Slashdot Mirror
Music Industry Looking for Lyrics Payoff
theodp writes "U.S. digital entertainment company Gracenote has obtained licenses to distribute the lyrics of more than 1 million songs. Music publishers are still mulling legal action against Web sites that provide lyrics without authorization." From the article: "Ralph Peer II, Firth's counterpart at peermusic, said licensing lyrics should boost worldwide music publishing revenues, estimated at about $4 billion annually. Peer said he hopes the unauthorized sites will seek licenses. 'I think we'll see a reasonable increase, as much as a 5 percent increase, in industry music publishing revenues five years out from where we are right now,' Peer said."
Now all we need is some form of DRM that makes you pay every time you read the lyrics, or someone reads them to you. And then some lawsuits for people that steal the lyrics by transcripting, storing or sharing them with others... Because we all know you just cannot remember and or write down stuff you hear on television or radio, or even worse, save other people the hassle of having to write them down themselves...
It's 'bout time them lyrics-stealing pirate bastards start paying for their criminal behaviour...
There's no way Gracenote would make a deal like this unless they had an agreement that the record companies would bludgeon Gracenote's competition to death with copyright. It's no problem for the record companies and it makes what they are licensing to Gracenote so much more valuable.
It will probably be easier than going after people who share MP3s - lyrics sites are generally ad-supported, with the ad providers like Google mentioning copyright problems in their terms & conditions, so there's no need for lawyers, just complain to the advertisers and "cut off their air supply".
This won't be the first time this has happened, either. Anybody remember lyrics.ch? Raided by the police for telling people the words to songs! Does it get any more ridiculous?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Eventually the media companies are going to push too hard. Many big companies like to ride the line, and it seems legally that with the current political influence they have the media companies can keep on moving that line so they don't cross it. The question is, where has the consumer market set that line? People might express some negative feelings about record companines extorting money from single mothers living in poverty, but they still keep on buying, so I guess that line hasn't been reached yet either. There's too many other things to worry about these days...like not being able to post a comment on slashdot for 6+ hours because Database maintenance is taking place. Noooo!
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
Fair use is no longer an option and we can look forward to root kits on our computers to 'crack down' on illegal copying? I think it is time to tell the recording industry how we feel about their draconian measures. Could you go without purchasing or even downloading music for 3 months? 6 months? a year? to prove a point?
Top Ten Things the RIAA would Like To Make Illegal
10. Whistling, humming, scatting, finger snapping, head bobbing, and any other form of "grooving" (per the Groove Memorandum of 1982.)
9. Refusing the blue pill after attending an Outkast concert.
8. Not answering your cell on the 1st ring in order to hear to more of "Clocks."
7. Fair use? More like "unfair abuse", am I right!?
6. Quoting Taking Back Sunday on mySpace.
5. Thinking about quoting Taking Back Sunday on mySpace.
4. Thinking about thinking about quoting Taking Back Sunday on mySpace.
3. Being Taking Back Sunday. (I kid, I kid.)
2. Transferring all your iTunes songs to your new bigger iPod. (You've got money for a new bigger iPod, don't you?)
1. Not handing them all of your money, every day, the second you earn it.
WHere are all the comments?
"U.S. digital nerd news company OSTG has obtained licenses to distribute the comments to more than 1 million slashdot submissions. Editors are still mulling legal action against users that provide comments without authorization."
From the article:
"CmdrTaco, head honcho at slashdot, said licensing comments should boost worldwide comment publishing revenues, estimated at about $4 billion annually. CmdrTaco said he hopes the unauthorized users will seek subscriptions. 'I think we'll see a reasonable increase, as much as a 5 percent increase, in nerd news publishing revenues five years out from where we are right now,' CmdrTaco said."
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
The only way to sell music is to raise a conscious desire to buy it in the minds of potential buyers. Exposure to the lyrics is one of the simplest ways for songwriters to encouarge people to think about the music they write and expose others to it in a way that has no meaningful way of allowing them to substitute copyright infringement for actually buying the song. Guitar tabs, for example, are useless by themselves. They form typically just one of four components to a song, but someone playing the tabs down the hallway at college or on stage at a local bar raises consciousness of the song.
"Rights, rights, rights" is the mantra of the industry and why they're so amazingly stupid. The only way to sell a cultural work is to make it part of the culture and locking it up in a maze of contract law is not going to do that. Let people violate your Happy Jolly Lawyer Land Contract Rights all day long on things like lyrics. If you're in the business of selling **songs**, and that's how songwriters make most of their money on average, you WANT people sharing the lyrics and posting them in public. It's not the song, it's not even part of the actual audio they'll enjoy. It's just a collection of written words that they'd never have a reason to buy on their own as... surprise, surprise THEY'RE NOT MUSICIANS!!
Meanwhile, most musicians, when given the choice, will gladly buy your sheet music at a reasonable cost if it means they get a 100% accurate set of sheet music with lyrics.
In other words : someone with a highly paid job inside a big corporation woke-up from his mid-afternoon doze and suddenly had a new idea :
Let's start charging money for something as stupid and obvious as song lyrics. Why haven't we though before ? There's so many new ways to rip money from our client base !
More money for my pocket and we can use the image of a starving artist to instill guilt inside the client's head. Just hope they won't notice the pointlessness of some recent work.
Yeah, let's call all free-rider that did provide the same service on their website "Pirates".
They're pirate ! They're ripping money from our starving artists. Think of the children, you terrorist !
Photocopying lyrics is killing the music indurty ! Pay us more for this service.
Let's launch suits against those pesky lyrics-pirate.
Are your dollars are belong to us !
You are on the way to legal actions !
Take off every 'Lawyer' !
For great justice and money !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Actually, the point is, nobody is going to say, "I don't have to buy that CD because I downloaded the lyrics for free and now I can sing it to myself whenever I want to hear it."
assert(birth_date<time-86400)
The most common way I discover new music is hearing it being played -- in a cafe or store, typically -- deciding I like the sound, and remembering a unique-sounding snippet of lyrics to Google later. That gives me the title and artist. From there I can buy the track on Rhapsody, or even buy the CD.
If they shut down the lyrics sites, I will buy much less music. Nice work there, RIAA.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
I would love if the RIAA or whoever just set up one site, possibly with a few google text ads, or maybe a few simple banners, and offered the real official lyrics to all the songs in existence. Really, it wouldn't be that hard, and it would help people find music they had heard so they could buy it. It would be a nice change from all those crappy lyrics sites with popups, viruses, and other crap that you find while searching for something as simple as lyrics. I think that the music industry could make quite a bit of money just from the ads. Not to mention the added sales from people being able to find songs. Apple, Amazon and other sites who sell music could also pay a fee to work the results into their services, so that not only could people find song by band and song title, but also by the lyrics. I'm sure the customers would love it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
There was licensing for sheet music long, long before there was licensing for audio.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I do this all the time, and I disover new music that way. I certainly wouldn't pay to do it though - after all, I'm just deciding whether I like something enough to explore further. It's like this - hear it on the radio, search on Google, read lyrics of a few songs to get a feel for the band, maybe download a song or two (or listen to clips on Amazon), and if I'm still interested, buy something.
If I really enjoy music, a large part of that is because I like the lyrics. But I doubt I'd pay someone else to try out their product. You know, in some businesses, they pay YOU to try out the product.
As a musician, I put my lyrics up on my site for free so people can spend more time and thought on my songs, and perhaps be drawn to my site through search. Seems kinda obvious that this is a good thing for everyone.
The only plus I see to the Gracenote system is that "official" lyrics should be accurate. Personally I'd like to get them packaged with a download, so that if I'm listening to a song I can click and get the lyrics to come up with a bouncing ball on where I am in the song. Seems like that would be easy to program and add next to nothing to file size.
Just wait until they try to stop people humming songs on the bus, they may even start a pay for thought service where money is deducted from you bank every time you get an song stuck in you head. It all looks like copyright infringement to me.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Tabs came under fire a long while back. The MPA (Music Publisher's Association I believe...) just up and decided that tabs (no matter how musically inaccurate they may be) were infringing on the sound of their copyrighted material. The head of the MPA went as far as to say he would push to have owners of tab sites fined AND jailed - needless to say, I don't think the latter has happened.
Anyway, this shut down many popular tab sites, most notably taborama.com (along with their forum on a different domain) and mxtabs.net. While Taborama remains closed, MXTabs argued that they pay music associations to licence the material on their site, and hence have the right to offer tabs and lyrics to users. They, along with most tab and lyrics sites, remain open.
As far as I know, the MPA really hasn't made any effort to actually enforce or take action on the threats they made. Most speculate that they just used the 'scare tatic' to get their way.
In my own personal opinion, the worries of these music associations is quite farfetched. Tab and lyrics sites are notorious for being somewhat inaccurate, which is scary considering that these groups are going after things that almost violate their copyright, although they may not always do so.
What' next? Lawsuits against people who happen to overhear their coworkers playing a CD in the cubicle next door? Against people who sing along with their favorite song? Against songwriters who use words in their songs that happen to appear in the songs of others ('love,' 'you,' 'the'...)? It's a slippery slope that we know the music industry is dying to tumble down.
"Could you go without purchasing or even downloading music for 3 months? 6 months? a year? to prove a point?"
Geez, I hope so.
If you can't find enough music to listen to here or here or here or here or here or here then I pity you. But try here or here before giving up entirely.My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love