Slashdot Mirror
Australian Record Industry Has Best Year Ever
Hecatonchires writes "ARIA (Australian Record Industry Assoc.) had their best year ever, but are fudging the figures because they run counter to their anti-filesharing arguments."
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Just because sales are going up doesn't mean that file sharing is helping sales. Remember the "correlation and causation are different things" idea slashdotters are always bitching about? I know many people who download instead of buying, but very few who buy more because of their downloads.
ARIA, Australian for cover up. ...
In all seriousness, how far off is this is the US?
I can feel it. An assortment victories like this, summed up over time will cause even contented 'joe six packs' to take notice.
Granted, the ARIA is fudging the figures to jibe with their party line...but I expected that anyone.
...their distribution-enforced monopoly is slowly slipping away.
Mirror here: http://www.silenceisdefeat.org/mirrors/www.smh.com .au/articles/2004/03/28/1080412234274.html
Seriously. No one calls "patent infringment" "patent, stealing", no one calls "trademark infringement" "trademark stealing".
Copyright infringement isn't stealing either, though they can both be independently illegal. The difference here is that the copyright holder doesn't lose his rights. His exclusivity is infringed upon, but nothing is taken.
If people are going to insist on analogizing it to something else, I would suggest TRESPASSING. If I put my foot in your yard, I've trespassed. But you still have your yard; you just aren't enjoying it exclusively.
Anyone who calls copyright infringement "stealing" has an agenda, and shouldn't be trusted.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
aria for the record industry.
It's nice to see this. What the fuck is wrong with the large record labels that they can't see past their own fat asses and USE the new technology? With the popularity of iTunes and other online music services you'd think these labels would be clamoring over each other to offer up something similar. Buy the album at the store for $14, or buy it online for $9 and burn the damn thing yourself?
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
File Sharing Increases CD Sales
Is it in any way related to the recent broadband deployments and the legislative changes in Australia? Could any Australian posts some statistics of P2P networks traffic in Australian backbones? It could be interesting if that could be used as an argument that file sharing (or "piracy" if you will) might be actually good to artists all over the world. Very interesting indeed.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
This is kinda obvisous... the total music industry growth p.y. is like 10% (extrapolating numbers from 1988-1998 to now), but CD sales is up only 5% world wide. Of course file sharing is hurting them. Not that I care...
Listen now, ye yellow-livered one-eyed pirate scum ! Ye thought ye had em down, didn't ye ? Bu they're still rising, ain't them ? Ye can't keep them Music Empire down, can ye ?!?
Look at these numbers and despair, ye pirate scum !
Seems like the record industry has hedged it's bets here.
It figures that it can make the most money by selling CDs, riding the P2P wave of free marketing, and then making money out of suing file traders.
It would make no sense from the perspective of their bottom line to endorse piracy... to them it's a free marketing & settlement cash cow!
Maybe they figure that there's more money to be had in doing things that way, as opposed to embracing the new technology? Worth a thought....... especially if they're making more money than ever.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Given the crap nature of 99% of current music, either Aussies have *really* bad taste, or the quantity of crap being rained from above must have gone through the roof...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
What the RIAA and the MPAA and their foreign counterparts don't understand is that people are less willing to spend their money on crap. Look at Gigli, where the movie industry blamed movie go-ers who text messaged their friends that the movie was bad. Or the latest Tomb Raider movie, where they tried to blame the latest Tomb Raider video game. Consumers are simply not willing to waste their money on things that suck.
The same is true with music. I for one prefer to download the entire CD to listen to all the tracks. Most online music sites have the first 30 seconds of each song. I really don't feel like I know enough from those 30 seconds to decide if I like the CD. I can usually decide that I don't like the CD. Think of how many people get upset because there's the won good single on the radio and the other tracks are all crap? I will happily go out and buy a CD if I feel it is worth the cost. I have bought more CDs because I listen to the whole CD and decide if I like it enough to buy it.
Record labels lie! Details at 11!
In my regular newspaper column I recently wrote about the phenomenon that is the bargain-bin music browser.
These are the people who spend hours pawing through the big bins of massively discounted CDs you see in the corner of many music stores.
These discs are often compilations or recordings that, for one reason or another, simply never sold at the full retail price.
Although the bargain-bin browsers will happily pay $1, or even $10 for these discounted albums, they'd never ever consider paying full price.
The only way the stores can clear them is to virtually give them away.
Well the arrival of P2P filesharing networks has produced the ultimate extrapolation of the bargain-bin browser.
These are the people who will download a track or an entire album -- but only because it's free.
They would likely never buy the album or tracks in question -- even if they did turn up at $5 in the local bargain-bin.
So do these people really represent lost sales to the recording industry?
No they don't.
A huge percentage of those who download a large proportion of the music found on P2P networks simply would never buy the music they copy to their PC's hard drive or CD writer.
For the recording industry to claim otherwise is, to use the politest term that springs to mind, disingenuous.
Yes, filesharing probably does have some negative effect on disc sales, but the recording industry have brought that on themselves by overstating their case to the extent that nobody actually believes them any more.
If it seems that way to you it's simply because crap music tends to be forgotten with time so you don't remember the older crap.
Stumble accross someones old record collection in a loft sometime and it will no doubt be quite craptacular.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Even the FBI has become involved. It says music piracy has become its third priority behind terrorism and counter-intelligence. A number of US Congress members who rely on the entertainment industry for campaign funds lobbied the FBI to spend more money hunting file-sharers and CD burners. So now CDs in the US carry FBI stickers warning of fines of $250,000 or five years in prison.
I sincerely hope they aren't expending much effort on chasing down teenagers with cablemodems. Given the fuckups at the FBI in the past several years, I would think that they have their hands full just trying to keep the citizens of this country from being killed. Unfortunately, I am never surprised at what money can buy these days.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Well, home taping obviously didn't kill music, Simon Cowell and Pete Waterman did. But that aside, the difference between then and now is simply that the record companies are taking a tougher line and are being allowed to do so by their tame politicians. The problem isn't a new one, but the "solution" is.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
From dictionary.com: <networking> (Note: not capitalised) Any set of networks interconnected with routers. The Internet is the biggest example of an internet.
This sig is only here so people stop skipping the last lines of my posts.
...we just have a lot of good music.
....I haven't found any music really worth buying in the last couple of years. I have even stopped downloading music now. What's the point? It's all the same - stamped out of the same studio - with the same sound.
I am still listening to U2's The Joshua Tree (which I bought years ago) and Crowded House. The only thing lately I have heard that was interesting was Ben Harper - even then, only a couple of songs were good.
I mean, sure....Post Modernism is ok - but the same Hip Hop crap about some American cultural "issue" is getting really boring.
It's all the same, but I am supposed to keep forking out AU$30 per album. I don't think so.
From context they appear to be referring to the Internet. In fact they say "the internet". If they meant another one they would have said "an internet" or "internets". You get the idea.
This is essentially what the recording industry deals in. The better they do, the worse the world is. I don't even have much problem with something like a TicketMaster--they deal in a limited quantity.
-I am an elective eunuch.
The cynical answer is that P2P is never about artist royalties or piracy it's about the fact that one P can be the artist and the other P can be the customer with no sign of ARIA or RIAA anywhere between the two. These big music industries are not fighting for the survival of music and musicians, they're fighting for their own survival at the cost of artists and consumers.
Pure and simple.
This is about spin and control. The record industry's profit/distribution/business model has been turned on its ear. They don't know how to respond, so they sue everyone in sight, bribe (oops! - "LOBBY") lawmakers. etc. All to keep the status quo while they figure it out. So far they haven't been able to. After all, digital distribution (MP3's etc.) have only been around for OVER FIVE YEARS ALREADY!! Besides, we wouldn't want the MARKETPLACE to decide, would we? God forbid another company be allowed to take business from them!See, the RIAA is sleazy and corrupt. They are a cartel. Five companies (soon to be four if they have their way) control something like 90% of the recorded music available for sale in the world. They like their monopoly. They want to keep their monopoly. Wouldn't you?
So, they lie cheat, bribe and do whatever they have to in order to keep the cash cow giving milk. If that means telling Congress that CD sales are down 10% due to downloading when the real reason is that they MANUFACTURED LESS CD's in order to keep the prices up, so be it. After all, the way they see it, you're not really lying, you're just SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH by witholding information.Besides, don't you think that Congress KNOWS what they're doing??!! After all, the politicians INVENTED SPIN!. Don't you think they know whan they're being spun? It's just that the spin comes with a nice bribe attached.
We have the best Government that $$ can buy and until they're voted out, nothing will change!... And don't hold your breath for THAT to happen! :(
Hmmm. I'm wondering where the FBI's priorities are, as far as filesharing goes. The person that downloads a song from a $13 album, or downloads a cracked copy of a $5000 version of 3DMax.
There isn't much bio information on the website but he is in his second year of presenting Triple J's current affairs program and was previously a reporter for same. You can listen to the show online.
He has written some interesting articles for the Sydney Morning Herald in the past, including this one on the decline of Sydney and another on censorship of CDs.
cheers
marty
"I can't buy want I want because it's free. Can't be what they want because I'm me." -Corduroy, Pearl Jam
This is pretty impressive considering that Australians pay more for CDs than most people. A$30 which is about $22 US. File sharing just stops people being sucked in by hype, you don't have to rely on the word of journalist, who can't write a bad review, for fear of losing freebies, and the one radio friendly unit pusher that's on an album full of crap.
How are you *ever* going to determine the effect of P2P on record industry revenues, using an unassailable and repeatable methodology? No one has even tried to demonstate the marketing difference between on demand download of 128k mp3 content and analog recording of radio broadcasts. How would you construct such a study? In the end it is all hand waving and opinion, and the only thing that matters is record industry profits.
Chances are industry profits will follow the economy. The more disposible income there is, the more people will "vote" for their favorite bands. All I have to work with is anecdotal evidence: my sister bought 15 copies of the Elvis Costello CD for her friends for Christmans because she "wanted to support him." But my sister has money.
My own anecdotal experience is that the only time I bought any CDs at all was during the heyday of Napster. I bought all kinds of stuff because I was reminded of and found what was good. (Also I had money during the heyday.) I also had money before Napster, but I did not buy CDs because I got burned too often.
What if it turns out that P2P actually stokes interest in music and ultimately increases record sales more than radio broadcast does? It is ENTIRELY possible that this is the case. All of a sudden the industries are going to do this huge spin....
1. Stealing: Deprevation of property, usually limited to tangible objects. The intent is to deprive the owner of an object, such that you may use/sell it.
2. Copyright infringement: Obtaining or making a copy of copyrighted material without paying appropriate royalties. Eg downloading copyrighted materials.
3. Copyright stealing: Changing the ownership of the copyright without the permission of the current owner. See #1, Stealing, deprivation of property (in this case, royalties).
Please use your terms correctly. Thankyou for your cooperation
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, however, there is.
That, and there's me. I hardly every buy music without listening first. I don't like top-40 pabulum, so that leaves downloading.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
If indeed it is illegal. Here in Canada, we can copy CDs all you want - we pay a tax on every blank CD that's distributed to record labels, and in exchange we have the legal right to copy CDs. Not that anyone seems to make a distinction around here, the "it's theft" people still call it theft...
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
You are aware of course that this is the ARIA, right? The Australian Recording Industry Association. US Congress of course has no input on what ARIA does.
I don't know about them, but with our Clear Channel run generic radio stations, I never get to hear decent music. MusicTV (remember MTV?) doesn't play music, VH1 is stuck in the 80's and my radio is useless.
Humans are naturally drawn to music, especially new interesting music, and will seek it out from some source. P2P is really the only alternative in US cities (i.e. Houston) that are Clear Channel owned and have no music scene.
People will not buy on a blind risk. Why don't the record labels go after the radio monopolies instead?
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
That means, you can't give away the copies - they're for your personal use only. But, you can always give away the original, since you bought it, and you don't have to destroy the copies, or even stop using them. You can even borrow or rent an original CD (or DVD or video, etc.), copy it, return it, and keep the copy.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
It's not because it's their best year ever that they're not losing money. They have good mathematical models to predict how much they expect to sell on a given year. If they're under their expectations, they're "losing" money. Being the best year ever doesn't mean much, really. Consider a company that had losses in its 5 first years. Then the 6th year they get 10$. Who cares if it's their best year, it's worth nothing!
If file-sharing really didn't affect them, they wouldn't bother going through all the trouble they are right now.
I have always justified my downloading of music by 'well, if I didn't download it, they wouldn't be gaining anything anyways'. Simply, I don't have the money to spend to buy CD's. If I did, I would buy the CD's. I guess this is how it is for everyone else seeing as since the downloads dont hurt sales. The people who have the money buy the cd's, as usual, and the people who don't have the money download, not making any difference to sales because they wouldnt be buying it anyways.
You are taking something that you should ordinarily pay for, without paying for it. That's called stealing, it really is that simple. People who insist on this "copyright infringement is not stealing" crap are just trying to justify their (or others') theft of music.
This guy is just trying to karma whore by posting a mirror with his account while the original site isn't even loading slow.
"This is a similar analogy to how some bars in the area around Wrigley field were charging patrons to watch the ball game from their roofs where they could see it. The MLB/Cubs sued them claiming that they were somehow stealing baseball from them."
Try this. The circus is in town holding a show. Out front they're selling tickets that will of course be used to pay for the whole thing. Now out back you have some budding "businessmen" that tell people for half of what the circus is charging, they will slip you under the tent to see the show. None of that money will go toward maintaining the show. What the bar owners were doing was profiting off the efforts of others, while contributing in no way to it's sustainability.
Now if they had either decided to not charge, or contributed in some way then things would have proably gone different for them.
It makes sense to me that singles would be where file sharing would hurt the most.
The target audience for singles is different, (too cheap/poor to buy the whole CD), and it much easier to get a single from p2p than a whole album....
Should get very interesting if we have a few more years of high correlation between sharing and sales.
Believing something doesn't make it true. Not believing something doesn't make it false.
An decent article, albeit with a lot of the same yakkety-yak -- but then suddenly, you hit the money quote:
Maybe it's the record industry that's getting a free ride from file-sharing - a massive marketing system that allows music lovers to get exposed to all kinds of music without the record industry having to pay a cent.
That describes my experience EXACTLY. If you're like me, you remember not too long ago when anytime you met someone in a band, you couldn't wait to ask them what they'd been listening to lately. When everytime you were at the book store, you rifled through the back of music mags looking at the What's Hot list. When you watched MTV late at night (when the format went off tight rotation) hoping to pick up some first-hand "insider" knowledge of whose star was poised for imminent ascendence. You'd go to the record store, buy a few CDs from the list you'd put together, buy a few more that you hoped would pan out, and go home. I considered myself lucky if, after all the advance work, I ended up with one out of three that actually made it into regular play.
Then, everything changed. In my case it started with Hotline. I noticed that in addition to warez, there were sporadic postings of music...and suddenly, a veritable flood. Mostly, it was bands I'd never heard of before. After a brief period of being annoyed at having to look harder for Bryce plugins or KPT add-ons or whatever the hell I was cruising for, I decided to check out some of these MP3s. It was like taking a starving Ethiopian to Royal Fork Buffet. I tried entire genres of music I'd never heard before. Electronic music suddenly made sense. Soon, I was arranging lists of sites that specialized in types of music I couldn't have even named a year before. As James Burke might say, it was The Day The Universe Changed.
Within six months, I ran across the early version of Napster. It was buggy as hell, but the idea of looking on someone else's hard disk to see what they were listening to was like the gift of Promethian fire. It empowered me. Instead of being a remora fish picking among musical scraps left over by people who "knew" what was happening in music, I started becoming someone who knew what was happening. My listening habits started diverging from, and then absolutely veering away from, the Top 100. For the first time, it became transparently obvious that mass music is a processed, focus-group-derived product like mass food or mass clothing or mass anything else. It's not that I felt snooty, just awakened...and for the first time ever, in command of what I listened to. I entered a golden age of enjoying music like never before. Now, I could go to the record store and buy CDs with a 90% or even 100% success rate, compared to maybe 30% in the old days. I no longer felt ripped off. The more I downloaded, the more CDs I felt like buying.
Bottom line: P2P is the greatest marketing tool ever devised for music. I have hit my forehead and said 'Doh!' about a thousand times over the last few years as I've watched the ham-fisted tactics of the RIAA, and their utter inability to change with, and exploit, the revolution in music. They should be getting fatter and happier than ever by seizing new technologies, and surging forward with the explosive push of free, ubiquitous marketing and feedback provided by P2P.
Instead, they are suing 12-year-olds and college students, and selling "secure" DRM CDs that won't play on your computer. They are flunking Business 101 not only by alienating an entire generation of customers, but BY TRYING TO DISMANTLE ONE OF THE MOST ASTONISHING FREE MARKETING GIFTS EVER BESTOWED ON AN INDUSTRY.
Nuff said.
Hmmm... I was just struck with a thought; what if the record industries are being rabid about piracy because they want to shift to a more advanced sales strategy?
I mean, if piracy increases sales of physical CDs, then it might be reasonable to assume that the first step in getting away from the physical-media-based distribution system would be to stop that which drives those sales. If the record industries are trying to impliment a download-based distribution system, it'd make sense for them to [persecute|prosecute] online piracy. After all, which is more appealing to the average consumer, downloading a song for free or downloading a song for a dollar/pound/yen/whatever?
If this is the case (and I make no claims that it is), then I can't say that I like the methods that have been taken (suing ISPs, suing impoverished little girls, etc.), but it would at least make the whole thing a bit more sensical/sane/intelligent, in my opinion.
(FYI, I have not read the article... yet, and it should under no circumstances be construed that I'm making excuses for the recording industries of the world and their lawyers. Quite frankly, I think I hate the bastards.)
~UP
Eat the Path.
Though slightly off topic. I just bought the new Placebo album and I am very upset that it isn't a CD following the audio standard but a low quality EMI copy controlled disk. Imagine my annoyance when I discovered that it wouldn't play in my car. I can't rip the CD to my MP3 player. These are the two devices I use to listen to music.
Don't buy copy controlled CDs - let consumer disapproval end this stupidity.
teh spoke 111111!!!!!!111ONEONEONEOPNE
There are lots of good recordings, but noone seems to advertise them. In fact, good music => good taste => people start thinking => profits go south.
I'll do my dirty spam job
Les Hurlements d'Leo -- ethnic punk, + some jazz
Pendragon -- classic british progressive, a-la Genesis, Marillion, Camel of 197x
The Pogues -- drunken Irish music
Hmmm... I don't know more (exept some Russians) but I'm sure there are more.
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
Leave Pikachu outta this!
"The original owner can still charge a fee if they like. Think like how company's charge for GPL'd software."
Well the poster is still right. Also what the infringer is doing is making a decision that's not theirs to make(2). By copying and freely distributing it without permission. They're basically sending a couple of messages. One "I have so little respect for you that I will ignore your wishes and do what I want". "I will decide what happens to your work, because I feel your not capable of making that decision". Of course there's the other interesting opposite. "I think your work has enough merit that I will keep a copy for myself, and share it with others (charging just for S&H naturally), but I nor my compatriots will compensate you for your time and effort in creating something I couldn't or wouldn't do on my own".
So we can dance around the issue all night long, but for most people "sharing" they're following one of the more base instincts and doing it for themselves, without looking at the consequences(1).
(1) Now what is the consequences of this exchange? "I'm going to take everything you will ever create in your life, regardless of what it took for you to create it, and scatter it to the four points of the compass, and if I can make some coin in the process, so much the better?" I would wager a high price that any creater would simply say "To hell with this, I'm not doing any more". Now who's the loser? The one who stops creating (can always do something that's harder to copy), or the one's who will not, or (more likely) can not create for themselves. There's a reason for the division of labour and it doesn't do a society well to abuse that relationship.
(2) Linksys taking GPL code without *respecting* the terms, and the "copyright police"(FSF) coming to correct the issue.
If you are too lazy to find good music, then just shut up and stop whining. Just because you haven't seen anything good on MTV doesn't mean that there isn't any great new music out there.
Did they also get bribe of Bills ?
Okaayy. Now with all the above being said. What do you suggest? Oh I know, since we as a society like to let our emotions do most of our thinking. How about we go up to the RIAA/MPAA/Whatever todays enemy is and burn the place to the ground, while standing in the parking lot with our AK-47's to catching any escapies. Hmmm...oh no I like your way better. Ranting and raving is so much better. How about you do something more constructive, like starting with the RIAA/MPAA's revenue stream. Oh you know, having nothing to do with them. No CD's, no tapes, no over the air listening, no concerts, not even P2P sharing, nothing. Then you really stick it to them by buying music from artists not affiliated with them. And I don't mean token support. You SUPPORT them. Now see how much more effective that is, and you didn't even have to get that "sleazy"(I'll get out and vote...sometime) government involved.
'nuff said
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
"Instead, they are suing 12-year-olds and college students, and selling "secure" DRM CDs that won't play on your computer. They are flunking Business 101 not only by alienating an entire generation of customers, but BY TRYING TO DISMANTLE ONE OF THE MOST ASTONISHING FREE MARKETING GIFTS EVER BESTOWED ON AN INDUSTRY."
So Napster (which started this whole mess) was created to be a marketing aid for the music industry? How magnanemous of them. Let's be realistic here and just say that any "marketing" was a side effect of the real goal.
So come on lets pirate Australia.
mod up
That is what he meant, and he expressed himself very well. Don't get your panties in a wad.
-ashot
Just a question here, okay? When a (not all, not many, but one) recordcompany-executive automaticly can argu that any decline in sales is due to piracy, isn't he really saying "The only way people can get music, is trough us. We are a fscking monopoly"?
Not to overestimate the intelligence, will or job-commitment of any government official or politician, but I had the distinct impression that monopolies were accounted for as "bad for the people", and was the whole reason we had anti-trust-laws.
So **AAs are saying "We are a monopoly" to the government-officials. Government says "We can't have no freaking monopolies" and then legislate that the entertainment industry shall have a de-facto legally protected monopoly.
Am I missing something here? Or is it that the amount of information in a (relativly) short slashdot post simply is too much information for a politician to handle at any given moment?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Why restrict yourself to AM/FM radio and TV? There are so many Internet Radio stations via Shoutcast, etc., that most people can find several stations they really like.
Look, anybody can spin of any bs to prove or diprove a correlation between piracy and music sales. Some might even try to use economic theories and models to prove something. But, think about it for a second. If you didn't buy music before the proliferation of mp3s, and if you pirate mp3s, you not impacting on sales. If you did buy music before the proliferation of mp3s, and if you pirate mp3s, you will probably still buy music. The factors that really impact on sales are the percieved quality of mnew usic and the income the groups of people who buy music earn.
Hi John Doe, they now have your IP.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Most online music sites have the first 30 seconds of each song. I really don't feel like I know enough from those 30 seconds to decide if I like the CD.
Yeah, partial songs don't do it for me either. I much prefer a couple of full version songs. A lot of artists do do this, though many use Realplayer streams which I refuse to deal with >:-( Interestingly, in my experience, the smaller the artist, the more likely they are to provide free complete tracks on their web site...
Freedom: "I won't!"
... there's a lot of great music out there. If you give up now you'll end up like my uncle, who virtually refuses to believe any good music has been made since CCR.
Freedom: "I won't!"
My listening habits started diverging from, and then absolutely veering away from, the Top 100. For the first time, it became transparently obvious that mass music is a processed, focus-group-derived product like mass food or mass clothing or mass anything else.
So tell me again why the record industry crushing P2P is stupid? It's wrong and evil, but not stupid per se.
Freedom: "I won't!"
An "advisory comittee" would get to "advise" us on our copyright issues... and pharmaceutical benefits... and how much further we should bend over to please the monopolistic bastards dangling the $$$'s...
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Yes, filesharing probably does have some negative effect on disc sales, but the recording industry have brought that on themselves by overstating their case to the extent that nobody actually believes them any more.
The article clearly makes the case that file sharing is a giant free promotion for record companies. The ARIA had it's best year ever, having nearly doubled album sales, from 40 million units to 65 million units, since the birth of easy file sharing in 1998.
This is a story that's reapeated everywhere and reversed only when recording industry morons get their way. The same thing happened in the US. It's easy to show that recent reverses in album sales were due to the death of Napster and a coincidental decrease in new releases. With the new music sharing networks booming, I'll bet record sales are again up despite declines in earning power.
P2P is grassroots and free marketing. It is less controled than radio, so the dumb asses running the "recording industry" and the world's five music companies don't like it. What they are afraid of is not being able to rip off artists themselves anymore. Record sales go up with P2P, it's just not the crap that will earn big companies the most money nor set the world's mood the same way they desire.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Humans initially prefer simple stimuli. But get bored fairly quickly enough. Humans tend to dislike complex stimuli. But tend to like those better as time passes. What pays more for a music distributor? Make a lot of crappy simple music? That will sell and that people will get bored of and so buy more of the shit. Cuz... of the principle of familiarity? Humans tend to like things simply because they are being exposed to it. So I wonder if you should blame them for being tyrannical or w/e. Maybe they just think things to be more profitable this way.
No, it doesn't.
...the difference between theft of a CD and copyright violation of a CD is less than a dollar's worth of plastic. The replication costs are negliable for both sides, so if the store has to make another copy because the first was stolen, or if you have to burn a copy instead of stealing a physical disk is pretty much irrelevant to the value illegally transfered.
Call it what you want, but to pretend those are completely unrelated crimes is hogwash. Yes, the value is artifical, copyright is artificial. So is the value of dollar bills. But while natural, it is none the less very real. Is then counterfeiting ok because noone has less money than before? As opposed to stealing actual dollar bills?
Kjella
maybe a dingo ate their "file sharing reduces sales argument"
e.
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It is worth noting that Copyright is not an intrinsic right, but rather, a government granted privilege. Arguments which focus on how "piracy" is a violation of an author's rights are typically trying to push their point via pathos persuasion (i.e. invoking pity or sympathy). These are colloquially referred to as "crap arguments."
Of course, the definition of "intrinsic rights" is debatable; I believe they include the right to private property and freedom from coercion, and nothing else.
In order to determine the real effect of P2P on recording sales, we have to move away from the idea that each recording is equal to each other recording, even though that approach is mandated by the media corporations by identical pricing for each title.
Let's assume that each person who buys recordings has a personal scale for the albums that he is aware of, say one to five. The albums considered five will be bought as soon as release at full retail, they love this band and want the new release now. The albums rated one would never be purchased and most likely not be listened to. The twos and threes will be bought if there is no new ones to be purchased and if a new interest in this band or recording can be generated.
P2P users (that is assuming those with high-speed bandwidth) will most-likely download three rated titles. Those with slow bandwidth (dialup modems) will download 'two' rated titles. The exposure to two and three rated titles will move some bands into the one rated category. That, and also the savings of not purchasing three rated recordings, allows the same amount of money that would have been spent for two and three rated recordings to be spent on new ones and twos.
As long as the same amount of money is being spent on recordings as before P2P, then obviously P2P doesn't hurt record sales. It does however, change the balance of sales amoung second and third tier level bands. Meaning, unless you're a superstar, P2P filesharing means that there is going to be a greater correlation between your touring and your record sales.
Record companies should adopt an Ebay auction approach to selling records. By agreeing to release only a certain number of physical recordings within a certain time period, then really popular bands can command higher than normal prices for their latest. New bands can price their recordings at manufacturing cost to get people to buy and try a new sound.
Opps! The record industry should have done this about twenty years ago. They wouldn't have anywhere near the problems that they have now. Well, too late now.
> If you've already paid for it, it would be fairly dumb not to take it.
http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml#what_amount
You would be very very dumb to take it. The music cartels will just use your fallacy to leverage higher rates and add more hardware devices to the list. This is already happening. It's stupid people who think they can copy all they want for a constant price, which is totally untrue. Stop feeding them!!!!!!
The taxing levy for plain CDRs now is 21 cents, but if you give them enough reason in the next hearing, the rates can easily be 50 cents. Actually, the current "music" labelled CDRs are already 77 cents per disc.
http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml#Who_sets_it
Nobody told me Men At Work had re-united. No wonder they had such a good year.
This series was shown on BBC TV at least once, including repeats on BBC3. It would have been difficult to have missed it. The whole of the UK can see it.
Guess what? It's the biggest selling DVD ever in the UK. So people were willing to pay for something they have seen for free.
People aren't buying it because they are "checking it out". They've already seen it and are paying again for it.
Great Post! Well thought out and written. Logical and passionate.
I might suggest getting a DVD writer (I suggest an 8X speed one) and making DVDs of all the great music that you have come to know and trading these with friends, associates, people who look kind-of cool, and even strangers on website postings. Each blank DVD costs about a dollar and holds about 50 albums in 192kbps MP3 format. Mailing costs are about 60 cents a disk with quality shipping envelope folders at about 50 cents.
This , along with hard disk swapping (a $100 160 Gigabyte hard disk holding about 2100 albums) will be the new Napster and primary method of music awareness and promotion among elite listeners when (or if and when) the P2P networks are shut down by the media corporations.
Well this is a reply to you and the AC. Who was first is irrelevent. It's not the pre-stadium that's being profited from, although the post-stadium situation is. Anyway [from the AC] "If the ball park owners didn't want people to be able to see into the park from outside, they should have built a larger wall." Following that path generates the very situation we're presently discussing in this forum. The MPAA/RIAA are erecting a "larger wall" and then the "bars" are building platforms "P2P, etc" to look over that wall. Back and forth, bigger wall, bigger platform till an untenuable situation is reached.
It's better overall for society to never get on that path to begin with, by both parties having respect for each other. More the bars because they aren't going through the effort to create something uniquely theirs for their patrons. Rather they're borrowing the efforts of others to enrich their coffers, without contributing to the sustainability of what they're profiting off of.
Slightly OT, but a while ago, someone let me install Unreal Tournament. I don't remember there being a serial code, and you don't need the CD in the drive, but I decided to buy it anyway. I'll probably do the same with Fallout 1/2 (Where's the original BIS team now, anyone know?). Piracy can boost sales!
There should be a law requiring/prohibiting that (Please circle one)
It's totaltarian only at the individual level. An individual can decide to steal, or they decide not to. The stealing (or not) of others may weight in their decision to go either way, but it still is an individual decision.
"What Linksys did was wrong as it didn't respect the terms of the agreement."
Which is based on copyright law. Music and other creative endevours are likewise based on copyright law. One can't be hypocritical an allow one while denying the other.
"Except that leaves out the RIAA adding $13 to the cost of that work for themselves. Hardly a fair situation for both the consumer and the artist."
Well this has been discussed many a time before, but the member companies behind the RIAA/MPAA are more than just money sinks. Otherwise there would be no point to signing up with them, and no before you go there, people do have a choice(1). I suspect that the reason such notions persist, is that one, hatred, two most people have never worked in any significent capacity in either the music or movie industry(2)
(1) The whole idea of alternatives is dependent on it being true. Listen to an indie band. purchase from an indie site. How many times have we heard that technology is the great leveler? Well now's the time to put one's money were one's principles are.
(2) A good example of this was a Slashdot story awhile back about the book industry and the roles of book companies and editors. Many a question was raised about the need for editors, ignoring the less than stelar quailty of most of the submitted manuscripts.
That could have come from an artist talking about companies like ARIA.
Old music looks good because time has filtered away the crap, not because it was better at the time.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Well, DO you?
So when CD sales were down, it was the economy to blame. But when cd sales are up, it has nothing to do with the economy, and everything to do with file sharing. This is just junk science by both sides. No one knows the correlation between cd sales and file sharing. Everyone just selectively chooses data to support their position.
Vote for Pedro
We pay a "tax" to an organization (weird, I thought tax was for the state) because the organization was claiming there was so much copying going on. Before CD and DVD tax there was the same tax on audio casettes and VHS tapes.
Even though a lot of people use these CD-Rs for backups of their own data or other legal uses, they still have to pay for something they don't make use of, they're treated like criminals and have to pay accordingly. It's a political compromise I guess, but it still sucks.
The only good thing is that it's legal to DOWNload and keep a copy of something because we've already paid for it. The record/movie company umbrella organisation pretends this last part does not exist.
http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/info/act-e.html#80
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
I'm not sure that internet downloads would be a legitimate source - for you to download, someone else had to upload, and they would basically be distributing a copy, rather than passing on the original.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht