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State of Online Music: RIAA's Efforts Paying Off
melquiades writes "The NYT (regreq) has a new article about online music, suggesting that the recording industry's war against P2P is paying off: pay-to-download services are rising in popularity. "Largely because of tough actions by the record companies to combat free music sites through the courts, legislation and even through techno-guerrilla tactics, there is a noticeable change of sentiment in a small segment of the downloading cognoscenti. Though their numbers are low, many are the early adapters who spot a trend first." Though the article falls into the common fallacy of equating P2P with illegal copying -- I'm one of the numerous artists who wants people to download my music for free -- it sums up the state of affairs well, particularly in this quote from online music consultant Michael Haile: "Record labels know what consumers want. We all do. They want a Napster you pay for. We all know that. But why would the labels want that at all? Making CD's is like printing money.""
Really? I never knew that... I thought I just wanted to listen, and was willing to pay if that's the only way I could listen... I thought the record companies wanted me to pay. Or have the laws of economics been changed again?
No they don't. People want a Napster that you don't pay for.
Because they are downloading a lot more pirated porn, thank God for cable.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Nobody downloads music off of the internet illegally anymore. Please move on.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that pay services have gotten much better in the past 18 months, with far more selection? Just maybe?
No, no, it's because they killed napster. Idiots.
Are there limits to what I can have at one time? How much are they? Are there lots of Audiogalaxy type material (rare songs, live songs, etc)? Is it fast, or would I get better downloads and searches using carrier pigeons? Most important do I get to burn the songs to CD, keeping them forever, or until a "contract" is up?
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
While admitting to downloading some redily avalble music, I mostly looked for some more obscure europian bands from 70s and 80s. They are long out of print, and there is no hope for new CDs. Now, thanks to RIAA, those musicians will be forgoten forever.
Imagine that the record companies are supposedly finding success in what we've wanted all along.
The answer has not been to stomp out the P2P networks. They will always be a fact of life, especially as consumer bandwidth gets faster. The answer is to look at this new technology and figure out how to embrace it as a business model.
P2P networks have flaws. Most kiddes can't label their MP3s correctly. Inevitably, The 1 person who has the song you're really looking for is on dialup. It goes on and on, but with P2P, you get what you pay for. Having a centralized pay for download service overcomes these issues. By paying a hosting company to host your MP3s, you're almost guaranteed good download speeds and properly labeled MP3s.
Now, if they RIAA had listened back in 1998 when people were telling them this, maybe they wouldn't be so hated.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
News.com is running an article on a study that KPMG did... in which they state that the ??AA need to embrace downloadable music and videos and to stop/reduce using copy protections to thwart piracy.
pay-to-download services are rising in popularity
That's kind of like saying this new car model we introduced last year is selling better than it was 2 years ago.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
I just don't listen to music that i haven't already previously purchased the CD of anymore, unless i legally downloaded it for free. Fueling the RIAA is not something i care to do, whether it be fuelling their arguement that there is demand for their garbage, or whether it be fuelling them with money. I know this is redundant, but support local music.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
However, I would like a place where I could download very high quality, RAW .wav or Ogg Vorbis or MP3 files for, say, $0.50-$1.00 each. Maybe $5.00 for a whole album. From a fast server. That are not in some sort of DRM vault.
This way, I own the music. I can do whatever I like with it: burn it to a CD, put it in my portable player, whatever I want to do within my fair use rights. And I also don't have to (effectively) pay additional money by trying to hunt someone down with the file I want at the quality I want, with a good connection that won't stop halfway through the download.
Merely having the record industry collect money for "allowing" other people to share music peer-to-peer is not sufficient.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Maybe they're not as dumb as we think - maybe they know that downloading music helps record sales, and maybe they actually DO want users downloading music.
Just as long as the service that does it is theirs.
What if the long term RIAA vision isn't that you can't get your DRM music off your CD, but you can only get it off and send it with software and hardware from the record companies (or their affiliates?) Maybe this is all just a play by the record companies - they only print their music in a format certain devices can read and transfer, and they only allow themselves or their affiliates (Sony records - sony cd players?) manufacture the equipment that can read the CD's.
Now not only do they get to charge you for the CD, but they'll charge you $1 to send a song to your friend, and charge him $30/month for a license to the software that lets him play it....
paintball
Well, I'm sure pay-to-download services are rising in populatiry. Prior to a year or so ago, there WERN'T any.
TODO: Something witty here...
Making CD's is like printing money.
So is providing pay-for-use downloads, except you save on the cost of CD manufacturing.
We're going to make information free Mr. Anderson, whether you like it, or not.
I found a great site with free .ogg
electronic/ambient music:
http://www.kahvi.org
They sell CDs too.
but NOT from the crapware sites like musicnet. Some well-known artists do sell their tunes online as mp3's, either individually or though real mp3 services.
sulli
RTFJ.
The RIAA would love to take all the credit and say that the music subscription sites succeed because the P2P services are getting worse, but that's simply not true. The guerilla tactics hardly put a dent in my p2p experience. It sounds to me like the subscription services are just getting better. They know what we want, they've just been afraid to offer it to us because they coudn't put together a viable business model.
What's it going to be like when internet2 is pervasive? When every home is wired with fiber optics for 100 Mb net access, or 1000 Mb access or whatever? You will be able to download the equivalent of a present day CD in a few seconds. You will have a handheld with 100s of gigabytes of storage and, thanks to BlueTooth Rev. 17, you'll be able to beam an entire movie at DVD quality to a friend's handheld in a matter of seconds.
In this future world, perhaps about five to ten years from now, how on earth will RIAA prevent music and video piracy? It seems doubtful that drm initiatives will succeed; people have an enormous incentive to bypass it, and as bandwidth increases, that incentive will only grow.
I think eventually we'll have to come to some sort of compromise between the content producers, marketers, and consumers, and settle on some sort of "reasonable fair use" doctrine as once existed with cassettes and VCRs.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Also, from the article:
Maybe it's a nitpick, but they seem to be painting the situation as if we have two monolithic, unified forces here -- the RIAA and Evil Internet Pirates (tm) (or Righteous Anti-RIAA Guerilla Freedom Fighters (tm)). The use of the term "apostasy" implies that there is some kind of central body or authority to the P2P movement, which isn't true. I'm pointing this out because it's indicative of the mindset the "mainstream" is in -- they don't really know what the situation is, even those who are paid to write about it.It certainly could just be poor word choice, and the writer actually does know the difference, but since it's the New York Times, I'm inclined to think it's ignorance rather than poor editing.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Drop your threshold to 0 and look for the AC post 'Googlized Link'.
We want a napster that you DON'T pay for. We want to get lots and lots of music for free. Also, we want to, in the midst of all this, buy lots of CDs. In fact, we want to buy CDs more when we can download music for free. Why? Beats the hell out of me. But Napster in its prime was a win-win situation--record sales were at their highest ever, while people listened to more music than ever--and it might not be a bad idea to go back to it and wait until it breaks until we try to fix it.
As a consumer, I DON'T want to pay for mp3s. Maybe I'm being a luddite, but I have a problem paying money for something I can't hold in my hand, even software. Maybe it might be different if I was able to download CD-quality audio, but I think I'd still rather buy a CD. I like flipping through the booklet while I listen to the music. I like getting stickers and posters and stuff with it, and I'll buy a CD with well-designed packaging over a thousand downloads any day. It's too bad labels just get cheaper and cheaper. Oh well--the CDs I sell will always be fun to look at (not to mention listen to); I guess that's the most I can do, outside of becoming a media mogul and dictating good design, thereby sacrificing the bottom line and getting fired.
c-hack.com |
I find emusic to be great because they carry albums from several artists I enjoy. (They Might Be Giants and Banco De Gaia to name a couple). Go browse on the site; you don't need to be a subscriber to find out what is in their catalog and hear samples.
They also offer completely unrestricted access. I regularly slurp several albums worth of MP3s from them into my collection. It's completely legal and supports the artists.
You know, I'd rather do without music than pay money to people who pay congressmen to propose legislation that limit our freedom.
:)
That is what they are doing.
I am going to spend less movies on Hollywood movies in the future as well. I can smell it coming.
I think I'll buy more books
But not from patent-crazed ama-zone.
"Piter, too, is dead."
One Buck Forty or Die
I thought this was one of the best things I've read on this well worn subject in awhile.
"And who exactly are these "early adapters (sic) (double sic)" who want to pay to share files? Isn't this the way the Mafia does business? "Sure, you can bring in as many caes (regular sic) of liquor (vomit sic)/kilos of coke (hyper sic)/hookers (itchy sic) that you want, Vinnie. Just make sure Uncle Don gets his share, you know what I'm sayin' (dead sic)?""
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Hopefully, some company out there will come up with a good system that will support a pay per download system.
I want to be able to have a solid client, where I can set up my payment method, and manipulate account details.
I want to have a searchable database of available titles.
I want to be able to download the songs at different bit rates. I don't mind if the higher bit rates are a touch (and that means under 10% more!) more expensive - that's reasonable. Most people are satisfied at 128. Give the audiophiles what they want as well.
I want to be able to download in different formats. MP3? Support it. Ogg? Support it. MP3 Pro? Support it. Get the idea - be flexible!
I want to be able to get the difficult to find songs. I like electronic music. One of my favorite program from college was EM Soundscape on KBIA. I hearrd stuff that you cannot find. I'd like a way to get that.
I want to see the consumers and the artists benefit. Take care of them, record companies, and your bottom line will take care of itself.
I'm not asking for too much, am I?
-- Ravensfire
"But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion"
Tough actions may be a contributing factor but more than likely it's the guarantee of good quality at a reasonable price. You know... what we've been asking for all along!
Paying a reasonable fee for good quality music is a lot more attractive to me than hunting for mp3s on Kazaa that are poor quality, incomplete crap. You need to download a few different versions of the same song to find the best one because someone out there doesn't know how to use MusicMatch very well.
The true pirates aren't going to pay anyway but they are a minority. The majority of us who could give a crap either way are just looking for the best bang for our buck. $20 for a CD with one or two good songs on it is an incentive for us to use Kazaa. A decent price and a guarantee of good quality music we want... of course we'll switch!
Duh.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
Recently the UK Govt found the CD producing cartel of price fixing, but only in the past.
here
They say that they can find no evidence of continued law breaking so they will take no action.
and yet the prices stay the same
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
So some artists distribute their work legally on P2P networks. But what is the point? Wouldn't it be much simpler and more convenient just to publish a URL and serve files with http?
People sometimes suggest that mirroring files saves bandwidth, but that can be done with http as well, and in general P2P services are quite wasteful of bandwidth, not choosing the most direct route for sending files but some meandering path between lots of peers. That's because they aren't optimized for efficient network usage, but for avoiding detection of who is sharing which files.
If one day, everyone decided that they didn't want to download any more pirated MP3s, would we still need P2P networks?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
...pay-to-download services are rising in popularity.
Oh, gee, the horror! You mean I actually have to pay for a piece of entertainment media! Fucking capitalist pig-dogs!
It hurts when I pee.
Hey, they have Noam Chomsky and George Carlin - maybe I'll subscribe! :)
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
No, people like stuff in the way they want it .. but will pay for it if somebody can figure out where to put the cash register.
.. you won't need to hire 10 body gaurds to make sure people pay; they'll pay because the ability to pay is actually offered.
.. you don't have to force somebody into doing something they perceive as fair.
Example: set up a store with all kinds of goods. Do not put a cashier in store. Allow people to walk in, peruse. Because people can't pay the store back due to the stores complete lack of payment options, they're going to think, well, tough crap, they don't make it easy for me to pay so they deserve to get ripped off. Now put a chashier in that store
The whole concept of fair price is that people think its a fair repayment for value given. If you don't provide a means of payment, people arn't going to pay, but if you do, they will because the price is fair. You can't alter the definition of the word fair price
Mind you, some people say that 20$ a CD isn't fair, so that might drive people to infringe the copyright of works, but only because the market doesn't seem to be working as advertised. A small peek into how 'competative' the market is, and a quick rundown of the payola and price fixing charges that the RIAA has been found guilty of, and that explains that angle.
So there you have it; people will take whats available, but I feel sorry for people who assume that people want something for nothing. It's when people have the ability or means to aquire goods in a form that the producer refuses to offer, will people go ahead and opt for enjoying the fruits of progress instead of self-disciplining themselves into abstinance.
People wouldn't object to a free Napster, but unless suddenly people start storming Barnes and Noble demanding they should get the books for free, they would prefer a pay for Napster if somebody would make one that was technically equal or superior to Naspter. And that's where were headed. If the market is relatively free and music is offered at prices people perceive to be fair, nobody will be demanding a return to the Napster days of old.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The groups that support the RIAA (the big 5) simply want what they have always wanted. To maintain ownership of the music, on both the production and consumer sides. The artists sign away the rights to music they create and the RIAA wants us to sign away our money for limited use. RIAA and company want to keep it that way on the consumption side. They assumed that CD was the answer, because you couldn't duplicate the CD cheaply.. problem solved. They didn't see that it would cost a few cents to copy CDs in the future. So they want to remove that control yet again. I'm not shocked by any of this anymore.
Just as if there were a cure for cancer, who in the business world would release it to the public. Not only would people start to live longer, all the pharmaceutical companies would go broke. Or the 100% renewable fuel source.. the energizer battery that lasts a lifetime.. so on and so forth.. Music, food, and healthcare should all be free! *Love, peace and happiness*
The **AA organizations will only buy into the idea of P2P services if and only if it serves them to move us closer to a world where all media is pay-per-view or pay-per-listen. This is their ultimate goal, and Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti, etc, sit at home and curse the fact that those lousy, cheating, criminal, consumer bastards can buy a CD or DVD and play it more than once without paying again.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
"Record labels know what consumers want. We all do. They want a Napster you pay for. We all know that. But why would the labels want that at all? Making CD's is like printing money."
In the case of selling the music online, wouldn't this be like making money without paying for the cost of ink and presses etc?
However this is like drawing blood from a stone
"Web broadcasters, whether lone teenagers or the Web sites of actual radio stations, will be required to make retroactive payments for all songs they have played in the last four years"
Most laws are made for the now. Making a law, especially one such as this, retroactive is - to say the least - insane. If I did something that was perfectly legal 10 years ago, should I be jailed today if a law making it illegal suddenly becomes retroactively effective?
Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do pay big companies an extensive amount of money - phorm
They're actively trying to twist the statistics to support their whiny anti-download position. I'm part of several polling groups and in the last few weeks I've done at least THREE polls (all from different polling groups) that tried to force you to answer "I don't buy cd's because I download everything I want for free".
Fact of the matter is I, like many people I know, download music off services like kazaa because who wants to pay $20 for a cd to get one song just to find out the entire rest of the CD sucks... And most of us will never sign up for pay download services because if you actually use the service much it easily approaches the cost of buying cd's.
people actually listen to the 40 "free" digital music channels?? I thought those were just shite
Damn. Every time one of these articles gets posted all it turns out to be is whining about the RIAA shutting down P2P sharing and someone's right to steal music. Unless you wrote and performed the music yourself that you're trading, what right do you have to trade it? Please someone intelligently defend the right to trade music you don't own the rights to. There's some good reasons and legitimate reasons to do it but I'm wondering if any slashdrones are capable enough of rational thought to come up with any.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
When Bill Clinton indicated that the average income of families in Arkansas went up 100% while he was governor. I specifically recall Perot stating, "Now see here, if you make 1 penny in a day, and then make 2 pennies the next day, that's 100% growth. But you still can't buy a cow patty in a Texas dairy farm for 2 cents." Yes folks, that right.. we now have 2, count em, 2 people using the Pay-Napster service! We have doubled our market share!
actually, I think their prefferred title is "the idle rich"
If I had lots o cash to waste, SURE, I'd buy from e-music.
Instead I took my 100 free songs and bolted.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I just wanted to point out what should be a little bit obvious. The record companies own the music. As frustrating as that is sometimes, they make the terms because they own it. I am a software developer and am a bit concerned about the "freedoms" people expect from things that are software. Because something is a bunch of bits does not mean that it is free. Because you didn't have to buy something of substance like a microchip or a slurpee doesn't mean that it did not cost money to produce to pay people like you and I.
It seems at times that some people have some "high moral ground" as they demonize companies - granted some companies are pretty easy to demonize - but are only really after something for nothing, a free lunch.
Is it really illegal or is it "sticking it to the inherently evil big guy" or is it a moral stand or is it that "I just want free music because, well, then I don't have to pay for it, duh."
If it is legal and okay and whatever, fine. If it isn't, how much is your integrity worth to you?
Then it occured to me that if I buy it, the label gets the cash. I just mailed The Vines a buck instead.
That's what we should do when we download music we really like.
Can I bum a sig?
Napster was a piece of shit - I want an AudioGalaxy.
sic transit gloria mundi
Say what you want but all though the years most people who use these types of copying tools are making illegal copies. This screws the few who want to legitimately use these tools. It also screws everyone else because companies try to put bad copy protection schemes on their products. Long run no one wins.
As for music you are stealing food from the families of musicians and songwriters families who have to live off the few cents royalities they get on a CD or when sheet music is sold. Same goes for movies being copied. Do some study on how the entertainment industry works, you are mainly cheating the artists you supposedly like.
Sure you have a few artist backing your illegal copying, but look at who they are, mainly no bodies or has-beens who are glad someone even knows who they are.
Bottom line because you think a company makes too much money its okay for you to rip them off. If you don't like a companies prices then protest by spending you money elsewhere and let them know you are doing it. When the companies revenues drop they will flinch and change. But by continuing to steal music you are going to screw everyone. Your theft will cause companies to get penality taxes on blank media, and screwed up copy protection schemes used. Companies will sign less new bands or more formula-music. Your cheapness pentalizes everyone else.
I find a lot of the rest of the article wrong as well. "Just six months ago, this sort of talk [about actually paying for music] would have been unthinkable, downright apostasy." No... actually, a lot of reasonable people were complaining that music was simply too expensive. You know, we've all been buying music for YEARS. We didn't all just forget about paying for things, we just realized that the music cartel has an unhealthy amount of control.
I have no sympathy for you if you get a virus from an MP3. You should have noticed the extension wasReally, they're advocating some kind of huge website where you can find lots of varied bands in some kind of unrestricted format that you can download to your computer. Boy, this is starting to sound a whole lot like the service we've all been asking for! And it's sounding more and more like what Napster used to be, and what Kazaa is now. Strange how that works.
sheephead
7d9e63e9501751ff4bf9307989d5623d *SheepHead
I was in the studio a couple years ago when Noam Chomsky was recording his latest album. He and Cornell West had a little "talking" rap going on.
Me, I sat off to one side just digging the shit out of it -- these two aged hippies just bopping and rapping like there was no tomorrow.
I stayed late -- long after the session had ended. Noam and West were talking about what it means to be a "radical Christian." West (you'll remember) always refers to himself as a radical Christian. He derives his basic spiritual vibe from Chekhov, Hegel, and Miles Davis.
But Chomsky was tired. He didn't feel much like sparring. He sorta stayed in the corner of the room, his feet up on a ratty sofa, and wondered whether or not there was any Chivas in the little bottle the soundman kept underneath the console.
"No Chivas, Noam," said the soundman.
West laughed at that. "Chivas? You're shitting me."
"Not me, Cornell," said Noam.
"Damn. If you want some badass Hegelian synthesis, I advise Jack, man. Jack D. all the way."
Noam said he hadn't had a shot of Jack Daniels since the march on the Pentagon. Then he laughed and remembered how he and Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsburg sat out on the Washington Mall, burning incense, and screaming "Howl" at the top of their lungs.
Man oh man. I'll never forget that recording session with Noam and Cornell.
Damn.
The RIAA has nothing to do with online pay services gaining in popularity.
Why? Because there WERE no places (or at least no well known places) to buy music online during the reign of Napster and early P2P services. Well maybe MP3.com, but the RIAA sued them too.
Instead it is rising because there has been a demand for this capability as soon as it became possible to create reasonable sized music files of a reasonably quality. It was basic economics which brought this about, not the RIAA. If anything, the RIAA has done everything they can to hamper services like this, even pay ones unless they actually CONTROLLED those services.
That is what this has always been about for the RIAA, not piracy, but who controls the sales. They want there to be *only* RIAA pay services and no 3rd party ones and they will sue companies like MP3.com and such who sell non RIAA music unser piracy laws to try to make and keep it that way.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
What we (consumers or music-downloaders) want is not services we have to pay for. The less cost, the better -- with no cost being best.
However, most of us do accept the fact that we have laws that require we pay for things. With a choice between illegal and low-cost, many of us will choose low-cost. (Doesn't mean that's what we really want, just that some of us are willing to pay rather than pirate.)
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
As the poster mentioned, this definetly falsely implies that peer-to-peer programs are not legal.
Here's an introduction to one of his latest books. From what little I've read though, he ultimatly makes different conclusions than the article.
Also: Why do these articles alternately refer to peer-to-peer programs as "sites"? Sure, they have sites often associated with them, but it's a small part of the whole thing, a complete misnomer. Oh well.
This section is appears to leaning towards FUD. Yes, Kazaa has become a minefield of spyware - but there is Kazaalight and other things out there to help, which is of course, not mentioned. Yes, there are viruses out there, but they cannot be transmitted through MP3 files, and most file sharing programs make a very clear distinction between executables and media files. As far as bad files go, Kazaa and others have a variety of helpful methods to help, from user comments on files, to more active methods being implimented in different P2P systems.
If you're looking for new pirated movies or something, expect to occasionally waste time on mislabelled files - mostly by fans, really. This is understandable. But if you're looking to see if you like Carol King, you can expect to find the music you are interested in, without many problems. To imply that it is inconvenient and dangerous to search for music on a P2P network is misleading at best.
Well - when asked, most will TELL you they use nothing right now. The same word-of-mouth that made Napster so popular hasn't stopped because Napster has gone away. Even without that, anyone with access to a search engine would know about Kazaa and the like as long as they had any interest and willingness to install a program that simply asks for a username, password and share directory before allowing you access to anything you are interested in.
The morals and ethics of file sharing with unaproved music files are definetly questionable - but the avaialbility and popularity of P2P programs are definetly not as questionable. I can't help but see most of this article as either anti-P2P FUD, or very poorly researched information.
Then again, perhaps it's just knowingly false just to get interest, disagreement, and publicity.
Ryan Fenton
"Largely because of tough actions by the record companies to combat free music sites through the courts, legislation and even through techno-guerrilla tactics, there is a noticeable change of sentiment in a small segment of the downloading cognoscenti. Though their numbers are low, many are the early adapters who spot a trend first."
I love it. These fucking idiots in the record industry didn't even offer pay for download services when Napster and their ilk came on the scene. These dildos aren't inventing a new trend, they're finally getting a clue - many consumers find their product too damn inconvenient. I have to go to a physical location, find a physical CD, get assaulted by mind numbed liberal children who think their GenY hipness overrides my GenX old-n-bustedness, just to find the latest Incubus. God forbid I be unfortunate enough to not have a virgin megastore nearby when I want a copy of Nina Simone ("who?"). And then, what I have is stuck on a piece of shit plastic disk that - when scratched - is nothing more than a shiny coaster.
Then enter P2P networks. I can get any song, anytime, anywhere, in multiple formats (ISO, CDA, MP3, OGG, WAV, et al). Hell, it's free too...I'd pay on a per song basis - but hey, that would eliminate 90% of the crap some 'arteests' put out today.
The record industry may have gotten a clue just in time to save their asses for the short term and justify their narrow field of vision, but don't expect them to be around much longer if they don't overhaul their business models. Put out a quality product, give greater flexibility in buying the product, and learn to deliver the product - not expect it to be picked up.
That my friend, is statistically impossible, given the current state of affairs.
sic transit gloria mundi
You want people to download your music for free, I can only assume, because you have either what is called a "TRUST FUND" or a "DAY JOB." Once you have had some success, and rely (even in small part) on record sales to pay for supplies, like say, food, then you become not against free music, but a little more conservative on the subject.
I and most of the musicians I know really do want people to be able to download tracks, spread the gospel, etc., but start getting nervous when a paid cd can actually seem *more* inconvenient than Kazaa Lite.
What do I want in a label? I want them to get their heads out of their asses and be creative about finding new and better ways to market my music -- finding a good blend between locking up people who would rip us off, letting people share music they love, but most of all making the *purchase* of music the most convenient and satisfying way of obtaining it.
The general perception among the working stiff musicians I know is that the one area that free P2P services has killed us is in "buy the hit" sales. It used to be that if someone heard your tune on the radio and liked it enough to want it, a certain proportion would tape it off the radio, netting you nothing. Another proportion would buy the single, and then another proportion would buy the entire cd for that tune and to hear what else was on it. My current possesion of an entire Kittie CD proves that I can fall into that category. The concern now is that Kazaa is the new radio-taping, but the ranks of people who fall into the net-you-nothing category have swollen exponentially. Keep in mind that for smaller-time musicians (lets take a lot of jazz musician as an example) solid airplay doesn't really net you much until it *translates* into something - better gigs, tours, or record sales.
You can quote statistics all you want about the growth of the industry, but there's a very large contingent of musicians who are not super famous, but are known and making a living, for whom the sale of 100 cd's is meaningful in making the rent. If even a few download a single radio song off Kazaa and are satisfied enough to not bother with the cd, then that performer may have just lost someone who could have become a lifelong cd-buying fan if they'd committed to the whole thing.
Soooo. . .I am not pretending to write a treatise on industry economics here, just trying to sum up some of the concerns (biases, myths, whatever) that I've heard from real people trying to make a living in music. People not beholden to record companies, but even more nervous about seeing 30 tracks and entire albums of their music show up on a service where they are free for the taking.
Let the anti-cabalist orange-pelting resume. . .
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
hardly any of the people trading online with P2P have their songs as whole albums. Hardly any.
:)
And without that, unfortunetly, then there's no way to make use of cddb's GUID system.
I'm not much of a programmer, but I think it would be a great idea if someone else wants to take up the challenge...
you're not much on coming up with good ideas either.
Dude, that was the point :-)
"OMFG!" implies that it's a complete shock to me. "OMFG!" is my way of using sarcasm(n). It was meant to imply that the the 16 yr old girls who apparently run the RIAA these days have just, like, totally figured out the obvious.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
You've just described emusic.com, but with a better selection
Not every "big business" professional thinks like the knuckle-draggers at the media companies. The brainiacs at KPMG have been very critical of how the music biz has handled this issue. The music industry has been ignoring huge potential markets, which *is not* in the interest of their shareholders. Read more about it here:
www.boingboing.net
I see stuff like this all the time.
Free, legal music for iTunes users.
... is the plight of the Webcasters, which was briefly touched on in the article. There are a lot of great webcast stations out there (just got introduced to radioio.com... wow.) that are going to probably have to shut down their doors due to the excessive royalty fees that the silly Librarian of Congress set for them.
... = $0.33...
That's not to say that such fees shouldn't exist. It's just that they are excessive, given many webcasters' revenues.
The real issue here to me is the idea of paying for services. Many people are perfectly willing to pay for services, as long as the services add value for the users. I loved Napster (when I could get it to work on my campus)... the lure of free music was impressive. I've used Kazaa a bit, so I can say that free stuff is great... but even with Kazaa, there's the problem of not getting what you wanted. I remember downloading a song on Napster that I had been searching for for weeks... only to find out that the song I downloaded was a terrible cover of the original.
As the article points out, consumers will pay for something if it is worth it. I've seriously considered eMusic a few times... it sounds like a pretty good deal. Likewise, if someone started up a webcasted radio station that "required" payment for listening, I would think about it (or in the radioio.com case, I'd pull that credit card right out and pay up, as long as it was reasonable... like $20 or so for a year). I have no trouble paying for entertainment or anything else, even if I can find it free elsewhere... especially if paying will get me something extra.
It's all about value... I can either spend time on Kazaa and take my chances, or I can pay some reasonable bit of money for a guaranteed bit of entertainment. Seriously, this just makes sense.
-Jellisky
(Did anyone else notice the terrible math in the article?
"I get at least 30 albums a month or so at 10 bucks a month. That's 10 cents each."
Ummm... $10.00 / 30 albums != $0.10
*sighs* Where have the basic arithmetic skills of people gone?)
It is NOT because of their overbearing tactics that some people are weaning away from Napster/Gnutalla/Limewire/etc.
It is because, primarily, they suck. Marginal results, unknown quality, often slow connection speeds.
A serice like emusic.com will fill the bill, when and if they get more selection. $10/month, for straight mp3's at good d/l speeds, online previews. Lots of off-mainstream music, but no heavy hitters. No Pink Floyd, no Beatles, ad infinitum.
Include some/all of those artists, and emusic will be a winner. $10/month is EASILY worth the ease of use over Napster and its clones.
here goes - I have an audible account and an iPod. Audible doesn't ship their files as mp3's - they're a propriatory format (.aa - AudibleAudio) that only work with computers you have an account set up on, up to three and you can't edit the files (like, to take out the "THIS...is AUDIBLE" intro to each track). BUT. You can copy the files to an iPod. You can burn them to a CD as audio (and technically rip it back, but it's a hassle, a waste of media and greatly increases the file size). You can do this an unlimited number of times. And if you cancel your audible account, you still keep the files.
Here's the question: is this GOOD DRM? Is there such a thing? (going on-topic) with the exception of emusic, I haven't seen a p2p alternative that isn't DRMed to the point of unuseability. I'll pay for MP3's on a per track basis (that's essentially what I do at audible) that I can load up on my portable or rip.
Triv
I think I'll buy more books :)
Alas, even that doesn't help much. Most of the major publishers are owned by the same media companies as everything else. That is a large part of the core of this problem. Something around 5 companies contitute something to the tune of 85% of all the media across the board.
jello.
aka aron.
One important difference is that Freenet doesn't guarantee retrievability of data, rather the more popular and recent the data, the more chance there is that it can be retrieved. This makes it more like a publication system (think radio or TV) than a distributed file-system.
http://www.bradhill.com/blog/archives/00000021.ht
Indeed - Brad has some minor corrections to the article.
Ryan Fenton
I would like to pay the piper. Unfortunately, I am paying the piper's trained monkey who caries the hat around and "skims" off his share.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
It seems like everytime one of these RIAA/record company discussions comes up, everyone says that the record industry has been ripping people off for years and that they need to develop a new business model now that technology is ahead of their time.
:P). CD's, radio, and the Internet are just ways for people to hear about your band and get a taste of your music. If you ask me, the true artform is a live performance/concert.
A couple of weeks ago, I attended an electronic music event. One of the performers really caught my ear, his music was simply amazing. I stuck around after the show and talked to him for a while, I asked where I could hear more of his music and he said (surprisingly enough) to check the internet.
I was shocked to hear a musician telling me to check kazaa and other p2p programs to find his music, so I asked him about it. He said that he saw the Internet as a promotional tool. (much like radio for commercial artists). Then mentioned that he made his real money from shows (much like a lot of electronic musicians and DJ's these days).
At first I didn't get it.. but looking back, it makes perfect sense. If you think about it, a real musician that has a true passion for music enjoys performing in front of an audience and playing for their fans. Going to a show, and feeling the energy of the people around you is something that can't be replicated digitally (at least not yet
the article falls into the common fallacy of equating P2P with illegal copying -- I'm one of the numerous artists who wants people to download my music for free
Well, since you have the time to post articles here instead of chasing groupies, I'd have to guess the RIAA couldn't care less whether or not people are downloading your music for free - since it seems probable you aren't going to get very many people to PAY for it. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.
Of course, YOU fall into the fallacy of assuming that the RIAA opposes P2P because they want to provide people like yoursef from sharing your music - which you are and should be free to do. I've always understood the RIAA is interested in protecting the copyrights of their members - which are being violated-a-plenty by P2P.
"Largely because of tough actions by the record companies to combat free music sites... the war against P2P is paying off
Hmmm. Who's had a lesson in economics? Obviously not whoever is suggestioning that the efforts of the RIAA and others have caused an increase in pay P2P sites and their usage. Have they ever heard of ceteris paribus? Obviously not all of the other variables have stayed the same in this instance to allow them to analyze whether there is a relationship between the two. These services weren't really established a year ago. The number and effectiveness of free file sharing networks has changed, the availability of broadband has changed, the economy has been in an upheaval, the amount of good music seems to be decreasing, and this list goes on. Many of us could come up with dozens of reasons why the actions of the RIAA and others have likely NOT caused or even made a dent in the use of pay P2P sites. The fact that one event followed another means nothing!!!
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Frankly, those who insist that this is a fuss about copyright, rather than money, by simply asserting their right to copy and distribute commercial recordings when and where they choose, copyright be damned, are playing into the hands of the recording industry. The recording industry wants this to be seen as a a life-or-death battle for the survival of copyright itself. It isn't. It's a fuss about getting the U.S. legal system to adjust the language and interpretation of copyright law in order to come to terms with new technological capabilities. Eventually, this will happen. But, if the recording industry is able to portray the other side as opponents of copyright and proponents of "stealing" digital media, then the adjustment will likely be expensive and draconian, affecting everyone's ability to use the net freely and openly.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
So what is this, officially sanctioned RIAA propaganda? ;)
With the recession, I have found that my local Rasputin's records has bursted with newly released CD's in the used bins within a week or 2 of a general release. I've hardly needed to buy a new CD in ages, I hardly even look at the new bins anymore. I did the other day and was blown away to see double CDs retail for $36. License to print money indeed. Fuck that.
You know, E-music has a FANTASTIC idea. 10 bucks a month for unlimited downloads of great quality (192k in my opinion) is a great business model. Unfortunately, they have one major problem. I did a search for Conjure One (Rhys Fulber's new solo project, which is a fantastic disc) and it turned up no results. If you have ever searched for it on Kazaa, you know as well as I do, that only a few tracks seem to be out there (I'll be damned if I share mine, this is a great disc, everyone should buy it). So even if you signed up for e-music, you still need to go buy the actual CD, which isn't something people want to do if they are paying to download their music. So, E-music does have the right idea, just not enough to catch my intrest yet. Until a service with Napster like variety, CD perfect quality, and Incredible available bandwidth comes along at a good price, E-music probably won't see many customers.
However, I will give them this...$9.95 a month (The one year upfront is kinda lame) is a very reasonable price, if they had everything.
The RIAA or whatever you call it have no weight over here so we will continue to swap this stuff and any other stuff we like. You can keep the guys in jackboots over there as we have grown out of them :)
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
You didn't mention that everyone would have to start over from scratch -- so I wasn't being shortsited. Just an asshole.
As a collector of full albums, I sought out full albums back during the Napster days: pretty frustrating. Not to mention that most people attempt to "assemble" full albums from different sources, meaning that the bitrates can be different, normalization is out the window, and the quality of encoder will be different on all of them.
This just caused me to move to off-line sources for trading for full album mp3's. The quality is tighter, and the chance of the full album coming from one source is almost a guarantee.
Even if full-album trading online became popular on P2P, I would imagine it would mimic the quality of personal FTP sites out there now. lots_of_songs_named_like_this and at least half the albums would be missing a track.
I think your idea would be fun to see in action, but I think it's idealistic. The problem with P2P is that the majority of the people out there are leaches. None of them rip or encode their own music. Many refuse to allow uploads on their machines. And they only want a hit song. They don't want to spend the time downloading a new song.
Having full albums means work on your part, and a nose for quality. You can find this evident at full-album IRC channels, and Newsgroups.
During a 12 month period in '98-'99 I rented and rip/encoded over 1,000 cd's from my public library. It's a shame that they were all Bladenc@128kb
And although downloading is nice and everything, you can only queue up so many albums to download in a night. If you want to trade serious quantity, you have to move offline and trade via postal mail.
Having been a saxophonist for many, many years, I listen almost exclusively to a *lot* of jazz. However, on the standard P2P model (or at least WinMX, which is what I've used in the past), I'm pretty much at the mercy of random people to even have specific artists that I'm looking for, working under the hopes that I'll get what I want providing I have something of equivalent value to trade.
This is probably one the things that I like about e-music is that they have a decent jazz selection that I can listen to previews of and have unlimited downloads at my leisure at a good bandwidth. A lot of the retail market doesn't usually have what I want, probably because most of what I listen to isn't mainstream..
I personally see them eventually building this into some kind of centralized repository that maybe someday we can even have all of our out-of-print albums available in this kind of distribution model.
Though I really hate a lot of what the RIAA and the MPAA is pushing in trying to get DRM into every electronic device we own (ESPECIALLY since I'm pretty sure most consumers DON'T WANT IT), I'm personally okay with paying for this kind of distribution model as long as I get to move my downloads over to whatever computer and/or device that I want without ever getting hassled.
NOTE: I am in no way affiliated with e-music or its partners. I just subscribe to the thing.
This is not true more people download their music now than they did with napster. This is because Kazaa is actually superior to napster. It is easier to download songs because one gets files from multiple sources. I find all popular stuff on Kazaa with great ease, and I find obscure stuff, too. The RIAA admits all of this in this brief. (It's 67 pages, a long download.)
Feel good, we're winning. The RIAA doesn't know what to do. They need to appear to be fighting piracy to their shareholders, but any move they make is a bad one. Each time they shut down a network it allows one based on superior technology to flourish. Going after individuals demonizes them way too much.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I listen to quite a bit of ebm and gothic/industrial, and I'd say the primary reason these are only niche music markets is that most people don't like them. They're simply not styles of music that most people like to listen to. I've played samples for all sorts of people, and very few are receptive at all to that style (most find it "too dark" or "too depressing" or something of that sort). I doubt that even a multi-million dollar advertising campaign would suddenly make Front 242 sell 15 million copies of its albums.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What if the long term RIAA vision isn't that you can't get your DRM music off your CD
That's not going to happen. There will always be an analog hole because there will always be audiophiles who can strap on a double blindfold and hear the difference between a watermark and no watermark. Even the proposed CBDTPA bill had a rule stating that if the publishers were to encode a work so as to prohibit fair use, the motion picture companies would be liable for $2,500 per copy.
and they only allow themselves or their affiliates (Sony records - sony cd players?) manufacture the equipment that can read the CD's.
Either you have fair use via the analog hole labeled "Line Out" on the back of your computer, or you have a severe case of anti-trust violation.
Will I retire or break 10K?
So some artists distribute their work legally on P2P networks.
Legally? Are you sure? How much did they pay for the underlying musical compositions? And don't tell me they wrote them themselves.
Wouldn't it be much simpler and more convenient just to publish a URL and serve files with http?
No. For one thing, hosting of big files costs money. Look at the bandwidth alone: 80 MB for an album, times however many listeners.
People sometimes suggest that mirroring files saves bandwidth, but that can be done with http as well
You can't have your fans mirror your files if most residential Internet access providers block incoming requests on port 80.
What you want is multicast, and you're not going to get multicast unless and until the ISPs figure out how to charge for that.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Not only is 25 cents per track 1/5th the price you might pay for a CD, but it also doesn't take into account the fact that some tracks are worth more than others. /. Readers are forever complaining that most CDs only contain 2 good songs (thankfully not the ones I buy). Part of the motivation for wanting per track downloading is so they can save money by only buying the 2 songs.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
Make the out of print material available at a reasonable price. At any given point 80% of all music is totally unavailable at any price, its locked away to create a false music economy and demand for the labels "Band D'Jour". That was the draw of Napster and later others. I could find Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts or Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Dot Bikini, or the latest Nirvana. The access to the music is what it was about. Locked away music doesn't benefit anybody, the artist, the label, or the public.
Locking up the culture of this country for the benefit of companies who are based outside of the USA is a far bigger crime than sharing White Christmas or Britney's latest.
LET MY MUSIC GO!
The only thing the RIAA is doing well is making consumers so angry that we boycott the recording industry.
How ya like dat?
Surely, that implies that you only record your own songs
What if, by coincidence, your so-called "own songs" happen to be "substantially similar" to a previously published musical composition? Substantial similarity is the standard for copying under United States copyright law, and this article shows just how easy it is for substantial similarity to kick in.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Have I just had incredible good luck? Am I using P2P on a different planet or something? Gnutella "scales" just fine for me, and I don't have any trouble with it.
I've had one bad download from P2P, 3 minutes of silence or hiss. Oh no! ;) I picked another result, clicked a button, and switched windows. Oh the time! Oh the trouble! ;) Do people just need to learn about ALT+TAB? You don't sit there watching the download attempts, do you? If that's the case, RIAA has nothing to fear after all. Maybe you do need to buy a $20 shrinkwrapped piece of %$^$^ with one good song on it.
If 99% of consumers use the industry's easy to use pay sites and 1% access the "free but you need to be running linux and be technically competent" sites then the music industry will go away and leave us alone. It won't be worth the cost to fight the remaining 1%.
I don't owe Joe Sixpack access to free music. Frankly, I don't care if they screw him for every cent he has, just so long as they go away and leave me to enjoy using and hacking Linux.
And no I am not worried about not being able to access music on my Linux box because its all protected by DRM. If I realy want it, all I have to do is buy a cheap "DRM Player" and a good quality microphone. I just record the sound straight into the sound card. My Linux system isn't going to take any notice of any watermarks and so long as my none-paladium hardware keeps working I can't go wrong.
You only paid for what you bought. I bought a Volvo once, so I shouldn't have to pay for a new one, right?
I buy a pizza from the place down the street every Friday, so since I paid $X over the years I should get free pizza now, right?
Your logic is flawed.
And that's why we are having the DRM issues now. It's the same mentality that people use to justify shoplifting; it's a big store, and they can afford it. Sure the record industry is big, but it's the performers that get hurt by stealing music.
Some people like to buy stuff online. I buy CDs that way all the time. It's convenient. I would probably buy a single songs online too. You just know a lot of cheapskates! Everyone I know actually buys CDs, even though they also download music.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol