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RIAA, This Is Earth, Please Come In!
ccnull writes "You might remember George Ziemann as the musician who found his own music banned from eBay because it was recorded on CD-R. Now he's back with a new rant about the RIAA's statistics, which blame piracy for the dire condition of the music industry. What's to blame? Price hikes and fewer titles. The latest rant (including analysis of the RIAA's own data) is mainly circulating by email, here's a readable link. (As an interesting side note, Ziemann says that songs are really just ads for CDs, and thus should be freely traded.)"
songs are really just ads for CDs, and thus should be freely traded.)
most assuredly that is the truth. i have bought tons of cd's after getting a few mp3's. the RIAA needs to understand the marketing potential in filesharing......jsut my thought, at least
xao
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
Another thing I am tired of hearing people complain about is the cost of CD's. Sure, they can be considered expensive. I agree that the cost of replication is way lower than what they sell CD's for. But replication is probably the cheapest step of the CD-making process. Next on the list is the actual studio time spent recording the CD. But the real money-burner is promotion and distribution. Thousands, hundreds of thousands are spent on replication and distribution and marketing just so regular people (including the non net-savvy) can hear about new music. So I think $12.99 is more than fair. Even $14.99.
Not to say the RIAA is always right, but if music pirating wasn't making the record companies lose money, why would they be so against it? If they lost no money, it would be a great marketing scheme. But they lose money. Not as many people buy CD's.
mund freud.
Excuse my French, but why the fuck doesn't anyone ever talk about the economy?
It seems to me that the RIAA's sales drop also seems to coincide with the dot-com bubble burst, the Terror attacks, and the lack of sunsequent economic resurgence.
I know that, as a resident in New York, freelance work has shriveled up -- if I hadn't had personally satisfied past clients who wanted to work with me again, I would have had to move. Quite frankly, we just don't have money to piss away on CDs right now, even if we didn't want to boycott the assholes at the RIAA.
I just want one reporter to, like, ask them why they think the economy has not had a deleterious effect on their business?
All this bullshit about MP#s being an ad for CDs, and so forth is just that: bullshit, IMO.
Two things are going on: (1) the economy sucks; (2) CDs are becoming obsolete.
Either way, the RIAA has no argument.
gameDB
People don't realize that durring the explosion of radio the recording industry went nuts as well, citing bad sales and tried their best to destroy radio entirely. Once they embraced it, however, they got richer and richer and richer...
But the issue to them isn't really the money that they claim they lose; it's the control. You see the recording industry is trying their best to keep us all in a world dominated by the MTV, not the MP3. In the world of MTV they can rely on certain things that will sell, they can even go so far as to control fads to control what will sell. With the MP3, that's all out of their hands.
Ofcourse the first record company to figure this out gets the capitalist prize!
You can read the details at their website, but what they did was allow authors to voluntarily put books in the "free library" and they seem to be happy with the results. Oddly enough, people read the free eBooks, and wind up either buying the paper copy or other books from the author once they determine they like it! Surprise, suprise... There's also a good article comparing what Baen is doing with the record industry also.
I'll leave the "is downloading illegal" argument alone, but part of the problem is that the music industry has failed to introduce any notable download service to compete with what consumers have come to expect as a way to obtain their music.
... yet here the consumer is telling them that they want the ability to download electronic copies of the songs. Out of fear of what the impact of such a service could mean to their bottom line, the music industry has failed to answer this demand ... and instead, has reacted with lawsuits. The result -- Consumers continue to download, since there's not a legal alternative answering their desire to get their music online.
I'd guess that music companies currently spend millions, if not billions of dollars, trying to figure out how to get their music in the hands of consumers
I'd guess that if the RIAA's strong-armed legal tactics were introduced side-by-side with an affordable online music-download service, they'd see that a large population of users wouldn't mind paying for a well-marketed digital distribution service. Right now they'd rather spend their time trying to get the genie back in the lamp instead of cashing in on what the consumer is telling them they want.
The reason it costs so much is demonstrated by a simple equation.
12.00
-.25 (artist royalties)
-.50 (Blank CD)
-.25 (To make up for piracy loss)
______
$0.00
What? The math doesn't add up? But it worked for Enron.
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Support Indy Music. Buy
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Music now competes directly at retail with DVDs, music videos, and video games. Most stores that carry any of those carry all of them.
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Most of the radio stations in the US are now owned by Clear Channel or Infinity Broadcasting, which play the same old music over and over again.
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Everybody has already converted from analog vinyl to CD.
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We're in a recession. All discretionary spending is down. Cars and air travel are doing much worse than music.
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Concert attendance is down about as much as CD sales are down.
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Rock music tanked a while back, and nothing since has a similarly broad appeal.
With all this, it's surprising that CD sales aren't down something like 50%. We may yet see that happen.Hate to interrupt here, but I'm George Ziemann. I'd like to correct a small error in the original post. What I said was that mp3s were ads for the actual recording. They ARE inferior because they only contain 10 percent of the original data. Maybe YOU (that's a very non-specific "you") can't hear the difference between a 128 bps mp3 and a 44.1kbps 16-bit recording, but I can. And it doesn't matter if you think it's immoral or not. It's my music and I should have the option of being a total moron and giving away crappy copies of my music for free if I want to. I can reach a global audience at a cost of $20 a month. Once I've made a CD, the mp3 costs ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to produce. As a result, I no longer need a record company. Record labels were invented to help the artist connect with their customers. Now they merely stand in the way. We don't need them any more, unless they successfully criminalize the sharing of mp3 files, in which case they gain complete control over my ability to make a living as a recording artist. Again.
The RIAA isn't really stupid per se. They're just faced with the following scenario:
...And... uh... There's Internet Piracy! Yes, that's it.
Mr. Big Bucks: My record sales are slipping. Make them better again.
RIAA: Well, there's a few things affecting your sales. There's your own high prices and lackluster quality...
Mr. Big Bucks: Are you planning on getting paid?
RIAA:
Mr. Big Bucks: Guess which one we can do something about.
RIAA: High prices?
Mr. Big Bucks: You are clearly delerious from the lack of money in your pockets. Here's a few million. Feel better now?
RIAA: Oh, we go after piracy?
Mr. Big Bucks: Excelsior.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.