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Gabriel and Eno Start Digital Music Artist Union
An anonymous reader writes "We have long heard stories about how the record companies cheat their own artists with audit techniques that would make Enron blush. They are already applying the same techniques to the revenues they draw from digital download sites like Apple iTunes, which is one reason many artists have refused to allow their music be sold through them (those who can control it at least). Looking to take a stand in the digital music arena before these practices become status quo Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are starting a new union the "Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists" or MUDDA. Gabriel, co-founder of OD2 - an iTunes competitor - has that company as a first source to negotiate terms with the new union."
This sounds all well and good from what's in the article. But what are it's chances for success??
I'm not bashing it at all, I'd really love to see it succeed.
So where are Prince and Bowie? The four of them are the big names that are getting into this in a very constructive way and I think that they would be a powerhouse of influence.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
No offense to Eno (whose music I like) and Gabriel (whose music I'm indifferent to) fans, but in order for something like this to be a success, for better or for worse, you need loud participation from musicians who haven't plateaued caereer-wise and are bigger-name "pop" musicians.
The former provides more financial clout and the latter more name recognition and clout. Of course it stands to reason that wildly popular pop musicians are likely to think that the current system works since they're benefitting from it (despite the longer-term consequences) or lack the business savvy or "political" interest to do so.
But I don't think a poorly named initiative by two musicians whose careers, however successful, are largely over and done, is going to do much, since these artists aren't as much of a PR or business influence on the industry. But I do applaud the idea behind it, and think that they'd probably be better off funding a PR campaign hilighting the RIAAs bullshit accounting and police-state tacticts towards old ladies with iMacs.
When performers no longer need the distribution and advertising services they provide, RIAA and the big labels will go away, or at least shrink to manageable size. Until that time, they will continue to prosper and pursue their agenda. As long as they effectively control distribution the situation will continue more or less as it is, a stalemate between producers and consumers of media. Who better to hasten their demise than the artists themselves?
The thing I think is missing from the whole power-to-the-artists movement is an open source project for a good site. There are now a number of sites offering music online which have a more direct connection between the artist and the fans, but they all work differently, and most of them are terribly unusable. It would be really neat to have a bunch of sites with a solid back-end, matching interfaces, and site-specific skins. From there, you could have cross-site searches and accounts.
The ideal for a music label should be that someone with well-defined taste in music finds artists they like and tells consumers with similar tastes about them. Being a good person to run a label doesn't have anything to do with being good at programming or interface design.
Okay, let me get this straight: iTunes is charging what, something like $ 0.90 per tune, so that the numerical equivalent of a 13-song CD is going to cost you approximately $13, i.e., the same you'd pay for it at my local discount CD store or Wal Mart ? And you get to pay that same amount for a product with no liner notes, no art work, no jewel case, and in an inferior audio format ? Now, I realize that you have the ability to download whatever and whenever, but does that really make up for losing those amenities while continuing to assist the expansion of the industry's already enormous profit margins ? Remember, when you buy this stuff you're still supporting the RIAA and the MPAA, both of which are aggresively anti-privacy and anti-choice. In the RIAA's instance they are also very aggresively anti-music, being primarily interested in the continued careers of their singing cash cows (Rod Stewart, Elton John, Celine Dion, Carlos Santana, Britney, Madonna, and the rest of that crapazola crew).
(rant-on)
I'm reminded of my chain-smoking friend who insists he's a Democrat, yet with every pack he smokes he's contributing to the success of the Republicans he so despises. Say what you will, but in a corporate plutocracy (i.e., the new USA) you vote with your purchases, not your ballot. Organizations such as the RIAA are also behind the continuing assault on the public domain and the further restriction of your rights of ownership. The only way to stop such people from acquiring more power over your life is for you to *stop giving it to them* !
(rant-off)
Btw, I'm obviously not very savvy re: iTunes so I welcome any and all civil corrections to my assumptions.
The Practices they use and their Business model will be their own demise. We are starting to see fewer and fewer new "Hit" Artists evey year.. How long will it be before these arists come togther when thier Recording Contracts Expire and Form their own Internet Related Distribution system That doesn't bend them over and Comepletely Circrumvent the RIAA... The RIAA is shouting at the top of their lungs Its not about the music.. Its about money... Which for the most part alot of artists do not see it that way.. Money is secondary to the music.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Don't forget Magnatune.
[...]
"Gabriel said he could not understand big music stars that advocated free music downloads while accepting big cheques from record companies at the same time.
"After all, most artists depended on record sales for up to 60% of their income, he said.
"Only superstars could afford to give away their music for free, because they had other opportunities for making money."
MUDDA is doing their members a disservice by entrenching them in the 20th Century model. DRM and paid-only downloads just simulate the bottlenecks of distrubtion on physical media, with somewhat lower costs. The artists with "other opportunities for making money" need to be superstars to succeed in that model. But with free ($ & liberty) downloads, artists can achieve that status by aggregating widely distributed niches around the Net, at any time after the release (not just in the first few weeks). And the same infrastructure offers a level playing field for selling into those "other opportunities", to fairly compete with the superstars. The music consumer culture is changing with P2P and Net community/distribution - wearing the same T-shirt as every other metalhead is out, and obscure references to flashes in the video pan are in. MUDDA is better positioned than the old record weasels to ride that zeitgeist - if they squander it, they'll drag down their member artists while they fiddle on the deck with the rest of their Titanic industry, as their fans race for the lifeboats.
"The time I like is the rush hour, cos I like the rush
The pushing of the people - I like it all so much
Such a mass of motion - do not know where it goes
I move with the movement and
- Peter Gabriel: "I Have the Touch", _Security_
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make install -not war
Am I the only one who sees the strong similarity between Britney Spears and Brigitte Bardot, the early 1960's French movie star?
Every year Britney looks more and more like Bardot.
It brings to mind the observation by Camille Paglia that the entertainment and movie industry recycles the same 'personae' every generation. The same faces, bodies, character types keep reappearing in mass media with different names.
He seems to be talking about some "mid-level" artists or something. Most "unknowns" make almost nothing off record sales -- they make far more on live shows. Many of them can give the music away for free because it increases their listening audience, who go to their concerts and/or buy their merchandise (including paying for a better quality CD than downloaded mp3s). There's also the "older artist" category like Janis Ian who also get the same increase in audience & sales by giving music away. So it's not just big stars.
One man's trash is another man's treasure.
Any filtering based on simple voting will be subject to the problem known as the tyranny of the majority. In fact, we are suffering that exact problem under the RIAA system today where $1 == 1 vote. All the mtv-brainwashed masses have a lot more dollars put together than the rest, which is why the market is dominated by pretty-boy-bands and tits-with-mouths soloists.
The marginal cost of disk space is so small as to make it effectively free. Bandwidth is almost as cheap as disk. So trying to use physical constraints (aka economics of scarcity) as a way to deal with the complexity of the content isn't a very good approach.
First, although you didn't directly comment on funding, let me get that out of the way: Charge the customers an "infrastructure fee" that covers maintaining the company, the basic facility. Then charge a per song fee that accurate reflects the marginal cost of disk space and bandwidth (i.e. really tiny) and then tack on top direct revenue to the band again per song as decided by the band itself. That should cover your costs and scale as large as could ever be needed.
Filtering or how to seperate the wheat from the chaff without throwing the baby out with the bathwater: The solution is collaborative or community filtering. Through player plugins or worst case, manual registration, you can set up a feedback system that makes recommendations by comparing each person's likes and dislikes with all other customers. Kind of like a way more sophisticated version of what Amazon does when you look at product X and at the bottom of the page it says, "People who bought X also looked at or bought A, B and C." There would be a couple of knobs to tweak about how tightly or loosely you want to track other people with similar listening preferences to avoid getting too insular. The more people contributing their playing habits back to the system, the wider ranging and more accurate it will get.
There is already one such system in existence today, for free. I did a quick search of feshmeat and couldn't find it, but if anyone else knows the links to projects like this, please follow-up with them.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It really bothers me that we're supposed to have to cross-check the music we like to make sure it's not on some RIAA member list before deciding if we should purchase it and enjoy it.
This runs counter to what music's all about in the first place. It should simply be heard and enjoyed.
There is lots of great "underground" music out there, and always will be - but it takes a certain amount of effort to dig through it to find what you like. Some people really enjoy the digging part itself. (Many people take a certain pride in listening to music that they know most other people won't have heard of yet. Maybe they just like feeling more musically "elite" by listening to something unique? Or maybe they really enjoy finding that awesome, previously unheard of, track - buried amongst a bunch of 2nd. rate garbage?) Whatever the case though, these people are in the minority.
The majority of people are more "casual" music listeners. If it's not presented right in front of them with next to zero effort on their part, they won't go the extra mile to find it. That's why the "major labels" have importance. (Don't forget - there's also a group of people who like knowing they're enjoying the same music that the majority of their peers are listening to. It gives them something in common to discuss.)