Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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!
--
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
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.
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
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.
You can. Just download the music and then mail the artist cash. I dare them not to spend it.
And if you don't agree, then you need to take down the daily dose of Kool-Aid.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
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?
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.
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.
...but what we have today isn't really capitalism...
Sorry, but what you have really is capitalism. What you don't have is the government doing its job. One of the most important jobs of the government is protecting the interests of the ones that are unable to look out for themselves, because they don't have the power or simply lack the knowledge to stand up to the capitalists on their own.
You see, capitalists are somewhat useful to society because they may generate wealth, but on no account should they be trusted. So, if they propose new laws, the task of the government of a country is to look at the proposal long and hard and with prejudice. Because capitalists don't have the same interests as the people, or the 'publick', depending on the where and when.
That's basically "wealth of nations" stuff (the unread chapters, that is)
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.
"...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!"
Because corporations
1)Have a hell of a lot more money.
2)Have a power setup where its more likely those in charge are amoral asshats.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
"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
Perhaps because the "record labels" referred to in this article are, ummm, "corporations"? Just a guess.
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.
Bob may owe his increased business to Alice, but he doesn't owe her anything for her advertising. In the same way, the RIAA may have created a demand for 50 Cent but the people selling 50 Cent's music owe nothing to the RIAA aside from the royalties on the actual copies sold (and licensing fees for using his trademarks in ways not covered by fair use of those trademarks). If they make money selling soda and candy in the store to all the people who came in to buy 50 Cent's CDs, the RIAA has no claim on it.
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"
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.