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
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.
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
one problem:
yeah, okay, 'most people' have modems.
but a lot of people in the 'young adult' (I mean recently adult, not teenager) category are in college, and most colleges have massive broadband penetration (almost everyone around here off campus has broadband, and EVERYONE in the dorms with a computer has it). That compounds the 'it's too hard to get a whole album' theory.
I can hop on windows networking and find giant massive piles of whole albums to listen to without even 'downloading' a thing in the classical sense.
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......
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
First off, nobody's listening to you because you're posting AC. Anyway...
There has always been an element of people who never bought their music for as long as home-recordable media has been available. My dad used to borrow LP's and record them on reel-to-reel, and, later, I copied friends tapes on cassette. The important issue here is that the vast majority of people out there (you know, the non-Slashdot folks) who aren't going to copy music. Sure, some of them will, but you'd be surprised how important that pretty little book that's inside the CD is to people. They may download enough to make their own CD, but they won't have THE CD.
If the pretty CD booklet isn't enough, then do what groups like Audioslave do and make extra songs available for download to those who own the CD. Either way, the overwhelming majority of folks who buy music are still going to buy it. That is, as long as the product isn't crap and they don't feel like they're being ripped off due to overly-inflated prices.
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
I'd admit it were pure, adulterated nonsense if it were 45-year old mullets buying all that fucking Skynard. But it isn't. It's 18 year-old kids stuck in a "retro" trip.
Why retro? Because their own, mass marketed, youth culture sucks ass. They'd rather feed off the ghosts of the past than starve with the shades of present.
While there are a certain number of people who reach a point where "nostalgia" becomes important to them and "new and shiny" is just not acceptable, I don't think that it invalidates my argument at all. After all, there is plenty of corporate music out there that is "new" that appeals to the "old" tastes, eh? And where are the sales of those groups? Down in the gutters with all the other new artists.
sig not found
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
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.