Slashdot Mirror
Don't Sever A High-Tech Lifeline for Musicians
Licensed2Hack writes "Janis Ian, who provided this slashdot interview last September, has written this editorial in the Los Angeles Times. Janis says, "After I first posted downloadable music, my merchandise sales went up 300%. They're still double what they were before the MP3s went online." And the RIAA's stated goal in preventing this type of activity with their lawsuit against Verizon is to increase sales..."
I'm all in favor of free downloads (not only do I believe in it, I practice it!). But to be fair, her sales probably don't reflect the average struggling not-so-famous musician since she's in the spotlight because of the whole mp3 controversy. I bet if she hadn't come out about mp3s her sales wouldn't be doing any better.
Of course, I just realized, her sales probably went up before she even made any public statements about it. Hmm, interesting.
1) people sample music
2) they like it and buy the cd
3) profit
At the moment, most people only have dial up modems. A dial up user can download an individual song, but it is too difficult to download a whole album without alot of time and effort. A dial up user will download a single Mp3 from an album, and then go out and buy the album - it's kind of like free advertising. The RIAA knows this. But the RIAA is thinking ahead.
In a few years time when broadband is standard, that same user would instead download an individual song, like it, and then download the whole album in less time than it takes a dialup user to download a single mp3.
Song-swapping encourages album purchases because it's still too difficult for many people to download whole albums with their slow connection speeds. This will change with the arrival of broadband. And when downloading a whole album becomes dead easy, album sales will fall off, alot.
This piece really hits the mark in a very roundabout sort of way. The RIAA is not, by any means, interested in "sales" or "artist's livelihood." What the RIAA is interested in is keeping a very tight rein on what is seen as cool, what is heard on the radio, and what makes their profit margins exceed their own expectations.
RIAA wants to stop peer-to-peer through actions like its lawsuit against Verizon because those actions threaten their stranglehold on commercial music. As I've often said before, plenty of people think that radio and music in general truly suck in these days and times (how many people do you know that haven't bought a "new artist" cd in the last five years, perferring to spend $11.98 on "Skynard's Greatest Hits" or what ever?)
sig not found
I agree! If it weren't for sites like MP3.com, my band Flailing Kitten would have never gotten off the ground; the 'industry' would never accept it. :) The RIAA is afraid of losing control of music in general and the profits that follow; that's what's got them so scared.
Couldn't artists who use online file sharing as a form of advertisement sue the RIAA for curtailing their activities?
I know the law in the US allows them to disable file sharing computers without worrying about damages, but would it protect them from damage it causes other people with secondary effects such as that?
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
Is accuse someone of pirating music, and the "machinery is set in motion."?
Well, I have a short list of people who I believe have been pirating music:
Hillary Rosen
George W. Bush
William Jefferson Clinton
Gandhi
Carrot Top
Ann Coulter
Jesse Jackson
The Dell Dude
mathew lesko (The question mark guy selling the book on how to get free government money)
Rick Fox (from the Lakers...)
Since the article obliquely discusses the death of radio and the rise of the MP3 (or other music file format) as a distribution method, it seems another progression might emerge.
At one point it seemed everything had an AM radio built into it - lamps, planters, kitchen appliances. You can find these kitschy, unenlightened objects in thrift stores nowadays, or tucked embarrassedly in people's basements. A while before that everything had a lamp built into it (culminating in that grass-skirted hula girl lamp you just can't get rid of), and before that it was a clock (you know you've got one of those elephants too). Whatever technology is just past the cusp seems to get built into everything as a cheap add-on (as long as it's simple enough, anyway - making toast, for instance, is a dedicated task).
Now people are asking for MP3 players in cellphones and PDAs - is this the kitschy inclusion of the future? Will alarm clocks and stoves and fridges and (dare I hope) toasters of the future all include a de rigeur network interface with an IPv6 address and an MP3 codec? It seems likely they will.
Could I interest anyone in some toast?
If you're interested in free music, go here.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
"After I first posted downloadable music, my merchandise sales went up 300%"
The entertainment industries are controlled by people so blinded by greed that they are completely incapable of comprehending any business model that does not revolve around iron-fisted totalitarian control of their product. The list is lengthy and has been repeated many times:
Jack Valenti wanted to outlaw VCRs, saying they would destroy the movie industry. Instead, they have produced billions in profits.
The MPAA claims that they are currently suffering enormous harm from the trading of movies on the Interent. In reality, box office receipts in 2002 were up 11% from the previous year and the number of movie tickets sold was the highest in 50 years.
In 1981 the RIAA was making the same claims that they are today about lost profits due to "piracy". Back in those days, CDs, Personal Computers and the Internet didn't exist. The villian, according to the RIAA, was cassette tape recorders. People were allegedly taping their friends records instead of buying them. But studies showed that people who owned sophisticated home recording requipment spend 75% MORE money buying records than people who didn't.
The list goes on.......
The greed and stupidity of the enterntainment industry goes on....
The irony here is that time and time again the entertainment industry has had to be saved from itself.
They want to make sure independent artists don't start getting too big for their britches and therefor don't need the help of the RIAA or the big 5 recording labels??
Case in point....Ani Difranco has sold nearly, if not MORE than 1 million albums....ALL ON HER OWN!! And that's just ONE WOMAN from that musical hotbed of Buffalo, NY *sarcasm*!!
Imagine that, if you multiplied that more than 100x with talent from around the world! The labels would not be able to compete......
Anyone care to put forward some suggestions on how a musician can distribute their work, receive payment, hold copyright and get people to license their work? I have a close friend who has recently put some of his work closer into the spotlight online (but still very far from it, in a very targeted place) and his bandwisth limits loom if he were to actually promote his music whatsoever. He's considered dumping lower quality versions (the present audio is 256kbs mp3) into p2p apps but is unconvinced that it is a good thing to do. He's had a number of offers in the past few weeks for deals for 1 or 2 tracks (people haven't seen or heard much of his music but he's been writing for over a dozen years). I'm think he should charge a minimal worthwhile credit card charge for his work, allowing people who buy return for up to a year to download new audio he writes, offer standard deals for record labels where they can download lossless files and run with them. Of course I want him to use free codecs, and I think he might be convinced (on the possibility of hearing from fraunhoffer et al demanding cash). Any ideas the best way to go about price, bandwidth and the artists interests? What about "simpler" things like hooking up a shop to downloads securely (and simply for the end user) without having to go to your bank to setup a merchant account and without having to loose nearly all of a reasonable sized transaction in costs?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
This should come as no surprise to those of us who actually pirate MP3s. Yes, I have 60 gigs of music on one of my hard drives. No, I did not pay for most of that music. However, if it hadn't been for Napster and its successors, I wouldn't have bought most of the 150 or so CDs I own. Most of my friends download music from the Internet, yet I know of no one who has stopped buying CDs just because they can get everything online. Instead, the Internet serves, as it does in all aspects of its use, to expose people to new things--and then, predictably for denizens of a consumer society, we buy those new things.
For that matter, it should come as no surprise to people who know the history of VHS. The movie industry was up in arms when tape recorders came out, saying people would no longer go to movies because they could just pirate a friend's copy. Today, most of the movie industry's revenue comes from sales and rentals of video tapes and DVDs. The VCR caused a boom in the movie industry, and if it weren't for a) the current economic slump and b) the RIAA's stubborn opposition of new technology, P2P would be causing a boom in the music industry.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
I believe CD sales have to be maintained by offering added-value. For example, the latest System of a Down CD did not have a cover booklet, but rather had embedded the pictures, lyrics and credits on the CD itself, only to be unlocked by an application downloadable from their website.
...
....
That's added value. The CD itself has more information and value than the collection of the same songs on mp3.
An album is not just the music that it has; it's a whole piece of art, expressed in the music, in the cover art, in the packaging, in the booklet, etc
Such albums would make me want to buy the CD instead of just having the mp3s
If I work for a union and the union is offered a contract that will significantly increase my salary, but also reduce the number of union employees, it is very unlikely that the proposal will be accepted (even when the staff reduction is done via attrition).
Similarly the RIAA's interests have nothing to do with artist's best interests, so why the surprise? Artists (like misreprested union employees) need to realize when the people they pay (very well), are no longer working in their best interests and move to find new representation.
Home Automation & Linux -- now I know I'm a geek
The only way we are going to get things to change is to tell the artists directly what we think.
We should take the time to contact our favorite artists and let them know that we are not going to buy their music until we can purchase it in a format that we want. Let the artists themselves put some serious pressure on the recording companies.
I personally have not bought a CD since 1996 despite wanting to buy a number of almbums. For me, CD's are simply not worth their current prices. The latest moves by RIAA have just hardened my resolve.
When I can buy high quality MP3's or FLAC encodings online, for a reasonable price, I can easily see myself spending a couple thousand dollars buying the music I want. Until then, I simply don't listen to music. I won't download it because I don't believe that is fair. I will, however, exercise my rights as a consumer not to purchase their music.
-sirket
I'm not quite sure it's so difficult for the folks on /. to see why the RIAA is against MP3s, file sharing, etc... The whole reason record companies exist is to burn CDs and advertise. It's actually quite easy and inexpensive(Meaning not M$, but K$) to setup a nice recording studio and then burn A CD. File sharing takes care of distribution and the relitively cheap cost of advertising on a website takes care of well.. advertisement.
The problem is that the recording companies can see a "free market" in the future, which means their relitive profit will probably come close to zero.
In Ellen Fiess-ese here's the senario:
"So the RIAA guy was like, 'Ah, like, I was doing my homework, and like,,, if these, like people start using mp3s, they will, like, stop buying CDs from us
So I was like Nooo Waaay!, so I made the switch from opressing music artists to suing and getting court orders to ransack small buisinesses trying to establish file-sharing on the internet.
I'm so totally pleased in my desision to broaden my circle oppression, cause, like, I feel so much more totally secure.'"
-- All your sig. are belong to us
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
There's a running list of probable music pirates being created here. Each person listed has admitted to music piracy, and is offering themself to be taken to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
To: spamvictim@aol.com
Subject: MAKE EASY MONEY AT HOME
After I first posted downloadable music, my merchandise sales went up 300%. They're still double what they were before the MP3s went online.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
www.machinaesupremacy.com allow people to download their music for free. although they have no cd's out atm I know if they did I would gladyl buy it and support them. but thats just me I find by sampleing the music I am more apt to buy it.
Exactly, but have you considered the possibility of a world that has free sharing of music, causing people to be exposed to more artists and genres, resulting in very few artists who get multi-platinum status because people wouldn't be fed music which is deemed "good" by "The Man". People that get multi-platinum would actually have to be THAT GOOD to earn it, not have the best marketing people.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You are thoroughly confused. The RIAA is an association of music publishers: Sony, Vivendi, etc. No actual musicians are involved. The article you cite is about ASCAP and BMI.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If you think the RIAA is worried about all these people downloading songs for free and pirating music
Their NOT.
Free downloads can actually help sales in the same way that radio does. And the pirates who have 1000's of mp3's probably would not have paid for any of that anyway.
So what are they worried about?
Distribution. Their greatest fear is that artists will start releasing music on their own, side stepping the recording industry and their slave like contracts. Once an artist can release music (without the record company) through the Internet. The record companies will cease to exist. End of story
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Like Britney Spears complaining in an RIAA ad that downloading music is the same as stealing a CD from a store?
Ian's story may be anecdotal but it entirely agrees with any economic analysis of the situation.
Retailers have a rule of thumb that cutting the price of an item in half increases your market by a factor of (IIRC) four - until it's free and everyone wants one whether they need it or not.
If you allow people to download your music for slightly over the cost of providing the bandwidth and overhead (i.e., you still profit), people will have no incentive to get it from a competitor (unless that competitor has better marketing - which is an expense he has that the original artist does not). This is basic economics.
The difference is, you don't have a middleman - the record label - charging you for the production of your product, then wasting money on payola, then cheating you on the royalties by claiming X% "breakage", etc., not to mention that you are not supporting THEIR profits instead of yours...
It's common sense that an artist selling their own product will make money if they can do a reasonable amount of marketing to come to the attention of the people who might like their work.
What WON'T happen is that artists will make millions of dollars because some corporation paid some radio station operators in cocaine and hookers to play those few songs the corporation decided to promote.
It's laughable - first the record labels screw over Metallica, then Metallica thinks they're owed millions of dollars, then they sue their fans to get it...
This is what happens when the vast majority of domesticated primates are clueless about economics...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
As a musician and recording engineer, I can attest that, yes, it isn't cheap bringing recordings to market.
However...
What we're really talking about here is the notion that one must fork over a monetary sum and wait (maybe minutes, but sometimes days, sometimes years, depending on a recording's availablity and rarity) to hear it. P2P cuts the wait and the inconvenience of "real" shopping, and is (currently) free.
The price of a CD is justified through the reward of owning a physical media that is as close to the original master as is possible, given mass-production's capabilities. Fairly-priced CDs ($5-$15) are a good bargain in this regard. If you know that a recorded work is required for your library, then ONLY a legitimate copy of that thing, with full audio quality, is an acceptable solution to that need. MP3s won't cut it.
MP3s are merely "near-CD" facsimiles of an actual, valuable thing. They, in and of themselves, have *NO* value. Even the highest quality MP3 files suffer from degradation, and can't be replicated without further degradation. Without hard-media backups, they are prone to instant and irrecoverable loss or corruption. They provide none of the tactile rewards of real media (quality artwork and printed liner notes are, indeed, worth something) and are even incapable of replicating the CD listening experience in certain cases (where tracks flow one song into another, seperate files for each track result in gaps).
Some might say these are minor things, but I feel strongly that no one would ever settle for having MP3s of a work that they truly love.
So the real question is: why should people feel pressure to pay for the privelege of auditioning works that they may not actually desire to have in their physical media library for the long term?
I don't think they should.
Readers can audition nearly any book at their public library without a financial transaction taking place. I feel that P2P applications are roughly the audio equivalent of public libraries, and, as such, are beneficial for the public's musical education.
As a musician with works in release, I do not fear downloading, because anyone who would download my record and be content with that piss-poor representation of my work wasn't going to buy it anyway. But, perhaps, through having heard it in it's entirety, they might learn to love it and need to purcahse it. Or, if they don't like it, they might recommend it to someone who *would* like it, and they might purchase it.
And another thing: if we're going to be upset about P2P music trading, why aren't we upset about used CDs? Artists don't get a *dime* from those transactions, and those transactions lead to the purchaser actually obtaining the thing of real value - a physical copy!
Yes-s-s-s, that is the key word....
You might know all the Pink Floyd hits from Careful With That Ax Eugene to the more recent masturbatory epics but for an 18 year old, that's a whole new world.
I was listening to a Yes live video (the one with the young girls in the symphony orchestra) with an older inlaw and our 15 year old niece who is a budding musician came down to the basement and went Wow!...what is that song?
"Uh.....its called Roundabout and Ive heard that song about as often as Freebird and hotel California"
What's Freebird she asked?
When her friends came by to check out some of my 70's stuff recently, it was an amazing revelation, for them and me. Songs that I had OD'ed on were new and fresh to them.
Mind you it helps that these kids were all interested in playing music so their tastes were not limited to the prefab top 40 stuff.
Hell, if you want to play music and get to hear
the Allmans Brothers Live at the Fillmore East for the first time, it will mark you, no matter when it was made.
zack
Not to nit-pick, but Janis is a woman.
Recently, I attended the Consumer Electronics Show and Janis was on a panel with Dan Gillmor from the Mecury News, Steve Wozniac, Scott Dinsdale (a weasle from the MPAA), a mega-weasle from the RIAA (the "little pischer" from Courtney Love's rant), and someone from the HRRC. Janis daid a lot of interesting things, including talking about a blind kid who had his computer wiped out by a copy-protected Celiene Dion CD.
Anyway, Dinsdale was asked about Jon Johansen and the right to watch legally purchased DVDs on the computer system of one's choice. He replied (I wish I had this on tape) that just because someone was stupid enough to use the wrong operating system, they didn't have the right to watch anything they wanted. Yes, I'm serious...he called Linux users "stupid". This should be on the recording of the CES "Supersession on Digital Downloading" of the 2003 CES.
To repeat, a legally authorized representative of the MPAA called Linux users stupid. This is true. This is NOT a troll. There were several hundred people in the room.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I mean, thousands of slashbot geeks who would never even consider giving an old-skool female folk artist a second look probably became instant fans of her just for visibly being on the white-hat side of the whole MP3 debate.
It's kind of like how we were all willing to forget how much we hated Wesley Crusher when Wil Wheaton turned out to be "one of us." Our objectivity has been skewed a little regarding public figures who turn out to be good eggs.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The RIAA companies "own" lots of artists who are not big right now. Only so many artists can be "big", and the recording insutry has made the deliberate decision ot only push the "big" ones.
Now I'm pulling numbers out of my hat below, just to make a point. But I'm sure youcan find real numbers to back up the argument.
The recording industry decided that since people collectively will only be buying 300 million CDs per year, then if they only run 30 marketing campaigns to push 30 artists, they would still sell 300 million CDs - but spend a heck of a lot less than they would pushing say 3000 artists.
The problem which they are unable to recognize is that not everyone likes the 30 artists that are being forced down our throats. So they are not seeing the 10 million CDs per artist that they expected. But since nothing is being done to promote the other 2970 artists, they might just conceivably want to see some additional sales - but that would involve online distribution of their music.
But wait, their music is "owned" by RIAA members.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
As a musician I have a need to play. It's something I just have to do and will always have to do. It doesn't matter if any one hears it or not. It's in my head and I have to find a way to get it out.
As a music fan I have a need to hear the voices in the heads of other kindred spirits who I can connect with via music. I'll get a hold of that through what ever means is available. Most of the music in my collection is special order. There is, make that was, a great deal I was never able to aquire until the internet united us all whether it be purchasing cds directly from the artist's web site or just downloading a mp3.
My personal feeling is that the RIAA is fighting to save itself under the guise of protecting it's artists. Technology has made the old system ( as ineffective as it was ) obsolete. Artists can now deal directly with their fans no matter how distant they may be. The Industry tried to ignore the technology, but the musicians and the fans created the system they wanted instead. Now the Industry is on the outside looking in.
If it were not for mp3's and the internet I would have really starved last year, and certainly would not have gotten as far with my musical project as I have.
In 2002, I received about $4000 in paypal donations from complete strangers who happened to stumble across my site. Whilst this was in no means a real salary, it kept the wolves from my door and the taxman fed.
It sickens me that the RIAA and the greedy fat record executives are trying to prevent anyone who does not produce 'commercial music' a chance to live off of their talents....
-- 7 string electric violin + live loop samplers
Downloadable music doesn't increase sales. It doesn't decrease sales either. It regresses sales to the mean.
For unsigned artists, it increases sales because they get global exposure which they can't get through some other medium.
For big name artists who are already known worldwide it decreases sales because the people who might otherwise knuckle under and pay will just download instead.
The people who argue that downloading increases sales for *everybody* are just trying to find arguments to support their desire for free downloads. Likewise, the people who argue that it decreases sales for *everybody* are just trying to protect their business.
Now obviously attacking the format, be it MP3 or whatever makes no sense at all. If the bigtime copyright holders want to persue illegal copying that's fine, but attacking P2P systems and the file formats makes no sense.
As much as many don't like it, the old bit about "when you're downloading MP3s you're downloading communism" has a kernel of truth to it. Socialist systems often regress people to the mean. Usually, the mean ends up lower too although command economies sometimes distribute resources towards one particular aspect of society and exceed the mean of that particular aspect under capitalism (see, Sputnik, Cuban Health Care). In a sense, the MP3 people have risen up and redistributed the wealth from large copyright holders to computer companies and smaller artists.
This presents me with a moral quandary. On the one hand, I dislike the Leftist revolutionary attitudes that some have. I don't believe people can justify the taking of something just because they think they should have it. On the other hand, the manipulation of the government by the corporations offends me equally. A pox on both their houses! When one side buys the law, and the other side breaks the law, the framework of society begins to unravel.
Our laws are supposed to be formed on the basis of civilized debate, not the outcome of a slugfest between thieves and scoundrels.
So for now, what very little music I buy, I buy legally; I haven't downloaded music very often, and when I did I felt like I was being a hypocrite, since I have argued in favor of IP rights. Of course, I'm mostly in the "radio is good enough" category of listener. If I were really, really pasionate about music I'm not sure what I'd do.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
But to be fair, her sales probably don't reflect the average struggling not-so-famous musician since she's in the spotlight because of the whole mp3 controversy.
;) and the record companies would be making less money than they would like. There would be more musicians being able to do what they wanted for a living because of the masively improved margins available.
:D
The RIAA's interest is it's members: Recording companies not artists or music(except when it's convinent for buisness).
Their current way of doing business is largely based on publicity and they have lots of control over the media they use.Competition from independant artists via the internet is not in their interests (obvious parallels here with M$), so to eliminate this competition they are using the indirect tactic of trying to lock the use of the net down by lobbying for apropriate laws.
If a larger chuck of commercial music was done by artists independantly, online, then there would be more focus on that group from the public - it would become a decent sized market (bazaar
So just like M$ they are trying to use their lobbying power (Money without ethics..) to preseve their buisness model from it's impending doom.
The standard of music should go up too