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Time to Face the Music
Mortimer.CA writes "The Toronto Star has an article up about the ailing recording industry with some possible scenarios for solving the problem(s). Choice quotation: 'We must ask ourselves what Elvis would do to stop the theft of music via the Internet, now so widespread and so brazen that it makes the Baghdad looters look like trick-or-treaters.'"
Give me a service which has nearly all the songs p2p networks has (ie the big 4 labels and all the smaller ones) for betwen £5 and £10 per month for nonDRM's downloads (ie in mp3 or ogg format) either in unlimited ammount of downloads or limited - 50 songs per month??? and i will pay now
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
-the record companies will stop promoting anything that might be experimental and push the brittanies and N'sync's in their quest for dollars.
/end cristal ball
-by not signing new bands to restrictive and costly (to the bands) contracts, more players in the indie scene will appear, more artists will take control of their own destiny
-CD's and mp3's will become promotional material available on artists' websites (already happening now) for the real money making venture - touring! (which is definately the place to hear your favourite bands)
Clear Channel and Ticket Master will be the corporate pimps in this new business model
One would almost think market economies would tend to lower the price of items as distribution costs fall. Last time I looked, the cost of CDs were rising. (That was a while ago...because I never even bother looking at CDs any more.)
The pirating is just a side show. The real problem is that distribution and production costs have fallen through the floor and the industry has not responded to the market dynamics. Instead they cling to copyright laws and monopolistic tactics to maintain artificially inflated costs of their goods.
If you really asked the musicians...most would love the idea of a dollar CD. A dime a song.
The CRIA's complaint is that someone is robbing the plunder house.
BTW What's this noise about antiquities? Try pumping an antiquity in your Surburban and see where it gets you.
Jeez, get a sense of proportion. The lawlessness in Baghdad is causing human suffering, death, and may yet lead to a real war. The lawlessness in the IP market is leading to lower revenues -- maybe. Only someone who's at the center of their own moral universe would try to compare the two!
'We must ask ourselves what Elvis would do to stop the theft of music via the Internet, now so widespread and so brazen that it makes the Baghdad looters look like trick-or-treaters.'"
Considering Elvis was the "bad-ass" of his time, he would probably be trading music with the rest of us. I don't know about you, but not all the Baghdad looters are bad, mostly the ones stealing from the hospitals and muesums that are bad, but even then you can't say trading music is worse than stealing needed medical equipment that would have been used to save lives. The only thing I'm depriving someone by stealing music is buying that brand new porsche to add to the collection, fucking Hillary Rosen.
One day history books are going to record how the american music industry burried itself by treating its clientel like criminals. Let me ask this though, why bother saving the music industry? The meat of the music industry isn't the companies distributing the recordings, its the artists performing the music. If the Internet enables people to get the music directly from the artist, and low cost recording equipment and instruments allow the artists to mix and record their own music, what the hell is wrong with that?
The RIAA is an obsolete business, thank god we didn't have the United States postal service going after the Internet because Email was causing them to lose postage stamp sales (they almost did). Someone came up with a better way, and you can't fight that. No matter what you do, the RIAA is going to be obsolete in probably 10 years.. The question is how much damage are they going to cause on the way down. Companies like the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Sony, that think they can control the consumers make me want to change my profession from an engineer to a lawyer so I go after these damn corporations myself..
Ugh, infuriating..
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Why is there so much discussion over this so-called "theft" we're experiencing on a massive scale? Regardless of what you think, sales aren't declining because "music sucks" or because the RIAA is recieving some karmic death-blow.
The music industry is starting to have problems because their method of distribution is outdated. The problem: digital music has become a huge online phenomenon, people want "formless" content that they can transfer to any media they see fit (hard drive, cd, memory stick) and the RIAA has so far been unable to provide consumers with that product.
The solution: consumers take matters into their own hands, downloading mp3's and then burning, ripping, copying, etc. The reason this has become such a huge deal is that the RIAA as a sort of oligopoly is having trouble coming to grips with the notion that the public will dictate the distribution methods and prices on its own terms. Like the "black market" writeup on K5 a month or two ago, we're seeing a system completely devoid of that which the public wants - on-line distribution at a signifigantly cheaper price than that of a CD (keep in mind blank media already benefits the RIAA).
Until the RIAA stops thrashing about in this all-out effort to dictate to the public exactly how, when, and for how much (no matter how inflated the price) they can get content, they're going to continue to have problems.
No morality, no ethics, just the facts. 'Nuff said.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
The bad news is that sales of CDs are in a freefall, representing a $250 million loss over the last two years.
OK, so we agree sales are falling. Is it any wonder? Having heard the fifth cover version of "Spirit in the Sky" earlier and myriads of other "artists" releasing other people's work, I begin to wonder if the media have woken up to exactly who is the thief here.
Wake up call: There is a global recession, or something that very much looks like one. The music industry is being hit by a downturn in spending in general, just like everyone else. Not only that but they are exacerbating the problem by the broadside by turning out crap, stuff we've heard time and time again, manufactured groups and cover versions that shame the originals. Why are they making less money? Doesn't take a rocket scientist, does it?
Why wasn't there all this hue and cry when twin tape decks appeared on the market? Because they weren't as visible as the publicly accessible Internet. Album and song sharing is not a new, 'net age problem. It happened all the time pre-Internet. Anyone who says they haven't copied a tape or recorded from the chart show on the radio is either very young or a liar. The only reason this is gaining public airtime is simply because the 'net, being free speech epitomised, is an easy target for any group of totalitarians, the RIAA included.
Yes, BTW, I buy my music, when there's anything worth buying. I always have done. The problem is, the interval between my purchases has increased. This is not influenced by finances or that I can download from the 'net. Simply put, the amount of quality music available has declined. Not only that but the implication that I am a criminal simply because I am tech savvy and trying to blame me and worse, imposing a tax on me due to their own faliures and shortcomings doesn't exactly endear the music industry to me, making me think a little more carefully about what I purchase since my purchases may support this idiocy.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
Explode on contact?
Indeed!
And this article talks about how Canadian radio is lame. Why is it lame?
Canadian radio is lame because the Canadian government has protectionist policies which force Canadian radio and TV stations to air 40% Canadian content. This is, of course, because we don't want to lose Canadian music because of all those evil American musicians brainwashing our kids...
Unless I'm blind and missed it, the article didn't even mention Canadian content laws.
The problem is that there simply aren't enough musicians in Canada who are capable of going head to head with the products of a very similar culture, 10x the size, next door.
The net effect is that, to achieve their Canadian content requirements, Canadian broadcasters have to play the same songs over and over and over. And then there are the marginal acts which really aren't good enough for the prime time but are being played anyway... The Tragically Hip are a good example.
If any American wonders what radio sounds like when you start letting pseudo-socialists control your airwaves, hit Kazaa and grab the Tragically Hip's Bobcaygeon. I'm a classic rock fan. The classic rock station in Toronto, Q107, wants to play Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. And that's what I want to listen to. But they're forced to play Bobcaygeon because of draconian laws which try to make me like bad music.
Canadian artists can sink or swim on their own. Alanis Morrissette, Burton Cummings and the Guess Who, Celine Dion, Shania Twain have all made it big in the US. Why? Because of Canadian government protectionism? No... because they're talented.
Beyond that and without protectionism (not to mention record company pressure, but we'll leave that for another time), radio stations should be playing what the broadest cross-sections of their audiences like. Of course that will result in more listeners and therefore more ad revenues. It's in the stations' interests.
The Tragically Hip should be working at the Wendys on Division Street in Kingston. The fact that my government has cost broadcasters their audiences weakens the music industry on a whole, disgusted consumers, and wasted billions of tax dollars rescuing struggling "artists" from the hell of working day-jobs in fast food while honing their skills playing bars at night.
"Paying your dues" is apparently too inhumane for the Canadian government to allow. Paying my taxes makes me want to see my government overthrown.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
And try to be nice for once instead of just flaming. Face it, this guy is just a journalist reguritating stuff he heard, and even then, he said a lot of stuff that most of us can agree with:
Radio is boring and homogenized, and it is hurting CD sales.
Labels should be more artist friendly
Michael Green's 2002 Grammy speech was annoying and pointless. (Even Janis Ian ripped on it.)
Decent recording can be done with reasonable studio costs (He even mentioned the new White Stripes album only costing $10,000 :-) )
Indie labels treat artists better than majors
Labels are a) greedy and b) want control of listeners
This guy is already halfway in our camp. Don't flame him, just educate him a little. In response to his claim that "sales of CDs are in a freefall", point to the recent Christian Science Monitor article we all read that said many indie labels have profits increasing 50-100% a year. Show him that the CDBaby sales figures keep getting better while the RIAA whiles that sales are disappearing.
He talked about musicians
Give him the names of acts you know about that get no radio play but who still can make money selling music and touring without a contract.In short, instead of yelling at him, give Peter Goddard a few more data points to use in his next article. This guy's views are not that different from most of the people here.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
OK, so I'm an old fuddy-duddy who remembers the days of vinyl. When I was a kid I got an old tube-type pre-amp that had an unusual dial on it. It selected the record de-emphasis to use for each particular label, and it had 19 positions. That's right, each record cutting company had its own ideas as to what the "best" pre-emphasis curve to use to reduce SNR without overcutting the record. (Yes, this was in the days of 78-rpm records, although even the early 33-1/3-rpm records were cut using proprietary filters.)
One of the reasons the Recording Industry Association of America, a.k.a the hated RIAA, was formed was to reign in the madness and develop some sensible standards for recordings. The work of the RIAA was to reduce the cost of both recording and playing back recordings in a number of formats: vinyl, magnetic tape, and at one point magnetic wire. By reducing the Babel, makers of cartridge pre-ampliers would need to put in less circuitry, makers of record-cutting lathes could provide the "standard" circuits for each speed/format, and the listening public didn't have to mess with that 19-position knob anymore when changing records.
The RIAA did such a good job that it put itself out of its original business, setting standards. Much of the standards work is now done by the developers of media: Phillips for cassettes, and I don't recall who brought us the digital compact disc. The DVD is pretty much out of RIAA's hands, too.
Interesting that the RIAA and many computer engineers have something in common -- a lack of need for what they do...
US Radio sucks ass as well. Clear Channel controls a huge percentage of the radio market and they play the same so called music ad-nauseum. I say let the recording industries die! Put the power back into the hands of the musicians. People will continue to make music whether or not they get paid millions to do so. If the recording industry gets out of the way, we may be able to sling all this over hyped corporate shit into the can. Avril, Shania, and Celine are exactly who I'm talking about here. If I have to hear any more of their stuff I'm going to jam pencils into my ears until I'm deaf.