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EMI Customer Relations Tells It Like It Is
hype7 writes "The Register is running a story about the most outrageous email sent from a customer services rep at BMI in Germany to a customer who had difficulty playing a copy-protected CD in his CD player. One of the most stunning lines from the translation: "If you plan to continue protesting about future audio media releases with copy protection, forget it; copy protection is a reality, and within a matter of months more or less all audio media worldwide are copy protected. And this is a good thing for the music industry. In order to make this happen we will do anything within our power - whether you like it or not.""
Now I can't buy anymore CDs, whether the music industry likes it or not. Which of us is going to blink first?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
If this customer service rep was not just a malcontent and really was telling the customer what was passed down from management, BMI is shooting itself in the foot.
Complete and utter. However vile and loathsome record companies might be, I do not believe that any one of their drones would say such a thing. It sounds like typical FUD/satire/what-not. Can anyone establish the veracity of this supposed email?
Pax Digitalia
I never, ever, play CDs anywhere but on a computer. I therefore will never buy a CD I cannot play on a computer. I am not alone.
Besides, their first attempt was defeated by a permanent marker. What will the next one be defeated by? A stapler?
Oh well.. give the RIAA enough rope, and it will hang itself. It's already acting like it's having a nervous breakdown. And with the GOP running the Senate, Fritz Hollings (aka Senator Disney) has no chance in hell of getting his SCCCCCCCCCCA bill passed.
Maybe I should buy some stock in Sanford (manufacturers of Sharpie markers)...
Which isn't to say that a platform can't fail - vis. the Mini Disk. But there's a difference between a platform failing and trying to imagine that simple competitive pressue exists for musical content.
Firstly, The Register is the National Enquirer of the net. Take it with a huge grain of salt.
Secondly, even if this letter were authentic, it could very well be the result of a disgruntled employee who had a really bad day and just didn't give a shit anymore. Unless someone can show me widespread responses along the same line, or a mandate that this is the official response, I'll take this as no more than one guy. While the truth is that they are actively pursuing copy protection, which is their right, I find the overly hostile and confrontational content of the letter incredibly dubious.
I'm not a big fan of this action, but I can understand BMI's point. Imagine for a second how it would be if you wrote a song and discovered a few months later that BMG had released a CD in which someone had recorded that song without your consent.
You'd be pretty angry about it.
This is exactly how BMI feels. I know I'm not taking the popular stance by not denouncing "facists tactics" or whatnot. But the truth is that BMI needs to protect its property. I think we should give them credit for at least being upfront about it.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
1) Copy-protection on CDs is a losing battles. Computers can always be modified to get around copy protection schemes. And even if they can't, there will always be the "analog" hole. I can always take an embedded device like a CD player and pipe it straight into my sound card. 99.9% fidelity, copy-free recording.
2) None of it matters, because if one person buys a copy protected CD, does the above, and puts it on p2p, the pee-in-the-pool effect kicks in, and the copyprotection-free version will be around forever.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
the music died a few years back anyway, all we have now is non-talented crap filling the airwaves.... no great loss
Typical... just like every previous generation, you now find the music of the current up-and-coming generation distasteful. Happens every time.
And, FYI, just because you feel the music isn't up to your "standards", it certainly doesn't make it so.
I'm always curious to find out how they get stats like this. Where do they get the 250 million blank CDRs and tapes number? Sales alone is rather inaccurate, as it fails to account for data and photo CDs, as well as what *could* be considered legitimate backup CDs.
But obviously, all CDRs that are purchased are for the sole purpose of piracy...
I think we can look forward to the same with the music industry.
As Mark Twain once said (something like), History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
I don't really buy a lot of CDs, nor do I get a lot of music online. The reason: some of the acts that the record cos. put on platters totally s*ck. The most salutary (and ironic) effect of this trend toward copy protection of CDs, movies, etc. would be for people to drop out of the slavish worship of mass culture-- the top-down delivery of music, movies, literature, and news. Whether it's because you can't afford it anymore, or because you are disgusted with their antics, it is increasingly becoming an attractive alternative. Wouldn't it be refreshing for us to drop a dime on a local club, where we can hear a band play live music? Hell, even if they are covering someone else's tunes, it would be better than stuffing the pockets of greedy record companies, who feel they owe us nothing and apparently think they own us. We owe them nothing.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
1. CD's get copy protected
2. People can't play these CD's and stop buying new CD's
3. The music business sees the drop in sale and assumes more piracy
4. They encrypt CD's differently
5. Goto 2
It's a vicious circle....
...all they can do is (possibly) prevent people from making perfect digital copies. There is no way they can stop people from simply re-digitizing what comes out of a line out port. Seeing as how all compressed music sounds a bit funky anyhow, the slight distortion you get from re-digitizing is unimportant. They can't stop piracy, but they are doing a good job of pissing off their paying customers. This is good. Once the people that have a stranglehold on the music industry are floating tits up in their swimming pools, all those great basement recording artists will have a chance to get their music listened to. As a crappy basement recording artist, I couldn't be happier about it all. Art is not supposed to be an industry.
From the article:
There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media.
I'd like to see where these numbers come from. Personally, (yea I know, I shouldn't put my personal anecdotes on top of the population.) I have bought nearly 2000 CDRs for myself and school.
For school, we put our "Publication/School Newspaper" on the CD and give it to students for a keepsake. For my private use, CDRs are a cheap easy server backup format. Toss in a CD. scribble a date and put it on a spindle. If/when I need to roll back my home network server. viola.There it is.
Have I ever used a CDR to copy a commercial Music CD? Yes. Once. I have a Vitamin C CD (It was a gift--honest) and it wouldn;t play in my CD Player. So I ripped it (methinks there was copy protection on it) and burned it to a CDR. Viola. Now I can listen to the CD that was rightfully mine to listen to.
When The music industy pays to upgrade my listening equipment so that I can listen to their music, then maybe I'll consider not complaining.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
In my experience, in the past they have had more journalistic integrity and readily admitted when they were wrong about something than many other organizations. But the fact is that they communicate regularly with many insiders in the IT field, they have been doing it for a while, and a lot of people who know what they are talking about both read the Reg AND supply them with information. Please stop spreading FUD about the Reg.
While you are busy copy protecting your stable of has-beens, boy bands, and warmed over focus group music, I will be investigating the wonderful world of non-label bands.
For every over-produced single that your 'A&R' people put out there for the clueless masses, there are two *albums* by talented, REAL musicians who believe in what they do.
Sure, they don't have the marketing power that your big company has, but while you are lumbering around trying to pin the tail on the donkey, you will find that the party is over and you missed it.
I will continue to seek good music that I can legally download, make good music that others can legally download, and push good music that everyone can legally download.
There is plenty out there. It might not be as easy to find as your latest Clear Channel release, but it's there. You are over. Your time is done. You won't see me at the wake.
I'll be listening to music.
Sincerely, teamhasnoi
At first there were records and they were good. You could easily seek to any song, but they weren't very portable. Cassette tapes were a step forward in this respect, so people switched. Later on there were CDs which are just as portable as cassettes with the added benefit of seeking. For the average music listener, 8 track, DAT and reel to reel offered no advantages and they sort of died out.
Now the music industry wants to change formats to encrypted digital disks. What are they offering us to switch? Extra content? Digital liner notes or cover art? DVD-esque interviews, band commentary? The disks aren't even a new color or shape for crying out loud. Hopefully people won't rush out and buy new players "just because".
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Wave of the future. Get all the music you want, without copy protection, and without those obnoxious high prices. What a concept. Quite frankly I've always been more interested in their music catalogs, only the very occasional band makes me want to go out and buy a new CD.
Also of note is that this is going to be a European experiment. So at least for the moment the US will be copy protection free. But it is probably worth boycotting BMG anyways, if their record sales completely erode, maybe they'll consider different policies.
I guess I'll also have to cancel my BMG music club account too.
That's the problem. You "Music Sharing" people think your doing the world a favor. I don't care how you state it....sharing music online via Kazaaa or whatever is wrong if it's copyrighted music. You have no principles.
....very different then the Original), but if you ever look at Sheryl she's never something that she isn't. Christina's image make over has some style person's finger prints all over it. Then again, maybe she really is a slut.
Now that I get THAT out of the way, I am against the copy-protection BS they are using because it makes it harder for me to put music in a form I want to listen to. I don't share and I have bought every CD I have made MP3's with. I still think the weak encryption that was included on DVD's is also wrong. I also agree that if they want to sell me a cd, make something I want to listen to. I don't want to listen to Dirrty from that slut Christina Agulera (she even looks Dirrty on her album cover. ICK!). Give me something that the artist came up with and not the record company.
Sheryl Crow is very good and her music is at least original. I can listen to lots of her stuff and almost every song on the album is pretty darn good. Sure she has done remakes (Guns and Rose's Sweet Child of Mine
Gorkman
They'd better send friends. Pennsylvania is a "shall issue" state, and my household (and most of the people on my street) are well armed :)
;)
- I know it's Saturday from all the popping sounds outside. Nothing sounds quite like home than the local gun club
I would like nothing more than for ALL future music to be copy-protected. This, combined with high prices for new equipment, inconvenience of having to purchase a new DiscMan, new car stereo, etc. by everyone on the planet who wishes to listen to the new discs will surely cause it to fail.
All the while those of us who can will go to the indy lables to get our music if not directly to the bands (Mp3.com still hosts some indy bands - go check out Cruiserweight) and in my book, I'd rather go buy their music and have the artists recoup most of the profit than some large, boorish conglomerate.
What we need to snap these CD nazis back into reality is a world-wide boycott of these "CDs" and pray that Philips sues the snot out of anyone trying to put a "Compact Disc" lable on what doesn't comply to Redbook standards.
Speaking of which - anyone got a link to the Redbook spec?
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
I don't like lots of the music today.
.......
That doesn't mean it is devoid of musical value.
You can see people dancing and moving and getting emotionally attached to it. That is music, that is art.
The fact that it is candy coated, semi-rebellious crap doesn't make it any less musical then it was in the 80's, 70's, 60's, 50's
Music is the voice of the generation, not surprising many don't want to listen, they'd rather dismiss it as garbage. Myself, I'll just live in the past. (And I'm in my 20's)
Record companies need to figure out that they do not dictate demand, I guess they've become delusional due to their oligopic power, but sooner or later one company will figure it out and the rest will follow. The consumer wants digital music formats that trust the consumer. If the consumer does not have the ability to convert the music to different media and formats, they will not buy it.
Ok, I'm going to say this plain and simple. We don't matter to them. The slashdot crowd doesn't matter. We can sit here and write about all these wacky protests we're going to do. How many people actually buy crippled CDs, open them, then return in principled disgust. I know I haven't. I know none of my friends have. Frankly, I don't know one person who has returned a crippled CD to a store because 'it didn't work'.
I can dig your music. Most of the people who write about their fav bands like indie stuff, or local, regional bands. That's cool. I don't think too many Slashdotters have front row tix for Pink or Justin Timberlake. Those are the acts that sell the majority of the CDs. Try explaining to a 12 year old girl with $20.00 burning in her pocket why she shouldn't buy the Britney Spears CD all her friends have because it's 'crippled'. It plays in her walkman and that's all she cares about. The worst part is, if it doesn't play in her player, she'll buy a new one.
Articles like this don't surprise me. To the informed crowds, all 2% of us, they might as well rent out big billboards and post a big "F*ck you" for all to see. We're not their bread and butter in their short term vision. Keep slapping a belly-baring shirt on a 17 year old with golden vocal cords and you'll never run out of $$$.
So in protest, we download the specific music we want. Morals or not, most people have done it or still do. It just adds the fuel to the fire. They cite pointless statistics about dropping sales. To us it's because the music might suck. As long as they keep putting the words File-sharing and Kazaa in the press-releases, people will assume the two are related, and legit file sharing gets screwed.
They won't go out of business because I don't buy their CDs. Or you don't buy them.
Start getting the 11-14 year olds to stop needing their N'sync fix and then you're onto something. I hate to say it, but with as much knowledge and purpose as we may have, we're no match for teenieboppers with mommy and daddy's money.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
Don't you realize that they don't care how much you break their copy protection?
Actually, that's not true. They care a great deal. If they can demonstrate to the US congress (yes, US... no one bothers trying to convice Europe or Asia of these things, as they will generally follow US lead, which may be sad, but is true) that copy protection keeps getting defeated and therefore they are "losing" lots of sales, they will be able to get legislation passed that requires CD-RW manufacturers to build in copy-protection.
Notice that they don't give a flying crap about the largest source of illegal music in the world (mass CD copying). They care that joe average with his PC might be able to get some milage out of their old CDs or listen to music in the car that wasn't purchased specifically for car listening, instead of having to impulse-by the entire CD again. That's a threat, and regardless of how right or wrong it might be, they'll work until you can be shot for doing it.
It's our job to find ways to make our politicians understand that this is not acceptable and that a sizable fraction of their constituents want to be able to listen to the music they bought.
As long as an item, be it copy-protected CD, DVD, PS2 game, etc.. is sold at Wal-Mart, Target, and the like, a boycott will never succeed. If all of us stopped buying CDs tomorrow, Cletus T. Bohunk would still go out and buy his Fullscren copy of Spider-Man. He'd still by the Allman Bros. Greatest Hits (no offense to fans), and its not going to matter if it works in his computer, because he doesn't use that to play music like we do!
Ahh yes, you are correct. However, with this new copy protection technology, the new "CDs" won't play in the old equipment. While you and I are more likely to be able to afford to run out and buy a new CD player, Cletus probably can't.
This will be their downfall.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
I work for a multi-national corporation, with a lot of people in Germany. For the longest time I would get very offended by e-mails I would get from our German colleagues.
For example, we would send around a proposal for how we thought we might do something in the future.
A German colleague would respond with a tersely worded message to the effect of "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. If you don't do it this way, it will lead to the end of the company and we'll all be unemployed."
After a while, and after actually meeting many of these people face to face, I discovered that's just their way of saying "Hmm, that's not a bad idea, but maybe you should consider this..."
After reading the letter from the CSR, I realized that this is probably the same situation. It sounds really harsh, but it's not intended to be that way.
There are huge cultural differences between America and Germany, and it's important to try and understand those differences before over reacting.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
No, the music has not died, you just don't know where to look. You certainly won't find much worthwhile listening to radio stations. Their playlists are determined not by listener voting or requests as they might lead you to believe, but by the record labels and radio empires. They feed you whatever artist (and I use that term loosely) they want to sell. Don't look for treasures in the septic tank.
There are lots of independent musicians making good music. They're in local bars, local venues, playing college stages, distributing music online for $4 a CD. Or maybe you just wanted to hear some tired old Metallica again; maybe those geriatric millionaire whiners are what you equate with good music. Their voices long ago slipped into irrelevance for me (not coincidentally when they donned suits to protest their fans sharing the music). But maybe the sight of some 40-something, balding fat guys does something for you, I don't care.
I've heard a lot of music from Pavarotti to Poto Duodongo, Grieg to Green Day and just about everything in between and on the outskirts. Now I don't mean to sound harsh -- well, yes I do -- but it's this constant whining about how bad today's music is that really pisses me off. There are as many vibrant, vital new artists out there now as there was twenty years ago playing in all the same places they played back then. Just look. Look in your local Weekend section of your morning paper. Look online. Tune in your local college radio station. But by God's grace, don't bother with commercial radio.
If there is an EF equivalent in Germany, maybe they would be willing to accept and publish specific donations. Specific not in the sense that they need to spend the money on so and so, but donations in the name of: F*** EMI or maybe something a little more political correct.
Help fight continental drift.
Technologically, it would not be hard to do; all that's necessary is for some hardware company to get sufficiently pissed off. Will this happen? Oh yes.
There's a fundamental problem with CD's and Copy Protection as it stands currently, with the published specs. As it is currently, there is no designed method of copy protection built into the CD spec. Now, copy protection can be achieved, barely, by extending or twisting the spec around in order to destroy that ability, at a cost. I use as an example: Minidiscs. Minidiscs, while they may have achieved only bare minimum acceptance in the US and slightly better elsewhere, come pre-designed with copy protection a central core of the spec. In fact, the spec even goes so far as to permit a single digital quality copy from an outside source to Minidisc. Afterwards, only degraded analog copies might be made. The Specification for Minidiscs took this into account, it is fundamental to the architecture of all player/recorders, and as such, so far as I have seen, not so easy to get around. Compact Discs, on the other hand, did not originally care about copying. The spec was based on the premise that only expensive burners that companies could afford would be the only thing to actually make a CD. A truely 'Read Only' format. This lack of foreknowledge of copying data from the CD to another medium has led to this problem. A lack of a redesigned spec incorperating Copy Protection (and, likely, a new name or encoding method (CD-CP, for example)) further complicates this matter. Unfortunately, the only way I can see this being resolved is if the music companies abandon the CD architecture all together in favor of another medium, one that has protections built in from the start. Either that, or abandon attempts to copy protect CD's.
The Register's problem is not that they have opinions or that their stories lack facts, but that they often mix the opinions and the facts together into the same article. Newspapers have a separate Op-Ed section for opinions because they devalue news content. Ideally news would be all facts, but as long as humans write the news, there will always be a slant to it. The Register makes no efforts to keep their opinions out of the news.
That is why I don't read the Register. I don't want to let some journalist form my opinions and I don't have the patience to sift through their articles separating fact from fiction. Just give me the plain, boring facts, instead of making every event look like the end of the world.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
What I find interesting is that they make the baseless assumption that ALL blank CD-R's are being bought and used to create or copy music CD's that they didn't purchase.
I personally use most of my CD-R's for games/programs that I didn't purchase.
That and digital pictures, home movies, photo CD's, file backups.
maybe 1 in 40 CD-R's I use contains any music at all.
It's more likely though that once a lot of labels using copy-protected CDs, the remaining holdouts will see their sales sky-rocket and take notice. They will start selling CDs with a huge phillips logo on the package and running marketing campaings showing "everyday people" with MP3 players and scratched CDs making a switch.
Also, watch out for other countries recording music specially for US and european markets and selling cheap, working CDs. Mickey Mouse will soon be cornered by Hello Kitty :-)
Yes. Perhaps you might also add something about how you've tried it in more than one CD player and it still doesn't work if they give you trouble. You might leave out the "fucking" part, unless you're dealing with someone particularly aggravating, in which case they probably deserve it. It's best not to put people on the defensive unless you want them that way.
I think that this point of view is propogated by the distillation of the labels' back catalog of music.
I'm 30, so my pop music consumption began in earnest in the early-to-mid mid-80's, when I got my first radio. I'm sure there was a lot of crap in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, but I never hear hear it anymore. What I hear on the radio is the popular stuff from those eras.
Today, what little I hear on the radio (and used to see on MTV), they pump out a lot of crap. Sure, there's good stuff, but it will bubble to the top over the next ten years and wind up in rotation on whatever "best hits of the 80's, 90's..." Clear Channel affiliate is out there at the time.
Do you think that in 20 years, people will get stoned and go soul searchin to N'Sync and Britney Spears albums, like people still do to Pink Floyd's The Wall? I highly doubt it. Will we see "Laser Backstreet Boys" at the local planetarium 30 years from now?
There's pop music, truly groundbreaking music, and then there's utter crap. Sometimes they overlap, and everyone's threshold is obviously different for each category.
I simply love the Beatles. I freely admit that their first albums were no better in content than current boy bands. I'd argue that they grew and contributed to musical history in their later albums. Bands just don't have that kind of shelf life anymore, so they never get time to grow anymore. Joplin, Marley, and Hendrix, also from that era, made some truly soul-shaking music. I don't get that from any current music.
Though I've consumed my fair share of pop music in the 80's and 90's, I can't think of any groups/performers I've followed that have had similar impact on people (as opposed to musical trends). Some of my favoites are Suzzane Vega, Enya, Kirst MacColl, Cheryl Crow, I don't know if any of them will stand the test of time. My wife introduced me to 80's rock these past five years or so (Cinderella, Bon Jovi, Great White), and while those feel more timeless and relavent today than those I loved in that era (Cindy Lauper, Huey Lewis, The Cars, Dire Straits), I don't know if those will last 20 more years either.
Another factor, IMO, is the seeming death of the theme album. I ask this question with all honesty: is there anything from the 90's and later that is equivalent to Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, The Wall, and Bat Out of Hell? I'm open to expand my contemporary music tastes here -- let the titles fly.
Having spewed all of that, I'll state that 2nd-hand music sources have been my primary source for a long time. It seems that every college town has a great used music store nearby (any Von's or JL Records fans from Purdue?). Several years ago, I discovered secondspin.com, which I have used almost exlusively since the first RIAA lawsuits began in the late 90's. I haven't bought I new album in quite a while, and these crippled CDs will only reinforce that behavior for me.
Who knows... maybe there's a scientific reason for the generational gap in musical tastes. Perhaps the hormone-charged angst most go through in our teens and early twenties cause us all to bond to whatever music we listen to at the time -- like a duckling that imprints on the first living thing it encounters. I like to think I'm really being objective when I say that the quality of music has been diminishing over time. Maybe it's the homogenization of Clear Channel and the like? If I could get music from the 20's thru 50's produced with today's recording technology (instead of scratchy mono tapes we have in the archives), I'd have a lot of it in my collection.
Method of processing duck feet
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It appears that "we" already are boycotting CD purchases. Sales are down 10% to 24% depending on how you measure (or who you believe). Any way you slice it, CD sales are significantly down by double digit percentages when in the past they have almost always increased in low single digit percentages. That's what I'd call a boycott.
Why the boycott?? Probably not copy prevention, since few discs have been released. More likely, it's either a combination of several factors:
But whatever the reason, it's pretty clear that a boycott of CD purchases is already underway, simply by the significant decrease is sales. Perhaps copy prevention will drive even more people to boycott, as it will only really work against #2 (nobody reading ./ comments is naive enough to believe copy prevention on CDs is going to prevent someone, somewhere, from making a "good enough" analog rip or circumvent it digitially and than post it to Kazaa). Then again, maybe #2 is the reason for the boycott, but my personal hunch is it's mostly #1 and #3.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
You forgot step 3 b:
File a small claims case for the value of the CD plus court costs. This can easily hit $100, depending on court fees. Bring the player (stereo, walkman, iMac, etc.) into court. Show the judge the logos. It should be fairly cut and dried.
The point here isn't the $100, the point is forcing some manager to waste a day in small claims court. It might only be ten minutes if you are first on the docket, but it could be 8 hours if you get to sit around. If they try to settle while you are waiting in the court house, make sure you make them sign a form saying "this CD was defective for the purpose it was sold". And if they bring in a lawyer, dummy up and speak to the judge.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I have to agree that a baseless assumption was made. It was the first thing that struck me as odd, assuming that all 250M CDR's (and let us not forget they said tapes as well) were used to record music. Well I have over 1000 of those CDR's and I can safely say I haven't recorded the first MP3 or copied a CD yet. DATA is what they are for and data is what I record. So make that 250M minus 1000 please!
Oh and come off it. Please tell me what tapes they are referring to. Deos anybody use tape anymore except for their VCR, their digicam, or for their server's backup?
As for ripping MP3's. Yup, I do it! And I don't have to swap out a CD all the time and the shuffle feature of XMMS is great! Oh, and you record company guru's, I still have the original CDs I ripped the mp3's from, and I don't have some P2P app installed either. So bit me! The second I can't listen to music paid for the way I want is the second you lose my business forever! Plenty of Indie bands out there not copy protecting their home grown CDs.
The truth is usually just an excuse for lack of imagination.
The problem with this is that the concert and radio businesses are monopolies. Any artist seen as anti-business will soon be a street artist.
:) If artist can sell music through their own web pages, why would they sign their souls away to a big label?
Then buy music from unsigned musicians and street artists!! There's a lot of good original stuff out there that you can find if you look for it. Any more most bands have a web page where you can sample their music, buy a cd, and find out about a show.
Here are some great unsigned bands that I've found: Breech,OO-Soul, and Powder. Go to the sites, try out their music and if you like it buy the CDs direct from the band!
This music isn't free as in Napster, but it's close to being free as in freedom
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
I find as time goes on I'm buying fewer and fewer CDs. Maybe it's just that my musical tastes are changing.
More and more of the music I listen to is put out by artists who are not on major labels and I think if this is how the major labels are going to treat the buyers then that is only going to continue.
Yes, I do buy an aweful lot of CD-Rs compared to CDs (this year about 300 to one), but I've NEVER burned a CD-R of music I wasn't entitled to. That is, music I had written permission from the artist to make copies of (one of my hobbies recently has been collecting music for an online radio station that hasn't gotten off the ground yet... all of it with full permission from the artists and copyright owners to make MP3 copies for use by the station to by-pass RIAA efforts to tax the hell out of the little guy. In that capacity I've made live recordings of some indie bands with their permission and even been asked to send them copies)
On the other hand, most of the CD-Rs I burn are chock full of free software (open source or otherwise freely distributable) so I resent music industry efforts to make me pay the big labels for the right to buy blank CD-Rs, NONE of which will be used to copy thier "property".
And people won't stop paying for music in the copy protected future anymore than they don't buy macrovision protected DVD's now.
There IS a big difference in these two examples, however - DVDs have been using copy protection of some type since the beginning - with CDs this is a new problem, and the kind of problems people have playing crippled CDs is likely to far outnumber problems with incompatible DVD players, because the CD players are not aware of the methods being used to make them "copy-protected".
What you don't seem to get is that even though it is legal to make MP3s, complilation discs, etc., THEY DON'T CARE. They don't want you to be able to do that, and if they had everything they wanted, you wouldn't be allowed to, PERIOD. That is why many of us hate them so much. They want to take away our rights to use media we paid for in the way we want to. All to preserve a dying business model.
This is supply and demand, they don't want to be subject to it. The fact is, people are finding fewer CDs that are worth buying while the prices keep going up! That leads to people not being willing to pay that price anymore and seeking another way to get what they want, which is probably just a song or two. In the real world, this should lead to prices on the CDs coming down to a level where most people will pay for them. This happened with computer software not so long ago, do you not remember when WordPerfect was charging $600 for a word processor? Now I can buy WP for $30, and I did. Back then, I copied it.
The industry is the root of the problem. Music copiers pushed it along, but the music industry created this problem for themselves. People were making tapes and sharing music long before the internet, it just made it faster. The fact is, people have been asking to pay for music online, they didn't want to offer it to us, so we did it ourselves. They could have offered us what we wanted for a price we were willing to pay, they refused. Does that make stealing from them right? Not really, but it doesn't make it right for them to destroy fair use either.
Piracy involves killing and such, I don't think it's fair to call someone who burns a CD the same as a person that burns a group of people alive, do you?
If I were lucky there would only be my ISP and the artist's ISP between me and my music, but it would still be a middle man. If there are only two choices of middle man, MSN/ATT or Time/AOL/Disney, I'd be just as screwed as neither is likely to provide "internet" service as we know it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'm with you. But I like it better the way it was explained to me. In American style news, you have the "he said, she said" style reporting. Person A said blah, blah, but person B points out "antiblah, antiblah+."
In English (European?) style journalism, journalists themselves are allowed to have opinions and to express them themselves, rather than through the puppet characters that Americans use. So, yes, they are slanted. American news is slanted, too, but the slant is done with the puppets. That's all.
If it is the only way music is being sold, it is the only way music is being purchased.
But *it* isn't the only way. You think the next few nifty punk/techno bands are going to sit back and give all their revenues to some big name label? You've got another think coming. Kids are a lot more savvy than you think, and they're also the ones who buy most of the music...
Frankly, I don't know one person who has returned a crippled CD to a store because 'it didn't work'.
Answer: Those of us who 'don't matter' should buy crippled CDs in the store, return them because it didn't work. Have them assume it is damaged. Exchange for another one. Later, rinse, repeat. We should actually patronize these companies and buy their crippled CDs, if only to fill the return pile.
I'm the ideal music consumer. I love music, I earn good money (well, sort of), and I recognize the value of intellectual property (I produce it), so I don't steal it.
Problem is, I've run out of stuff to buy. There isn't a single listenable commercial radio station on the air. They all play the same mediocre stuff, over and over, plus a lot of really crass, insulting commercials.
The online, officially-sanctioned music scene isn't much better. There are crappy, commercial-encumbered interfaces that make available a small number of highly-compressed, proprietary-format, selected-for-the-idiot-masses crap, and there are collections of MP3s of varying quality and completeness in a bazillion poorly-fornmatted, not-enough-information-to-make-good-selections, lucky-if-you-even-encounter them places.
In short, I don't have the patience of God, so my access to new music is limited. Music availability has been pop-cultured into mediocrity.
If record companies want me as a customer, and I used to be a very good customer, they need to fix this. I want a means of previewing available music without ads, spyware or hoops to jump through, and I'm not going to give my social security number, mother's maden name or a tissue sample to get it. Make it proprietary and less-than-audiophile quality to protect your sales, but make it easy to get at, and give me more than mass-market crap.
I'd also suggest fixing the homogenization of radio, but I believe all ad-supported media is beyond saving.
Amy
The music companies can generally avoid having to deal with us directly, but the stores have to. I really hate to do this, but I don't see a lot of other alternatives for actively getting the point across that I will not buy botched (err, protected) CDs.
1. Go to record store (sorry, but I'm old and to me, its a record store).
2. Pick up a few CDs known to be protected (we've really got to get these things labelled).
3. Initiate a purchase transaction.
4. During said transaction, inquire if the CDs are protected.
5. If they say No, call 'em on it and abort transaction.
6. If they say Yes, tell 'em I wont buy protected CDs and abort transaction.
7. If they say I dunno, tell 'em I don't want to take the chance and abort transaction.
8. Try to retain the ability to look at myself in the mirror after being such a dick to my local music store owner... (well, those guys are pretty much screwed anyway in the long run)
-x
There have always been a lot of crappy one-hit wonder artists. We selectively remember the good artists from the past and forget the mediocre ones. There is still good music being made.
I would instead contend that people are spending more of their dollars on DVD movies and less on CDs. Why?
Your average DVD costs 15-20 dollars. So does the average premium CD. A movie is generally at least an hour and a half long, plus bonus materials. A CD is usually not much more than an hour long. And a movie is a much more engaging experience with video and surround sound. If consumers have limited dollars to spend on entertainment they will pick the better value.
The problem is that the music industry is operating from the premise that they are entitled to ever-increasing revenues on a mature technology that is being overtaken by something more exciting. The music industry needs to either spice up the product or get used to making less money.
I would say overall MS has learned exactly the opposite.
Antitrust-wise they seem to be in zero trouble, without making any material change in their business practices. So one PR strategy against Linux failed. There will be dozens of others. I still don't find it obvious that Microsoft's products will be eclipsed by open source in the long term.
I think the moral of that story is, do whatever you want to your customers; if you're a big enough monopolist, you will almost certainly get away with it.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Nice thought but
CD sales fall, and the RIAA are going to claim that there copy protected CDs are being cracked, sharing is increasing, and introduce something worse.
Do you want the only music available to be tried to windoze XP?
remember we are talking about the RIAA here, and since when did they actually think before acting
I'd have thought politeness was even more necessary in The Land of the Gun(TM)
I wonder if they'll have to coin a new term soon:
"Going Corporate" instead of "Going Postal?"
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Perhaps it's time that something like /. used it's respectiable sized based of readers to drive the first stake into RIAA's heart? I wonder how successful something like a /.'s OGG of the day would in generating interest in unsighned bands who allow free downloads of thier songs? I realize that it would be a big hassle for the /. crew to decide on which OGG is good enough (and if appropriate licenses are in effect) and setting the appropriate mirrors up. but it could be well worth it if it sparks a new paradigm.
Dammy