Slashdot Mirror
Viral Music Videos A Problem For RIAA
prostoalex writes "A few years ago music videos were considered promotional, a tease to get the viewer to buy the whole album. However, now that a commercial market for music videos is springing up, the music industry is not quite happy with YouTube, iFilm, Google Video and other video sharing sites distributing the music videos of famous artists. Billboard magazine says: 'The RIAA estimates that sales of music videos topped $3.7 million in three months, after being introduced in October. Meanwhile, the major labels also are sharing in the profits of ad-supported video-on-demand offerings from AOL, Yahoo, Music Choice and others. That is revenue the music industry is keenly interested in protecting. Hopes are that YouTube and others will ink similar deals with the industry in the long run.'"
Has the RIAA seen the quality of the videos on youtube? We're not talking about redistribution of DVDs here, these are snippets people find interesting and worth sharing. And the quality of these videos is something you'd only look at in tiny resolution on a computer, and probably only once or twice.
From the article: "Viral video sharing would not have been an issue just 18 months ago, when the labels still viewed music videos as a promotional tool for selling albums. Now that their efforts have created interest in their videos, they want to take it away in any form except for what they dictate.
The RIAA and MPAA remind me of an old Peanuts cartoon, where Lucy takes all of Linus' toys away, and leaves him a rubber band to play with... I've got to dig that up, it's so appropriate (do you remember it?).
These videos surfacing on youtube and other video sites are free publicity and advertising for the subjects! I'm beginning to think the RIAA has some bizarre credo, something along the lines of, "No matter what!, we MUST stop any sharing, enjoyment, distribution of ANYTHING that we can possible stamp with OUR ownership!". I'm also convinced the people running RIAA are totally insane.
There's an adage "there's no such thing as bad publicity". Eventually, the RIAA and MPAA may prove that wrong. Idiots.
When will they learn? If they make a funny / cool / sexy video... People are going to post it to sites like youtube, google video or similar. The artists' company will just have to pay a cleanup crew to keep bugging the content sites to remove their protected content. That will just have to be part of their business.
Heck... It's getting easier to build sites with the ability to share content... Mtrx.net (see my sig) can share videos/images/music... But I've only turned on images and I'm not taking customers. But if I did, it would be a full time job for several people to scan thousands of uploads for copyrighted content... Which is a good reason not to take new people yet... Point being, the companies that have the most to lose will end up footing the bill (and because of this they will also keep trying to sue the pants off little guys when their customers post copyrighted content to their subsites)
Funnypics
I hope YouTube isn't hosted in sweden.
For a moment I though this was about some kind of "sony-rootkit" fiasco from the MPAA...
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
No one gives a fuck that you think you should get paid for the "right" to help you advertise. Your attempts to charge for the flow of information have failed horibly in every aspect. Maybe if you would stop making shitty, cut and publish content and allow your customers some of the most basic rights, you would get more respect from mankind. However, you continue to attempt to make pathetic laws and bombard the public with blatant lies and slander wherever appliable, and thus no one cares that you can't buy yourselves another $200,000 stretch and a nice new diamond ring for your wife while African children starve to death.
Signed,
The World.
"...the music industry is not quite happy..."
I don't think the music industry will ever be happy. I think they will always find some reason to complain, whether it was radio, audio cassette, file sharing, or now music video posting.
Respect the laws of physics, for the laws of physics have no respect for you.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I don't know of anyone that buys music videos, and I'm only 21. Classically, music videos are the free things on MTV and VH1 used to promote the music.
Why would I pay for something that I have to watch and can't just turn on while I'm doing other stuff, unless it is going to provide me with some new content? Once I have seen a music video once, why would I ever want one enough to pay for it again? This isn't a movie or even porn we're talking about here. This is just another example of the RIAA inflating the amount of money they actually gain from something.
Unless they're charging over a dollar each for these they would have to have sold 1.2 million per month - that's 41,000 per day. I find that highly unlikely. Nothing to see here, just the RIAA trying to squeeze blood from a turnip and screwing themselves out of a perfectly good advertising method.
A pretty girl on a music video with a good voice will make me more likely to buy a CD or song, but not if they try to make me pay for the music video, I'll just stop watching them.
If anything, it's proof that the RIAA isn't insane, and realizes that it needs to control different distribution channels if it's gonna last more than another decade.
If they expect people to pay to watch what are, in essence, commercials, or even to have the "priveledge" of showing their commercials on your site, well, screw 'em :]
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go find something, anything, to pirate after the shameful and possibly illegal things they did to the Pirate Bay the other day.
And another thought, the RIAA says they made $3.7 million in 3 months... while P2P networks are out there with mp3s, movies... and probably music videos as well!
I know I've downloaded few music videos over the years, so I'm sure people share music videos out there in P2P.
Doesn't that shoot a hole in the claim that P2P file sharing is killing the RIAA when they're able to make $3.7 million in 3 months selling stuff that's available in P2P?
Respect the laws of physics, for the laws of physics have no respect for you.
FTFA: "NEW YORK (Billboard) - As the recording industry tries to block file trading of songs across peer-to-peer networks, blogs and other viral distribution channels, the major labels suddenly have a whole new piracy concern: music videos."
Interestingly, every new and (arguably) useful tool on the Internet seems to somehow allow people to pirate the *AA's protected content. Somewhere in all that, somebody, group, or even countries should be hitting the *AA et al with the clue stick.... hard! Not that I think if they did get a clue it would make anything cheaper or easier for anyone that wants to use their content.
Instead of inventing licensing models that make sense, they simply seem to be trying to stop all use of their content.
Personally, I think it would be sort of sucky for a few months, but if everyone just stopped buying music and videos from *AA affiliated musicians, perhaps the hint would work. Try http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/ for music that they don't benefit from. See if buying music they don't get paid for makes them any happier?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
What the fuck does this even mean? HAVE YOU STOPPED FAILING ENGLISH YET?
Is there anyone left out there who actually believes these assholes deserve to retain any degree of their unprecedented money, power, and political influence? Tell me I'm wrong, please. Maybe there's a whole big contingent of people out there who think listening to music without paying for it is actually stealing. Those are probably the same people who think musicians make more than a few cents per every album sold, and that every song 'stolen' represents lost revenue equal to the retail price of that song. In other words, the sadly ignorant. ASCAP is even worse-- only the top-selling bands make any significant money whatsoever from ASCAP licensing revenues. Meanwhile, they're making money for their legal department by suing the bars and clubs who host DJs and cover bands.
As a musician, I think that's a big crock of shit.
That said, I keep the RIAA off my back the old fashioned way-- I rip my friends' CDs rather than download off the net, and similarly share the wealth off-line. Not like I could've bought the Beatles' albums in the Apple Store anyway. And Sir McCartney certainly doesn't need it, if he even sees royalties from those sales anymore. Perhaps it's time to drop the copyright timelimits, yeah?
Ultimately, it's increasingly clear that these incestuous corporate associations not only don't have the best interests of the emerging world culture at heart, but are an active enemy to both their customers and the future of the very industry they claim to represent. I know the list of evil organizations in the world is getting over-long at this point, but they really do need to be stopped, along with all the other fucks out there wrecking civilization for everyone else.
I wonder if strong leadership and extensive organization could effect the degree of change the world needs before everything really goes to hell...
No matter how hard the **AA's of the world try and no matter how much money they throw at their problem, they will NEVER, EVER stop determined people from obtaining their content for free. They will always be reacting to the proactive.
Furthermore, the harder they try, the more they're just going to end up pissing off their ever-dwindling base of consumers. Right or wrong and for better or worse, it's reality.
(The above concept applies to the dumb-fsking war on terrorism, too, but I won't even begin ranting about that horrorshow.)
These people are off the deep end. Maybe they should cut to the chase and get laws passed that force us to buy their crap at gunpoint.
"Time for your new Brittany CD, citizen!"
Music videos are advertisements - commercials, and charging for them is the best idea I have heard in decades! Perhaps the idea will catch on, and all advertisements will be withheld from us unless we pay. Poor us, life will be so boring just watching our programs without the joy commercial interruptions bring.
The MPAA could learn a lot from this! That's right, keep those movie trailers under lock and key! They usually show all the interesting parts of the movie, and they are condensed into just a few minutes! Who would pay to see a bloated movie when the Cliff Notes version is available?!? They should be charging more for the trailers than the movies. Pull them from the theaters and TV! That way, people will want to see the movies even more.
Oh, and someone check the water coolers at the RIAA. I suspect that some joker has been dropping LSD in with the bottle deliveries.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
I don't have anything to say, but I just wanted to applaud you for being the first person in the history of Slashdot to spell "lose" correctly. Bravo, sir.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
I would love to see them start trying to get guitar manufacturers to pay the RIAA tax because the istruments could be used for stealing "stairway to heaven" and "smoke on the water"...
ymmv
The music industry doesn't seem to know how to make money anymore.
Just take the Numa Numa video on the internet from a year ago. This is a potential hit song made popular in the US from the "Numa Numa" video at http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/206373 that went nowhere on the buying charts due to pure stupidity of the recording industry. If you liked this song, you couldn't buy it.
iTunes only added it to their collection well after the interest in it subsided (and I bought it then). Sure it was in Romanian, but that really wasn't a big deal--just look at the success of 99 Luftballooons from 20 years ago.
The record industry is over-focused on piracy from folks who would never buy their music anyway. The positive word-of-mouth of a good song more than outweighs any piracy of a good song. And the greedy executives don't realize they'll make more money when teenagers grow up and *buy* music from nostalgia then they'll ever get from the same people when they are teenagers. But if the greedy recording companies force teenagers to get their music through piracy because they have no alternative, then those customers may be gone for good.
I'm old enough to know what I want in music, and as best as I can tell, the recording industry doesn't want to sell it to me at any price. They want to sell me their crap instead.
Until the only way to listen to music is to walk up to a music booth through a metal detector to prevent you from bringing in any recording equipment, and up to a music booth. At this music booth you will insert five dollar bills. You will then select a song using a touchscreen. You will then take paper headphone covers from a dispenser on the wall. You will place the headphone covers over the public headphones, connected to the booth by a flexible metal tube. You will then listen to your music until your credit has expired. Rocking out or playing air guitar will be discouraged, although singing along in a quiet voice will be tolerated, unless there's somebody wihtin earshot.
Maybe then, the RIAA will stop whining.
I want the fire back.
I'm waiting to see articles with quotes like "I used to listen to music, but it cut into my gaming time", or "Hip hop is so for losers".
every historical era is defined by an ideological struggle which defines the status quo of future eras
in our time, that struggle is the balance between corporate ownership and public culture
the riaa/ mpaa won't stop until they own all of our culture, period. every single bit of expression of it
its a pathology: greed, greed, greed, and it will never stop
but the struggle is too esoteric now, too new to have reached the man in the street yet
only us dweebs and tech heads see the outrageousness of this creeping doom on the horizon right now
but give it time. eventually it will rear its ugly head on the radar of public consciousness
and then maybe, hopefully, this pathology that is ip law that wants to own absolutely every bit of cultural expression will get the bitch slap down it deserves
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Pardon me for not giving a fuck what the music industry likes. It hasn't given a fuck what I like for years.
"No Stairway? Denied." - Wayne Campbell