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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
Soft of like the definition of a fanatic: they're redoubling their efforts as they lose sight of their purpose.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The problem with this strategy is that it relies on a relevent amount of listeners to quit listening. I doubt most people are informed or just don't care.
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.
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.
Because the people are stupid and weak. I know that sounds harsh but it's true. The corporations know how to make you want things, they know how to manipulate you down to the last detail. They don't spend billions of dollars in advertising and research for nothing.
Just go ahead and try to get people to boycott anything, I dare you. All a corporation has to do is to pay some TV or radio personality to call you a communist, cancer, zealot, hippie or a radical and boom they have taken care of the situation.
Look at slashdot, look at how often the shills call people who use linux or program in open source zealots and hippies? It happens every day. Your average joe does not want to go through life being called a zealot or a communist, he has been tought to reflexivey hate zealots and communists even though he probably could not define communist if his life depended on it.
evil is as evil does
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.
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)
Perhaps because the "record labels" referred to in this article are, ummm, "corporations"? Just a guess.
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.
People have found music prices unbearable. They bought less music. Much less music. So much less music that the recording industry has spent millions to reinforce their own delusions. (Perhaps you've heard of a few?)
The music industry chose to believe that the quality and price of current music isn't the problem, rather choosing the belief that the fault lie not with the prices and product the industry produced.
The music industry chose to believe that the problem lie with the consumers, and with 'piracy'.
Apple computer comes along, and begins selling music online -- in an easy to use, relatively fair system. The music industry sings Apple's praises, temporarily dropping their obsession with 'subscription' based online music. Then they start their own music services; Napster, for example, is owned by the recording industry; Sony/BMG IIRC, but that was a while ago.
And the recording industry starts to try to hike up the prices and force a 'subscription' service on its customers. People leave Napster and join the Apple camp, and the Apple store dominates the industry. In spite of the massive amount of profits that iTunes generates for the recording industry (which is pure profit -- it costs them nothing to let Apple do all the work for them), they attack their 'savior', deciding that Apple's current prices are 'too low.'
All the while ignoring these simple facts:
iTunes sells music:
* For a substantially lower cost than the recording industry.
* Music is $5-8 less per album.
* Customers aren't forced to buy an entire album for one song.
Essentially what the music industry wants to do is raise the price of buying music on iTunes to the price point that a CD has: $15-18 per album.
iTunes success isn't about the iPod. Most of the iTunes users I know of don't even have an iPod. They bought their music from iTunes because they got the music at a fair price, and could even burn the music to a CD (and re-rip it to another format) should they choose to. (Interestingly enough, the iPod did just fine before the iTunes Music Store; I'm convinced it would still dominate the industry even if the iTunes store never existed).
iTunes success stems from the fact that Apple offered the product for a price and condition consumers deemed was acceptable; something that is not true of buying CD's from a music store, or from the non-industry owned music services. (ie. Napster)
The music industry just wants to raise prices, and then blame everybody but themselves when consumers (literally) don't buy it. They persist in blaming everybody but themselves, their prices, their policies.
For its faults, the Motion Picture industry has at least admitted ticket sales have been sluggish recently because their product wasn't worth what they were charging for it. (Not that they think they were charging too much -- rather than their product sucked).
So no, the music industry does want more than they can get; when they don't get what they want, they come up with scapegoats and call their lawyers. They try to shut down everybody who disagrees with them. Which is silly, considering the entire American music industry is smaller than some of the companies they are offending (ie. Microsoft, Apple)
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.