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Bon Jovi Tries New Approach To Fight Piracy
Dudio writes "80s-era rock band Bon Jovi is taking a novel approach to fighting piracy of their upcoming album, Bounce. Retail CDs will be distributed with a unique serial number with which the purchaser can register in order to receive such exclusives as prioritized concert ticket purchases and unreleased music. Finally, somebody in the entertainment industry is attempting to adapt to the changing market rather than rushing to protect an outdated business model." All Bon Jovi jokes aside, it is nice to see a fresh approach.
Um, yeah. Unreleased until it's released to the paying customers, who then pass it off to the non-paying "customers." The prioritized ticket thing, on the other hand, actually makes sense.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
What Bon Jovi jokes?
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog: Bon Jovi you are filming a new vampire movie, yes?
Bon Jovi: Yes I am...
Triumph: At last a role that requires you to suck...
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Dark Side of the Moon was a top 40 record for five years running.
--
Socrates was asked where he was from. He replied not "Athens," but "The world."
But...I already feel like NOT pirating Bon Jovi music.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Well, lets not forget the efforts and foresigth of people like David Bowie who is totally hip to the values of Slashdot. He feels that copyright will be obsolete in 10 years, and he thinks its a good idea.
www.enthea.org
Four Catholic mothers were having coffee together discussing how important their children are.
."
The first one tells her friends, "My son is a priest. When he walks into room, everyone calls him 'Father.'"
The second Catholic woman chirps, "Well, my son is a bishop. Whenever he walks into a room, people say 'Your Grace'."
The third Catholic woman says smugly, "Well, not to put you down, but MY son is a Cardinal. Whenever he walks into a room, people say, 'Your Eminence'."
The fourth Catholic woman sips her coffee in silence. The first three women give her this subtle Well . . . ?
Mrs. B. replies, "My son is Jon Bon Jovi. Whenever he walks into a room, people say, "Oh my God. .
Daft Punk put a credit card sized card inside their CD with a unique number were you could download MP3 singles of remixes and live versions of the song from a special website.
Of course. But I think a better point is that someone in the industry is realising that the real money maker will NOT be CDs in the coming years. They are starting to cultivate the market for concerts instead. This priority ticket purchasing with CDs would probably cause people who would never have considered going to concerts to buy concert tickets.
And live concerts, I do believe, will be the real money makers in the future as opposed to CD sales.
THANK YOU Bon Jovi et al for rewarding purchases of the CD with real perks, as opposed to assuming the purchase is a copyright infringement waiting to happen.
It's refreshing to hear of a "retail-minded" band that is adding value to their CD in order to combat piracy. I like the idea of "perks" for those people who purchase the CD.
Hopefully, this will do well and maybe the industry will begin looking at alternative ideas, those that benefit the customer, rather than punishing, to combat piracy.
Then again pigs may fly over my house...
I bought this CD for-
[ ] the music
[ ] the principle
Just remember, even if you do buy the Bon Jovi CD on principle, your friends will still lose respect for you.
"I bought it for the principle!" just doesn't sound right.
In other news, Kenny G announced his new piracy-defeating measures by releasing another CD. His plans entail marketing only to the over-80 market, who still call computers televisions. In a recent interview, he seemed very excited to demonstrate that piracy only affects good musicians. When asked about Bon Jovi, Kenny G said they were planning a duet in which would be titled, "Kenny G and Bon Jovi: A tribute to the corpses who used to listen to us" and marketed under the pretense of expected zero piracy.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Problem: RIAA products overpriced given what you get, people don't want to pay for them.
Sympton: People pirate the music instead.
Solution: Add value to the CD that makes people more willing to buy it.
The RIAA in the past has been trying to cure the symptoms, without attacking the core problem. This is a MAJOR step in the right direction.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Thank goodness!!! I proposed this idea to a digital music list almost two years ago hoping that things would evolve this way. The labels could marginalize piracy if they approached the problem intelligently.
The Nature of Demand
It seems to me one of the key problems facing the music industry in the
digital age is the "commodity" approach to marketing music. Who was the
genius that first determined that the real product is a piece of plastic?
When I buy a CD, it's not because I simply want to be able to play the music
at my leisure. At the core of every music purchase is a connection between
the artist and the consumer. For some, it's an association of ideals. For
others, it may be image, lust, identity, craft or a myriad of other
possibilities. This is the real nature of demand in this business and it's
being completely ignored under the current model.
Pissing Off the Consumer
This whole idea came to me as I was driving to work one day listening to
"Celebrity Skin." I'm on my third copy now and it irks my hide a little each
time I buy a CD that I have previously owned. Especially considering the
fact that I know so little money is going to the artist.
Why can't I just buy personal rights to the piece of work and pay a media
fee for whatever form of media I choose as a playback device? If I lose the
CD, why can't I just pay a reasonable media fee to replace it? Why can't I
be a patron of the artist rather than a consumer of plastic? The value of a
CD is in the beauty of the work, not in its physical manifestation.
In a Perfect World
I'd pay $25 bucks for a CD. It would come with a serial number. I'd go to a
Web site managed by the artist or their representatives and register. Once
registered, I'd be able to download the CD in MP3 format. Maybe I'd get
access to a couple of bonus tracks as well. Maybe I'd like a second copy of
the CD or a tape for my car. I'd be able to buy a second copy for 5-7 bucks.
Call it a media fee.
A Different Approach
Now here's the real power of this model. Now that I've registered, the
artist can send me an email telling me about what's going on in their
creative life every now and then. Maybe I'd be able to get an early copy of
the next album in MP3 format for pre-ordering. Maybe the artist could send
me a link to some live tracks from concerts or some things they have been
playing around with in the studio between major releases. Maybe they could
point me to a couple of older albums I might be interested in. Maybe once I
have purchased the rights to three albums I would achieve "distinguished
patron" status that allows me special access to other material. That's
value. Now I feel like I have a relationship with the artist. Now I feel
like a patron who helps support the artist so they can spend their time
working on their art. Now the artist has a direct way to build a
relationship with me the fan. Foster that relationship and the artist is
meeting the real demand of a music consumer.
Maybe when the artist comes to town, they can put on a special show at a
small venue for "distinguished patrons." I think a show like this would be
good for the artist and the patron. The artist would know they are
performing for a select group that appreciates their craft and has shown it
by supporting them. The patron gets to see his or her favorite artist up
close and personal. The patron would be willing to pay a higher price as
well. The next day, maybe a special commerative t-shirt would be available
at the web site when the patron logs in.
Also, think about how valuable the database would be.
Watch the Money Roll In
So under this scenario, I'd probably spend at least a couple hundred bucks
with an artist. Under the current model, I might have shelled out $100 for a
CD and a couple of concert tickets. Why allow labels to take so much money
for "managing" the artist, when what they really should be doing is managing
the relationship with between the artist and the patron? The marketing
potential under this model is a no brainer. Some might abuse it, some might
manage it well. At the end of the day, it's the relationship that counts.
Piss off your registered fan base with a load of spam and chances are the
fan won't cough up any more dough. Provide a real value to registering and
watch the money roll in. The better an artist manages the relationship, the
more money they make. Make the management earn their keep for a change.
This Kills the Napter Problem
Piracy will never go away. Instead of trying to limit access to an artist's
work, why not take a different approach... provide real value for paying for
the work. Why would I spend hours trolling Napster for bad MP3's encoded at
different bit rates and labeled with no common format when I can just buy
the CD and have access to clean copies encoded at a high bit rate for my
desktop machine and maybe another set encoded at a low bit rate for my car
or portable player? Napster's cool, but face it, it's still a
pain-in-the-ass. Today's average MP3 collection is a sloppy mess. Why would
I pirate when buying the work and registering offers me real value? Sure
some people will pirate. Face it folks, it's going to happen no matter what.
The loss from piracy would be more than covered by the additional revenue.
This would also go a long way to killing the demand for used CD's.
Eviscerate The Damn Middlemen
I'm offended that the record companies skim off such a disproportionate
amount of income from the process compared to the value they inject into the
transaction. They get away with it because they control the distribution
channel. That control is dying and all the industry seems to want to do is
come up with another way to protect it. Wake up! Fans are pissed off.
Artists are pissed off. Everyone is sick and tired of paying twenty bucks
for a CD and knowing that the artist only ends up with a buck or two. That's
why everyone is sucking songs off of Napster. We're all tired of feeding
your machine. Let go and start fresh. Didn't most people in the business get
into management or promotion or whatever because they loved music? Wouldn't
it be nice to get back to that rather than working in a system that is
basically a leech feeding upon both artist and consumer?
Someday Soon
An new act is going to make it big direct. No label. No management. No
distribution deal. Self-financed. Self-promoted. Self-Published. Another
possibility is a major act going direct successfully. The day is coming soon
and when it happens, a lot of people in this business are going to face a
rude wake-up call. Why not make a deal now while you still have a chance?
Honest World -
If it fails, they made shitty music which wasn't marketed well.
If it succeeds, its due to better music and perhaps the added incentive of the aforementioned offer.
Marketing world -
If it fails, its due to blatant piracy
If it succeeds, it didn't succeed enough. Piracy was still rampant.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
While I'm sure tactics like this are advertised as anti-piracy measures, I'm excited about this as a sales technique. The online community(slashdot especially) has been talking for quite some time about the relative value of copyright when it comes to music recordings. A very common response has been one which suggests that in order to assure sales, a retailer/merchant/distributor/manufacturer needs to give a prospective buyer a good reason to purchase.
The traditional extension to that idea I've come across here is that in most transactions the consumer is paying for a service rendered. For example, a new car was built by a factory and an ordinary consumer cannot make his own. Same goes for computer parts, TVs, and many types of clothes. The consumer has discovered, through the advent of consumer digital media devices(esp computers), that the act of taking an existing digital audio recording and duplicating it is trivial and practically mundane. The artist(who only has to record the album once) does a lot more work than the record company copying it, particularly within the boundries of the insane amount of elbow grease that goes into writing/recording/touring.
You may think Bon Jovi is the lamest crap on earth, but in my opinion this strategy not only sounds like an effective solution but a vote of confidence for consumers. For once a recording institution is admitting that it needs to work to keep it's customers loyal instead of the other way around.
I really hate when people compare the sharing of mp3 files to software piracy. Why? Because the two are totally different.
Music has been broadcast over the airwaves for years and years and then some more years. For most of those years, there has existed the technology to copy those songs onto cassette tapes and other mediums and listen to those songs at a later time; and numerous times.
Growing up, I always recorded my favorite songs off the radio; and I believe, just like recording a TV show, it was perfectly fine for me to do so. In fact, wasn't it Sony, one of the companies that is now whining about music sharing, that sold me the ability to record radio broadcasts? Why, I believe it was!
Since the radio reaches nearly every corner of our country and nearly everone owns the technology to record that music, I don't see a difference between that and sharing an mp3 file with your friends, other than you get to cut out the retarded DJ who always talks over the song like some dimwit fart.
A couple more interesting things to note, in Japan, they have stores that will rent you CDs, for a couple hundred yen, in much the same way American's rent VHS and DVD movies. Those same stores also sell very specialized cassette tapes so you can record the CD instead of having to pay around $30.00 for it. Since the stores are not owned by the record companies, I don't see a difference between this and sharing mp3s with your friends (other than you've cut out the middle man).
Also, you most public libraries will loan you music CDs for free.
On the otherhand, software has NEVER been broadcast over public airwaves or freely distributed in your public library. Nor are there stores that will rent you software and then the media to use to copy it. Nor has the means to copy software ever been commercially provided with the copying of software being its primary marketed function.
I think that the record industry is too damn stupid to provide their customers with a product in the form their customers demand and I think they are using an apples to oranges comparison of software piracy to sharing music to force the governments to pass laws that maintain the status quo of their current, obviously undesirable, business plans.
And all of that is why I hate hearing music sharing compared to software piracy.