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Still More RIAA News
We just did an article about the RIAA's mendacity with statistics, and here come some more: first, someone has gone to the trouble to deconstruct their income figures over the past few years, showing that the RIAA's lack of investment in new releases is in itself sufficient to explain any dropping sales, and second, this website concerning the music industry settling a price-fixing lawsuit, which I believe is this one, filed two years ago.
But telling Slashdot won't achieve much - most people here already have a particular opinion on the RIAA.
Good luck with getting the message across to the public at large, to people who matter, and to people who make and shape laws.
I'd be much more willing to buy CD's if they were not insanely expensive.
Most new CD's cost around $15-$20... Considering I usually buy a CD mainly for 2 or 3 tracks, thats about $5 or more for a single song.
Or, I could buy the singles, and pay about $5 a song
Gee, that really makes me want to buy CD's. I'll stick with Kazaa Lite, Gnutella, or something.
The only time I buy a CD anymore is when it is a small band that I want to support, and then I usually buy from their website.
As usual, groups with relative power will alter and hide statistics if they really want to get their point of view across, especially when they are beseiged by FUD. On a side note, there are 4 CD's I wanted to buy but didn't, because of them.
Please direct all bug reports to
from the article : why is it that sales didn't start declining until AFTER the RIAA had Napster shut down?
kazaa, morpheus, audiogalaxy, gnutella...
frankly, can anyone (good or vilain) pretend that closing napster possibly changed anything in online music trading habits ? and hence in any sales reports an correlation analysis whatsoever ?
I wish the author was honest.
O.
> The RIAA is an industry association. It does not control its members, its members control it
And therefore, its members control what it says, and what its priorities are. Its members are saying that piracy is the problem, so the RIAA says priacy is the problem, and by complaining about the RIAA you are complaining about all the members of the RIAA.
Back in the mid 1980s when CDs first came out you had a choice of LP, CD, or Tape. The typical list price for a new release LP or tape was $8.99. The CD list price was $16.99.
Their reason: There was a backlog of over a year to manufacture "back catalog releases". They (record industry) said the price high price of CD was because of the manufacturing process, as well as supply and demand.
Well for CDs there's no backlog now, they use less raw material, and provide less artwork. And yet the CD price remains inflated.
Does the artist get more royalties for CD than a LP or cassette? I think not.
Maybe not. The author of the article goes on to argue that file swapping, which may have killed the singles market, couldn't add up to this amount. Alas, he didn't read the quote properly. $4 billion is what they attribute to physical piracy, not online swapping. There are parts of the world where you can buy just about any CD, music or software, for a fraction of the price of retail. In a street market in Thailand I saw MS Office and NT Server for $20 (with activation keys), music CDs of current US and European pop releases for $5, PS games for $5-10. All were in jewel cases with artwork.
Physical piracy is their real enemy, not file sharing.
From the Cost of a CD from the RIAA web site:
"While the RIAA does not collect information on the specific costs that make up the price of a CD, there are many factors that go into the overall cost of a CD -- and the plastic it's pressed on, is among the least significant."
They admit they don't really know the costs. They don't have the data so they speak from ignorance. Or, they do have the data but don't want to admit what they know.
How to Download YouTube Videos
I don't think it's quite that sinister, though your portrayal of the music industry is considerably sexier than mine.
I won't even ask what you mean by "she loves loves loves her ding dongs." (Lest any guys get misplaced notions about Hilary, read this.) I mean, I like ding dongs as much as the next guy, but....
I've heard figures for the artist's cut ranging form 50 to $2. I don't know what's accurate, but assume it depends a lot on how much leverage the act has -- there's a difference between Bruce Springsteen and WeEatToads but their CD's are both expensive. (Springsteen may be cheaper because of volume.) (And I'm not starting a f*cking debate about musical tastes!) Must be nice to be a solo artist rather than have to split the coins with other band members.
As for markup, we rarely think about it as we happily pay for it. Next time you see a box of Wheaties, ask yourself how much the wheat cost. Probably less than a raw CD. Now look at that pretty and informative 4-color box it comes in. Which costs more? Then look around at the supermarket. How much does it cost to run? A lot. What does this have to do with the price of wheat? Nothing, but it has a heck of a lot to do with the price of Wheaties.
Stealing is not free!!
That's a misconception. It doesn't cost any *money* to steal, but stealing still has cost. Most notable is time cost -- it takes time to locate and download a song you want. And even then once you're done you can't be sure you didn't get a lot of data errors in the track or different songs in the album were recorded with different loudness, etc.
Theoretically, if the recording industry priced CDs below ((peoples' value of own time * length of time it takes to find the cd) + value of quality) then the could compete with piracy on a price level. Obviously everyone's value of their time is different so they'll never be able to get everyone. For me, if CDs cost $5-$10 I would never mess around with Kazaa, and I think a lot of other people wouldn't either. $20? No, thanks.
Here is my email to the author...
You have posted a great article. It's very informative and insightful and missing a couple important things.
First, I appreciate your promotion of independent artists and justly compensating them, but I disagree with you're numbers. Let me humbly suggest a different split. 16% for production costs. 34% marketing and bribes (we can dream that clear channel and mtv are with in budget). 16% for the label, 16% for investors and 17% for the band. I don't think anyone would disagree with their cut, but what I'm really trying to express is the rule that you spend twice as much on marketing as you do on R&D. And in this case, the world's demonstrated that marketing often counts more for sales than product quality.
Second, as the above somewhat illustrates, the real enemy of both the consumer AND the labels is radio consolidation and the evil empire of clear channel and the event venue lackies it holds. They limit our choice and variety. For the artist and labels, they charge too much money. At one time, music was often the program that pulled people in to listen to adds. Because of extravagently high payola.. er, I mean, "promoter" costs through elimination of competition, the radio stations have really become NOTHING BUT ADVERTISING. Ads are paid for, programs are paid for, automate and underpay local talent, buy out the competition and then print your own money. The Conrad Burns '96 telecommunications act did good things, but it brought more harm than good and needs to be corrected. The record labels have much much more to gain from investing in policial bribery to bring back competition than they have from making all their consumers and benifactors criminals.
Last, that leads to what the REAL issue with RIAA is. The RIAA's end consumer, the people who pay them, are the records labels. The RIAA has to justify thier high costs to the labels every year. Every year, they have to justify the existence of this perpetual parasitic beauracracy. The labels feel that they get good benifits from the current payola system; they just don't like today's prices. If they didn't like it, the lables have plentry of shills to create politicial winds of change. The RIAA's consumer is the labels, NOT THE CONSUMER. They don't care about us; we aren't even the corn in Rosen's shit. They are paid by the labels. What this whole piracy thing is about marketing themselves as relevent to the labels. Let me repeat; the RIAA's emphasis on piracy is their effort to keep getting money from the labels and to start asking them for more money. Yes, of course it's all about money. The RIAA and the labels know the numbers and reasons you cited. They are pursuing what they feel is a safer, more profitable route. The labels are culpable in all of this of course. I just think you need to cite and remember the root motive to all of this non-sense.
Good Luck!
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
This sentence of Hilary Rosen is often quoted to prove harm filesharing is doing: "When 23 percent of surveyed music consumers say they are not buying more music because they are downloading or copying their music for free, we cannot ignore the impact on the marketplace." And I see that it is used again in this article. What this really means is that 23 percent are not changing their buying habits, and 77 percent are spending more. Where's the harm to their marketplace? This is typical politician double-speak - I can see her laughing everytime she sees it quoted. With the figures they published they are doing better than most anyway.
Freedom of speech doesn't come with bandwidth.
The other day I was listening to NPR and they profiled James McMutry, a singer/song writer (he is the son of novelist Larry McMutry, who Lonesome Dove, etc). Larry has a new album out, Saint Mary of the Woods. NPR talked to him and played some samples of his music, which a kind of country/rock/folk fusion. I liked what I heard.
When I got home I jumped on Gnutella and found a song from his new CD and downloaded it. I liked it. Then I downloaded another and liked it too.
The next day I went out and bought the CD.
The RIAA can learn from this. Without being able to sample some songs so I could decide whether or not I wanted to buy the whole CD, I never would have plunked down my cash for an unknown (to me) artist. Thanks to Gnutella, James McMutry made a sale, and got a new fan.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Stealing is not free!![...]Most notable is time cost
I agree that there is a cost to stealing, but I disagree that the cost is time. By the time I drive out to the mall, find a parking spot, walk to the CD store, find the CD, stand in line and buy the CD, walk back to the car, and drive home I could have found the CD on some P2P 5 times over.
The real cost to those who steal (and to those who don't due to the backlash towards those who do) is economic and/or political. And that's the battle we're losing. It really is more convenient and less time consuming to download music. If the RIAA embraced that fact, they could profit from it. Instead, they're trying to dictate demand based on their desire to supply music in the one way they think they can control, and they still haven't realized that their economic theory is flawed (that is until/unless they manage to litigate their problems away).
I have a hard time feeling anything but a dull sense that justice is done when a million petty thieves rob the giant
:)
That's how they'll quote you, too.
No matter what the RIAA does to shamelessly promote the piracy issue, people who illegally download songs are no better. As I've said several times before, a very efficient way to ellicit a change in behavior is to change your own. Stop playing the game. Walk away. Forget the music produced by the RIAA members. Don't buy it, don't steal it...just forget it. What can the RIAA do? Can it pass laws forcing consumers to purchase a certain number of CD's per year? No...the fact is that it can't do anything but change its business model. Rest assured, the current m.o. of stealing and justifying it with a heavy dose of rationalization will accomplish nothing.
- Stop buying music from the big 5 members of the RIAA (Sony, etc.) that essentially belongs to popular but truly "garbage of the month" purported to be hip, fresh, etc. --from any source.
- Only buy CDs where there is quality music (your definition not mine) throughout the whole album.
- Buy independent labels that have good reputations for how they treat their talent, or better yet
- see if you can find a way to buy from the artists directly or through a direct distribution medium -- i.e. artist to distributor to you, no big five profit
- Send a snail mail to any local radio station playing crap music from the big 5, suggesting that they play the better music indie labels and suggesting that you'll change your listening habits to their competitor's station if they don't.
Want to make it hurt even more?- Send a copy of each one of the radio station letters to the big 5 studios every time your selection has caused the indie labels make money and the big 5 didn't make a nickel.
- Send a copy to MTV explaining that you change the channel every time the crap music's video comes on.
- Maybe send even more copies to the NYT, LA Times, Washington Post etc. Bury the RIAA companies with exposure in the mass media via snail mail barrages and see if they can maintain the same kind of cartel pricing and crap music peddling in the glare of major media. Then you might just get their attention.
Still interested? or is standing up to the corruption just too much bother?...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...