Slashdot Mirror
Japanese Musicians Defy Sony by Joining iTunes
Homework Help writes "Japanese musicians under contract by Sony are defying their contracts by using Apple's iTunes service to deliver songs. Rock Musician Hotoharu Sano points out: 'It is an individual's freedom where that person chooses to listen to music. I want to deliver my music wherever my listeners are.' Sony Music Entertainment and Apple are still locked in talks and no agreement has been reached so far. Apple's offering of its iTunes service at lower cost in Japan is greatly attributed to their success." From the article: " Before iTunes' arrival, Japan's top music download service, which is backed by Sony and includes Sony recording artists, averaged about 450,000 downloads a month. By offering its service for lower prices, Apple is undercutting such online music services. Japanese are accustomed to paying twice as much as Apple is charging in Japan, which are still higher than the 99 cents charged in the U.S."
Its about time artists started to stand up to the recording industry for their rights. Now, if only the artists received fair compensations from the sales of their music.
You:
;)
Are the artists that are doing this in violation of their contract with Sony?
The summary:
Japanese musicians under contract by Sony are defying their contracts by using Apple's iTunes service to deliver songs.
I'll let you connect the dots
Everything is more expensive in Japan, even Videos and Cds, but it's nice to see Apple realizes it doesn't have to be that much more, and is showing it by undercutting the cost of the service.
It's the freaking internet, all they pay for is bandwidth and the music. Good to see that some companies remember that and are trying to avoid gouging. I just hope apple continues that path.
But you sold away that right in exchange from a large advance from Sony. You can't have it both ways. You can have your freedom or you can take the corporate dollar.
When you sup with the devil, use a long spoon.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
is it japanese for iTunes?
Are the artists that are doing this in violation of their contract with Sony?
Yes they are. That's the point. Its really the only thing they can do to get Sony's attention.
Japanese musicians under contract by Sony are defying their contracts
IANAL, but the summary certainly seems to imply so.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Most likely, yes. It would be a bit like taking the master recordings that Sony owns the rights to distribute and going out on the street corner selling CDs. While it might common sense that the artist has a right to sell their music how they want to, but that's not the way things are done in "the industry" and not the way contracts work. Although there might be some little loophole in their contracts, I'm sure big expensive teams of lawyers are working through the details as we speak.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Good for them! They should be able to put their music everywhere and anywhere - isn't that why they signed on with a label in the first place?
Of course, doing so in violation of their contract could put them in a sticky situation. I wonder what the contract actually says.
-Daniel
What is it these days??
People sign things like NDAs, record deals, and professional sports contracts, and then expect us to be sympathetic when they decide not to honor their agreements?
Want your music to be free (speech)? Great! Then don't sign a contract with a major label! It's that simple!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Dots? Connect? I don't understand? I don't need help to connect to slashdot?
Sounds like it, although not too many details have been put out. It looks like they were already agreed to be part of the Sony-run online site, so I would guess they were at least under a contract there.
Defying != in violation of. I took the summary to mean they are not respecting their contract. Not that they are necessarily in violation of it.
It would depend on each individual contract as well as the songs that they are putting up on iTunes. One article I read seemed to imply that the Sony artists were putting up songs on iTunes that were not from Sony records, but some may be, and that Sony was planning on breaking off their relations with artists who put songs on iTunes. It seemed to imply that what the artists are doing is not technically in violation of their contracts, but Sony sure as hell wasn't happy about it. Ultimately it'll probably come down to a case by case basis for each artist.
The laws of probability forbid it!
iTuning Japanese, iTuning Japanese, I really think so.
The fellow's name is Motoharu Sano, and his band is called the Hobo King Band. Apparently, their music is not currently available on the American version of iTMS.
If we really pursued open markets, the japenesse and all others, should be able to download music from any legal site--- ie itunes usa should offer music to the world at .99 per tune plus whatever the VAT or other tax imposed by the person in the receiving country.
Perhaps there is a market for exporting ipods preloaded with music legally download in a lower cost locale.
How long before the record companies realize they've just lost to Apple their most important asset: the direct relationship with the customer? They've monopolized that position, between artist and audience, for a century, which is where they get all their power and money. Now that Apple has judoed (judone?) them to the mat, will they start to fight really dirty? Probably against the only thing they still have control over: us, the people in the audience.
--
make install -not war
They should be able to put their music everywhere and anywhere - isn't that why they signed on with a label in the first place?
No, they signed with Sony so their music could go anywhere and everywhere Sony decides it should go. If they wanted to retain that right, they shouldn't have signed with them. I'm always amazed that so many people can't seem to make this connection.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Give it a month or so and they will probably be going through 450,000 songs a day. I'm guessing that the reduced price has more to do with it than the Apple Brand. It looks like Apple is going to sell a lot of iPods to Japanese consumers.
I wonder if these latest developments will be enough to bring Sony around to reaching an agreement with Apple.
Here
Sorry for the doublepost, shoulda linked the article in the first place.
The laws of probability forbid it!
All your bases are belong to us..duh.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Presumably, if the artist didn't hold the copyright on the music, they would be unable to grant Apple a license to sell the music on iTMS, and Apple wouldn't start selling the music in the first place. The implication is that Apple is selling their music, which means that while Sony has some sort of exclusivity agreement with the artist, they don't hold the copyright on the music itself.
In the US, this wouldn't fly. Apple would be opening themselves up to a slam-dunk lawsuit for contract interference. Maybe contract law is different in Japan, though.
But you sold away that right in exchange from a large advance from Sony
Are you sure? That would depend on the details of their contract and the details of Japanese contract law, wouldn't it? Depending on those details they may well have sold away the right to Sony to distribute their work on CD while retaining some sort of right to independently negotiate sales through other entities on new mediums.
We don't have copies of their contracts, so we don't know. But something of this sort is clearly the case with Mr. Motoharu Sano who said the thing you quote; otherwise Apple certainly would not have allowed his music onto their store in the first place, as doing so would have been illegal.
You can't have it both ways. You can have your freedom or you can take the corporate dollar.
This seems to be the case right now, but only in a practical or logistics sense. Aside from purely practical matters, there seems to be no good reason why this is the case, and so there is no good reason to shrug things off and accept the way things are. Not all evils are necessary.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
These days there is very little need for the majors. Everything that musicians need to produce, promote and distribute music is cheap. But the majors have a stranglehold on the media - it's far harder to get mainstream exposure when you aren't playing the payola game (e.g. Sony).
Still unless musicians stand up to the majors and say no to crap contracts, and unless fans start supporting musicians that go the tougher indy route (by not stealing their music when they should be buying), things will move slowly, if at all.
People used to post without reading the article.. Now they post without reading the headline!
and so, is that also Japanese for Motoharu?
So Steve did a great job by using the Internet to skip standard distribution channels for music ... Why this didn't work so well for games? http://www.steampowered.com/
Alexandru
Yeah! They are really making a great point by defying the corporate tools they willingly and knowledgeably entered into a business agreement with, by selling out to other corporate tools!
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
No, you're confusing what contract they had to sign in order to get their music out there, with what they WANTED to have happen. The artists are trying to get their music out ther. They sign with a label in order to do that. The contract restricts them to only doing what the label says, but that isn't what the artists WANT.
They signed with the label to get their music out there as best as possible - in order to do that, they ended up resctricting themselves to Sony.
-Daniel
Vana White demands a universal remote.
How long before places like iTMS become the main source for distribution? The record companies should be getting nervous... once upon a time both artists and listeners needed them for distribution. Now they're useless.
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
Apple's offering of its iTures service
Is iTures the Japanese spelling of iTunes?
If the editors aren't going to check for dupes, the least they could do is spell check.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
IANAJL, but if there's some language in the contract about Sony's duties to promote their artists it wouldn't be out of the question to try to call not putting their artist's music on the (now) #1 downloadable music store in a timely manner a breach of contract on Sony's,/i> part.
It would require some brass cojones and a good lawyer in the U.S., sure, but it wouldn't be out of the question-- as for Japan, who knows?
If I sign a contract that says I will work for Sony for free, then I lose the ability to claim that my compensation is unnacceptable, that I'm being enslaved, etc. Which is what these artists and that guy that left microsoft to work at google are doing.
I doubt it adds up to much right now, but I see the day when places like iTunes are the music distribution channels of the very near future.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
What you really meant is "all your basses are belong to us."
Does anyone know who is violating their contracts to get onto iTMS? Since I'm guessing each contract is unique, it will be interesting to see how Sony handles the inevitable lawsuits against popular bands vs. non-name ones. And whether the ones who are breaching their contract will ever be able to get signed by a major label again.
I wonder what the contract actually says.
Bla bla bla... First born child... Bla bla bla... Eternal soul... Bla bla bla... Look, are you gonna sign or not?
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I am flatly flabbergasted at the number of people in these article comments who are expressing the observation that if you want to sell your music commercially you must give up your "rights"/"free speech"/whatever, and don't seem to see anything wrong with this situation.
Just because this is the system the Good Lord Capitalism has handed down to us doesn't mean that it is a good system. These people didn't sign these contracts by choice, they signed it because cartels are by and large holding the world's music industries hostage and these cartels use their influence to force people to choose between giving up their artistic work to others and not being able to make artistic work at all. Not much of a choice at all, that.
If we lived in an actually free market artists (or artists less rich than David Bowie anyway) would have choices, they'd be able to negotiate terms or obtain a distribution contract acceptable to them, rather than dictated by a record label. We don't. We live in a market dictated by the wielders of monopoly power.
And don't try to claim they could go to independent record labels. I listen to practically nothing but independent music, I've done work in/with self-published music, and I know some independently-signed musicians. Independent music is a ghetto. It is something you do because you love the art and you love what you are doing. It is not really something you can turn into a career.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Well, I think so -POIT- but where do you stick the feather and call it macaroni?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Hell, they're so noble they probably just told Sony "We'll sign with you. But you can keep your money, man. With us, it's all about the music!"
God bless those noble, selfless rock stars and their world-renown integrity!
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Music CDs are typically $20-$30 in Japan, so I can see why iTunes would be popular there.
-- Hot Wasabi over & out --
"Sony should sew this person for gazillions of dollars. "
That would be a real stitch to see.
Sorry, I didn't mean to continue the thread like this, nor buttonhole you on the right way to express yourself.
Perhaps if you hem and haw a bit, we'll get this crease in our relationship.
1. Sign a contract with Company A to create products
2. Take money from Company A to create products
3. Sell products through Company B for more money
This is no different than whiny athletes who sign with a sports team and refuse to play until their contract is renegotiated. The amount of gross funds you generate, the fans you gain, and disparity in how profits are distributed are all irrelevant. Everyone was happy when the contract was signed and the only thing that changes are the attitudes of people who incorrectly (and quite arrogantly) see themselves as the sole source of that profit. Take a step back, see who the true money-grubbing whores are, and stop glorifying thieves.
To bad, they should have read it. They no longer have rights to the music the wrote and recorded, it belongs to Sony now
Free Mac Mini
Uhm yeah and your just now figuring this out??
:D
I got news for you then babies aren't delivered by storkes either.
Just to give you a heads up on that one
Oh and welcome to the real world where everybody gets screwed at least ten times daily by some rich bastard with more money than he'll ever spend in his or his childrens lifetime just so he can get even more of what he has to much of to begin with.
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
...Not Sony.
Fossilization is a real big problem.
From TFA it is hard to tell whether this will create legal problems for the artists...
... but it is interesting to see that a major record label is being circumvented because it does not distribute the music in the way that customers demand it.
It is amazing that a company like Sony, which invented the walkman, just doesn't get it. They will go the way of the Dodo.
You'd probably have landed +5, Funny by now if you'd written:
cheers
> Want your music to be free (speech)? Great! Then don't sign a contract with a major label! It's that simple!
Want your computer to be free? Great! Then don't use any software whatsoever that comes with a EULA! It's that simple.
And good luck with that .. your "free" computer makes a good doorstop/conversation piece.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
And this is how it should be. Musicians promoting revolution. Clearly the record companies are not looking out for anyone except their own fat bottom lines, and it's about time they take the hit for that. Go for it!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
My wife's Japanese, and I like J-Pop. But, iTunes Japan won't be getting my money, since we live in the U.S. and you have to have a Japanese credit card to download from their site.
It's actually easier for us to buy a CD from Japan and get it shipped to us, than try and send money to her Japanese bank account, etc.
You can buy a money card from http://amazon.co.jp/ (it's on the front page) ONLY IF you are in Japan. They think of everything...
I suppose eventually some stores are going to set up so you can purchase iTunes money cards overseas, but until then, iTunes Japan can kiss my ass.
The industry cannot compete on the internet effectively, and artists are awakening to the fact that in such a venue, they don't need to become the indentured servants of record companies just to see global distribution. The fact is, if they sell so much as one album on their own, they've made more money than 85 percent of the recording artists signed to major labels alone--who do not sell enough albums to recoup their recording advance.
Using the royalty computation model explained in "All You Need to Know About the Music Business" by Don Passman, an industry lawyer and professor, the average mid-level artist has to sell a quarter-million albums just to start seeing a dime of royalties.
This luring of artists away from their record companies, into direct distribution, and cutting out about 9 or 10 middle-entities along the way, is basically "phase two" of the emergence of internet distribution as the dominant model.
To make matters more interesting... Think about the implications here... In a world where even an artist selling 500 copies can make a better profit than a Britney Spears should her latest album sell less than enough to cover whatever six or seven figure advance she's been paid, there's going to be a much bigger selection of talented artistry out there... available for mass consumption. One won't have to resort to ridiculous marketing and promotions to make a buck... and that will make it harder for Britney Spears and the like to dominate the scene because they essentially bring nothing to the table
Record companies with their moronic A&R departments so myopically focused on putting every last ounce of energy into pushing only the biggest international artists stand to lose everything... and their employees along with it (especially the overpaid, underimaginative executives).
So, if you're still wondering why RIAA spends so much time, effort and money ice-skating uphill... It's because they have everything to lose, anyway. All they can do now is try to postpone the inevitable... and they're failing to do even that. But if they let down, it means they're going to have to get off their asses and find real jobs.
I agree. If it is legal for a citizen of Japan to fly to America, buy a CD at American prices that is also available in Japan, and fly back with it to play at home, then they darn well ought to be able to buy that same track off of the American iTunes site at the American price.
In a truly honest world this would already be the case.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
With a what?!!??
chowed on any cock today?
Has this been lost? Or simply transferred to Apple the same way artists have been passed between companies by contract sales and buyouts for decades.
Is there really a change, or is Apple just the newest Master?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Then all the record companies need to do is buy out Apple. Truth is, Apple just isn't big enough to hold out against them if they want it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You do realize that convenience is always part of the the cost equation. Why do you think milk (and, well, everything) costs more at a convenience store than it does at the grocery store?
Honesty has nothing to do with it. You're either willing to pay more for the convenience, or you'd rather put yourself through the inconvenience (and expense) of going and getting it somewhere cheaper.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
because we all know there have never been any misleading or just plain wrong headlines on slashdot before.
But you sold away that right in exchange from a large advance from Sony. You can't have it both ways.
Somewhere way back in history the phrase "you can't have it both ways" was uttered for the first time.
And thus, lawyers were created.
Really I think of it like divorce - this poor guy has shacked up with someone who turns out to be manic depressive - "No I won't join iTunes! You're sleeping on the couch tonight!!". What is he supposed to do, watch his carreer go down the tubes? Seems to me he has a right to extracate himself from the horns of Sony's dilemma.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And how hard can it be to get a JCB card, especially when you have a bank account and family in Japan?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This was out on MacNN and Digg yesterday. /. - news for nerds from yesterday.
Ahh
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
An obvious flaw in your argument is that Britney keeps the seven figure advance too. You won't make that much profit on 500 Internet sales.
But for those of you who aren't Britney (thank God there aren't more of her running around) and will never see such advances, it's a good deal.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
People sign things like NDAs, record deals, and professional sports contracts, and then expect us to be sympathetic when they decide not to honor their agreements?
Want your music to be free (speech)? Great! Then don't sign a contract with a major label! It's that simple!
Megacorporations insert unfair clauses in contracts, using obfuscated legal language to screw over the little guy, and then expect us to be sympathetic when they decide to enforce them?
Want to be stuck playing in dives and highschool proms for the rest of your life? Great! Then don't sign a contract with a major label! It's that simple!
You can't take the sky from me...
Everyone seems so ga-ga over iTMS, but you get screwed over even more by Apple then by most record labels. 99 cents per song is as much if not more than I end up paying for a full album. And I am supposed to enjoy paying this much for a lossy compressed, DRMed sound file. Meanwhile I pay the same or less for the CD and I get CD quality that I can rip and encode to my own specifications without DRM _and_ a pressed CD, jewel case, and cover art.
Am I insane? Or is everyone else just listening to crappy bands that can't put out more than one good song per album? Maybe you are just all overpaying for CDs at Sam Goody or some other chain store with an insane mark-up. Shop online, you'll find a better deal and you won't have to leave your house that way either.
Can anyone explain to me the benefit of the iTunes music store for anyone that doesn't have ADD?
Therefore, anything that weakens them is not a bad thing for the world at large.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When you sup with the devil, use a long spoon?
What the fuck does that mean?
When you write stupid aphorisms, explain them.
..shitty tasteless crap called (pop/rap/punk/rock) music.
Just because you are ignorant about these genres of music, doesn't give you the right to generalize and call it all "shitty tasteless crap". Every genre of music has something that people would call crap in it. I would like to hear what you listen to and think is so "great".
More importantly, it's a loan from which the costs of recording are paid. In other words... Out of that advance, Britney has to pay:
1. The studio
2. The producer
3. The musicians
4. The songwriters
5. The backup singers
6. The business agent
7. The manager
8. Security
9. Staff
10. Personal assistants
11. Music techs
12. Sound engineers (yes, they cost extra)
13. Transportation
Usually, the entire advance gets spent on all of the above... the artist is now sitting with zero in the bank or even a negative balance after all is said and done.
Now here's where it gets scary...
The entire advance is a loan... That's right... it's owed back to the record company.
Recoupment works like this...
If Warner Bros. pays you a $500,000 advance for album 1, and has you optioned for three more...
First you have to recoup the $500,000... but you don't recoup it at the gross MSRP of the albums sold. You recoup it at your royalty rate.
The royalty rate an artist gets is not based on the MSRP. In other words, if an album retails for $15.98, the artist's cut... probably around 14% for Britney... is not 14% of $15.98. It's 14% of the royalty base less gross margin, i.e. about $7.98 ... after deducting marketing, distribution, packaging, promotions, and related costs.
So now, that's about $1.12... pretty high actually for a Britney, believe it or not. But let's be generous and say that her royalty is $1.12.
She has to recoup the $500,000 at that rate... $1.12 per album. So, she has to sell 446,428 albums just to pay back her advance.
Now... UNTIL she pays back her advance, she does not get to keep a DIME of royalties. So, given that with a $500,000 advance she's probably spent every last dime of it, she's going to be broke if her album doesn't go gold. What's worse, she's still tied to her contract until she delivers the other optioned albums.
But wait, it gets worse...
If she gets a larger advance, she now has to sell even more albums to pay back the advance, meaning it takes even longer before she gets paid a dime... and usually when artists get a larger advance, they still blow every dime of it on all the aforementioned expenses.
But here's what's more... If she has any contracts with band members or producers to get paid royalties... their percentage take comes OUT OF that $1.12... Then the business agent and managers take their cut... 15% of what's left? No, 15% of $1.12 per album.
It still gets worse... the artist is the last person to get paid. The business manager handles all disbursements (just like a lawyer on retainer)... everybody else gets paid, then the artist takes what's left.
It gets worse, still... If any tracks on the demo submitted to the A&R department are rejected, Britney has to go back to the studio and record some more...but if she's blown her advance already, then the additional recording costs come out of her pocket.
It gets even worse, even now...
If Britney's album is a failure and lets say $200,000 has not been recouped... When her next album is due, the $200,000 unrecouped balance gets pooled with the advance for the new album. Now she has to still recoup both... but there's more. Until she has paid off all her debts, she cannot get out of her contract... she still owes the record company material.
But there's still more...
The record company may incur additional expenses related to the promotion of the album... whenever an A&R agent wines & dines a program director at a radio station, whenever someone uses a jet to fly from LA to New York and meet with program directors there, whenever transportation costs and other overhead expenditures are incurred in relation to the promotion of her album, etc.... all these expenses are deducted from her advance and/or royalty checks first.
Very interesting to hear these sort of details. *NO WONDER* record companies are so scared.
Britney doesn't get to keep the advance... it's a loan. See my response to the other guy for a more detailed explanation.
This is like that Motorola iTunes-capable phone that none of the cellphone carriers want to support; these are the same carriers that charge $3 for a _ringtone_ and a $1 iTunes song just messes up their business model. Same here for Sony. Apple gets a lot more pennies with their smaller margin than the gougers who think their monopoly justifies the price.. slashdotters may be aware of this already, but your common consumer doesn't.. Out of mind, out of money, as it were. Glad to see Apple subverting the infrastructure. being in the 10% or less market share and surviving the computing world has taught them a few tricks.. now if they only had iFuel for 99c a gallon..
Any parties she throws, her mortgage, car payments, phone bills, shopping for $5000 purses, trips to Ibiza... whatever's remaining, if anything, from the advance... is pretty much her earnings for the time being.
Then, on top of it all, let's not forget the income taxes on the royalties. Of course, since a recording artist is an independent contractor and not an employee of the record label, they (or rather the accountant... yet another expenditure) are responsible for setting aside the money to pay for income taxes, insurance, etc.
Royalties, when they do get paid, are disbursed only twice a year.
In Japan, contract law is enforced by sleve-tatoo covered guys that do meat-origami with your internal organs.
Your only recourse is to find a peasant kung fu master from rural china to fight on your behalf.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
...finally get my hands on all that Japanese Country music I've been hearing about:
"The Corner Automat Stopped Selling Your Panties Today"
"My Ecchi Breaky Heart"
"You Took My Heart, My Dog And My Battlesuit"
"She Said I Was Her First, But The Tentacle Marks Don't Lie"
"I've Been Drowning In Sake Since Your Webcast Bukkake"
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
My comments should have read:
Because the record label has Right of First Refusal in their contract with the artist, the label has the first opportunity to review and accept or reject the material. Unless and until the material is rejected, the material in question cannot be shopped to other record labels. Furthermore, if it is shopped to other record labels, there may be a clause that requires Label B to pay Label A either a flat fee or a percentage of gross receipts for the distribution rights... and on top of it, the artist still owes Label A the advance unless Label B purchases the loan from Label A, in which case the artist now owes Label B the advance.
Look, I'm a free market guy, don't get me wrong, but in this case, there is NO free market.
In theory, sports SHOULD be a free market, or RELATIVELY free. IF AND ONLY IF each team was an independent operator.
In theory, there are at least a thousand players talented enough to play at that level (including backups), and a few dozen buyers of talent including the NFL, and then the other leagues. HOWEVER, there isn't a free market at work. Remember, the NFL teams collude on things like rules, drafts etc. AS A RESULT, the league has colluded to be a monopsony, the singly buyer of a resource. While there ARE other options other than the NFL, the NFL has defacto monopolized the US market for setting football (USFL actually WON an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL, but only $1 in damages because their own stupidity causing their fall; XFL likewise collapsed under their own stupidity). As a result, the players association functions as a union to monopolize the supply of labor.
There IS no free market in sports.
If you eliminated the draft, revenue sharing, etc., and forced each team to compete for players AND television contracts, then you would have a free market.
Instead, the NFL needs to only pay $1 more than the Canadians CAN AFFORD TO PAY and you can keep the monopoly rents.
Sports contracts aren't reasonable because of the cartel that supplies football to fans and purchases talent in a non-open market.
As a sports fan, I LIKE the market manipulating effects BECAUSE it increases parity in the league with the draft, etc. However, let's NOT pretend that there is an open market for athletic talents.
Alex
Actually, Mr. Motoharu Sano did not sign away that right for these particular songs, according to Sony itself. The Forbes article link edited out an important paragraph from the original AP news feed article:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050810/japan_itunes.html?
Without this paragraph, the Forbes article and the Slashdot article is slightly misleading. Sano is not allowed to sell his earlier songs that he signed away to Sony, but he can (and did) sell his newer songs that under his own label, DaisyMusic. This is what Sano's own website says.
http://www.moto.co.jp/WhatsNew/news.html#iTMS1
("Announcement of Song Sales via DaisyMusic, iTunes Music Store")
In short, what Sano did is perfectly legal and demonstrates the problem with current signing contracts: musicians have near complete freedom under their own labels, but are nearly helpless to dictate terms under the major labels.
Convenience is not the point. For someone living in the US, buying cheap goods from down the street is more convenient than flying to Japan and buying the same CD for 50% more. The price difference is what they're complaining about (and the fact that the price difference is being carried forward into the borderless, distanceless internet).
I quit!
Are you sure it's not the other way round?
Not as cool as Buckaroo Banzai who is half Japanese, a famous scientist, a brain surgeon AND a rock star!
I've tried to make this point before ... but you make a good discussion of the details. I would also like to add that it is even worse than just the money; from what I've read a standard contract might be for 3, 5 or 10 albums. Until you've completed that, you can't make an album for anyone else, or use music that they don't want. An artist can't make an old song free or get songs published that the label doesn't want.
I've made the point that the RIAA is getting the government to protect their profits. They are the equivalent of forcing everyone with a car to buy a buggy whip for more than the price of the car. They don't help the consumer, the artist, or the quality of product. Labels only unique product is hype. When they talk about "music pirates" hurting artists, they mean Record Labels and maybe Madonna or someone with a good contract. Most artists would like to get people to their concerts and could care less about what is "stolen" on the web.
Great points.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Paying 99 cents per song is a great deal in some cases. I use the iTMS to pick up tracks off of soundtrack albums and compilations, when I only want one or two songs. $0.99 for the one good song is a much better deal than $18.99 for that same song plus a bunch of other garbage. Same deal for re-releases of albums that I already own, where they add in bonus tracks (see recent reissues of Elvis Costello lp's or Sonic Youth's "Goo"). And then there are those Greatest Hits albums where they add one new song. 99 cents to get that song without buying all the other songs you already own is just dandy.
> Then all the record companies need to do is buy out Apple.
> Truth is, Apple just isn't big enough to hold out against them
> if they want it.
"The record companies" can't collectively act together to buy out Apple. If they did, there's a little law called Sherman Anti-Trust that would come into play the moment the republicans are out of the white house. And even if the right-wing corporate stooges do manage to hang on to the white house in 2008, it still pays to maintain the illusion of competition, just for propriety's sake, After all, occasionally... not nearly often enough, but occasionally... the public *DOES* wake up and take notice of corporate malfeasance, and call for heads on a platter.
Given that a collective buy-out of Apple is out; Apple vs. any given *single* RIAA member is another story entirely. And Apple *IS* large enough that no such deal could go through without Steve Jobs getting a significant amount of stock/power, in the new company, out of the deal.
And Steve Jobs; or anyone with his kind of vision, talent, charisma, resourcefulness, and drive; is absolutely the LAST person some stuffed-shirt corporate MBA type wants to give a foothold in his company. Remember the fall, humiliation, and disgrace of gil amelio? Remember how quickly Jobs went from "strictly an advisory role" to giving gilly-boy and most of his crew the boot, and the taking over and running the whole show himself?
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
The consequences are usually spelled out in the contract, so contract-breakers are essentially making a cost-benefit assessment and acting accordingly.
What about "Party 1 is entitled to all revenue earned by Party 2 through a willful breach by Party 2 of these conditions"? Do a cost-benefit analysis on that.
Songs require significantly less bandwidth than games.
Not always. Look at classic MAME ROMs, and you'll find that most of them weigh in at well under the 40 MB of a typical album. Many of the downloadable shareware games are rawther small as well.
Quote from Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise:
- "The party of the first part gives the party of the second part, and his associates, full power to do with him, at their pleasure, to rule, to send, to fetch, or carry him or his, be it either body, soul, flesh, blood, or goods." What does that mean?
- Oh, that's a transportation clause.
>Are the artists that are doing this in violation of their contract with Sony?
I don't know who the "other" artists are, but first of all, Sano Motoharu isn't even signed with Sony now - he got sick of Sony and started his own record company a while back. I don't see how Sony can stop him selling music recorded at his own company through the iTMS.
Hey, his first name is MOTOHARU. not Hotoharu!
http://www.moto.co.jp/