Slashdot Mirror
Challenging Music Downloading Myths
The BBC is reporting on a study by digital music research firm The Leading Question, which found that people who download music from peer to peer networks paid for four and a half times more music than regular music fans. Also that most of these people "are extremely enthusiastic about paid-for services, as long as they are suitably compelling." What is nice is that the BPI welcomed the findings that not all file sharers are actually evil... they still pledged to carry on the 'carrot and stick' approach though.
This is something everyone knows, yet the RIAA still hasn't gotten wind of. Users would gladly pay for songs if they were sufficiently cheap and instantly available. Look at iTunes.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
recording companies around the globe will likely ignore this piece of common sense and prefer to continue their tagline of "all pirates are evil and they steal millions from us". I wish I was just being cynical, but at this point the stubborness of the *IAA to fight pirates is really disheartening.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
"are extremely enthusiastic about paid-for services"
yeah, sure.
Rather than taking legal action against downloaders, the music industry needs to entice them to use legal alternatives, the report said.
By chasing down people for using P2P they just cement my opinion that we should be downloading free music via legal alternatives like etree, dimeadozen, etc.
I just can't imagine why people would be enticed to further support the RIAA's actions rather than dropping support for them all together.
It's the sad nature of the public. They love to be abused.
I know it's illegal and that it can possibly hurt artists, but if it wasn't for downloading music illegally, I would have never bothered listening to Michael Buble, would have never bought two tickets to his show, and would have never spent over $200 on merchandise afterwards. So there's a good side to it as well that isn't always as obvious.
I spend as much money as I can afford on CD and vinyl and am completely unapologetic about downloading leaked pre-releases, deleted releases, music I'd consider buying but only after hearing (RIP John Peel, there are fewer and fewer places to do so), and sometimes just music I've not yet the money or time to buy...
I like the way the spokespeople in the article speak entirely as though the recording industry's major problem with filesharing is not that it's illegal, but that it costs them money - probably a more accurate reflection of their sentiments, but certainly not the line the RIAA has been spouting.
As to how much music down loaders have that should count the amount that they now have. My MP3 files amount to about 11 gigs, but I used to work in a record store so it's skewed. I do fit that profile of owning more music. I just didn't pay retail for it. And I will be damned if I am going to lug a turn table and 70+ records in to work each day.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
One day I am going to find and buy - or else delete from my hard drive - all the music I have illegally downloaded.
qntm.org
No, they paid 4.5 times more for legally downloaded music. This study doesn't take into account the amount spent on music in general including physical CDs, and as such the correlation could only apply to downloads, and that opens the door for all sorts of non-causal relationships.
For example, aren't filesharers likely to more strongly represent the tech savvy demographic? And wouldn't people who often swap MP3s be more likely to be happy to listen to MP3s rather than physical CDs?
It's nice to hear the CD before you pay $20 for one good song and fifteen crap songs. I have never downloaded off of a P2P myself though.. ((smile))
/. spaztech
The whole piracy/peer-to-peer argument has been done and done. And no matter how powerful the argument, the industry believes that every single time you download something, they lose a sale. And that's that.
Statistics and studies do not matter to these people. Your desire to kick the tires before you buy doesn't matter either. You got it - you didn't pay for it - we lost money. Of course the reality of it is something totally different, but these organizations have had a stranglehold on their commodity for so long, they're not comfortable with anything less than a stranglehold.
So they fight. And if that means ignoring studies and taking up ridiculous positoins - so be it. We're convinced - but they are never going to be.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The report also said that people who downloaded music for free spent less on music overall than those who didn't.
While the RIAA and BPI are guilty of heavy-handed tactics in taking tracts of their customer base to court, it doesn't actually make copyright infringment any better.
But our concern is that file-sharers' expenditure on music overall is down, a fact borne out by study after study. So we must always spend more on music not less! How dare we as consumers decide to spend less of our disposable income on something other than music.
why paying for one song makes the industry so happy. Because you can only buy one song online, instead of having to buy the whole album in the store. Yes, buying one song is better than getting it P2P, but the recording industry can't be happy about itunes and such for long.
Go to the w3.org and put Slashdot.org through the validator.
It's something of an apples-to-horses comparison anyway - comparing illegal file sharers to "average music fans", that is. I guess I'm an "average music fan" and I don't do peer-to-peer at all and rarely download music, period. My way of experiencing music isn't really supported by song-by-song purchase in the first place. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but music that I find most interesting - and most likely to purchase - is packaged as a collection where the artist created a 60-75 minute experience, not just a 3'05" experience.
I suppose many people like to create their own lengthy music experience one song at a time from different artists, and good for them, but that's just not me. I suppose that's why there's a market for short story collections as well as novels.
The thing is people have a fixed music budget. This is why a lot of people download music. They buy it until their budget is reached, and then they download the rest.
This means that if music was cheaper (say $.25 or less) folks would by more music. This could only be a good thing for the music industry because more music would be purchased. That in itself woulnd't generate extra revenue, since the music is cheaper, BUT music listeners musical horizons would be expanded. This means more people going to more shows and a general increase in the level of interest in music.
Albums could almost be sold as a loss leader for getting people to come to shows because you can't "download" the experience of a live show!
I fail to see the relevance of this. Yes, while some people I know who download a lot of music tend to buy more music than other people, they are still downloading much more than they are buying. A record stolen is a record that the record company, the artist, and all the tricky bastards in between on the cut aren't getting paid for. And they have every right to be pissed about that. If someone buys more real estate than the average person, they shouldn't be turned a blind eye for stealing massively greater amounts of land. Here's a metaphor I'm sure most of you will get: Bill Gates is one of if not the most generous philantropists in the world, but that doesn't stop the Slashdot community from admonishing him for his shifty business practices. No matter what someone does for someone else, it shouldn't justify wronging the other party. Also, besides knowing some people who buy lots of music, and download lots of music, I know a smaller portion of people, who download much more by comparison, who buy significantly less CDs or online downloadable songs
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
The BBC is reporting on a study by domestic violence research firm The Bleeding Question, which found that people who commit armed robbery paid for four and a half times more weapons than regular munitions fans. Also that most of these people "are extremely enthusiastic about paid-for services, as long as they are suitably compelling." What is nice is that the BPI welcomed the findings that not all thieves are actually evil... they still pledged to carry on the 'carrot and stick' approach though.
The BBC is reporting on a study by digital music research firm The Leading Question, which found that people who download music from peer to peer networks paid for four and a half times more music than regular music fans.
I may eventually regret using Yahoo Music Unlimited, but one of the nice things about it is that you get to find out which CDs really stink and aren't worth buying.... Turns out, almost all CDs out there are really bad.
I'm sure that this isn't a shocking revelation, but the fact that M.C. Hawking has the best album I've heard in the past month is rather disappointing.
On the other hand, music pirates don't know how bad an entire album is until they cave in and buy it. Suckers.
Anyone else think the people who are harming the music industry are the RIAA? People who download music off the Internet (hardcore music lovers) probably take up a majority of the people who spread awareness about music artist's songs.
How about record companies sign bands that are fresh and innovative not the same old crap and perhapse overall record sales and legal downloading revenu will go up.
Reality is a big nasty dragon. Fortunately I don't believe in dragons.
I don't think we should be really giving BPI (or RIAA when they do) a lot of credit for acknowledging that downloaders aren't all evil. They're making a buttload of cash off people who are getting music electronically. They have ZERO production costs (other than a few kilowatts of electricity), reduced equipment maintinance (costs of maintaining duplicating equipment vs. Apple's servers), and zero shipping costs.
Giving them credit is like patting a child on the head and telling them "good job!" when they eat a cookie.
When they start making real changes, and start understanding the new culture, then I'll be interested.
And yes, I read the article. According to the fifth word of the fifth paragraph, "of"
More seriously, my wife's and my music purchasing really picked up after we discovered Napster all those years ago. Sampling a couple of songs from an artist often convinces us we want the whole album, and we still really enjoy the permanance of physical media (yes, we rip all our CDs, but I think of the collection of actual media as an aesthetically interesting, if not large, physical backup).
"'...which is why we need to continue our carrot and stick approach to the problem of illegal file-sharing,' he [Philips] said."
What carrots? All I see are sticks. Are good file-sharers being rewarded at all? Let's see...
New CD at Best Buy, at a cut-rate price: $12.00
Paying for an entire CD with 15 songs off of iTunes: $14.85, not including the hidden costs of their DRM.
It seems all we're getting are sticks and heavier sticks from the recording industry. Yet they think they're being nice by offering to license music for a more expensive price. Fuck them, I'll save my $15 bucks and download free music off archive.org.
If the big stores would just offer to BURN me a CD of all my favorite songs from ANY I can find in there store I would pay for it. I just hate buying a album and only lissening to 1 or 2 songs on it. That is where the REAL pirating is coming from. But, of course they don't get all the Free Press if they use Common Sense.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -Albert Einstein
For one thing, getting leaked albums is now one of the main uses for illegal downloads (say the Danger Mouse/MF Doom collaboration DangerDoom) or songs that are only on the mixtape circuit. I'd say that these downloaders are what are alluded to by the above study: core audience music consumers with max purchasing potential. These are the folks who spread hype on the mp3 blogs and give semi-anonymous artists with limited marketing relatively large sales through word of mouth. This is the illegal networks working "for" the music industry.
As an example I myself have already bought 47 albums this year, often importing them because of delayed distribution from domestic labels. Conversely I've purchased three songs this year (for the same reason as above). If studies like this could get A&Rs at Interscope from sitting on their hands and release stuff digitally (instead of having to find the right season to "roll out" a new artist that isn't competing with their bread and butter) I'm all for it. Of course I'm the sort of person who puts all of this in a spreadsheet and then creates histograms of time/disc and cost/disc and compares them over the last few years so I'll admit to being in a, uh, minority.
What is music when you despise all sound?
One problem with the record store and CDs is there has been no innovation in the last 25 years. DVD-Audio is a start, so is Rhapsody, but why don't record comanies embrace some of the technology file sharers use. Imagine a kiosk at a record store networked to a library of esentially entire catalogs of CD quality audio. The customer could then buy by the track or buy whole albums which can't be stocked in stores. The kiosk would then burn a custom CD for a reasonable price. The kiosk could also allow a customer to listen to tracks from its catalog.
Dave
...that people do actually like to try before they buy.
FTFA: "It's encouraging that many illegal file-sharers are starting to use legal services," said BPI spokesman Matt Philips.
"But our concern is that file-sharers' expenditure on music overall is down, a fact borne out by study after study.
Once again, quality is the issue with CDs being $15 and 1 good song on it from a fly-by-night band. I won't pirate it because I do believe those who worked hard to create it deserve their fair share. But buying it doesn't seem to work that way. Subscription downloads seem good enough to satisy instant gratification, but I won't buy anything with DRM. Not because I want to give it to everyone and their brother, but because I like to have a choice on which medium I can enjoy it.
I have the right to own a gun, but I don't utilize that right. If someone tries to take that right away I'll be the first one kicking and screaming.
And prior to flamespray, I do understand the difference in a gun killing someone and stealing $15. It all boils down to choice, to have it or not to have it, that is the question.
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
It's pretty much a repeat of history. Back when FM radio and analog tape cassette recording was in its infancy, the music industry also cried foul about people recording music from radio shows and claimed it was cutting into their profits.
Studies of that time showed similar results to the one mentioned in the article: people who recorded music from radio also bought a heck of a lot more music than those who didn't. Ultimately radio served as an advertising medium and wasn't hurting sales at all. The music industry eventually made its peace with radio.
We can only hope that eventually the music industry will relearn this old lesson...
I have a solution for you. GET RID OF THE %$%#@ DRM!
No shit Sherlock... People with more access to more diverse forms of music buy more DIVERSE music. That's the rub of the *AA problem summed up nicely.
Like many I uses various 'net technologies to sample new music. However I'm an audio head (played in bands since age 15, got into computers in part to use them to make & produce music) and I'll never buy an MP3. Why ? because it's a compressed, lossy format and it sounds SHIT on a decent sound system (or at least in comparison to a CD)
But I do use MP3s. Being able to listen to MP3s of new stuff on my little MP3 player is great. Being able to listen to streamed webcasts of stuff I've never heard of it brilliant (I'll sometimes save a stream to play on the way to the pub). And guess what ? If I like stuff I will go and buy a CD etc. for the simple reason it's far, far better quality. I'll then make some Uber high quality MP3s from this to tote around on my little player (most peoples 128 kb MP3 rips stink, they don't even know enough to normalise stuff etc. etc.)
Sadly for the *AA though I will no longer buy anything where I think they're getting a cut. I'll buy direct from bands at gigs, I'll buy direct from bands websites. But I won't buy from major labels, big stores, big websites. Not whilst the *AA are behaving like gansters.
Their big beef with people like me is that I'm not consuming the products they're pushing at me. I'm going out and finding what I like from a vast, diverse pool of stuff over which they have no control. They can't sit between me and the music and take a cut on the trade. They're simply obsolete and will soon be extinct.
*AA. Fuck you.
While going through some old magazines, I came across a copy of "Modern Recording" from early 1981.
24 years ago, the recording industry was making the same exact claims that they are making today -- they are losing huge amounts of money due to "piracy". Back in those days, personal computers and the Internet were almost non-existant. CDs didn't exist and the main form of recorded music was the vinyl LP. According to the RIAA back then, the villain was cassette tape recorders. People were borrowing their friends albums and recording them onto cassettes instead of buying their own copy.
So, the RIAA commissioned a study that they hoped to take to Congress as proof that they needed tougher laws to deal with this terrible problem. But a funny thing happened. Their study showed that people who had a good quality cassette deck in their stereo sysytem bought nearly twice as many albums as people who didn't.
Sound familiar?
I'm skeptical of the objectivity of this study. Just as sketpical as I am of the objectivity of the studies paid for the RIAA and their ilk.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
This has long been something I've been saying.
Before I started downloading music illegally, I never bought any CDs. Now that I do, I use illegal downloading to find bands that I really enjoy then buy their CDs. Overall, the music industry has made a profit from my purchases - if it weren't for music downloading I wouldn't have bought a thing.
The bottom line is that I have the cash to spend on music and the desire to be experimental, but I am not going to pay the label's price - it is just not worth it. At Allofmp3.com, I pay between 1.50 - 2.50 for a full CD encoded with 192bps Lame VBR all properly tagged and with no DRM. I figure that 2$ is the right pricepoint for a slightly obscure band, and I would pay up to 4$ for a band with the quality of something like Radiohead.
I could get all of this music for free without too much hassle (I got a few FTP connections or I could always go the annoying P2P route), but why bother at these pricepoints. 2-4$ for a CD is the magic pricepoint and if the labels were selling DRM-free high quality MP3s for this price, they would be making twice as much money as they are now because people would be buying 10x as much music.
Instead, the labels don't want to accept the realities of a changing market - the solution to which, in America, is to seek legislative solutions.
What I really hope for is that the bands themselves will seek a legislative solution and dissolve all of their contracts with these fucked up labels and start their own non-profit collective "labels." I would sure rather be sending my 2$ to the band directly rather than the Russian mafia...
I rarely, if ever, download music - legally or not.
Interestingly, I haven't bought a CD for myself in years...
I wonder if the RIAA assumes I'm a pirate because I'm not feeding their monopoly. I wonder if the RIAA is even aware that people like me have stopped buying music because we got sick and tired of being treated like criminals - copy restricted CD's, lawsuits against music fans, etc...
I wonder if it ever occurs to the **AA's that their revenue shortfalls are due more to the manner in which they treat their customers than piracy. Face it - while the average Asian may have a good reason to commit music piracy, the average American is affluent enough that they'd rather buy music than steal it. Yet, most Americans want to know they like something before they buy it. And this is what P2P provided.
I don't use P2P. I don't buy music, either. Wonder how long it will take the likes of the RIAA to figure out the connection between the two...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I used to use Napster and some of the others for two things: (1) downloading music that can't be bought, i.e. out-of-print albums, b-sides, etc. and (2) trying music. Back then, I bought numerous CDs after trying music I really liked. Some of these CDs were retail CDs, where I wanted a higher quality sound than a low-grade MP3. Others were b-sides I bought on CD singles off of eBay because I wanted the better sound quality. But I also bought a lot of retail CDs I never would have bought if I had to buy them without hearing them first. So the bottom line for the RIAA is that the P2P effect is not simple: file sharing has caused me to buy music I downloaded, but not always at retail. More music may be sold as a result, but it's not all profit for the RIAA.
The unfortunate part about the new online services is you can't browse the catalogues without first signing up and selling your soul to their DRM. I would love to see if out-of-print music is available on some legal download services, such as out-of-print albums and b-sides, but I doubt there is anything on these services you can't find in Circuit City or the mall, so I don't ever sign up for the DRM.
The one thing no one ever mentions is the CD replacement effect. People who grew up listening to cassettes and LPs in the 70s and 80s got jobs in the 90s and could afford to dump their cassettes and buy CDs. This sort of generational shift in media will never happen again, and the RIAA's sales figures were bloated by people buying albums they already had. The effect is over. Everone now is buying music on CDs from the beginning, and has nothing to replace.
Okay, so they say not all sharers are evil, just bad. This stance, while a slightly sugar-coated version of what has been said before, is not worthy of really listening to or debating anymore. These groups, the RIAA and BPI are not concerned about the artist etc, they are concerned with their cash lifeline. The organizations produce nothing, not one disc, not one note. They are an industry umbrella organization, not unlike a deBeers for music (though without the class). They exist to act as a cartel, keep the prices up, and do whatever it takes to protect that cash flow. The Sony payola thing just shows they are no strangers to illegal tactics. The drive to force Apple to increase iTune prices shows their price-fixing tendencies. Downloading threatens all that (yes, even legal downloading) as sooner or later the artists may go that way cutting out the need for their cartel and putting that cash directly in their pockets.
But our concern is that file-sharers' expenditure on music overall is down, a fact borne out by study after study. This is probably due to many CDs on iTunes costing $9.99, where a CD in the store is costing $16.99. Also buyers are able to be more selective about thier purchases, since I may only want 1 or 2 songs from an album instead of the whole album.
Gadget News at Gizmo.com
I'm sure I own at least some Sony stock in the mutual funds in my IRA (especially in the Total Market Index one). Now, as a shareholder, I'd rather have them do things that will make me more money, rather than keep a stranglehold or whatever. If enough shareholders felt this way, they could vote out the current management and put in people that would actually listen to research.
Theres far less distribution and packaging cost, the record companies dont even handle the servers for downloading.
Were not getting all the goodies that come with a CD so why should we have to pay $9.99 for a downloaded album?
If the downloaded albums were cheaper Id take a chance on groups ive never heard of.
The global music body said the rise in legal downloads was proof its policy of pursuing file-sharers was working.
No, it's not proof that pursuing file-sharers is working, it could be proof that legal download services are working, or a combination of the two. Way to be extremely narrow-minded. BTW, that was from a Q&A linked near the bottom.
How many people honestly revealed their habits? Here on Slashdot I see enough postings of firlesharers who proudly proclaim that they will never send a cent to the RIAA. I can imagine a lot of guys falsely claiming that they buy tons of music after learning about it on P2P.
What is nice is that the BPI welcomed the findings that not all file sharers are actually evil... they still pledged to carry on the 'carrot and stick' approach though.
I mean, we've seen plenty of stick action in the US and recently the EU, but what are those figurative carrots they are speaking about?
Oh, maybe they consider letting us pay for downloaded songs via iTunes etc. a big favour.
Or not having people assaulted by hired goons - at least for now.
"Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-my-own-Grandpa." - Dr Hubert Farnsworth
It is interesting that pirates are suddenly interested in the music industry making more money.. the same people who were previously concerned with undermining greedy record companies now routinely extol research that helps to improve their bottom line. It's truly heartwarming that everyone wants to see their former enemies get rich (especially since the continued absence of the proposed business model provides a convinient excuse for copyright infringement until its implementation)!
The RIAA doesn't sue people for downloading music. The people they go after are distributing without authorization.
That's a HUGE distinction that I think many Slashdotters tend to ignore in order to make the RIAA appear that much more petty and intrusive.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I tend to have a negative opinion of anyone that treats me like a 5 year old. Carrot and Stick approaches are exactly the reason why I stopped purchasing mainstream music. I'd rather support someone that appreaciates my time and money (and an extra fan).
_Vishal www.squad9.com
My feeling is that if the greedy artist or record company has decided NOT to take my money online in legit fashion, then they lost their chance at my money, and I still want the song. The artists and companies are NOT "losing a sale" in that case, because there IS no sale. I pretty much only buy online. There's no way in hell I'm buying a CD for two songs. Those days are gone.
Music - www.richardmac.com
The study was done by asking people who download music questions. How many of them told the truth and how many of them lied because they knew from the question being asked what answer was the "right" answer?
"How much music do you download on a regular basis?"
"How much music did you buy last month?"
Yeah, like they wouldn't lie.
"...found that people who download music from peer to peer networks paid for four and a half times more music than regular music fans."
Sure, people who like music are more likely to both buy music and to download music. The real question is if downloading music changes the amount of music that you would buy in one direction or the other. If they weren't downloading music from peer to peer networks, would they have purchased more or less music. This is a much harder theory to test, and probably can't be done by simple observation of current buying/downloading trends.
Does anyone know of a study that tries to address this question?
--
RumorsDaily
I've bought music (mostly CDs) at a much accelerated rate since I could play my collection without having to change CDs or records. I've also downloaded most of my pre-existing collection from peer to peer services. If I could, I'd buy much of my collection for a third time and some of it for the second. The labels will never publish some of my collection (a sincere thank you John Peel). What do I do to be able to enjoy a collection that makes me buy music. The more of my collection I can listen to the more I'll buy. Exclude me from some of it and I'll buy less. That's a fairly simple concept. Come on RIAA - force me to buy less music, you can't lose if you do...well there must be some reason for your policy.
Morpheus?
My favorite quote:
I download music with no intent of paying for it, I go to live shows make bootlegs and sell them.. after stealing the bands equipment from the back of the van of course... I kick kittens and puppies and beat up old people while selling smack to their grand kids. Britney Spears and all those wonderfully manufactured musicians are going hungry because of me.
I am evil hear me roar.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
I think the main reason this information will not affect the actions of these media organizations is that legal rights not defended are eventually waived. Basically, the way it was explained to me, you cannot selectively defend your legal rights to IP. If you let one known case of it slide, then you will have a hard time defending your right in the next one. Now, I know someone is going to argue that they let thousands of cases slide all the time, but in the case of music downloads, the sheer volume of violations necessitate that they only pursue the cases where they are most likely to win. Bottom line, this won't change anything because the lawyers won't let it. IMO, that's the way it should be. Every download IS illegal and should be procecuted as resources permit.
You got any karma man? I really neeed it. Just a little hit! Come on!
Greedy? You are calling someone who owns something you want greedy because they won't sell it to you on your terms? If you don't want to buy a CD for two songs, then don't buy it, but don't steal it either!
I simply cannot beleive the "gimme" attitude of you pirates! I don't like the fact that hot dog buns are sold in packs of eight while hot dogs are sold in packs of six. Does that make it OK for me to rip open the bag and steal six buns?!? NO!
Didn't your mother raise you with any morals at all?
You got any karma man? I really neeed it. Just a little hit! Come on!
Why bother even paying $2, though? The band sees precisely 0 cents of that money. I'd rather put the money towards buying more legit CDs, and get the odd track via dubious but free methods.
Allofmp3 and its siblings cost money, but don't solve any of the moral problems with illegal downloads; surely the worst of both worlds?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
The Music gives to you! Well, its cheap anyways. check out www.allofmp3.com. $0.02 per meg and you can choose your own format and where applicable quality (formats include FLAC and ogg).
Its probably not the best way to support your favorite artist but at least it's legal, well legal through a loophole (The RIAA has some sort of alliance with the ROM [Russia's equivalent] who apparantly has approved allofmp3.com)
People who use peer-to-peer software are likely bigger music fans than people who don't. Therefore, it is quite natural that they would consume more music (both paid-for and not) than there non-thieving counterparts. Of course, what music companies and the RIAA allege is that these people would have paid 8.5 times more than the other group but for the existence of P2P.
:)
I'm not saying that record companies and/or the RIAA aren't evil. I'm not saying that free music can be a fantastic promotional tool which can lead to more paid music consumption. So calm down
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
There are a few comments in this thread concerning the point of being able to buy just one song online vs buying the whole album in the stores.
... Pardon the dated but
seminal example: SOTW is wonderful but the other songs aren't less spectacular)
:P
Now, while some interesting points are being made, I can't keep myself from asking: what kind of ultra-pop-hollow-crap music kind are you used to listen to and, worst, paying for, gentlemen??
Here in the beautiful towns of Bluesia, Hard-rockia and Metal Hill, it's commonly known that the single on each album is often the _worst_ song of the album, put together to please the label and casual listeners, while the juice is in the rest of the album.
Personally, if I bought from iTunes or whatever, I would probably buy every and each song from an album, I would _never_ be satisfied with a subset of an album. (Buy only Smoke On The Water and not the whole Machine Head album? Pure blasphemy!
When you are to buy a song that you probably know is the only decent song of an album, isn't it a sign that you are supporting the wrong kind of people? (Providing, of course, that you are interested in people able to offer you a whole album that is worth listen to, instead of a few isolated lucky good songs in a desolated shallow sea of nothingness.)
I pointed out this because it seems to me that supporting label-made hollow artistroids is not far away to support the hollow views of their labels, which are the main topic. I mean, if they can sell me shit, they probably realize that they can sell it to me and "protect" it in shitty ways (DRM, evil pirates campaigns and whatnot), since I'm an happy shit-eater... Anyone agrees?
Uh, sorry for rude terms
I recently just downloaded and bought some songs from iTunes that I wanted for a picture slide show I was putting together.
However as I found out, I can't use the iTunes format in MS Photo Story. So then I had to download another program to hack the songs out of iTunes. In the end it would have been much easier to illegally download them. At least then I've got it in a format I can actually use for something.
Just another case of DRM hurting legitimate users.
Yorkspace
Ummmm...the report said that 1/3 of illegal file-sharers spent more, and 2/3s spent less on overall music purchases. Of course, they coincidentally do not mention the margin by which illegal file-sharers' music spending is down. It's entirely possible, albeit unlikely, that the majority of that 2/3s buy one less record per year than they used to.
Also, factor this in: who's doing the counting? Are these just RIAA-affiliated labels? If I'm not mistaken, RIAA is the group that hands out gold and platinum records, if you sell 100,000 copies of a cd through independent distribution channels, you'll have to pat yourself on the back and buy some cheap vinyl and gold spraypaint. That being said, has the RIAA taken into account that *gasp* maybe some of their sales have gone to independent competitors? I was a college freshman the year during the days of Napster, Scour, etc. and almost all of what I downloaded eventually was from independent labels, it opened up a world of new music for me. Since then, the majority of what I buy is not affiliated with the RIAA..are they calling up independent labels and counting my cd purchases, or am I lost in the seething masses of evildoers who apparently buy less music than they used to (in this case, patently false).
--- What
But they do need to cry foul, and keep up the appearances that every single download is a crime, and a lost sale. They are using the same strategy of fear mongering that our government is fond of.
The reasons are simple. If they were to let up and say, ok so some music downloads are ok, but we still think we are losing sales, then their entire basis for legislation is thrown out the window.
I hope it doesn't sound like I'm defending them. I think the RIAA, and cooperations like them, are some of the absolute WORST things about this country.
But I can understand why they are keeping up the public relations stint of crying foul. They don't need music fans to believe them. They just need congress to. As soon as they "convince" congress with their "arguements" ($$$,$$$,$$$) they will get more legislation that will introduce more DRM, and possibly even remove the free-use clauses from current law.
They know full well that some bands are discovered soley through the internet. They just don't care. That is a small drop in the bucket compared to the marketing machine that makes acts like Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys sucessfull. They don't need underground marketing when they have pepsi jingles and MTV in the middle of time square.
What I can't figure out is why they pay so much for marketing crap bands when we would be just as happy with zero marketing for good bands. We'll find the music on our own. The RIAA could probably make just as much money if they just gave up. But I hope they don't. I hope they legislate themselves into the grave.
Stop marketing crappy music then. Even the most mindless drones of modern "culture" are beginning to notice that the SPAM (Shit Posing As Music) that they are being bombarded with all sounds exactly the same, no matter how enticing/slutty (depends on your POV, I suppose) the singer is.
I mean there are only so many ways you can refry the three/four-guys-in-a-'punk'-band, or the boy band, or the solo-female-who-struggled-from-nothing-to-stardom, etc recipes before it all starts to taste the same.
The same holds true even in the less popular genres. I work for my university's radio station as the heavy metal director. Even the "smaller" labels are pushing this same pre-formatted "loud rock" now. And the standard rock (not top-40 though) that we play during the day time is so bland that I spend most of my time listening to the jazz/blues station.
I, and most of my peers, have downloaded plenty of illegal music in our day. Now that the P2P services are getting worse and worse, and the legal services are getting more and more enticing, we're making the switch. I, for one, spend at least $30 a month on the iTMS each month. I do this not because I may have downloaded a P2P track here or there, but because I like music. This is not a cause-and-effect relationship.
On the other hand, my relatives over the age of 50, many of whom do not have computers and thus have never used a P2P service, do not buy a lot of music. So, in my little group, our results match those of the survey.
This is a second-order relationship: Younger people buy more music. Younger people tend to be more wired. Younger people who are online and who like music are likely to have used a P2P service at some point. This is the very psychographic that the online music stores are targetting. In other words, of course the generation of younger online music listeners is going to be the first to flock to the legal stores.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
The figures given by the authors of the study are for online purchases of music. Many of the people who are not participating in illegal filesharing are still purchasing music on CDs. This makes their 4 1/2 times factor misleading.
Say your sample is 500 'music fans'.
50 are pirates who may also buy music online
50 only download legally
400 don't download music at all.
Pirates spend an average of $1 on music downloads
Legal downloaders average $5
Non-downloaders, obviously, spend $0
Conclusion? Pirates outspend non-pirates nearly 2-1 on average. Hmm, that doesn't seem quite right...
A more honest approach would have been to restrict the survey to frequent music downloaders, but I don't think that would have yielded the result the pollsters clearly wanted.
Which doesn't justify piracy, maybe it's just the convict heritage? Seriously, I imagine a lot of people download things they would never pay for, and the studies show that most of these people get more excited about music and purchase as much as before. But don't expect Sony et al. to see it that way.
The band sees precisely 0 cents of that money.
Wrong!
AllOfMp3.com pays royalties to an authority which redistributes the money to the artists.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
But really, you guys are full of crap. Sure, you illegally downloaded content that didn't belong to you. Then you went and spent money at a show or bought it. To you, that justifies copyright infringement. But it doesn't mater what you think, it's against the law and it's not really that hard to understand why. You are getting things for free that you should be paying for. If the artist is cool with free downloads, fine, but they aren't.
When you can now go to iTunes and preview all the music you want (well, the first 30 seconds of it), you have no justification for still doing this. I won't argue, the RIAA is evil. They price fix and people should be legally going after that monopoly. But just because some group is using crappy practicies, it doesn't give you the right to break the law.
That being said, I actually don't care if people download music or not. Just don't try to justify that you are doing the right thing. Because you aren't.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
For a clue to the behavior of the **AA, read "The Merchant of Venice".
For those of you who are impatient or lazy, Google using the phrase "pound of flesh" as the search term.
The more choice you give a person,
The more they'll open up to you and those similar to you.
They can "steal" (omgz!) anyone of your tracks and listen to it.
Then they wind up liking it, and the style/genre/whatever.
They buy your album, and suggested "similar artists".
But they stole one of your tracks, damn! I just made money off someone, but they stole from me first!
How dare they!
I think you've hit the nail on the head. I just heard a rather interesting story on NPR about payola and how the recent Sony payout fits into the big picture. Payola has existed since the 1950s, and will likely continue, with occasional slaps on the wrist simply because it's so effective for record companies. They don't necessarily want to restrict the variety of choices as much as they want to make sure that they're pushing you toward the "right" choices.
If the music industry doesn't change their business model from a mere media distribution model (media in my book include DRMd files) to a value adder (promotion, marketing, infrastructure, artist scouts, etc) and continues their rather odd "criminalize-thy-customer" business model my prediction is that 10 years from now they are deader then Jimmy Hoffa.
Personally I think it's already too late for the industry. The small indies that reallly understand what's going on are going to create the next wave music industry, one that is far less reliant on radio, emphasizes broad choice, and recognizes that if you function as a middleman, you have to provide value for artists and consumers, or both will route around you.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Well, seems to me I spend time listening online because music I like (due to current trends, etc) is less available. That being so, it takes more time to find stuff I like, and thus I buy more.
Be careful not to associate results with possibly unrelated causes...
This is rather flawed logic.
How much did a person who likes Apples spend on apples before stealing?
That's the question to ask. That shows what the real impact on digital downloads is on the bottom line. Of course we'll never actually see that statistic from a reputable independant source.
The logic in the statistic is flawed. Making the data completely meaningless. Who cares how music lovers compare to non music lovers? That doesn't say anything about how downloading effects sales.
It tells us people who don't like music don't buy music, and people who like it, aquire it (legally and illegally). Well a 6 year old could have discovered that with much less research.
Honestly if it weren't for downloading music I would never buy CD's . At least this way I can preview the music before I buy . It seems like lately alot of bands put MAYBE one good song on the cd and the rest is filler . I got sick of buying CD's that I only listen to one track off of . Now I preview the bands newest offereings online . If I like a few of the songs I buy the CD . If its a one song $20 dollar cd with two discs of filler I pass .
- A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing
content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD,
these users simply take it [...]
- B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it [...] The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.
- C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content
that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the
transaction costs off the Net are too high [...]
- D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content
that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away.
How do these different types of sharing balance out? [...] From the perspective of the law, only type D sharing is clearly legal. From the perspective of economics, only type A sharing is clearly harmful. Type B sharing is illegal but plainly beneficial. Type C sharing is illegal, yet good for society [...]The "net harm" to the industry as a whole is the amount by which type A sharing exceeds type B."
It's only a "global economy" when they're laying you off and sending your job to India. :(
Are there any music stores that have music at higher quality?
No professional musicians sounds good to me. I want that.
The argument is just plain fallacial. A correlation here does not imply causation. People who are more interested in something -- be in pornography or MP3s -- are obviously going to try to acquire said thing in more ways and in greater quantities than people who have only a passing interest.
I've purchased many more CD's since P2P came out than before.
.25 a track, or heaven forbid, .10 a track and you'll see legal downloads zooming.
That being said, during the last few years of the RIAA's witch hunt I've not downloaded nor have I bought any CD's.
Of the six of us in my group at work we all have decent enough iTunes collections to keep me happy.
Of course if there is something I want it's as easy as MyTunes Redux. But I don't do that. Others in my group do.
Give me reasonably priced tracks on the net and I'll be all for it. I believe Yahoo is now plugging their $5 a month model. So long as they don't put arbitrarily low limits on the number of songs you can download, as well as not putting onerous rights management, it should be succesful.
There was a proposal to tack a $4 or so dollar a month fee onto broadband connections to pay licensing for any music downloaded. That would have been nice.
But right now at a dollar or so a track it isn't feasible. Suppose you download 15 tracks. The cost of the CD is probably $10 to $15 or so. So you're not saving anything and you're using YOUR media to burn it to CD.
Bring that price down to
It appears this research group just asked people questions and drew conclusions based on that. According to The Guardian:
"But the survey of 600 music fans who also own computers and mobile phones, conducted by the music research firm The Leading Question, shows that those who regularly download or share unlicensed music also spend an average of £5.52 a month on legal downloads through sites such as Apple's iTunes Music Store or Napster. Those who were not illegally filesharing spent just £1.27 a month on digital tracks."
Relying on peoples' memories and suppositions is not particularly good practice. For example, when studies of overweight peoples' eating habits have been done, the results varied significantly depending on whether they were just asked what they ate during the day (analagous to this music study), or if they kept a running tally throughout the day. Throw in the fact that one group (the folks who illegally download music) likely have a (perception of a) vested interest in the outcome of the study, and you've basically got a fatally flawed piece of research.
#DeleteChrome
Radio is random. You have no control over what most radio stations play, many stations don't tell you what the tracks are that they're playing, and the chances of something obscure of specific coming up on the play list at the precise time that you're listening is fairly low.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I am writing this as an author of this resource. How many of the recordings I publish there one could go and download legally, paying per download, from any country in the world? The answer is: about none. This stuff is just not sold in a convenient way acceptable for a visitor to the museum to listen to it as-you-go, paying per download. Neither expect I it to become available in the foreseeable future. This is why it's free here - it has to, otherwise the museum could not exist.
If there were an ideal download service it would have to have EVERYTHING, every audio and video record made on the planet, including all radio and TV station broadcasts. Just like a good national library system can deliver all the books and periodicals ever published in the country, this global media service would have to have everything, and I mean everything. Hey records associations, get working on this goal and I will one day be your happy customer. Yet I doubt the records associations will be interested, this is inconsistent with their PROFITS. Long live "piracy" then: it lets us keep and further our human knowledge and culture!
To add to the original subject, I think I have about as much recordings on CDs bought legally as I have filesharing downloads. Don't let me start on what it sometimes takes to order CDs to Russia form the USA and Great Britain. Amazon Marketplace, for example, doesn't sell them to my country, and I have to painstakingly negotiate "special delivery terms" with every seller (sometimes unsuccessfully) before placing the order.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
"This is a very good point. Not everyone can pay for music on iTMS. Kids are at the mercy of their parents buying them vouchers (The UK doesn't have these in stores) and not everyone wants to have a credit card - I sure as hell don't"
Being that I have just turned 17, trying to buy online music is a hassle, and I guarantee, that half of the music I listen to (mostly underground metal from scandinavia) would not be anywhere near iTMS. This presents a problem, not only are they not providing the product I am looking to buy, but I would have no way of paying for said product.
As for the main point of this article, that those who download music buy more music, I can definately say this is true for me. It helps me expand my musical horizons, if there is a user with somthing I like, odds are they will have somthing else that I will like. When I find somthing I like, I go buy it. The experience is in seeing the disc, the packaging, and just having the real thing.
" people who download music from peer to peer networks paid for four and a half times more music "
Or:
People who buy a lot of music also download music from P2P networks.
Buying Music encourages pirating? I suppose that is not the message they wanted to convey, and so read the statistics (lies and damned lies) differently.
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
"Theres far less distribution and packaging cost, the record companies dont even handle the servers for downloading. Were not getting all the goodies that come with a CD so why should we have to pay $9.99 for a downloaded album?"
While I totally agree with your sentiment, there would be others that would claim the high cost is a convenience charge. Plus, with CDs shipping with DRM, the online purchase is a convenient way for you to get the track(s) onto your iPod whereas if you buy the CD, you run the risk of not easily being able to transfer said tracks to your MP3 portable. It reminds me a lot of Ticketmaster. I do not know if this is still their practice, but Ticketmaster would charge convenience charges if you purchased tickets online or via telephone, and still would charge you a similar fee to purchase the tickets at a retail outlet. Double dipping, or "all your base are belong to us," so to speak.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I know in the last couple of years, a buddy of mine has obtained over 25 complete downloaded albums, and has not went out and purchased a single one, though they are among his favorite bands. That's roughly $375 that did not go to the record companies or the artist. In this case, somebody is losing money somewhere. I'm sure that this is the more likely scenario than the usual music-lovers-just-want-to-try-it-first voices that I usually hear. I just want to hear some people admit that they download music illegally because they can, it's easy, and it's free. I bet that even if there was an iTunes-like service that contained the same un-DRM'd formats that people illegally download, it wouldn't matter to a lot of people when they could still get it for free.
"Carrot and stick" refers to putting a carrot at the end of a stick, which is held above the head of a reluctant mule by its passenger. The mule walks forward to get the carrot, which it can never quite reach, at least until it arrives at its destination, when it's given the carrot. "Carrot and stick" means "incentive." It does not mean "alternately rewarding and beating." Anybody who's beaten a mule knows full well that the damned thing will just kick you in the head.
-Waldo Jaquith
there are several different cases. one case is if someone tells me about a band that i might like. i don't want to waste time and money on buying a cd i'm not even sure i'll like or not. so i download a few mp3s for free. if i don't like them, i won't download any more mp3s - if i do, most likely the recording companies are gonna be happy anyway. :)
there are bands that i really like yet all (well, most) of the mp3s i have from there are from the net for free. that means no money from me to the recording companies (who cares about them anyway? i like the band, not the record company). in that case i'll go to their concerts where i'll pay much more than i'd pay for a CD and it's usually not a ripoff either as i get drunk and generally feel good - both the fans and the artists are happy.
and that way the record companies aren't really involved, the band gets paid and not organizations like the riaa.
so basically if i like the band i'll eventually pay more for their concerts than i'd pay for their cd's. if i don't like a band it's not likely i'll keep downloading their music anyway. all the fuss about it is by the money-grabbing record companies. no real band has ever complained about people having the right to do whatever they want with the music. it's only the record companies who suppose that i'd buy CD's from them if i wouldn't have the music already from the net.
without the record companies life would be much easier for everyone. if bands didn't have to get a record company for cd manufacturing and stuff, they'd get a lot more money for what they do and the consumers/fans wouldn't have to deal with all this bullshit. and of course, the only way to do that is to make a website and sell downloads. no stupid crap like drm or any of that shit limiting the customer - just good old mp3. if people aren't tied down by all this copyright bullshit they won't be leeching stuff just for spite.
[SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS
and I despise any one who does. I just download all my music for free over the Internet.
What bands/artists are you listening to that are only capable of making one good song per album?
This seems more like a problem with the artist and/or the listener. All the CDs I've bought don't contain a lot of filler.
I don't use iTunes or any other paying-for-music sys. Neither do my friends. But we sure buy an album from a band that we really admire, as soon as we have the money. And if the band is independent and we don't have to pay an extra for "The Industry", even better! Maybe the independent scene can finally rise now, following the decline of some major labels.
People who download music tend to pay more for music. There's a common element: music lovers do both. Perhaps piracy is DECREASING music sales, because the people who download music would otherwise spend 10x as much on music if it weren't for piracy! Please do not read this as a victory for P2P; this study proves ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
or i get it for free at my radio station on radio.yahoo.com (Launch, which doesn't work well with Firefox or Opera ...) when I'm on an XP laptop.
But I've stopped buying from big chains and only buying from the musicians themselves at their shows (they get half the take, instead of 2 cents) or at local indie music stores where they get $1 from the $12 CD price.
my prediction is this situation will continue to get worse as more and more people avoid the price-fixing parasites at the middle tier and reroute from the consumer to the provider (musicians).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Nobody in the pay to download field has yet offered what the original Napster offered - great content in MP3 format.
To use the download services ties the typical user to a limited selection of software and portable players.
Even those of us able to convert protected content would sometimes rather avoid the extra hassle.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, let's think about this for a moment. You've got a lot of people out there that really don't buy a whole lot of music or really even listen to the radio all that much or whatever. Many of these people probably don't even get on the internet and read Slashdot (gasp) and some of them don't even know what it is... So that is one group of people.
Then you've got your second group of people who are avid music fans. They are out their buying CD's like mad, or at least in comparison to the first group. And they always want the latest album when it comes out. And they listen to all the newest songs. And they get into arguments with their friends about which band is better... And they are out their downloading MP3s and all that. Well, in comparision to the first group, ofcourse they buy a lot more music. Many people from the first group don't even *own* a stereo.
And yeah, there are a lot of groups in between these two extremes, but you get my point...
Randy.Flood@RHCE2B.COM
iTMS offers 30-second samplings, which is fully 20% of most songs. No, it's not the same as hearing the whole thing, but it seems like a pretty fair compromise to me.
Between that and the other ways you have of hearing music (radio, CDs from friends, in clubs), it seems unfair to defend illegally-downloading music, since it is VERY unfair to the music labels (since they have no way of distinguishing between "I was just trying it out" and "I decided that I'd rather not pay you for it").
I'm not saying that the compromise is completely fair to you, but it does seem that asking them to shoulder 100% of the risk is even more unfair to them.
Fuck slashdot.
1) DRM. I don't like it when I can't play the songs I bought on iTMS on something other than an iPod or iTunes.
You can burn the music onto a CD. Later you can rip them to MP3s or whatever. Yes that's a pain but it is possible. From Apple:
This restriction is not any different than any other music service. With Walmart and Microsoft you even more limited in that you can't use a Mac.
2) Format compatbility. iTunes and iPods are so closed. I can't play the music I already have.
iTunes and iPods can play regular MP3s and non-DRMed AAC files. iTunes can play audio CDs.
3) iTMS is so expensive at $0.99 a song. That's like $15 dollars for an album.
You can buy at $0.99 a song or a full album at $9.99
4) Apple doesn't support ogg-vorbis.
Not officially. You can get a plug-in for iTunes that will play ogg files. Bear in mind that although it is technically superior to other formats, it isn't the standard. MP3 is the standard.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
So just compare the past and present spending on CDs by people who don't download songs. If they're also spending less than they used to on CDs, the problem isn't downloading. I suspect the *AA never bothered looking up that particular stat. If they had and it supported them, their claim would've been the much stronger, "People who download spend less than they used to spend on CDs, unlike people who don't download."
Why? "The purpose of 2314 to fill with federal action an enforcement gap created by limited state jurisdiction...." So this is why 2314 exists.
"No such need for supplemental federal action has ever existed with respect to copyright..." And why it doesn't apply.
To back up, "Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud." So, to quote your own case, there are property interests and it's not just "run-of-the-mill theft".
Now, from dictionary.com: Theft: "a criminal taking of the property or services of another without consent."
Property OR services. Check. Without consent. Check.
Finally, from a moral standpoint, if you take my property, my work, the results of my work, or even just my ideas, you're stealing from me.
So, from a legal, dictionary, and moral standpoint... buzz off.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
A compelling reason to STOP DOWNLOADING MUSIC!
Give labels NO SUPPORT! Power to the artists!
In court, they have to talk in terms of what's legal. Just because it costs them money doesn't give them any right to put a stop to it. It being illegal does.
The goal of laws is to make things that hurt people illegal, so their motivation (making money, and avoiding losing money) drives lawmaking (making music sharing illegal). Whether the law is fair, and whether it serves the goal, is another question entirely.
That's the legal route. They also have the route of appeal to your sense of fairness, which they've also been taking. They say, "Please don't download music/movies, because it puts the people who make them out of work," in ads. They "spout" that line, too, just in a different venue: direct to the consumers/downloaders. They talk law in the courts, and fairness to you.
" Recording companies don't care about consumers; they're scared as hell that the artists will decide that they don't need record companies any more. The artists will quit signing with them, or they will insist on better terms."
The job of a record label is to produce and market music. Even if a band produces its own music, it is unlikely they have the capital or connections to market the music. The internet won't help you get exposure if no one knows who you are in the first place. A company can try to start up on it's own captial, but more likely the company will seek venture capital. In the music industry, the record labels are the venture capitalists of musicians.
Vote for Pedro
it seems to me that the clash over terminology is actually moot. The critical things to ask are: 1) has a law been broken when you download mp3s of unauthorized albums over a p2p network? 2) Is this punishable? Note that 2 does not necessarily follow from 1.
if the answer to both questions is "yes", then all the justifications and rationalizations and analogies (it's just test-driving, downloaders actually buy more, etc. etc. ad nauseum) are plain bullshit. Don't like the law? Petition your senator.
"That hardly seems like a carrot. Or rather, when the company drastically reduces their packaging and distribution costs, I expect a big chunk of that benefit to be passed on to the consumer. At least, that's what I would expect to happen in a competitive market."
For whatever reason, the majority of people equate legal music on the internet with Apple. Few people go to other sites, even though they charge less than $1/song. Therefore, Apple has a monopoly, and doesn't worry about competition. They simply pick a price that maximizes profit.
Vote for Pedro
"Warcraftmovies.com and RPGfilms.net were both shut down on Monday for violating copyright laws. The Recording Industry Association of America was behind the shut down. The RIAA cited that the music used in many of the videos on the sites violated copyright laws, saying that it's possible that someone could steal the song from the video itself. Warcraftmovies.com simply returns a "site cannot be found" error while RPGfilms.net has the actual letter sent to them by the RIAA on their site.
In my opinion, RIAA is a monopoly, and this is just another example of their greed. I could just as easily "steal" a song from the radio if I really wanted. Most of the WoW community is in an uproar about the matter, and there's a very long post on the official forums about it. Be sure to voice your opinion!"
http://wow.warcry.com/
I found your comment very hard to read. Please use capital letters at the beginning of sentences.
Alternatively, please use line breaks between sentences.
Thanks.
You do realize that you're not the first person to point this out? I guess that makes your post a "Typical Slashdot Response Response."
"Statistics and studies do not matter to these people. Your desire to kick the tires before you buy doesn't matter either. You got it - you didn't pay for it - we lost money. Of course the reality of it is something totally different, but these organizations have had a stranglehold on their commodity for so long, they're not comfortable with anything less than a stranglehold."
Here's the reality (from the article):
"But our concern is that file-sharers' expenditure on music overall is down, a fact borne out by study after study.
"The consensus among independent research is that a third of illegal file-sharers may buy more music and around two thirds buy less.
"That two-thirds tends to include people who were the heaviest buyers which is why we need to continue our carrot and stick approach to the problem of illegal file-sharing," he said.
Vote for Pedro
There are other websites that like Magnatune allows free or low cost music downloads. Some of these are:
Also there's Berklee Shares where you can find free music lessons.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This gets me thinking... seems like the recording industry really targets preteen/younger teens with the likes of MTV and Much Music (in Canada), and these kids can't afford to go buy CDs on their allowance mom and dad is giving them. So here we have teens that are very interested in the music scene without any money. The illegal music solutions make sense for them.
In fact, I don't hold out hope anymore that they'll wise up. So, I try to listen to the quality stuff they used to produce that I currently own and listen to indie stuff for the large part. Each sale or copy of something that you pirate of theirs is another piece contributing to the network effect that fuels the power they have to screw us up.
DRM. It comes from this absolute desire to control all aspects of the media and computing. It's come time to quit paying these people attention and money- they don't have anyone's interests in mind but their own, and even though your interests might coincide with theirs now, they won't at some point in the near to medium future and then you will get screwed by them as it's only about the almighty dollar.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
If you're picky about the sound quality of music then you should be listening to to analogue instead of digital music anyway. Such as the old LP records, sure they degrade quickly but when new and the turntable has a new needle a record has the best sound quality. Then you could do like I used to do, the first tyme I played a record I'd record it on my reel to reel tape deck then I'd put the record away and play the tape. I only wish I still had that tape deck. I could record 4 hours of quadrasonic sound or 8 hours of stereo on one tape and it sounded better than any 8 track or cassette tape.
Yea I suppose talking about turntables, reel to reels, and 8 tracks mark me as old and in that sense I am.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I would love to see if out-of-print music is available on some legal download services, such as out-of-print albums and b-sides, but I doubt there is anything on these services you can't find in Circuit City or the mall...
Unfortunately that seems to be the case. A lot of the albums (and books) I'm looking for are out of print (or available only as expensive imports from Japan). I don't really understand why this is true - everyone would benefit from having the music available for download, since I'd be able to find the music I want, and the rights-holders would be making money off the music, which they aren't doing when no one can buy it.
I can understand that there are some costs involved when you're dealing with master tapes that have been sitting in a box for decades - but take, for example Os Mutantes - a somewhat legendary Brazilian psychedelic album (to the extent that there is such a thing) that was in print as recently as 1999 - now it's out of print again, and people are paying $40 for used copies. I'm sure many of those people would rather pay $10 for a CD-quality download.
Same goes for books, for that matter; I've sometimes been tempted to steal books from libraries that I know are long out of print, and pay for them as lost.
Maybe copyright laws should modified so that if a work is out of print for a certain period of time (say ten years) it provisionally enters the public domain, and can be freely distributed until the copyright holders reclaim their rights by making the work available again. That way those who hold the rights would still be able to profit from their work, but wouldn't be able to keep it from being distributed even when they weren't selling it.
There's no reason for anything to be out of print, when all it costs to keep an album "in print" is 600 MB of storage space.
not everyone wants to have a credit card - I sure as hell don't.
I don't like credit cards myself but you can get plastic without it being credit. Visa amoung others sale cards you can put a specific amount on and use like a visa, each purchase removes the amount of the purchase from how much is on the card. This was started in part so parents could give their child(ren) a card without having to worry they'll make a lot of charges and spend more than they can afford to. Yes, I know it "prepares" children to be a good consumer and spend money but used properly they also teach financial responsibility.
FalconShould there be a Law?
announce how evil the perpetual copyright extensions are.
99% of the music in the world today would be public domain if it weren't for those meddling cartels.
that they won't address this very big aspect of copyright just means to me that they aren't serious about stopping infringement.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Such irE
The concern that I have with the "download one song at a time" idea is that it may end up being a disincentive to the artists to actually create quility music;
My look of it is the opposite, by having individual songs to buy artists won't get as much as they would if people had to buy the whole album unless the song is real good. Instead they'll have to release better and more music to keep the same or get better sales. There've been a number of songs I loved and would of bought but I didn't like other songs on the album and therefore wouldn't spend the money just to get the one song I liked. One such song I love I wasn't able to find as a single was Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". It might be available now, I don't know.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You're one of those "intellegent design" people, aren't you!
If they can make money in music without copyright and protection for things that I believe they should not own. What is this "brilliance" you speak of. Creativity and brilliance are things like "intellegent design" are hard to prove. If individuals have the tools and without having "professional musicians" to do work in place of them that comes close to what they like, and to steal rights from them by happening upon good sounding patterns first, they can use what is known of music now to make songs that are better for them and thoe like them. They'll be able to exchange tunes back and forth making improvements on each exchange.
What I can't figure out is why they pay so much for marketing crap bands when we would be just as happy with zero marketing for good bands.
Control.
Good artists can negotiate the contract so it will favour them. Crap, manufactured, acts are more supplicant and tend not to play hardball on the financials as they are way more interested in the fame and groupies.
To the big media players this is purely about profit and control of the marketplace, they don't care about the product.
Only what the product brings in.
How come it's all gotta sound the same. What's the point of downloading your music when it's exactly the same as the music that's played day in and day out on the radio. Your music is not rock and roll by the way...Rock and Roll by definition should be interesting. Rock and Roll should piss off parents, not rock fans. Since when is whining badly off key the only form of rock you can hear. Oh, wait I know.
The obvious example is the concept album - imagine a world in which Pink Floyd's The Wall (or the Who's Tommy, or Rush's 2112, or Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime)existed only as a collection of individual tracks distributed independently of each other. While the songs from these albums certainly are capable of standing alone, their inclusion in albums of conceptually related material gives them additional meaning, and adds context that allows them collectively, as an album, to be greater than than the sum of the individual parts.
While I agree all or most of the songs on an album can be a good fit making the whole album better than the inidividual songs, my favorite example is the Beatle's "White Album", most of the tyme there's at most only a few songs on an album I like. I've passed by on buying an album because there was only one song on it I liked.
FalconShould there be a Law?
It still strikes me as odd that paying $0.25 for a CD at a garage sale or thrift store is far superior (in the eyes of the industry) than me downloading the songs instead (and perhaps someday buying the CD new since I like the music enough). Sure, maybe somewhere way down the line someone'll buy that CD new since the used one wasn't available, but for some of them I rather doubt it. I keep meaning to send money to those obscure artists whose CDs I would have bought new if I hadn't found dirt-cheap used ones first... On a side note, thanks to my early days of being able to go "oh, that's who wrote that song!" my CD collection has exploded in size, and I now own far more music "legally" than I would have without being able to connect artists to songs on my playlist. But there's only so much a starving grad student can do to "help" the industry...
Watch out for the penguins!
I would gladly pay the $100 they were asking for Johnny Cash Unearthed because of the book it comes with
Thanks, glad you said that as I didn't know about it. I love and sorely miss Johnny Cash, especially as part of the HighwayMen, Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Walyon Jennings, and Willie Nelsen. Ah, Amazon has it, Unearthed [BOX SET] for $72. Barne and Noble has if for the same price but as a member I can get it %10 off.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I've bought and downloaded whole albums for $1.24, and songs for as low as $.06 at AllOfMP3.com. You have to commit to purchasing at least $10 worth of music, but my money has gone a long way. I even downloaded several albums I owned in the past but lost over time, for example "green Mind" by Dinosaur Jr. I don't think I could even find that album in most music stores anymore!
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Because when you buy a used CD no money goes back to the artists because it's used. I don't care how you try to label it, copying music is not theft. You aren't depriving anybody of anything.
If you want to see real copyright abuse don't look at downloaders. Look at 75+ year copyrights that keep getting extended. Look at corporations that own copyrights that will never expire as long as the corporation exists. Copyright law in the U.S. was made to allow artists to make a living but the work was supposed to be returend to the public domain. Now the works stay in the private domain indefinately due to a corrupt system of kickbacks and lobbying.
Others would just look around, organize, hell learn to play music yourself.
Like me, I bought a wooden flute made by David Nighteagle I want to learn to play well instead of just playing with it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I paid $8500 bucks for my album collection (starting in 1976!!!) and I ***KNOW*** that most every other fellow tune sucker's collection out there isn't worth more than $1889 bucks.
('Think I got a season pass, Martha.)
I know some songs that are 20 minutes long, even more that are in the 12-15 minute span
Though I know songs can get to be long such as some classical music, but the longest one I know of is Lynard Skynard's 13 minutes version of "Free Bird", love that song.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Ignoring the pointless insults present in your response, you do have a point -- there are a number of streaming audio resources on the net which are commonly (if erroneously) called "internet radio", and which can certainly provide a convenient and often highly-customizable method for previewing commonly-available music.
If you think that's the best available answer to all music-hunting problems, however, I've got a nice Microsoft OS here to sell ya...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
"It should come as no coincidence that Apple Computer recently announced a milestone of half a billion legal downloads at it's online music store.
The phenomenal growth of Apple's online music business should come as no surprise: Apple was the first - and only - company to carefully survey the online digital music landscape and focus on the inherent weaknesses of illegal file-trading networks before launching their online music store. Apple found that file-trading networks were awash with problems: the encoding quality of music that was available varied enormously, when and if the desired song could be found intact. Spyware also ravaged most networks; all but the most diligent users who entrust their computers to Microsoft's Windows operating system were adversely affected. Of course, in the end, the prize was free music, but the road travelled was anything but smooth.
It appears Apple's foresight paid off. The music store addressed all of the weaknesses of file-trading networks. Songs could be found instantly and intuitively . The encoding quality was pristine. The combined delivery system of Apple's music store, the iTunes music management software, and the iPod portable player proved to be the perfect combination that none of the file-trading networks could ever hope to match. It wasn't free, but it was strategically and fairly priced, with enough usage rights to enable consumers to do what any music aficionado would normally want and has done in the past with their purchased music.
I point this out to IFPI because you ignored it. The advance of broadband certainly has opened the door to increased online music consumption, but that alone wouldn't explain the substantial increase in legal music downloading. Quite simply (and unfortunately, virtually ignored by the music industry in the heyday of Napster), in order to enable consumers to purchase music online, a music purchasing system must exist that attracts consumers and offers a fully satisfactory online purchase experience. One that doesn't frustrate the consumer and tempt them towards an illegal alternative.
Prior to Apple's online music store, no such legal downloading method existed. Moreover, such an attempt wasn't even on the music business industry's radar at the time. It took Apple - a computer company - to develop the perfect legal downloading model that for the first time offered consumers an attractive alternative to illegal file-sharing networks. It took Apple to sell the idea to blinded music industry executives who were more concerned with finding ways to keep music off the internet. That moment in history cannot be rewritten by you, and unfortunately, as future technological challenges arise, it portends poorly for a music industry that has shown itself to be stymied by the challenge of incorporating internet distribution technologies for music in it's business plans.
And it seems a little premature for self-congratulatory statements regarding the threat of lawsuits impacting illegal music downloading. You can drink that Kool-aid if you desire, but notwithstanding the above, the reports you reference concerning legions of lawsuit fearing consumers suddenly turning a new leaf and embracing legal music downloading don't even casually add up. Worse, it serves as a reminder of the continuing morass that music industry executives portray as a whole; the industry still fails to recognize the advantages and significance of developing beneficial internet technologies, and instead invests in disadvantageous putative measures to "manage" music consumption."
Lawyers might very well have their own definitions that go the way you want them to.
They do, Black's Law Dictionary.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The complete OED is twenty volumes and weights 150 pounds...
I'd love to get my hands on the full edition of the "EOD". I loved reading it. Some have noticed how I spell "time" as "tyme", I found that spelling in the volumn with "t", 18 or 19 I think, and have used it since. That was more than 20 years ago. Another spelling I like is "gaol".
FalconShould there be a Law?
I pulled the definitions from the online version of the OED (3rd edition) [oed.com]. (Possibly it requires a subscription -- I access it through a University system, so I'm not sure.)
It does require a subscription:
Welcome to the Personal Subscription Shop
FalconShould there be a Law?
With music you can't try it first, and you can't return it afterward. Is that fair?
Although it may not be available everywhere, people can tryout music before buying. Though it's been more than a year since I bought any music, unlike before I rarely listen to music other than when driving and my car only has a radio, when I did at Barnes and Noble I was able to listen to segments of songs at kiosk B&N has, admittedly not the whole songs but parts of them.
FalconShould there be a Law?
you don't really read the whole book before you buy it either.
I have, I have compleatly read books before buying them. I do the same with magazines, I'd go into the cafe at B&N or Borders and read. If I loved it and/or want to keep it for reference then I pay for it. Reminds me of the movie "You've Got Mail" where one of the charactors says something along the lines of what I do.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I think that a LOT of peopple are "missing the point", here we are talking about peopple who SHARE with others are "pirates".
I wasnt enter in sony music with a gun an steal material, i bought a Pink Floyd cd, and share with a lot of peopple. Yes im breaking the law, but worst if i dont SHARE this music with others.
I dont know how they will stop the listeners natural impulse to share the music they love (ITs NATURAL THAT PEOPPLE WANT TO SHARE), now music can be copied completely faithfully, and without cost.
There is a REALLY interesting articles about this subject of SHARING MUSIC, but IMHO this one sucks.
The music exist and doesn't need RIAA, its the RIAA the one who want to use the most important thing in this world to make some profit.
Chao
PS: We can derivate to the idea of "respect only the laws I think are corrects", and THAT can be ANOTHER discussion.
PS. PS.: Will i was writing this comment and for a looong time i still be sharing ALL pink floyd disks on torrent.
Pink Floyd Discs (2250.8 MB)
Rock and Roll
Is this an example of the "Post hoc ergo procter hoc" fallacy? Who is to say that these users would not buy even MORE music were they not downloading music online? There is likely some self-selection taking place.
In what way has the music industry been rewarding anyone for ...anything?
They mean continue the stick approach.
I'm french, and went to the virgin music store on the champs-elysées last week.
The price for a single CD (one/two tracks) was 5euros ($7).
When you have the opportunity to get the same thing for free, why should we bother and pay some crazy amount for it.
All the music industry people want to do is trying to get us buy their products at a silly price they fix.
I'm waiting for th chinese to fully enter the global market, and you will see the kind of prices they will be practicing, when the competition will be truely tough for an industry that has taken the public for granted for tooooo long!
The more free or cheap downloads, the better we (the users) will be!!
Okay, the amount of music downloads is on increase, the amount of CDs bought in the music stores is on decrease. To be honest, I am not sure that any methods RIAA and other companies have recently introduced will actually help to defeat p2p. The only thing which actually would help is to decrease the price for CDs. If you could buy a CD for 2 or 3 Euros - in a good quality - instead of downloading it from some illegal trackers, you would really buy it. But if you have to pay 20 or 30 Euros for the same CD, it is more obvious that you will rather download it on the Net. In my opinion, 1*30 Euros is worse than 30*2 Euros... Or am I wrong?
vitaly.friedman -> creative.web.design.saarbruecken.germany
If the tracks I'm interested in were only released on vinyl and the vinyl in question were a limited or local album or single release, the probability of that item being available through licensed means except in the hands of a collector is fairly low.
It's the music industry equivalent of abandonware.
Sometimes laws are unjust, outdated, or simply incorrect, and I think we as individuals have the right to make that determination for ourselves.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.