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Recording Industry Hoist By Their Own Petard

An anonymous reader writes "As reported by MSNBC, the recording industry has been unable to offer combination DVD / CD discs to consumers because of the IP ownership questions as well as licensing issues between CD and DVD content. All I can say is it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch!"

18 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Re:tech issues by mrgreen4242 · · Score: 4, Informative
    From the article:"The labels also have spurred sales by packaging "bonus" DVDs with CDs. In February, several began test marketing the new hybrid discs -- CD on one side and DVD on the other."

    So there you have it, each side of the disc is either the DVD or the CD. Seems a stupid way to do it to me... making a dual layer CD/DVD would be much more convientient, as suggested above, but I'm not sure how plausible it is.

  2. New Dave Matthews Band album is combination CD/DVD by mgahs · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't think this is industry-wide. The Dave Matthews Band just came out with a live album from their tour-ending shows in 2002. You can buy the best songs from all three shows on a two-disc set, plus it comes with a DVD with 6 or 7 songs from those shows, plus highlights of the Gorge venue.

    It's not as if it's a 2-disc jewel case and a DVD case, I mean it's all one case - open it up and the DVD is on one side, and the two CDs are overlapping on the other side. It's ONE unit.

    Now, the Dave Matthews Band has been around long enough that they have pretty damn good control over their own content, and they release their albums on Bama Rags (their own label, i think), but it's also distributed through Columbia, so it's not completely independent.

  3. Not exactly a DVD and a CD but almost by Fred_A · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here a group called "Kool Shem" had their latest album released on a disk that has one side pressed as an audio CD and the other as a video DVD, a format they call "DVD [plus]".

    I've only heard of this because of the technical first and have no idea what kind of music they do, apparently it's some kind of rap thing.

    Sample link to an online store (Fnac.com)

    --

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  4. Re:tech issues by einhverfr · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is different from a normal CD how?

    If you scratch the polycarbonate side, you might interfere with the reading of the data.

    If you scratch the label site you might interfere with the storage of the data.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  5. Re:New Dave Matthews Band album is combination CD/ by Crizp · · Score: 3, Informative

    Also Phish has very good control over what happens, I guess. And, in their contract it explicitally says audience taping is to be allowed unless they say otherwise.

    I like bands that allow the audience to tape their shows, visit Etree for a huge list of live shows by a large number of bands - most of them in glorious lossless SHN or FLAC formats.

    When I found Etree and discovered SHN at the same time I almost came in my pants - among other things they have over 2500 Grateful Dead shows!

  6. Re:tech issues by Nachtfalke · · Score: 4, Informative

    If this is the stuff I think it is, then you get a "flipper", where you have DVD content on the one side, and CD content on the other.

    I actually remember a professor at my university talking about this, saying a friend of was doing something great with DVDs. That was in 96 or 97, I think.

  7. Petard? by azav · · Score: 3, Informative
    I do not think that means what you think it means.

    Petard

    --
    - Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
    1. Re:Petard? by bhorling · · Score: 5, Informative

      The phrase "hoist with his own petard" comes from Shakespeare. Petard, as you noted, means an explosive of some sort. While hoist means to lift up. Shakespeare was referring to a sapper, which duing a siege would place an explosive under a castle wall in order to bring it down. If you've been hoisted by your own petard then you've managed to blow yourself up with your own bomb.

  8. Re:tech issues by ocelotbob · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, these discs would be more durable. The polycarbonate side can be scratched pretty badly before you ruin the disk. It's the more fragile label side which is usually what causes discs to go bad. As there is no label side, you stand a greater chance of the disc still being playable.

    --

    Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses

  9. Re:I love their webpage by tomhudson · · Score: 2, Informative
    You might want to play around with this url a bit, though: http://www.dualdisc.com/perl/lib/admin.pl
    http://www.dualdisc.com/perl/lib/admin.pl?INSERT_Q UERY_STRING_PARAMETERS_HERE
    They're obviously running on someone's multi-homed box. Who knows what you can get Oracle to cough up if you add the right parameters? Adding
    Perl Cartridge Error: Failed to open '/ora/app/oracle/product/805/ows/3.0/perl/lib/admi n.pl' at (eval 6) line 55.
    Have fun.
  10. Re:It's being used! by nettdata · · Score: 2, Informative

    Then you're extremely uninformed as to how the industry works. I've headed up some of the IT initiateives in the mid-90's (database driven web sites, streaming audio, etc.) for Nettwerk, EMI, Virgin, BMG, and Sony, and as a result have met a LOT of musicians, and can vouch for this happening for more than just a few of the acts.

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    $0.02 (CDN)
  11. Re:It's being used! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    you should read this:
    http://www.prosoundweb.com/recording/mm/
    if you don't believe things like that happens...

  12. Buy the music vid DVD and get the CD for it free by iamcf13 · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you buy Weird Al music videos DVD (or anybody else's) you get the music for them as the 'soundtrack' of the DVD at no additional cost. Just be sure to rout the DVD audio through your home theater/stereo system and keep the TV turned off.

    The only drawbacks to this method is that there might be Weird Al songs that he *didn't* make music videos for or the music video version of a song is different than the one on the actual music CD.

    Food for thought.

  13. Re:Why am I supposed to hate the recording industr by jdaily · · Score: 2, Informative

    The movie and music recording industries have committed several major sins:

    • Lobbying to make anything that could infringe on copyright illegal.
    • Lobbying to make illegal any activities that could later lead to copyright infringement.
    • Pushing to cripple computer hardware (i.e. DRM) to protect against copyright infringement.
    • Lobbying to extend copyright well past the point at which an objective observer would agree is "limited" as the founding fathers intended.
    • Treating the Internet as something to be sued into oblivion as opposed to something to be embraced.
    • Acting in collusion to keep prices artificially high.
    • Using their oligopoly powers to impoverish musicians.

    Have I missed anything? I'm sure there's a few more issues that could be dredged up.

  14. Been there, done that. by System.out.println() · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's actually already a solution to this.... the iTunes Music store. you can burn all the AAC's onto a DVD and voila!

    Or, of course, you can just transfer them to your iPod.

  15. Re:It's being used! by nettdata · · Score: 2, Informative

    You have absolutely no idea at ALL about what you're talking about.

    You actually think "talent" has anything to do with getting a record deal? (Let's not even THINK about William Hung!) I've seen some of the most incredibly jaw-droppingly unbelieveable musicians not get signed for lots of reasons, such as not being willing to sign over the control that the label wants, but primarily they didn't fit the "look" or latest fad.

    For instance, when Stevie Ray Vaughn was presented to the powers that be at EMI, they didn't sign him because they didn't think he'd sell at all. Yeah, right.

    Regardless, I've seen bands get signed to an exclusive deal that were awesome, and yet the label arbitrarily changed their minds and didn't do anything with them. The bands still wrote and demo'd, but the label wouldn't put them into the studio to record... never mind put together the marketing campaign, tour, etc. FYI, it usually takes about a year to a year and a half to record and promote the album, and then comes the touring.

    "NOT YOUNG ENOUGH" is PRECISELY why this kind of thing happens... because in the year since a band gets signed, some fuckwad in marketing realizes that the target demographic is now looking for 16-18 year old faggy boy bands with attitude (or whatever other "fad of the day" is relevent) rather than 25+ year old quality musicians that they have just signed.

    Oh... one other thing. This "getting signed for thousands of dollars" thing is pretty funny... you have no clue at all. When a band gets signed, they basically enter into an agreement saying that the record company will provide them with all sorts of money (under strict control/supervision of the label) to record, tour, and MAYBE to live off, etc., but THEY WILL PAY IT ALL BACK, plus some serious interest (userous in most cases). This is BEFORE the artist sees a penny in "profit".

    A newly signed band, in 99.999% of the time, will not get a whack of cash to go buy the Porsches or H2's. That's the myth, the dream, and feeds the greed that allows artists to make incredibly stupid decisions at the most important time of their carreer... at the beginning when they sign their contracts. They're lucky if they can afford to keep gas in the 15 year old tour van that they MIGHT already own/rent.

    Once they've proven their ability to sell product, then they gain some leverage when renegotiating their next ADVANCE. And there's a reason why they call it an ADVANCE.

    Say what you like, but I've been in the thick of it for almost 15 years, and have seen it play out a thousand times.

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    $0.02 (CDN)
  16. Re:It's being used! by glenstar · · Score: 2, Informative
    The point it, if someone signs a restrictive contract that can hold them hostage for several years (likely 7 at most if they signed in California or the label's headquarters are there), they should be held to the contract. If you promise to do something, you should keep your word. The promise is the contract -- not what others say about the contract. They signed it, they suffer.

    In California, the record label *must* pay you a minimum of 9k the first year and 12k (if memory serves correctly) each remaining year if you have signed an exclusive contract with them for your recording services.

  17. Re:MP3s on DVDs by dmanny · · Score: 2, Informative

    Your post got me thinking of this again. I tried googling for the phrase "DVD of MP3s". It got only 16 displayable results, many of which were people bemoaning the same situation as I have. However, there was at least one UK post about a player that does do OK, Ronin or some such. I just bought and am out of the market for a while but still interested.

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