap out of Fred Durst and his various imitators. Some of the stuff (particularly The White Stripes) is really outstanding work. There's still a lot of pop out there, but that's never going to change (hence the name). There's a lot of good non-political music out there too, that I didn't mention, that is just off to the side of mainstream, but is actually very good. As for the political/social stuff, I don't think there's a whole lot right now, but who knows? The new Rage Against the Machine album should be out soon.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
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
And, ironically, those automatons had been trained to fanatically follow trends by none other than... the marketing army called the RIAA.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I'm sick of reading some study that points to some supposed failings of the music industry and concludes that file-sharing isn't hurting the industry. I'm just as sick of reading stories about how file-sharing has gone up and profits have gone down, stories which conclude that file-sharing IS hurting the industry. I'm sick of the blind chauvinism that surrounds both sides of the issue.
The assorted and supposed failures of the music industry and the presumed decline in quality of today's music - even if true - can NOT be taken as evidence that file-sharing isn't hurting the industry, just like declining record sales can't necessarily be attributed to the accompanying rise in file-sharing.
BOTH types of 'evidence' marshalled by both sides are correlational and don't really say anything about what the proponents are arguing about, namely the root of the problem. Maybe file-sharing is going up because today's music sucks, or because people want this method of distribution. Or maybe file-sharing is on the rise because people just like grabbing things they don't have to pay for.
You've heard it a million times: Correlation is NOT causation. Once we get past the stupid "X is happening, and Y is/isn't happening, therefore X does/doesn't cause Y", we'll be able to really and fairly consider the issue instead of looking through these blinders that seem to get narrower and narrower as time goes on, and hearing the tautologies flogged like yesterday's dead horse - by BOTH sides.
Being a lover of history, I am always looking for parrallels from the past with problems of today. This paragraph then, cuaght my attention:
In 1978, record sales began to fall, and the major labels blamed a larcenous new technology: cassette tapes. The international industry even had an outraged official slogan: "Home taping is killing music." The idea was that music fans--ingrates that they are--would rather pirate songs than pay for them, and that sharing favorite songs was a crime against hard-working musicians (rather than great word-of-mouth advertising).
This helps me remember that as fast paced as our world may be, we're really just handling the same problems that have been dealt with in the past. The article goes on to say how the emergence of MTV and Rock Videos saved the music industry now, and that if the Music Mavens don't stop blocking every new technology that comes along, they miss their own savior. Bravo for a great article and let's hope the RIAA will study some history as well.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
You know, just because someone's moral compass points in a different direction than your own, doesn't imply that they don't have one. But then, people who can throw around phrases and judgments like that are generally terrified by the idea that someone might believe legitimately other than them, and so must tar everyone with a broad brush. What a sad world to inhabit.
For the record, I don't download anyway. So you can just close the reply you'd opened saying "You're just trying to justify your theft."
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The US music scene sucks, plain and simple. The majority of albums released within the last 5 years have been formulaic, cookie-cutter crap. Remember in the 80's how bands were designed around musicians? Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen, Neil Peart etc ad nauseum....you used to be able to name the members of bands. They actually had talent, wrote their own songs, some were even (God forbid) classically trained.
With the one hit wonders we have now, you can't even name the vocalist for the bands.
Skip across to the pond and see what the 'peans are up to. Let's see, progressive metal bands like Stratovarius, Blind Guardian, Avantasia, Edguy, Theatre of Tragedy, etc are HUGE stars. They play arena concerts, like GNR, VH, Selloutica and others did in the 80's and 90's. Members are usually classically trained musicians and have technical abilities that most US musicians only dream of. Many of the band members collaborate with other bands for entire albums (ex. Demons & Wizards).
Granted, this music may not be to everyone's tastes, but looks at the techno scene overseas. People like DJ Tiesto, Oakenfold, Van Dyk, etc are huge....yet unless you go to a trance club in the US, you are unlikely to ever hear them.
The US labels are failing for the same reason the US carmakers failed late last century:
Lack of innovation.
wuh? that was called "beam-it", and it wasn't about sharing. It was about availablity of your music digitally at any location. Where exactly did "sharing" come into play with this service?
The Free desktop that Just Works
I don't think the RIAA goes far enough. I blame cassette tapes for
the 1979 oil crisis
the hostage crisis in Iran
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
and El Nino
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
To find out if filesharing has had an effect on music sharing one only needs to look at the success of a different product that shares many characteristics with cds: for example MTV and concert tickets. If cd sales have dropped because consumers have lost interest in the music then we should see a similar decline in concert ticket sales and MTV ratings.
I have neither these numbers available to me nor the interest to properly evaluate them (properly meaning statisticly... not just scanning them with the naked eye.) But the numbers are there and any interested party could resolve this.
If concert ticket sales have declined it would be very difficult for the industry to say that this is the fault of filesharing. But at the same time if it is found that Britney Spears concerts are still selling out then it is also very hard for consumers to say there is less interest in listening to her.
Perhaps by stating their claims so heavily, both sides have too much to lose if they are found to be wrong.
I have discovered tons of new music styles which I would have never listened to, thanks to Audiogalaxy. Man I really miss it. It seems that soulseek http://www.slsk.org is taking the torch, but it's not there yet !
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 RIAA blames wholesale digital piracy for a downturn in music sales. Or it could be that the music is so bad nobody is willing to pay for it. The simpler explanation seems to be the answer here. Current music is simply not worth purchasing. Ergo, Occam.
Wrong.
I have never burned a single CD of music I have downloaded. In fact, every piece of music that I've downloaded and since kept have been added to my list of CDs to purchase. As many of these have been out of print for awhile and of limited quantity to begin with, that can sometimes take time. I am, however, on a complete RIAA boycott and while my CD purchases have gone up over a hundred fold in the last two years, none of it has been published by a member of RIAA.
I suspect that my actions more represent the majority than your "everybody and their dog" comment. Neither, of course, are very accurate.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Being quite honest, I like Britney Spear and her music. For saying this, I expect to get a whole slew of responses talking about how terrible my taste is, and even moderated down.
And it has nothing to do with the latest trend or whatever. Eminem's also one of the latest trends, and I hate what he has to offer.
So, why do I like her? Well, simply put, because her music is fun to listen to. And its fun to watch her videos. I'm not saying its intellectually rich music, but I really don't care. If I want intellectually enriched music, I'll go someplace else (like Ernesto Cortazar, Beethoven, John Williams).
That said, I can understand why this style of music means a slump for the music industry. Its not something I want to listen to all the time. In fact, there's very few artists I'd like to listen to all the time. The only musician who's music I've been able to listen to repeatedly over and over again is Beethoven.
So, what's the problem? Well, the problem is the zillion Britney-alikes that pop up (you know what I'm talking about, Pink, etc). And its not even so much them. I like some of Pink's music. I like alot of the stuff by Pink, No Doubt, Shakira, Aquilera, Spears, etc. Its not that the music's that bad. It's that it gets OVER -PLAYED.
This, my friends, is the fault of the music industry and the radio stations. Hearing the same song 500 times in one day is going to make me sick of it (i.e., anyone remember "I Saw The Sign" -- they played that song to death).
That's part of the reason I love the 80's stations, because they have a large selection to choose from, and I probably won't hear the same song twice in one day. That's also part of the appeal of P2P -- you get to mix it up.
So, ultimately, the current slump in the music business is completely the fault of the RIAA and music companies, along with the radio stations. Start mixing it up more, and people will be more interested. But really, who wants to buy that latest Britney Spears album when the songs in it have been played on the radio 500 times a day? If I listened to the radio more, I probably wouldn't buy CD's, but since I don't, I don't get so sick of songs that I want to puke when I hear them, like most people do.
So, the take home message to the RIAA? Well, lets say it like this. I like ice cream. I really like ice cream. I really really like ice cream. But if I've been eating nothing but ice cream for a week straight, I'm going to puke the next time I see it and I never want to see it again.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
anybody riping and collecting works they don't pay for are simply stealing
No, they are NOT. Stealing means depriving the original owner of the use of that material. The RIAA has a long way to go before they can make a direct link between music copying and loss of revenue. All P2P clients are doing is copying music. No more, no less. It's only in the last 100 years that artists and publishers can expect to make money while no one is physically playing their instruments.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
What Napster did was "filesharing", in the traditional and well-known networking sense: A given file was placed on a network and made accessible to others on the network. Or are you morally opposed to MS Windows "share folder" mechanism, too?
Now, it's legitimate to feel that supporters of Naptser liked to use the word "fileshare" because "sharing" has such a nice connotation -- everyone's all nice and friendly and Sesame Street-like. But then, the RIAA chose "piracy" to utilize the negative connotation of the word, even though infringing a copyright is nothing at all like raping and pillaging on the high seas. But at least in Napster's case, the word has a legitimate technical meaning that is actually related to how it's being used.
If someone took GPL code but violated the license, well, that would breach-of-contract and also copyright infringement -- both well-defined crimes but neither "stealing".
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
My questions were rhetorical, and not aimed at someone with a clue, which you appear to have.
;) Do you believe the GPL, or any other Free/OSS licenses are valid? They rely on the very same assumptions about IP...
However, if you won't respect copyright "in its current form", how do you make the distinction between what is and isn't acceptable? (note: that *wasn't* rhetorical
The Free desktop that Just Works
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!
I personaly think Fast Company said it best nearly a month ago
. ht ml
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/60/monopolist
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
"and the alternative distribution systemss don't work very well for anything but Britny and dubs of live Grateful Dead"
Touch&Go, Dischord, Sub Pop, Metal Blade etc are all record labels that each market to their own audience. I would guess that only a very small portion of the music released by these labels ever gets radio play, and can be impossible to find in all but the most open of record stores. Fans of the music find the the ability to order what they are looking for, though. Alternative means of distribution has always been how this muisc gets found.
Dischord has been artist run since the beginning and has always encouraged the consumer to order directly from them at a nice realistic price. This is a label that does it way more right than most, by being very active as an alternate distribution system.
"Some older music fans may hate hip-hop, nu-metal, or techno,"
Older? I am 23.
There is almost no good music I can buy today in stores. There are Dio and Ozzy albums, but these performers ale little old. There are few good newer bands like Evergrey, but in general - new music sucks. 10 years ago there was some nice tunes on MTV (for example by Dire Straits, GNR, Aerosmith, ZZ-top or even... Roxette), today it's impossible to find there something which isn't crap.
Probably people who buy todays popular music aren't real fans, they don't love this music, just listen to it. When there will be something new in TV - they will buy something new.
People who produce music are responsible for this situation. For new group it's very hard to put track on radio or TV. Of course there is possibility to put mp3 on net (hey, that was napster official mission), but it's hard to gain big set of fans this way.
We just need to wait until music producers realize what is wrong, so maybe they will stop promoting shit in radio/TV and good music will back on scene.
> For that matter, if the music the RIAA put out was SOOOO bad, why are all you jerkoffs so desperate to get your hands on it via Napster, Gnutella, et al? You're as shitty as the **AA fuckers you're supposedly against.
Boy, did you ever miss the point.
I have never downloaded any IP-restricted music off the internet, but I've still cut way back on my CD purchases.
Some of us aren't trying to justify theft; we just want to point out that the RIAA's finger-pointing game is utter bullshit.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
dubs of live Grateful Dead concerts.
While a lot of people (deadheads) may argue this, I think part of the bands immense popularity was due to their decision to allow this type of taping.
The tape always had background noise, without the clean room effect of a studio. The thing was, you could hear conversations, people talking, laughing, tripping, cheering having a good time so the bootleg would MAKE you want to be there.
I tip my glass to Jerry Garcia in heaven. I will always love your tunes you magical bard you!
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
I second that - every mp3 I own I ripped myself. Some of the CD's were lost/destroyed and a few were given away, so I am not 100% legal (w/ regards to the ones I gave away), but I'm pretty damn close.
:)
I have an MP3 CD player for use in the car, my home stereo plays MP3 cds, and I have a portable matchbook sized MP3 player for commuting on the train.
The sick thing is, I spent $36 CAD on a cd recently. That's more than a 4 disc DVD box set - and yet I am the pirate
* I'm not sure if the label I purchased the CD from is a member of the RIAA, but the point remains the same, since at least some of the music I buy must be...
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Most of my CD purchases are done online these days. I have afast enough connection that I'd rather download the MP3s than wait the days+ until I can get delivery.
As far as I can see, the music industry as we know and hate it is doomed. We don't need them. Anyone can make music, burn CDs, put up a website and sell them. Distributors will come to the party soon enough.
All we lose is the saturation media bombing to promote the latest 15-minute megastar. Well, darn.
The movie industry is in a stronger position - at least for the time being. You can't get some friends together and make The Lord of the Rings, no matter how much creative talent you have. And I still enjoy going to the movies with my friends and munching popcorn and seeing it all on the big screen.
The MPAA still needs to be clubbed senseless, though. Maybe we can get some out-of-work seal trappers on the case.
What Napster did was "filesharing", in the traditional and well-known networking sense: A given file was placed on a network and made accessible to others on the network. Or are you morally opposed to MS Windows "share folder" mechanism, too?
;)
No, because it wasn't explicitly designed to capitalize on others ripping off artists (though also, by happy coincidence, ripping off crap corporate entities like the **AAs)
As I said in another post, you're right, it's NOT stealing or piracy, just as much as it's not really *sharing* either. It's copyright violation, which is something related to theft, but not the same, as it doesn't deprive the original author of the property itself. What's needed is a concise term for that sort of thing, as "copyright violation" is a mouthful, and covers too broad a range - some copyrights are bullshit, like Disney's proposals to extend copyright to infinity, ie: no Public Domain-ing of works, ever. Unfortunately, I don't think such a term is forthcoming... people are generally too polarized on the issue to agree on a non-polarized term for the kind of copyright violations that occur on p2p networks.
If someone took GPL code but violated the license, well, that would breach-of-contract and also copyright infringement -- both well-defined crimes but neither "stealing".
I know that, but some people think of it that way, and I was trying to provoke thought rhetorically, and at the same time, amuse myself with a little flamebait.
The Free desktop that Just Works
I think you missed my point, too. That comment wasn't aimed at you, obviously. My point was that the people that bitch endlessly about the RIAA, but then go and DOWNLOAD RIAA music anyhow, are hypocrites and are ruining the potential of p2p for legit uses by invoking the unholy wrath of the RIAA/MPAA on *everyone*.
The Free desktop that Just Works
I have not seen any studies that tried to measure the elasticity of demand for music, but since there are not many new companies offering music at this price, I doubt it is 1. It is probably between, 1.5 and 2 over that large a price range. Things that are not neccessities are unlikely to have elasticities below 1 (meaning you spend more of your income on them as prices increase, food staples are a good example of this) and as you move toward the extreems of demand curves constant elasticites do not hold. (Demand curves become more elastic as you lower prices, because you usually don't need an infinite number of anything.)
Also, music still isn't free to produce, if you release 5 times as much music, its going to cost you five times as much to produce. While production costs are still low, that much of an increase is going to eat into your profits. Keep in mind the only part of the overhead you removed with online distribution was the wholesale and retail parts, while they are costly, they are not 75% of the cost of your music. You would probably have to buy more than 100 songs before profits would be similar.
I think online distribution is only really an improvment for less known groups that already have low enough overhead that $0.25 per song is enough to provide a reasonable profit.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Big Business not getting their fair profits? Boo-fucking-hoo...
Agreed completely, but...
I'm not saying it's ok to download copyrighted music because the music biz sucks, but until sanity is restored, my rights as a consumer are protected, and the artists get their fair shake, I say fuck 'em.
And by "fuck 'em", I assume you mean, "I'll download their shit anyhow and not give the sods a red cent!" I wish I could go along with this, but I can't. Even though they rip the artists off, it's still breaking the law, and instead of getting a meager proportion of that sale, when people just *take* it without paying for it, that GUARANTEES the artist gets NOTHING instead. This just turns bad into worse! I'm not for putting up with it, either, but my point is: two wrongs don't make a right. It's wrong ethically, and it's wrong practically too. When you pit a (somewhat justified) law breaking public againt moneyed scumbags that ARE in the scope of the law, guess who wins? It's not us...
The Free desktop that Just Works
> I still dont get it; everybody and their dog downloads music and burns it on CD instead of buying it in the store. Yet, every story here on \. claims that the drop in CD sales is not caused by illegally copying and how bad the RIAA is (sure, the RIAA is bad). Could somebody please explain this to me -- I've never followed economy class, but to me all the music industry bashing just sounds like some crappy arguments to cover the fact that file sharing is just convenient (in many ways, not just economically).
It's never safe to assume that everyone on Slashdot has the same motive, but I suspect that for some of us it's merely an expression of rage at the RIAA for the crappification of the commercial music scene, with their facile attempt to pin the blame on someone else being seen as insult added to injury.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Metal Blade distributes the mighty lamb of god and GWAR,so they can't be all bad...
> > It is much easier to download something than to go to the store and pay for it.
> I think the "easier" part is the crux of the issue.
Actually, a big part of the US economy is built on a "go shopping" culture. A lot of the sales of music, clothes, etc. is driven by a culturally driven desire to go out, spend some money, bring something home in a bag, and show it off to your friends. It's not clear that downloading will have much appeal to the "habitual shopper" crowd.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sue anyone and anything vaguely threatening to your line of business
"That said, dare to challenge your views! And feel free to mod me down, bitches! I have no fear of /. hypocricy!"
I'd mod you down as Flamebait if I could. You over-simplified a well-known situation and twisted it into an attack.
If there was any legitimate point to what you were saying, your solution wouldn't be so simple. Frankly, I think the GPL comment you made was icing to earn karma.
"Derp de derp."
"You can't honestly tell me they were trying to capitalize on legal trading."
Yes they were. They created an audience ready to acquire music. If the RIAA had any intelligence, they would have taken advantage of this, charged modest prices, and let the money roll in. Napster would have become a promotional tool that the RIAA would pay $$$ to keep running.
Let me be clear about something: Before you tell me I'm wrong, tell me how Napster could have possibly made money off of people illegally trading files.
"Derp de derp."
I heard a new twist on the "because they put out crappy CDs" theory, a theory that, interestingly enough, came from a friend who is lawyer for one of the big five record labels. She said the reason CD sales are being hurt by file-sharing (a premise I dispute, but, anyway) is that the labels are putting out CDs with one or two "hit" tunes and eight fillers. Naturally, most listeners would rather just have the hits, and they don't want to pay for the schlock. So, they go to Kazaa/Napster/Gnutella etc., get the one or two songs and don't have any interest in hearing the other tunes. Just passing along the theory of someone in the biz.
King Crimson did the same with their label, Discipline Global Mobile. (They're not just King Crimson any more, either. I believe that John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin has signed up with them, too.)
A look at their business aims is quite instructive as it sums up what they think is wrong with the rest of the industry.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Well of course it's flamebait. Duh. It was trolling satire of the sadly frequent attitude of "Fuck the man! I want Free Beer! The world owes me, dammit!", seen here on /. that oversimplifies just as badly as my *intentional* oversimplification. It was meant partly as thought provocation and partly as my own entertainment. >;-)
The Free desktop that Just Works
There are two big factors causing a decline in album sales:
The article states that over-40s are practically ignored by the media behemoths responsible for putting out most new music, but that that same age group is responsible for over forty percent of total cd sales. Why? Because the young people, the people who know how to get what few songs they hear on the radio for free, have virtually no reason to go buy the albums that are being put out.
Just one lowly geek's opinion.
i now buy more music than i used to. i've been exposed to many more artists through mp3's. while i dont really use p2p networks (im a net news fan myself). there are entire genre's that i had never had a chance to listen to and never would have listened to if it hadnt been for p2p networks. i've also introduced many friends to music with my mp3's (i've converted/am converting my entire collection). they too have purchased cd's they never would have. simple (admittedly anecdotal) evidence.
-- john
Quoting the introduction:
"Labels are in trouble, and it's not from file sharing. To tap into $2 billion in new revenues, they must let people find, copy, and pay for music on their own terms."
Free as in speech, but not as in beer. Not that beer is ever really free...
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
I just wonder if CD sales are also down because people^H^H^H^H^H^H consumers are getting music delivered to them in other ways than file sharing or purchase. On my ExpressVu satellite receiver, I get 30 audio channels and I do listen sometimes to the 80s, folk, jazz and classical channels, and I'm sure the record companies are not licencing the broadcast of the music for free.
I do this is mostly because radio sucks, but it is annoying to go to a record store, indy or chain, and just not be inspired to make even one purchase.
Other than via satellite receivers, there must be other ways that people are listening to music that are not traditional. Internet radio, digital radio etc....
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
One of the more interesting things going on right now is how free access to information makes the entertainment monopolies a bit obsolete.
What might be going on here is the death of the celebrity star system. The RIAA is having trouble making people believe they need the latest and greatest from Britney Spears, et al. Is this just a sign of her ending 15 minutes of fame or perhaps something more? Non-mainstream music is very accessible today, especially compared to when I was in High School living in the suburbs ten years ago. Is it any surprise that music fans are dropping mainstream interests for something better and cheaper? Hello 10 dollar albums and 8 dollar concerts.
I'm seeing small signs pointing in this direction everywhere in the media. Failed advertising campaigns which probably would have worked 15 years ago. Shrewd consumers telling Madison Avenue to fuck off, just check out the reaction to Maxim's hair dye for men. Socially conscious people voting with their dollars.
As publishing and information becomes cheaper and freerer the old figureheard/celebrity system will become obsolete. Its going to be hard to care about a Gwenyth Paltrow interview on TV when people begin to see her as just an actor and not a cultural figure.
I've noticed that too, and I don't live anywhere near the bay area.
About once a year I get up to San Francisco, and make Ameoba one of the stops on my itinerary. Lots of great used stuff, a nifty selection on vinyl, and overall a very pleasent shopping experience (you can easily waste a half day in that place).
As I read your post it occured to me. On average, I spend more money at a good record store 800 miles away then I do at the tower just a few blocks from my house.
The Internet is generally stupid
No, not hardly. Mos Def and Talib Kweli did put out a (very) good album together, but it's conscious rap (think Common or Blackalicious here), nothing mind-bogglingly evolutionary and aware like Public Enemy was and is.
Maybe you meant to say El-P is this generation's Public Enemy? Again, not quite apt lyrics-wise (no one these days can touch Chuck D at his prime in terms of politically intelligent rap) but production-wise, he's the obvious heir to the Bomb Squad's legacy of boundary-pushing.
And why listen to the White Stripes when you can listen to Bill Kirchen instead? He puts out ridiculously good blues-informed honky-tonk/rock 'n roll. Trust me.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Actually, thats sort of the cheap price. If you check, you'll notice that freeware CDs do sell for about $2 (i.e. recordings of famous symphonies where the artists made the album to gain exposure and nothing else).
But CD makers do have other costs. The price of marketing, the music videos, the failed artists (that would be the number one cost), and the high price of artists. While I'm sure they make money, I'm not quite sure that they would at the $2 price. Perhaps its time for music to become less marketed, and music stars to be paid less.
To me, it seems justified. In a society where modern recording equipment can be purchased (which works nearly as well as a studio) for about $500, and CDs can be made and distributed for cheap, and a large portion of society (at least 1%) is capable of some form of musical ability of their own, demand for paid musicians shouldn't be that high (based upon law of supply and demand).
Somehow...I am not even sure that it is. I've met a lot more talented musicians than I've seen or heard from the "outlets" (and as a lifelong sound tech and singer, I'm somewhat qualified to identify talent; at least vocal talent), barring a handful of exceptions. But I don't think any of those were nearly as attractive as todays singers. Perhaps the music industry could cut prices by distributing good music for cheap, and showing Pr0n stars in the videos rather than the singers.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
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.
Certainly not to blame -- but still blatantly illegal.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
There are benefits to owning a properly-mastered CD. No matter what people say, CD-R's aren't as durable. Plus, I really enjoy buying the case for the artwork and music info. A 48 CD case full of black-Sharpie-on-white-Verbatim CD's gets on my nerves after a while.
Finally, I too have bought CD's from artists I would not have before. But I have also NOT purchased albums from artists because they sucked much harder than I thought they would. And I have 20 or 30 friends in the same boat.
I don't really have a problem with you liking BS, or the other pop music groups/people. Your tastes are your own, enjoy them.
However, I have to disagree with your comment about the 80s music stations. Or, rather, "classic rock" stations. More specifically, the Clear Channel classic rock stations.
They are very nearly as limited in their playlists as the Top 40s and pop music stations are. I used to like Pink Floyd. I spent too much time listening to the local classic rock station. I can't stand hearing Dark Side of the Moon any more. They didn't play it every day (I think)... but I heard it 20 times a month, at a minimum. I can only take that so long.
I've stopped listening to music on the radio, mostly. I've switched over to NPR, and a local college station that plays mostly classical stuff.
How do I hear new music now? I mostly don't, unless a friend sends me an mp3. My CD buying has gone down a lot. If I'm going to listen to the same stuff recycled over and over again... I'll listen to my own CDs, and not have to put up with radio ads.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Try that with a real business connection. Say a T3.
A T3 is 45mbit/sec, and costs about $20,000 per month.
Assuming you actually have it running at 50% utilization 24 hours a day... (Couldn't tell you what a reasonable utilization is, but for this I'd hope it would be closer to 80%...)
22.5mbit/sec * 60 seconds/minute * 60minutes/hour * 24hours/day * 30days/month
That's 58,320,000 megabits in a month. Divide by 8 to get megabytes... 7,290,000 megabytes/month.
I'd like some decent quality songs... 256kbps MP3s. If I'm going to pay for them, I want them good.
Side Note: Personally, I'd rather get them at 3 quality levels, for the same price. 128kbps for my mp3 player in the gym, where the background noise makes that bitrate acceptable. 256kpbs for my crappy PC speakers in an otherwise quiet environment, and 320kbps for burning to an audio cd for listening to in the car.
But I'll leave it at 256kpbs MP3s. That's about 8MB per song. 7,290,000 megabytes/month divided by 8MB/song
That's 911,250 songs per month, for $20,000 in bandwidth costs.
Or about 2.2 cents per song in bandwidth costs.
If you do my 3 versions for the same price... that increases to about 6 cents per song in bandwidth costs.
Is that reasonable, when selling a song for 25 cents? I dunno, you tell me.
I assume someone will tell me if I made a silly math error.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
When did this become the day of "let the marketplace decide"???
The software industry wants UCITA.
The power companies want to be allowed to ignore the Clean Air Act.
The Big 3 Detroit auto makers are trying to ignore fuel economy requirements in cars.
Major airlines have how many billions in government-guaranteed loans? (Of course, this industry has been losing money since it started 70 years ago.)
When was the last time you saw a major highway building contract awarded without bribes and kickbacks?
At least the media companies aren't alone in *not* wanting to let the marketplace decide. *Everyone* gets special treatment. That's the whole point in buying congressmen. Well, okay, renting them for a little while.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
You're right for the most part. I think a lot of people would do the right thing, but you have to make it super easy and super benefical to them in doing so. "Free" is a tough bargain to beat, however, especially when the consumer already thinks they're being reipped off.. How do you combat it? You have to provide something the pirates (speaking as one) can't.
Unregulated P2P Benefits
1) Free music
2) No restrictions on media use
3) Massive archive (user supported)
Nothing "the Man" is willing to field right now can stand against any of that, because their systems are the total anti-thesis of what people want. The music costs, there are normally assnine restrictions place on it's use and the archive is limited to whatever the specific label supports. It's like they're not even trying to compete. If they want to win this, they need to play off the weaknesses of the current unregulated P2P models...
1) Pop-ups, spyware and banners.
2) Marginal connections to service and downloads (slow, need more sources, etc)
3) Questionable quality (partial songs, poor quality, skipping, etc)
Like you, I still think people would do the right thing... If you showed them you were willing to work with them and not lighten their pocketbooks at every opportunity. I'd pay for a stable, reliable high speed connection whose songs were guaranteed to be what they say they are and were of a consistent quality. Nobody tracking my surfing, using my PC cycles, blasting me with banners, clogging my connection with other P2P connections. Pay my subscription, turn it on, download what I want and (most importantly) do whatever I want with it. No proprietary music formats here. If I quit my subscription, I still want to be able to read the magazines I bought. Of course, the labels would have to cooperate to get the most coverage of songs, even if they were on different systems... Maybe a slight increase for "importing" another labels songs.
I know, naive, wild-eyed visions of grandure...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
You are completely correct in your assessments.
The big problem is simple: The RIAA is acting as a cartel and engaging in what amounts to price fixing of audio Compact Discs.
Anyone who's taken a beginning course in microeconomics in college knows that the cartel model is exactly how the RIAA is running nowadays. Problem is, they priced CD's so high (like US$18 per album-length disc!) that there is just too much economic incentive to subvert the cartel, namely through music piracy. It's small wonder why audio CD sales are down: the RIAA has priced CD's out of the reach of the majority of consumers out there.
If the RIAA had just priced CD's at a more reasonable US$11 per album-length disc the incentive to pirate music would drop drastically.
It's great that you pay for what you have, but this will do nothing to solve the problem. The RIAA isn't going to change unless it has to, and the only way this will happen is to present the message in a format it can easily understand: no change, no money. Every time someone forks over their hard-earned money, they are providing the means that enable the RIAA to continue its assault on consumers of digital entertainment.
stealing one cd from the store is a misdemeanor and worth a slap on the hand and maybe a small fine. Do it two or three times and you are likely to go to jail a few days, steal 200 CD's from the store and you just commited a felony theft of about $2,000 that will send you to jail for a long time if you hit the three strikes provisions.
Well in English that's equivalent to saying
'tell everyone that MSN is shit'
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
i guess i should provide more information :)
i agree completely with you. what file shareing has enabled me to do is find bands i would not hear on the more popular mediums: radio/tv. as a result most of the music i listen to comes from independent artists. while there are a few artists i like who are signed under an riaa label, most are not.
i've recently stopped purchasing music from artists signed under labels who are members of the riaa. at least i wont purchase them new. i have however purchased some used-do you have an opinion on this? i would also like to write some artists explaining my position to them. does anyone know where i can get addresses of different artists?
-- john
It's important to remember that an "artist's" CD is not the only product that we are paying for. Add to that cost the price of concert tickets, t-shirts, refrigerator magnets, whatever... We are gouged at every turn, given Cheez-Whiz in return, and we can't get enough. All of this is what makes it possible for low rent trash like P.Diddy or Celine Dion to spend insane amounts of money on platinum jewelry, ridiculous homes, and cars that cost twice what my 4 bedroom house is worth. Let's face it, these greedy cocksuckers are also to blame. How many CDs (at $20) do you have to sell to make back the $20 million you spent on studio time to make some asswipes like Creed sound like musicians? When calculating that, remember that after you cover that cost, you might like to make some money on the whole mess yourself... When all is said and done, these bloated, overpaid sacks of pus have run the costs up so high that there is little choice but to bend us over at the register. Read the performer contract riders over at http://www.thesmokinggun.com , it is truly sickening where the money goes when you pony up your dough to see a performance. On the whole, "pop" music is a sick, sad mess. I am all for people making a good living, but is it right that some boy band dipshit can afford a trip into space? Aren't monkeys cheaper/smarter/more fun? I'm getting off the track here... The RIAA is trying to protect their profits so they can pay off their greedy little stars, greedy little managers, lawyers, personal trainers, plastic surgeons... When Brittany Spears wants a talking pony, guess who has to pay for it... Guess where they get the money... Here's how to stop the madness: Don't buy Top 40 crap. Shop in independent/non-megachain stores. Support original bands playing small venues. Tell local radio stations that their payolalist sucks. Don't buy clothing that J Lo wears. Make these pricks less marketable by not following every stupid thing they do. Throw dogshit at them when they arrive at awards shows. Maybe I'm going too far. While we're at it, the same should apply to the other overpaid parasites that we can't go five minutes without hearing about... professional athletes. $700 million to play a game? All of these greedy parasites needs to go. The question for everyone should be "how much is enough?". I will stop now, before I start telling people to go all "Fight Club".
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Why not something like this:
Anything a year old or less, they don't offer digitally. (or they offer digitally, but you have to buy the whole album) Anything older than one year, you can get on MP3 per song. If it is 1-5 years old, it will cost you $0.50 per song. If it is 5 years old or older, it only costs $0.25 per song.
Set up a friggin website where you can buy the MP3s and download them. Go into the large music chains, like Virgin et al, and set up a "burning studio" where you can pick out however many songs you want, and they will burn them to CD for you, with a small overhead charge for the media and the burn. While you are waiting for your burn, you can browse the CDs of the new stuff that are for sale.
Bottom line, if people could easily get the music they want, they will pay a reasonable price for it. What good is all of the old Ratt, Trixster, and Cinderella stuff that is sitting there collecting dust? I'd like to hear that stuff again, but I am not going to pay $18 for their CDs.
I know there are technical issues with this plan, but technical issues can be overcome. Make the entire catalog searchable. Have preset categories, like "all the top10 songs for each month during 1985". The interest in music would skyrocket. Make getting music "legally" worthwhile, and people will pay for it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
MS wants to move to subscription services.
EverQuest is a subscription service that rakes in $5 million/month with very little effort beyond initial development.
I know a few business-type people that wish they could get into subscription services because that's where the $$$$$ is at.
Screw CDs. Screw copy protection.
Simply start up a service - $5-10/month for all the music you can listen to.
The average consumer probably buys only a few CDs/year. Spread out over 12 months, it comes out to $5-10/month.
A handful of consumers buy a lot more.
But I have a feeling that there are far more consumers who buy CDs rarely (like myself - Once every year or two I find something worth the $$$$) who would willingly pay $10-15 for unlimited listening.
I would only pay $5 or so if I couldn't save it though - If it doesn't play in my car, it's not worth much to me.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
If you have to infringe on their materials for their business model to fail, doesn't that imply that it would succeed without the infringement?
Did you bring this question up in general, or in response to me? I never said anything about copyright infringement. In fact, this article suggests other reasons why the Big-5 have lost money.
I believe they are grasping at straws when they blame pirates instead of the recession for their "loss" of revenue last year.
The big-5 didn't even LOSE money last year. They just didn't MAKE MORE money than the year before.
Other entertainment is fighting for our dollars. DVD's are very similar in cost to CD's, and you get much more out of it. (There was a great aticle earlier interviewing kids buying DVD's instead of CD's)
Computer game sales have also continued to rise a LOT. This extra money has to come from somewhere! (I'll tell you where my money went -- towards inflation, because I wasn't given the yearly bonus OR a raise last year)
Although I don't think you can actually measure file sharing damages to the industry, I would bet that the industry would have felt this pressure (or a very high percentage) in an alternate Slider's universe where there was no file sharing. It would be interesting to see.
And as far as their "business model" working. Most monopolies succeed quite well by just being the monopoly. They've had this luxury for decades. And they fought technology the whole time: tapes, vcr (different industry-sorry), cd's, and now digital.
And what is their business model anyway? Exploit the artists. Control all of the medium. All of the distribution. Control the airwaves (oops, that's medium too). Price fix. Buy legislation.
I think that this is part of the whole point. The RIAA does not like it because they don't control the distribution, and it's one brick in the wall between them and control of their profits.
I also have a whole bunch of CDs that I bought because of hearing the artists when I downloaded their tunes. Populations now are so diverse that most people simply can't find anything worth listening to on mainstream TV or HITMIX 99 radio. This is why I find online samlers from unknown artists and listen to community radio stations. Occasionally, I hear something I like and take note, then look the CD up at Sam's because HMV never seems to have what I want. (For radio, I record the time it played and then look at the station's web site and find what was on their playlist at that time.)
I do agree that the price of CDs is outrageous and that they are charging way too much, but I think it costs more than $1.00 to produce a good CD.
The materials (plastic holder, punching the disc, printing the inserts) probably cost less than $1.00 but there are other costs. You have to pay a typesetter to put together the inserts. A photographer is paid to take those shots of the band. A sound engineer has to mix the tracks and produce them for CD format. Oh yeah, and I suspect that even today, the artists get a few cents in royalties.
Still, I expect that the price charged is ludicrous.
Hypothetically, if the royalty portion of the price was doubled, but the profit margin was reduced to, say, 100% (which is still outrageous) I bet the labels would make MORE money because more people could afford to buy the CDs.
Their business model has DIED, they need to start selling Audio CDs for $5 to sell them.
I agree. However, one thing I just realized is that I would be willing to pay more if they listed that an explicit percentage of the CD's price went straight to the artist/group/orchestra.
If the CD were $15, and they listed clearly that 1/3 of that ($5) went to an obscure orchestra that needs CD sales to stay afloat, I wouldn't mind this "best of both worlds" sort of pricing (I get a CD, label gets some money, retailer gets some money, and artists don't get swindled).
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I have a few Britney Spears tracks on my HD.
Why did I download them? They were on a dormmate's shared drive back at college and I had plenty of HD space.
Do I listen to them? Hmm... Maybe once a year. As opposed to other stuff I have that gets played around once a week or more. And since it's not a CD I can conveniently have it in my playlist for a little variety without having a sickening 45 minute Spears-A-Thon.
Honestly, her music isn't TOO bad to listen to once in a while, it's catchy. But it is grossly overplayed, and doesn't deserve more than the occasional sneak into a playlist for variety. And definately multiple Spears tracks should NOT be played in sequence for the sake of your mental health.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Yes, almost surely she'd be selling more records with a big music company pushing her.
Here's the issue of quality vs. quantity. For her, CDs sold by her own outfit have a higher "quality" (measured in profit she sees) per item as opposed to CDs sold by [Insert Big Music Company Here].
Overall, she could probably sell 5-6x more records via the biggies and still be making *LESS MONEY* than she currently is, just because she is almost surely making *FAR* more money with her own label, etc. than if she went through Major Label X.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Where is the origin of this "joke"
/., I have no idea what it's a reference to...
I've seen it numerous times on
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Thanks for the clarification. : )
Yes, these bands will be harder to find than those European bands. Well, not for a US resident, but the original poster was (I believe) *European*, i.e. the bands he talks about are major mainstream bands for him.
Note that he mentions "arena" performances. i.e. megaconcerts that only the largest bands enjoy.
Theatre of Tragedy rocks! I've heard some of their music on reccomendation by some friends in Europe. Great stuff.
It's not just European culture - It's European business practices. Radio stations operate differently there, etc. Europeans have some sort of digital subcarrier encoding standard that actually tells you *what other stations are in the area or in other cities* - For a US broadcaster, the possibility of you driving to another area is EXTREMELY undesirable to them.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice
So, by your own definition, you're wrong. Copying is not only not stealing, it's not even taking. Turn off your TV once in a while. When you take something, you deprive the owner of its use.
This is only copying without permission, a relatively new type of "crime" created by our legislation to protect the business of intellectual property. "Stealing" was defined long before the idea of IP copying.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
People who have 200 plus cds need to collect tangible things, and a download is too intangible. I used to collect LPs I have hundreds. You got so much more with a $7.99 LP than you do with a $20.00 CD. The artwork was suitable for framing in many cases, especially if you had a foldout or a double album. Miniaturization killed cover art. Also, when CDs were new, they cost two times as much as LP or cassette. They claimed that they cost more to manufacture, and price would come down soon. It never did, and it is well known by now that it costs them next to nothing to press a disc. CDs would sell like hotcakes if they were eight dollars instead of 20, even without extras like the cool cover art LPs used to have. If the RIAA and affiliated labels can shut down file trading, we will all just buy the bootlegs and pirates at flea markets and on street corners. The RIAA doesn't even see them as competition.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
The free software licenses also depend on copyrights, but they use them in their originally intended way (To Promote Science and Useful Arts), which is very acceptable.
I don't care about the current copyright laws, but I do care about Promoting Science and Useful Arts, and if evil laws can be used to promote them, so be it. Fight fire with fire.