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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.
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.
What the fuck does this even mean? HAVE YOU STOPPED FAILING ENGLISH YET?
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.