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The Economics of P2P File-Sharing
brajesh writes "Does P2P file-sharing really affect music sales and in what ways? According to a blog entry at "The Long Tail", a paper from David Blackburn[.pdf], a Harvard PhD student, on the economics of P2P file-sharing concludes that it does indeed depress music sales overall. But the effect is not felt evenly. The hits at the top of the charts lose sales, but the niche artists further down the popularity curve actually benefit from file-trading. Form the paper - "Artists who are unknown, and thus most helped by file sharing, are those artists who sell relatively few albums, whereas artists who are harmed by file sharing and thus gain from its removal, the popular ones, are the artists whose sales are relatively high." But then "File sharing is reducing the probability that any act is able to sell millions of records, and if the success of the mega-star artists is what drives the investment in new acts, it might reduce the incentive to invest in new talent. This is, at its heart, an empirical question which is left to future work." There is also another compilation of studies on economics of P2P."
The hits at the top of the charts lose sales, but the niche artists further down the popularity curve actually benefit from file-trading.
From each according to his abilities; to each according to his need. Lighten up--it's a joke!
No posts? People must be reading the PDF in disbelief?
--
The "are you a script" word for today is reread.
P2P file sharing is the right thing to do...it's socialist.
"File sharing is reducing the probability that any act is able to sell millions of records, and if the success of the mega-star artists is what drives the investment in new acts, it might reduce the incentive to invest in new talent."
So what this is saying is, P2P helps smaller independent artists and is detrimental to large "manufactured" pop acts. Which is pretty much common sense, and is why the corporate music industry is so against it.
The argument that "lack of investment" will produce a shortage of talent is clearly ridiculous. How many of the great, truly talented acts we all know and love were the product of "investment" by the music industry? And how many struggled in poverty for years because they loved making music, before finally being signed up by a label and exploited for all they were worth...?
Hopefully this will move the industry somewhat away from acts such as Britney Spears (which traditionally have much higher profit margins and lower risk than smaller acts) and towards a business model that is wrapped around greater diversity and the continual sale of older music (which they usually drop the ball on fast, in order to focus the public on the newer mega acts).
Maybe the records industry could somehow start promoting clusters of artists and whole genres instead of one mega artist? Hmm..
Will code a sig generator for food
Dont you mean "suck dry"?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Perhpas this is a good thing in the sense that the lesser known artist has a chance to rise up and even out with the more popular artist. Most of the songs I download are not mainstream anyway, why? Because I can turn on the radio or the TV if I want to hear those artists. P2P gives me a chance to search out further for something that might really inspire me. Just because your not on MTv does not mean your music blows. The quality of mainstream music is starting to wear me down lately anyway.
"Nothing, not all the armies of the world, can stop an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
P2P is here. It's not going away and you can't even legislate it out of existance. For right or wrong, there is nothing the various copyright industries can do except adapt to the change. Everything else is just hot air.
Simon
For the past 50-years the only way to be a "successful" musician was to write songs 2:50 long and sell 500,000 records. Ever wonder why everything on the radio sounds the same? If an artist can't break even, they're pretty much worthless in the eye of the label.
Legitimate online digital distribution of music could possibly replace the notion of rock stars with micro-stars in their respected genres. There just needs to be some sort of way to market these niche artists online so the cream rises to the top. A group who could make 80% off of their recordings is not so bad off considering the average signed artist only sees 5 - 15% per record.
So the big majors can not invest in new talents ? Let's tax the ISP and, instead of giving this tax money to the big majors, create a fund for artists :) So we'll invest in new talents.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
When the rest of the 'food chain' below her benefits, who cares if the one at the top, with more then they need anyway, misses out on a few potential sales.
Remember, *nothing* was stolen during the p2p transaction, so she didnt actually *lose* anything, it is only a reduction in the vague concept of 'potential' ( i.e. unprovable ) sales.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What this means is that being a musician will no longer be a multi-million dollar a year job. It will be a job that pays only thousands of dollars a year, the same thing "the rest of us" get paid. And it also means that more people will be able to be musicians, as opposed to now where being a musician for a living is very difficult. I'll definitely take many musicians making many songs and each making enough money to pay rent over a few musicians making a few songs and making enough to pay everyone's rent. Ask yourself which of these two makes a better society.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
"File sharing is reducing the probability that any act is able to sell millions of records"
How about file sharing is allowing people to sample the artificial crap the music industry churns out these days and they decide not to waste their money on the product?
I particularly like the Fairshare proposal floated by Ian Goldberg, in which you could "invest" in promising new artists. It gives incentive to get in on the ground floor with a little-known artist, rather than to ride the coattails of a megastar.
Any alternative would be better than the current system.
it's been said many times before. It takes a phd student writing a crummy white paper to get coverage? Wank.
I couldn't care less about not having mega star marketeed artists... So this must be good.
... from the forgotten corner in europe
"For right or wrong, there is nothing the various copyright industries can do except adapt to the change. "
Or just stop producing content to the greedy and disrespectful. Funny how all the "your information wants to be free" advocates forget that option. They just expect the gravy train to never stop, and content producers to just stand there and get kicked in the nuts, then smile and ask for more.
P2P is breaking the vicious cycle where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It's the only reason all the **AA execs are frothing blood at the mouth about it.
I thought everyone already knew that.
Yeah, but he had formulas, data, charts and stuff. Even used those funny greek symbols and had partial differential equations. It must be right. :)
My question is, who supported the research?
My karma is not a Chameleon.
As a wise marketing/business teacher told me once, the masses are the asses, they follow the loudest megaphone.
This will be good for everyone but the current three monopoly publishers. Popular taste will do a better job of finding talent than payolla in the form of coke and whores. A more distributed music distribution system will be more competitive for artists and the money that now flows into a few hands will flow into many. The job will get done and people will still pay the piper.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I guess it shows how cool the P2P effect is, it makes huge fuckin stars sell less CD's and undergroud ones sell a bit more.
Isn't it what anyone (except the big artists and music companies) would want to see? As someone say, that's very socialist, it's like the tax on fortune and wellfare, or whatever you call that, takes lots from the rich people and gives some to the poor ones.
Big stars all suck according to me anyway, so fuck them and don't try to make us cry because Madonna is gonna sell a few thousand less than expected on the millions she's sellin.
Reminds me of an episode of south park actually...
You just got troll'd!
I have to argue that the concept of income from successful acts allowing more money for R & D of new acts is outdated. In the past, studios were extremely expensive places to construct, and to pay them off, studio time was expensive. Now technology is cheap and readily availible any anyone with the time and some small investment can create professional products. Ditto with outsourcing mass printing and reproduction.
Bottom line, the only thing the large houses can offer now is mass marketing and distribution chains. This too has already technologically changed and the understanding of it is probably moving to the early majority by now. With regards to both, the Internet has the potential to significantly level the playing field. Nontraditional promotions can be vitually free, and as this article focuses on, P2P very easily solves the distribution issues.
The superstar is only rarely someone several standard deviations above the herd. Much more often it is the result of mere exposure effect to marginal talent on traditional corporate controlled forms of mass entertainment. So I don't see much merit in bellyaching about the potential for their dearth in a changing era.
$.02 from Me
Takes from the rich and gives to the poor?
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
The Long Tail,
/.
As previously discussed on
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
I don't understand what being most popular on the charts has to do with it...
If I download an album and like it, I will buy it. If I don't like it enough, I won't, obviously. But never do I look on the charts to see how the album I'm reviewing is doing to determine whether or not I should buy it.
It seems to me rather, that Blackburn suggests that the only reason the chart toppers top the charts is because consumers are focused on very few artists, as opposed to having their attention drawn to more artists via P2P.
Does this mean that record labels will make less money? No, they are buying the same amount of albums (or more), but the purchases are spread across different bands rather than a select few that the record labels are promoting. The spread is more even, so chart toppers have less sales but those at the bottom of the chart have more sales.
This means that the advertising dollars spent by record labels have less impact, because consumers are getting informed through another channel, by P2P.
I guess it used to be that record labels only needed to find a few would-be chart toppers to guarantee themselves some revenue. But now record labels will have to have a larger pool of more diverse talent to satisfy the consumer who is more aware.
Now the more artists that record labels have available, the more records they will sell. Instead of concentrating on scoring the next flavor-of-the-month that won't be hot very long to get a big flash of sales all at once, record labels should concentrating on keeping lots of diverse and lasting talent.
Twinstiq, game news
I don't understand why the record companies keep coming up with more and more manufactured acts that all sound the same.
Don't they have functioning ears?
Even if they don't, can't they just compile a selection of samples from up-and-comings, and run them by a bunch of people? See what people like, then back the one that people think are good.
You'd think record companies would have figured out by now that the manufactured sound is getting old. You'd think they figure out that the reason peer-to-peer and online music stores are so popular is because there is only one good song on any given album anymore. They overplay that song on the radio and then sell albums with that song and 8 filler tracks. No one wants to buy filler!
exactly! now when companies question the viewpoints of anyone pro-filesharing, we can say "see: for details"; and since he has some credibility, his word has power.
the thing is, the record companies are basing their whole argument on the idea that they should stay on with their current scheme of "hit-record"-ing. if they werent too lazy to find a better scheme and adapt their plan, then mayby they'd be riding filesharing to greater ritches; like iTunes. its funny when agile companies stomp all over the stale old ones. its ecenomic evolution, baby!
I think the industry's biggest problem is a lack of diversity. Right now, everything on mainstream radio sounds exactly the same. Even ten years ago, radio was still crap, but at least you could differentiate the music better. Personally, I rarely even listen to the radio at all anymore, and when I do, it's a classic rock station.
Record companies want to go with what's "safe" these days. No one wants to take a risk on signing and promoting an artist that's "different." However, the big rewards come with big risk. I really wish these huge, billionaire conglomerates like WEA and SonyBMG would gamble a little bit more. They're actually losing a lot of good acts who are moving to smaller labels like Koch and Sanctuary. Audium (a Koch label) has become one of the best labels in country music by signing artists who got cut by the majors, like Dwight Yoakam, Merle Haggard, and Dale Watson. Sanctuary is now home to the likes of Iron Maiden and Morrissey, two of England's best sellers ever, who still are putting out good albums. It just kills me how labels will not settle for "just" platinum anymore. You have to go multi-platinum to be a success now. I remember how Capitol was getting disappointed with Garth Brooks when his albums started selling "only" two million copies. This is the same Garth Brooks who single-handedly saved Capitol/EMI from bankruptcy with No Fences and Ropin' the Wind, each of which sold something like over 10 million two consecutive years. He had the top 3 albums in the U.S. for over a year. But if he's only two-times platinum and not ten-times platinum, then he's no good to Capitol! This is the kind of moronic thinking that drives the recording industry. It is pure, unadulterated greed. So much greed that it completely clouds any sensibility they might have.
Since P2P provides an alternative to big-budget advertising as a way to promote music, it helps the lesser-known acts. That has to come from somewhere, and where it comes from is the big names that owe their success to marketing.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"When the rest of the 'food chain' below her benefits, who cares if the one at the top, with more then they need anyway, misses out on a few potential sales."
Well aren't we the envious one. Geeks didn't see any problem with being the top dog, making more than they needed during the dot.com boom. But when it's someone else who has risen above their "class", and is rewarded for their time and effort. Then the P2P vigilantes come out of the woodwork. Stings double when no one wants to go into your profession, the rest is being outsourced, and OSS is kicking the crap out of the remainder. We've been telling you all on this forum for years on how to set the situation right, and the best you all have so far came up with is "complain on slashdot","illegal copyright violations from the safety of my basement", and "suggestions" you expect others to impliment, because you all sure as hell will not.
"Remember, *nothing* was stolen during the p2p transaction, so she didnt actually *lose* anything, it is only a reduction in the vague concept of 'potential' ( i.e. unprovable ) sales".
Since we're remembering things:
"We would never have bought it anyway". Kind of shoots down the "free advertising","we're potential customers", and my favourite "it benefits the artists".
The fact that the big hits lose sales due to P2P is bad for some labels, and not for others.
E.g. Sony has a lot of big-name hits. So P2P == evil.
Koch Records has a lot of smaller-selling indies. P2P != evil.
However, I have a deep suspicion that RIAA is run by the likes of SONY, and not the ones like Koch.
Also, musicians are keenly aware of the differences: to get on Koch, you pretty much have to have your album finished and mixed. They produce and distribute it, and give you a big percentage. Other ones front tons of money for production and advertising, and give back a smaller percentage -- and they are the ones that stand to lose the most from P2P.
The most interesting thing in all of music these days are mixtapes and mashups. They are both illegal to sell -- no copyrights are cleared, so you'll hear samples, beats and so on from entirely different groups. You can now buy them over the web, or download them from P2P.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
the headline says it's provable: Harvard PhD student, on the economics of P2P file-sharing concludes that it does indeed depress music sales overall
You can't handle the truth.
Richard MacLemale on iTunes.
Music - www.richardmac.com
So what you're saying is that you are happy to live your life like a self-centered asshole without any strong principles nor love of your audience, and you justify your lack of a moral position and your support of a corrupt industry on the grounds of "someone is buying the crap".
Well I have news for you. Not all musicians are self-centered assholes.
I'd like to believe you. But I just have this feeling that saying, "ADAPT OR DIE!" to a multi-billionaire is not a personally productive operation. In the long run, that billionaire will have to ADAPT OR DIE, but in the short and medium run, he's going to cause a pile of angst and disruption while he preserves his own comfort zone. Who knows, in the long run, that billionaire may well help take the United States into third-world status. That's really the net effect of things like the "Induce Act," because it's the US turning its back on technology in favor of a misguided attempt to preserve the entertainment industry's business model. Add to that the Religious Right's war on science, and you have the US going the way of the Moslem empire a millenium or so ago.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
This guy and his "counterfactual excersizes" are a joke. He pulls numbers directly out of his ass, or uses numbers pulled out of the RIAA's ass!
Its a total work of fiction.
Its a just guy, that thinks stealing music is cool, who wrote a paper that uses his own imagination to appear to support it. Thin on fact and fat on wild speculation.
But most of you will eat it up. You'll continue your tired mantra about "new business model" to justify continuing to steal music and movies. You'll say who cares, its only Britney Spears suffering, not the alternative bands that you listen to.
He uses a quadratic decay trend for utility of album in figure 3, page 27 of TFA. This clearly means that as the number of weeks since an album's release goes to infinity, the utility of demand goes to infinity. I gotta get into this recording industry. Any time now, and achy breaky heart is gonna make a comeback, rocketing up the charts.
Looks like technology is always favouring a minority of people isnt it? Its good that that minority has real views on the world and isnt strapped to chart music :) it sounds bad anyway
I had posted this a while back on my blog about similar issues: http://pdavid.sytes.net/blog/archives/36/
A few points here :
1. True, filesharing might reduce the incentive to invest in new acts. But it definately reduces the need. If you don't need millions of dollars to launch your album, just a laptop and a podcasting site, then who needs investment? I think what will happen is that the promotional aspects of the music biz will survive in a substantially reduced form (after all, people still need to hear about you!) but the whole production and distribution megalith will go the way of the 8-track.
2. I agree, though, that P2P itself means next to nothing to a small unknown artist. Nobody is going to type your name into Limewire if they have never heard of you, obviously. Internet radio and podcasting are muhc more meaningful and useful tools for such artists. You get a podcaster to listen to your music, they play it for people, those peopel go to your website, etc.
3. It's said a lot, but it bears repeating : even Britney Spears makes only pennies per CD. The big name artists make all their money on touring. So there's no reason to worry about the ten cents you might be 'stealing' from Britney if you download a song. If you love her and want to support her, go to her concerts, buy her clothes, her perfumes, whatever. She gets a lot more money out of that.
Essentially, the music industry has reacheed the point where it is almost completely parisitical in nature. And like any parasite, it wants to control its host, and fears the light of day. Right now, they exploit the fact that the people and most importantly the legislators don't really grasp the issue at all. When you say to someone "Should they be allowed to steal our music?" and they know nothing of what is truly going on, it's hard to blame them for saying "Gee, I guess not!"
But we don't have to worry about that. This revolution requires no propaganda on our side. With every MP3 player, every iPod, every DVD player sold, our view sells itself. Eventually the RIAA and its bloodsucking ilk will be reduced to the level of rambling lunatic old men defending their collections of old cans and newspapers with bloodthirsty vehemence, oblivious to the fact that nobody wants them any more.
Michael J. Bertrand, AKA Fruvous or FruFox My
Remember, *nothing* was stolen during the p2p transaction, so she didnt actually *lose* anything, it is only a reduction in the vague concept of 'potential' ( i.e. unprovable ) sales.
When every anyone argues that nothing is stolen, meaning that nothing is physically taken, they always seem to overlook one key factor...the person involved in the acquisition unquestionably now has something of value in their possession. I'd like to see someone justify the notion that by virtue of the fact that Persion A has created something of value, that Person B is automatically is entitled to whatever benefit it may bring.
I'm not a fan of the *AA monopoly at all, but I do think the entitlement mentality that seems to be a large part of the p2p ethos, is rather repugnant.
Talking about not hearing the other sides argument. The point is that small artists don't *need* a record label any more. So we don't care how they invest their money - except that suing grandmothers doesn't seem like the best use.
We also have the classic "free" vs. "free" equivocation. I don't want to get music for free. I want to support the artist. But I much prefer to buy albums directly from the artists. And I hate stupid restrictions. "Liberian Acapella" is one of my favorites. They sing at churches and sell their self produced albums. I have many albums from Magnatune (a "record label" that does distribution only). Another favorite is David Bellugi from Italy.
That said, I am a copyright Nazi. I confiscate and destroy illegally copied RIAA music whenever I find it, give my teenage daughters a lecture on "playing by their rules if your going to listen to their music", and threaten to take the $3000 out of their bank account if they get caught distributing copies (I realize the lawsuits are for online distribution, but the principal is the same). Of course, the fact that I can't stand most of the music has *nothing* to do with this...
What I really need is some official RIAA materials on copyright violation, so that we can be clear that the copyright Nazi thing is part and parcel of RIAA music, and not something I am making up.
"Free market ensures that if some fat exec having a hissy fit says 'I'm not playing with you anymore', someone else will be happy to provide the same service (probably at lower cost)."
.e.g.your own business to inequalities. You expect others to do the hard work for you.
Free market might(1). But a market policed by the P2P vigilante police will not. What content provider* is going to insert themselves into a market govern by "know it alls" who arbitrarily set limits (make too much, or rise too far beyound your status in life) and if you don't "conform" to them, distribute your content all over the planet, and give you the middle finger when you complain. You may enjoy being raped by your fellow men, but most artists don't. And will (unhappily maybe) take jobs in other professions that aren't as hard for the disrespectful, and selfish to exploit. You can continue to belive such nonsense like "sticking it to the man", but that isn't the person your actions are hurting, and karma will eventually show you the error of your ways. Problem is the truely innocent will have to suffer right along with you, and THAT is truely not fair.
*les you forget, illegal copyright violations aren't confined to music, or movies. The people who do this have no shame, and respect no boundaries. They take from the small and big, and scorn both equally.
(1) Free market, you know that sytem you all choose to not avail yourselves of. You don't vote with your dollars (you download, and then complain), and you don't set up legally santioned systems
1) Brittany makes almost all of her money on profits from posters and T-shirt sales, not off of sales of her shiatty bubblegum pop music. The record company owns almost all of that.
2) The offense is called Copyright Infringement, not Theft, and there is a good reason that the two are not the same. The difference is the same as that of copying an e-book and printing it out for yourself, and going into a bookstore and stealing a bound and printed object. Your dentist has been assaulted, not robbed.
Thanks for playing.
My friend say that when he downloads, he ends up getting songs he wouldnt buy in the first place. He also feels that many of the songs inspire him to either buy from iTunes or Amazon.
Although, he prefers to buy used because he thinks that the music industry has bigger issues than online file trading - such as controlled product marketing (marketing what it thinks is good music), the recent recession, an increase of used music sales, and an overall poor quality of the bands the music industry choose to promote.
Ultimately these guys are the middle men. THey jack up the price for the interest of the middle men, not the artist.
Perfect examples are the cost of the CD compared to the LP - and the forth coming increase of iTunes song prices.
It was a socialist/communist nation that put the first man into space.
;-) say that it was really a dictatorship and a poor example of communism. Now you cite it as an good example. Well which is it?
Uh huh. When the Soviet Union is offered as evidence of the failure of communism the commies
The first man in space was put there by brilliant hardworking scientists and engineers. Too bad circumstances forced them to serve such an abomination of a government. They deserved better.
If we were really talking about the economics of P2P then we would bring in the other half. You've got revenues and you've also got cost. If P2P reduces revenue but reduces cost even greater than the profit - which is the margin between the two - will increase.
Without evaluating the effect of P2P on cost you're really not able to say anything about the economic effect of P2P at all.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
How the heck can it be socialist? If anything it's anti-socialist and, since everything is tied back to economic profits, it's moreso communist.
;-)
It's anti-communist but not anti-socialist. Socialism allows profits, it merely taxes the profits into insignificance to redistribute wealth from producers to non-producers. It merely looks like communism since the the would be producers say why bother and don't even try.
Note to flamers: anything taken to an extreme is bad, pure capitalism or pure socialism, the argument is merely about what the mix should be.
Here's a solution: To hell with musicians. I might be more understanding of their plight if Eminem wouldn't speak out against P2P with a diamond stud in his ear that weighs more than his testicles, sack included. Awww, your poor bank account! I might consider paying for CDs if Britney Spears didn't just get out of an Escalade that's worth more than her life before speaking out against P2P in front of people. (Simply the first two musicians Google gave me.) Of course I understand that anyone is entitled to reap the benefits of something they produce, but please, let's keep the rise of the cost of a CD congruent with the current national minimum wage. I support the musicians/groups I enjoy by buying t-shirts and concert tickets. I was listening to a radio show, Dave Grohl was the guest, and he went on for a solid 25 minutes about how, whether people buy Foo Fighters CDs or not, the record company will reap most of those profits. He has a nice house because they're a fantastic live band (I've seen them three times, it's true) and they tour pretty often. It's simply the American way; You want a dollar in your pocket? Get to work.
i would get laid this weekend but my cargo van is in the shop and im out of chloroform
IMHO, the only thing that can combat marketing is more marketing. If we really wanted to change things, we'd start an advertising campaign to win back mindshare from Joe Sixpack. Set up a website with the truth, then play 15 second ads on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and CNN that say 'music companies and movie studios are lying to you', with a link to the website.
I don't have the time or money to devote to such a noble effort -- my path will see me through law school and out into the IP field to change things from within. In the meantime, until one of you picks up the slack, we'll continue to lose the battle for mindshare.
Before, to get known by the people, an artist had to INVEST lots of money. The recording companies provided that, in exchange for a VERY HIGH return of investment.
Now, the recording companies are not able to invest in low-profile musicians, but these musicians DON'T NEED THEM TO. Because they have file sharers and Indy websites to do the work.
I don't remember if 50 years ago there were radio or TV shows dedicated to getting unknown musicians to be heard by the public, but now anyone can go to these independent websites, and spending a couple of minutes to download a song.
In other words, the "talent discovery" job of recording companies is passing to peer to peer, while the "music distribution" job can be done by the artists themselves.
So, does P2P hurt recording companies? Yes, but does that hurt the artists represented by the recording companies? Nope. (And I mean the REAL artists, not spoiled Mickey-Mouse club girls)
I don't understand what being most popular on the charts has to do with it...
;-)
If I download an album and like it, I will buy it.
Music has a network effect. The more people who listen to a given artist the greater the demand for that artist.
It seems to me rather, that Blackburn suggests that the only reason the chart toppers top the charts is because consumers are focused on very few artists, as opposed to having their attention drawn to more artists via P2P.
There is too much music to listen to, too many slashdot posts to read. Some sort of ranking system is needed in both areas. The charts, the radio, etc are a convenient form of ranking, performing the same function as the slashdot moderation system. The real complaint is about the quality of this ranking system.
Does this mean that record labels will make less money? No, they are buying the same amount of albums (or more)
That is about as naive and self serving as RIAA saying they are losing money. What you and they state are your respective desires. The truth is that we don't really know since the question is not whether sales are up or down, it is what would sales have been in 2005 had there been no P2P. Realized sales vs. potential sales.
But now record labels will have to have a larger pool of more diverse talent to satisfy the consumer who is more aware.
That is also naive. There has always been a niche music market where individuals combed collections for odd titles, sought out new bands homemade tapes, communities that traded such bootleg tapes, communities that traded the most popular commercial tapes, etc. P2P is *not* exhibiting new listening or sharing behaviors. It is just a more convenient mechanism to do so. The word processor replaced the typewriter, P2P replaced recording an LP to casette and handing it to someone.
Trading music, like sex, is not something the "current" generation has discovered. It's been going on for a while, the current generation is merely not well informed about what the previous generation was up to. Face it, when grandpa and grandma went to woodstock she probably blew a roadie to get him a bootleg Hendrix tape.
This is what I've been saying the whole time, and it's all a good thing. Puff daddy shouldn't be in business anyway, so any diminished sales for him and brittney are a good thing, while real artists like jazz singers and such get plenty of new listeners, even though the radio and mtv are too busy rehashing songs that everyone has heard a gajillion times. This is all a good thing.
rhY
www.leperkhanz.com
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I don't believe that indi groups are being "rewarded" because of talent. What incentive do file sharers have in buying an indi album simply because it's better than a pop album? I don't think there's any. No, they buy the indi album because it's more obscure than the pop album. Take an indi group like "Betty" for example. Ever try to find any of their music online? You won't find much on file sharing services, but if you go to their web site you can download SOME of their songs from select albums, which you can buy from their site. But Billy Joel, The Beatles, Celine Dion... sure tons of those are on the file sharing services. I have no reason to buy their songs because I can get them for free, we all know this. I'm not going to "reward" them no matter how good a musician they are. I'll buy a CD if I want a CD. It's as simple as that. But if I like the indi group, basically I HAVE to buy their CD because it's hard to find their music on file sharing. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH REWARD. I don't doubt that P2P has impacted the music industry. But the RIAA and labels are going about it wrong. They need to reinvent the industry to keep up with technology, or they will vanish into obscurity. -dave
Although I am not an economist, I am a social scientist, and I can say from experience that like all counterfactual speculators, he's attempting to infer what human behavior would be without something he deems as a catalyst. The problem is that perhaps he is reading too much into P2P as the cause of decreases in sales without controlling for other factors. Of course, given the Not only that, but if you read into the paper he's making a lot of assumptions about the behavior of the big music companies - specifically that there is no price response from them. His method of applying popularity ratings to albums, 201-(top spot on the Hot 200 chart) seems a little fishy. His non-random sample, even weighted, always draws a question mark by generalizability.
Granted, for purposes of expediency I didn't read Blackburn's whole article in depth, so I can't comment on everything. That having been said, just like with most research, unless you have time to vet it yourself, I would tell you to take this with a grain of salt.
For a long time, the longest songs that were played on the radio were max 3.5~4 minutes because that is all that would fit on a 45 or 78 record. Even today, stations will fade most songs out after 4.5 minutes max of play.
Example: When Zepplin's "Stairway To Heaven" came out in the 70's, at eight minutes, it was the longest popular song that got radio playtime. It was also the most played song ever, but it was a HUGE breakthrough for a song more than 4 minutes long to get any kind of airplay, but that doesn't stop radio DJ's from fading it out well before the end.
Radio station owners were afraid to play long songs on the radio, they didn't think people would listen to them. You may not realize it, but a lot of what is on the radio is a "radio edit", since stations expect musicians to cut their songs down to a radio friendly size.
The radio industry changed a lot once a few companies began consolidating ownership of stations. Even as recently as the 1996 Telecommunications Act, consolidation caused local markets to have a more varied playlist (to avoid canabilizing sister stations) but less diversity over the national market.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Factoring in the fact that a more leveled popularity exposes more people to more different types of music, making them more educated and therefore more useful in other fields.
Therefore the lost revenues directly from the music sale is won back in overall "productivity" of those people...?
1. Band writes an album.
2. Band puts it on iTunes.
3. Band self promotes on the interweb.
4. ??????
5. Profit!
I know what 4 is! 4 is the record companies losing there cut!
He claims to be the first to include a new variable: well-known vs. unknown artists. Previous studies [he cites] have shown p2p does *not* hurt record sales.
His methodology is to see how the RIAA's lawsuit waves coincide with drops in filesharing and bumps in record sales. All insightful corrections, but before anybody can claim the Last Word, the model needs to address the perception that today's platinum records just aren't worth buying.
I'll sit back, eat some chips, and watch yet another partial solution to this question enjoy its 15 minutes of fame. Music people will pay to own, I think, comes in equal parts from the heart and crotch. P2P or not, nobody can sell too many records riding manufactured trends that were insincere to begin with.
Now where's my walker and my dentures?
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
It's now shown that it can be done.
It's also one of the few number 1s that I'd rate as a fine single in about a decade.
While the ultimate goal was to get to a government based on willing sharing of property, that's why communism was a bad idea. You can't get to willful sharing without first suppressing people and forcing them to share.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I wonder how the effect of P2P can be isolated from the dynamics of the market overall. Used CDs must depress sales. The CD industry has re-remasters which have glutted the used CD market with remasters and original unremastered CDs, creating more supply than demand. P2P could very well be stimulating CD sales, only for used CDs which are in great supply (unlike LP and Cassette, CDs last virtually forever). Plus older CDs don't have DRM! Plus, how are sales calculated? When an artist has 2 or 3 "best of" CDs for sale, do they compete with each other? (If so, is this intentional to artifically depress sales?) Don't these constant best-of releases, usually with one or two extra tracks for fans who have the back catalog, cut into back-catalog sales? Sure, some people steal music, but isn't it good to have them in a sandbox of ever-decreasing returns as leeches leech off of each other and nothing new ever comes into the mix? That would be like all the diamond thieves stealing the same diamonds from each other all the time. It goes without saying that the effect we saw of CDs replacing LP and Cassette will never happen again. Exacerbating the slump after people replacing their LP/Cassette with CD is the fact that younger generations probably won't get into the 1980s - 1970s - 1960s - and earlier groups in the same way that people who LIVED through those times would, and won't have the emotional (i.e. willing to spend $$$) attachment to buy the full back catalogues on CD. (Music stores already reflect this - they don't carry back catalogs much anymore, just the best-of compilations.) Artists have to take some of the blame also for producing CDs that won't sell (can anyone give away copies of Yes' Magnification?)...
You don't need a PhD or even a BS in the Recording Indsutry (that's what I have) to realize this guy is stating the obvious. Many many people have said the same thing for the past few years.
Libertas in infinitum
in the recording industry
just kidding;)
While it's true that most of the time the concept of infringement vs. theft is abused to one side or the other's gain, the truth is that infringement is, and always should be, a civil issue. Turning it into a criminal offense with multi-millions in damages and jail time (for sharing files? Come on...) is more repugnant than any entitlement mentality either side clings to.
If the *AA monopoly succeeds in criminalizing something that has no business in the criminal court system, we have lost the basis of what copyright is for. "For a limited time" has been bastardized and marginalized by the holders (not creators) of copyrighted works. The system is broken. It has been stolen by the middlemen in the copyright issue, the *AA's. The future is what loses out. Not the *AA's.
P2P is just a symptom of the stranglehold the *AA's have on copyright and the public domain.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
On the contrary, I'd argue that it's not broken at all - it's just a victim of a two-sided issue, of which both sides are behaving very badly. As long as consumers refuse to allow it to work, it won't work. Only after consumers do their part, can they legitimately point the finger at the media companies.
From the first page of the paper:
"This Draft: December 30, 2004"
Pretty current, that research is.
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
I ask the question because increasing the sales of relatively low-ranked artists, particularly the ones that the record labels are nominally losing money on should have a direct and positive impact on label bottom lines.
Plus, there is the physical overhead. Why are CDs for musicians who are expected to be relatively low in sales physically pressed and shipped and most of them get returned unsold instead of being burned on demand at record stores? A jukebox setup simply duping CDs and printing the labels and jewel box sleeves could handle it now, a better solution would be the upcoming terabyte CD-form factor media. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to ship information than physical anything.
One weakness in the studies is that they depend on information voluntarily released by the record labels, which automatically reduce the credibility of the data and the studies.
Another question is the effect of radio airplay (which can be turned into mp3 with the right tuner card) vs P2P in getting the word about artists.
But even with the questions unanswered, there may well be a new and more profitable distribution model implicit within these studies.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I read somewhere (in Slashdot?) that P2P promotes the best sellers that can make money on other kinds of sponsoring. It also promotes the little guys who would get 0 otherwise. But it will harm the middle-sellers that can't get promoted enugh to jump to professionalism.
Can somebody point to an ellaboration along these lines?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Radio stations play songs so frequently they are impossible to avoid, so why would I want to buy it? I can turn on the radio and wait 30 minutes and it will be on (in most markets, which are moving to the "Jack" format, it almost doesn't matter which station!)
They pay lots of money to put stuff on the radio ( payola: http://www.dontbuycds.org/payola.htm ). Instead of requiring labels to pay radio stations so that I can hear a song, I just download it - which costs the labels no money whatsoever! And, I don't have to hear it so many times I have it memorized.
In fact, every time I download a song, I should send the label a bill - either as the newest incarnation of payola, or maybe for my time spent listening, depending on how good it is.
Do your part! Save the label bundles of money!
When consumers "do their part", they are accused of wrongdoing. Their part is not participating in a broken system of copyright. The media conglomerates cry foul when sales dip. They blame piracy. There is no way to stamp it out 100%, just like any offense. So the media companies have their scapegoat. The electorate cannot help, because those we elect do not hold the interests of the common man when they arrive in D.C.
So what are we to do? We can legitimately point our fingers now, but no one listens.
Do you actually believe "for a limited time" is life + 90 years? And it keeps getting retroactively applied by Congress, in direct violation of the Constitution (with the help of the judiciary)... so that our public domain is thoroughly raped. The Founding Fathers had no intention of our copyright system turning into Great Britain's, but we are close with near perpetual copyright, no registration requirements for copyrighting anything, and stiff (unjust) punishments for infringement.
The system is indeed broken, and if you can't see that, I'm sorry.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Socialism is a mix of government control and free enterprise. Communism is control of property and commerce by the people. P2P sites while claiming to be a form of altruistic communism are really capitalists, advertising is there in various degrees. I was traded on Grokster and I felt as an indie artist it was a good promotional vehicle. In fact because of my postings they started an indie forum on the site so indie artists could post concerns as well as draw attention to themselves. Suddenly to get posted and promoted on Grokster or the indie forum you had to be a member of a promotional company. So I was excluded from the forum that I had helped to form. I dont mind having my music copied and shared but if the indie artist is still alive buy something...anything. A T shirt, pin, CD or even 1 download just as a token of appreciation. If enough people buy music based upon a genuine appreciation of the music, the music industry will have to either change or die. Dennis Jennings ASCAP Celestial Image http://celestial-image.com/
Well, since P2P networks are here to stay, it appears that the only thing musicians can do is try to live with it. I can cite here the example of Jonathan Coulton, who actually released most of his songs via a Creative Commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, free as in beer). He actually does get some money from donations, as in one of his posts he mentioned becoming a hundredaire. So now I guess that, after reading his success story, all other musicians and record companies will install a BitTorrent tracker and start sharing away. Not.
I read a Rolling Stone article a couple of years back that was pretty interesting. I obviously can't find it now though.
Anyway, the point of the article was that CD sales actually account for a very small percentage of an artists music income. I think it was something like 5-15%. The artist also has to go Platinum on the first 3-4 CDs to break even with the Label's initial investment. The music companies spend a shitload of money on recording sessions, image PR, advertising, Radio Payola, etc...
Where the artists make the real money is with live performances and merchandising where they have a lot more control over the financial aspects than they do from their Label contracts. Concerts supposedly work in the opposite way regarding the financial agreements with the Labels. The Label only gets something like 5-10% of the money generated by ticket prices and t-shirt sales.
So it would seem to me that P2P doesn't actually harm the artists as much as it does the Labels.
than any company could use gpl'ed software and sell enhanced, proprietory and closed sourced versions and use technical drm to enforce copy protection.
When consumers "do their part", they are accused of wrongdoing.
The willful violation of someone's copyright is not "doing their part." It's circumventing the issue entirely - snd not because it's effective, or because it will work, but because it's easier than doing the right thing. In fact, this laziness on the part of consumers has created quite a little quagmire, because now the media companies can always raise the specter of illegal copying as a reason for declining sales.
So what are we to do? We can legitimately point our fingers now, but no one listens.
Assuming that consumers can reign in their penchant for copyright violation, they have the only tool they'll ever need, which stands ready at their beck and call- control over their spending. It's surprisingly easy to decide NOT to buy something. It requires no gas, no insurance, no loans, or any other obligation - all it requires is a little bit of discipline.
Ideally, when the revenue of the media companies starts to slide enough that there's no way it can be reasonably blamed on illegal copying, they'll be faced with two options: they can continue on their current path, pointing the finger at everyone else (eventually leading to their demise), or they can wise up and develop a new, more appealing business model.
The biggest problem I see in all of this is that most consumers are only willing to entertain two options...lip service, and copyright violation - neither of which has accomplished much of anything. They simply refuse to do the one thing that will make their voice heard.
I didn't say violating copyright was "doing their part" I implied boycott or not purchasing.
Content holders will not embrace new technology because they fear a lack of control. They want their old-world controls in place before they release their precious "content" into the wild, but it's a catch-22. No one wants that control foisted on them. Treating people like criminals is the surest way to lose your customer base. And the *AA's are doing a bang-up job. They will ALWAYS raise the specter of piracy. No matter if it is a recession, double-digit unemployment, or a famine, the media conglomerates will cry foul when they don't make a double-digit percentage increase in revenue from year to year. Economics be damned, because the news (controlled by said media) won't interject that no business can sustain growth like that each and every year. But, people keep feeding the machine...
You act like people are enjoying their "spree" at the expense of copyright holders, yet revenue is up in some entertainment markets (when there isn't a recession or $3 gasoline.) Somebody must be buying their crap. But to listen to you, no one buys anything... they just have a penchant for copyright violation.
If people ("consumers" is a shitty word... I hate it) are somehow on a piracy spree, how can the entertainment conglomerates make any money? Even the movie studios themselves admitted that their slump in ticket sales was due to poor movies. Revenue will never slide low enough that they cannot blame piracy. Sorry, they'll find a way. They are already pointing their finger at everyone else (that would include you and I). And guess what? They will never develop a new business model, because fearmongering and whining to the bought-and-paid-for officials works so well for them. Why don't they go after the big piracy-laden countries like China and the like who ignore our precious copyright? Why do they pick on people who share songs? Because bullies only pick on those weaker than them. The enterainment moguls are nothing more than well-dressed bullies. They'd rather hit you over the head with stupid commercials about "stealing" (it's NOT stealing. Sorry), than try to find a way to make the system better.
The only way to win is FIX the system. The system has been hijacked by people who HOLD copyrights, not creators, nor the public. It has been stolen by the middle man. Until we break the back of the middle man, we will never see any relief. Stopping purchases, boycotts, sit-ins, letter-writing campaigns... nothing will work. The system needs an enema. Whether it be political, or outright social upheaval, the system is broken. (The Copyright system). Reason won't work, because these people don't adhere to reason. They are reactionary scrooges who worship the almighty dollar (or euro, or yen, or whatever.) The only solution is a restoration of purity into copyright. Until that happens, this argument will never be over. WE need to take the argument back from their court. Stop them from getting away with their specious revenue loss claims, their misuse of the word "stealing", their characterization of the internet as a haven for hippies and anti-capitalist monsters, their labeling of people as merely vats of fat that "consume" things. We need to stop them from de-humanizing the opposition to oppressive copyright before it is too late. We need to take back the public domain. These companies (Disney *cough*) got rich off it, and now they won't replenish it because of their greed. Take them to task. Make the world see just how wrong they are. And make them see that the Founding Fathers didn't mean for copyright to turn out this way.
"Life + 90 years" is NOT a "limited time".... THAT is the tragedy of copyright. Have you done your part buy not buying anything?
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
You know what, the moment you actually create something in your life, create something people want to use, and the moment you try to profit from what you created and the others who did nothing are benefitting in some way and/or distributing your work regardless of your wishes, completely disregarding the time/money/blood and sacrifices you had to put into your creation, that moment I will talk to you.
I hate to burst your bubble, but the IRC client I wrote is used by thousands of people every day, and has been for years. I've been paid for some of the work I did on it, and in fact people have distributed it against my wishes (see my sig).
So I think my argument deserves a little more than a hand-wave. I believe it whole-heartedly: the right to speak freely and share one's experiences with friends is more important than anyone's ability to make a buck. I don't pretend to own any strings of bits, and I don't think anyone needs to obey my wishes as to how they use what I've produced, just as I don't need to obey anyone else's wishes as to how I use the information they produce. (The GPL is somewhat of a special case, because it's about making information more available, not less.)
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.