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Peter Gabriel: Digital Music Downloading's Future
securitas writes "CNN International's Becky Anderson interviews musician and OD2 online music service co-founder Peter Gabriel about the future of digital music downloads. The interview covers Gabriel's motivations in starting OD2, how technology has changed the music industry business model in the favor of artists and away from the big record labels, and where the small, independent artist fits in. Gabriel's words have weight because of his insights as both a musician/artist and a businessman who guided a digital music on demand distribution (OD2) and download service to success."
I think that this is something that everyone outside of the time/warner, sony, etc cartels who want to be in the music industry need to take heed of. If the big boys are consolidating, then maybe the smaller labels and distributors should put aside their personal ambitions and look at the larger picture...before they're written out of it.
Peter Gabriel has always been one of the music scene's most technologically advanced members. For instance with Genesis he pioneered the use of lasers during concerts.
MP3 Search Engine
When I was younger I was sooo much a fan of Peter Gabriel I'd tape his songs off the radio.
Omnis amans amens
Peter Gabriel was quoted as saying, "I'd like to hit the RIAA with a SLEDGE-HAMMER dunt-duh. After all, I've kicked the RIAA habit, (kicked the habit, whoo)"
Unknown host pong.
Sorry guys, OD2 is Win/IE only. No Mac, no Linux, no Moz.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
But it's not like he's Linus Torvalds or Bill Gates.
So, if I need tips on how to wear a fox head on stage; I'll ask pete. If I want advice on the internet, I'll ask someone who knows (such as the men I mentioned).
Tapes that is .... :)
..
Also a musician carries more weight than any other guy
Like in human testing - "you have to be willing to do it yourself"
I'm addicted to the iTunes Music Store, and since I have an iPod I'm not really going to switch to OD2. Though I really respect Peter Gabriel's work and music, he needs to get OD2 and iTunes together I'd think since they only support Windows from what I can tell, and that pretty much locks me out on my desktop or server OS platform of choice.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
He'd like to be our sledgehammer... wait, that joke was already made....dagnabit...
AccountKiller
Durrr... I dig Peter Gabriel, and I dig this concept, but, uh, success? Can we have any stats to back that up?
In January, it seemed like the store had varying rights per label, delivering only Windows Media songs. Varying DRM'd files with fine print? Ok, I guess people were buying into it when they introduced that penny per streaming song thing.
Outside of that I've seen no press releases or 3rd party sites talking about OD2 as a "success". Are we qualifying it by the fact that they're still here after 6 months? The submission just feels weird to me.. I couldn't even find any stats thru google.
(again, I dig Mr. Gabriel, and I appreciate him and Mr. Eno coming up with a new concept. It's nice for iTunes to have competition.. but I need to see some numbers to endear a service with only DRM'd WM9 files servicing 3-4 countries of the EU as a "success". Even the BBC calls them a success with no numbers!)
This won't work for any artist other than mainstream artists, unless the indie artist gets airtime. Radio stations are still owned by big corporations, and like to shove thier music down your throat...until there are more places like IRL, then this model will probably not work for small artists. What Gabriel is suggesting is alot like communism...looks great on paper, but in the real world, other things need to change, not just how you buy the music. He is suggesting a change that will alow ANY artist to sell thier own works, but that really does need alot of help in the "Gabriel: Well you see, I think that a lot of artists aren't very good when it comes to marketing or accounts or doing a lot of the jobs that record companies do" area....and that doesn't necessarily mean that the RIAA can still have a job. Fsck the RIAA! I want to choose the music that I want to listen to!
BIG TIME!
what is that some sort of geekspeak?
Please remember, people...
This has nothing to do with the creation of music.
It has nothing to do with us musicians or artists.
It has nothing to do with what it is about music that moves us.
It won't make music better.
It won't inspire, educate or enlighten anyone.
It has no sound of it's own.
It's a computer file distribution thing, and only has to do with audio in so far as it uses a codec that compresses audio effectively, albeit a little mushily.
Humans make music, not computers.
replying to the empty post; and feeling particularly zen about it.
lol jews
Yes, the Galway Hooker is a visually stunning boat design, and fun to pilot too.
Interestingly, people have sailed across the atlantic in a Galway Hooker (the St. Patrick, built 1911). While not quite up there with sailing across in a curragh (an Irish boat made from cow. Yes, cow. Cowhide stretched across a skeletal wooden frame...), still pretty impressive.
lolf
No, the Curragh is a big flat bit of land just west of Dublin. You mean Currach. Easy mistake to make, though.
Or just the most obvious ones?
"For the quarter ended March 31, 2004 on a UK GAAP basis OD2 generated approximately $2.5 million in revenues, which represented over 80% sequential growth from the quarter ended December 31, 2003 and over 250% growth versus the prior year quarter."
Not outstandingly successful, but not terrible either.
0
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> > \
Tiscali Music Club: System Check
In order to enter the Tiscali Music Club you must have the following on your PC:
* Internet Explorer 5.0 (or better) - Click here to download the latest version
* Windows Media Player 7.0 (or better) - Click here to download the latest version
* Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP
Ya' know what? This thread almost makes me believe there is some remote hope for /. The moderation system (sic), on the other hand......
This is almost as off-topic as the parent, but now seems like a good time to quote William Burroughs:
Beware of whores who say they don't want money.
The hell they don't!
What they mean is they want MORE money. Much more. These arre the most expensive whores money can buy.
"(again, I dig Mr. Gabriel, and I appreciate him and Mr. Eno coming up with a new concept. It's nice for iTunes to have competition."
If this is the same article I read last week, Gabriel and Eno have nothing to do with the service anymore, and it was sold to a company that considers itself to be a partner to companies like Apple and its iTMS as opposed to a competitor.
As for every motherfucker claiming Apple is ripping motherfuckers off, I have several friends that 'own' a label -- they share in the cost of a full time person to deal with distribution and marketting, and they take all the money for their songs sold past what it takes to employ their distribution people. Apple takes in a lot less than these guys are getting -- and now that the Indies are slowly signing on, I expect to see their European distribution (slightly different persons / artists -- the core group is the same, not all have the buy in for US & Europe, the same idea though) -- they will be making a lot more.
Why does the iTMS need competition? They provide a great service with little in the way of DRM compared to the other companies. What I'd like to see is a company that sells a type of media -- maybe on aluminum plated plastic discs -- that sell 'full quality' audio is 44.khz 16 bit audio, or maybe even taking a 96khz 24bit version of the same audio selling as a Super Audio - Aluminum Plated Plastic Disc...if there was a company (or maybe in the future an entire industry built around this), *THAT* might actually be competition to the bastards at Apple. They might be able to sell this in stores OR have a mail order company (maybe one of those places that sell paper media) where you can get the audio delivered as quickly as overnight.
Again, I only wish there was some fucking competition...then we'd show those smarty pants bastards up...
What the big guys fear is that ANYONE can simply record their music or video's and put it on line and bypass the cartels. In fact, the whole monopolistic industry of entertainment is shaking in their boots.
0 .html?tw=wn_story_related for more on icravetv.
Why? InternetTV. Forget HDTV, cable TV, DVD and other, I want InternetTV where I get to choose what I watch and what I subscribe to.
The industry pouncing on companies like ICraveTV show how desperate they are to control what we see (and we thought it was just Outer Limits).
See http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51303,0
Downloading takes the critical distribution link in the music delivery chain away from the big companies. That alone gives the artist the biggest chance to break free that they've ever had. P2P file-sharing, not iTunes-style pay-per-download, weakens the promotion link in the music delivery chain to some extent as well. That is, it doesn't cost you anything to experiment.
Big promotions via radio and ad campaigns are a different matter. Pretty tough for the small artist to negotiate with ClearChannel for airtime. Also pretty tall order for them to finance a billboard in Times Square. But that's the case now, so perhaps we're looking at a future where small artists starting out have to look to viral marketing to get their name out there.
What must go is the big labels acting like dictators, oppressing artists and dumbing down music to fit their marketing models. They should shrink and shrink until they're like specialized ad agencies, marketing a product like every other firm on Madison Avenue does. Then successful artists can hire them just like they'd hire an accountant, retain a lawyer, or any other sort of specialized service.
It's still not easy for small artists to accomplish what a label does now, but with home-recording studios more affordable than ever, P2P file-sharing for free advertising, and accounting software like Quicken it's more possible now than it ever has been for the motivated indy artist to DYI their own success.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Yay! Thank you! You found a metric! Woohoo! I'm such a nerd for statistics
I recently discovered AllOfMP3, a Russian music store, because I was trying to find music by Eva Cassidy online and neither iTunes or Napster carry her music.
This site offers pay by bandwidth download of digital music, $10(US) per 1GB, and even allows you to select the bitrate and format of your download (including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, etc).
I was a bit wary at first, and I carefully reviewed the legal info provided on the site. I was reassured by the fact that they accept PayPal and are PayPal verified among other payment methods, I decided to risk $10.
I have been greatly pleased with the results.
My questions for the Slashdot community are: Can you see any legal problems with using this site? If so what are they? This is by far the best deal I've seen in digital music, and seems to be legit as far as my understanding goes, so I keep looking for the catch. If there isn't one, well enjoy the music!
And yes I know... in Soviet Russia digital music plays you.
OD2 apparently has "virus free music". Is that something new and innovative or what?
Ooops... the URL for the story is here
Seriously, Gabriel is one of my favorite musicians. He defitely brings a feeling of originality to each record with new instruments and arrangements. He was one of the first musicians to use samplers, world music, and the Chapman "Stick" on his records. Now, if only he would put out more than one record a decade!
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
Now I can hold up my MP3 player in front of my girlfriend's house and play In Your Eyes to win her back!
But if I actually had a girlfriend to win back, I wouldn't be posting on Slashdot, would I?
Unfortunately, consolidation often leads to far more problems than one might think. In about as close to ideal in a given social system (yes, an industry is a social system) the safest system is one in which there is little, if any consolidation. It leaves room for differences, such as varying music styles. However, once people start consolidating under major groups, something interesting starts to happen.
The smaller entities start getting shoved out of the big picture. You are no longer dealing with the industry as a whole unless you go digging to find the smaller labels, and thusly those who prefer the types of music these smaller labels produce have much more trouble finding what they want because of the overbearing Main Groups.
Now, most of this is based on my studies of web-society and the parallels to real-life society (it's really quite fascinating; I recommend it to anyone who enjoys understanding groups of people better) and I've seen these things happen over and over, and there's something else I've seen as well, which is the main point of this post.
When the smaller entities stay apart, the larger entity will only try to surpass them. The larger does not view them as a threat. However--I've seen this time and time again--when the smaller entities try to form a large consolidation of their own, and actually succeed... then they become a threat. Not only do they become a threat, but the larger entity may feel them dangerous enough to warrant attacking them in various ways until they've been brought down. (And they almost always succeed in such ventures. It's very rare the people in power don't neutralize threats completely.)
I do not believe that the consolidation of indie lables at this time would be a good idea. The big companies have to be drastically weakened before they could stand a chance of surviving the attacks... and if they consolidate, it is more than likely they will end up going the same way the other record companies did: clinging to a small face of music, and shafting everyone else.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Unfortunately, Gabriel has missed a key point. Everything he mentions would be true and would provide a great way forward for musicians in the digital era, if only it weren't for one collosal problem.
Musicians live within an extremely complex community embracing music production, fandom, distribution, a major hype machine, journalism, radio and television, thousands of associated forms of business, professional institutions of various kinds, and a strong legal environment, all parts of which sustain each other and exclude anyone who does not play by their rules.
The vast vast vast majority of musicians *want* to play within this cozy hyped up environment, they want to get signed to major labels (it's a right of passage), they want to get interviewed by the label-owned magazines, they want to be on first-name terms with the best producers. With extremely few exceptions, they will NOT even consider going it alone, because that is tantamount to self-exile from their own community.
This is why we almost never hear any dissenting voices when the RIAA decides to shaft another few thousand fans. Musicians don't care, because all they see is their mother defending them, and nobody else complains apart from a few loons, so it must be OK.
Gabriel will get nowhere because he is being very careful not to rock the boat in which musicians lie peacefully asleep. The fans are not asleep, and that is why he has had some business success getting music to them. In contrast, the future about which he is now talking requires the musicians to awaken first from their slumbers (or maybe it's a total coma) and recognize that the values of everyone in their community are badly distorted and somewhat evil, and hence to want out. That however is not happening.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
how does one GET successful using these new models.
many of the models for independent records, such as those created by King Crimson (DGM), Marillion, Peter Gabriel, Phish, et al, all work for those artists because they already have a large fan base from their days when they WERE on major labels, with major promotion budgets (or at least major touring budgets).
the independent approach (whether independent labels or downloads) can sustain an artist once they've reached a certain success level, but simply doesn't seem to work to actually GET one to become a national level (or even regional level above touring the same city or state) success to the point that the income from the music alone is self-sustaining. and by self-sustaining, i mean both in terms of the artist's own expenses and the cost of making the next recording.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
However, for work I did some research into online music services, and really have to say that I am not happy with the quality of OD2. Lousy selection, high price for what you get, and it has restrictions up the whazoo.
So while he gets kudos for being intelligent enough to start the business and is indeed helping online music sales become big, his service sucks and should be recognized for that.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
It is as if you are arguing that theatres have nothing to do with music, so who cares if a few corporate conglomerates own all of them and never let anyone else perform there?
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Can you be a bit more specific, please?
...exactly where did you encounter this? I surfed around extensively and everything just worked.
No UA spoofing, no nothing. Gentoo with: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040703 Firefox/0.9.1
I tried to check out some of the music download sites - all gave me the same red screen telling me that I must use Internet Explorer.
Whatever.
I've been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn't understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual.
"If it can't be marketed why would it be created?"
You have no idea how sad it makes me feel to hear that. I know yadda yadda money, tax, making a living etc...
But, it used to work the other way round. People used to write music, play it, enjoy it, and then *afterwards* the possibility of making money would be discussed.
Pato Banton and Elton John went for a songwriting session. I was making tea and patching stuff.. no recording.
Elton was targetting market sectors while writing the damm song, indeed as part of the song writing process. Pato was shocked, I was shocked. Nothing came of the session. My first rude introduction to how the music business at the moment really works. I always was kinda cynical, but I never guessed people really did that kind of thing.
You don't need studio time to create music by the way. People go to the studio too early nowadays with half baked ideas and the fucking engineer has to do the arrangement because the song has so little substance that without ladling on a pile of samples it is revealed as the weak derivative crap it really is.
Most people would be better off laying it down to a tape deck and rewriting till the thing works as just a few simple parts.
"It is as if you are arguing that theatres have nothing to do with music, so who cares if a few corporate conglomerates own all of them and never let anyone else perform there?"
No, that would be sad. My argument is not coherent, I'm just pissed off that some data in a file has become 'music' rather than a discourse between the musician and audience. You can get away with so much in a recording, I can make anyone sound great, it's just a long tedious process rather than starting with real talent and a decent song to start with.
Music used to be made like films. You'd point a mic like a camera, and it would record the scene. Nowadays it's often like a bad cartoon, built a frame at a time, lots of repetition of samples (cos that's cheaper than "redrawing" with real players) and totally disposable.
Some people like aphex, or tom (his twin), use the new medium to explore music, others just make cartoon music.
rant rant rant
I want a realdoll.
Unlike broadcast, anyone could set up a radio on the 'net and reach all over the world. I could tune into a number of stations that played exactly the kind of music I like, and more importantly, hear music I'd not have heard otherwise. As large as my jukebox is, it's still only got music I own (or not, depending on RIAA's PoV) in it.
Nowadays, I look at play-lists from clubs and look at what's being played and try find samples of artists who get mixed in with stuff that I like. The only radio I listen to is the local community radio (when DJs I like are on). As well as play-lists, I follow links pages from the web pages of artists I do like, and now have bought more CDs online than I have from stores. The web offers many ways of letting people discover the music they like, and for musicians to find people who like their kind of music. I'd even say it's more discerning and efficient than the broadcast model. We need to make such discovery tools easier to find and use.
To use market-speak, everything between the artist and the "consumer" is an overhead and an inefficiency.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
What I should have written was "recorded" instead of "created". Nothing is going to stop musicians from making music. However, in order to record music and get it to the outside world you need to record, package, and distribute it somehow. This makes it possible to hear and learn about musicians who live on the other side of the world, for example, instead of just the ones perform at the local coffeehouse.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Fair enough.
:)
It's a bit of a confusing time for music at the moment. We have to ability to share songs from a personal website with a virtually unlimited audience for pretty much no cost, and you can get equipment to do very high quality stereo recording+multitracking for less than $3000.
And yet, making a record still seems to turn into a very expensive task.
Perhaps I'll get to hear the players at your local coffeehouse sometime over this file distribution thing. I'd probably find better music there than is being pushed in the charts anyway.
"Consumer rights under the Microsoft DRM can be configured at label, product group or product level. This means that the rights holder can control what the end-user is able to do with the digital product. For example, a label may wish to allow a customer to make a CD copy of one product, but not another."
Oh yeah, he's really in this for you and me folks, oh yeah -- need I remind anyone that DRM is not representative of any actual laws in any jurisdiction on this planet? So, Defender of the Musicians Peter Gabriel wants to slip DRM into every machine? Oh, yeah, that will sure help the little musicians, especially those little guys like poor Disney-Juke Gabriel.