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Recording Industry Extinction Predicted RSN
nautical9 writes "There's an interesting commentary from Wired's Charles Mann, speaking of the imminent death of the recording industry as we know it. Nothing really ground-breaking here, but it is a good summary and somewhat fair treatment of the RIAA's current state-of-affairs, and offers a little insight into what the world of music may be like without them (hint: perhaps better off)."
"from the imminent-death-predictions-getting-boring dept"
Then why post it?
That's why she chose now to resign her position as head of the RIAA. She doesn't want to preside over a sinking ship.
Umm.. They just mention Kazaa. I imagine that if Kazaa became pay only, people would just get their music elsewhere.
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
This show to me that the music industry makes big money up to this point so most people are buying from them and it's only a small percentage of people who read slashdot who have problem.
Slashdot community little fish in big pond.
All the best,
--Achmed
Swaribabu Consulting Inc. -- We code so you don't have to
Counting down until someone posts a modified "RIAA is dying" text, which will immediately get modded up to +5 Funny. (:
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Recording industry -> Music -> Girls -> Clubs -> Hot, horny girls -> Sex
Nope, not gonna happen.
You know the rest...
even since the dawn of mp3s, I think we've all had that little feeling in our stomachs that the days of CD sales are limited. It wouldn't ruin the industry.. there'd still be concerts, music videos, and merchandising.
But what would be the main delivery of the art [music] to the public?
It is certainly difficult to say.. 20 dollars for a CD with 12 songs, of which 2-3 are usually "good". (poor generalization) Is it web radio or some other streaming service? Possibly.
Maybe 'albums' need to get bigger, like DVDs that include music videos. Traditional CDs are sold more like singles - very cheaply.
--------
Free your mind.
And the electronics industry's attitude toward the labels is summed up by an Apple slogan: Rip. Mix. Burn. Which, a music executive once told me, translates into "Fuck you, record labels."
Funny, I don't agree that the "electronic industry's" attitude can be summed up by Apple's slogan. Apple is one of the few that dares to encourage people to Rip/Mix/Burn.
(Thinking Sony, etc.)
While it may not always be CALLED the RIAA, it will always BE the RIAA.
Kickstart
From the article:
labels' new legitimate online music services attracted fewer paying customers than the McDonald's in Times Square.
We can be sure to see the visits to that burger joint to drop as well. I mean, when this becomes commonplace.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Hillary Rosen announced her resignation from the group today to spend more time with her family.
Washington Post Story
But what does RSN mean when they say their death is predicted RSN?
Does it mean Really SooN?
for companies.
Make a boatload of money doing one thing and doing it well. (In this case, it's screwing everyone related to the music--buyers, musicians, etc)
Now, the test comes in when something causes a decrease in sales, or your business model becomes obsoleted by new technology.
Why is it so hard for companies to adapt? They are obviously in it for the money, why not change your business model to accomodate new things?
If the RIAA was a small company, nothing like this would occur, since they'd either adapt or die--in a hurry.
It's just taken a really long time for RIAA to realize they need to change, and if they don't, well, I look forward to cheaper cds.
Sent from your iPad.
RIAA is dying!
Thanks to wonderful innovations like the mp3/ogg codecs and a working p2p environment...
If only DeCSS could now bring down the lawyers of the MPAA...
But what really worries me is the possibility that the companies that build what we love, eletronic devices and gadgets, take RIAA's place.
RIAA is trying to protect its business model, where they control everything on the mainstream music chain. Technology can break a link of this chain, the distribution of an artist material.
But! The laws and the mentallity that RIAA is leaving is the most dangerous thing. Tech industries may (or will?) have control on distribution.
RIAA is showing them that this IS possible, and that consumers aren't doing much besides complain. No changes on the institutional power and the supplu of money is coming steady.
The recent agreement between the tech industry and the RIAA shows exactly this. Most of the RIAA associates are, in one way or another, connected to the tech industry. It was a PR move to soften its images with the public.
What I really think is that we are becoming less political involved with a lot of issues, but that's a subject for another post!
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
What do the recording agencies do? Record, remaster, produce, manufacture and market musicians.
Nearly as I can tell computers and the Internet have pretty much taken over those roles. As far as getting paid for their hard work, I guess musicians are left to concert money and merchandise. Most listeners aren't going to be paying for an album that they can download for free, either legally or illegally.
Maybe the recording studios will be replaced by concert halls. Maybe the future is a movie theator with a band stage. Hey that'd be cool.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
...and I feel fine!!!" - REM
What do I have to pay the RIAA for this?
the record industry sucks, and I'm all for seeing their demise, but I want to still have people who make a living as musicians, and while they can make a decent living by performing, they really need the profits from selling their music.
I'd recommend that they make the CD itself (and not just the music on it) an object worth having. Unique and artful packaging, tickets to concerts inside, or whatever. It's not rocket science. People don't buy the CD's cause the CD isn't worth having.
Customers don't "listen" to an album. They listen to songs; individual tracks. And until the music industry understands that, they'll continue sinking.
This excludes of course, classic albums like Rumours, Dark Side of the Moon, etc. But those are few and far between.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
We need to tax everyone who uses the internet, that will save the poor record companies. I find it funny that this article predicing the fall of the record companies comes on the heels of the record compaines trying to tax everyone who uses the internet whther they download copyrighted music or not. I woner if this story will be cited by the record companies as they try to put an unfair tax on everyone who uses the net.
Fuck the record companies, the poor babies only sold 20 billion dollars worth of music last year. Boo fucking hoo.
of the same subject
How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate
I more or less knew about this, but it was nice to see it put so well. Of course, they are blaming everything under the sun except themselves. I can't think of one conglomerate that didn't just suck the life out of everything it touched. The music industry is supposed to be about the art of music, but it has just turned into another lifeless business.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
If you threaten jailtime to your customers then your customers will go away.
A very expensive lesson for them to learn
... killed off by FM. And then all radio died, killed off by television. And then both the movies and television were killed off by people home-taping movies on their VCR's. And then books died, killed off by eBooks and photocopiers.
Oh, wait, none of that happened, did it?
The existing recording industry power structure may be in for a rough time, and the Deccas and Polygrams and Capitols may join the likes of Studebaker and Eastern Airlines and Crossley, but people will be recording CD's and selling them to other people for quite some time.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I believe we will soon be entering the age of independent records. I've been preparing to record my solo debut record independently, and I will be distributing/promoting it myself. If in fact the record industry does collapse soon, I believe many artists are going to have to turn to independent labels and/or producing records themselves. Of course, with this route, one gets much less exposure than if a big league label was to be in charge. But I think that there can be ways around this.
If a new artist makes a CD, and begins promoting it, and selling online, eventually the word will get out. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's rather difficult to find and download independent music off of major file-sharing apps like Kazaa and Gnutella. So, in turn, this is a measure of the artists popularity. So if an independent artist can become popular enough for people to start downloading his music online, then this creates the potential to tour and perform live. And perhaps that's the ticket -- live performances could possibly make up for money lost on file sharing. As popularity grows, more money can be made off of live shows, and thus more albums can be produced, etc.
I'm sure I am leaving a lot of out of this theory, but it seems that there still may be some hope for the music business, in the form of independent labels and records.
mund freud.
What if they had public exocutions of all the teenie bopper studio band sugar coated micky mouse club burnout brat packs and billed them out at halftime shows at football games? they could even make it entertaining too. Not just some cheesy lethal injections, Im thinking about fucking crucifixions, and beheadings. When was the last time you saw anybody stoned to death? I'd pay 20 bucks to see that! And certainly the commercial time spot sales would be able to keep the industry going for many years to come.
Ultimately, Timothy suggested to me that night, the industry as we know it could vanish not so much because of technology but because few people over the age of 30 would care if it did.
This is very true. In some cases, I know people in their mid 20's who wouldn't care.
Being in my mid-30's, most of the industry does nothing for me, does not interest me, and when its not ignoring me, its insulting my intelligence or calling me a theif. Meanwhile it churns out lame, uninteresting, repetitive music. Good riddance I say.
All of these models would produce fewer global superstars and more locally successful musicians. We might not see another Michael Jackson circa 1982, but we also wouldn't see another Michael Jackson circa 2002. Not a bad tradeoff.
There's already a lot of good work going on on city, state, and geographic-area levels. Bands working on these levels seem to have a whole different mindset and be more in touch with their listeners.
And yeah, I'll give up any future Michael Jacksons to avoid . . . any future Michael Jacksons.
Good article
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered RIAA Association community when IDC confirmed that RIAA market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all music. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that RIAA has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. RIAA is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict RIAA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: RIAA faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for RIAA because RIAA is dying. Things are looking very bad for RIAA. As many of us are already aware, RIAA continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time RIAA chairman Hillary Rosen only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: RIAA is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
EMI leader Theo states that there are 7000 customers of EMI. How many customers of BMG are there? Let's see. The number of EMI versus BMG posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 BMG users. Warner Music posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of BMG posts. Therefore there are about 700 customers of Warner Music. A recent article put SONY at about 80 percent of the music market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 SONY customers. This is consistent with the number of SONY Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of piracy, abysmal sales and so on, Napster went out of business and was taken over by BMG who sell another troubled online music service. Now KaZaA is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that RIAA has steadily declined in market share. RIAA is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If RIAA is to survive at all it will be among music dilettante dabblers. RIAA continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this late point in time. For all practical purposes, RIAA is dead.
Fact: RIAA is dying
The need for the label isn't disappearing, it's changing. We'll see the majors start contracting instead of expanding just like every other industry affected by technology. More outsourcing specific tasks (a&r for example). The label will take on a more management style role, and will become more of a "branding" issue. (Think punk scene: you know what a fat records band is going to sound like before you even press play). We'll also see labels start providing health insurance and accounting assistance to aid future MC Hammers. Ahhh, the possible return of the career artist
People love entertainment, people love music. It'll always be around, and there will always be money in it. It's just going to take some restructuring, even if it costs a whole lot of people their jobs.
Just a thought..
Sure their market will be reduced, and morph. But if they learn to adapt, they will survive.
Besides, the *industry* will do fine, its just the companies that have a stranglehold over it that are in trouble and must adapt, or die.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ask anyone where the money they pay for their CDs goes, and they'll tell you: 5% to the artists, 95% to the executives. No one feels like they are actually supporting the artists when they buy a CD! If we wanted to support the artists, we should buy Concert tickets! sell the CD for $5 (most of the CDs out there are only worth $5) and sell the concert tickets for $10 more! Much more of the profits from concert tickets goes into the pockets of the artists! The record labels are an obsolete marketing model. Radio play and file sharing works. The word spreads. When you hear something your friend burned onto his/her last CD, and you like it, you also want to know what it is! If something is of good quality, the people will buy it, period. Not everyone will pay for 100% of the music they burn, but they will pay for enough to keep the artists living the life, but only those who deserve it, and entertain us enough.
Oh, and by the way, Britney can whine all she wants, but for every $1 she's whining about, the execs are out 15! She's just the puppet in "her" anti-piracy campaign.
It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end.
We had a lock in last night, about six of us rainging from 60 years old to about 22(all left wing)
Anyhow, the 60 year old was saying how the record industry was dead, you can get anything over the internet, who needs CD's.
One of my friends, 26, Never buy's CD's any more, she only ever downloads music off of kazaa.
The Juke box in the pub kept skipping, they have about 400CD's in the juke box, and are replacing it with, music downloaded off of the internet and stored on a PC.
And I only ever get music from sites like besonic(I don't like stealing).
So, that's 4/6 indepentend people saying that the record industry and the Stars they create are dead, and will have to start playing pubs and bars again, like 'real' musicians.
The End.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The tech companies should just buy the media companies outright and give everything away for free. Treat music the way we treat movies. A release from a major artist would be good for a month or two and as soon as his music became available online his profits would start to decline.
On the other hand, a full third of all CDs I currently own I bought because I downloaded a song from Napster or Kazaa that I liked.
The music industry is going to go broke because the big money is being spent on people who look good, not on people who sound good. It's as simple as that.
Beware the wood elf!!!
The problem isn't the demand for royalties per se -- it's the demand for royalties over and above what over-the-air stations pay.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Is Rosen's departure from the RIAA the first rat leaving a sinking ship?
Just something for us to consider. If the article is correct, then we should look for signs of the inevitable downturn.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I remember recent discussion regarding the role of producers and publisher and the article stating that the function of producers is 'filtering of all the crap they are getting and presenting the consumer with the best staff'. I wish it were true. In reality, producers invent the product they believe consumers would like, and since the product is rather vacuous, that is, has no contents, they put the excessive amount of efforts on packaging and advertising (junk food, anyone?) The sooner the present system goes the better. Doesn't look like anyone (except producers) will loose anything.
More importantly, two of the foundation elements of this article are misleading and/or potentially wrong. First, the 11% decline of sales this year can be attributed to
a) the 25% decline in output by the labels
b) the economy
c) the generally boring content
My vote is on a and b. c never seems to have an effect.
Also, the usage of P2P services does not necessarily bode ill for the recording industry. As has been advanced here before, P2P services often drive sales (they have for me and quite a few others). Just because the Suits don't believe it doesn't mean it isn't true.
Still, you gotta wonder about musicians: If someday all music were free, what would they do? Would they still make music, just getting money off of concerts and stuff? I know some bands would, but some of the other more popular bands, I dunno...
I think there are more albums worth listening to than you realize. There are several artists and albums that I will listen to as an album and never are individual tracks. Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick and Passion Play are extreme examples being songs which are albums. But Peter Gabriel's US is an album which carries a theme, developing from start to finish. Then there are some albums which are not necessarily works as a whole but still are completely full of songs worth listening to: nearly all of The Dave Matthew's Band's albums are that way.
I agree that the majority of flash-in-the-pan, me-too groups cannot do this, but there are enough around for me to dispute that. Rather than say people listen to songs, and call that the argument to kill the concept of an album as a work, I'd rather say we need to teach the new artists that albums should be thought of as a work itself, made up of songs, rather than just song repositories.
I don't see things in black and white; I see the gray. Heck, I actually see in color, which makes things more difficult
As a new owner of an iMac with iTunes I think that being able to transfer CD music to my hard drive encourages me to buy CD's. Once they are in iTunes i can create my own playlists or let random shuffle pick the songs for me. I have been dissapointed with the quality of MP3's and prefer CD's, but I have to buy them to get the music I want.
The music industry has been trying to pre-program the minds of listeners for years. They need to return to the 60's type of music promotion where everyone was looking for the "new sound" instead of using MTV belly buttons to sell over produced krp.
ok rant over, back to work, peace
The music industry won't die. They may be dinosaurs, but there are lots of people who will be happy to take over and make it into something else. Rather then some grandiose claims, what will happen is the following: Hillary Rosen will resign, along with several top record execs (we already know this is happening) the price of CDs will come down to a reasonable level ($6-$8 I'd guess), and a reasonably priced online service will be launched with some sort of DRM, the service may or may not succeed, depending on customer adoption of DRM software. Considering what people are willing to put up with in order to get music (tons of spy ware from Kazaa, and by the way you'd be surprised at how many use windows media player to listen to MP3s)
I predict that eventually there will be some service where you pay $20-$50/mo for all the music you want, downloaded to your computer/pda/walkman. You'll 'own' the files even after the service expires. The money will be distributed to the parent companies based on their percentage of the downloads.
That will be it, that will be the "death". No grandiose flameouts, no seeing Kid-rock getting a job at K-mart, no Britney as a porn star (sorry), etc. The music industry will continue as long as people are willing to pay for music. There will be a change from viewing music as a product to viewing it as a service, but it will still exist, and will be controlled by mostly the same people.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
How unfair it is that people would prefer an easier and more convenient way of doing things! How dare they not continue to support the old business model!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go write some more letters protesting the use of electric automobiles and praising the twenty year extension of the copyright law! Progress must be stopped!
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
"For years, the safest path to success in the music business has been to hunt the teen market. But by ignoring career artists at the expense of the latest trends, the labels have lost touch with wide swaths of society. Ultimately, Timothy suggested to me that night, the industry as we know it could vanish not so much because of technology but because few people over the age of 30 would care if it did."
Well written.
I'm 34 years old, and the only CD I've purchased in the last 18 months was for a gift. I am no longer able to stomach most new music that the labels promote. I do not like rap, I do not like teen pop, older bands are ignored and anything that is new and fresh is immediately duped and run into the ground as the latest profit mill. Meanwhile, good local bands are ignored and routinely GIVE away their music online.
I purchased an insane amount of CDs between 1986 (my first CD player) and 1996. I had a nice amount of disposable income and thought nothing of dropping $40 on CDs on a weekly shopping trip. No longer, there's nothing worthy of my hard earned dollar.
If the record companies want to make a quick buck, all they need to do is simply create a web site that offers ALL their out of print music in their entire collection and allow me to download it and burn it for $2 per song. I can fit 10 songs per CD, and the weekly revenue stream magically re-appears.
Alas, they are too stupid to see how profitable it is to satiate a demand in the market. They are too arrogant to admit that they need to make an adjustment. And they are too greedy to do anything about their problem but to buy legislation and call their customers criminals.
It's sad, really.
This is an interesting discussion, but I think much of it is being driven by personal agendas and people seeing what they want to see. I find many of them hard to agree with. First, I never think of the recording industry "labels" much at all. I don't even know who makes any of the CDs I own. I buy music from bands I like. I don't walk into a store and see "evil"; I see music.
I also don't see all music in stores as crap. Yeah, there's Mariah and so on, but there's alot a whole lot of it that I really like, both new and old. Saying that music publishers deserve to die because they're foisting unlistenable garbage on the world is a narrow view. If you hate all the music you find in the average, say, Borders, then I'm sorry, but You Just Don't Like Music.
All of the things that can be said about the Big Music Corporations can just as easily be said about smaller labels and music from local bands. They're trying to get you to pay for plastic CDs just like the big guys, and they're charging more than the fifty cents for materials. If you're arguing for the death of big music, you're arguing for the death of small music too.
I also find it hypocritcal that many people won't touch music in stores--calling it crap--but then will download it and enjoy it. Either you don't like it or you don't. These arguments come across as those from poor students trying to justify their lack of funds.
It's also not clear that CDs are really being killed by online music. I live near a CD store by a college campus, and it's always busy. The industry being down 11% is meaningless. No business grows forever and ever. So they're down 11% after growing 200% in the last decade. Does that matter? Look at how much the entire stock market has dropped in the last few years! And now they're only making _billions_ of dollars instead of billions + 11%. Hmmm. I'd take that.
The only real issue is that MP3s are more convenient sometimes, especially if you only want one song, and sure, that makes people buy fewer CDs (but it's arguable that people wouldn't buy those "for just one song" CDs anyway). But this has nothing to do with record companies being evil and so on. If you think music publishers are evil, then you should think video game and movie publishers are too. It's more that they're being branded as evil because people like the dodges that downloading music give them.
What they plan to do is, flood Kazaa with tons of bogus files and data and try to make it worthless, then people will have to use their pay services if they want music. Lots of people pirate music, but even more people are willing to pay for music.
I actually got a CD this summer when I couldn't find it on the depleted campus LAN.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Hating Hilary [Coming Jan. 23] Napster slayer. Corporate thug. Industry shill. Hilary Rosen has heard it all as the reviled frontwoman for the music biz. Sure, she knows file-sharing is the future. She's just fighting to give the dinosaurs one last gasp.
By Matt Bai
The article will be online soon at: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/ [wired.com]
Nothing really ground-breaking here
Is the big 5 digging their own grave.
[/ducks]
Oh, and a real deep one for the RIAA.
m
"..the industry as we know it could vanish not so much because of technology but because few people over the age of 30 would care if it did. "
Being over 30, I can agree with this statement.
If only the fools in charge of the major players would realize that their simply cutting their own throats by keep CD prices so high and that this will ultimately be their own doom...
What they need to do is slash prices as well as their profit margin per disc (as opposed to cutting into artist profits). Only when a decent CD (if one can be found in the era of The Backside Boys and Christina Whore-uleria) costs about $10 will they win people back.
Sure, their profits will go down -- but at least they'll still be making money. The tech industry got hit hard, its damned hard to find a decent IT-related job and nearly impossible to find one paying what it did 2 years ago. Maybe the music industry needs to trim the fat and let some people go from their payrolls to recoup the losses involved with keeping their customers otherwise they'll simply cease to exist.
Just my $.02.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
I can't get too excited about this article... while the idea of the RIAA "dying" is a pleasing one, keep in mind that at this point it's still purely speculative.
I DO agree that the record companies are facing death threats on all sides. But they have an artillery of their own, too, not the least of which has been litigation and lobbying (which although cumbersome, seems to work all too well).
There will likely always be a place for some figurehead organization of some sort, if for no other reason than to manage the interests of players in an industry. Think about... what does RIAA stand for? "Recording Industry Association..." Virtually every industry/sector has groups like this. The Automotive industry, airlines, electronics manufacturers, educational standards/bodies/schools... textiles... pretty much everyone does (I only wish I could remember all the acronyms right now).
Without debating the moralities of their methods, The RIAA manages a lot... as long as there are Best Buys selling 1000's of CD's to get people to browse their other electronic junk for sale; as long as there are special-equipment manufacturers trying to market devices for playing music, as long as there are independent recording studios, instrument manufacturers, delivery providers (XM radio, etc) and the like out there (see the ripple effect here?) there will be some central organization with a mind toward controlling the commodity (music in this case) that is central to it all.
The central organization known now as the RIAA may not exist in 5 years (or 2 or 1) in the same form as it does today. But as long as there is some shred of money to be made, it WILL exists in some form.
~~~
"The slave thinks he is released from bondage, only to find a stronger set of chains" - NIN
From the article: As recently as 10 years ago, the media conglomerates that own record labels regarded them as cash cows - smaller than Hollywood but more reliably profitable. Now all five major labels are either losing money or barely in the black, and the industry's decline is turning into a plunge. In the next year, whether together or separately, the labels will have to set about totally reinventing the way they do business, a horribly difficult task for any institution.
GOOD! Maybe I don't like paying all the rich bastards, some peoples drugs, booze, and in rap's case the 'bling bling'. Musically talented people are generally WAY overpaid. Shit, even the president does not have 3 $250,000 cars, and 2 $1,500,000 homes.
Screw the bling bling, now you may actually have to work at being at just maintaining upper middle class. ( THE WAY IT SHOULD BE ).
And as far as I am concerned, actors are way overpaid as well. And that news reporter lady, Katie Curick or whatever, she deserves no more than 60,000 per year, at the MAX.
These people get rich off the average Joe's buck, and then think they are above everyone.
It does not matter who they are, deep down, they are all that way.
The record labels blame piracy for their woes. And they're right - in part. Before writing this paragraph, I logged on to Kazaa. At 10 on a Monday morning, hardly peak time, 3.1 million people were on the network - more simultaneous users than Napster ever had in its heyday.
just becuase there are more people on kazaa, doesn't mean there are more people swapping music. People also share stuff like images, movies, pron, software, etc.
Also, a signifigant portion of napster lived in homegrown servers, using napigator, etc. Lack of actuall information here.
When you can give me some stats about what type of content most kazaa users trade, then the above quote might actually mean something.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
The old recording industry dies out, and attempts to be reborn as a modern business. All the laws they made trying to save the old way of doing business makes it illegal for them to even attempt such a thing. They all die and there is no longer a music industry. Music ceases to exist.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
or the lack of it. People still pay $100+ to see the Stones, Clapton, Floyd, but who here will pay even $10 to see Brittany? Develop the artists, Mr. RecordExec. Give us something worth paying for.
Judging by the recent stuff that has happened in this month I belive that they are not dead, and are not going to be for quite some time.
They got the forced DRM acceptance by hardware and software manufactures. All they have to do now besides sueing everyone, making asses of themselfs, etc, is wait for this to forced on users, thanks to their new firend Microsoft's monoply and forcing these technologys on us.
I wouldn't be surprised if they or the lables start up/support a division that focuses on the new area of middle management for DRM systems as well as controlling their DRMed media. You will have to go through the middle management to be able to put or offer anything online.
I also see them using the new power the got from the kazza user case. While I don't see them sueing eveyone yet, they could use this threat to stop a lot of ISPs from allowing people to run p2p applications with out the amount of money and time they would normaly have to invest in doing this. ISPs allready get notices by bots about files that their customers have been serving, I wouldn't be supprised that this would give their "stop them" threat more weight and ISPs will be taking action to stop their users.
All in all they are not dead, they just moved else where and gained more power.
Shameless self promotion here but - I had a letter I wrote to the Financial Times published today on this same topic.
Let this be a call to arms for all slashdotters - if you argue the facts back to the newspapers they might just print the other side of the story.
Rosen, RIAA, et al has been very busy lately drumming up press about how piracy has killed the industry and how the poor sound mixers and unknown artists will suffer. I disagree. The record industry exists to solve two expensive problems: distribution and promotion.
Then along came the internet, MP3s, CD-burners, and DVD players. Technology has solved the distribution problem. Which leaves the BMGs, Sonys, RCAs, of the world to do just promotion. Promotion is a far less valuable (and profitable) commodity.
The wired article is dead-on. Piracy may indeed have an inpact. The industry must change or die.
Yay Capitalism! The market decides! The good drives out the bad! Ayn Rand is my copilot!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
well, if you buy concert tickets, then a huge piece of that money goes to fees by ticketmaster and their
price gouging monopoly, not to the artists.
it's getting so if you really want to get the money to the band members, you have to go paypal to a secret account, or RIAA and ticketmaster, and others will get some
they've started sueing everyone. That's a sure sign of a failing business.
(In my Best Reagan-esqe voice:
:)
"Ms.Rosen - Tear down that wall"
I stopped downloading songs when AG and Napster went away....No Linux Client for Kazzaa (sic)...So it looks like if the RIAA want everyone to stop stealing tunes than maybe they can just get everyone to convert to Linux
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
The cost of decent equipment affordable to the serious hobbyist is crazily low, thanks to various economies of scale happily interacting.
...) So it's possible --if you have some musical ability, and live in a country where these optimistic figures apply! -- to record your own Greatest Hits, even package it on CDs, make your million dollars ... except:
... held high positions at the other companies) is involved in the music industry out of interest and some level of appreciation, if not passionate devotion. It just happens that music filtered and packaged that way (bad contracts, glitzy promos, airplay freebies, reviewer massaging) is not the *only* sort of music worth listening to. There's lots of good music available through the music industry system, though. All I'm saying is that if the "industry" dried up and blew away, it would not be the end of *Music* -- just a particular, not-always-good approach to its selection and propagation.
For $2000 (price of a mid-level PC just a few years ago), you can have a decently (though minimally) equipped home studio consisting of a digital multitrack recorder, a passable mic pre-amp and a mic or two. And that's with new equipment, and probably with some change. For far *Far* less you can record yourself by other means (eBay, local classifieds, a few hours of studio time
Being able to *record* decent quality doesn't mean record companies don't matter -- it's just that "recording industry" is a misnomer. The various things which make up that "industry" could better be thought of as a big weird system of legalese + marketing + other forms of influence.
The "recording industry" postures as the *source* of music, and as standing up for the musicians whose work ends up being filtered through it. That might be true of most individuals involved, too; I can't really believe that Satan himself secretly heads all the big record companies, and does it because he hates all musicians. But it's not a secret that the reason record companies, including their high-priced studios and high-priced studio engineers, marketeers, etc, exist is to, hopefully and eventually, make some money.
I'm sure many if not most of everyone below the esoteric upper management level (where people float between companies seemingly on the basis that they've
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Does this mean I'll no longer have to hear about talentless hacks like Eminem?
If so, hooray for the death of recording industry!
--these guys release their figures and are bemoaning "lost sales". What they leave out all the time is that the entire economy (very broadly speaking, there's a few exceptions obviously) is hurting. Many other industries have "lower sales" figures for 2001 and 2002. People are maxed out credit-wise, a lot of folks have lost their jobs and either still don't have jobs or are working for much less money. In the US the actual true unemployment figures are so dismal that the bureau of labor statistics stopped reporting a lot of the details claiming it was "too expensive" to include them in their reports. Well, that's obviously a political decision there.
People aren't buying as much music more from 1-it's just too expensive for what you get, and 2-less disposable income. Music on CDs is not a necessity like the home note, vehicle note, food and utilities are.
As I sit here in Dayton, OH, I ponder why I don't have a radio in my cube and the answer comes to me rather quickly - because truly and honestly isn't a radio station around worth listening to. I could listen to any number of classic rock or 80's radio stations if I wanted to hear the same songs over and over again every day...forever. Or I could listen to the country music stations that play the same crap over and over again (never once have I heard truly talented country artists like Dwight Yoakam or Steve Earle get air time). I could flip on the local "alternative" station but, good God all the songs they ever play are what I call "white boy rage rock" - the sound never changes. It sucks and it's because the record industry essentially feeds them their playlists. There is one great station that's close but I can't get it (WOXY 97X in Cincinatti) here and it's an exception to the rule.
I am beginning to rediscover the joy of music again through digital cable music channels and swapping MP3's. My friend and I have set up FTP servers on our computers and upload interesting music (which we almost always buy) for each other to listen to. We've also swapped songs from vinyl albums or CD's bought in our youth that aren't physically playable anymore. It's not like we we're going to buy that particular CD again but it was nice that one of us had a digital copy of it so we could continue to enjoy it. Both of us like to buy CD's still but if the industry collapses I suppose we'll adapt. Really though, we're doing nothing that we weren't already doing for years - making mix tapes from albums and CD's and swapping them. It's just now we a a higher-quality medium to achieve the same thing. I don't get how Rip-Mix-Burn says "Fuck You Record Industry". Twenty years ago it was Cue-Mix-Tape and we never heard them complain.
In my case, technology is not to blame for my change in listening habits. Technology has been the savior in reviving my passion for music. It has allowed me to listen to what I like. The RIAA almost killed that part of my life because I found nothing worth listening to anymore that was easily accessible. The RIAA and its unchecked greed and totalitarian control tactics is really the culprit for the death of the music industry. At least for those of us that are too old to find Britney Spears appealing or talented.
Over the holidays I bought 30 classical
music CDs in a boxed set for $45. At $1.50
a disc it was well worth it for me to buy
the CDs rather than downloading and burning
that much music myself.
The interesting thing for me was the fact
that someone is making money selling them
at this price. Sure, the music itself is
out of copyright, and the orchestras they
used to record the music were from eastern
europe where labor is cheap, but it
demonstrates how low CD prices can get.
Add back some reasonable royalties for the
writers and performers, and single unit
packaging, and you should be
able to sell CDs for $3 apiece.
Daniel
Just about every complaint you guys have can be solved by going to www.mp3.com.
The music there is free for download if the artists want it to be. If you like the music you can buy an mp3 cd. It plays in a cd player or you can stick it into your computer and play the mp3's. Plenty of music to select from, plenty of artists to select from. The cd's are cheaper that in the store and the artist gets a bigger cut. If someone likes some of the music you only have to tell them to go online and download it for themselves. It supports a broad base of artists and music styles, much more than you will find in the stores and the artists gets feedback from the people that listen to their music not some ad guy so they can stay true to their music.
That's the business model the Slashdot crowd should support. Voluntary opt in by the artist, voluntary opt in by the listener and someone creating the conditions where they can meet. Put in a "real time streaming" feature and the artist can play to the crowd. (I probably wouldn't mind an ad or too popping up on the screen while the music is playing so that the "facilitator" can make a little money. As long as it doesn't interfere with the music playing over a dial up.)
This is what I suspect is going on in the minds of young consumers: "Wow, they sure are playing this new Britney song a LOT! It must be good, I guess everyone else likes it, too."
And the electronics industry's attitude toward the labels is summed up by an Apple slogan: Rip. Mix. Burn. Which, a music executive once told me, translates into "Fuck you, record labels."
They deserve to die if they're this clueless. "Rip" means to take a track off a CD that I bought and paid for and encode it into a format that my computer recognises. "Mix" means re-assemble these music tracks that I bought and paid for into a playlist that I will enjoy. "Burn" means put this playlist of tracks that I bought and paid for onto a CD so that I can enjoy music that I bought and paid for in say a car or portable CD player. How they think that translates into "Fuck you, record labels" is astounding. Actually this music executive's asinine statement should be translated as "Fuck you music fans". Fuck me? No...FUCK YOU! I'm the one with the wallet and I can wait until you're dead and then make sure my money goes to the artists.
You're using her as bait, Master!
nt
In the mid 90's, everyone was predicting apple's doom. There were newspaper articles saying things like "the rise and fall of Apple" suggesting that apple's death was going to happen next year. I think the RIAA is the apple of the mid 90's. Everyone is saying that they are going to die, but they won't. Maybe they will become a lot smaller, but they won't go away. There is a market for high priced CDs even if it is getting smaller. There is some convenience in buying a CD, going home, playing it, and knowing it will work without the use of a computer(although the RIAA is shooting itself in the foot with DRM) What do you think?
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
At the point in time Rosen decided to kill Napster, older downloaders were largely grabbing out-of-print music, while youngsters grabbed the same hits as were on the radio. We didn't like Rosen or the RIAA, but most of us had yet to realize what a slimeball she is, and by association the RIAA. Cars with CD players were still a small minority, and CD burning software and hardware were as yet unpolished. Most importantly, though, was that downloaders were still thinking has nice it was going to be in the future when they could easily and reliably download high quality music, artwork, lyrics, etc, and also access thousand of out of print or difficult to get albums. Those whose main goal was to get free music for the sake of IP theft/piracy were the minority; most people simply thought that although what they were downloading was not top quality, it would get better once Napster went legit.
That was three years ago. Retail buyers of CDs find it even harder to find what they want, and a large portion of this is caused by the RIAA's using Golden Goose economics. E.g, fewer artists, fewer titles, and even pressing fewer copies to save money. At first glance it seems that if you press 200,000 and only sell 160,000, then you only should have pressed 160,000. However, what really happens is that if 160,000 are pressed, then sales will decline to probably around 110,000. Such is the power of having something in stock when the the buyer is there. Likewise, if there are six groups, you might like one; with just three, you probably don't like any.
Just imagine if there was a web site where a user go after discovering a new (to them) group, and click a button to purchase their entire catalogue. Print/burn/assemble/ship. By now everyone can do these steps, while the RIAA members's back catalogues have actually shrunk. In many cases they've cancelled contracts with independents (such as Rhino) and then .... done nothing.
The RIAA's members couldn't, can't and never will even agree with each other on how to do anything that would involve voluntarily giving up one penny.
So, Rosen, now we hate you. Things should have gotten better, but you made things considerably worse. We don't want to give you or your RIAA member's money so you can sue us, buy politicans and judges, and snort coke in your private jets all day (or whatever it is you need the money for).
Shoutcast
Basically, an extremely large list of internet radio stations, most of which are non-profit and done by music lovers, not executives. Simply select a genre and then a station. Listen.
If you hear something you like, the artist and track name are shown in the media player. Go to Allmusic or a similar music database, and you usually get a complete listing of their work.
Download said band's material from p2p and serve. Remember, if you like their stuff, don't forget to buy merchandise and go to concerts.
If you insist on hearing new stuff on MTV and radio, you'll only get the "commercially viable" stuff. That is, Britany Spears.
Considering the remarkable prescience and accuracy of the above predictions, I have *so* much confidence in this one.
Isn't it ironic that some of the same mega-corps that produce MP3 players also produce CD's from which you can't make MP3's?
What they NEED to understand, is that most people WANT to do the right thing. Most people would gladly pay $5 for a CD, even if it only had 2 or 3 songs that they liked. But $15+ is where most of us draw the line and simply refuse. Add to that the fact that (as stated above) you might not be able to use it on your MP3 player, and you've got even less incentive to purchase.
Does Madonna need to get any richer? Can Metallica stuff their heads any further up the RIAA's ass? Remember the days when Rock-'n'-Roll was about bucking the establishment? Now they ARE the establishment.
Watch for new inventions such as "Free Radio", where bands get air time because *shudder* they like to play music. It's not supposed to be about getting rich, it's supposed to be about sharing art. What good is art if it can't be shared?
Maybe they won't disappear in the next few years, but I see more and more younger people (I'm 34) realizing that success isn't all about getting rich. Open Source is the tip of the ice-berg. It may be a long hard process, but in the end, these types of businesses are going to go away.
So many people want to blame Napster and Kazaa for the eminent death of the recording industry as we know it. They may be partially responsible, but the real culprit is most likely Guitar Center.
Think about it. Any yahoo with a modicum of talent can produce a CD that doesn't sound bad. It may not necessarily be grammy material, but the bottom line is that it's entertaining.
There's simply a glut of small bands and artists producing burned CD's for friends. Why spend $10-$15 on a CD when your buddy's giving them away?
And THAT is what the industry is most afraid of. They'll blame piracy all day long and attempt to impose controls on technology to thwart it. What they're *really* trying to do is impose controls on technology to thwart the independant creation of entertainment.
Witness the inablility to export raw digital from almost any non-pro MD recorder on the market. If you could go direct out, than any halfway decent guitar-player/singer could produce an album with NO MIDDLEMAN!
Thank about it.
or that he had died
Pure & simple...the lion goes too quietly and too soon. They will be back with their lawsuits and their outdated methods. Only this time they will have the Industry behind them with machines built encoded with DRM tech. Inherent to the machine at the lowest levels, there will be no way to run your own system without authorization from all of the MFR's and in turn the RIAA, MPAA, and the KMAAYLC (Kiss my ass association you lousy consumer!).
Time to pick up a guitar and make my own...You keep going until you die..."Me".
What do they contribute to the process today?
At one time, it was very difficult to record and distribute music. Letting the listeners know the music was available was a problem, too. All of this costa lotta dollah! An industry was born, they provided those services, and they charged a fee. I don't forget that industry has abused and defrauded both the artists and the listeners; I'm keeping this basic, here.
Anyhow, the services are simply not as precious as they once were. The most difficult part of getting a recorded piece of music onto media is to create the art itself. Today, anybody with a few grand can put together a decent recording studio. More and more, when the band's in the studio the most expensive collection of hardware in the room is their instruments.
Editing and mixing a decent track from the audio your engineer has just captured? Again, the limiting factor is talent, not capital.
Marketing and Distribution? I don't think we need help with that.
The RIAA is doomed because they have no product. They may hang onto some "talent" through old contracts, but I can't forsee the majority of new artists waiting to be "discovered" when they can do it themselves.
Torque, Torque--the Beast needs more Torque.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
If they made CD's $6-$8 apiece I'd buy two a week easily. As it stands now $18 for one just doesn't get me out of my chair to get one. It's been months since I've bought a CD.
I get giddy thinking about all of the music I could buy that right now I consider too expensive to aquire.
Look, when I was in college I was in an a capella group. We performed mostly rock, alternative, classic rock, pop, and jazz. Our group performed all over the country (cept West Coast). We made 3 cd's during the time I was a member. We even paid the licensing fees for the covers we did. Each CD cost (recording, mixing, mastering, printing, distributing, and legal fees) less the 8,000 bucks. Then we'd turn around and sell our CD's for $10 a piece (and each one had at least 12 QUALITY tracks). And its not like our CD's sound bad either. My group has won several national awards for our albums. Most of the college fan base liked listening to our CD's better then the original artists we covered. We made enough money on every CD to pay for most of our big trips, uniforms, and the next CD.
If a bunch of guys doing all this part-time with no monetary backing can do all this why can't a professional artist do it?
The article title - "The Year The Music Dies" is sensasionalist and WRONG.
The recording industry has only existed for maybe 100 years. Prior to its inception, (which itself put more musicians out of work than P2P ever will), it was apparently still possible, over the last 10,000 years or so, to produce music, even without a video, a Billboard slot or MTV.
We're witnessing the beginning of the end of a brief 100-year glitch during which the production and distribution of music came to be dominated by the companies that manufacture and distribute physical media.
I look forward to a future where music isn't chosen and produced simply to permit the recording industry to make the most money possible from as few artists as possible.
Although not a silver bullet, I think it would be wiser for the industry to put out those smaller mini-cd's with several of the artists 'good' songs, instead of the usual dozen which contain mostly filler songs.
:)
I think this model would allow for more releases in a shorter amount of time with less overhead. Kinda reminds me of Linux kernel releases
The Wired piece correctly points to the changing music preferences of people who aren't teenagers. One thing they discover is that music is not bounded by the "popular bands' that many Slashdor readers seem to think equate with all music.
I'm over 30, and buy fewer than a dozen CD's per year. I stopped feeling a "gotta have that CD" compulsion a long timer ago. (Hence, the hundreds of CD's sitting in boxesx in my closets.)
I haven't paid to hear a musician play in anything larger than a neighborhood bar for years. And, when I think of a "band" it's more likely to be a bunch of jazz players found on a Bluenote reissue.
I've played with the p2p networks, found them rather chaotic, and, more importantly, found little music that I'd bother to listen to, on any medium.
I care about audio quality, so I don't listen to music on my PC.
I don't know if my experience mirrors that of others (I suspect it does), but the same thing is likely to happen to the big demographic currently targeted by the music industry.
My criteria for a music distribution system that succeeds the current system includes: distribution of music I like; sufficient revenue back to the musicians I like to keep them in the business; simple and convenient way to locate and acquire music I like; simple means to transfer the music files to a format acceptable to my playback method of choice.
Cost? Less is better than more expensive, but it isn't a primary factor.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
but, even if the article WAS about cd technology dying, you still haven't made any sort of argument. Yes, some technologies survive longer than people predict. But so what? This means that all technologies will survive longer than people predict?? ... and then the telegraph died, killed off by the telephone, and then the cassette tape died, killed off by the cd. And then the phonograph died, killed off by the cd, and the black and white television died, killed off by the color television, and the cave wall died, killed of by parchment.
Corporations are a form of public ownership.
As long as we have corporate record companies, they will seek an organization where they can band together for self-protection.
Not all corporations are unethical and you don't have to let the rest get away with practices that are against the law. I fully expect honest publishers to continue to do what they have always done, cull material and present the best of it. There is value in that trust. The unethical publishers are responsible for DMCA, 100 year copyrights and all that bad jazz that prevents the spread of knowledge. They must be defeated.
Don't knife the baby. Incorporation is a way to sheild yourself against personal ruin for a business that fails. It enables risk taking. It is a govenment intervention in the marketplace that has some use and only goes wrong laws are twisted too far. There's no reason to erase eveything, just the things that are wrong.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
She's WON!
The way I see the "radical change" in the direction of the RIAA is as follows.
It is not so radical. The RIAA has gotten absolutely everything it wants.
Every large CPU chip maker (Intel, AMD, & Transmeta) have recently (in the last quarter) unveiled DRM enabling technologies. Inevitably touted as "security" or "trustworthy computing" features, they generally support the TCPA (Trusted Computing Platform Alliance), which in turn can be used to prevent users' access to portions of their computer and to the files on their computer (i.e. DRM).
With the CPU & chipset taken care of via these companies, all that is left to get on board are the BIOS makers, since any DRM technology is dead in the water if the BIOS doesn't enforce certain rules about what can run at boottime (not to mention run HASH checks, key checks, etc). The support that BIOS makers such as American Megatrends, Inc., have recently annouced for TCPA puts all the pieces for effective hardware DRM in place. Of course, the other portion of the pie that is necessary for DRM is a DRM enforcing OS, but Microsoft is working on that with Palladium.
With all the above, the Hollings bill becomes irrelevant. No GOVERNMENT mandated DRM technologies are needed, because the chip makers are implementing the exact DRM "features" the RIAA has always wanted. Control of individual PC users data will now be wrested away from them and given to the content owners. The RIAA has been given exactly what they wanted and they didn't have to go to the government to get it; in effect, the computer industry caved.
From what I know firsthand, it is clear that a trade has been made. The computer industry will supply the DRM framework if the RIAA (and eventually the MPAA) will provide the content that keeps the PC platform as a viable alternative to set top boxes (i.e. get people using "media PCs").
The other thing that makes this an absolute coup for the RIAA is the announcement that the computer industry will no longer fight the DMCA or support users fair use rights. This may effectively kill Rep. Boucher's attempt to reform the DMCA through the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (the "DMCRA"). DRM with the DMCA still in effect is almost too horrible for me to contemplate.
There is room for disagreement perhaps, but it seems that the computer companies have sold out the American consumer for a cut of the "content" pie.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Didn't you just say the same thing nine minutes ago?
...the music industry?
The history of music in the 20th century really seems to be about young people liking music and the older people thinking it sucks, and going out and getting the music from the bands that they liked when they were young - which anyone can still do.
How many 35-year-olds in the 70's liked the BeeGees?
I actually considered it odd to listen to songs or individual tracks rather than albums. Of course, sometimes I'm just in the mood for one song over and over again, but all of the CDs I have are of albums; buying singles just seems pointless and strange to me. £3.50 for a song, a remix and a remix of the remix? Why?
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
"record companies are detested by politicians (for corrupting youth)"
Isn't it more like:
"record companies are detested by youth (for corrupting politicians)"
FRA: STFU GTFO
Recording is easy. Mailing CDs to people or letting them download your MP3 is easy. But have you ever tried to market an unknown record to total strangers? Good luck...
I hope the music future looks like
www.emusic.com
For a reasonable monthly fee, you can download all the mp3s you want.
No weird player required, no limited plays, just mp3s.
The catalogue is surprisingly good.
It's a shame this service is almost never mentioned in any articles on file sharing.
I subscribe to them for the tunes, and also to sooth my guilty conscience.
Although I'm an anonymous coward, I don't work for them. Honest!
This comment is VERY misleading.
The big 5 record companies DO NOT RUN ALL the Recording Services that artists use.
First point - most good musicians end up having a home studio anyway. A lot of people I listen to (Will Kimbrough, Ani DiFranco, Slaid Cleeves to name a few) are hard working live and session artists and have invested in thier own gear - they are craft workers that want to have control of the final product.
Second point - Each artist does not have to master thier own music - the same mastering services will be available as there are now that the record companies use. Mastering CD's is not a technically difficult job at all - but properly producing a good album is and needs a good team to do it. (I have done this for come college bands so they can send decent demos to promoters and such - I'm no proffesional but the tools available mean I can cut a pretty acceptable live album.) Most of those people are contractors of a kind either independant or attached to a studio like Abbey Road. These people right now are being requested by artists that care about thier music, and will still be if record companies disappear in the morning.
Point Three - you don't make squat from CD sales NOW because so many people take a cut. Yes artists give up 85% of sales, but many of them end up being charged for all the costs out of THIER 15%. If an artist can pay for the album to be produced and the CDs to be created once they have broken even everything is pure profit. Most of these guys make thier break in the live circuit and selling signed cds for 10 bucks at the end is a great way to meet fans, make money and spread the word of your music for those people who didnt make your gig. This is where I get most of my CDs now because its cheaper and the artist I respect gets a bigger cut of the money.
Point Four - Promoters hire and organise concerts, these people will also not disappear. The difference will be the artists will have to have a bit more financial backing to put the capital up, but will get more of the returns. Without a slush fund from the Record Companies in the future you will find promoters being more flexible becasue they themselves will want to evolve and adapt and stay in buisness. I can, and have, see the artists I mentioned above for 10UKP a time in the Borderline in London - that MUST be profitable otherwise it wouldn't happen and I can tell you for certain that no Record Company is involved. I've run band nights myself and we ALL made profits for far less outlay than you suggest.
Point 5 - Yamaha/Korg/Roland arent going to go out of buisness. Big News - artist have thier own instruments these days, even session musicians. Cubase and other such programs can generate very very reasonable sound on commodity PC hardware. Even college bands can afford good mid range equipment these days.
Point 6 - artists are willing to give up 85% of thier sales because if they want to break out of the niche live and touring circuit and bring thier music to a wider audience they need airplay. Try getting that in the US without playing ball with an A&R man. Thankfully in the UK we have more choice with guys like Bob Harris who actually care about the music they play and don't have a playlist and a script.
Point 7 - a lot of independant artists manage themselves or are managed RIGHT NOW by management groups without any affiliation with the Big 5.
Point 8 - the attitude of 'those poor dumb artists don't want to be bothered with buisness' is condescending and insulting. ALL of the craftspeople in the industry from writers to session musicians to producers to sound engineers generally take pride in thier work. Thats why so many of them set up thier own record labels and studios so they can keep control of thier work. A lot of 'real' unmanufactured music is pretty much only distributed by the Big 5, everything else is done by the people themselves. Its not economics, its an issue of control.
Point 9 - computers have brought cheap good quality synthesisation and sequenceing into the homes of college students and teenagers. This in turn has brought down the price of higher level kit. Good studios are now available for hire. We no longer need the massive outlay of money to set up a studio that required a Record Company to do it - indeed these days a large number of studios are set up by existing artist who hire them out to make it profitable. What computers have done is bring down the costs and made good music production available to many many more people. The internet has now offered a distribution channel that was previously only available to a large buisness. Thats the point.
Point 10 - nothing in your post is about supporting the artist. Its about supporting the status quo. I support artists by supporting efforts to limit the massive lobbying for control of thier livelhood that is going on, by going to thier gigs, by buying directly from them.
My hatred of the Recording Companies (NOT the recording industry itself) is not hatred, and nor is it blind. They are just as relevant to the task of getting music from the artist into my hifi as coal mining is to fueling railway trains - namely redundant as things have moved on.
Phone: *rrrrrinnnnggg*
Little Timmy Mann: Hello?
Wired Editor: Umm. Is this the Manns?
LTM: Yes, i'm Charles Mann's Son!
WE: (OMG they must all be dead) *faint*
LTM: *sigh* that was the third one this week! and it's monday, 9am!
(and yes this should be funny. if you don't find it funny just try to think of a psycho with a swastika on his forehead)
Free as in mason.
get an instrument today.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
If the RIAA own copyrights for so much music (is this correct?), and they cease to be, then what happens to those copyright rights?
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
The RIAA has successfully changed the debate on recorded music from:
"What do consumers really want"
to:
"What is an acceptable distribution method that satisfies the RIAA's piracy concerns"
The two appear to be at odds, and the RIAA would rather legislate its way out of the dilemna than innovate.
I've said before the ideal distribution method would be one that would allow consumers to have a transparancy of media that doesn't penalize consumers for listening to music wherever, whenever they'd like.
In otherwords, buying a license to a performance is probably okay, but that license means I get to listen to it in whatever format I want at any time, including improvements to technology without paying extra or "rebuying".
It means that if I want to loan a copy to my friends, I can.
It means that if I want to listen to it in my car, I can.
Everything I can do today, and more.
It seems with the advent of new technology the RIAA members are trying to limit my choices as to how I can listen to the music they've sold me.
Meanwhile, they charge more, and then complain that less people are interested! They even call their best potential customers theives and prosecute them!
The RIAA members seem to be causing themselves their own trouble. I'm sure they'll get it eventually, but right now, they appear to be flopping like a mackrel on the deck of a japanese fishing ship.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Join in the long, long line ready to take a Big Fat Wizzz all over the grave of the RIAA and it's puppet masters. Good Artists will always be rewards. The "Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Men" can rot for all I care.
nobody posted where this came from so I will...
in the early 80s SF writer Jerry Pournelle started using RSN to mean "real soon now", when referring to vaporware.
dunno where he got it from, I think he made it up.
one more fact to fill your brain...
Dinosaurs Will Die by NOFX:
"Sit back watch it crumble, see the drowning watch the fall
I feel just terrible about it, that's sarcasm, let it burn
I'm gonna make at toast when it falls apart
I'm gonna raise my glass abuv my heart
Then someone shouts that's what they get!
For all the years of hit and run for all the piss broke bands on VH one
Where did all their money go don't we all know
Parasitic music industry as it destroys itself
We'll show them how it's supposed to be
Music written from devotion not ambithicin, not for fame
Zero people are exploited there are no tricks up or sleeve
Were gonna fight against the mass appeal
Were gonna kill the seven record deal
Make records that have more then one good song
The dinosaurs will slowly die and I do believe no one will cry
I'm just fucking glad I'm gonna be there to watch the fall
Prehistoric music industry three feet in la brea tar
Extinction never felt so good
If you think anyone will feel badly you are sadly mistaken
The time has come for evolution fuck collusion kill the big five
What ever happened to the handshake whatever happened to deals no one would break whatever happened to integrity
It's still there it always was for playing music just because
A million reasons why all dinosaurs must die "
It is quite true that videos get copied around a lot in Japan. So how does Anime sell at all in Japan? Well one of the tricks is that they load the offical releases with goodies beyond the actual video material. Their philosophy: You can't beat the rampant copying so why bother?
And that is the trick. The video or CD itself can be worth as much work as you are willing to put into copying it. However getting posters, thick supplimental reading material, figurines, extra CDs, wooden cases with the show's logo on it can't be copied. Of course they don't sell releases in giantic volumes companies in the US are used to on mainstream releases but if done right they can make money.
Besides the obvious answer (to the executives' pockets) where is all of the money going? I don't believe that it costs as much to produce an album as it does to make a movie, and the costs to replicate CDs is almost nothing compared to DVDs (which are also cheaper these days).
So the main problem here isn't that people aren't willing to pay for music, it's that labels are so inefficient and wasteful (and corrupt) that they can't produce a quality product for a reasonable price. If they were efficient they should be able to stay rich by dropping the sales prices to $5 per album, or by including a lot of extras, thereby maintaining sales. A lot of people prefer a nice professionally produced disc, but the price is just higher than it's worth.
I'd put that up with "the long boom" as really great Wired predictions.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I think a lot of people have a revolutionary business model in mind for record companies and wonder why the "idiot music execs" don't see it. Well, here's mine :) :
Record companies need to figure out how to sell mainstream CD's at $6. Some places to look to cut costs are outrageous celebrity and marketing expenses, and management size/salaries. $16 for even the best hour of music in the world seems like a lot to me; I think it's hard for many people to justify spending that much when they can download the music free (plus the expense of time & quality). Complete modern and popular albums that are playable on computers at a *reasonable* price could compete with online trading.
the record companies seem like they are getting just a bit smarter. Remember, I said just a bit.
Why, you ask? Because they are starting to give use more content (more INCENTIVE) to purchase a CD. The record comapnies are feeling a lot of pressure from online file sharing, and instead of spending million on new copy protections that don't work, and millions more on lawsuits (mind you, they're doing both anyway -- that's why they're only a bit smarter) they are spending a few bucks (less than 50 cents a copy with production costs, I'm sure) on throwing in the DVD -- A medium not too easily shared through Kazaa or the like.
So if any of you out there are members of the board of directors of the RIAA, I have 2 things to say to you:
Fuck off and go to hell, and
Get Smart. YOU WILL NEVER PREVENT SOUND FROM BEING COPIED. NEVER. What you can do is come up with innovative solutions that make me WANT to go to the CD store and buy the CD. Give me more. I am glad you are seeing the light. Just think of this: Every CD you release has a couple of videos made for it. The production costs are already spent. Throw them on a DVD and add it to the CD. Throw in an interview with the artist. Put in some behind the scenes footage of the studio sessions. There is tons of shit to do. This makes people want to buy your (now less) overpriced crap.
Half.com. All "used", but even if you only buy in "like new" or "brand new" condition, most CD's are under $10 there. Many older ones are REALLY cheap ($0.75) even in those good conditions. I've bought tons of stuff since I discovered them. I've had months where I bought 5-10 CD's a week. Before then, I almost never bought one. When the price came down for me it both made it not worth it to dig around on P2P for those songs and made me want to buy more. For me, it's not worth it to have to dig to find all 14 songs on a CD when I can have it delivered to the door for $5.
I find that at $5, I'll probably buy 5-6 discs, whereas at $18, I won't buy even 1.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
On another note, what is your sig a reference to? I feel like I've heard it before, but what the hell?
Despite their dominance, though, the majors are merely duchies in large media empires with other, often conflicting, priorities.
Last year, the Big Five together sold about $20 billion worth of music. Meanwhile, Sony alone saw about $42 billion in electronics and computer sales. If Sony wants to sell MP3-capable cell phones - a big thing in Japan and potentially worldwide - how much attention will it pay to Sony Music's protests?
For the first time, I truly think the music industry might not survive as is, because there's more money in hardware if the software is free. (Note this is IBM's business plan in a different context).
I was never big on "information wants to be free" or "the artists will revolt" analyses, because frankly executives and shareholders want to get paid, so they'll pass whatever laws they need to bully their way to the money.
But, if there's more money to be made with a different model, well, they're ya go.
-- p
First, downloading from Kazaa isn't theft, piracy or copyright infringement if you're using it to find tracks to an artist that someone recommended to you. If you download an entire album or ten, YES, that's wrong, but I regularly track down (with varying success) artists I've heard about to try to find 3-4 songs to see if I like them. If I like them, I go buy the CD, if I don't I delete the tracks.
As for no alternative, check out CDBaby when you have a moment. 30,000 artists, artists get everything except $4 an album, and more variety than you can shake your booty at. No contracts, no abusive clauses, and the artists set their prices, not some record labels.
Peace.
but the recording 'industry' is not the RIAA. The Recording Industry is also CDs sold out of the back of a punk band's van. the RIAA is a collection of nothing but labels. death of labels is different from killing off a whole industry.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
unless i've had it inflicted on me in a supermarket, i haven't heard any of his music, but i am familiar with his name and am aware that robbie williams is one of the current major names in the pop music pimping business...
...and now i feel a certain amount of affection for this top-selling music prostitute who has come out and openly stated that piracy[sic] 'is great' and also that "There is nothing anyone can do about it."
yet another sign of the music industry's impending implosion?
Just because you can make available music online doesn't make it any cheaper to produce or promote it. A professional music studio still costs thousands of times more than the instruments and equipment a band uses to play in a local club. No one's going to vist Joe Band's web site either unless they've heard of them. All the stuff traded on Kazaa is stuff the RIAA took risks on to make popular. They spent the money and are getting screwed. Slashdot is against the RIAA because they don't like the RIAA resisting while they're screwing them.
Vote for Pedro
I wouldn't class the following as Top 40 or rap
Slaid Cleeves
Will Kimbrough
Beth Neilson Chapman
and yet I bought albums from these people on the strength of the songs.
Its not as simple as album/song - some albums are great in thier own right, but it has to be said most of these are classic albums because you couldn't skip down the tracks on an LP so you crafted it with more care. On a CD many people hit random - you still care (if you are good) about putting together a complimentary set of tracks, but maybe not as much as with an LP.
Good music is a richer experience than that - I don't want anyone dictating what I can and cant do.
It annoys me immensly that tracks I have on tape I can't get on CD because the album has been 'deleted'.
It annoys me that radio will play one great track for weeks before I can get the album to listen to the other good tracks and hear it in context.
It annoys me that having bought a collection of music that I can't select and group tracks that fit my musical taste and reflect my personal expression onto a CD for me to listen too because any attempt to do so is regarded as criminal.
Real musicians also do gigs - and they don't trot out the albums track for track. They play songs that are meaningful to them, explain what it means to them, why they wrote it.
I listen to songs, and studio albums, and live albums, and big concerts and small gigs and watch music videos... its all part of the richness of musical experience that is just enjoying music.
I must say I agree with the above post. I came to the same conclusion several months ago. Fortunately, everything I could probably ever want to do with digital media can be done with today's modern (and unrestricted)hardware. What that in mind, and casting a worried eye towards the future, I recently built myself a very fast rock solid AthlonXP system (for practically nothing, as hardware is so cheap these days) and stuck it in a closet. Maybe it'll come in handy on some rainy day.
You know what? If Rip/Mix/Burn is the equivalent of "Fuck you, record companies," then I'm all for it. A couple weeks ago I sat in front of my computer with the lead singer of Dandy Warhols, whom I had just met. I didn't know much about their music, but he wanted me to hear their popular song. So we went to his band's website. Then we went to the record company's website. Then we went to mp3.com. Then we tried altavista's mp3 search. Finally we found a crappy copy on gnutella but only got 3/4 of the song. If RIAA had its way we wouldn't have even found that. Now, this is a band with a hit song and a major label contract. Their stuff is played on KROQ and MTV (at no cost to listeners, I might add). There seems to be something supremely ironic - and patently absurd - about the lead singer not even being able to download his own music to play for a friend. It was pretty clear that he didn't think that I was ripping him off, or that if it were easier to find his music on the web he would be less popular. It was also clear that as the artist he had little control over (and perhaps little interest in controlling) the way his music is distributed.
As long as Kazaa is up, no one's going to buy DRM media, so DRM is a mute point for music anyway. DRM does not stop Kazaa or block mp3s. Without legal help in protecting their copyrighted material, the RIAA is doomed since the average teenager either doesn't understand or care about copyright. Most adults aren't any better
Vote for Pedro
No different that, say a decent program, or any piece of information made available on the net. Here's a little test for ya...
Try creating a simple program for, say, either Linux or the Palm platform. Making sure that the program is something useful goes without saying. Submit it to freshmeat.net and/or plamgear.com. Watch people start to download your program from both sites. Then take a closer look at your web logs and see that your referrals are now coming from other sites, in addition to freshmeat and palmgear. Making the program USEFUL and something that PEOPLE WANT in key here.
Starting to get the picture?
They simply lend the artisits the money to hire the studio,nusicians, producer, mastering and then they take the maoney back from sales. If anything is left, the artist may get some pennies. If not and it's a multi-record contract, the artist starts the next record in the hole.
This is slavery
The point is that corporations tend to move at a glacial pace and tend to ignore technology and change, often at their own peril. Those that make this behavior a bad habit, go extinct or end up having to donate to charity just to get their domain name back.
The recording industry has wasted the last 3+ years fighting file sharing when they should have been figuring out how to embrace it and adapt themselves to the changing environment.
My feelings were that they should have tried to one-up the technology (i.e., offer music albums on DVD which would include lots of low-cost filler material that fans love--interviews with the band, live performances, commentary, videos, etc.) That would make the store-bought medium far more desireable to the consumer and the mp3 downloading experience would pale by comparison. In having done that, they could have relegated Napter and all its offspring to the status of free advertising. Instead, the recording industry chose (like McDonalds) to ignore the inevitable.
Even if they choose to change their ways now, I doubt they could make up for the lost time. Good riddance to them. I hope they can't. I'd like to see one good, hard-to-ignore example of technology roadkill for other industries to contemplate. Hopefully the corporate world will pass by the recording industry's dead body and learn a lesson from it.
Probably not, but I'm an optimist.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Today's SMH online has a story about the first fall in CD sales for a while, the story blames piracy and DVD sales. For once the writer does not seem to lay the blame with downloaders, but rather with people ripping multiple copies of a CD ("backyard piracy").
| softball team for the apocalypse | holding tryouts now |
who after ralizing they had an internal conflict with devices and content essentially is saying 'devices win' our content is just a means to sell hardware.
Get talent, have a big studio promote your music under the terms of a contract. Fulfill that contract, then go on to release music independently
The problem is that most such contracts last about seven albums, and many performers who write their own music don't have eighty songs in them. The other problem is that the label can refuse to accept any given song or recording "for any reason or no reason", locking the artist into the contract with no way to fulfill it.
Will I retire or break 10K?
All of these models would produce fewer global superstars and more locally successful musicians. We might not see another Michael Jackson circa 1982, but we also wouldn't see another Michael Jackson circa 2002. Not a bad tradeoff.
take this brother may it serve you well
YYYESSSSSSSS!!!!
It may be a little early to crack open the champagne, but I'm ready to celebrate evolution in action. Record companies served a purpose when the technology to make copies of records was expensive. This service is no longer necessary, or even beneficial, to musicians or the public. The promotional services that record companies still legitimately provice could be replaced by a promotion industry. Hopefully one that's based on sane business agreements, rather than the take-it-or-leave-it usury model which the record industry chose to follow, and which is finally biting it in its big ugly ass.
What I really hope happens is not just the extinction of record companies, but that other businesses will take this as proof that the path to long-term survival lies in serving a purpose, not in forcing the public to support your business model.
Sony for a long time was trying to stiffle the free use of MP3s in their consumer electronics. Their MP3 players require that you encode the CD with their own DRM enabled ripping software. Many of their CD/DVD players for a long time didn't support playing MP3 CDs. I haven't looked at any Sony equipment for a long so I don't know if they have or haven't changed their policy.
Becuase Sony is worried about me possibly not buying a CD because I downloaded it on Gnuetella, I don't buy *any* Sony electronics that I can buy from competitors:
PC- Apple/Dell
Computer monitor -Apple/Samsung
TV- Toshiba/Panasonic
MP3 player- Apple/RIO
Speakers- Boston Accustics
CD player- Samsung
powered speakers- Roland
Tuner -Panasonic
Video Game console- Xbox
2.4Ghz telephone -panasonic
car stereo- kenwood/MBquartz
Cell phone- Motorola
But I did buy the last Michael Jackson CD from them ; )
....who said that push technology would revolutionize the Web, and that the 'New Attention Economy' had arrived. Sheesh. I believe that the recording industry is going to fundamentally change. But it won't dissappear...
this is slightly off topic... but i seem to remember in the 80's recording companies saying that kids taping songs off the radio was killing them. sales were down... then they figured it out... most music in the 80's sucked (the cure and bowie rock).. thats why noone was willing to shell out for it... in the 90's music changed and noone bitched... the scene is stagnent again... record companies won't give you a shot unless you sell out on their tried and true path... and we are stuck in that same rut... of course i'm not buying cd's.. they all suck... but damn strait i will download the one song i like off a cd that i NEVER would have bought anyway... don't call that a "loss" you never woulda got that money. the only musicians this affects anyway are the filthy stinkin rich ones... any real musician is so exstatic that his music is being spread about they would take the free advertisment and beg for more. now what was the point of this.... oh ya... DIE RIAA. die a horrible screaming death.... thank you for enduring my rant.
I've decided to start a new recording label to see what happens. The plan is to release music under a Creative Commons license. Music will be released for general use & copying - just call us first if you're going to make money out of it as we may want our cut.
:), etc. Maybe you get calls to go on tour. Maybe you don't.
You'll be able to buy CD's if you want or download lower quality copies of music from the site. If you want to rip & burn & share the music - go for it. The more people doing it, the better - get our names out there.
The end goal is to do something like the open source/free software movement with music. Get money from somewhere else while making your music. If you get popular, maybe you get calls asking you to write stuff for movies, parties, elevators (god forbid!
Sorta means that the people who are producing the music are those who love it enough to dedicate their evenings, weekends and general spare time into its creation while working somewhere else for a living. I don't know about you, but to me those folks usually put out music with more spirit and feeling because it's a passion, not a living...
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
That's only naming three. Sure, they were from the 1960s, but people are still trying to approach the wonderful sound of those albums today. Sgt. Pepper was recorded on a FOUR TRACK, buddy. That's the truth.
Another thing: this 16 track machine records digitally, so there is no generational loss when bouncing from track to track. A 16-track hard disk recording portastudio like that one could allow for some amazingly complex mixes.
I chose to point out the self-contained unit rather than a PC or Mac running ProTools or Vegas or whatever because anyone with even the slightest bit of studio experience would hit the ground running with it. The digital audio workstation programs require a bit of a learning curve for non-geeks. Like my husband, who is a musician but not a computer geek, for instance.
The reason why DAT got neutered in the US was that the RIAA feared the possibility of a digital portastudio. They didn't think of the potential of hard disk recording, flash RAM recording, and the CD-RW. When the RIAA whines about "piracy," translate it as "we don't want indie musicians to be able to put out pro-quality music." That's the REAL issue, folks. The Five Families of the Record Industry don't want competition from the Great Unwashed. Surprise! It's out there.
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
I used to have the misfortune of working for them in a blue collar capacity. They're a crappy employer too. Consequentially, I go out of my way to buy from their competitors. The fact that they are an RIAA asshole is just another reason to avoid them.
... competition from other forms of entertainment such as video games and DVDs.
e) The overall decline in importance of music in our culture - it's just not as central to popular culture now as it was in the 60s.
That's how it should work, if we were living in a sane society. I've downloaded music from the web sites of some of my favorite singers and bands, too.
But those bands post soundtracks on their web sites specifically for people to "try before they buy."
It would make sense for bands or distributors to make music available for sampling online. But most of them don't, as far as I know. And I've never been comfortable helping myself, even though I am a customer and would buy something I liked.
I've checked out a number of alternative sites; a lot of my favorite music isn't something you'd find at CDNOW. :) I'll definitely take a look here -- thanks for the pointer!
Catherine
...following statement:
Really though, we're doing nothing that we weren't already doing for years - making mix tapes from albums and CD's and swapping them. It's just now we a a higher-quality medium to achieve the same thing.
Lars Ulrich of Metallica, media whore during the whole Napster ordeal, did the same thing when he was young. He used to make mix tapes of Euorpean metal bands (not available in the US at the time or VERY hard to get) and trade them to friends in the Bay Area. Did he ever once pay royalties to the bands he made tapes of?
It's because of his hyprocitical actions during the Napster ordeal that I lost all respect for him and Metallica.
Dolemite
Save the World! Use a Quote!
full ACK.
/.
v e/ index.html?pn=1
I have (just, few hours ago) - via german geek news ticker heise.de - come to know British music industry has set up a site to "protect their content" and educate the consumers (to pay, what else?.
http://www.bmr.org/campaign/
And they have a nice site with links "Click to join the debate",
http://www.bmr.org/campaign/
but, as usual they got it all wrong:
i answered but it's an email and i suspect they will have to ask their bosses whether they can publish this.
So i'll publish my reply (hey, they asked!) on
#email-start#
Concerning the artists i agree almost totally with James Bostock.
Looking to the opportunities for "consumers" like me (who just has not enough time to make the music i'd like to hear myself) i am convinced there will be many ways to find published music which is interesting to the likes of me but cannot be published the way the business runs nowadays. Think of those musicians with a more eclectic taste, those who even now like old styles or just the "bygones" who are not selling enough to interest even a small label.
Thinking of the music industry i hope they will continue the path they have taken. In this case they will destroy themselves and rightly so:
http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/lo
To be polite: there may be something to be invented, thought out or else which could win back the respect the music industry and all copyright sellers like them have destroyed in the recent years and are further destroying any given day. But i don't think anyone can convince me to do such a job for them.
Doc Searls and his friends have done a great job in this direction:
http://www.cluetrain.com/
#email-end#
(Any native speakers of english or american english always welcome to direct me to be more polite)
"Writings of mad Lawyers! The Lawyers upon you" - old dwarven alarm cry.
Mudhoney were given $20,000 to record a song for the 'Singles' soundtrack for the movie of the same name. They promptly recorded it on a 4 track in a few hours for $800 and pocketed the rest.
omico--
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I agree. But there is still room for consumer protection on the state level -- California-style (note the irony). Remember how California has the entire car industry by the throat, because their strict emissions standards set the bar for the rest of the country (unless car makers want to design, devlop and build California-compliant models, which would cost them millions of dollars). All that needs to happen is for a large and progressive state -- say, NY, MI, or IL (or a less progressive and large state, like FL) -- to pass a consumer rights law saying that any product shipping with DRM technology must allow that technology to be completely disabled by the user if the user so desires. Constitutionally feasible and legally impeccable, at least as far as I can see. It would never pass at the Federal level (and might not be Constitutional there anyway), but the states, or a state, could totally do it. State reps, at least outside of CA, are much more independant than national reps (i.e., Hollings (D-Disney)).
Thoughts anyone?
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
"Holiday" came before "Virgin".
"Everybody" was her first single.
Oh to return to the good old days of vinyl...
Goodbye, RIAA, goodbye, Rosen, we won't miss you.