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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.
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'.
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...
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.
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.
I don't wonna stop here. I think, it's more like they build towers and then insist on charging money for looking at them. We are not even trespassing on their property, just enjoying it, because they've made it so wildly accessible. Their only argument is "if you don't pay us, who will build these beautiful towers for you too look at?" We are consumers, after all; what happened to our right to chose?
And there's a huge difficulty of a different sort here. The pirate is now an individual, and the "theft" is happening in the privacy of our houses. The whole idea of p2p is that there's no middle man (except the ISP, and they alredy washed their hands). To fight piracy effectively, they will need to tap our wires, to know what we are doing behind the closed doors. I hope you'll agree, they shouldn't succeed at that. I believe, the change is coming.
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! :(
But trespassing doesn't work as a decent analogy either. Because when you put your foot in my yard and then walk away, are you walking away with a perfect copy of my yard?
:-P
That's where this analogy gets sticky. Granted, yes I still have my original property, but now you have a copy of my property now too. While in this case it may not hurt me (since I'm not selling my yard), you are still walking away with something that isn't really yours.
Except in the case of music, the copy you are walking away with is something you should have payed for to get, regardless of whether there was an exchange of property or not. That is where this whole issue gets really sticky.
So it does border on actually stealing in my humble opinion. Copyright doesn't even have anything to do with it really. You're taking something that you can only get (legally) if you had paid for it.
Mostly playing devil's advocate here, because I personally don't like paying > $14 USD for 2 good songs and 13 filler tracks. If you want to call me a thief, so be it. But it's amazing how far people will go to justify stealing music. Just say you steal and move on. There's nothing to argue about and no one will judge you any different.
I mean no harm in breaking laws right? We've all gone slightly over the speed limit as well as jay walked.
You seem a little confused. The copyright holder does lose his right: he loses the right to decide upon the fate of that individual work such as charging you a fee for using the work.
OTOH, I don't think that means that it qualifies to be called stealing though, technically nothing has been stolen. It would be stealing if the copyright owner had made the copy, and then you took that copy: but it's not stealing when you make the copy yourself. That's the distinction.
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
But it's amazing how far people will go to justify stealing music. Just say you steal and move on. There's nothing to argue about and no one will judge you any different.
The thing is, they do. Remember how rediculous it sounded when the MPAA and RIAA started using the term "Intellectual Property," right about the big DeCSS case? We all knew that there was no such thing as "intellectual property," there was just copyrights and patents which defined certain limited rights afforded to one party or another. Now that "intellectual property" has become lexicon, you hear phrases like "they can do anything they want with it. It's their intellectual property." Substitute the word "copyright" in that previous sentence and it just doesn't work. By defining copyrights as a form of property, property rights go along with it.
Likewise, by defining copyright violations as a form of theft, additional punative measures go along with it. A "theif" has a clear-cut definition and a lot of cultural associations with it. Being a thief means you have deprived a rightful owner of something for personal gain, and you must return the thing and be punished. Violating copyright is something completely different. That's not to say that copyright violaters shouldn't be punished, that's to say that copyright violaters didn't deprive a rightful owner of a physical object. There are also the labels of "arsonist," "mugger," "hacker," "slanderer," "murderer," "terrorist," and "con-man." They all have different legal meanings, and different cultural associations, and should all should be punished. But to call a "hacker" a "terrorist" would be disingenuous, a clear attempt to draw an inappropriate punishment for a less severe infraction. The same is true with calling a copyright violator a "thief."
Personally I like the term "pirate." It's such an antiquated term that it lacks most of its original meaning, actual piracy is incredibly rare, and it is culturally entrenched enough to become an accepted standard. I would prefer if copyright violations kept the name copyright violations, but realistically with seven syllables it would have to be shortened in Japanese fashion to copvi, and even that might have one syllable too many. "Pirate" is a good compromise term.
The ______ Agenda
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.
"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....
Ob /. language nitpick: Actually, it just "raises the question." To "beg the question" means to assume the conclusion as one of your premises. Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies has a good description.
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.
Then you're simply not looking hard enough. There is plenty of great music out there, but you won't hear it on the radio or MTV or whatever.
I don't know if you're in the UK or not but over hear we have something called the Consumer Protection Act. If it was me I'd demand money back from the store because the product is "Not of Merchantable Quality" i.e It doesn't work on my player! If enough people complain, who knows it may eventually be enough for a "class action" suit.
Just my 2 cents worth (or should that be '2p')
Hal
Aside from walking away with stuff, there's also the scarcity part. If enough people trespass on your property, there's no more room for more people to trespass. If you were, say, letting people park in your yard during the local medieval fair (for a small fee) then although they've not taken anything, they've deprived you of the opportunity to sell that spot to someone else.
I would instead go back to music and suggest this: an open-air concert that is a non-free event, but with random people walking by, and into, the area. They listen for a while (or the whole time) and walk off without paying. There was plenty of room, the quality was approx. the same, and everyone (paying or not) walked away having had a similarly satisfying experience. Did the non-payers steal music? Not any more than walls, chairs, and trees did. But they did get something for nothing, something which wasn't expected to be had for nothing.
It's not theft. It's a free lunch. And there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, even when there is.
And when all audio disks (I noticed and approve that you made the distinction) are loaded down with non-Red Book DRM, will the tax go away?
I'm minded to remark that in USia (and UKia) income tax was a short term measure to support a war. Funnily enough, when the war ended, the tax stayed.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
wow! what a stupid theory. they are making record profits. their theory would be based on having the same growth as previous years, but this year they have had more growth. the recording industry isn't loossing money they are making money, and shit loads of it!
Monopolies only apply to single companies, not to an industry association. No single company can seriously be said to have a monopoly over selling music to the general public, nor is any single company using its market position to create an uneven marketplace. So there's not really a case for anti-trust policy, because it's just an industry association acting on behalf of its members, not a single company acting exclusively in its own interests, against the others.
I'm sure that independent record companies have complaints about the difficulty of setting themselves up, and probably can point to various anticompetitive practices, but there doesn't seem to be the widespread abuse on the lines of Microsoft. For instance, I've never heard of any of any individual company, nor the **AAs going to record shops and chains and saying "You can't sell our product if you include content from these independents". I have also not heard about any of the **AA refusing membership to new companies or independents.
... 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!"
There is nothing wrong with having a monopoly. It is abusing the power of one which is illegal.
You entire argument is flawed, if the currently non existent recording artist/singer/band Foo signs a contract with a given recording company, that company is most likely going to have exclusive legal distribution rights of Foo's songs through CD's, LP's, Cassettes, Online downloads, etc. They recording company can license another company to also distribute content... for a price.
Now for a bit of sarcasm to drive home my point. Know what I hate? The book publishing industry! If there is a book out that I want to read, my only choice is to buy it and ultimately have the publisher get a cut! Why can't I buy it from another publisher and not have the original one get their cut?
There is plenty of music and books in the world, a lot of it is free, and if you want to listen to Foo, you will need to pay the monopoly who owns the rights for distribution of their music... what is so wrong with that?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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!"
I've never interpreted it like that.
Rather I think of 'information wants to be free' as being similar to other aphorisms such as 'water seeks its own level.' Obviously water isn't actually seeking anything, it's just a way to describe what tends to happen.
Information tends to become widespread. Once it leaves your control, you typically can't get it back. So to put it another way, you might say 'secrets don't want to be kept.'
Whether the information is secret because it's scandalous, or slightly secret merely because you're expected to pay for admission to see it, eventually it'll escape from your control and tend to spread amongst those that are interested in it, and you'll never get it back.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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