Slashdot Mirror
Raising Barriers to Entry into the Music Business
An anonymous reader writes "MP3newswire.net has an interesting commentary, inspired it seems by the woes of the Webcasting community. Basically they are saying that the RIAA is less concerned about piracy and more about the low barrier of entry into the online music business. For example, most slashdotters right now can start their own radio streams or distribute music files for next to nothing, just download the appropriate freeware and go. Through lawsuits and the DMCA the entertainment conglomerates are trying to make such acts much more expensive. So expensive that it is no longer affordable for the "average Joe" to trade or broadcast. The article makes a good argument on how the Internet has empowered individuals and artists to affordably express themselves online, and how a threatened record industry wants to stop that." Update: 10/20 6:55pm EST by C : More news from the webcasting front can be found in the article...
In case you haven't had a chance, here's the latest article from The Register on the state of HR5469 as it was introduced to the Senate, earlier this week. And as a bit of a wrap up to this roller coaster week, this Reuter's article serves to provide a nice summary of the situation so far.
Rusty reports: "Friday afternoon, the RIAA and SoundExchange announced a temporary payment plan and fee reprieve for small webcasters while congress considers legislation.. Basically, by Monday, Oct 21st, small webcasters will need to pay a $500 a year minimum fee ($2500 max). While this rate still may be a problem for hobbyist webcasters, it is lower than the $2500-$6500 minimum that HR5469 called out.
From the RIAA's SoundExchange site:
"Any webcaster that qualifies as an 'eligible small webcaster' under H.R. 5469 will not be required to pay on October 20 the per performance (.0762 cents) royalties otherwise due under the Librarian of Congress' decision of July 8, 2002.This still provides no relief for Live365, although their appeal hasn't been heard yet."
Instead, by October 21st, these eligible small webcasters may instead pay only the $500 annual minimum fee set by the Librarian of Congress for each year or portion thereof they have been in operation since 1998 (a maximum of $2500) until this Congress has had the opportunity to act on the pending legislation."
Ann Gabriel writes the following in response to Rusty's report from our last article on webcasting:
It appears that the message being sent to me in the response by SOMA FM's Rusty is that since HR 5469 does not directly affect me, I should sit quietly by and watch this travesty play itself out without saying anything.Brian Hurley of Detroit Industrial also had his response to Rusty's words from that article.
What happened with HR 5469 directly affects EVERYONE is the webcasting community and to pretend otherwise is a joke.
There is nothing wrong with the fact that a group of people set out to negotiate a private deal for themselves intending to save themselves from the retroactive royalties that will come due on October 20, 2002.
But there is something horribly wrong with the FACT that what began as a private negotiation ended up being turned into a piece of legislation forced as a yolk around the necks of people who had no say in the matter.
I am tired of being asked as a member of the webcasting industry to accept something so horribly wrong just because some people think this deal was "the best they could get."
To sit by and accept the events that led up to the negotiations and the formation of the actual bill language is something I cannot do.
To me it would be like being invited over to lunch and expecting to eat Chicken Salad - and then being served Chicken S**t. There might be a large portion of the webcasting community who can stomach that, but I can't.
The RIAA never had any intention of dealing fairly, honestly and respectfully with the webcasting industry. Those that sat down privately to negotiate a deal for themselves did so in their own best interest and for their own individual reasons. I don't believe there was anything wrong with that.
But when the self-serving agenda of a few becomes something that is foisted upon the community as a whole, then I cannot, must not and will not stand by and accept such an American Injustice.
It is patently clear to me that the IWA and the VOW are separate organizations. To that end if you read my open letter carefully you will see that I point out the deal was NOT negotiated on behalf of the IWA and it's members, of which I was one until last week.
Just because people are claiming right now that HR 5469 in its present form will not really hurt the industry does not mean that is the truth. The only entity that HR 5469 helps is the RIAA and it is a sad truth that they care nothing about the industry they are destroying.
Ann Gabriel
Gabriel Media Inc.
In case you haven't had a chance, here's the latest article from The Register on the state of HR5469 as it was introduced to the Senate, earlier this week. And as a bit of a wrap up to this roller coaster week, this Reuter's article serves to provide a nice summary of the situation so far.
The RIAA only cares about its own music. They don't care about quality or doing anything new and creative. Most new music really isn't good. I don't see how they can claim that piracy costs them "billions of dollars" every year when music sales are still going up. The only thing that cause people not to buy music is $18 a CD and shitty music.
this could be why, no matter how many studies say otherwise, the music industry is still very persistant on saying piracy hurts them...
I'm thinking, despite the RIAA doing everything possible to reinforce their crumbling kingdom, isn't it already too late?
Maybe I'm overestimating the intelligence of the public, but if technology exists today that enables people to trade and distribute information freely (music, in this case), and such technology is in use literally everywhere you look, how can you really stop that? Even if you implement some new technology that enables you to stop the exchange, the old systems are still out there.
I don't see how the RIAA can really stop Joe Musician from burning his own CDs and selling them through his webpage. The best they can hope for is to criminalize it, right? Wouldn't it just go 'underground' like software piracy at that point?
=Smidge=
Of course they are trying to do this.
Good grief. It's obvious to me, if you have a business model based on total control, and something comes along to challenge that control, you do one of three things:
Adapt
Squelch competition in any manner necessary
Die
Of course, it causes much pain and suffering on the parts of the musicians, the djs, and last but not least, Mr Average Pete. (Joe gets too much credit)
Sent from your iPad.
Most companies want to make it harder to compete with them in their business sphere of influence. It's little surprise that the recording industries want to do the same. What the recording industries will end up facing is the fact that consumers are getting fed up with their tactics and this will eventually turn around and bite them in their ass hard. I personally will no longer go out and buy music. Not because I am pirating their content but because I got very tired very quickly of their assuming I was a thief. When enough people come to this decision then the recording industries influence will lessen and the balance can tip back towards the consumers.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
However, I disagree with the first thesis of the article on face. The RIAA could not give two shits less where their fees come from. I promise you, if Satan himself (the real one, not Hillary Rosen) were to bring them a business plan, they'd jump on it. So, why do they care about the startup costs of traditional, "terrestrial" radio stations? They don't. They just want to receive money whenever "their" music is played. They don't care if it's net stream, radio, or on TV commercials. Say what you want about the RIAA (and you can start by saying they're rat-bastard pieces of shit), but one thing they're not about is caring who it is that gives them money.
This whole article reads like it was written for the back of a cereal box.
If some new means of distributing content would hurt the bottom line of the RIAA and may not be legal, in our adversarial capitalist world it's the RIAA's job to try to squash the new means, the new mean's job to fight back, and for the courts to decide where the line should be drawn given the ultimate goal of the granted-not-natural right of copyright to encourage the creation of useful arts for generations to come.
If you are fed up with the RIAA and their backdoor legal manuvers, boycott RIAA artists and the stations that play their music. Find and support local and/or web-based artists and the broadcasters who support them.
Creating your own music or 'net radio station hasn't gotten any harder. This is simply new incentive to dump mass-produced drivel right where it belongs.
(crinkle, crinkle, STUFF)
-- Windows is not simply installed on a computer; it is inflicted.
They are doing their best to quash competition and to raise the barrier to entry. Stopping piracy is a false mantra and only an afterthought.
Fight Spammers!
I agree that artists need to be paid.
But art needs to be public in my opinion.
If something like the RIAA existed 1000 years ago think of where music would be now.
Art is inspired by art.
I say this with a grain of salt as I like to call myself an artists of several mediums. But the only truely original artist was that caveman who first smeared his shit on the wall, or the first to beat the ground with a bone in a rythm. The rest of us have all been inspired by some form of art whether we admit it or not.
My point is that the more art is stifled the less art evolves.
Just my opinion
*DrugCheese rants*
It is time to start flooding the market with independent record labels and sites like IUMA. The people need to reclaim their music from the coorporations.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
So expensive that it is no longer affordable for the "average Joe" to trade or broadcast.
No, it makes it more difficult from someone to trade or broadcast material that is controlled by the RIAA. It doesn't hinder "average Joe" from broadcasting material of his own creation, nor material created by other that "average Joe" has been given permission to distribute.
If "average Joe" wants to broadcast my music, he can damn well pay me for it. If he doesn't want to pay the prices, according to the value I put on my music, he should make his own or find cheaper content.
Now is the time when we should be paying close scrutiny to the RIAA however, since instead of bowing to market (consumer) pressures, they are hellbent on strongarming everything that comes in between them and their fiefdom.
I look forward to the day when all of the media cartels have fallen, and the sham that is hollywood swirls (counterclockwise) into the shitter.
?-|||-----x<*))))><
Of course you can publish for free if you have the permission of the copyright holder. Since every original thing you say is copyrighted, to suppose otherwise would say you have to pay fees to talk.
In fact, the fees are proportional to the number of ASCAP song listenings, so if that number is zero, then the fees are zero. If they hassle you, send them a check for $0.
There is also another quote by her that went something like 'When am I getting my check from napster?' but I can't find where I read it...
I run a indie record label and I've got nothing to do with the RIAA.
If you'd like to broadcast releases to which I own the rights, more power to you.
If you run a broadcaster and the RIAA is all up in your face, I encourage you to just stop playing releases from RIAA member labels.
The cost of entry to the music business is in fact lower then ever. Todays home studio is able to do what 10 years ago was the stuff of wet dreams. Plus CD reproduction costs are lower then ever. You can start an record label for less then $5k these days, I'm living proof.
This should be clear to everyone, but people forget quickly. Just as people consider it a new and shocking claim that the US's war in Iraq has something to do with oil.
and house started in chicago, techno in detroit. but they came to life in london and manchester.
Counterexample: Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park. Their fame was earned by a single, badly-digitized QuickTime movie called The Spirit of Christmas that got copied all over the Internet. In the span of a few months, Comedy Central offered them a deal.
It's probably also worth pointing out that Parker and Stone didn't digitize or upload the QuickTime file themselves. One of the recipients of their original VHS tape did it. So Parker and Stone's wild success proceeded from a massive case of unsanctioned copying (or, to use the misleading slang term, "piracy").
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Ah, but they're also trying to prevent one from self-broadcasting their *own* music; effectively saying, 'if you want your music released into the public market, it MUST go through us.'
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
If the musicians would just bypass the record companies all together, they could sell their CD's for $5 each and still make WAY more profit per CD than they are now (at $15 a CD).
And if you could buy the CD at full quality for $5, why would you bother downloading an mp3 with a much lower quality sound?
The only way the record industry is going to survive is if they realize that they need to provide a BETTER SERVICE at a LOWER PRICE, instead of relying on LAWSUITS for their existence.
Most people trading MP3's can afford the $1500 computer to do so - and they could also afford all the $5 CD's they could possibly want.
If you want to break into the music business, then create something of your own. Want to give that away? Go for it -- it's your right to do so if you choose, and the world will be a slightly better place for it. Share your work via P2P networks; set up your own Net radio stream so people can hear your work. That is legitimately "breaking into the music business", and do you want to know something? The RIAA can't do a thing to stop you.
what hellhole do you people live in that CD's cost 18 dollars?
In Sweden and the UK (the only two nations in which I know the price situation) $18 is definately not much for a CD.
Although RIAA is a US organization, their pricing affects the rest of the world too...
May we live long and die out
Jeff Patterson of IUMA started this years ago. I remember talking to him at the time (I was the original drummer in the Ugly Mugs back in High School) and him constantly worrying how it was the Labels were going to close him down. I went to Taiwan not too long after that, and when I came back found they'd forgotten about him and unsigned bands because Napster was distributing all their cash cows for free.
In a way, I think Napster helped kill the idea that unsigned bands could easily be successful by publishing their stuff on the Internet (and getting free airtime). I mean, if you can download all the Van Halen songs out there, why would you spend a lot of time looking for the next Eddy?
People go with what their familiar with, and Napster&Co helped keep unsigned bands down and the labeled bands up.
I don't know what the consensus is among unsigned artists anymore, but the few I talk to anymore agree it is hard to get heard on the Internet with all the file swapping of big name bands.
Wow. The only 2 bad things I can think of right now are that my paper is due rather soon, and that I can't moderate your comment up myself.
Those are excellent sources, all I had so far was John Gilmore's excellent "What's wrong with Content Protection" and a few articles on CD-R-assisted piracy.
Think about it, these issues are about who controls human knowledge. If anyone says this argument is stupid or pointless, ask them if they want to pay every time they turn on their tv, or if they want to hear the same songs on every radio station, or if they want to own and control their own works. It is still like you have your very own printing press. Make sure that isn't destroyed because media companies want to own everything.
I was only going to say what I said in my first paragraph, but the other things that followed it really re-enforce the need for open standards instead of proprietary formats. Free as in freedom, indeed.
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
I've been saying this for months.
You need to stop giving money to the copyright industry forever.
It isn't about copying or piracy, it's about competition.
The tools you use to steal their content are the same tools you can use to COMPETE with their content.
They are lying when they talk about piracy. Don't talk about piracy, because if you do, then you're being reeled in by their lies. Make sure that you tell people that it's about competition, not stealing.
It's about using copyrights to hinder the progress of the sciences and useful arts by trying to take away the machines that people could use to promote the progress of the sciences and the useful arts. They can't allow these machines to exist or else they'll make less money as people become able to compete with them on an even playing field, but with much less money.
It's about giant corporations using lies to subvert the Constitution to destroy freedom because they think that they'll make more money.
So, please don't give money to the copyright industry ever again. They won't ever stop, and they will wait as long as needed between laws, and they're willing to take steps as small as needed to get toward their goal of preventing the existence of machines that will let people compete with them.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Consider:
An allegation against you, Joe Webcaster, that your site streams copyrighted material. Even though you stream music that is 100% free (or otherwise requested to be mass-distributed by whatever means), the mere allegation and C&D almost requires you to stop streaming until you can be proven innocent (I don't beleive the DMCA actually follows innocent till proven guilty). Meanwhile you are "off-the-air" until it is cleared. An obvious win for the labels, regardless of the outcome in the trial.
It would be nice to know if whether it would be considered libel for an organization to claim copyright infringement when in fact there is none... Of course, this would require that such webcasters be 100% legit, because we do know the lengths to which the RIAA will go to put someone down.
Anyway, thats my 0.02.
-Bob
Is there enough non-RIAA-ontrolled content to make web radio, son-of-napster, etc viable again?
I would suggest that such a point of viability is subjective. Someone who intends to boycott "corporate music" will perceive that viability at a much lower quantity of available work than someone who is still mostly sold on entertainment with the corporate stamp of approval.
If so, someone please post links!
The link in my .sig, to the Open Music Registry, is one starting point for you. There are hundreds of songs listed in it, all licensed with the EFF's Open Audio License. But are "hundreds" of songs "enough" to be viable for the stated purposes? (Luckily there are works licensed with similar licenses, but I don't know how many are actually available.)
No Laughing Allowed!