Unlimited Legal Music Downloads for $3.95 a Month?

fishmasta writes "I'm at a major university studying the music industry, so we get to regularly talk to executives in the major labels. In a recent talk with someone working at Warner Bros, she brought up an idea they want to try where all file sharing is legalized by paying $4-5 a month through an ISP, all downloads are permanent, and you can get them from any source, and do what you want with them. It seems like some in the industry are starting to 'get it.' I was just wondering what Slashdot thinks of this idea. Would you be willing to pay a small fee each month if you could get all the music you want and have no legal liability?" El-Man has another take on that subject replacing "unlimited" with a set number of licenses: "I believe that people are basically honest (maybe a failing, but it's how I feel), and are quite happy to pay for something of value. With music downloads, the only solution the recording industry has come up with is wrapping digital files with onerous, incompatible DRM systems, suing those whom they say have illegally distributed music (what is it, 13000 people and counting? Surely the courts have better things to do!), and generally not doing themselves or music lovers any good. How about a system, whereby a user can purchase a license for [n] amount of digital music files? Numbers can be, 10, 50, 100, 200, etc. Doesn't matter what the files are, as long as the number is not exceeded. There'd be a lot of details to thrash out, but is this something that is ultimately workable?"

If you were an executive of a medium-to-large sized record company, how would you handle the potential of the Internet?

Comments

Yes.

[jersey_emt]

I would gladly pay $5 a month for unlimited, non-DRMed music. Heck, I already pay $5 amonth for DRM'ed downloads (Yahoo! Music Unlimited).

The EFF calls it Voluntary Collective Licensing

[Kelerain]

The EFF calls it Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing.
It has many similarities to what is described in the article, and I think it is a solution that is best for everyone. Lawrence Lessig, in Free Culture (a great, freely downloadable book on related subjects), calls it a chimera. It is wrong to rob the artists, but it is also wrong for the RIAA to treat their fans as criminals. The solution is in the middle, and I think the collective licensing idea is it.

From a future executive?

[dada21]

I'm starting a studio in Chicago, Illinois this spring: No Copyright Studios. We've started to take in donations and investments, and are hoping to open our doors in very late spring if not sooner (considering the equipment we're getting, it should be sooner). I hope to be a future medium-sized label exec by repudiating copyright and focusing on bands that have a real value in live shows versus CD sales.

I believe that music has some interesting profit incentives when it is played live. We've looked into all sorts of value-added options for those live venues, including the following:

* Buy the official CD, get a free ticket to a private show.
* Buy the official CD, get a login to view the band in the studio for a set period of time
* After the live show, purchase a real-time edited sound-board fed DVD of the show
* Buy practice time with the band
* Let anyone else play the song live if you like, but we'll make sure we find out who performed what and when, and advertise that we're the co-op that created the music.

I don't believe in any intellectual property. In the last 6 months, I have attended almost 50 live shows in the Chicago Indie, Punk and alternative scene. I've met over 75 bands who have admitted that copyright has done jack for their income, and they were always better off giving away the recorded music in exchange for getting people into the shows. If you're a musician and you want to earn an income, is it better for the top 10 in the country to make $10,000,000 because they're the main earners for those who control the distribution networks? Or would you rather see 1,000 bands locally who can generate $100,000 each?

There is a lot of money out there to be made when you take out the copyright cartel companies from the market. I firmly believe that bands can make money if they realize the supply and demand forces at work can not be manipulated. Taking advantage of supply and demand is the best way to go about it. MP3 = near infinite supply = $0. Live music = limited supply = income. QED.

Re:I don't get it

[Trogre]

At first I thought "hell yes, this is what I've been waiting for!"

But then I considered this:

Where does that $3.95 or $10 or whatever go? Directly to the RIAA, and filtered down to the actual label and eventually the artist.

Now what happens to all the minor labels, the ones that aren't part of the RIAA? I'm not talking about companies like Magnatune that distribute low-bitrate recordings for free, but labels that charge per download?

Since this initiative will inevitibly result in an "I've paid my monthly dues so I can download any music for free" meme, the small labels will be forced to either give the music away for nothing or join the RIAA to get a piece of the pie. Of course this will effectively give the RIAA a total monopoly on music dollars.

I'm not saying free downloads are necessarily a bad thing, but it's just something to consider.