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South Korean Music Retailers Dying
terrymaster69 writes "According to this Reuters feature, 95% of South Korean music retail businesses have failed in the last year. 'While South Korea is not alone in seeing a downturn, the drop has been greatly accentuated and particularly deep because of the country's high-speed Internet access and a youth culture that uses some of the most sophisticated gadgets available.' Is this really a problem or just a natural progression?"
I see it as natural progression.
People want information to be free - which is why P2P music sharing hasn't died yet.
Of course the RIAA have done exceedingly well turning everyone on the street into a criminal, I believe there is now a jail term for music traders? Feel free to correct me on that one if I'm wrong.
The USA isn't in a position yet where they can imprison people in SK. Not yet.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Did Netcraft confirm it?
*ducks*
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
It's natural progression. Records died out didnt they?
They will start a fresh more intensive drive to put the falling sales on "piracy" and "file sharing"...
RIAA will portray musicians as starving somalis who have to sell their souls to lawyers to fight for them...
INDUCE act will be reintroduced by Orrin Hatch and will be passed by 284-0
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
...Kim Jong Il has gone way too far now. It was one thing when he was developing nuclear weapons (hell, the US didn't seem to care), but now he's killing the South Korean recording industry? For shame.
the industry chose litigation over innovation...
i think we know how this one ends...
All the torrents you could want.
Music retailers are middlemen. They add exactly no value to the merchandise they sell. So when you make distribution cheap and easy (like buying direct on Amazon, or Itunes, etc), OF COURSE the middlemen are going to suffer. Thus is the nature of structure unemployment.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I used to work for Personics.
n et .music.idg/
Late 1980s they worked out a way to allow people to have professionally made audio tapes made up out of whatever single tracks they wanted from a large catalog. It involved a CD jukebox with compression that allowed cutting audio tapes at 8x or so - a 60 minute tape would run out in 10 minutes or less and all the gear to do this was at the record shop.
Detailed auditing tracked per-song revenue and royalties.
The music business deliberately killed this off in order to max out full album sales.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9805/26/inter
http://www.betagroupllc.com/1st-personics.html
In this and a ton of other ways, they crippled innovation.
They're now paying the price.
Are "professional" song writers that make their primary living as artists a thing of the past? If South Korea is any indication, the answer is YES...
Obviously it is a problem for the people who lose their jobs. But at the same time change is the way of the world.
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Is this really a problem or just a natural progression?
Well, much depends on if you are a Korean music retailer or not.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
It's really a simple thing. The traditional music industry has been a bunch of middle men that get the product from musician to consumer, on the bizarre premise that consumers don't actually want to see the band perform, but would rather be able to listen to a stale, overproduced, overedited piece of music from a CD or cassette.
Consumers, rightly so, don't see a whole lot of value here anymore. If they want a stale, overproduced piece of music, they download it from the internet or listen to the radio.
The value will be in watching a skilled set of musicians perform together. Check out, for example, the Asylum Street Spankers. (I mean, look them up and go watch them when they're in your city. You'll understand once you see them perform (And this is just one example. I'm sure music afficionados can think of a few others)).
fifth sigma, inc.
But I think the intriguing part is not the situation in Korea itself as much as the reaction to it in the US.
I just read in Business Week that the US slipped from number three --I'm pretty sure we're talking raw numbers rather than percentages-- to number ten in global broadband rankings. It's not altogether impossible that this decline is going to get worse rather than better in the near term.
And if it doesn't, if something like Wi-Max suddenly turns things around, then it could be even more interesting. Let's hope it's the latter rather than the former. But even then, there would be reprecussions for a rather large number of corporations beyond just music.
in my town, the old horse & cart transports have died out too. Is this because of high-speed road access and a youth culture that uses some of the most sophisticated automobiles available?
Or is it just because there is a better way of doing things?
Old industries die and new ones come along. Of course the dying industries aren't happy about it, but the only way is forward...
In Korea retail shops the top 5 are:
1) FreeBSD on CD
2) Gnome version 2 on CD
3) Microsoft XP Super Lite version
4) SCO Linux version 10
5) Celine Dion - Greatest Hits Volumes 1 to 10
Hmmm. Now we know why it is dying.
"About 95 percent of music retail businesses in the country have failed in the last five years."
"Since the launch of these sites, domestic CD sales have nose-dived by nearly 50 percent."
And they come from a credible unbiased source.
"It was two years ago when Seoul music store owner Jang Kyung-hee"
Personally, I'd like to see percentages of CD sales broken down by speciality music stores, big box stores (whatever is their equivalent of Walmart), local online shopping malls, and foreign shopping malls (such as iTunes). There are many factors that could be affecting these stats.
Let's see I can:
1. Get in my car, drive through traffic to get to the mall, find parking, and then go to my retail music store.
2. Once there, I can manually browse the racks for a while in hopes that the cd I want is there.
3. If there, I can now buy it for $14
4. If not there, I can ask the salesman to order it for me, or just come back next week.
5. Drive back home, through traffic, and put said CD in my player. Hopefully it will work also on my computer without any DRM scheme in the way.
OR....
I can
1. Not leave the house, and sit at my computer in my bathrobe.
2. Search for a song online, from as many bands as I want and know that they're there. And only get the songs I want, not being forced to buy the whole album.
3. Download said music, in a fraction of the time it would take to drive anywhere.
4. Listen to it on every one of my music devices
5. Pay or not pay for it as I see fit.
Hmmm... I'm thinking this new-fangled music download thing goes in the "trend" category.
"Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The
sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into
account, the sooner people will start making money again."
-- Bruce Schneier
From TFA: "These days, cellphone handset sales are the biggest source of profit for us," Jang said.
So they have realized.
But then: ``the future of music retailers looks particularly bleak since they also face cut-throat competition from online shopping malls.''
Well, looks like their business model is too last century. That's how the cookie crumbles. Innovate or degrade.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
There are two explanations for such a severe drop in music purchases: either their consumption of music is being replaced with their consumption of the other sophisticated gadgets, or (as I think was implied) the piracy* rates are extrordinarily high.
The problem is, if that level of piracy becomes common everywhere, it will stop being profitable for the record companies to make music. I realize that they are lining their pockets and fleecing the artists, but at a certain point (and 95% shutting down seems like that kind of point) it stops making sense to continue business. That would be well and good if people didn't really want the music, but they wouldn't be obtaining it like they are if they didn't.
I'm all for change, and I realize that the world will find a way to carry on even if the music industry collapses, but I don't feel that they want the industry to collapse. They just want to have their cake and eat it too.
The only way this can be considered a natural progression is in the sense tthat greed and human nature are going to make both sides sad.
*I'd say the "copyright infringement rates" but that just sounds funny.
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I'm sorry, 95%? Where do these numbers come from? Very convenient that the RIAA has an excuse to go into panic spasms.
The main reason that I don't pirate music is not that it's illegal or that it's the subject of rigged legal action, but because "popular" music is crap. Same with movies. I was offered a free viewing of Catwoman and I refused based on the artistic quality of the movie, not because of the legallity or otherwise of the offer. I'm surprised that music stores aren't failing at this rate all over the world.
I'm going to start the obligatory anti-bush thread since it seems to be appearing in almost every story no matter how non-sequiter the connection.
If "95% of the music retailers have failed", it could be because of foreign concurrence or simply because there were 20 x too many of them.
anyway, the FUD part of this announcement should also be considered.
I know which conclusions people want us to draw.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Y'know, there are still a few places in any major city where you can get a buggy whip... Fantasy Unlimited is probably the first shop I'd look at here in Seattle.
After all, why not? :)
People listen more and more music through small portable [mp3|ogg|wma|whatever]players, and not directly from a cd player anymore. Thus cds need to be converted to a format that can be listened to. With copy protected cds that is impossible, or at least harder than downloading. The cds aren't usable anymore, so they're not bought.
In high tech countries like Korea and Japan, this is felt first. In more countries this effect will be noticed soon, I expect.
the pun is mightier than the sword
Although the Korean retail business is miniture in comparison to Japan's (page 13 of this document), you've got to consider things like the ring-back, or caller-tune market (explained here and here) which have quickly grown into a $100 million market, showing that if you move in tune with technology you can make profits...
there is no need to gloat over it, these are just people trying to make a living and if they cant see the "big picture" like slashdotters can its no reason for them to lose their livelihood, how about some symptathy wile they restrucuture into the modern age ?
"...Check out, for example, the Asylum Street Spankers...."
This sounds disconcertingly like a product of the band name generator
T&K.
Political language
"CD sales at Jang's Mihwadang Records, once one of the 10 biggest music retail chains in the country, dropped by two-thirds in just two years. Jang now devotes more shelf space to digital appliances, including MP3 players or mobile phones."
I bet Jang isn't forcing his customers to buy the vinyl that they used to need to replace after scratching them, either. If only the record labels would stop fighting voluntary blanket licenses for song sharing, that they allow for lucrative radio royalties, they might survive to distribute content to Jang's new wares. But it looks like instead they're just roadkill on the Infobahn.
--
make install -not war
I mean that seriously too. Pretty much all the studies that have shown that downloaders don't buy more music were sponsored by the RIAA or the companies doing them had it in their best interest to get results that would make the RIAA member companies happy. Whether the results are accurate or not is irrelevant, when there's potential for bias you have to look at them as possibly incorrect. On the other side many of the folks who have found the opposite are sometimes motivated to want that result, or at least the RIAA will claim so. In some cases they're right, in others they're not but it's hard to always know which are which so you have to treat most of those as possibly incorrect.
What's that leave us? I bunch of wasted time to produce studies that we have to be skeptical of. Frankly we'll never really know the answer, we'd need alternate universes/timelines to experiment in to really come anywhere near proving it either way. Even then I wouldn't be surprised if we could prove both camps right, but it'd only apply in those alternate universes/timelines.
What IS definite is that music sales are down, downloading is at least steady if not growing and lawsuits flying right and left have had no real effect on those download numbers. Frankly it should be obvious to everyone that something is going to have to change to fix this. Perhaps compulsury licensing is the answer, perhaps something new we've not heard of is (DRM isn't going to stop it though), but whatever the answer is pointing fingers and trying to place blame (on both sides) will not help find it. Granted the RIAA seems to be the worst offender here, but /. alone has its share of "information wants to be free, no one should pay for music" supporters.
It'd be nice to see everyone to just sit down and find a solution, unfortunately the RIAA is probably the least likely to take part so a solution is likely still far away.
Good god, how awful of our loyal customers to abandon our stores for the same product sold cheaper and with less hassle elsewhere. Let's hope the government bails out our failing model of selling.
So the answer is simple, make it easier and cheaper for people to buy in your store than online...or face bankruptcy.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
I think this an important progression in music. The entire structure of music distribution needs to be rebuilt.
Right now, the music industy act as middle men, choosing what will be listened to and what won't. The artist recieves so little of the CDs actual cost, while the record companies continue to have profits in the billions.
How long did they really expect this system to stay place? How stupid do they think people are? It's only a matter of time before the music industry isn't even part of the eqation anymore.
Artists will become popular through word of mouth, because thier music is good, and not because they have a big tits. You'll be able to buy a CD for a couple of dollars, and hopefully MTV won't be around anymore.
- in a store, where they might not carry what I am looking for, or the CD I want is out of stock, where I have to ask the store clerk for every single CD I'd like to listen to, and where those same clerks often are distinctly un-knowledgable about music.
- or, on the Internet, where I can buy music legally by the song (and at a better price as well), where they pretty much carry everything on-line, and where I can browse to my heart's content without leaving my house?
It was bound to happen, and it's only natural that the first business to be affected is the one dealing in stuff that is essentially non-physical. I think other retailers must be beginning to feel the on-line competition as well... on line purchasing is way up for physical goods suchs as toys, clothes and electronics, and these are all purchases taken away from physical shops.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
If thats natural progression, then outsourcing is a natural progression too...
Serious music won't. I don't know anyone who uses downloading/P2P for classical or jazz. There are a lot of smaller labels out there that do a very good, serious, professional job of packaging their CDs for a discerning audience; and a lot of discerning people who buy their stuff. That's why chains like Harmonia Mundi in France are doing fine. As Harmonia Mundi's founder Bernard Coutaz points out (scroll to bottom), the audience is there and growing, and concert goers regularly buy CDs: it's the big labels who are failing to reach out to such customers. Me, I'm happy if the generic Tower Records crashes and burns, give me the small guy who actually knows his stuff. As for South Korea, dunno -- maybe they don't have enough of a market for that kind of thing, they're dominated by the MTV crowd?
I don't know about you but I *LIKE* going around a music store and browsing. Whats the alternative , driving for an hour to the warehouse and climbing over the shelves? Not everyone likes mailorder and lets face it , online retail is nothing more than an electronic sears catalogue that my granny used to buy her knickers from 3 decades ago. I *LIKE* shops , and for some geek like you to say they add no value shows how out of touch you are with a large percentage of humanity.
It IS part of a natural progression, and one that has been too long in coming. First the retail stores will die, then the major labels that subsidize their product, then the payola radio stations and television stations that centralize their advertising. What will die last is the age of the massively wealthy musician, an anonmoly at best that has led us to such tragedies as Milli Vanilla and Britney. Think of the poor wretch, dear Ludwig Van, who created the greatest music the world has ever seen not for the pennies he was tossed but for his love of the art. This is the soul of music; this is the golden age to which we are returning. Down with the cartels!
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
"The value will be in watching a skilled set of musicians perform together. "
Err no. The bands I listen to hardly ever come to my country. Am I supposed to book a flight to go see them in the few hours I get free in an evening? Or am I suppose to spend 4 hours over my dial up link to download their album so depreving them of money and me tying up my phone line?
Sorry pal , I'd sooner pay the $20 for a CD (and unless you're some tight fisted student $20 is NOT a lot of money) and listen to it in the comfort of my home when I want.
No no!! That is *not* the way to go about it.
Here, let me show you, child.
It is official; Netcraft confirms: music in South Korea is dying.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered South music Korean community when IDC confirmed that South Korean music market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all other entertainment. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that music in South Korea has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. music in South Korea is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Pop Star comprehensive stardom contest.
You don't need to be a Slashdotter to predict South Korea's musical future. The hand writing is on the wall: music in South Korea faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for music in South Korea because music in South Korea is dying. Things are looking very bad for music in South Korea. As many of us are already aware, music in South Korea continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Pop Music is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its sexy singers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Pop Star developers Hon Chi Ko and Pom Pom Fo only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Pop Music is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Disco Pop Star Koo states that there are merely 7000 listeners of Disco. How many users of Rock are there? Let's see. The number of Rock versus Disco songs on the radio is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 listeners of Rock. Other genre songs on Usenet are about half of the volume of Rock songs. Therefore there are about 700 listeners of alternative music. A recent article put South Korean chick flick Disco at about 80 percent of the music in the South Korean market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 music listeners. This is consistent with the number of songs on the radio.
Due to the troubles at Pyonyong, political instability, abysmal sales and so on, Disco Music went out of business and was taken over by eminent American pop-stars such as the well endowed Britney Spears, who tries to sell what is called "american pop trash". Now American Pop is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that music in South Korea has steadily declined in market share. music in South Korea is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If music in South Korea is to survive at all it will be among dilettante entertainment dabblers. music in South Korea continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, music in South Korea is dead.
Fact: music in South Korea is dying
(blatantly stolen from an AC *BSD troll)
and not just gloating? The RIAA what this guy's saying loud and clear. They know what they are (middleman) and they know they're largely unecesary now. But so what? It's 2004 and us here in the US still have an Electoral College, right? Those of us in the US know those middlemen are busy figuring out how to screw us, and so far they're doing a damn fine job. They bought up mp3.com, and shut down successful bands that weren't in a hurry to sign nasty contracts (way too lazy to look that up right now, and I'm sure it's all 'alleged' and crap, but there where several band that got taken off mp3.com w/o reason around the time of the buyout).
Oh, and they do nasty stuff like witholding support from Rob Halford's solo career so he'll team back up with Priest (and make them lots more money). Then there's King Diamond, who's got a successful album but can't get money to tour. He's blaming mp3s, meanwhile not notice who's really fscking him over.
So you'll forgive me if I don't cry a river for these guys. Maybe I'm mistaken, and the South Korean industry are all music loving saints (dountful, but stranger things have happended). Meanwhile, I'd say good riddence, but I'm a pessimist and I don't think they're going anywhere.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Something a lot of the rich techno geeks on this forum forget is that not everyone has a PC (I'm speaking generally , not just about Korea), never mind broadband. Just because YOU can download a whole album in 5 minutes onto your top of range PC then download it into the iPod mummy and daddy bought for your birthday doesn't mean everyone has that option. For some people a cheap CD ghetto blaster is as good as it gets and I know some people who still listen to tapes.
So how about some people move out of this bleedin edge mindset and realise that not everyone on this planet is part of the wired generation.
... or maybe not ;-))
;-))
I think this is a combination s of factors but first of all, it is the great popularity of computer games and MMOGs in particular in S. Korea.
If a teenager has a limited supply of money, like they usually do, what will he spend it on? Playing with his friends in real time, or buying the latest manufactured crap the RIAA has to offer?
Sadly, we in the west are always a few years behind those Koreans, but one can hope, can't he?
Imagine them mowing down all theose Virgins,HMV's, whatever... And building PC Baangs (online gaming coffe palors) instead, now that would be cool!
PS
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that if you are playing an MMOG on a standard DSL connection, you probbaly don't need a torrent in the background to drink up all your bandwidth...
Maybe the reasons are less obvious than "I just download all the time"?
"667 - Neighbour of the beast"
... and although that is admittedly a long time ago, at least 95% of the music I saw on sale was in the form of copied cassettes with shoddilly photocopied covers.
In fact I still have two of these tapes going strong now (and before anyone whines about me being a pirate, I also own legitimate copies thereof).
Now, I don't know whether it was just the shops I was going to, but it seemed there was a cultural predilection for fake stuff - which is just being amplified heavily by the ease of broadband access.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
You must be living in a dream world. South Korea is widely known to be the world's leader in p2p filesharing. It only makes sense that the content middleman industries would suffer as a result of that, copy protection or not. Why pay for what you can get for free, especially when the practice is so commonplace that it's not considered "bad"?
Unless you can show that a higher percentage of South Korean CDs are copy protected compared with North America or Europe, you've got no argument.
501 Not Implemented
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I've long been torn between whether or not p2p is ethical to me or not, its a very hard debate. but , after reading a post here, i'm really interested in what music would be like if gigantic labels lost alot of money and eventually become non-existant...is it possible that p2p would lead to only true music where the artist loved his craft, or is p2p just something that has spawned off people's desire to want everything for free (because hell, we pay enough for other things in life)
i believe that if p2p leads to the complete destruction of the music industry and all its corporations, that only true artists who really love their craft and care nothing about fame will be dominant and music and life (because my life mirrors the music I listen to) will be wonderful.
Just to point out, the article said 95% failure in the last FIVE years, not the last ONE year as the intro says. [Though I am sure the RIAA types will conveniently make the same mistake.]
For comparison, don't about 80% of all businesses fail within five years of startup?? Since youre talking economics, I hope you might know where to look up general failure rates. Let alone failure rates in Luddite industries.
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CD Sales down 95%
So did 95% of the musicians in Korea quit singing?
Why would people sing for free? They must be commies or hippies. Normal people don't like making music for fun, the only thing in life is work!
I'm not trying to come off as flamebait, but here it goes....
I really don't care if such a thing as a professional musician is part of my society. I feel if there's a band that is going to be hurt by file-sharing, then they need day jobs as well. If you're a good enough musician, then live performances should get you through the tough times. Writing "Stacy's Mom" should never be anyones main source of income.
http://www.commaecho.com
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I've been there, and I know you can buy bootleg music on street stalls all over the place in Seoul, and its been that way for years.
P2P is really the least of their worries I think.
Their article sounds like FUD to me..
SO let me get this straight - the record companies need to grow up and innovate or die, but we need to keep IT jobs in the U.S. because... well, because that's our livelyhoood!
/. and it's not dreaming.
Yup, this really is
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
This is more insightful than it is funny. As long as I'm not directly hurt by X, X is an innovation and A Good Thing(tm). When X becomes harmful it quickly becomes a problem.
/awaits to be modded troll/flamebait
A fun exercise left to the reader:
1. Substitute X = filesharing
2. Substitute X = outsourcing
What are you defining as "free?" Convenience? Quality? immediacy?
That damn Victoria's Secret commercial with the first few notes of "Monkey Man" got that song stuck in my head and last night I had to clear it out. Now, I lost virtually my entire MP3 collection about a month ago and have been able to restore only a tiny part of it, so it's not like I could just "click on the mp3." And while I have an LP of that album somewhere in my collection, I haven't had a turntable in years.
So I headed for easynews (not free: ten bucks a month). Believe it or not no one has posted that song in the last 22 days or so, so I had to pay for it. Now, did I go to one of the RIAA backed sites? No - I went to allofmp3.com. Why? Because the RIAA is fighting to lobby away my rights AND force me to subsidize their arrogance, so there's no way in hell they're US member is gonna get a penny. I settled for the lower quality (allofmp3's rip quality kinda sucks although the end product is still likely higher than the 128kbps crap from most US sites) and paid the Russians (who are NOT lobbying Washington to erode my rights) a dime for the track. Don't know how the BOM works but it's still likely whoever owns that album got paid - just a LOT less than if I bought from a US vendor.
Bottom line: it's not always about free, but it is now universally about freedom. In this case, the free market deprived the US industry of a buck while getting the Russians a dime. This happened for no other reason than the US entertainment industry has pissed me off to the point I refuse to support it.
God I love free trade...
I have a feeling that my feelings are likely felt by many Koreans and people just about everywhere. That feeling is that I just ain't paying $18 for a CD. It isn't WORTH $18 to me to listen to the VAST majority of music out there. It's simply overpriced. Instead I'll listen to the digital music channel I get as part of my cable subscription, the radio, or I may even soon get Sirius or XM radio as well.
I love music, I listen to lots of it, but I just can't bring myself to believe that $15 - $18 is a fair price for a CD of music, by ANYONE, I can count on one hand, maybe both, the number of CDs or cassettes (or records) that I own that I would listen to and think "hell yeah this is WORTH $18" and the rest are simply worth less and most if I had to buy them AGAIN for the retail price (that I paid for OH so many of them) I wouldn't repurchase them, no way.
I can go buy "most" new movies for $14.99 a few go $19.99 but as a rule of thumb I can pick up a movie for about $15 or I can rent it for $2 (actually I use Netflix religiously). This, to me, is a good enough deal that I buy quite a few movies, and rent quite a few more (via Netflix). Pirating movies to me is an absurd thought, why spend hours and hours downloading a crappy copy when I can just Netflix it? The same for music, if I could pick up a CD for $7-$9 I wouldn't bother pirating it it'd be WORTH it to me to get the pretty insert and a "real copy" of it. Alternatively I feel like 99 cents per track of music is a bit high too, your average CD is around 10-15 tracks and that makes some CDs more expensive to buy online than in the store, I've yet to buy a single song of online music, and probably won't unless it gets cheaper. When it hits about a quarter per song, maybe 50 cents, then I'll probably buy into it. Hey it probably never will, and I won't buy any music online, life goes on I suppose.
I put a "personal price point" on music at about $8 per cd. I hop on Amazon.com and pick up used CDs for $2-$7 all the time, I've bought dozens and dozens. I'll PAY that for a CD rather than pirate it, gladly. I support the artists by going to their concerts, and by listening to their music and by telling others "hey check out..." but I'm growing increasingly pissed off at the price of CDs and I haven't bought a CD off the shelf in... hmm 2 years now? Maybe more.
I for one will shed nary a tear to hear that the RIAA and the "big music" companies are hurting, evolution happens to us all. Better things come along, new ways of doing things, faster, cheaper, ways of doing things, and you adapt or die. Hello RIAA, meet the Dodo.
--- www.f-theocean.com
Not everyone on this planet is part of the wired generation, but the young South Koreans deserting their record stores are (practically by definition).
Awesome. We're one step closer to never having to leave the house, ever.
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In Other News, the Horse Trough Industry Association moved today to criminalize the use of the automobile.
"Automobiles are infernal machines that stink, make noise and are cutting into our bottom line," Christopher Fisk, barrister for HTIA, said earlier this afternoon.
HTIA is pressing legislation to impose tough penalties on non-horsetrough users.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
So, a small group of people quits making hideous amounts of money for wanking, and that is somehow sad & unjust. Your point? If I demand a substantial income for jerking off, are you going to pay me? I like that idea...
But for now, I think I'll just keep boycotting & letting them starve. I've already been doing that since I my IT job got outsourced a couple years back.
The honestly "struggling" artists were already struggling; and might have already been better off going with independent distributors, as have been discussed here on Slashdot before. Or they could get day jobs. [Or even night jobs, many of them.]
But more to the point, entertainment is NOT dead in Korea nor East Asia in general. In fact Korean entertainers are particularly popular here in Japan right now.
Lets face it, we are in the information age. An age, where information doesn't need any resellers. Perhaps the resellers need to refocus on providing information themselves, instead of simply reselling information which can be found cheaper somewhere else. This 'problem' is going to spread around the world as internet access gets more widely spread, and gets cheaper and cheaper.
Piracy doesn't kill retailers. Amazon does
ha - ha - ha :(
Professional songwriters get paid for every performance of their work, even in live settings.
So long as people pay for live music (and a century of recorded music has done nothing but increase this market) then songwriters can do just fine.
Might not be so easy for the talentless bankers in the middle...
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I think your comment applies to a lot of people, but not to me. You never heard _me_ say outsourcing is a Bad Thing. It's bad for the people who lose their jobs, but otherwise everybody wins. Software production becomes cheaper, yet the programmers who make this possible make fortunes according to their countries' standards.
Outsourcing is a great equalizer. Wealth flows from the rich countries to the poor ones. This makes those countries richer, and eventually they will stop getting the benefits.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Awe, come on...
If you heard South Korean music, you would be dying too, well, especially if you were in North Korea!
basically every company out there that involves itself in electronics is trying to incorporate music into their devices. Case in point: cellphones.
The Samsung SPH-S2300 comes with a built-in MP3 player, along with a mini-SD card, and its adapter for use as a regular SD card. Same goes with the Samsung SCH-V420, only with a Memory Stick Duo.
There is an on-demand cellphone-only portal called June by SK Telecom, the biggest carrier in Korea. June is host to numerous music files that subscribers can download to their cellphons for X number of days, and then watch it vanish. Hence, you see a lot of people with headphones that sprout from the phone as opposed to a different player.
In the end, it's all about the comfort level, having something when, where and how you want it. Some like to hold it in an iPod or some other capacity music player while others just want to listen to what the want, only for the time being.
The P2P distribution method is so compelling that it will win out -- even if it's illegal right now.
For Americans this might not be case. Let's keep in mind the way drug research is supported. Americans subsidize medicines for the entire world through high drug prices as well as the NIH grants that go to researchers in American universities. In the rest of the world the same medicines are available at much lower cost. In a parallel way, MPAA may keep US citizens from using P2P, but the rest of us will get it for free.
Even though Amazon will ship old Bogart films practically anywhere in the world, the fact is that any Bogart film ever made can be easily downloaded on eMule by anyone on the Internet. As someone in Eastern Europe right now, I am certain the P2P global availability will break the back of MPAA/RIAA.
I'm also going to make oblique references to your sexuality and hint that you may be a closet supporter of terrorism, communism, anti-Americanism, or whatever this week's enemy is.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The suggestion here is that the industry is failing because of music piracy over P2P networks and the internet.
From most of the comments here, I suspect that those posting get most of their music via P2P systems, and that is entirely up to them, but the death of music retailer has long been on the cards.
Over the years many of the best local indie music stores have closed down due to commercial pressure from the major players. This was going on, and most went out of business long before the impact of the internet. Back then we were all on 56K modems or slower.
I loved my local indie store, and I felt I got superb service from them. The staff became friends who I trusted and could rely upon, and as they got to know me, they would suggest new music they thought I'd like. Usually they were right, and my experience and exposure to music in general expanded significantly. I bought music habitually, to the extent that some weekends I didn't have any money left to go out drinking. It's not that I couldn't get copies from my friends, music was something to be treasured and a good music collection was something to be proud of.
With the indies gone, I opted to buy my music where it was cheapest - online retailers such as Amazon - but I still bought it. I think many other people did the same, and this in itself was an indication of how things were going. I doubt that online CD sales took business away from indies in itself, but more that as the small independent music retailers and the added value they provided disappeared, customers shifted to buying from the likes of Amazon.
Nobody (except possibly the staff, and even then I'm not certain) cares about the fate of the large "faceless" music retailing corporations, no matter how good they may be. There is no personal interaction, and they certainly present a less convenient way to purchase music. Just trying to find what you want is often a problem, and then you invariably have to queue in order to pay.
Let's compare that to buying on the the internet via the iTunes Music Store and the like. Yup, they're still big faceless corporations, but they're making it easy for you to find what you what by flexible searches and cross referencing. I've discovered and bought plenty of new music just from links to bands I'd never have found of considered when buying in HMV. And the fact that you can listen to 30 seconds of a track means that music from brand new bands isn't such a risky purchase, you've already a pretty good idea of what you're getting. You can shop whenever it's convenient, you're not forced to buy an entire album just for the one song you want, you can burn a CD if you really want one for the car, and even though the entire experience is many times more convenient and efficient, you actually pay less for the music!
I appreciate that P2P is having an impact on sales of music, but I suspect that if it weren't for illegal music downloads, many of those using such networks would simply be getting copies (used to be tape, now it would be CDR) from friends which is what used to happen back in the 80s.
What the RIAA are desperately clinging onto and defending is an approach to music distribution which has been around and has remained almost unchanged for 40+ years. Change is long overdue, and legitimate online purchasing of music is the way forward for so many reasons it's quite simply inevitable.
You'll never stop people copying music, and the internet simply makes the entire process quicker and more convenient. The only way to save the music industry is to make music distribution quicker and more convenient as well, the infrastructure is already available, just go with it.
Aqua certainly is out on vinyl -- if that's an issue for you I'd have thought you'd have looked.
Even Aqua's one single successful song, however long ago _that_ was, sucked, and so did the video, and their mothers wear army boots.
In the world of techno/dance, vinyl is still the dominant medium -- CDs are what the music is collected on for sale in Tower Records the year _after_ it stops being fashionable.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Six Degrees Of G. W. Bush
Music retailers blame "piracy" for lost sales -> Evil INDUCE act aims to "fix" this -> INDUCE act was proposed by Orrin Hatch -> Hatch is a Republican -> Bush is a Republican -> Therefore, Bush supports the INDUCE act (so Bush is bad)!
Neener neener neener, I win!
[it's a joke; laugh!]
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Bjork has a new CD out. Now, I dearly love bjork. You could quite honestly say I am a "fan" - you could even say I am somewhat obsessed with her work. And I have multiple usenet accounts which I frequently employ so as to keep up with my favorite tv shows (bad reception and rural living means tivo is useless to me). It would be trivial to add a pretty high quality rip of bjork's latest CD to my download folder. However:
I don't have a jacket to fondle - with that cool picture of her nearly topless and wearing what looks almost like S&M gear. Is there more inside? I don't know.
Her latest release is actually a DVD with 5.1 sound, two channel PCM sound, and video interviews. While I might be able to download all this stuff as a high quality ISO of the DVD (which would cost me a large percentage of the bandwidth I pay ten bucks a month for), if I do so I still...
I don't have the liner notes to read as I listen, nor do I have the satisfaction of knowing I gave Bjork my further support in the only way I can (at least until she realizes I'm alive and comes to live with me forever in my modest country home) - by giving her some money.
And so my download experience becomes significantly less fulfilling than were I to order the meatspace stuff and wait for its delivery. While there's a small chance I might not like the release at all, the fact is I "just want it because it's Bjork." And, as they say, it's never like the first time again.
So, I go to bjork.com, fill out a form, and wait...
When will the horror end?
It comes down to the digital music revolution. Its rare these days that an album contains all good songs. So why pay for songs that are no worth listening to or not your ideal type of song. Personally I download large volmes of music from p2p networks. However I like many people i know purchase the albums or songs (from stores like itunes etc) once I am sure that I like the song. Personally I feel ripped off by the music industry when I buy an album for one song. Yes its good for the person that has put in the time to write/play etc etc the music but do they get the money for the music they perform?
How many times have you bought an album and only liked a few songs on there? Im sure the feeling is all too common in the tech community. Its been a long time since ive been impressed with an entire album of songs (see U2 best of 1980 to 1990 kicks arse). And who really wants to listen to those prefab boy bands / girlie bands that have clearly had thier balls/personality removed/reprogrammed if it ever existed. The music industry needs to get a clue.
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I want to see the present system die. Completely. The system that gave us all that great stuff from my youth that I still listen to - Pink floyd, Yes, ELP, led Zep, The Jam, Cowboys International, Sex Pistols, The Damned - I want to see that industry dead.
This is the industry that has clearly seen the future coming for at least half a decade now and yet refused to evolve. In the meantime I've found all kinds of new stuff and seen some of my old friends adapt on their own. I've become my own "interntional distributor" via internet commerce. I've discovered music free of these old barriers, and I find - surprise - much of it's just as good as the stuff from the old system. Except now I get to KNOW where my money went. Commerce has become personal - when I give ten bucks to buy a CD, it's like digging into my own wallet and handing that artist five bucks. I'm being allowed to express myself directly to the artist. It restores a creative flow that has become disconnected for too long because of the middlemen of commerce.
Yee hah.
If you want to go back to the patronage model, please, feel free to stump up the money to do so yourself.
Do you pay taxes? In The US, there's the National Endowment for the Arts, in other countries there's often an even larger organization called the Ministry of Culture or some variation thereof. The point is every taxpayer *is* a patron of the arts.
Of course, the NEA has become rather infamous for funding the sort of thing that hardly anybody enjoys (tedious "advant-garde" performance art, grotesque paintings using one or more bodily fluids for shock value), but there's no intrinsic reason why the money, couldn't say, fund music of popular nature instead.
If no one buys and rips the music, will it still be possible to download it?
its people like RIAA who have created the whole "business" and "business projections" in the first place. sample this - they hire an artist for one his numbers. pay him pittance. modify the same tune to suit all the modes of delivery - FM, TV, Ringtones, CDs, LPs, AD Jingles, Movie tracks, ...whatever. the artist get a pittance anyways. but this way the RIAA has projected a business of say a billion plus dollars in revenue worldwide. now, its the RIAA who has claimed this profit all along. why project the profit/ loss in the first palce. you project something as great potential, and then cash in on the percieved loss. by the way RIAA projects things - they discount many factors, consumer boredom, changing habits, and lets face it less value for actual music itself. there was a time when the artist had talents which we re rare, and hence people paid for it. now anyone could do that in a garage - just plain anyone. so why pay for something thats actually doesnt cost anything ?
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What many people would like to see is less of the short term pop bands and more work on long term artists who will be selling albums in 10-20 years time (think Stones, Beatles, Bowie etc..).
The money spend hyping up all the rubbish boy/girl bands could be spread more evenly, promoting all of the bands a label has on its books. Spending a million dollars or pounds on a video is ludicrous just for one rubbish song.
At best it'll only kill off the current music industry.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
That's another of those fallacious crutches dragged about by the crippled, dying, industry: "if this industry, that owns all these recordings, dies, so do the recordings." It reminds me of Cleavon Little in "Blazing Saddles", holding a gun to his own head while holding back the ignorant townsfolk: "Hold it. The next man makes a move, the nigger gets it...Drop it! I'll blow this nigger's head all over this town! Oh Lordy-lord, he's desperate. Do what he say. Do what he say..."
If Sony records went out of business tomorrow, the catalog would still be owned by Sony. they would seek to extract value from that catalog anyway they could, and if they couldn't come up with something profitable they'd either find someone else to sell it to or move into new distribution partnerships.. partnerships that would INCREASE the flow of these long forgotten recordings back into the culture.
These recordings are not going to suddenly vanish into oblivion, raptured by some corporate god because the parent went out of business. Call it greed, call it common sense... just don't call it Mr. Johnson.
So it will take a while, but they'll have it eventually. After all, how many people do you know who don't have a radio?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
1. How much did a bible cost in the year 1500?
How much for one at a used bookstore today?
Of course it is a progression.
2. For the first time in history, we have literally a 100 year storehouse of audio and video. A consumer only has 24 hours in a day and we are swimming in media. Why shouldn't a product in gross overabundance have a negligible price if we honestly promote competitive capitalism?
If one has a stake in a media company, one might think differently.
If an MP3 is not ripped, does it make a sound?
Tyler: You don't know where ive been, Lou. YOU DONT KNOW WHERE IVE BEEN!!
I listen to my music on a non-linear device that doesn't get bigger when my music collection does.
I store my music on my computer and/or iPod.
I'm supposed to buy my music on a linear medium, find physical storage space for all of the albums I own, and manually transfer every CD I own or will want to own to my computer?
Something about this model seems fundamentally wrong. The RIAA needs to make a paradigm shift that acknowledges that you can sell non physical goods and make a profit.
If I'm going to rip my CD to MP3 anyway, why should they bother selling me the CD, it's no less copyable than an MP3, and after a lifetime of collecting music, I won't have to worry about replacing my old CD's with whatever the next generation medium is, like we did with LP's in the mid 80's.
The movie industry will face this same challenge in another 10 years when technology makes DVD's obsolete, and I can download an HD quality movie in minutes and burn it to whatever medium is popular, or upload it to my media center in seconds.
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Even without any P2P or illeagal copying, retailers of music will be the first to go.
People will buy mp3's or CD's though the net.
And when they start to really get fed up with the price of it all, they will start buying music from cheaper unsigned artists or will look for artist who are just giving it away.
This industry will crash.
When I look at the current litagation by RIAA, I see a man trapped in a swamp. Stuggeling makes it worse.
I already told you my reason: I'm not going to give the RIAA affiliated corps any more of my money. Even when I buy "mainstream" media I make an effort to buy imports or used. You can call it "self rightcheous" all you like - whoopdeefucking doo. Like I care what you think when you're in here whoring for the people lobbying away the rights that allow the little guy to compete with them. (You might want to think about the real;ity of this before you jump off that cliff with another ignorant retort.)
(while attached to broadband).
I'm not on broadband; And this wasn't the first of your simple minded assumptions.
I have to drive an hour to campus and spend a few hours in the library to make use of that usenet bandwidth I pay for every month. Ergo, those "streaming services" that provide shit quality recordings that I cannot save are as useless to me as the cable TV that I also do not get out here in the country.
And yes, I have ethical issues with payng for something propped up by an artifical trade barrier.
You say you own a copy on LP. That's great, but there's no realistic way for anyone to verify that
I didn't ask you to. Nor is it relevant to my point. I was not mentioning it to point out my "right" to download a copy of the recording, only my ironic inability to make use of media I already own. Nice try, 'tho.
Buy a record player for $5 at a yard sale (I got my rather nice one complete with two unused styluses that way).
Fischer-Price, no doubt.
I have, in the past, spent a great deal of money on hifi equipment. I have designed it, built it, sold it, written articles for commercial publication - I certainly know about the availability of older equipment. I also own a vintage four track stereo reel to reel deck made in 1961 - does that mean I can play four track stereo reel to reel tapes?
I spent a lot of money on my records and many of them are irreplaceable. Unless you can tell me where to find a (free) vinyl copy of Tex and The Horsehead's first LP, or Shock Therapy's original Detroit release of "Shock Therapy" or impLOG's "Holland Tunnel Dive" 12" 45 I think I'll leave them right where they are: hanging on the wall, well protected from damage.
I'll spend my money where I please, thanks. And it won't be on RIAA label recordings; Why should I blow a four year streak?
And dude... you never heard of the Rolling Stones?
I'm a fleabit peanut monkey
All my friends are junkies
(That's not really true...)
He/she is certainly suggesting no such thing. You went from him/her saying "a digital copy of a music recording is not a thing" to "anything which can be represented digitally is not a thing". So... no.
But even so... Let's see... certainly something which is (as opposed to just "can be") represented digitally has some properties which "things" (as in "physical object") do not. For example, they can be copied at virtually no cost. So if you'd said: "[...] something which is represented digitally [...]", I would certainly have agreed with that statement. However, your phrasing is very clever and ambiguous. Let's use a painting as an example: A paiting can be (albeit incompletely) represented digitally, but that certainly does NOT mean that the original painting is not a thing. However, it can still be argued (and rightly so, I think) that the digital representation of that painting is not a "thing" (because it can e.g. be copied at will, something which "things" cannot). So it all hinges on someone's interpretation of the "anything" in your statement, ie. whether "anything" is in fact meant to be the original "thing" or whether it is the digital representation you're talking about.
HAND.
Anyone who has ever read economics should recognize that the music industry is dying. Protecting a dying industry is just inherently wrong!
;)
What they should do is to quite trying to protect artists by passing various laws, and by doing so force them to find new ways of making money.
Supply is always going to equal demand! If we want more artists, we'll pay for it.. and if we feel there are too many we won't (like we are not doing at the moment).
I wish governments would spend millions of dollars on job security for programmers as well.
Korean music sucks! K, J & HK pop really blows the big goat in the sky. I suppose the same thing can be said about the pop we have here....
There is a difference between "worthless" and "can't be sold". Many things are (essentially) worthless, but can still be sold for a great deal of money (and vice versa). Diamonds come to mind.
HAND.
The quote in the submission contains a statement that directly blame it on high-speed internet and gadgets... where is the evidence here? where's the primary data of the research that would prove that those with high-speed internet access and gadgets would buy less music than those without, in a way that would explain this drop?
There is a difference between the two. However, something that cannot be sold, notably the effort/labor/cost put into a commodity *intended for sale* is absolutely worthless if the commodity cannot be sold. A better way for me to have put that phrase would have been
/. Diamond drills come to mind :P
[...] can't be sold and is therefore absolutely worthless?
A bit of pedantry here, but an important clarification, thanks for noting it.
And I would caution about calling diamonds essentially worthless on
You know you've lost it when you begin signing physical documents with =^_^=
Yes, yes. Should have had the obligatory IANAE disclaimer on that.
HAND.
Piracy isn't theft, as you aren't taking anything. It is, however, akin to fare dodging (off peak). If you dont buy a train ticket, the train will still run. It doesn't cost anyone anything extra (the added fuel needed because of your addedmass is negligable).
Trouble is, if everyone does it, the train doesnt make any money and then it wont run. Everyone loses.
Of course, some trains will still run out peaoples love of driving trains, but theres no guarentee it wil go when and where you need it.
I am not sure what your point is and I am sure that somebody said the same thing about 45 RPM record players when CD's were becoming popular. Yes, for economic reasons, there are always people who are at the tail end of the technology curve. Software for older technologies tends to remain widely available until the new technologies become cheap enough for most people to adopt. Sound recording technology has been progressing since the first tin foil recording. 78's replaced cylinders, vinyl replaced 78's, CD's largely replaced vinyl. Reel to reel tapes were replaced by 8 track tapes, 8 track tapes were replaced by cassette tapes, cassettes and "singles" are being replaced by MP3 and similar technologies. I am not sure that anybody makes new prerecorded tapes or 78's anymore. There are people who for economic reasons still listen to older music formats. Some people even prefer vinyl to newer formats and pay a premium for both vintage and newly manufactured vinyl records. Time changes, and formerly preeminant technologies either fade away or become high-end niche markets.
Keep in mind S. Korea is a relatively new democracy. I can point out Kwangju Diary as a flashpoint in its evolution, and you can see how things have pretty much progressed from there. What does this have to do with music retailers dying out? Well, look at the S Korean release of The Cult's "Love", and you'll note the song "Revolution" is missing. It was banned by the government. However, the song is freely available online. As well as a bunch of other songs, news, and info. You can't keep people in the dark if they don't want to be. If you want that song, what is your source? Congratulations, you just broke the copyright by working your way around an artificial control. The situation with the RIAA/copyright isn't much different. Putting aside the whole copyright issue, it becomes a simple case of supply and demand. You have an infinite supply on P2P networks, and a worldwide demand of internet users. How is this so fucking hard to understand? You either integrate with the standing technology or you die. You can't stand on your molehill and demand all the technology be revised to suit your specific demands (well, unless you got one damn good lobbying group). Put the onus on the content providers. Let them come up with their uncrackable format. Let them come up with their proprietary players. Hell, let them come up with there own internet. See how long they last. You want music on the web? You want music in a digital format? Well, you're gonna have to compromise. Just don't expect everyone else to be stupid enough to buy in to your outrage over file sharing compared to their outrage of paying $18 a pop. And try getting a copy of Ratticus past US customs. Information does indeed want to be free.
Uh, both? It's a problem if you are a music retailer. It's not a problem if you are a music consumer who has found a channel for acquiring music which is better suited to your needs and tastes than what the music shops were doing for you.
Incidentally, harness makers and cartwrights can still earn a decent living; there's just far, far fewer of them per 1000 than in centuries past.
South Korean Music Retailers Dying
I've got to admit - I thought this was going to be a story about hitmen wacking small business owners in some new untraceable way that made it look like natural causes.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
You've just abstracted the NIMBY concept...
(Not In My Back Yard)
Substitute X = Nuclear Waste Dump
etc... etc... etc...
"My religion is to live --and die-- without regret." -- Milarepa
So, there's just not that much space for music retailers anymore, is there? Well, what people think has happened to space for MUSICIANS with the advent of recorded music? Try to imagine how many people would earn their livings with music if all music had to be live.
(8-DCS)
Small music retailers occupy a position in the value chain that just isn't tenable any more. The same thing happened to travel agents in the U.S. -- they were killed off by online giants. Did you really want to pay for a whole group of people to do shuffle tickets around in ways that are less convenient to the consumer and totally unnecessary?
These changes in the nature of business, driven by technological change, are Schumpeter's "creative destruction" in action. The thing to worry about is when powerful groups that developed to profit from the status quo stand in the way of natural change and create distorting laws or institutions to prevent natural efficiencies from being realized. We can all think of such groups...
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There is so much music with the internet supply and demand mean that everyone doesn't need to pay so much for the crap.. it's like an instant message program, any chance you'd pay for one?
No, you switch to another one in a heartbeat. Why should we pay for the development of something people create for free all the time?
If I want a symphony made for my opera I will get investors together or if I want to see it performed I will pay, but to pay for popular music which I can get MOST EASILY THROUGH THE INTERNET?.
No, I'm sorry, you lose.
The Slashdot summary says that the 95% failure rate was "in the last year", but the linked article actually says five years.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Besides, there's also folk music
Not with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Witness lawsuits about "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "Happy Birthday to You".
Legal or illegal, right or wrong, just or unjust, distributing music on plastic platters is technologically obsolete.
The day of the large recording company is over.
Perhaps the day of the Rock Star is also over.
Let's accept this fact and move on. You can't stand in the way of progress.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
There is another broad overarching principle which is enshrined in the same document that protects against slavery, and that principle is copyright and patent, two fundamental bricks of intellectual property.
The same Constitution that gives Congress the power to provide for enforcement of monopolies on works of authorship and inventions also once recognized slavery. See also "Three Fifths Compromise". This same Constitution also briefly prohibited the manufacture, sale, or importation of alcoholic beverage. Constitutions can be amended.
Any IP laws or amendments to the US constitution you'd like to see enacted would be easily and permanetly avoided by the use of contract law.
Hypothetically, if Congress and industry decide to reimplement copyright in terms of contract law, then how can a songwriter impose his IP wishes on those who happen to hear his music on a retail store's PA or on radio, and who have not signed anything?
if The terms are set that You can take a picture of me for $10 but can't copy it and give it away, and you agree, then that's that.
So given people who happen to walk into a retail store and hear music, how do you expect to get all of them to "agree" not to copy it? Or if copyright law were to be reimplemented in terms of contract law, would the commercial background music industry that Muzak created evaporate then and there? What about FM radio?
As for the case of genetically engineered canola, the corporation SHOULD be getting a piece of the action wherever the crop is grown to be sold
Do you think Monsanto should have a right to take my wealth from me if some ROUNDUP READY brand patented seed happened to blow accidentally into my fields?
One implication of the myriads that this nightmare can produce is "royalty" on children of parents who underwent a DNA therapy, since the children (and their progeny) are now carriers of some corporation's "Intellectual Property".
BS. A gene therapy patent filed before a child is born will have expired by the next generation. Or are you assuming a hypothetical Cher Patent Term Harmonization Act?
Notice that the article says the past five years, not the past year as the poster misquotes. Not to poke holes in their numbers, but here are some historical US business failure statistics randomly grabbed from Google. I have read that 80% of new businesses fail in the first 2 years, 90% if they are restaurants. So if the statistics include startups that are destined to fail naturally, it's not as significant as it sounds.
Did anyone ask Steve Balmer? Maybe they are all iPod users. :)
Do not stare at the sun. It might hurt your eyes.
That's right, me and everyone else who disagree with you work for the RIAA! Well spotted, mate!
Putting that aside, your analysis is incredibly simplistic. Copy protection is only one of a myriad of factors that affects willingness to grab copyrighted files off p2p networks. Some of those factors include:
* Repect for copyrights. Perhaps South Korea doesn't have the same corporation-worshipping mantra we have in the West?
* Price of content. If the DVDs and CDs people want are priced more than people can afford, they will grab them for free instead.
* Availability. If high-quality free content is available and people, and the applications to aquire them are easy to use, it will encourage more filesharing.
* Legal difficulties. If you don't fear the RIAA or other policing knocking down your door, you are again more likely to grab stuff of P2P.
* Network infrastructure. If your ISP or networking technology limits your upload/download potential, you either hit a rate cap and it costs you money, or download too slowly to make p2p worthwhile.
Copy protection is also a factor, I'm sure. But here, very few CDs are copy protected, enough so that it would be a surprise if a random CD purchased at a store had copy protection on it. Unless South Korea has a significantly higher percentage of copy protected CDs, I fail to see how that could explain the additional filesharing when the other factors I listed above have far more explanatory power.
501 Not Implemented
Piracy isn't the only reason.
Took the example of my country, Brazil, that with Japan and EUA are the only countries where the national music sells more than the imported. Here a lot of small retailers have already died. The reason? They can't compete selling just 2 dozen albums.
Today the world has just 4 transnacional record companies, each year they release less albuns and have a smaller cast. The record companies just want to sell millions of copies, and their greatest buyers are the big departament stores. Retailers that just want to sell the last hit, and have very little shelf space. The payola marketing makes just these few artists play in the radio. The public doesn't know anything different.
The small independent store, with a knowledgeable salesman and a variety of offers, is dying. They can't sell the handful of hits at the same price of the big stores. They will die in Korea, Brazil and everywhere.
You got that right. Except for indie shops, it's the mall store Sam Goodys and boxstore Walmarts of the world who sell music now. So I have to spend money back & forth (spending gas & maintenance on my car to drive to overcrowded parking lots to enter malls[with noisy kids & loud crying babies]) to enter stores like Sam Goody's where their very limited selection of music is stuck where the disco cd's and M$donna's a$$ are. Then, yeah, put on the ear plugs 'cause they'll bang your ear with foul loud rock or rap music from a band you hate. Then you go to ask the clerk some questions about your favorite musician you found online and he says "What?? Who??" obviously not listening to what you're saying while his ears are filled with a headset attached to an mp3 player. Then he says, "oh don't know. I only listen to M$donna music." Then you go to pay for your CD and have to pay their OVER INFLATED PRICES of $25 or more for the privilege of taking it home. Then you open it at home and only find 1 or 2 good songs for something you paid $25 for!!
Thank you p2p and musicians (Shareaza, EmilieAutumn.com, CDBaby.com) who put their music online for me to sample and buy. Bye Bye CD Carriers Sam Goodys of the world!!
* weedshare.com 50% to artists, webjay.org iuma.com CDBaby.com Epitonic.com ampcast.com
This is added value. The CD is worth the same whether you bought it from the shop or online. Therefore, the shop adds 0 value.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I lived in Korea for a couple of years, and I'm a little confused. The majority of the inventory of the retailers that I came across were bootlegs. I don't know why the RIAA would have a problem with these guys going out of business because of internet file sharing.
Where we are headed is - free digital entertainment with advertizing embedded in the entertainment (called "product placement").
LISTEN to the beginning of the next top rap song. Does it not advertize the NAME of the people/groups doing the singing/editing/producing (e.g. Eminem mentions/advertizes his producer Dr. Dre)
Throwing in "coke" "pepsi" or"google" in the lyrics (for cash) is inevitable.
By the way, google pays me for mentioning them.
( just kidding )
"I think there's a proportion of downloaders who would pay, but just not to the RIAA. I'd certainly want to pay the artist directly."
I've suggested this before and got the usual silence. If you're really for "artists" welfare then you'd do everything in your power. You'd become the middleman yourself. Make the artist you claim the MPAA/RIAA/Book publishers are ripping off, a better deal. Why aren't all you "civil disobediance" types doing that?
Also how is your "civil disobediance" working to the artists benefit, when you're taking the little that they do get away from them?
Then why not boycott the RIAA instead of stealing the music? That way, the RIAA gets the message, and you're not depriving the artist of any income
.mp3 file is not "stealing music". If I steal something from you, I deprive you of what was once yours to do with as you please. Filesharing does not satisfy this definition.
1. Stealing Music -
Sharing an
If I steal your music, I am presenting myself as the author of your creative work, and attempting to pass it off as my own, for profit. Again, filesharing does not do this.
2. RIAA Feels Threatened -
I'd be interested to hear how one could boycott the RIAA and still pay for 90% of the music you hear on the radio. RIAA and distributors/music lables are out to get file sharers because p2p threatens to supplant the status quo of music distribution models File sharers provide a service to the artist just like the traditional distribution vendors do: they disseminate the music to the masses. Artists make money not on the song (for the most part), but on the related business of merchandising and concerts.
Artists still make that money if p2p networks are allowed to flourish, and the people distributing the files exchange the value they provide via distribution, for the value of the song they get for free.
Any attempts to criminalize an exchange of music, (or art, or digital reproduction of any kind,) when the people sharing are not attempting to sell it, are nothing more than a thuggish cartel trying to bully the populace into adhering to a system that allows their parasitic existence.
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
Tyranny of the masses, replacing tyranny of the corporation.
How is being ripped off by the masses any better than being ripped off by corporations?
The assumption that the masses will somehow behave morally better than the corporation doesn't hold up when you consider that a corporation is nothing more than an algamation of individuals.
Anyway I suggest Artnet as a solution. A bit extreme but then reading all of the "justifying" posts here, I don't think any other option is available.
There aren't enough people (currently) who like to browse brick and mortar shops the way you do. There are many, many people who find the model like iTunes online shopping much more convinient. Therefore, traditional distributors are not adding enough value to justify their existence.
P2P distribution models add value, but not enough to support a whole industry like the big labels are used to. The grandparent's comment about structural unemployment is quite true. The RIAA's attempt to criminalize filesharing is akin to the buggy-whip manufacturers banding together to criminalize alternative modes of transportation, because it was 'their idea', and the automakers (and drivers) somehow were 'stealing' it.
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
I like your analogy, except for one part: a train can be argued to represent an essential need to a community. Here, we're talking about entertainment.
... what? No more movies? Or, not as many, but better movies?
:-)
So, perhaps a better analogy would be 'sneaking into a movie'? (downloading it off the net?) The movie still plays, but if enough people dodge the gate,
If Star Wars was shown *free* in theaters around the world, George Lucas would still have got rich off the action figures.
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
I agree; if you're a Korean music retailer, it's a problem.
Now the sun will die out eventually, part of its natural progression. For those of us who rely on it for energy, this will be a problem. Sometime before then, we need to figure out how to get off this rock. Since we think its death will take a few million years, it's not our biggest concern yet. A natural decline of the middleman in music is a much more immediate concern.
The two concepts are not mutually exclusive; a natural progression can also be a problem.
"That's why the Gutenberg press, and the recording industry are huge. They give everyone the chance to make a living at producing works of art - not just a lucky exalted few who manage to fall under the eye of those with the money and the power to make things happen."
There's also no guarentee that a patron will either pick what the populus desires, or even release it to the public (has anyone see The Scream recently?).
Substituting one form of control for another?
Bull (again). I know someone already who is shipping DVDs offshore to have them ripped to an archive. It costs just a few cents to have some chinese laborer rig it up on a fixture and rip it to a digital archive.
Even if you paid an expensive US worker to rig up a tape on a deck and digitally record it we're talking an hour or two - so how many need to be sold to recoup? Ten? Twenty? After that every access of that archive is pure profit.
It's not being done now because they're still scrambling for that "all or nothing" prize. Eventually they'll figure out that's lost to them, and you'll see the floodgates open.
In Korea, PCs are everywhere including PC-Baangs. The availability of highspeed broadband everywhere and good P2P software (soribada) has made it too easy to download MP3 online. Unlike slow and queue-intensive eDonkey or gnutella, Soribada (Korean P2P app) is very fast and a song downloads almost instantaneously. It reminds me of the original Napster-era.
Zeia Award for Technology and Software http://zeia.net/
http://www.up0.com/
Maybe Rap has a thing or two to do with this trend----won't waste my cash on that stuff!!
>Is this really a problem or just a natural > progression?" The two things aren't mutually exclusive.
if all the horsetraders called it a problem when Ford rolled out the model T.
Either way I think artists will make more money with online $0.99 music sales, the very people who form the base of this market.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
"Is this really a problem or just a natural progression?"
/.ers are hipocrates.
So the death of the music industry is natural industry, but outsourcing jobs to India and whatnot (which i'm sure your against) isn't? Go ahead, troll me or offtopic me or whatever, but I just feel like expressing the fact that some
That's a reference to the old practice of singing to pay for a meal or some other service. The song is the currency, not the item being purchased.
Sometimes...you just have to leave the house. You should try it atleast once.
No kidding. But the point is, when someone says you can buy something "for a song", they mean that it's cheap.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It wants to be free.
However, it does NOT want to be anthropomorphized.