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Record Labels Unveil Greed 2.0
theodp writes "Unsatisfied with $2.49 ringtones and as much as 70 cents of each 99 cent iTunes download, Newsweek reports that record labels want a bigger cut of digital music profits. One example: If you type in 'Madonna' - a Warner act - at the Google Video site, and the results are accompanied by ads, Warner wants a share of those ad dollars." Even more ridiculous demands than those put forth in previous stories.
these pigs are always wanting more money.
That's why all new music acts are nothing more than a 'formula'. everything's over-produced and is total crap.
Artists don't even need labels anymore. It's now feasible for composers to do business directly with online music providers... it doesn't cost much to upload a few megabytes of info. After it's been on iTunes, Napster, or whatever; and has made some money, then produce the CD, using profit money from distributing online.
The only reason the RIAA is useful to new artists is for advertising purposes, which is IMO isn't that great anyways. They are increasingly advertising the the artists they think can make the most money, not necessarily the artists that make the best music.
The only thing they're really doing now is desperately holding on for their survival. If they persuade congress to pass enough laws in their favor maybe they'll stick around for a while...
The RIAA today, is like the horse and buggy businesses when the automobile hit mainstream. They're obsolete.
Go away RIAA, nobody likes you.
Slashdot = ((Technology + Politics) / Trolls) % Grammar Nazis
The more of this claims the better... They will cross the line very soon and will be hit back with lots of lawsuites. Leaving them no money to sue regular people
Visit my site @ http://www.madtorrent.com
I have a serious question. If people are tired of the record companies, why don't they just stop listening for a while and find other forms of entertainment? Wouldn't the most effective way of sending the message that these guys are being jerks be to stop buying music? This isn't like gas, where a "boycott" means that you just delay your purchase a few days. Put enough economic pressure on the studios and artists and maybe things will change.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
...from the adds next to this slashdot story.
They're only at 2.0? That's news.
What good is a double standard if you can't enforce it?
I cant believe this. Its absurd. Are they going to be demanding money when I whistle a tune in my local supermarket while I'm shopping for groceries?
Whats even worse is that some dumbass company is going to capitulate and then they'll all be forced to cave.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
If they continue behaving like this I just might miss them one day.
--- In the battle between the axis of evil and the one of stupidity, choosing intelligence is disloyal.
I think the record labels need to get a grip. Their product is music. If someone BUYS music, they should get some profit. If a commerical company uses the music in something (Ad, radio), they should get some profit. If someone uses the music in a remix, they should get some profits. If someone puts it on a Blog or Webpage, and makes money off it, they should get some of the profits.
But to say that if someone types in Madonna, or Backdoor Boys, and they get some of the ad revenue is insane. I suppose FORD motor company would want the same thing. Or Nike, or Coke, or....everyone.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
i now I shouldnt be, but I am stunned
just..wow.
I was about to go out and buy most of Sade's discography.
I wish to hell we could just pay the artist directly.
Soft of like the definition of a fanatic: they're redoubling their efforts as they lose sight of their purpose.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I wasn't looking for the pop singer, I was looking for Ze Fallen Madonna With Ze Big Boobies. There are group names with different meanings outside the music empire, how are they going to differentiate?
I'm disgusted once more.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Don't buy their shit !
Sun rises in the east, water is still wet.
Seriously did anyone think that an industry that starts by screwing their own wouldn't also be out to screw everyone else ?
Take a look at how the industry has operated in the past. If reality doesn't suit it bribe legislators write laws that make reality more amenable. If even otherwise law abiding people recoil at these self serving pieces of legislation, then start suing your customers. If your customers have the temerity to fight back step up the lawsuits.
The only element of interest or doubt in this story is when they will bring in thei captive legislators to write laws that make things go their way.
The reason why the RIAA/MPAA are able to get away with this (and with draconian copyright laws) is because people rely too much on TV for information. Al Gore this week did a speech explaining that Americans watch television, on average, 4 hours and 28 minutes every day--90 minutes more than the world average. Americans base their opinions on what they see on TV--not what they hear on the internet, not what they read in the newspaper (since they generally don't read the newspaper).
The people in charge of TV are not about to describe accurately what the new copyright laws are doing to the American people, or the extent of greed that the media conglomerates have. When people are spoon fed information on TV, they get information from a biased source.
My suggestion: Get rid of your TV. Get your friends to get rid of their TVs. Go outside or go on the internet to get information.
Chill. This particular issue is being spun way out of scope. If Yahoo! makes money by showing videos, why shouldn't the record companies (and the artits) get a cut? Is this so shocking? In a perfect world, we'd get to watch all this stuff for free, record companies would get nothing and Google would profit and we'd all be happy!
Get real. Google shows music videos for free. They show ads, for which they receive money. Record company says, hey, if you're making money on this, let's get a cut! This has nothing to do with searching for Madonna on Google when you're not watching a video. It's about getting a cut of the money Google receives for showing ads while we watch the Madonna video. What's the BFD? Blowing issues like this out of proportion makes the whole crowd sound like a bunch of idiots when we're talking about the real issues (Betamax, broadcast flag, industry lawsuits).
Read the article, think about it, and decide whether this is really such a big deal.
Don't forget: Google is "good" not "evil".
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
If you sold your car, you'd probably choose to sell it to whoever would pay you the most money. Same with your house.
But at the end of the day, consumers have a choice. Music is a product that you really do not need, and it is a luxury. The way to get the music companies to charge less is to buy less, and let the marketplace force them to charge a price that consumers find more reasonable. That's also part of the equation of 'what the marketplace will bear.'
By Warner's logic, publishers should be paid everytime one of their books comes up in a search on Google, or Amazon.com, or even in a library catalog. That's ridiculous. The publishers aren't providing the service here. In fact, they're the ones who benefit - they're getting free advertising. This is more than trying to get the most profit from what you own - now they're demanding handouts from their benefactors and customers.
Shouldnt the labels be paying google for the advertising, not google paying them to advertise? Google doesnt make any money, intrinsicly, by advertising. They get money from those that they advertise FOR.
SO, if the labels wanted money from the adds, then Google could just drop the adverts that were music related.
Some wierd logic there.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Madonna! Madonna madonna madonna madonnamadonna madonna madonna. Madonnamadonnamadonna! Madonna, madonna madonna. Madonna madonna madonna... Madonna madonna; madonna madonna madonna madonna. "Madonna? Madonnamadonna Madonna madonna madonna." (Madonna madonna madonna: madonna madonna.)
Lameness filter encountered. Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.
is download all the music I listen to (for free, fo course), and then donate to the artist directly as much as I see fit.
This way, the moneys go directly to the people who deserve them, and there's no shit in between like RIAA's fat greedy hands.
And the record companies surely are giving that additional profits from sales and ad revenue generated by the videos back to the artists who pay for their production from their cut of album sales... right? Otherwise such a thing would be horribly immoral, the equivalent of selling something you don't own... right?
This will go great with all of the checks the RIAA must be sending to artists from the illegal download lawsuit revenues.
Truly, this is a wonderful time to be a musician.
The ______ Agenda
1. For every pair of lips in my family, lest they sue them for whistling a RIAA-owned tune.
2. For every shower in my house, as my wife sings when talking a shower.
3. For every pair of ears, lest I walk past a friends listening to his collection of MP3s that I haven't paid to listen.
4. I will send 10 euro for each MP3 in my iPod that I ripped from my brother-in-law's CD collection.
5. Whenever I hear/shout 'f$ck U greedy son of a gun!", because that should only be directed to RIAA members.
Disclosure: I'm stupid
"If you type in 'Madonna' - a Warner act - at the Google Video site, and the results are accompanied by ads, Warner wants a share of those ad dollars."
What's the big fuss over something like this? The income from searches for 'Madonna' would be trace.
This story seems to have less to do with digital music as with the industry trying to claim that the artist is a brand, whose very name is valuable. As such it continues a line from the guys who have sued Google in the past trying to keep them from selling Ad Words to competitors. And if this works for the music industry it may spread to other people-brands: movie stars, NASCAR drivers, etc.
The RIAA's business is making people famous. Anybody can make,produce, and distribute music, but it takes a major corporation to sell a gold record's worth of music. Even after carefully selecting the artists that they think will be worth the investment they fail much more often than they succeed, so they feel compelled to milk those artists who do succeed. Not for their music per se, but for the fame of their brand, which is the one thing that they've added to the mix.
It sounds like the RIAA is trying to buy themselves a Supreme Court fight on the subject of fair use. Not about the usual question of whether you can make backups or play it in on your Linux box, but at what point a tiny fragment of a brand (like a name in a search engine) becomes usable by the public without charge. That decision will end up affecting a lot more than the music industry. There are other people-as-brands, as well as more classic product brands. I'm sure other industries will be watching this closely.
Incidentally, that's why they're so zealous in trying to eliminate music sharing. They feel that the reason you want that music is precisely because they created you wanting it. That is, there's lots and lots and lots of music available, but you want the RIAA's music because they spent a buttload of money coaxing you into wanting it: getting it onto radio stations, putting posters in music stores, TV ads, etc.
There are plenty of people who don't like the blandness of the lowest-common denominator music that the RIAA promotes, and in theory the RIAA has no argument with those people sharing the non-label music, except they get caught up in the general sweep of things. I suspect (but don't have any numbers) that most of the P2P-shared music is RIAA-produced music precisely because the RIAA labels have put so much effort into promoting it. Tiny local bands would be thrilled to think that you knew enough about their music to go to the effort of downloading it.
Everything the mainstream media says about technology is at best misleading and oversimplified, and at worst outright bullshit. This is part of what I come to Slashdot to AVOID.
Some choice nonsense from TFA:
"The music industry is filled with creative types, and many seem to be wearing suits these days."
ROFLMAO.
"Who can blame music execs for wanting to play offense?"
Way to defend the status quo, Newsweek. Who can blame the execs? Consumers, musicians, other companies... basically everyone. 99% of Slashdot rightly believes that the old music business model is dead. Why bother with an article that assumes otherwise?
To the RIAA, MPAA and all other corporate thieves:
FUCK YOU! I won't do what ya tell me! (repeat 4 times)
Motherfuckerrrr! UnG! UnG! UnG!
Hugs & kisses,
-Khan
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
Its obvious that the music execs feel that if their company puts it out, then they are entitled to money even if it is so much as mentioned or thought of.
If they could fit us all with mindreaders and secure microphones with AI, they'd charge us everytime we thought of a tune too close to an existing song.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
It's no secret that corporations are greedy and will do anything they can to increase their wealth. Them charging more for music is minor compared to the grand scheme of things.
The wealth has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is the poor below. They talk of trickle economics for the the poor getting money from the wealthy, but it's quite the reverse. Wealth, often in the form of labor, flows from the bottom up. If not, they wouldn't be so rich.
To back this stance, it is worth nothing that the wealthiest wealthy grew wealthier between 2003 and 2004, partially thanks to tax cuts. The poor, however, became poorer. During that time period the number of Americans living in poverty grew by 1.4 million. Source: this CNN article.
I'm not an advocate of pure communism, but what we have today isn't really capitalism, it's a crappy corporate welfare system that intentionally pisses on the poor.
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
The problem for todays new pop stars is that they really aren't musicians in the first place. They rely on the up front $$ that the record companies throw into marketing them, paying for talent coaches and producing the hell out of their music so their cd's sound good.
That said, I agree that online distribution is a boon for independent musicians that are in fact actual artists.
No sig for you!!
Which I'd love to tell the music company executives, and all those that might admire them. It's a simple word, at first inoffensive if you don't know the meaning, and can be shouted in anger without losing the basic sound of the word.
The word is "Garn".
It means "Go and get fucked.", from "go and" being said shortly to "go'an", then altered via the australian accent into the word "garn".
The long of it is "garn get fucked", and the shorthand "garn" can used when you just need to say something snappy without being misheard, or offending little old ladies.
So, to the RIAA, and all those affiliated,
"I'm never paying you fuckers a single cent from now on. Those two Ministry albums - Animositisomina, and Houses of the Mole' - I just bought were IT, the end of the line. I am going to download any music I want to listen to, and I'm going to send the purchase price, or import price, directly to the artist via a money order."
"Garn. Garn! GARN! Sideways! With walnuts!"
His name is Robert Paulsen...
And what if I'm searching for paintings of the Madonna? How are they going to differentiate?
This greed is fucking rediculous... If I am searching for their Madonna, well, they will probably make a cut of whatever I find that I might buy from that search. Hell - if I'm searching for that Madonna, I am probably already interested enough in her to own a CD or two, so they already have some of my money in their pockets. Am I going to have to pay them if I mention Madonna in my blog? Isn't that fair use? Why should I pay for any mismatches that might come up? Whats next? Should I pay for the privilege of looking at billboards when I drive along the interstate?
All I read on /. is that the RIAA are bastards and they should be dead or whatever, but can anyone tell me in detail /why/ they act like this? I mean, greed is one thing, but I find it impossible to believe that this organization consists of total lunatics only. So there must be a good explanation as to why they act like this.
-- Cheers!
I suppose it is a great time to agree to sign with Warner; wait until you start searching for my band, 'The'.
--
"pain is weakness leaving the body."They already do! If you use background music in an area with something like 50 or more people listening to it then you have to pay an ASCAP fee! Many a restaurant and bar have been nailed for not paying. Talk about legal extortion.
Ironic perhaps, but I think you'll find that that particular album was released by the RIAA. link
That'll be five bucks please.
- The RIAA.
Whats even worse is that some dumbass company is going to capitulate and then they'll all be forced to cave.
TFA: "Labels scored a victory in music videos, however, after a battle that was sparked by the grandson of Doug Morris, Universal Music's CEO. Early this year Morris noticed his grandson repeatedly watching a video of 50 Cent, a Universal artist, for free. Morris investigated and discovered his labels were supplying the videos free of charge to promote record sales. Yet Yahoo, AOL and other sites were awash in ad revenue because of the huge audiences the videos helped draw (recently Yahoo CEO Terry Semel revealed that Yahoo expects to stream 5 billion videos this year.) Morris demanded payments--a fee for each time a Universal Music video was played and a cut of the ad money. Yahoo balked, and Morris pulled Universal's videos. After weeks of declining traffic, Yahoo capitulated. One Universal Music exec estimates revenue from the new agreement to be worth $10 million or more to the company. Warner Music is now trying to extend the concept to the emerging video-search business."
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
I think that market pressures are exerting change on the music industry. We're just seeing some of the last efforts to capitalize on business models that are outmoded.
Meanwhile... the oil thing... there are some legitimate reasons we are paying more for oil... I still think that we are paying too much. The price of the crude commodity is up maybe 33% from last year. 20% of our refining capacity has been effected by recent events... But we're looking at 100% price increase on the finished product from last year...There is no real incentive for any one company to lower their prices right now, increase refining capacity, etc. This is a hypothetical situation...
What if we stopped buying from the largest oil company inside the US? What is we stopped buying any gasoline from only Exxon Mobile? Would their supplies increase enough and their profits drop enough to make them want to lower their prices to draw customers back?
It's something that I don't know enough to comment on, but I'd love to hear from someone with a degree in economics.
I think that we need to change our habits in this country, but I also think that it's perfectly fair for us to fight back as consumers and exert our buying power to change things on the short term too. It is way over simplified, but it's like AOL getting it's ass kicked for offering internet access at $20, and others offering nearly the same product at $15, $10, or less. Eventually AOL, Exxon, Warner Music or any other business is left with a choice... adapt... or die.
Of course it may be even worse for the giant to die, but I'd be willing to see what poking it with a pointy stick does...
How long until the music industry machine decides that, like software, music that can be played on computers should be priced according to the number of processors decoding it?
."
"Your CD player, that's a single charge of $13.99, but thanks to our new DRM you can't play it on your computer without running this setup program first. Two processors? Okay, we'll cut you a deal, because we're nice guys like that. $21.99 instead of $27.98. Oh, I see you have the Sharpie discount . .
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Considering the schoool system, and the media, how would you expect the American consumer to be anything but midless sheep?
If it wasn't for all those mindless sheep buying tons of things they didn't need, the entire world economy would collapse, that's just a fact. Poeple don't need that much really, and most of that is automated.
So thank your local sheep, thanks to them YOU have a job.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Coming next from the RIAA...
They'll want royalties from people singing (I typed sinking first - Freudian slip?) their songs at karaoke bars. And since the music contributes to people having a good time and buying more drinks, they should get a cut of the bartenders' tips as well.
I see my shadow changing, stretching up and over me...
As a musician this topic always interests me. I for one have heard almost nothing good about the "industry," and I personally have no interest in taking part in its creativity-killing machinations. In today's corporate environment creating unique and excellent music is nearly impossible. Artists from all genres are all saying the same thing: the industry is a perennially negative influence on the creation of great music. Even Bono recently stated that he didn't think U2 would exist if they had started up in the last few years, as opposed to 20 years ago. The fundamental concept that salesmen and business executives don't understand is that, in the long run, it's in everyone's financial interests to move music in new, creative directions. However, being the good bottom-line minded people they are, the tend to look towards short term gains. Of course they have a very successful formula for the short term, based mainly on leveraging the market using their significant financial resources. A poster earlier mentioned that the RIAA is irrelevant. This is entirely true. No musician, short of perhaps a symphony orchestra, needs a $500/hour studio, needs an army of producers and engineers, needs a multi-national advertising firm. Thanks mostly to computers and increasingly cheap technology, each and every musician can achieve the same recording results, the same packaging and the same press materials as a record label can. It's not rocket science. Of course one has to have the desire to do this stuff, but once you've got that it's smooth sailing and the results that can be achieved are truly remarkable. I would encourage everyone here to explore non-corporate-sanctioned means of getting music directly from the artists. In the coming years we will see a flood of musicians from all genres offering the same products as the major labels, but without the middleman. Forget iTunes and go the artist's site and use their download service - I have one on my site. Order a CD straight from the source. This is best for the artists and you know that your purchase will go directly to supporting the music and musicians that you love and admire.
It is not the record labels that make ringtones expensive. Typically around 50% of the cost of the ringtone goes directly to the phone carrier. Some charge as high as 60%.
Most ringtones fees are billed directly to a user's cellphone bill. This dramatically increases sales because people buy more impulsively. To have this privilege, companies that sell ringtones must give a MAJORITY of the revenue from the sale directly to the cellphone company itself.
Of the remaining dollar, about 20 cents goes to aggregators that provide SMS/PSMS (premium sms... billing messages) integration (the guys who let you send text messages to cellphone networks.)
Of the 80 cents that remains after that, 20 cents will usually go to the content providers... or, for the lucky ones who have the resources to create and managing the licensing of their own ringtones, they get to keep that 20 cents.
Around 30 cents of the remaining 60 to 80 cents go to the record labels.
In the end, the people who actually run the ringtone site get between 30 and 50 cents per ringtone sold. Minus advertising. (Which is almost always a LOT more than 30 to 50 cents per sale.)
That is why almost all ringtone sites sell subscriptions, not single ringtones. They're hoping you don't use all your ringtones that come with your monthly subscription, and that you continue your subscription for more than one month. Otherwise, it's just not profitable.
But the point is that record labels only get between 10% and 15% of the cost of a ringtone. Of that 10% - 15%, the artists get some portion. (Usually 2% to 5%.) It's the carriers that take the VAST majority of the money.
If you want ringtones to be cheaper, bitch to the cellphone companies not the record labels.
Pretty soon, someone will come along and offer:
- a better deal to Google and Yahoo
- a better deal to the artists
- a better deal to Apple
- a better deal to CD buyers
- a better deal to concert-goers
- a better deal to satelite radio
- and better music with better terms for the consumers
and they'll still be able to make a nice profit.
The slow decline of the old record companies will accelerat, Madonna will turn 75-years-old, and Warner and Sony BMG will have to shut their doors.
Five days after we hear about Music Labels Charging Too Much For Microsoft there's a story on MSNBC about how greedy the music labels are.
Hmm.
The notion that record labels should share in advertising revenue from keyword searches is to confuse the ownership of intellectual property with the concept of "adjacent space".
Adjacent space is frequently sold at a premium in multiple mediums, from supermarket shelf-space, to tradeshow booth-placement, to partial-page magazine advertising. Wherever a premium brand is located, the neighboring advertising- or product-space increases in value. If a record store puts Sarah Q. Smith's album on a shelf next to Madonna's new album, the record store is effectively using Madonna to promote the sale of Sara Q. Smith. But this is very different from capitalizing on Madonna's intellectual property. This is capitalizing on *Madonna's market*, which is something Madonna does not own, control or have rights to.
Likewise Google's use of adjacent space, ie: space neighboring Madonna's relevant links, is Google's own affair. It is Google's effort to target Madonna's market -- which is as old a phenomenon as the outdoor marketplace.
The entertainment industry needs to get a reality check on the scope and limits of IP.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
There's more than one Madonna.
Services such as http://pandora.com/ that introduce listeners to music that is not on the radio will allow independent and lesser known artists to succeed without the promotional value that signing with a big label confers. If so the big labels, radio stations, and music channels will lose some of their influence and thus power.
Have you paid the royalties to put that on slashdot?
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
Whoa, take it easy there Hitler. Ixnay on the ewjays...
This is why you have to do what every other musican has ever done. That is tour.
A problem with touring is that very few venues in my area that hold rock music concerts seem to admit minors (due to alcoholic beverage regulations), and those concert venues that do admit minors seem to have prohibitive up-front venue fees that startup bands cannot afford. This gives bands promoted by the major labels a near-lock on the under-21 crowd.
Does anyone else here feel the need to purchase a shotgun, lest you catch sight of an RIAA rep?
I am having trouble believing that the record labels are this stupid... they are going to just drive people back to file sharing/steeling. The level of arrogance they possess is striking. Do they really think they THEY can stop it? Not to mention most of the music I ("would" if i did ;) ) download is live stuff, they can't presume to put copyright on all of that.
I think the problem has to do with Hollywood in general. The movie's cost to watch now too. They are all so full of themselves, greedy, and arrogant, its really become quite revolting. I have all but stopped watching new movies until they come out on DVD and just borrow (or copy if I did that kinda thing) it from a friend. As far as music, emule is great.
Please, Bronfman is very far from being "smart." He sold his family's highly profitable liquor brands to buy into the lowly profitable entertainment industry, and I doubt that his new assets have aquired value in that time. He is just another in a long line of useless hiers who have squandered a fortune in the pursuit of "free" sex.
First they own your music, then they own your image, then your name, then your soul, and now common names and words. Silver bullets and wooden stakes needed...
However, what you may lost is the ability to play at your local AmphiClearChannelBudweiserSonyTheatre.
If such stadiums are the only live music venues that admit minors, and they're off-limits to independent bands that don't have a lot of investment behind them, then how should an independent band that plays family-safe music tour?
How about they start reimbursing me for bandwidth charges and giving me a cut of the profits every time I link to one of their artists from my blog?
I'm helping create buzz and drive potential customers to their clients... Sounds like I could function as a sales 'Broker' and charge them 10% of every sale, no?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/greed/ is at version 2.2211ß, not 2.0 as stated!!
var sig = function() { sig(); }
Ironically, they are doing this to keep themselves well stocked with coke in the first place.
If they get this through, it's not enough not to buy their shit. You may not even seek for it. Or for something with a similar name: Say, someone wrote a (non-RIAA) song titled "the blue madonna", and you want to seek for it, but don't remember the "blue" part. What would you type in the search engine? Right: "madonna". Result (if that would get through): Money for the RIAA.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I mean if you write a song, and some other "artist" gets it and makes a hit of it. Is that fair?
Royalties for cover songs go through Harry Fox Agency, not RIAA. Besides, what if the song you wrote turned out to be itself subconsciously plagiarized from another song?
What the RIAA does (or rather, the RIAA member companies) is extremely expensive. Their job is to make artists well-known enough to sell a lot of music. If you want to make a living making music, you have to sell a LOT of music. At $10 a CD, you need to sell 1,500 CDs just to get yourself to the poverty line, and that's before you've paid for producing, printing, pressing, much less the advertising that makes people want your CD in the first place. You can tour like crazy but getting thousands of people to cough up $10 for your CD is going to be a challenge, especially when there are literally thousands of bands like yours out there. So real number is more like tens of thousands of CDs. If you want to get rich you'd better sell a million of them, and unless you're REALLY friendly you haven't got a million friends to sell CDs to.
So the RIAA spends money: they lobby radio stations (and paying them, even though that's illegal) to play your music, they advertise your tour on TV, they give away free t-shirts, etc. All on a national level, because if you want to sell tens of thousands of CDs you need to adverise to many, many people.
What they have in the end is a brand. They've spent a lot of money on you, and 20 artists like you who didn't catch fire. Once they have your name on everybody's lips, they want a cut of everything that makes money from that brand. They didn't create the music, they created the fame, and it's the fame (not the music) that's bringing people to Google to search on your name.
I'm oversimplifying like crazy (of course the music is relevant to make the brand appealing) but you get the idea. More importantly, it's not like they're not already wildly profitable (even accounting for all of their failed attempts), and they're not taking nearly as big a risk as I'm suggesting. For example, a lot of the start-up costs are taken out of your royalties. You the artist don't see squat until you've paid back the immense costs of producing that album. (In addition to marketing costs, RIAA companies own very expensive equipment, managed by very expensive engineers, operated by very expensive producers and mixers. A musician will tell you that those things are critical to making an album you're going to want to buy, and those who aren't with the labels spend a lot of their own money to buy the equivlent themselves.)
But perhaps your real question is, "Why do they risk alienating their customers so much?" That, I can't say for sure, except to say that I assume that somebody in a room somewhere has done a cost-benefit analysis and taken a guess that maximizing the profit on their brand is worth the customers who are alienated. They may be right; Slashdot readers (and posters) are exquisitely sensitive to the sort of manipulation that the RIAA does but many less technologically aware people aren't.
Ultimately it is all about greed; their job is to make the maximum money. They walk a careful line; some industries do very well by appearing to be generous. Instead, they've chosen to try to milk every possible dollar. But that's "greed" in the "trying to maximize your value" sense, not "greed" in the stealing-from-other-people sense. They want the benefit of what they've created, even though it seems awfully miserly of them (and even counter-productive) to go about it the way they are.
I imagine that they get that cynical as a result of manipulating people into buying the music in the first place, music that a lot of people think isn't very good but which a lot of people spend money on and which many go out of their way to download. (The vast majority of bands would love to have you download their music, because it means you've at least hard of them.) Since they think that they can create the desire to buy music (and their CD sales figures show that they can), the seem to think that they've got the formula licked and can risk alienating their customers because they'd rather buy the CDs from the RIAA than risk jail or take a chance on a band they've never heard of.
Nice link. I cannot figure out if these guys are serious.
"You can support us by buying overpriced items" near the bottom tripped my sarcasm detector.
Any ideas out there how to make a brand new, decentralized massively wireless network that can't be attacked by **aa? We're going to need to break from this commercialism-controlled net eventually if we want to keep our freedom of speech /and/or content...
This seems to be a far too common occurence here: the article summary is misleading and the commenters don't even read the 300 word article. The article says nothing about companies wanting money for things people type into a search engine.
Apparently the record companies used to allow portals like Yahoo to show their videos for free, since they considered it free advertising for their music. Then, they realized that Yahoo was making lots of money off
the deal through advertising, so they asked for a cut. Yahoo refused, but saw their hits go down, so they negotiated a deal. Basically, an exec at Universal realized what they considered advertising was more like giving away free product. This makes sense: people weren't discovering new music on Yahoo. Most of the time, they came there to see videos and songs they already knew.
I suppose you could say the record companies are being greedy, but they're not doing anything suspect. They realized other companies were making money off their products, and decided to charge for the privilege. Similarly, they're trying to renegotiate with Apple, and we'll see who wins there. They may harm their own market more than they expect by raising the prices, or the market may be happy to pay $1.30 for new hits. We'll just see. They're also renegotiating with satellite radio, now that that industry is pulling in lots of money, again with the RIAA's products.
There's no talk in the article of charging anyone for search engine keywords.
what precisely is "steeling"? if i were to "steel" would i turn myself into metal? perhaps i'd make metal, or simply act like a piece of metal or get a job as a metal plate and be bolted to the side of a ship? it's kind of like "loose"... if i were to "loose" would that mean i'd be mellow rather than uptight, or maybe it involves simply loosening whatever is nearby, or being "loose" as in loose women?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
And any shareholder can have an opinion on what is the best way to run a company. Some hold a very long term view, that by consistently "doing no evil", the company will last a long time and be even more profitable than doing everything they can to maximize profits in the "this quarter" mentality that so many other corporations have. In fact, perhaps more than a few people invested in google for that reason.
There are many institutional and private investors that now consider ethics and politics in their investment decisions and it's completely legal and normal and they contend it's a long range logical view to take. If you as a potential investor read that google had such a "do no evil" policy and it lead to your decision to invest cash when they went public, then you could make a case where they violated that if they started "doing evil", and perhaps file a complaint.
Funny story, friend of mine inherited a really nice portfolio. He divested all (to buy rental properties instead) except for enough shares in this or that company to go to the shareholder meetings and rail on issues about how the companies were run.
Look, I hate the evil capitalist pigs as much as the next comrade (and I actually say that with little irony when it comes to the recording industry) but it's the title "Greed 2.0" a bit over-the-top, even for a fake news source like /.?
"he has been tought to reflexivey hate zealots and communists even though he probably could not define communist if his life depended on it."
and why is it that you single out corporations in your little rant? is it because all corporations are evil? is it because non-incorporated firms don't advertise and try to get people to buy their products? or is it because the word "corporation" is rhetorically effective and reflexively conjures images of greed in the people you are preaching to?
i'm not trying to defend the riaa here, i despise their business practices just as much as you, but i'm sick of hearing generic "anti-corporate" rants that don't contribute to the discussion.
And there are a lot of small bands and individual performers who sign with RIAA's clients and don't get adequate representation either. If I were one of these performers who was probably going to have to live with inadequate representation, I'd much rather hold on to the copyrights to my recorded performances than sign them away.
Digital Citizen
You know, in the real world, people PAY to have people see their ads, not CHARGE. It's time for IETF to take over the world. (See Stross' Singularity Sky)
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
It's PEOPLE dammit, not ppl! You saved three whole keystrokes and you sound like a 12 year old gamer.
And, you don't have to end every sentence with "..."
I know I'll probably get modded down but sometimes you just can't help but say something.
As to your actual comments, you've explained exactly what's wrong with the big labels. If all you have is a nice body and a 'little' vocal talent then maybe you shouldn't be headlining for Busch Stadium. There's a lot of musicians that are actually very good and they shouldn't have to compete with that crap. It's hard enough as it is.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Check out www.jamendo.com
It features independent artists and is originally from Luxembourg.
You can listen using MP3/OGG streaming and downloads are available in those two format using several P2P services (BT among others).
If you like you can send money directly to artists.
the more i work with bands and record labels (labels that are meant to be indie) the more dirt i find out about this industry.
so many bands nowadays are picked up or formed by majors (RIAA labels) secretly, then they are put on an "indie" label for their first cd. then once the indie/punk/insert_somewhat_underground_genre_here crowd loves them, they release the next album on the major.
then when they are on mtv/radio, the people who just buy into whatever they hear love them, and so does the underground (or at least those who'd like to theink they are) crowd.
it's ingenious, and disgusting.
-- lol pwned
"And who's gonna fly it, kid - you?"
"You bet! Why, I -"
"Recording music ain't like dusting crops, boy. Without precise calculations you'd bury yourself in the mix, or sound too close to a pop tartlet, and that would end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?"
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
The artist pays for all the production costs for their music. the Music company USED to pay the distribution costs, and now with on-line stores, they do not have to do that because apple pays for that, or napster, or yahoo, etc. and the record industry thinks they deserve cuts of the profits of windows, iPods, Google ads, etc? are they fucking nuts?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
They'll want royalties from people singing (I typed sinking first - Freudian slip?) their songs at karaoke bars.
Nope. Live performance is the turf of BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC.
Consider an analogy. Alice and Bob each has a fruit stand selling apples. Both are selling identical apples for $1 a piece. They've been doing it for a while, until Alice decided to hire Carol, a marketing exec, to increase sales. Carol immediately gets to work: she installs a loud boombox, girls in skimpy outfits and a blimp hovering overhead - all advertizing Alice's apples. Crowd gathers around Alice's stand and sales go through the roof. Even after paying Carol marketing fees, there is still handsome profit left - more than she ever had before.
Where did the profits come from? Was there any new value created? Well, the apples didn't change, but the demand did. The demand was created exclusively by Carol.
Bob in the meantime kept his costs low and did not hire any marketers. He did notice something interesting, however - because of all the increased interest in the apples next door, demand for his apples started to pick up as well. Marketing effort paid for by Alice has began to increase Bob's revenues.
Question: does Bob owe anything to Alice?
In the physical world, generally, yes. It's called "location, location, location". Bob can setup a fruit stand out in the middle of nowhere and pay nobody for the privilege. Or he can open a stand in a downtown mall, which will cost him.
Back to RIAA.
Without heavy and expensive promotion by RIAA, the value of, say, 50 Cent would be hovering just above zero (some would argue below). RIAA effectively created the artificial demand for his product, which, supported by copyright laws, fuels a vast ecosystem of businesses. Why shouldn't those benefitting from selling, reselling or otherwise commercially benefitting from 50 Cent's music own portion of profits to RIAA who created majority of the value in the first place?
Disclaimer: I think that RIAA should die and music should be free, but that would be preaching to the choir and, therefore, boring.
As long as they also get a cut of "greedy piece of shit organization".
It makes no sense. How can the RIAA possibly expect search engines to pay them for something that they have no valid claim on. I can say that Google owes me a gazillion dollars, but that doesn't make it so.
I have a suggestion... what about artists each set up their own website (yes yes I know many have, bear with me), and offer simple MP3 downloads for a buck apiece, similar to itunes except they keep all save the bandwidth. Not going to work? If you think about it though, is a person who is going to pay for the music in the first place going to share the music on edonkey or klite? Probably not. But then you run into problems with people who swap their MP3 collections with their friends, friends who have no compunction about putting their entire collection on the file sharing networks, or kids who used their parents' credit cards to buy the song or songs, and share them for the kudos.
So basically you have one or two months before your song downloads start dropping, and of course then you will still have the fans that are willing to pay the dollar. And don't forget, many people patronise itunes, even though they could almost certainly get the songs on p2p networks.
Therefore to maintain this kind of business, bands would need to release a new song every month or so. The rest is just marketing (very cheap online, if you pick your keywords right), maybe a bit of touring... nothing to it really. This would mean the really good artists would gain the fame they deserve, not the bought and paid for fame of the record companies. And those with dreams of vast riches would be well advised to steer clear of the RIAA et al anyway.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Imagine if an artist demanded a part of the advertising dollars from Spin magazine every time his name was mentioned in the zine. That'd be ludicrous. But how is this any different?
m usic_licensing_talks/
p le_decapitation/
The music industry is just incredibly greedy. Even sites who are helping to promote have to pay to promote. It even turned away Gates' billions and his offer to sell music.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/04/ms_quits_
Even Apple who admittedly looses money on iTunes will have to pay profits from its iPods.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/27/warner_ap
Do you know what this means?! The music industry is even greedier than Microsoft!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
From TFA
said one top-label executive. And that's the problem--lots of companies are making money from music, just not music companies.
Mike
What leverage does the music industry have though? Google's video search doesnt actually host that much content - it just links to offsite content, hosted by others. What can the music industry pull from Google that would hurt them? Nothing.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Google and other search engines should charge big companies like that for advertising every time a search result inculdes any reference to that company.
Although I believe, like many, that the RIAA has a failed business model that is struggling to survive, do we really need to post 10 stories about the RIAA to Slashdot every day?
Is it possible to moderate an entire story as -5 Flamebait?
Where is the line? Sure, Google is making money off an ad for Madonna, but why should Google be faced with a fee? Shouldn't the person who placed an ad with "Madonna" as a keyword be the one who has to also notify Madonna?
We can do way better than that:
Night clubs: they are playing Madonna, take some of that cover charge and the alcohol profits, because they want Madonna
Concerts: lots of people (besides the producer) is making money off a concert. Take some of their profits, too.
Speaking tax: as long as we're going to try to fee Google for ads, we should charge people for even saying "Madonna"
Listening tax: find IP in everything we hear and charge you whenever you hear music, even if you own it
Candles: those little religious candles often show a picture of the Madonna, and what's that w/o Madonna's spikey tits?
Those are just off the top of my head.
It's only a matter of time before the music labels will want a $.02 royalty for every time I imagine Britney Spears naked...
I want the music industry to pay me for playing Madonna. Only right, since they're making a profit from my music buying, right?
I think, therefore I am...I think.
That's right, Mr. Recording Industry Executive, keep right on squeezing. You'll only hasten the inevitable, which is to mean that the network will eventually phase out every last dollar you previously had moving in your direction.
They're in their last throes - just like the Iraqi insurgency.
So, f*ck you, then.
Why doesnt the RIAss of A just get everyone fitted with a media chip. Every time your brain registers a tune in any format, the RIAss of A gets some money. This could be used for actual music, ringtones, karaoke, humming a tune on the way to work, singing in the shower.
"...but they've gotten so carried away they are overreaching... That's good."
Are you sure about that? I'd like to start by mentioning the industry collapsing won't be good for any artists, established or not. High prices and piracy or not, if there's no one to quickly turn performances into CDs in stores and songs on the radio, I don't think anyone's going to be happy.
On another note, I don't think having their 'greed show' is going to stop them. It's been really clear for a long time that they've been greedy as shit ($13.86 mean anything to you?), but since then, there hasn't been a single crippling lawsuit against the RIAA. They're still getting rediculous royalties (70 cents per iTunes song), they're still cranking out lawsuits left and right, and no one's doing anything about it.
The recording industry is making no secret of being greedy (special thanks Steve Jobs), but it hasn't gotten, or appeared, more or less greedy in the last 5 years or so. If they haven't been stopped already, I don't think that's going to do it.
Unfortunately, it's going to take more than being perceived as a greedy bad guy to take them down (cough, Microsoft). I'm sort of hoping for a 'new generation' of lawmakers. As of now, I'm going to say that most people in positions to pass these laws are in the age range of 35-60, but people that grew up with Napster and successors probably aren't more than 20-25 years old. Maybe when this all cycles through and people that grew up downloading music start to pass these laws, they might be a bit more sympathetic toward the money-starved, music-hungry end user downloader.
I just don't see any real end to all of this. As long as the RIAA (and MPAA) continues to have endless dollars to throw lawyers around, they're probably not going to lose big time. And I have a feeling they'll have plenty of those dollars for a LONG time.
P2P seems to be the light in all of this. Despite flurries of lawsuits and garbage propaganda, efforts thus far to curb piracy have not been extremely effective. Napster lead way to Kazzaa and iMesh, and even the shutting down of the giant Suprnova only lead to sites like IsoHunt that are bigger than SN ever was. As long as music, movies, and music videos are readily available online for free, I don't think the record companies will ever have too much of an edge up. As long as I can put my mp3s (that I didn't pay a dime for) onto my iPod, and watch DivX movies on my modded Xbox, I think I'll be happy.
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
"You bet! Why, I -"
"Recording music ain't like dusting crops, boy. Without precise calculations you'd bury yourself in the mix, or sound too close to a pop tartlet, and that would end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?"
"And who's gonna advertise it, kid - you?"
"You bet I could! I'm not such a bad... Wait, what was the question?"
we can't blame them for trying now can we. the bottom line, is google and co have no legal obligation do pay them a cent. and you can bet google knows this. they are flush with cash and will have the best legal advise money can buy.i also doubt itunes will pay them more per song. given the amount itunes is selling, i think they are the ones with the bargining power.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The problem from the point of view the music industry is, that portals like google and yahoo are used to distribute the content the music industry has created. By providing local caches of videos and music, they rake in advertising revenue for content they haven't payed. As the article states Yahoo expects to serve 5 billion videos next year. This is sorta like MTV!
.coms.
So the cost for google and yahoo is bandwidth and diskspace and for the music industry the band and the f**ing video itself. Obviously providing bandwidth and diskspace is a low risk proposition. The only thing google or yahoo are investing per video are a few cents for discspace. If the video sucks, bandwidth wont be used at all. If the video is a success, bandwidth pays itself by advertising.
I am no fan of the RIAA, but I rather see the money go eventually a little bit at least to the artists and those that support them, than just to some
If Google capitulates to this request it could destroy them as a company. Assume Google pays the record companies a percentage of ad revenue based on product keyword searches. What is to stop everyone with search content in google from making the same demand? This would make Google much less profitable and we would soon be back to the days of "hit or click inflation" to try and generate more revenue. I could even imagine the RIAA contracting with nefarious programmers to create worms with the sole purpose of generating hits on Google.
Google must reject this request and let the RIAA take them to court and subsequently lose. The stakes on this are quite high for all search engine companies. I agree with previous posters who said that Google should delete all RIAA content and have them pay for to get into Google's search database. The result of this would hurt the RIAA worse than it would hurt Google.
It seems like they're in no danger of that. They're vastly overvaluing their own importance in the new digital age where artists can produce and distribute music without them.
I'm still running the initial beta release Greed v0.1.0
Let them work the bugs out. All encompassing greed is still in beta. They haven't figured out how to sue children for listening to unlicensed lullabies yet.
Granted, don't attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance and stupidity... but this seems a bit over the top to me, even for corporate idjits. Maybe it's the old tactic of "Propose something nobody in their right mind would accept" to make their second offer than no one would've accepted in the first place seem much more sane by comparison.
IIUTC (If I Understand Things Correctly):
Maybe that's how the "deal" should be made?
hany
shouldnt it be the other way around they should be paying google for every time some one searches madona?
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
This just in: The record labels also want part of the profits from the electricity powering the computers playing the music.
-Myke
-Myke
"so many bands nowadays are picked up or formed by majors (RIAA labels) secretly, then they are put on an "indie" label for their first cd. then once the indie/punk/insert_somewhat_underground_genre_here crowd loves them, they release the next album on the major.
then when they are on mtv/radio, the people who just buy into whatever they hear love them, and so does the underground (or at least those who'd like to theink they are) crowd. "
If a group of people only like a band because it's on an indie label, it says they're a bunch of posers anyway. So if the the music industry has to trick these people to like music, what's the harm?
Vote for Pedro
Okay, I admit, I've never recorded an album and I don't know how everything works, but couldn't an artist take their album straight to iTunes, and thereby bypass the whole RIAA thing? I think if that were possible, it really would make the RIAA obsolete.
I think as these groups become more possesive, I can see a dramatic backlash against these pratices. I'm not sure if its an accurate reflection, but at my local flea markets I can already see a difference, for one the music offered is being ignored by most everyone that walks by.
I can remember often seeing 3 to 10 people browsing the offerings, not now. Maybe one at the most at any one time. The value of used CD's has gone down dramatically. People are wising up.
Honestly for the past 5 years I have only bought CD's directly from the small time artist at local coffee shops. This just makes me want to continue that trend. (That and my existing collection of several hundred CD's purchased during my colledge years and early twenties is enough to fill my iPod.)
Think Deeply.
Greed 1.0 was in screwing the artists for the past fifty years. The labels always claim that successful artists make plenty of money but if that's true then why have so many of them gotten such a small piece of the pie that they sued? Listen to some of the stories told by people like Little Richard, Prince, Neil Young, The Dixie Chicks, Shania Twain, and many more. It is actually pretty amusing when you hear them and suddenly understand why things happened, like Prince legally changing his name to that god-awful abstract symbol and why Neil Young made the album Trans.
Buy a cellphone that allows you to use mp3s as ringtones, from a provider that doesn't disable it (or unlock it once bought), and stop buying ringtones! just transfer whichever one you want from your PC. That's what I do and if everyone did that carriers would stop that silliness.
They say money makes the world go round . What I would like to know is , what type of gravitational forces they are trying to achieve on planet RIAA .
If Music be the food of love and the RIAA owns a great deal of music , then I think I am going on a diet .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I am going to wait until the 2.1 release comes out. Gives them time to get all the bugs out of the .0 release...
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
Until you're paying 'royalties' every time you hum your favorite band's newest catchy tune...
Just give this one generation. Or less. I bet the real reason the RIAA's sweating is because they know there's no reason for the talented artists to resign, or sign up in the first place with them anymore. With distribution channels like iTMS, and public advertising like word of mouth on the internet, more and more artists will remain independent.
If I was a musician, here's what I'd do: Make a good album. Give away a few tracks on my personal site, and sell the remaining on iTMS and sites like audiolunchbox.com. As the money slowly comes in, use it to pay for banner ads on sites based around music.
The better (more popular) your music, the less you need RIAA. The fewer good (popular) artists RIAA can get, the quicker they'll tank. And they know it.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
No, not their style. People either don't like people who call them names, or they just don't care. Do you think name calling has slowed down one single music swapper?
No what they say is, "Look, all the cool kids are doing this, and you want to be cool, right?"
To quote a comic pair from yesteryear:
"If someone told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?"
"Heh, not again!"
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
When lots of people stop buying CDs, they blame the drop in sales on piracy and act even worse. Its not like they get the message "you suck" when you stop buying their crap. They get to make up whatever reason they feel like for the decline in sales.
I wonder what the RIAA's cut is from my favorite music store.... www.packetnews.com Even if they get 100% of my $0.00, I think it would be money well spent.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
does that mean that the music companies would want a cut of the advertising revenues of radio companies as well? or cuts from sales of cars if the ads for those cars use their music too?
-- and if life has failed you leave the cross you're nailed to
...with Jesus, and man his mom is PISSED. She wants royalties, man, big-time.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Womp rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'll never know, cuz I won't eat the filthy mother f*ckers.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
people still support these mfer's by listening/buying music from artists on their labels. I've just stopped buying mainstream music and only support small labels.
With all of the stunts they've pulled lately, I thought they were up to version 8 or 9 by now?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
How else are going to keep up with the spending habits of the no talent hacks you see on Cribs?
The RIAA today announced that they will be demanding royalties from every RIAA related story appearing on slashdot.
An RIAA spokesman today announced "These slashdot stories are related to us and we should have a cut and anyway you could be buying CDs instead of reading this story so you owe me $13.99 and if you don't pay that then I'll take you to court and sue for 20 Million dollars and if you don't pay that then I'll sue your kids and your dog too."
This article is basically a paid advertisement for the music industry--it is larded with such industry-serving arguments, and is so one-sided that it makes me feel sorry for the good middle-Americans who depend on Newsweek to actually provide them with news...
The industry doesn't want to repeat a history of undervaluing itself. yes, they've obviously been undervalued for so long--it's really sad how MTV made all that money off of Madonna--and we're supposed to believe that all Warner Bros got was a lousy t-shirt? how many artists made their name off MTV, and now we're supposed to believe that the labels didn't make any money off this?
The industry considers Steve Jobs the latest incarnation of this problem. so he's a problem because he succeeded where they failed? until the ascendancy of iTunes, they were getting 100% of next to nothing--Apple did what they couldn't do, and now they're complaining because they only get 70% of the proceeds?
And that's the problem--lots of companies are making money from music, just not music companies. they're not making money from music, or enough money to satisfy their corporate overlords? funny, but the labels weren't complaining when overpriced CDs were flying off the shelves, and all these years of record profits, nor do they complain when somebody buys Led Zeppelin IV for the fourth or fifth time, or until death do you part...
I guess they already know what people 'in the know' think about them, which is why they plant slimy articles like this, to try to keep on picking the low-hanging fruit, using their brand of creativity, which seems to be limited to accounting and FUD...pigs.
And that's the problem--lots of companies are making money from music, just not music companies.
So what's next, the car makers going after the after-market parts market and repair shops? After all, they make money on the cars that the manufacturers produce, so why shouldn't they have access to some of those profits? If I run a car message board and advertise on Google, shouldn't Google have to pay the manufacturer a portion of that ad revenue? Where would it END?
Just because I make something, and someone else gets creative and finds a way to ADD VALUE TO AND PROFIT FROM my own creation, doesn't mean that I am entitled to the money they make for themselves.
Hell, I am a ColdFusion developer. Should I have to pay Macromedia (now Adobe) a percentage of every job I do using their software in addition to the cost of purchasing (er, licensing) their software? Heck, they produced ColdFusion, so why shouldn't they get access to the money I make as a result?
This is exactly what the RIAA and the labels are asking for. Sure, they have the right to negotiate their contracts any way they please, but they are going to price themselves right out of business if they keep this short-sighted march into the vault moving forward.
It's almost as bad as the housing market here in Sarasota, FL right now. Many of the apartment buildings are planning to convert to condos that will sell at insane prices once the leases expire for their current tenants. Most people lease/rent because they cannot afford to buy just yet, and if rental housing/apartments become unavailable, they will be forced to leave. Most of those same people are the unskilled workers who serve us in our restaurants and pick up our garbage. If they leave, nobody will be left to do those jobs and then we're all fux0r3d, but that's another rant for another time.
Note to Slashdot: Stop posting RIAA stories, you're getting me worked up about nothing. I gave up on music a few years ago anyway, so why should I care?
Reminds me of Microbrews. All the major labels put out fuller bodied suds to take advantage of the beer trend. That's how capitalism works. Caveat Emptor.
There aren't enough people who care about the copyright cartels' antics to make a dent in their sales. I haven't bought any new RIAA-affiliated artist's CDs since 2001, haven't bought an MPAA movie on DVD in almost that long, and have been to see maybe three films in the theater in that time. Somehow that hasn't helped, and the ??AA members are still making record profits even without my money...
0 1 - just my two bits
You sure as hell CAN! The USA Copyright Act provides for what is called a "Compulsory License", which means that if you follow the steps set forth by statute, you can distribute your recording of that song on a CD or over the internet. The owner of the copyright to the song cannot prevent you from doing so.
Note that "permission" is not required. You just have to notify them and pay the statutory required royalties ... The hard part if finding out who owns the rights.
See http://www.cleverjoe.com/articles/music_copyright_ law.html and also
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ73.pdf
Only 1 in 20 videos in a generic search for the Virgin Mum:
G =Search+Video
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=madonna&btn
Actually contains footage of the Material Girl. How on Earth can the RIAA justify claims of ownership over search terms containing the names of acts, especially those which deliberately identify themselves with household words? If this lateest RIAA proposal wins out, Search engines will be paying a tribute to the RIAA whenever someone searches for "eagles" or "nirvana".
Something needs to be done, really: If we all had cash like this to burn lobbying every conceivable interest, government would come to a come to a complete standstill.
Frankly, I don't see that this is so horrible, compared with most of the crap that RIAA pulls. Firstly, one think to note is that Google Video Beta, as it now operates, does not show ads, so that means the RIAA would be asking for nothing. But assuming they do show ads, and they do get a cut, so what? Google Video isn't just text like normal Google, it actually shows a frame of the video. If you were the director, wouldn't you want to be paid for someone showing a clip of your work? And isn't it preferable that the money comes out of advertising revenue as opposed to out of the pocket of the consumer? Isn't the RIAA actually doing the right thing for a change, adapting to the new paradigm instead of clinging onto the old ways of business (which in their case would be a blanket "linking to our videos is a violation of our 'IP' and we'll sue you.")
Perhaps one day, pre-recorded music will be totally "free" and totally supported by ad revenue. Maybe I'm missing something, but that strikes me as not such a bad thing.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I would bet money that Steve Jobs is currently putting together what he needs to start Apple's own label. Disney learned the hard way that you don't screw with him. Eisner tried to play hardball thinking that Pixar needed Disney rather than the other way around, and look what happened. Chicken Little appears to be Disney's first in-house CGI movie. Saw a preview of it last night - It didn't surprise me that it's the usual Disney dreck.
And now we have Time Warner wanting a bigger piece of the pie by demanding they get a cut of iPod sales. It would be endlessly amusing to me if Apple blacklisted Warner products, started their own label, and starting poaching Warner's acts when their contracts were up.
-R
I'm gonna go steal some music.
Artists, I promise you this: if you release your works in a DRM-free format, I promise that when I download and enjoy your work to the extent that I listen to it more than a few times, ie. it becomes a staple item in my collection, I will pay you for it.
This offer is not available to artists who are members of RIAA or CCRA.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The Tecno Brega Brazilian music scene proves what I've said: that recorded music is - or should be - just a loss leader for live performances.
From the OpenBusiness site http://openbusiness.cc/category/models:
Tecno Brega
Monday, September 26th, 2005
Tecno Brega
A music scene called Tecno Brega making use of an alternative business model has emerged in the city of Belem in Brazil. This parallel music industry has been active for years and has achieved great success. Several hundred new Tecno Brega records are produced and released every year by local artists, with both the production and distribution taking place outside of the mainstream music industry. The tecno brega model is simple: the music lies outside the realm of traditional copyright and is used as a method of marketing events. Every weekend the "sound system" parties attract thousands of people to the outskirts of Belem to listen to the Tecno Brega music. The parties are advertised by the distribution of the music itself. The numbers are incomplete, but the Belem scene alone brings in yearly revenues of several million US dollars.
The Tecno Brega music is "born free" in the sense that copyright protection is not a part of the business model developed by its creators. The CDs sold are utilized as marketing material- advertisements for the highly popular weekly "sound system" parties. The Tecno Brega CDs are sold by local street vendors as per arrangements with the local recording studios. At a mere US$1.50, the CDs are highly affordable by the local population, thus providing greater access to the music at a grassroots level.
The goal is not for artists to make money on conventional CD sales. Instead, the price charged works exclusively as an incentive for the local vendors to sell the CDs and in effect market the tecno brega parties. The artists thus make money through innovative business models related to the sound system parties. One such example consists of artists recording their live concert sets at the parties in real time and then selling the recordings at the conclusion of the event. This enables the audience to go home with a souvenir of the concert they have just attended. Another technique utilized by the artists is to acknowledge the presence of various people and neighborhoods in the course of the live presentations. Hearing such acknowledgment is greatly valuable to the audience- naturally people want to hear a "shout out" to them, their friends, or their neighborhood. As a result, thousands of people buy copies of the live CDs to have a permanent memoir of this form of homage.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
New releases costing more than classics is not a bad idea.
When new songs are releases the number of downloads of increases
and having an increased price provides money for faster downloads.
Calling the music people greedy doesnt change the issue.
However instead of being kneejerk on the issue why dont
we explore the idea.
What if new relases were $1.49 for the first couple months
then dropped to 99 cents and classics(songs older than 5 years old)
were 49 cents.
A lot of people would like to buy songs that are old and not in heavy
demand replacing their collections.
Someone has already beaten you to it.
whoi is going to lookup "Madonna", now that she is but an old hag ?
"Record Labels Unveil Greed 2.0"
I'm pretty sure we're already up to version 5 or 6.0 beta, but don't quote me on that one.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
This is beyond being greedy ... my guess is this attitude will do them more harm than anything else ... tempting ppl to download music without paying for it just to stick it to them
I am involved with a community radio station that used to offer (analogue) studio services for local bands. We got out of that because there's a bunch of small studios in town who can churn out damn fine recordings for very little cash, one of the *best* mastering people I have ever encountered has a little cave of a studio, some good mikes and a Macintosh. The whole million dollar studio thing is BS for people who love the sort of mussic industry we see in This is Spinal Tap.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
- shazow
I don't think he has much good to say about the RIAA and major labels either--fortunately, he's been small enough/smart enough to avoid them, yet he's been one of the most influential musicians of the past 25 years...
bonus question: what does his success say about the need for major labels?
Gawd I hate those f*ckers.
I'm not sure I understand the question. I was born in Missouri.
What I'm trying to say is that I'm jealous of your access to all-ages venues, unlike Indiana residents like me.
Homer: "Oh, Fat Tony! You mean the mob only did something for me to get something in return?"
Fat Tony (hangs head): "Okay. I will go."
Some smart guy could easily buy what he needs, rent some two room office in LA or NY, and rent out one or two studios at $50/hour, and then all you have to do to be decently recorded is get a few takes of each of your songs, then email it home to pretty much any decent computer to assemble. My buddy is a middle class student at Virginia Tech, and he's the probably comparable software in video editing to what's probably needed. People would need to only produce a few songs at a time, instead of a full CD. Really, if they made a few digital copies of their songs, then did a few minor local shows and made 1000 song sales (people telling friends and cousins or whatever), they'd break even, if they used their own drums and instruments.
I've said it before. They're middle men, they know it, and they know their time is almost over. They are trying to make as much money as they can before everyone realises that it's over for them. The artists don't need them any more, and the fans can't stand them any more. The record companies' days are numbered.
where madanna is... RIAA should get an extra cut?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Nope. Live performance is the turf of BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC.
...Who are nothing more than collection agencies for the copyright owners of the music being performed. The copyright owners happen to be: the record companies!
just keep it up. gimmie gimmie gimmie. I don't know about you guys, but I will just stop buying from a label who acts like this. But just keep it up and make sure -everyone- hates you.
mroe reasons to stop buying music and let these companys go bankrupt
http://www.npcgaming.com Dedicated Gaming Servers
If you purchase your CD's from a pawn shop or used music shop you can usually get pretty recent music and the record companies don't get a penny of it.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
So what happens when the Catholic Church goes to the music industry asking for a piece of all Madonna sales and royalties? That would make just about as much sense.
The solution to this problem is simple: Pass the cost on to consumers: If people have to pay 50 cents for a search on 50 cent, then 50 cent the "artist" (I don't like abusing the word artist for crap like that) will soon be back where he belongs, on the street trying to peddle crack and beat up women. Even better, make it a prerequisite to enter a credit card number to search for RIAA property.
One thing I have noticed is that this debate is making more and more people aware of just how bad the RIAA brand of the holy grail of capitalism is. I suspect that this situation won't last forever. Sooner or later it will become a public cause, like open source has in the tech world, and from then on its days as the Microsoft of the music world will be numbered.
Posted anonymously...
I have seen Avril live...
Here is what it's like - a karaoke bar. I could not believe how awful the sound was. Seriously, this was extremely atrociuos and quite a punishment on my ears. And I know the sound at that venue is normally superb and the opening act sounded way better.
She would take songs normally sung by Cheryl Crow, Sarah Maclahlan, Sarah Brightman even (blashemy!) and turn them into crap. It was very much beyond awful.
If a place like Yahoo is making money off of streaming music videos, then the record labels certainly deserve a cut in the profit, or are justified in charging per play fees. I don't think that they deserve a cut in ad revenues from an information search engine like Google, however. Google isn't streaming videos and selling ad space based on that. Likewise, the labels don't deserve a cut in the profits generated by any device that plays music back, such as the iPod. The labels have done nothing to develop or market such hardware, and the fact is that their music doesn't sell the devices, it is quite the reverse: people buy them, and then buy music to play on them. This is what Greed 2.0 is all about: record labels skimming profit from the work of others when they have done nothing to deserve it. If 70 cents of every tune from the iTunes music store has gone to the labels, this means the labels have received something like $400 million in revenue from the iTMS USA alone--free and clear gold in the pocket, unencumbered by any overhead for advertising or manufacture of physical product, not to mention zero cost for distribution. And this is money that they wouldn't have had to begin with, if not for the (reletively) low-cost download service. Greed 2.0 is about wringing the beast of every drop of monetary blood until it is bled to death.
A friend of mine has a theory that some day, the RIAA will try to charge you for every time that you either hum or sing a song in your head. They'll be able to access your neural music pathways via a "B-Chip" which will be programmable via a RFID chip :-)
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
Delisting is probably a bad idea as searchers will go to where they can find the artists listed and someone else will get revenue.
What google should do is list them sans paying adds - hence cutting off competition. The free ads surrounding the search should be to Groklaw and the sites of the various people the RIAA have screwed over the years.
That'd work.
For the formula of rock and roll, listen to Randy Bachmann's Vinyl Tap on CBC.ca Saturday night 7 to 9 pm eastern.
Did you now Stairway to Heaven is a Welsh folk song? Or that ACDC and LZ are just 3 chord blues bands.
Use the Internet Stream, bunky. Randy Bachmann had hits before your parents had sex.
Because Bob never asked for help or contracted with Alice or Carol. Thanks, you clarified something for me. If RIAA wants to start charging people for the use of various names and words in searches, they should be required to set up a contract with everyone involved to ensure that those names and words maintain their value and continue to generate revenue.
1. Funny thing, I don't see how they can enforce that without walking into problems with the First Amendment. Sure would be nice if someone with the necessary authority would simply tell them that things just don't work that way in this country. (Or so I wish)
2. I'd be amused to see how they reacted to the reverse. Say some band gets huge because of blogs, or better yet because of all those P2P pirates, and RIAA signs their next record. How much fun would it be to see a thousand Bloggers and 4-5 P2p software engineers dragging RIAA into court for a cut of the proceeds?
3. The primary power of the Internet is that it creates that huge ecosystem. Something Big comes along and a myriad ways in which it can be bought, sold, talked about and used in new contexts crops up. Alice's Apples, Bob's apples, Jane's apple pie, Johhny Appleseed's DIY Apple-tree FAQ, Sue's AppleBlog, A history of Apples in Colorado, Colorado's Fall Apple Festival.. Of course in real life it's cooler than that, and the answer to why Alice's marketer doesn't get paid in that context is that, like any ecosystem, the whole thing is interconnected and if you try to make your living by eating the entire apple crop yourself (or economically make it impossible for the ecosystem to ever get going), you and everyone who couldn't adapt to the new orange paradigm go to dinosaur land.
This has GOT to be a joke. Did I somehow sleep through the winter and wake up on April 1?
Time to RTFA. . .
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The Catholic Church has first call for a tithe of those ad dollars.
And twice as much from the RIAA to fund the Devil's Advocate.
"Hell, same thing with beer. 97% of the beer consumed in the US is cheap, mass produced, bland Bud, Miller, and Coors. Most people just don't appreciate quality beer or music. But they pay for it anyway. And that is where the big corps get their profits."
All too true.
Well, maybe except for Belgians and their Belgian Beer, perhaps...
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---