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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.
They're only at 2.0? That's news.
What good is a double standard if you can't enforce it?
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
Why not? After all, they demand royalties from people who sing "Happy Birthday" in a restaurant.
http://www.unhappybirthday.com/
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.
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.
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
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.
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!!
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?
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."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.
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.
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.
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?
Hey! I have a degree in economics!
s tories/04biz.htmh eney1988.htm
Oh. What was the question again??? = )
Well, happy to pointificate!
Hmmm.. Boycot Exxon? OK, well, they would just advertize like BP. Sunflowers, responsibility, alternative energy. Bla bla. People would believe it too. All the while they pump that oil...
Prices of gas are increasing faster than crude because they are different markets. Now there are limited amounts of refineries in the US and few companies can invest that much capital to build one... I understand they take a few years to build and get onstream..
Not that Bush's idea (subsidize the building of oil refineries) is a great one. The oil companies are making big bucks: they should do it right? I heard that one made more profit last quarter than any other company in history. Could have been Exxon, I don't remember.
To me, the question is: why are there so few refineries now? Did the oil excecs get to gether some golf game and say: Let's not build any more for a couple years? Was it *really* environmental regulation that quashed them? Collusion in that market would have the benefit of huge profits for them. I remember Cheney had secret meetings with the oil 'boyz' a few years ago, and they collectively decided US energy policy, without ever releasing the minutes of those meetings.. I think that was pre-Iraq so they might make some fun reading in 40 years.. It could have been similar to:
Cheney: Thanks for the donation, boyz. Like the cigars? They're Cuban! Batista! Well, to business then. We agree that you don't make any refineries in the next few years (and collect excess profits), support us in Iraq, and we'll get you those Iraqi drilling contracts, leash the anti-trust hounds. Of course we'll expect future consideration...
Oil barons: No refineries? None of us? We're "Gung Ho" for Oil Contracts! (puff.. puff...) OK, deal.
Well it *could* have been like that! = )
In general, you are better to vote in politicians that support consumers, not oil companies, than attempt to get a boycot organized. Companies (Oil or RIAA members) do not have to adapt to change if they are protected by fiat. And one can buy policy so cheaply these days:
$200M building an oil refinery could get you say a %50 return if you bet correctly on oil prices.
$50,000.00 donation/investment to Cheney's PAC could help get you $8,000,000,000 in return.
Where would you invest? The law requires you to act in the best interest of your share holders, not your country.
http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2005/0429/biz/
http://www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/cheney/c
Katrina and Rita wipes out a few refineries and it all goes to hell for the consumer...
Of course nobody will know what the truth is until these folks are long gone.
Cheers,
-b
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.
"...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?
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.
"Ever hear a performer thank their label when winning an award?"
Actually, my favorite band, The Corrs, were dumb enough to do that when they won their first international award in Spain back in the mid-90's.
In fact, they've been slavishly worshipful of Time-Warner and Atlantic Records, praising them in numerous documentary videos.
Today, guess what? Jason Flom, the head of Atlantic and the guy who discovered them, is out, the Corrs have been relegated to Atlantic.UK and gets no release for their new album, "Home", in the US - and their manager, John Hughes, admits publicly that they're looking for a new record deal.
In other words, having been screwed by Atlantic, they are now looking to sign themselves up for another screwing because they don't have the imagination to see that distributing their own music and live concert broadcasts by subscription - in other words, a return to live performance, the basis of music historically - is the way to go. Even though they're probably one of the best live concert acts in the world and their ticket demand at the end of last year's tour, according to Hughes, is the highest it's ever been.
You just can't save some people from themselves.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
There are several ways of bypassing the label thing, but not all of them are successful. Labels do know how to get you good distribution... so starting your own label and getting your songs in iTunes is very hard if you aren't someone "formerly known as".
But I've heard very good things about CDBABY. They are distributors and store keepers. You, the independent artist can sell in their store (cdbaby.com). If you do, you can also opt for their digital distribution deal, which almost guarantees placement with iTunes, Napster and a whole bunch of other shops. Their cut is 9% of what you get per sale, and since you don't have a label, that means 91% of 65 cents.
So instead of only getting about 5 cents you get about 59 cents. Which is nice.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
- shazow