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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)."
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
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!
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.
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!
Totally agree. I mean look at DVD sales. People can grab movies off the internet just as easily as they can music (granted it does take longer) but look at the huge amount of people buying DVD's and DVD players. or look at the success TV shows have had selling Season DVD's, nothing is cooler than watching your favorite show at 720p resoultion.
Why can't artists do the same? Of course you could point out that producing something like a 'music-dvd' would cost alot more than a pure vanilla music cd but the potentional for profit has to be higher.
Why can't the music industry sell us cool packaged deals like dvd's with all sorts of little 'extras'? I might actually pay for my music then... as it is now I see no point in buying a 20$ CD - not to mention I own most of the CD's I would ever want to own, I find very little new music now adays that I would consider spending money for.
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/
Cheers, AC
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...
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.
"..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
The Canadian DVD version of Trainspotting is a DVD on one side, and an audio CD on the other. In this case, the audio CD doesn't contain anything interesting (ambient train sounds?!?), but the idea is sound.
To gloat? <wry grin>
The RIAA has made enemies here, and not many friends anywhere. To quote the inimitable Molly Ivins, "My mother may have raised a mean child, but she didn't raise no hypocrites." I'm not an expert, but from where I sit, it looks like the recording industry has jacked up prices unconscionably, reduced the range and variety of music available to the rest of us, and driven independent distributors out of business. I think the recording industry as a whole has become a bunch of parasites, and (worse) parasites that are killing the host.
The wierdest part of this is that I've never downloaded a single illegal song, never did Napster, never installed any version of Kazaa, don't even copy my own CDs. I don't think it's right to steal -- even from thieves. I certainly don't think it's right to steal from artists who create the work I love to listen to.
So I listen mostly to my old CDs these days. I don't think I've bought a dozen CDs in the last three years, and most of those have been from small, independent artists who produce their own stuff.
It is frustrating to have no alternative, though, to being ripped off myself, doing without, or starving out the artists and other good guys along with the parasites. I just picked the least objectionable of those alternatives. :/
So I admit it's nice to hear that the parasites are in trouble. :>
Catherine
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
Historical analogy game:
The record labels limit distribution just as the hand written books of the monks restricted the printed word until the printing press
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
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.
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.
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."
full ACK.
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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.