Slashdot Mirror
Record Store Owners Blame RIAA For Destroying Music Industry
techdirt writes "It's not like it hasn't been said many times before, but it's nice to see the NY Times running an opinion piece about the RIAA from a pair of record store owners which basically points out how at every opportunity, the RIAA has made the wrong move and made things worse: 'The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it's not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.' It's not every day that you see a NY Times piece use the word 'boneheadedness' to describe the strategy of an organization."
It's all over but the lawsuits.
Why are you suprised? It's an op-ed piece!
The fat lady is practising her lines.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
I go to the second largest undergraduate university in the country. Within the last year, both record (CDs) stores near our campus have closed. The one that closed last week had a sign on the door that said
"to all the people that download music, if you think you are only hurting big companies you are wrong. There are two working people with families who no longer have jobs because of music piracy."
I don't know who is to blame for the major decline in CD sales, the RIAA's stupidly clutching to the old music business model, or the students with 3000+ stolen songs on their ipods. I admit that I have pirated music, but I just listen to SIRIUS now and don't even own an iPod.
FTA:
"Meanwhile, the recording industry association continues to give the impression that it's doing something by occasionally threatening to sue college students who share their record collections online. But apart from scaring the dickens out of a few dozen kids, that's just an amusing sideshow."
Threatening to sue? Has the NY Times not noticed that they actually ARE suing a bunch of people? I think the amount of time and money that has been spent in courtrooms over actual lawsuits is a little more than "just an amusing sideshow."
I dislike the RIAA as much as the next guy, but I just couldn't help noticing that this article downplays the RIAA lawsuits quite a bit...it's not like they're not doing anything, they're just doing the WRONG things.
Hi, I'm looking for a song. I think it's called Ozymandias.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't know. Websites like last.fm which not only can expose you to unknown music but it can also tell you when they are coming to town, let you meet up with other people also attending the concert. Last.fm is what the record store used to be. Even though RIAA probably killed the industry, last.fm is showing how online music can be done and done correctly by keeping things open.
On that note, I hope they don't get bought out by some record label. I think it is important that they use their market power and grow themselves into a force for change in the record industry similar to what Apple has been doing with iTunes.
sri
You have to read their stuff through a special de-warping lense. Take this article with a big pinch of salt.
This industry had to die.
If the record stores are not controlling the market, and the radio is not the place where music is heard, then the artists win. If you find a new artist via MySpace, the artist wins.
The artists should stop signing slave labor (or worse, pay their employer for the privilege of working for them) contracts and sell their music directly; either online or they can burn a CD as easily as a record company can press one.
A band can play a small joint, record the show to a Notebook and burn a CD to sell to the patrons for $5. Profitable gig. DONE.
Yea, it won't sound like a studio job, but the music loving community doesn't really care that much.
Reading the article, it sounded more like another "mom and pop" type business going down to Walmart and the like and less with the RIAA. I will say though, I haven't purchased a CD since the RIAA took down Napster. I used to like sampling music. If I liked it, I would purchase the CD. I found some groups that way - music I wouldn't never listened to otherwise. I've purchased 1000s of CDs over the years but no more.
I'm all for bringing down the RIAA and all, but you could walk around downtown Manhattan handing out free bars of soild gold and it would still only be a matter of time before someone writes in to the Times to complain.
After all, they're the ones who choose not to purchase music from record stores...
Bullshit.
I do not own an iPod. I buy CD's. I rip the CD's and listen to them on my computer.
But I rarely buy any newer artists. And as was mentioned in the article, I don't buy ANOTHER "greatest hits" collection CD. If I buy something now, it is probably directly from the artist or at a used CD store.
There is too much crap and not enough substance coming from the RIAA now. They've done this to themselves. And it is the RIAA that is killing the smaller stores.
So you're saying that they don't write nearly enough about the Bush administration? Or Congress? Or the justice dept? (or government in general...)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The store owner seems to think that all downloads are illegal - once music became available online, the brick&mortar record store was in trouble. The ability for the casual music shopper to find the songs they want without having to leave the house, and the limited draw of the store pales. For every store with helpful, cheerful employees, there are (were?) 2 with condescending indie-alternative snobs who were rude to people just looking for what they wanted.
The RIAA has shown that even if it squashed illegal downloads, it would not save the small stores - TFA mentions the deals with the big box stores that undercut the small stores wholesale costs. The RIAA would love to cut out every bit of the middle, and not lower prices one cent.
I think the biggest RIAA mistake was that they denied humans rights to superior technologies.
The parent refers to the poem Ozymandias. I leave it to you as an exercise to fill in the blanks.
... near them, on the sand,
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." --
Exactly. There is always something that these stories leave out. The only thing that is critically certain is that the RIAA has killed their member's businesses, or is trying really *REALLY* hard to kill them.
Everyone in that business will get hurt in one way or another because the RIAA persecuted its customers. Way to go RIAA...
Aside from bashing them, I feel a bit sad because of the inevitable lull in available good music there will be between the death throws of the current music industry and when it reinvents itself, if it does.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Shamelessly plagiarized from the internets.
I used to be a music lover - I still am, in a way. But 10 years ago, one of my standard weekend occupations was a trip to Tower Records. There, I would buy 5-6 CDs of classical music. I would listen to them all, return a couple of them or so (I often bought the same piece played by different interpreters / orchestras, returning interpretations I found less interesting), and get 5-6 more CDs, and so on and so forth, a visit every other weekend on average.
Then came mp3's and copying. But I didn't do it. I liked having the albums - for some classical music, the booklet is interesting - and more than that, I didn't have the kind of time required to copy all the CDs I wanted to have. It was beautifully simple - buy, listen, return a few and buy many more. Money was not a problem, as I worked and I didn't have kids at the time. I didn't (and don't) have a TV - what harm there was in spending $40 / week for something I loved? It was below my threshold of attention.
But then Tower started to decline returns. That very day, I stopped buying CDs, and in the intervening years, I must have bought 10 of them in total - mostly folkloristic music I bought while traveling. I simply could not put up with the idea of plunging $18 to try a new interpretation of a Missa by Bach - and not being able to return it if I didn't like it.
So I stopped buying music altogether. I don't copy it either, because I still don't have a lot of time. Rather, other hobbies - digital photography, then kids, then other things still - gradually replaced the space music had in my life.
It is sad, but I am still young, and who knows, perhaps I will live again through an era where I can easily browse through all the interpretations of the Zauberflute, listen to them, and buy them at top quality.
So in my case, the music industry lost a customer, due purely to their fear of piracy.
Mod parent troll, or if you're generous, redundant...
Both the music store and the RIAA were SOLELY in the business of music promotion and distribution. They made their money off of distribution, but used their promotion as a client getter.
The internet is pretty much the best means of distributing information.
Just like the Horse and Buggy, the RIAA and the music stores were pretty much doomed the second that the internet was created, it just took some time for it to happen.
The only shame is they won't admit it what business they are in, trying to convince themselves and the rest of the world that they are in the production business, when they simply don't do that.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Radio stations were so bad for so long that people stopped
listening to the -primary- venue for new groups and songs and
just listened to the old stuff. People stopped getting excited
about new groups and new alblums and stopped buying.
And now Radio cant come back because the quality is so bad
compared with what they are used to listening to now.
any way to mod parent -1 Hoax?
I mean, c'mon. I'll bet my bottom dollar this is just some stupid hoax. It reads just like one of those eMails your mom sends you telling you to avoid Pseudoephedrine and that you should send this to EVERYONE in your address book ASAP.
Gimme a break.
blah blah blah
"It's tempting for us to gloat. By worrying more about quarterly profits than the bigger picture, by protecting their short-term interests without thinking about how to survive and prosper in the long run, record-industry bigwigs have got what was coming to them. It's a disaster they brought upon themselves."
Isn't this true for _all_ public traded companies in the US. Just look at GM, FORD and the like.
You have to blame it on the entitlement mentality of many Americans. "I WANT IT RIGHT NOW, I DON'T LIKE YOUR PRICE, SO I'LL JUST TAKE IT!!"
What is going to happen to our economy if we get to the point where you can build devices and even vehicles using some sort of nano replicator? Will we just tell the companies that make the designs to go fuck themselves, if they thing they should get any return on the design of a new ferrari, space ship, media player, etc.?
The simple fact of the matter is that music is not a necessity. You will not in any way, shape or form be harmed by it being priced outside of a range that you can afford or are willing to pay for. There is no argument for it being a "human right" except in the most perverse, materialistic, greedy sort of way.
Stop downloading it. If it is good enough for you to download off of a file sharing network, it is good enough for you to buy and actually, God forbid, support the musician that made it. I'm sick of the sophists who say "well, I'm just hurting the music label." Oh really, you bloody fucktard? What if it's an independent band? How good is their reach? How likely is your "free advertising" to get them a good gig anywhere near you and your "free advertisement?" Huh? Speak up. That's the golden question. All of this "free advertisement" that comes from basically stealing their music and giving away, how much is it actually getting bands good gigs?
It's been nearly 7 years since the media was predicting that post-Napster, and after broadband became accessible to most Americans, that an alternative marketplace would develop, exploiting the Internet. In another 7 years, we'll probably be no better off, either.
I see that the RIAA achieves the opposite of their stated intentions. That's exactly what our elected representatives do, as well. Every bill obtains the opposite to the claimed effect. So the folks at the RIAA have reached an equal level of incompetence. Gotta love it.
--- Bill
Srsly
FanFictionRecs.net
As another business owner, I think I know one big reason why your business is failing... You also forgot who your customer is... What right do you have to tell that kid what he can and cant do because of a major flaw your industries business model? This kid is only doing what makes sense to most logically minded individuals that just paid >= $15 for an album. If your industry charged $2 for that album, do you honestly think that anyone would bother the pain of burning it?
What your industry should have done is realised that the individual "value" of your product was going down and reduced your prices accordingly to compete. That is what the rest of us do. They didnt, because they (indluding you) forgot that you serve the customer music... You are not the gatekeeper of music.. Those days are over... The internet is not your competitor.
Also, do not pitty me with your "loose the house" crap. As another business owner, I completely understand this risk, and it is part of being a business owner. It is not societies responsability to prop up a failing industry that is committing suicide. It is dieing and either you change with it or go broke. Oh, and I have a little advice for you since you dont seem to have gotten it yet... Get the heck out of selling music CDs... Close the doors, lick your wounds, and move on. No move or lawsuit is going to save you...
Very interesting post. I want to see posts from people who are directly affected by the topic under discussion.
By the way, I have a friend who is an excellent aucoustic blues guitar and dobro player. Can he come give a concert for a few hours some evening in your store?
Oh, you don't allow music in your music store. You sell the packaged disks that come from the distributor. Music can only be played in a public forum like a bar. With special licenses and fees and union bullshit and dispensations from authorities and on and on.
It's too bad that both my friend and you can't make any money in the 'music' business. He creates music and you sell music; we buy music. Again it's too bad that you both can't work together. You could both make money. But, that's not the way that the music business has been set up by those people who are destroying the entire business by refusing to be flexible to the 21st century.
Oh well... Personally, I feel that I got a lifetime subscription to all music industry product when I spent most of my disposable income on music when I was a teenager. I don't 'buy' music product from music stores anymore. Oh, you disagree? Well, I'm just so sorry....Have a nice day!
Tastes changed. Young people don't listen so much to music anymore - they play WOW instead. There's a fixed number of hours in a year - if one activity grows, something else has to decline.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If the CD and the album are dying, it's the technology platform that killed them: individual songs delivered as electronic files. RIAA deserves relatively little credit for those kills -- like rain drops in the ocean.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
""I WANT IT RIGHT NOW, I DON'T LIKE YOUR PRICE, SO I'LL uhh Just buy it from a cheaper and more convienant outlet"
That is far more accurate statement.
hahaha.. like buying it supports a muscian any more.
The majority of down loaders and 'pirates' are not in America.
"What is going to happen to our economy if we get to the point where you can build devices and even vehicles using some sort of nano replicator?"
People will pay someone to design something off the grid, or relize that when they get it to fill there need, it will be available to everyone.
Of course your analogy doesn't even deserve the rating of 'Fuck Twit' because in that case you would still need material.
I would also like to point out that until 1976 music wasn't covered yet some great musicians managed to make a lot of money.
By the way, copyright is the privledge in the US, not a right. With one act, it could go away.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unless that organization is the GOP, then it's not limited to the op-ed section.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
The solution is to increase profit per unit. That is done by increasing unit price, to about $50 per album.
How do you get a consumers to buy music albums for $50 a piece? Take a page from the boxed set and extend the concept.
Ok, now that I've saved you, please cut me in on the action. No, really!
I've said it before, I'll say it again. the distributors of choice now are electronic on-demand outfits like iTunes and the rehabbed Napster.
if you're doing music, go to them. get a certificate of incorporation for "all legal businesses, including but not limited to music production and distribution," at most a couple thousand bucks in most states, see your lawyer. get on the books at the harry fox agency for licensing. then go to the online guys, get their sample contract, check it out, get your stuff up there. make some webnoise and start selling it yourself. don't do an exclusive contract with anybody, keep your own rights, sell your own CDs at your gigs. do something creative, at breaks have your CPFs put on yellow hats and orange vests and walk among the tables selling direct.
if you're good, and you have a place online to put 64k MP3 samples for folks to listen to, you'll get sales.
if not, at least you don't have the stench of record company weasels on you.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
When I hear people talk about piracy, I think about one thing from long ago. When MP3s were brand spanking new, you could find tons of pirate FTP sites and Usenet newsgroups carrying illegal rips of music. And then there was one site, MyMP3.com, that had a different policy: you could download songs only if you could prove you physically had a copy of the CD at hand (by providing a hash of actual data off the CD). Now, if you're trying to drive out piracy, which do you target: the tons of completely-illegal sites, or the one site trying to insure it doesn't hand out illegal copies?
The RIAA threw all it's resources into driving MyMP3.com out of business, putting almost nothing into tracking down and eliminating the completely pirate sites.
Sure, the RIAA certainly pisses where it lives, but the one thing is...we've been a music drought for some time now. What the industry is pushing is pure crap - everyone knows it. That's why sales are off, etc. Once the cycle bottoms and turns up, look out Jethro :)
back in the 20s and 30s, most labels would NOT license for broadcast, leading radio to set up their own studios, orchestras, and put out better stuff than the labels did.
the record industry wised up, and started getting all cuddly with radio. which became its jukebox and top promoter. you know, "Now on The Big Zero, 86th caller wins free tickets to Screaming Babies in concert at the Echobowl, 86th caller, GO! With! The! ZERO!! -- here's Pap and the Droolers -- get Nulled!"
here's a hint. those weren't row EE tickets bought that morning, no sir. they were front 5 row tickets the record companies reserved from sale for promotion purposes. you play enough Screaming Babies, you get the tickets and a box of free albums. give 'em out on air and at public events, push WZRO and the record, climb on the spiral and ride to the top of the charts....
then the top 40 of the week on WZRO 860 became the top 20, and then the top 15, and another wave of "kill the payola" went through the bizz, and now it's all hate talkers on either end of the political spectrum spitting on the station down on the other end of the dial. "them silly Internets things" came along, and radio and physical records became almost irrelevant overnight.
and this morning, there weren't any dinosaurs outside my door when I got up....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"to all the people that download music, if you think you are only hurting big companies you are wrong. There are two working people with families who no longer have jobs because of music piracy."
Music piracy has nothing to do with it. They don't have jobs anymore because record stores are a crappy way to distribute music when you have the internet. There is simply no reason to go to a physical place to buy a CD when you could download the same song from your house.
And this isn't something that just affects the music industry. I have always built my own computers from components. Back in the early 90's, I did that by going to a computer show and buying the components. Nowadays I order what I want from Newegg.
Why? Because it's BETTER. Does it suck that those computer fair operators have gone out of business? It does for them, but it doesn't suck for the rest of us who don't have to blow a Saturday driving to the fairgrounds to get parts that UPS will get us for the price of admission.
Even if nobody downloaded pirated music, the record companies STILL would have gone out of business, because $0.99 downloads are still better than $18 CDs or $3.99 singles.
Hell, the $13 CD I got on Amazon with free shipping is better than having to drive down to the record store. Record stores are closing because record stores just aren't needed anymore. Piracy has nothing to do with it.
paintball
Sounds like a genuine RIAA strategy.
the music industry has controlled the products they sell for ever. Artists have to change their music, clothings, personal style and even the things they say, to satisfy the corporations. On top of giving most of the money their creations make to the industry that gave them the chance to become famous if thet ever did, since a lot of music just gets stored with out seeing the light of day. It's time to take the middle man out of it and give full control to the people that make the music. True that they willingly signed the contract. And a lot of them made millions of it. Usually the most fake ones. So am happy to see this kind of industry vanish. they have leached too long off gifted people. Internet and technology in general have a liberating effect that give us the consumer more venues than the ones the industry has controlled.
The parent notes that the grandparent ("I am a record store owner blah blah blah") is just a copy-n-paste job . Which I suppose is oddly appropriate given the subject.
(BTW, if original author is around, books are EASIER to transfer over the net -- but most people like the physical product because it offers added value over just the content.)
I knew some people here and there who were in the music business and allot that wanted to be. I'll be honest, not all were good. But surprisingly some were great, well beyond anything you hear on the radio. It's hard to get heard, played on the radio, and hit the right ear to get the record contract. I only know a handful that did that. Even then there are problems. Some ended up being pawns in the scheme to bilk money out of a large label. One band was hardly promoted at all, after recording great album. In fact the ONLY place I heard them played was at big name gym chain.
Problems to beyond that. In one case a friend's band was to open for a well known band since they both had the same agent. It was a done deal, but at the last minute the big name band didn't want them to open. It appears to be out of fear that the opening act might be too good.
I also know people who have made it and done well, but they are the exception. To date it's only 1 person out of the many many many people I met in the LA, San Francisco, and Boston music scene.
Some bands I think people would enjoy.
Tsar (fist Album if my favorite)
Calendar Girls
Lee Press-on
Champion
Ken Layne (kenlayne.com)
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
>>Fair enough, but the point was that they couldn't get into this business, even if it existed, because piracy (and I doubt that their claim is substantively false) intervened.
Seems to me that the reason they couldn't get into it is that the RIAA wouldn't license their music for online distribution until WAY too late for the little guys.
>>It doesn't matter what you have for sale - if somebody is giving it away for free and there are no consequences, you will lose.
And yet, I hear of all these online, digital music stores.
That's what this whole situation is. It's all about greed.
You have the RIAA releasing TERRIBLE full length albums while abandoning the single. You have radio operators like Clear Channel only providing space for 2 or 3 new songs on their national playlists, and demanding that those 2 or 3 new songs be songs that appeal to the target advertiser's say are the most important (13-25 year olds.) 13-25 year olds, not having a lot of money, opt to pirate the ONE song they like rather than pay $20 for a CD full of terrible music. And the circle is complete!
And let's not even get to how the music, radio, and retailers are failing people over the age of 25. When the hell is the RIAA going to realize that if 13-25 year olds aren't going to BUY the music, they should start making music for the people who will shell out the money (ie, people over 25.)????
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
In truth, people are laying the blame at the feet of the RIAA because they want to do a bit of blameshifting. Of course music piracy is killing record stores and bleeding the record companies. I haven't bought a record in years - and I am far from alone. The RIAA is mainly guilty of trying to fend off the (almost) inevitable.
This is not primarily becasue the RIAA has "failed to adapt their business model" as the mantra goes. There is no business model that can preserve the profitability of RIAA members.
Nor is it because customers are boycotting because of "RIAA tactics" or other silly debating feints. It is simple: Piracy provides the product of the RIAA members and record stores at virtually zero marginal cost, with similar or better quality with similar or better ease-of-aquisition. All other factors are merely fluff. The same goes for non-online PC games, a market that major players are slowly abandoning.
Online legal downloading (itunes) will stop some of the bleeding - but the music industry will either have to force through draconian anti-piracy measures real soon (before a popular majority have a private interest in free downloading, and it becomes politically impossible to stop it), or it will simply have to adapt to a much leaner budget. Personally, in the case of the music industry, I don't care much. The trend cycle might slow down a bit, while non-commercial music becomes a tad bigger. No huge loss. Piracy of computer programs is a far more serious problem.
Man I wish I had mod points to give you.
"Movie theaters and HDTV may be their only saviors, in that it takes enormous (by current measure) amounts of bandwidth and storage to copy a quality movie."
100 mbit pipes are growing common in these parts - personally, I'm on a 24mbit pipe, and frequently get over 1/Mbyte (8mbit) per second download rates on the good DC++ hubs. The movie industry can't be resting easy here - they're next.
Exactly. Of course there are tons of factors influencing declining sales. But the majority of responders here seem to think that the effect of piracy is negligible, and I just don't see how you can make that argument with a straight face. Of course the widespread use of unauthorized P2P distribution is going to have *some* effect on sales -- especially in this case, where the market is made up of college students.
You assaulted a customer who was approaching the register to pay for your product? In order to sell more product?
You want to blacklist anyone who ever pirated music so that they are NOT ALLOWED to buy music with the idea that this will force people to buy more music? if someone downloads a song, then they are prohibited from ever again PAYING for a song, making music exclusively accessible through online pirating..... and this is supposed to make them... buy CDs? but wait... I thought that they were blacklisted..... I'm confused.
Obviously, you didn't write this, as it was plagiarized from the Internet, but the original author of this is as "boneheaded" as the RIAA. Can't you see that the idea is patently absurd. heh
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
IMHO, the reason the music business is failing is greed.
Among other things, I'm an media producer. As such, I've had to get CD replication done for clients. Even small runs of CD's - we're talking 5000 and up - the cost for full replication, including artwork, shipping, printing, shrink-wrapping, etc runs well under 1.50 per disc. So the price point for CD's is just ludicrous.
Combine that with the absolutely moronic state of A&R in the business, and you've got a recipe for failure.
I'm also a musician. One who has his own album. And I couldn't afford to get mass replication, but I am replicating it on my own. And I'm charging folks just under 10 bucks for the CD, which has 19 tracks on it. When you do the math, that's a pretty decent deal.
Lastly - I think we should be a bit cautious about tossing out the wheat with the chaff here. Just because you don't like every track on an album, doesn't mean it's not worth it in the long run to buy the album. Why? Because you are supporting the artist. Honestly, how many times have you bought an album on which you loved every single track? Me neither. But if the artist only gets the revenue from a single track, chances are they'll be working at Home Depot before too long. No one writes hits all the time, and part of supportin the arts is accepting that too.
M.
I see the point. I bought my first CD in over a year, the new one from the Shins. But if I hear a song I like, I check iTunes first, and just buy the song. I've been harping this point with others for a while, but the physical album is essentially dead. It sucks, especially for the small retailers, but people want the quick fix, not a body of work. There are very few albums which people can listen to start to finish.
I'm Peggy.
Heresy! How dare you question the RIAA's assessment that all the recording industry's woes are due to "pirates." There's absolutely no way the RIAA could be misinterpreting the situation. They're infallible. They said so themselves.
In today's age, your free time is under assault from hundreds of sources. Your free time is a resource that everyone wants access to. The youts [sic] of today have more choices than we did when we were kids. Listening to music used to be one of the mainstay activities. The music industry hasn't increased the "value" of listening to music, while other activities have increased their value to me. It's no surprise that the music industry is losing market share.
"[...] the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.'"
You don't make it pay, you offer a service that people pay you for. Hint: DRM is not a service that people want to pay for.
Doktor Avalanche wrote the MPAA a prescription, and they've been using amphetamine logic ever since. Seriously, Sisters of Mercy actually have enough geek factor to know what /dev/null is, have a drum machine built from military hardware, and seem to have broad enough intellectual and cultural understanding to be respectable. Personally, if there was ever a vote, I'd consider them to be more trustworthy guardians of the music industry than the RIAA. (However, if stage shows are anything to go by, Sabbat and Manowar are much more likely to take up swords and launch a revolution. Hmmm. That could be interesting. Sick, yes, but interesting.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I didn't realize. With this posting I'm undoing my +1 Interesting mod.
Hell yes. Back in the early days, I downloaded loads of stuff from Morpheus, and then Kazaa when Morpheus rose onto the radar enough to suck, and then when Kazaa got into the public eye, Usenet. I've got thousands of songs in a library with a few hundred ripped from my own CDs.
I still grab the occasional CD from Usenet, as it's the most convenient place to get full albums at good bit rates.
However, in the past year, I've bought more music from iTunes than I downloaded from Usenet. I only go to Usenet now if I can't find it in iTunes.
In my case, I'll gladly pay if you provide the product I want at a fair market price. I think a lot of people are in the same boat. There will always be piracy, but if you make a convenient, fair alternative to piracy, people will use it.
Hilarious! Who modded this troll? Shouldn't it be funny? I laughed.
Anyway, reguarding the RIAA ruining the industry, all I have to say is, "This is why monopolies are bad."
I must disagree. Downloaded music is free. It is easily copyable without loss of quality between copys.
That is all true. But it does not distinguish between songs downloaded legally without DRM, and those downloaded illegally - also with DRM.
The reason iTunes has been a success is because it equalizes the download process, while greatly improving searches - all the songs it offers are always there, unlike P2P. DRM was the last wall that kept some people away, but with mass-market legal downloads being DRm free there is simply very little reason to use P2P to get a track when iTunes works better and quicker and easier.
eMusic discovered the same thing long ago. Even some major label bands knew the secret for some time (like the Barenaked Ladies, who sell both MP3's and FLAC from their own website). If you offer easy access to downloaded music that users can do whatever they want with, they will come and buy even if the free stuff is there - which it always will be. Make your system easier than the free stuff and you can still sell music.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I do still frequent independant music shops, and I know several that are doing booming business. The trick is to tap into the local music scene, support the local artists (instore events), and try to encourage your own community. If you're just an indie music shop and your added value is that you know about music, well that's just not as much of an added value these days.
I do sympathise with these independant retailers as they battle the superstores who get exclusives, but those exclusives are really only for the top 40 acts anyhow. I got the impression top 40 wasn't meant to be the bread and butter of the indie shop anyhow...
Not included in the article,
http://www.nycd-online.com/
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
Actually it was my.mp3.com :D
:D
n shot.jpg
You could also buy CDs from 3 different retailers (only 3 signed up before we got sacked).
And INSTANTLY get access to the songs. Your cd would arrive days later. I had many an un-opened CD i purchased
Here is a pic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mymp3com_scree
Thats my all legal (well i guess not after the ruling) music collection, i was a systems admin there.
Piracy is killing the music industry.
The de-industrialisation of music?
Sounds good to me.
Industrialisation has caused so many problems for the world. Aside from the benefits of mass production of consumer items such as cars or refridgerators, industrialisation only brings dehumanisation.
The industrialisation of warfare.
The industrialisation of education.
The industrialisation of music.
All three have been distanced from reality; warfare has become so preposterously easy that nations walk into wars with their eyes shut and no idea what they are getting themselves into.
Education has become a process of (attempted) mass production of nearly identical minds.
Music? Music has become a process of mass production of bland repetitiveness.
Will the likes of Britney or Metallica be able to survive in a post-industrial music world? I doubt it. And the music stores which pander to this kind of rigid, unimaginitive pap? I doubt it.
There will be more live music and improvements in software and technologies which today contribute to 'piracy' will only help to return control over production to those who actually *create* music.
Its becoming easier and easier for 'ordinary' musicians to produce and distribute for themselves; music becomes a 'cottage industry' again.
Next on the de-industrialisation hit-list: education.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
That is, the model under which a designer spends a year coming up with a new model of Ferrari, and later hopes to get paid for it by taking a cut of every Ferrari sold, will be superseded by one in which the designer advertises his services to Ferrari enthusiasts, collects a few bucks each (held in escrow) from thousands of individuals, and then releases his new design once he's collected enough money.
A business model like that one cannot be undercut by new technology. Information can be copied, but labor and talent cannot. The artists' human effort is where the value in music ultimately comes from, and as long as there's demand for new music, there will be demand for musical talent. All they have to do is break themselves of the habit of thinking their job is to sell plastic discs, and realize that if they have talent, people will be willing to pay them directly for the time they spend writing and recording.
It sounds like a big change, but really it's just bringing the music industry up to parity with, well, pretty much every other industry in the world, where if you want to make twice as much money, you either find someone to agree to pay you twice as much (before you do the work), or you do twice as much work. People in the music industry have gotten used to the idea that they can perform a finite amount of work, but keep extracting more and more money from it indefinitely - which is cushy, but not sustainable. There is no argument for it being a "human right" except in the most perverse, materialistic, greedy sort of way. Well, I suppose that's one way to look at it. But if you're looking at it that way, there's also no argument for any "human right" to use calculus, or the speed of light, or to include the word "perverse" in your post. You didn't invent that word, did you? Someone else did, and doesn't he deserve to get paid if you're deriving benefit from it? Quick, go find the heirs of the guy who first uttered that word, and cut him a fat royalty check!
Get real. We as sentient beings do have the right to share information with each other, to use our minds, and to use technology to do what our minds cannot do alone. If you sing a song for me, I have the right to remember it, write it down, and sing it for someone else. You don't own those sound waves once they leave your mouth and enter my ears. You can't own a song any more than you can own a number. If you don't like the fact that people can share your songs once you sing them, then don't go around singing songs for free before anyone has agreed to pay you.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Not sure of the relevance to the point, just thought it was ironic.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Let's be clear about this. We keep talking about the RIAA like they are the baddies. They aren't. They are a smoke screen. They are nothing more than a trade group that represent the record labels, who are the real guilty parties here. EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner hide behind this RIAA label so that they distance themselves from the lawsuits, dumb-ass decisions, etc. Up-and-coming bands still sign every day to these labels because they don't realise that they are the puppeteers pulling the strings of the RIAA. The RIAA itself has not one single artist on its roster. It's classic misdirection. Let this RIAA 'persona' take the flack while the record companies themselves don't get tarred with the same brush. Until people stop talking about the RIAA and its deeds, and starting laying the blame at the record companies themselves, nothing will change.
small stores are going to bitch at the larger record chains and WalMarts and whomever. The reality is the small business cannot compete when they dont have an exclusive supply for their community. Small business is ideal for specialization, not in mass marketing.
I think satellite radio is doing its part to kill the traditional music industry as well. Radio music has sucked for a long time, necessitating the use of CD collections if I wanted a decent listening experience Guess what? I now have lots of commercial-free stations available on satellite radio, many of which are sufficiently specialized to provide just the music I want. I don't listen to particular music over and over, I like to hear a variety from a selected genre or sub-genre, only once in a while liking something enough to buy it.
One evening just this week I heard two tracks that I really liked. After much research I found them (a couple of reasonably rare imports on Amazon), and decided I didn't really want them that much anyway. There will be new tracks on the radio tomorrow, and I'll like them too.
The more choices we have, the less we'll use each choice and the more we'll gravitate towards the most convenient ones. Another example: once the cable companies get their act together and have a truly comprehensive library of HD movies available on demand, Netflix and Blockbuster can kiss their business goodbye as well.
--- JurassicPizza
Realize that not everyone considers data duplication to be immoral. Those who DO consider it to be immoral are the ones that come up with very ill-fitting analogies that liken data to physical property.
Data is not physical property. It does not follow the same rules, neither physically nor morally. It is fundamentally different and the problems the industry is facing are a direct result of an inability to understand the differences.
But whenever I complain about difficulties in my industry, I am told to adapt, reapply my resources to a different industry, or creatively reinvent them within the industry. That is capitalism, or so I am told. Well, since that is the answer I have been given, it is now the answer I give.
Adapt. Adapt your moral sense to better fit the way data actually works, and adapt your business model as well.
Nice recycling of a previous post from last month
Oh, and here too...not even on Slashdot October 2003
And here
Hell, I'm not going to point out more, go find them yourself
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
I think the real question everyone wants to know is, who would pirate christian rock CDs?
Wait, What?
I have no aversion to buying music. My entire life, I have spent many hours in record stores, and had over 1000 LPs at one time. Even once CDs became popular, I made the 90-minute trip each way to a Tower Records store, because they had the best selection around. Problem is, over time, my musical tastes changed, became more obscure, and the music became very difficult to find in retail stores. I had a small used shop near me with a knowledgeable employee on similar brainwaves as me, and through him I continued to fine tune my music. Later, I changed tracks again musically, but still wasn't going to find new stuff in stores. Online stores have all this. I don't need to re-purchase all my old ELP CDs, and there aren't any new ones coming out. The Sam GOody in the mall isn't going to carry a lot of Norwegian death metal either.
Back when I first got on usenet around 90-91, and discovered progressive rock discussion groups, full of people with similar tastes in music, I was amazed. Now I could find out about things that I couldn't even buy. Tape trading was still popular among that crowd, as few of us could spend the $30 for a imported CD that you didn't even know if you liked. I did buy some that I really got into though, but it wasn't in B&M stores. Once the mp3s got going it was more of the same. I can guarantee that Napster got me to ultimatly purchase far more music than I would have otherwise, because I could find what I liked. I go to at least 20 shows a year as well, and continue to support my favorite bands. Often traveling to other countries to see them since they don't have much of a fan base in this country. Which kind of comes around to my main point. As my knowledge of the world grew, so did my music, and that purchasing could no longer be constrained to my local record store.
I feel for the small B&M music stores, but just like hat makers, times are changing.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
Unfortunately it is all too common to see a giant business overrun a small business, but the RIAA was the giant business. They had the opportunity to lead the market, but they just repeatedly dropped the ball over and over. There wasn't much in the way of innovation that you could have done to save your online book sales, but the RIAA only wants to innovate in ways that alienate their customers (lots of R&D to the DRM). They have made such an amazing series of bad decisions it should be used in business school text books as "what not to do". I don't see how the upper management of most major labels havn't all been fired and replaced by those with a clue.
We are all just people.
I think the real question everyone wants to know is, who would pirate christian rock CDs?
Satanists. So they could can play the music backwards.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
They often have a boat load of knowledge that they are willing to share as well.
For example:
I'll go to a "Mom and Pop" store to by my matrials for home improvements and even pay more. If the people running the place can give me good advice.
Same with music stores. unfortunatly I have seen the service in these stores decline sharply.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Your idea might work, but this would be a major restructuring for it to be implemented in every sector of the economy. For artists its simple: Well-off people feed them and house them as long as they are famous, and for most of them they are famous as long as they are performing music that people like. Maybe a few big-time acts would get so famous that they could just leech for the rest of their lives.
But where would the food come from? Joe Farmer. And Joe Farmer gets some fame for being the person that gives vegetables to Steve Jobs' mansion or all the Luigi's Italian Restaurant's in New Jersey. But who gives Joe Farmer the bio-diesel for his tractor? Fred Bio-diesel Refiner. And Fred Refiner gets his fame for providing the bio-diesel to the man who provides the vegetables to the restaurant that feeds lots of famous people. I don't see fame trickling-down enough to motivate people on the bottom-side of such an economy (without it turning into bartering, charitable patronage, or true communism). Furthermore you would have to have some kind of scale for how famous you were. And if you weren't that famous and overused your limited fame would you go bankrupt?
There are a lot of books in the filesharing networks, from what I see mostly technical (programing etc) and Scifi/Fantasy. "Ripping" books in a useful way is MUCH more work than music (scanning, ocr, proofreading, maybe formatting), and I agree that most people will rather buy a real book than read at the screen, so piracy seems unlikely to become a big issue.
Even though, I have already read a lot of books in the small display of my Palm Zire, and got used to it, and I could well imagine many other people reading novels, technical books (think about search functions) and other stuff once cheap and comfortable eBook-Readers hit the market. Then, book piracy might well become an issue to consider.
The sad thing is that most people are as clueless as you, and as a result, most of the US looks like one big fucking parking lot. What an empty, depressing life people like you must lead...
I don't respond to AC's.
I think it's worth noting that one of the only reasons that this controversy began in the first place is that we are all accustomed to large amounts of money being associated with the music industry. Ironically, the biggest amounts of money are associated with a very small percentage of the performers, and definitely not with the best music. In other words, CD's cost so much because we don't bat an eye at the thought of millionaire rock stars, multi-million dollar live performances, and billion dollar companies behind it all.
Of course, none of that is really necessary for the production and distribution of good music anymore. Just look at the proliferation of internet radio and things like Pandora.
Compare the music industry with the writing industry. No one thinks about famous authors as millionaires. There isn't a very substantial book piracy industry (in the US, anyway) because people that want to read books don't usually hesitate to pay for them. It's much easier to steal from someone you think is very, very wealthy.
I realize that not all of the cost of a given musical product goes to the performer; in fact, I've heard that only a very small percentage does. Nevertheless, the perception is that most of the money goes in the pockets of people who have more money than you do.
Fortunately, the information superhighway has the potential to mitigate this effect entirely. Let us hope the RIAA and the CRB do not slam the door on that, too.
I think the reasons are legio.
For one thing, kids today grow up without a stereo system. You can't buy them anymore, except at ridiculously high prices from people who also sell you $2500 power cables and volume knobs. Try to go to Best Buy or Circuit City to buy a stereo amp, standalone CD player and tuner. You can't!
What you have today are "entertainment centers" where the main focus is video. Well, I for one, don't like crawling on the floor under the TV to put in a CD (and can't do that if others want to watch TV/Video). Screw that.
Then there's portable players. Well, they are nice and all, but I can't put a CD into them. If I buy a CD, I first have to rip it, and then transfer it. That's just too much work, so screw that too.
What are we left with? Playing CDs on the computer. Which for one thing is noisy and far from HiFi, but also is uniquely equipped to download and play songs as files...
Now if I could buy a $10 stamp sized memory device with an album on it that would actually fit in all my portable and stationary players, and I wouldn't have to bend down to the floor to use an "entertainment center", then I would start buying albums at the rate I used to. But if I can't listen to the albums conveniently, it's not going to happen. The music industry has to adjust to me, and not the other way around. And I'm now used to the portable devices being much smaller than a CD - no way would I want to lug around a CD walkman again.
And I still remember good old stereo systems, where people could listen together (which is a unique way of promotion). Make them appear again. Subsidise them if you have to, but get the stereo away from the TV, so people can sit down and listen to music again. Then they'll buy music again.
Oh, and lest I forget -- we aren't interested in Greatest Soul Hits Volume 27. Dear labels, take a chance on bringing in new artists, or give the existing ones a bit more artistic freedom to come out with new stuff. Yes, some of them will flop. That was expected, and how you did business in the past. Nowadays, you'd rather put out only albums that probably sells enough to recover the costs, because you're afraid of your job. Screw that - you won't get any fat bonuses unless you discover the next Elvis, Michael Jackson, Genesis or Pink Floyd. And you won't do that if all you put out is the same regurgitated cud. Take a chance. Live a little. And give people what your gut tells you, not what research shows will most likely go in black figures.
Going into a big storem getting what you want cheaper is some how depressing?
Do you actually ahve some relevant points, are are you just an ass?
I don't know where you live, but most of the US does not look like one big parking lot.
When mom and pop stores offer something to compete in the market, then they can make sales.
Going into a smelly store, to not find what I want and get a surley attitude from the tatooed, pierced, slack jaw behind the counter isn't exactly going to get me to come back.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Simple. Slashdotters are a subset of a larger culture that values money above all else. If their precious $50/hour cushy programming job is threatened, then it's bad. If somebody else's way of life goes away altogether, they don't give a shit. Same as everybody else. That's why the US looks like a giant Big-Box parking lot today... people can't think beyond their own wallets.
I don't respond to AC's.
major p2p services were reporting billions in ad revenue before they were sued into oblivion, but did the music industry get the hint and "out p2p" the p2p providers? no, they continued their rediculous demands for iron control over what music i'm allowed to listen to, how, in what format, and where, even in my own house!
welcome to the future of the music industry, scorned and rejected for their rediculous demands for control over our stuff.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The RIAA is really off base about piracy, when a major part of their decline is due to the demographic shift of the US population. The baby boomers are older, and have a disproportionate share of disposable income for entertainment. They tend to be less interested in video games, and not as interested in the fare which tends to dominate the movie theatres. In short, a wealthy group of people who grew up listening to music on the radio when there were fewer choices for their entertainment doller and inclined to choose it over most other forms of entertainment.
So, what does the music industry offer this huge group of potential consumers?
1) Music acts who have been marketed and chosen based on their appearance on videos rather than musical talent.
2) Music acts consisting of people who are 18 to 24 years old. 30 year old musicians? Hell, they don't even play those on VH-1 any more. Oddly enough, musicians like Joan Baez, Ry Cooder, and others who were big in the 60s, when these baby boomers first started listening to the radio, can't even get arrested in the music industry.
3) Music acts who are rehashing the same music baby boomers bought 30 years ago. Music trends are cyclical, and I've already got music from 3 discrete generations of bands that sound like the Stones.
4) An opportunity to re-buy our record collections yet again. It's bad enough that the RIAA complained when we wanted to tape our vinyl LPs so we could listen on portable devices and our cars. No, they wanted to sell us cassettes. Then CDs.
5) Reduced choice in an ever-expanding universe of choices. Catalogs are clogged with mediocre music, and the labels are simultaneously taking lots of things out of print. In the meantime, the digital world and business models like Amazon.com are trending towards the infinitely deep catalog, and the RIAA just doesn't get it. I understand that there isn't enough potential business to justify a CD re-pressing of the Fabulous Poodles record from 1980, that's probably at least $2000 in costs, plus the distribution, etc. However, encoding that record from the CD and distributing it digitally is probably less than $2 of labor. I guarantee they'd get a much higher return on investment than they get from letting it die.
One of the quiet successes of iTunes is its deep catalog of jazz, classical and baby-boomer-friendly acts. For someone like me who is technically quite capable of encoding music from my old collection, but far too busy to bother, 99 cents is a very fair deal for the one song I recall from an old album. I buy new music, too, but so much of what is pushed by the major labels is just not even aimed at me.
If the RIAA was actually courting customers rather than suing them, they would be much healthier. As it is, their pursuit of the shallow teen dollar is biting them in the ass as their audience continues to skew older. Meanwhile, the teens they are actively pursuing have a completely different outlook about their entertainment choices. Hell, who ever thought that a whole genre of music would ever appear based on cheesy videogame soundtracks from the 80s?
the 3 bucks is for the surly employees and the privlege of smelling that fat person in front of you.
Wont you think of the surly?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Going into a big storem getting what you want cheaper is some how depressing?
Yes, and it's even more depressing that most people (like you) couldn't care less. Let me guess... you live in a generic apartment (with cable TV!), you wear khaki pants, a shirt two sizes too big to hid your gut, and you drive either a Saturn, or a small Toyota or Honda, right? If I have to explain it, the point is already lost.
I don't respond to AC's.
Your daughter is a whore anyway.
I've often felt that an illegal downloader could make amends by Paypal-ing a few dollars (~ $5-$10) directly to the artist. This would be FAR more money than the vast majority gets from the record labels. Yes, I acknowledge that marketing, etc costs money, but CERTAINLY not 90% of the purchase price. As a matter of principle, I don't Napster/Limewire/whatever. But I WOULD adhere to this idea if I wasn't afraid of the RIAA swooping in on me for circumventing them. So, in the end, I don't buy any new music; I refuse to find those jackals. XM Radio is fine for me.
Did anybody else catch the irony of him referencing Big Brother for his pitch to create a massive national pirate blacklist?
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
I wonder how many of the buggy whip manufacturers turned it into a wrenching personal drama between good and evil...
In any event, it appears (assuming of course your story is true) that you were once astute enough to recognise a rising fashion and you rode it. Now that fashion is fading out, there will be something else.
So don't be stuck -- all your self-pity and recrimination will help you not a bit. Get some emotional clarity instead and then you may experience more prosperity.
Hopefully doing something less harmful than supporting the record industry's deplorable activities.
Caveat Utilitor
I just bought the who's next album on Itunes. 16 tracks cost $9.99 when bought together. or I could buy each track individually at $.99. Doing the math, by buying the whole album I bought each track at $.63 cents. $9.99/16 songs = $.624 per song. I saved .38 cents on each song. Also since it is in apple lossless, I get to burn a CD for my collection. all I'm missing is the artwork. I didn't have to leave my chair, didn't have to start the car and use gas (which can be factored into the overall cost of buying an album). before that I bought. The album costs $12-$14 in most stores. which at its worst would be $.875 per song.
I'm not pirating, and yet I saved money. I wonder why small stores are going away. it sucks
but times are changing.
If you plant ice, your gonna' harvest wind.
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.
You must be new here.
This particular comment is posted with monotonous frequency.
To Mr. record store owner,
This is what you business model looks like.
1) Buy little closed up boxes from big cartels
2) Hire minum wage teen ages to run cash register
3) Hope people buy from you and not the store
just like your just down the block.
Of course you are going broke? You are selling
closed boxes that you add no value to. You are
not different from from the store owners who
sells cans of Pesi and Coke.
What you need to do is add value. Give me a
reason to come into your store and not just
go to Anazon.com Some Ideas
Have real, true experts on the floor. People who
know music. They can talk to customers and
find then stuff they don't already know about.
Why not offer to load up a customer's iPod for
him if he buys something
Build a studio in the back and record un-signed local
bands and build exclusive product. Become
a "label" Bring you portable studio to bars and
clubs and record live.
The prices need to come down. A CD should
sell for under $10
Make you product on demand -- burd the disks
at the register or offer to load up
If you continue to sell the same stuff I can buy
anyplace with no added value I will go to Amazon
where I save Money, gas, and time. So give me
something I can ONLY get in your store
What IS sad, however, is that people don't consider $15 a good deal for an hours worth of music. As a musician, that just makes me sad. Maybe the quality of the goods need to go up, but $10-$15 seems like a steal if you've just gotten a great album you're going to be listening to for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, most people don't think of music that way... it's like fast food: you eat it, shit it, and forget about it.
I don't know about you guys, but I get fast food because my body need neurishment and I'm in a hurry. I wouldn't buy it if I didn't get hungry. We don't NEED music, though. We've lived for eons without walkman or iPods. Why, now, do we need music that badly that we're willing to pay shit to listen to shit? I don't know about you, but I don't see this as victory for the music world in the slightest.
I'm not defending the RIAA in the slightest... on the contrary, I think they're the biggest culprit in spreading this diseased culture.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
RIAA hung themselves, the music stores that are going out of business bet on a loser horse, tough-shit folks.
....).
MS is moving with the same loser-biz-model in the software market. IPR laws are destroying the USA economy by protecting failing legacy-businesses and preventing the growth of new economic models of competitive capitalism. Today the USA has corporatist-communism welfare, it ain't capitalism.
Also, citizen democracy is dying a cancerous death with dogmatic pseudo-patriotism and faux-prophet Christianity. USA Americans bullshit themselves far more than the rest of the world. As a mater of fact, during my recent trip to Europe, a German couple told me a few jokes. It was like hearing the Polish/Jewish (very offensive) jokes of the 1970's with a much funnier updated twist about Americans (not
You would not believe, that couple had me laughing as hard as George Carlin did when I was high on weed and mescaline in an LA comedy club.
How many Americans does it take to kill a terrorist? One hell of a lot more than 10K.
How many Americans does it take to destroy a country? One idiot and some friends.
Do Americans like sex? No, but they have some butt fucking fun sinning, after preaching.
Why are Americans called the blue-pill people? because they're SMERFS (SadoMasochistic Egotistical Rude Fools).
It took a while and a couple beers for me to start laughing, but then they had me rolling for about an hour.
Imagine, I was shocked, Germans with a sense of humor and they did it all in English with a slightly slurred German accent.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I couldn't agree more.
That depends. If you count Veggie Rocks!, then, well, guilty. But Reliant K did Pirates Who Don't Do Anything! I mean, who would pass that up?
captcha: geranium. Temptation to say "gertie": high
ah, I remember that stuff about "backwards masking" when I was young in church. The pastors claimed you could hear satanic messages and occult beliefs when playing hard rock backwards. The hoot was, just play for example an Iron Maiden song *forwards*
Stop pirating music! If you stop, we have much greater leverage against the RIAA and their campaigns. We could get them to stop the lawsuits, possibly reverse some of the DMCA laws that we don't like, and even get them to lower their prices. Once you prove that it's their prices and business model that is killing them, then they have no choice but to stop whinging.
It's going to be difficult, since the RIAA will kick up a fuss. Perhaps fund a few studies here, lobby a few congressmen there, you know what I mean. Nevertheless, the proof would lie in the dwindling P2P networks, with infringing files becoming more and more rare. Even the people determined to pirate would be hard-pressed to find the files they are looking for. The whole affair, once momentum is gained, would become easier and easier.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Of course that analogy is wrong because you can't play that movie over and over again unless you buy it for home use.
Secondly, the argument "you've just gotten a great album you're going to be listening to for the rest of your life." is also not valid. Most albums I buy, I listen to 4-5 songs from for awhile, then they drift off, replaced by new songs. And who knows how long I will be able to play those songs from CD. At some point CDs will go the way of 8-track tapes.
Insert obligatory comment about the RIAA being a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes...
I am not a resource! I am a free man!
What pissed me off was the Iron Maiden song "Still Life" from "Piece of Mind". After years of trying to figure out what the backwards message said, I finally had a computer where I could record it and play it backwards. When played backwards, it was still just jibberish. Arrrggg....
I figured out it was more fun to learn how to play music myself. Longer warm up time, shorter playlist, and more limited portability (guitar doesn't really travel well in the subway). But the enjoyment is about fifty times higher for picking out 'House of the Rising Sun' than listening to recycled boy band song #19.
Eventually I hope to learn to read music and write my own. And that too will take a while. But I'd rather take the next four years to get to a tolerable level of ability and enjoy every bit of it than give one more dime to an industry and system that thinks it has a monopoly on culture and that it has the right the dictate to you and me what we enjoy.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Little Background info on book piracy.
Around 10-12 years ago i got into this as i was after a series of books by barry sadler that went out of publication in the 80s and i couldnt find them anywhere on the net or in shops to buy, not even to borrow from my library.
So i join the bookz scene on undernet, looking around for them there and bingo they had just 1 but that was still 1 more then i was able to find anywhere else!
I ask the regulars in the room for any help if they could suggest other places for me to try, none could suggest anything that i hadnt already tried though, but then about 3-4 days later, had a nice surprise, one of the regulars had remembered me asking for help while they were at there local library and did a quick look and found another one and had scanned it in for me, couldnt believe it in just under a week i had managed to find another 2 in the series!
It then snowballed from there, other members then went out and found a couple more, one person even got one in a second hand shop and posted it to me to keep so long as i scanned it in.
From here i listed all my books and offered em out for scanning as i had some rare and out of print books, and got a coule of hundred requests! luckily mostly for the same books, but damned if i didnt scan em all in though.
anyway end of the boring background stuff of how i got into it.
When #bookz was originally started it was just a place to trade rare and out of print books, but it snowballed from there with people asking for the latest books from places where they werent able to get it themselves, I.E. living overseas and couldnt get the book in english.
Now adays though pretty much any new book out is available on the net within hours if you know where to look, but still i personally dont believe it has hurt the book industry as most people will realise that downloaded books are near useless (unless you can use the work printer on the sly), as it puts a hell of a strain on your eyes trying to read em, And upto a few years ago (havent check lately) there where no suitable portable devices that wouldnt kill your eyes staring at them reading for hours on end.
I do remember when the 4th harry potter book came out though, a group of people all did the chapters individually and proofread just there own chapter, it took about an hour from it being released at midnight to being on the net.
The average size of an ebook is about 100-200k so long as it doesnt have the covers, but even then thats about 500k with em, they are much easier to copy between people as most can download that in seconds.
"Casca"
P.s. posting AC for obvious reasons
P.p.s please ignore all spelling and grammar errors as its half 2 in the morning for me
think about it, the quality of what's being released has been going down, way down, and people are still "buying it." regardless of the cruddy quality, they're "listening" to it, not just because so few of us are audiophiles. people (general, blanket statement) don't seem to care about music anymore, they just want some sort of background noise with words that they can focus on. there isn't enough time to pay attention to music, to sit down and appreciate it, but (too many) people still want it to drown out the world (which is where the ipod comes in to play - pun intended).
now that i devote more attention to it, the general populous doesn't seem to be interested in quality music (maybe they never were?); however, the advent of all of the digital media has made it much easier to get all of the soma that joe public can handle, but for free.
interesting and confusing is the idea that the push for quality in films seems to be grabbing the public's interest... why not do this for audio products as well? this could open up a stronger revenue stream from something that was pretty weak, quality stereo components. forget the LOUD stuff, find something that sounds good, then worry about high volume (as most of us know, that means spending more than just buying loud/quality).
I can honestly say that if CDs were $2, I would never even consider copying a cd I didn't buy. If I knew for a fact that the CDs would still be available forever at $2 without DRM, I would probably also stop my household policy that original discs do not leave the house. Only copies go in the car. If they were $2 and I didn't have to worry about DBD (Defective By Design) problems, I can honestly say that my household CD purchases would be way more than 15 times what it is now. I used to buy at least an album a week. Once the DBD discs started coming out, I pretty much quite buying music. My wife was buying a little more than me. Since she got one DBD disc, she has not bought a single album. Also, we are not 'We just want to pay for one song' people. We want albums.
Of course if Movies were $4, I wouldn't rent. I would just buy tons of movies. If last generation games were sold at $2 a piece, I would be happy to subscribe to auto purchase whatever they sent me. In fact I have done that in the past. I don't remember the magazine name, but about 10 years ago, there was a PC gaming magazine that came with a free full (OLD) commercial game in every issue. I loved that. I didn't really care about the magazine. Some of the games sucked. But, every month, I got a full commercial game to play for $2 or $3.
The great music of the 20th century was created by people who played live most nights of the week. As the 80s and MTV kicked into gear there were less gigs to go around, as protools came in you no longer had to be able to sing in tune. We now have a generation that thinks of music as something that they are entitled to. To make it, you recycle the moves of the past with your cheap home protools rig and look great. There is an almost unlimited supply of quality pop culture from the previous century, and best of all, it's all free.
If you want good music in the future, support live music. See bands, buy their disks at their gigs. There's still going to be music and musicians, it's the vast support employment engines that grew up around 20th century media that are going away. If you wanted to be a critic or a publicist, think again. And remember, your other skills are worth no more than anyone else in the world, you'll just pay higher rent.
As a long time pro, times couldn't be better. People still drink beer and when they dance they hook up and the species continues. And we sell in the EU, keep all the money, and go there twice a year at a large profit.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
So in other words, make DVDs with music...nobody will ever pirate that
DVD movies are chock full of extra features; most people don't watch them.
Giving people who actually buy CDs something that keeps their attention, is like giving gum to birds. They either don't eat it, or - oops.
I like some dvd extra features, but a music version of that for $50~$500 (this IS the RIAA we're talking about) you can bet your sweet @#$ I'll look for a torrent first.
BTW, I've got a great business opportunity for you.
You can earn $0.01 per visitor, in ad revenue, hosting just about any content you'd like, from your computer.
Am I the best or what? You don't even have to pay me royalties for taking advantage of MY "consumer referral service".
Eat your heart out, RIAA... No, Really!
I buy bottled water because I want the water and the bottle, to put more water in it.
And going off on a tangent here, the recording industry's scared shitless the music market is going to fragment, with everyone and his brother listening to exactly the music they like. Right now they can pump out Britney Spears CDs by the millions and rake in the dough with economies of scale. You couldn't do that in a fractured market. That's why the shut down Napster and (more so) mp3.com. That's why they move so slow on digital downloads. They're trying to do it w/o breaking up the market they've spent the last few decades consolidating.
Oh, and I miss mp3.com so much. emusic is kinda neat, but there were so many bands that put their music up there that I would never have heard of. Frostweaver, Powerquest, Dragonforce, Saboten, Ravenlords. Myspace just doesn't attract the bands the same way, nothing does. Sucks. I hate the RIAA.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Any chance of modding this up to Score:6 infuckingcredible?
Most of the stuff on
It was a hell of a lot more than not understanding his audience. For one thing, the RIAA jacked up the cost of CDs to mom and pop shops like his, mean while letting Walmart sell the same CDs at cost or a loss. That's just evil. Also, they were pushing bands tailored for singles while foisting full albums on the shops. That's just dumb. Besides, the author wasn't lamenting that he couldn't make a living, he was lamenting he couldn't make a living running a record store anymore.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm going to hit the parent again with Score:6 infuckingcredible.
Most of the stuff on
You make an excellent point that speaks to the industry's lack of imagination as a whole. I see a lot of concerts and I generally prefer the live versions to the studio recorded songs of the artists I like. For years, I have been collecting bootlegged recordings of concerts, particularly those I have attended. To me, there is nothing like remembering the performance as I listen to the music recorded at that very show.
That said, how hard would it be to record the music in real-time, upload it to a few servers and provide kiosks for patrons to pay $10 and copy the show *they just heard* onto a USB drive they brought to the show? No DRM bullshit. No pre-approved licensed playback devices. Just pure, unfettered MP3. I would gladly pay it because bootleg trading is an enormous fucking hassle and you have to take many precautions to keep from getting screwed by crappy traders. The cost to the record companies is minimal as they only have to invest in the fixed cost of some hardware. Just like that, another revenue stream is born.
Instead, they spend their time deciding if they should allow a song to be played three times should someone jizz it from one Zune to another. The music industry isn't succeeding because they aren't even trying.
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
and while the RIAA is happy to take your money for a Beatles album when you're 40, they don't need it to survive. That's why music sucks so much in this country, and why they've been getting away with $20 dollar CDs. It's all about the Teenagers, with their part time jobs, no responsibilities and lots of disposable income.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Fngnavfgf. Fb gurl pbhyq pna cynl gur zhfvp onpxjneqf.
15 bucks is a gouging ripoff for some bits on a 25 cent plastic disk. You think you are the only musician in the world? How about charging 1.50 to three dollars tops instead, and let folks get a buncha other bands works for that 15? Download, you could still make a profit.
It's not that people don't want to pay, it's that they want a lot of music, and at 15 a pop it adds up quick, and it is a pure d ripoff price anymore, because the technological advances have made duplicating digital bits incredibly cheap. Sure, YOUR 15 dollars is just 15 bucks, but most folks might want 1,000 albums or something like that. That's now FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Do you get it NOW? Is it sinking in yet?? This isn't chump change anymore. Musicians would sell more, and be better off, the cheaper they make their copies go for. Make your copiesa at an "impiulse buy" price, they will sell lots more. Instead, you drove your customer base to p2p, because you went along with the mafiaa pure gouge prices, and you have brainwashed yourself to think that it isn't gouging. Hello, it is, that's why Cd sales are dropping, because it's a rip! We have "duplicators" now that can provide that amount of data your song or album represents for PENNIES. WHY do you need to make thousands percent profit??? Just "because" it's the old pricing model from 1989 or something? We have advanced tech now, it is the 21st century, get with the program and enjoy it! Be part of it, help your fellow musicians, all of you make your stuff cheaper, as cheap as modern tech can make it, then everyone gets a full smorgasbord of music for cheap! And you'll still make money! What's not to like?
I consider $15 a good deal for an hour's worth of music. That is, live music of a style that I like played by talented musicians. A CD is AT BEST 2 out of 3 - most don't even cover one. And you don't know until you listen to it!
So, I buy concert tickets. Anywhere from $30-$120 for a few hours of music. Limewire, bittorrent? Free advertising. If I like your music (and remember I won't like your music if I haven't heard it, and if I haven't downloaded it I haven't heard it) then I'll buy a ticket to your concert when you play in my city. I might even buy a t-shirt if I like the show. But I'll be damned if I'm going to pay (or watch/listen to ads for stuff I don't want) to find out if I want to go to your concert.
As for artists that don't play live: get a job. Most writers have real jobs, so what makes you so special? I highly doubt you spend 40 hours a week working on your next album, so why should I pay for you to sit beside the pool drinking cocktails just because you mixed together an hour of beats?
It's not exactly rocket surgery.
I'm glad the labels are to stupid to be less greedy even at the cost of their business.
We are overdue for a shake-up to remove the talentless redundant leeches like Simon Cowell and the crappy bland muzak they promote.
Oh boy ... this gem again. At least change SOME of the words.
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
The RIAA has conviently ignored the impact of DVDs. People spend a lot of money on DVDs, money that in many cases would have been spent on music if DVDs didn't exist. I suspect this is the most significant factor in the music industries declining fortunes, not piracy. People have X dollars to spend on entertainment and that money is being spent on different things than it was 10 years ago. DVDs and games are up, music is down.
I still haven't seen the movie about the RIAA but I would guess they are all fanatical religious types.
people don't consider $15 a good deal for an hours worth of music
Why do you find this surprising? I would consider paying $5-15 for a couple of hours of LIVE music, especially when I can stand right next to the stage. That making a copy of a digital recording should be more expensive is totally absurd.
They don't play Christian rock backwards to hear hidden messages. They play Christian rock backwards to make it sound better.
This is one of the most appropriate and relevant quotes on I've seen about the RIAA and all these articles about what they are doing and not doing:
.99c a song is a bit over priced, but I'd be somewhat willing to pay for it and I wouldn't mind *too much* -- but when there is access to songs at .5c and .10c a piece, that's a little more reasonable to me. That's what I'm willing to pay (and I do from allofmp3 of course). I haven't downloaded music from P2P or FTP in years... I'm more than willing to pay for the convenience and quality of allofmp3. So are many other people. We've always been willing to pay for it - most have not been willing to over-pay for it. They've over-paid in the past because there was no other option.
... after seeing the lengths they have gone to corrupt the legal system, the business model and everything else, I simply just don't care about paying them anything, ever. I will pay for a convenience, but I won't pay for the content. If that means no more content is being made, fine... I can do without. I will, however, pay artists directly for what they are worth. As soon as I can go to an artists website and be sure the funds are going to them, not the RIAA, I will happily download from there.
"At this point, it may be too late to win back disgruntled music lovers no matter what they do. As one music industry lawyer, Ken Hertz, said recently, "The consumer's conscience, which is all we had left, that's gone, too.""
It really strikes a cord with me, and I'm sure many others. I was (and still am) more than willing to pay for music. I am not willing to over-pay for music. I never liked paying $15+ for a CD with 1 song I liked on it. It's over priced, always has been.
However, getting back to my original point - after the RIAA's antics, I have absolutely no remorse about downloading from allofmp3, or even using P2P to get the music I want. The quote is dead accurate... the last currency they had with consumers was their conscience, and they threw it away, stomped on it, whipped it out and pissed on it, then laughed. Now, I don't care. I just plain don't care
To those "business owners" who are complaining about their stores going out of business - whatever the cause, be it pirates, the RIAA, etc... - too bad is about all I have to say. I don't want to buy CDs, in fact I never did. I never liked CD's... they were too big and a pain in the ass to carry around. Couple that with the fact that I had to switch CD's after every song or two (because I couldn't buy a CD with the songs I wanted on it), it made me hate the format. I want a format that contains everything I want to listen to in one discrete, easy to transport and easy to manage package. You don't or can't provide that at a record store, thus your business and your business model is totally irrelevant. Your business closed because it's irrelevant and nobody wants the service you are offering, not because of pirates or the RIAA. You need to adapt to what people want or go out of business... you went out of business... that's the way these things work.
Record stores converted to 8 tracks (or added 8 tracks to their inventory), then added cassettes, then added CDs. The record stores that did NOT do this went out of business... nobody wanted to buy 8 tracks anymore. Any store that still sold only 8 tracks went out of business. Today, nobody wants to buy physical media like CDs or records... adapt like generations upon generations of music stores did before, or go out of business. Stop bitching about it... adapt.
As a musician, I disagree. There's no law chiseled in stone that proclaims a musician's right to live off album sales. Musicians historically have lived by the largesse of wealthy patrons. Selling sheet music, performances, and recordings yield a certain level of income but for the average musician who is not a star, it needs to be supplemented by teaching, whoring (i.e., playing for weddings/birthdays/bar mitzvahs), building and repairing instruments, or a part- or full-time job washing dishes, working at a music store, etc.
There's also no law that says a CD which cost about $0.50 to stamp out has to sell for $15. Cut the prices back to $5 or $8 per disk and you'll see sales go up. Record albums used to sell for $4 or $5 back in the day, then tapes came along and bumped the price up to about $10 or $12, and then CDs went through the roof. OK already, a CD *player* costs $20 so why are disks still so expensive?
The amount of money musicians see from a CD sale is vanishingly small, especially when a middle man has done the production work. Do you honestly believe that out of that $15 (or $12 or $18) the musician is receiving more than $0.25 or $0.50? Typically not. If you self-produce, as less well-known musicians are forced to do, you have to front about $20,000 in studio time, design, copying and printing expenses, and it takes a long time to make that kind of money back from sales, let alone start to turn a profit. Disks are really a calling card, a way of getting your name out there and popularizing your music rather than some kind of bread-and-butter solid income that RIAA makes it out to be. Sure, a nationally known act with a dozen recordings out is going to be making some income from record sales but the lion's share is still going to the record producer.
Because of this situation, I think it makes more sense to simply upload your music and get the public listening to it, then ask them to pay to hear you play live. People have demonstrated that they will pay for great music either live or recorded. There are people who were making thousands of dollars a month on mp3.com, though of course most of the musicians there were amateurs. Yet, mp3.com had an interesting business model and I'm very sorry it got bought out.
The RIAA is living in a time warp. It's no longer possible to monopolize sound waves. Even twenty-five years ago, we used to constantly tape each other's records and tape albums played on the radio. No one was rich enough or crazy enough to purchase every single must-have album out there, though we all wanted to of course. Now we have a much better music delivery system that will very quickly get music out to millions of people all over the world--let's take advantage of it and the money will follow. Apple, CDBaby, mp3.com--they were thinking creatively and sooner or later a business model will emerge that leverages the current technology and gives musicians back some remuneration for their efforts.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
It would be a good deal if it didn't come with all the DRM crap. 10 years ago, there was no DRM, and the music industry was thriving.
Nowadays, more CDs than not come with copy prevention, and almost all legal downloads have DRM. The music industry has degraded their product to the point where it is no longer worth $15, and they have no one but themselves to blame.
Weebit slaps RIAA with a rolled up newspaper... bad Dog!!!!!
What IS sad, however, is that people don't consider $15 a good deal for an hours worth of music. As a musician, that just makes me sad. Maybe the quality of the goods need to go up, but $10-$15 seems like a steal if you've just gotten a great album you're going to be listening to for the rest of your life.
Please. (rant coming)
There are so few albums that good, and most of them are some form of compilation of greatest hits. I have CDs from artists that I absolutely adore and wish would produce more CDs, and even these artists have more than a few songs that just don't strike me as all that good.
Then there are CDs with 10-12 tracks, 3-4 minutes in length. That's less than an hour.
I have a stack of CD-Rs sitting here on my desk (for data, not music -- I don't listen to any music off of CDs*) and they claim to hold up to 80 minutes of music. I would gladly pay $15 for 80 minutes of quality music. But the problem is, a lot of music is more on the average scale (RIAA or not).
What IS sad to me is that musicians think that they're entitled to anything. I buy my music, but I don't owe any musician a damn thing if they're not selling what I want to buy. That's just how the world works. I write fiction, and damned if I feel entitled to any money -- I do it because I enjoy doing it. If someone wants to give me cash, that's fine, but I don't expect it and I'm not banking on making a living off of selling entertainment.
A hardcover book is $20-30, and generally upwards of 100,000 words (most of the thicker fantasy novels now are upwards of 250,000 words) -- this takes longer than an hour to read, and paper backs are around $7-8 for fiction, and this generally represents a year or more of work by the author; a DVD movie is $10-25 and is generally at least ninety minutes and takes a lot more work and people than an album; there is a ton of free/cheap and legal entertainment available on the internet; radio is free, satellite radio is pretty cheap; TV is cheap for basic cable ($45ish *a month*, give or take $10 depending on location and "rate increases"); video games tend to cost ~$60 and generally take more than an hour of time to get bored of.
There's a lot of competition for entertainment dollars out there, and there's also free content available. $15 isn't necessarily a deal for the average album. It would be great if all albums were just fan-damn-tastic works of art that moved me to buy them, because I really, truly love good music. But it'd be great if I had more money than Bill Gates and a magic flying unicorn to ride to work every day, too. The truth is there's a lot of crap out there and $15 isn't worth it for a song or three. There's also a lot of crap books, a lot of crap movies, a lot of crap games, and a lot of crap websites, TV shows, and everything else.
There are simply more sources for entertainment than music.
(end rant)
By the way, I don't eat fast food. I'd sooner eat the cardboard the burger comes in.
There is a great article posted on Baen's site about media pirating. It basically says anything I could possibly say but better. It comments on how badly the situation has been handled, how most artists should love the free exposure, and also states that the consumer and tax dollar should not be responsible for the music industry. If you are interested, it is part of the Prime Palaver by Eric Flint. Go to http://www.baen.com/library/ and the link is on left side of page - the article is #11 in the series (dated 9/16/2002 which shows that this is no new thing).
Incidentally - it is posted as part of the comments for their free library. That's right free. You don't even have to register. Is there anything better than a FREE BOOK? They have over 60 titles from some big name sci-fi and fantasy authors available to read online 'cause they practice what they preach. A perfect example of how giving people a chance to experiment with new authors (or musicians) will actually increase your sales.
Before CD's, you had two choices in how to listen to an album. Either on a record or a cassette. Both formats pretty much forced you to listen to the album in its entirety. When the CD came out, all of a sudden it become easier to listen to individual tracks.
So people buying singles from iTunes is a result of the CD killing the concept of the album itself.
on his radio show when people were eulogizing Sonny Bono's genius for promotion after his fatal skiing encounter with a tree. If memory serves, his summary was to the effect, "How much genius does it take to meet on Monday morning to decide how to smear the payola for the week?"
the elimination of destitution, poverty and slavery? you obviously never tried to support yourself at or anywhere near the minimum wage.
.. his point is well taken, quality always sucks when something is scaled up, it's a fact; whether it's the service at your drive-thru or hospital doesn't matter. dehumanizing and mechanizing the daily life of most people (most people are still essentially cogs in the various corporate machines they work for, about as worth as much to them as a tire on your car, probably less)has far worse consequences than most of you fortune 500 stockholders could possibly be willing to admit.
ps the industrialization of food brought you mcdonalds and million of deadly chemicals in everything you eat approved by the gov't thanks to corporate lobbyists
waspleg
Dead right tgatliff. It's like buggy whip manufacturers trying to stop people buying cars because cars didn't need buggy whips. Or even more apt; trying to force car manufacturers to replace the accelerator with a pad that you had to whip. What an evil bunch car drivers are for killing the buggy whip industry. ;) They must be stopped!!!!
Adapt to the market or die. Considering the unethical way that the record industry have always behaved (payola, exploiting naive young musos with outrageous contracts, etc) it's probably best that they do die imo. Musos simply don't need the thieving dirtballs any more. Die, die, die my darling!! Suffer, it couldn't happen to a more deserving group of people.
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
On a song from Information Society's album Don't Be Afraid (I think it was Seek300), there is backwards talking near the end of the song. I recorded it onto my computer and reversed it, and it said, "Obey your parents. Do your homework. Winners don't do drugs."
Well, for one thing, studio recordings are just as hard, if not harder, than live albums. I guess it depends upon the kind of music you listen to, but many times, live bands are doing everything in their power to sound as good as they did in the studio. Live albums aren't as difficult in many ways, because people are willing to accept (and expect) some amount of mistakes and not as good quality of sound. Also live spaces tend to muddy sound a bit anyway, so more mistakes and production inconsistancies are masked.
I dunno, I love live shows, but I love studio albums too, I wouldn't trade one for the other, or say that one is inherently superior to the other.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Read the linked article from the NYT. It is not the same as what you linked to. It is actually a good analysis of how the recording industry screwed up, and is NOT pro-RIAA. The authors still sell recordings, but have gone the internet route. They are not moaning about piracy, but about the stupidity of the recording industry which, like our Dear Leader, has chosen the EXACTLY WRONG response every single time, thus destroying itself. (While, of course, blaming everyone else.)
Looks like Internet Explorer running in Microsoft Windows to me...
If you must!
Oh, I don't disagree with you at all there. But this isn't about musicians demanding money, this is about people not being WILLING to pay money for music. The more people have to pay for something, it's likely that the more they're going to respect it/pay attention to it. For $5 a pop, CDs become like soda to everyone... it's something disposable. People won't expect anything from musicians anymore, and industry professionals won't feel inclined to try and get the very best quality material.
If music is really worth it to our society, we should be WILLING to pay for it. I'm not suggesting that we HAVE to pay for it, but my problem is that many aren't WILLING to pay for it.
Back in the day, people paid $100 a head to see a live concert. They'd sit down, and give the musicians their full attention for an hour and a half. Now, we pay $15 for a CD we can play over and over again, and most don't even give it the time of day. Yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say that price is inversely proportional the interest in the material, at least in this case.
My composition prof used to go on rants about this all day long, and I used to blow him off. Now, I can sorta understand what he's talking about.
What's more is that today's album is yesterday's symphony. How would you feel, if I showed up to a concert to just listen to one movement of a symphony, and then left? That's what people are doing with CDs... they buy it for one track, and only listen to that, claiming that the rest of the CD is crap. Sorry dude, if you don't like my WORK as a whole, then FUCK OFF! I put together and released an ALBUM because I wanted to make an ALBUM, not a fucking string of songs.
If people can't pay $15, because they don't think its worth it, they need to LOOK HARDER, because, yes, 95% of everything out there is total crap, but that's about a good 20 thousand albums, by now, that aren't.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I used to own almost 18 feet of vinyl, I used to have a couple of hundred cassettes, now I have dozens of CDs. Notice the trend here? The RIAA obviously doesn't. I stopped buying because they told me it wasn't mine anymore. The music was no longer what I wanted to buy, the music became what they wanted to sell. And the RIAA have no one to blame but themselves, no matter what they say. I used to listen to radio, I used to listen to FM, now I listen to online radio. There is that trend again. How does the RIAA think they will sell music if no one is listening?
It would also make planning seafaring trips of pillage and plunder much more convenient to organize. I salute your brilliant idea, me salty dog. The only thing that would make it better would be a national register of wenches.
R.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Here's a direct link to the referenced column on filesharing and the RIAA written by a music artist.
Here's an idea that is worth thousands.
iTunes like service that allows customers to come in, pick the songs they want, and burn the cd in the store. I doubt many non-business minded individuals will get this idea. There is a 'bigger picture' involved with many details to consider.
These stores need to adapt or die.
\
The catch is that it's a good deal to pay only for an hours worth of good music. The music industry's decisions over the last decade or so have greatly reduced the availability of good new albums. How many albums of the last 5 years can you honestly say you'd want to listen to every track on? How many of those do you like maybe 2-3 songs max? Is it still a good deal to pay $15 for 2-3 good songs? (We're in the $5 a song range at this point.)
Older albums that still have a majority of good music on them are worth more (at least to me), but since they're older now I'm not willing to pay $15 or more for them. I'd pay $10 pretty happily, especially for a physical CD, but it's pretty damn annoying that those albums tend to come with the bare minimum CD booklet. Just because it's older and I'm paying only $10 instead of $15 or more doesn't mean I don't want (and deserve) to get the lyrics with my damn CD.
Because this is the market the RIAA created with their idiotic decisions over the last decade or two. They killed the singles market and at the same time started forcing full albums to have only 2-3 good songs and the rest filler crap. This was done out of greed, they wanted you to pay them $20 for the same songs you would have paid around $5 for on singles. People were sick and tired of getting raped buying CDs so they started trading them online. Even though technology overtook their business plan they fought it tooth and nail. They then moved on to suing their customers to try and force them to go back to the old method of paying $15-20 for only 2-3 tracks they wanted. Unsurprisingly to anyone but the RIAA, this didn't work either.
So now you have a market that's used to only 2-3 songs being worth listening to on any album and only interested in those songs and not the rest. It's not the general public that killed off the album as a format, it's the recording industry. As for the quality of the music, that's also the recording industry's fault. They decided to promote mainly the crap stuff and sell it by having pretty "singers" instead of quality. And now they're paying the price for their stupidity, the market rebelled and they may go under as a result. Society is paying the price with quality music being less available.
On the bright side once the shift is complete I think we'll see quality come back as the recording industry loses its stranglehold on promotion and distribution. I'm afraid the album as a format is mostly dead though, the public is too used to singles and random shuffle play. I have to admit that even though I enjoy some of the old good albums, I like my music on random shuffle better. It's nice to have the variety.
Since most recording artists that release CD's work for a percentage (professional hired guns excluded) the cost of a recording and pressing a CD is less then $1,000,000 USD. You can have it done for $10,000 - $150,000 depending on the studio you use, the time it takes, and the number of copies. The Recording industry doesn't ussually spend that much on the recording, it spends on the advertising. Which contributes nothing to the product.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
STILL? I recognized it, but didn't realize it was still common. Ugh.
If music is really worth it to our society, we should be WILLING to pay for it.
Apparently the answer is no. I do not find $15 for 2 3 minutes songs to be worth it. Instead if I like a tune I'll mentally note to go to the concert when ti rolls by. The albulm would have netted the artists $0.50 if he was lucky but some slimy middleman and a retailer gets the rest. I prefer to cute the slimy middleman out. The concert also pays the slimy middle man to promote them but again a much smaller percentage.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Getting out isn't the only option. There's a great indie record store( Strangeland Records) not far from where I'm currently living in northern VA. They don't just put a bunch of CDs on the racks and expect people to come in and buy them. They have at least 3 free live shows per week right in the shop. Local bands come in to play and get exposure, local people come and get a free show, the store gets lots of people coming in who then buy things since they're there. It's win/win/win.
They carry CDs from local bands and do a lot to support the local scene. They also make use of the wall space to sell art by local artists, and they have a good selection of records, something a DJ can't just download. I've never asked Ryan if I could look at the books, so I don't know what kind of profits he's pulling, but they just celebrated their first year of operation last month and things look to be going well.
It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
Anyone who wants to help spread the word of god contained within these CDs.
You're right. You *are* so much smarter and important than the rest of us. Sorry for even bothering.
Back to the actual subject (sorry for dirtying myself responding to your non sequiturs), if your main concern is to buy stuff, then why the hell wouldn't you want to pay the cheapest price? Certainly if you're after something unique or you want a community atmosphere you can go elsewhere, but we're talking about massively produced homogeneous products here! If small record stores go out of business, it's because they don't offer anything that people can't get at Wal-Mart or off the internet. That's the real problem.
Care to explain your point a little or are you just gonna continue to shake your head at all us stupid people who can't possibly grasp the truth?
The unemployed don't buy many goods and the smaller higher paid executives onlt buy so much crap.
So who's buying these goods?
For a healthy society, we need the same employment but to have efficiencies give us more free time. The luddite then gets direct and positive outcome from technology: they get to spend their money in their free time.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
If thats how you treat customers them your not fit to run a bussiness dont blame others for your imcompitence. Its your fault if you stay in a failing market. Theres a good reason you dont see many candlestick makers around anymore? Next were going to have the video store owners complaining that they cant make a Living. Now excuse me while I go back to my stall in the city center selling horseshoes!
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Or because they really like dogs.
sigfault. core dumped.
"I think a big part of the reason for this is that it doesn't compare well to DVDs. Should I consider $15 dollars a good deal for an hour of music that cost $1M to produce when I can spend $20 for 2 hours of movie that cost $200M to produce? (Not that cost is any indication of quality.)"
You've answered your own question. You can drill down even more by pointing out that production cost is not necessarily a reflection of value to the buyer.
I do not buy DVDs, for the simple reason that they're not worth the money to me. I rarely watch a film more than once. So, Netflix serves my needs.
But I'll listen to a good CD dozens, or hundreds of times.
In either case, I don't care of the film cost $1MM, $10MM, or $100MM to make. Nor do I care if the CD cost $100, $1K, $10K or $100K or $1MM to produce. It's my enjoyment of the product that determines whether it's of value to me.
Have you noticed that the "they're both pieces of plastic; so why do they have similar costs if the production costs are widely disparate?" argument is typically used for CDs vs. DVDs, and not, say, to question why a film with production costs of $1MM and a film with production costs of $100MM both cost the same on DVD? In other words, if that crowd is so tragically unclued into the concept of supply and demand that they really, genuinely don't understand why CDs and DVDs are priced the way they are, then they'd be making one hell of a holy stink over the fact that, say, a copy of Clerks costs $3 more on Amazon than does a copy of Titanic, when the production cost ratio on the two was somewhere on the order of 100X.
The answer, I think, is that many people understand this just fine (it's readily apparent to anybody who's ever visited a shopping mall and compared prices of clothes from hot designer brands vs. those from Sears), but they make this comparison primarily as a way to help justify music piracy. Odds are that they go through the rest of the life like most people do -- if they want something and they think it's a good value, they'll buy it, without making some sort of moral judgement of the ratio of the cost of production to the retail price.
"The RIAA has conviently ignored the impact of DVDs."
Not sure that I follow. The music industry is fighting for its very life against the impact of other sources of entertainment. It's patently obvious to you and I that we have a lot more choices for spending our entertainment dollars than we did 10 or 20 years ago; you can assume that the folks in the music industry, do, too. It's fun to say "ha ha, they sure are dumb, they haven't done any market research to see how their target market is spending their money!", but really.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
A recent news item in Holland has been the firing of thousands of postal workers. "To all the people that send email, if you think that you are only hurting big companies you are wrong. There are thousands of working people with families who no longer have jobs because of email."
You can do the same for lots of developments in society. How many people once made a living taking care of all the horses needed for transportation? When steam went the way of the horse, how many stokers were fired? Do you use electric or gas for cooking? Did you spare a thought for the poor guy who is now unemployed that used to deliver coal?
However the coal guy did NOT spy on me to make sure the coal I bought was only used in my own stove. The postal worker did NOT up prices and tell me that from now on I could no longer send postcards but only letters with a minimum of three pages (the same as the music industry trying to kill singles).
The music industry is suffering from new technology but it ain't just incapable of adjusting to a new a world, it is actually trying to worsen the situation. Imagine if in this day and age when sending email is just so much easier then sending a letter, the postal companies would reduce the number letterboxes, cut down deliveries, increase prices, put insane restriction on what you can send and who you can send too and in general behaved like a load of asshats.
Would you give a damn about their demise then?
Music shops should have protested over a decade ago. Now it is too late, they are the hanger ons to a failed strategy. They are as much to blame as the RIAA itself, because of their inaction.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
QUOTE: "The arts must take a more realistic view of their place in society." --Margaret Thatcher "This, of course, includes the various associated vicious parasites such as RIAA." --Texposé RR
"There's also no law that says a CD which cost about $0.50 to stamp out has to sell for $15. Cut the prices back to $5 or $8 per disk and you'll see sales go up. Record albums used to sell for $4 or $5 back in the day, then tapes came along and bumped the price up to about $10 or $12, and then CDs went through the roof. OK already, a CD *player* costs $20 so why are disks still so expensive?"
You're 100% correct -- before prerecorded cassettes were widely available in the 70's, LPs cost about $5. That $5 LP you bought in 1970 was about $26 in today's money. The average retail price of a new CD release is around $13, so the price has dropped by 50%.
I was paying around $8 for LPs -- $16 in today's money -- in the early 80's, so if prerecorded cassettes hit $12.00, an educated guess is that this would have been in 1986 or so, where that $12 cassette would be $22 in today's money.
I started buying CDs in 1985. They cost me around $17 each, or $31 in today's money. As mentioned, they're $13 today; that's a 60% reduction in cost.
If you're genuinely wondering why CDs are $13 today when LPs sold for only $5 "back in the day," I'm not sure I can do the best job of explaining it, but a good way to start is to think about all the people who touch the CD from start to finish -- including the guy at the pressing plant and the guy in the store who sells it -- and think about how much they were paid by the hour in 1970, vs. how much they make now.
Music isn't alone in reflecting the effect of inflation. My mother bought a new 1965 Beetle for $2,000 back in the day. Inflation's a real devil bitch.
If you're wondering why the price of new CDs has settled at $13 vs. $8 or $10 or $16 or $21, it's that other devil bitch, supply and demand. They're $13 because that's the optimal point on the curve (five years ago, CDs were $18, but the P2P explosion and the growth of other competition for your entertainment dollar put a stop to that). The supply and demand god is the same one who dictates that Sears is lucky to sell a shirt for $20, while Kenneth Cole has no problem selling shirts for $120. He can smile on you -- if you're Kenneth Cole -- or he can be one mean SOB -- if you're trying to sell CDs.
"Do you honestly believe that out of that $15 (or $12 or $18) the musician is receiving more than $0.25 or $0.50? Typically not."
I think that's a pretty well established fact. Similarly, I'm at the director level for a maker of PC peripherals; I'm responsible for some $40MM of business per year. Yet I don't even see 1% of that. The retail industry is pretty inefficient. You're right -- digital delivery, direct from the producer to the customer, is often the best way to go. I hope your model of releasing your songs for free and making your money on live performances is working for you; best of luck to you on your career.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
"What IS sad to me is that musicians think that they're entitled to anything. I buy my music, but I don't owe any musician a damn thing if they're not selling what I want to buy."
Can you give an example of a musician who believes that you owe them money even if you don't buy their music?
So many people on Slashdot straw-man "don't pirate my music" into "you owe me a living" that I'm curious to hear from musicians who really have stated that they're entitled to get money from people who don't buy their music.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
...
Odds are that they go through the rest of the life like most people do -- if they want something and they think it's a good value, they'll buy it, without making some sort of moral judgement of the ratio of the cost of production to the retail price. I wasn't intending the cost thing to be the main point, I was just trying to use it as an example of the apparent value that DVDs and CDs can have. It's clearly not a good indication of the worth of particular CDs and DVDs to individual consumers. The point is simply that a lot of people would rather spend their money on DVDs rather than CDs because they value the DVDs more. Not everyone, but a significant proportion. Even in your case you're spending money on DVDs via Netflix that you could instead spend on music. "The RIAA has conviently ignored the impact of DVDs." Not sure that I follow. The music industry is fighting for its very life against the impact of other sources of entertainment. What I was really meaning here is that the RIAA is ignoring the impact of DVDs in their media material. I'm sure they know that DVDs etc are eating into their sales but I don't see them acknowledging that fact or doing much to counteract it. Instead they are spending a lot of effort blaming piracy and trying to counteract it. There are probably a number of reasons for that, e.g. the piracy issue is easier to be seen to be doing something about, and no doubt some of their people truly believe that piracy is sole or at least major cause. But I'm sure that at least some of their people realise that even the elimination of piracy would not return the industry to the booming state it enjoyed in the 80's and 90's.
as it puts a hell of a strain on your eyes trying to read em
This is why they created e-ink and the new e-book readers. Personally, I can still read books on monochrome PDAs, with no back light, but that really limits your reading options. The color screens and back lights make it really hard to read for a while.
Since your "I might have to start posting this on a regular basis" comment suggests that you are enamoured of your own genius, may I humbly suggest that your majesty get off his high horse and allow his grace to revisit an economics 101 textbook. While I'm afraid that it might cause unfortunately interruption that is the manna from heaven that you clearly feel that your underinformed high-school calibera pontificating amounts to, I suggest that you read the section (usually at about chapter 2) about "substitute goods" and how the market values those. As your majesty is obviously large of brain, I ask thee to consider that the substitutability of goods is not a binary (yes/no) variable, but rather (when considered over a large group of people) some substitutability factor that can be normalized to a number between 0 and 1. Bottled water makes its profit from where it is seen as sufficiently different, superior, or available to tap water as to warrant its increased price. It is clear that pirated downloaded music, even with the risks involved, is seen as being sufficiently substitutable to legitimately purchased music given the price to a very significant, and possibly increasing, segment of the population. By similar token, jewelry is 'free' if you simply break into a jeweler's. However, most of us who have occasional (or even frequent) contact with women are likely to pay for it nevertheless, because, despite the price, breaking in is not a suitable substitute due to the potential social stigma, not to mention time in jail, associated with getting caught. So, here's a crazy, crazy idea. Given that your knowledge of economics appears to bear similarity to the creationist's knowldge of earth science, Just maybe, if there exists a ladder long enough in all of christendom to allow this, you get off your high horse and actually take a few moments to learn a little of the most basic aspects of economic theory before continuing your role as yet another badly informed internet pseudo-expert so confidently spreading bad reasoning and infantile rationalizaton.
BTW, something that's often lost in /. discussions regarding music/movies: Just because you disagree with the price of something (especially something that you don't need!), doesn't give you the right to steal it.
Sometimes I doubt your committment to SparkleMotion!
Even if they don't their representatives behave that way though.
See the CD-R tax in Canada. Now it seems they aren't satisfied with that and want more.
In the ancient days you just had a few occupations. Now you have zillions with lots of specialists AND worse there are tons of interdependencies nowadays.
If something happened to your food/water/fuel/energy supply it'll be pretty disastrous, BUT nowadays, that is dependent on so many things.
In most of the developed countries already a relatively few farmers are producing food for more and more people.
Now add the distribution and preparation of that food.
And look up how many weeks of fuel reserves countries have stored. Japan has about 170 days but not as many countries can afford that (or actually have decent contingency planning). See what happened when Russia started throttling their gas supply to various countries - major unpleasantness.
If there was a global pandemic there would be a high chance of too many specialists being wiped out with the corresponding "knock on" effects. And the effects of widespread quarantines (the only solution if you don't have a cure) would be pretty drastic to modern civilization.
If you aren't a farmer and were quarantined, how many weeks supply of food do you have? How would supplies get from A to B?
The aboriginal peoples living in rainforests etc would do ok, but people living in and reliant on cities would be in big trouble.
BTW, something that's often lost in /. discussions regarding music/movies: Just because you disagree with the price of something (especially something that you don't need!), doesn't give you the right to steal it.
You're right except for 2 things.
1) We're not talking about an individual stealing anything - though I'm sure a lot of us are haphazardly guilty - expecially during our poorer younger years. The issue is the invisible hand. The fact that the store left the back-door open and can't figure out how to put a lock on it means that there is plentify low-moral-cost availibility of a commodity good. Music, Musak, however you view the current pop-culture-in-a-box, has forced the industry to lower their commodity prices. The fact that they're now allowing us to purchase $1 songs (and especially now on itunes - the subset of a CD with no future risk) means that cost pressures are there.. That labels have to compete against the existing reality of their own short-sightedness. So $15 is no longer practical for a CD, the market won't bear it [for much longer].
2) Copy-right violation is a legal term, and in that sense, as similar, but not identical to stealing. But there is no moral attachment to that particular law.. It's a purely commerce oriented legal artificat that both England and the US support. China isn't as big a supporter because it's currently to their benefit to allow copy-right theft to exist. But there is no fundamental moral dillema here. No more than having God-justice being applied to you if you use a button on a web-browser to purchase something in a single step (which violates the current suite of patents - unless that has changed, but was still in effect for some time). So please don't appeal to a higher sense of morality for a tertiary concept of commerce.
-Michael
It's not "pirating", it's "exposure", remember? You can't buy what you don't know.
... *bought* the replacement tapes from a store.
Some kid in my high school made me a couple tapes of Petra, which had very crisp melodies. I made my first halting attempts at mixes from those tapes, and when some 5th rate tape player ate my originals, I
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Easy. Folks who want to give them out to girls at Christian Rock festivals to get them to engage in "higher risk" sexual activities, as they are wont to do.
If I were in high school today, I'd hang out in the Christian youth group.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Lawnmower Deth recorded a song that sounds identical when played backwards or forwards. It's called "Can I Cultivate Your Groinal Garden" from the album "Ooh Crikey."
Stick Men
Personally, I knew it was a fake when they used the names of the so called "victims." "David?" "Jenny?" Such common, down-to-Earth salt-of-the-Earth American names of honest people, being ripped off by the soulless, godless heathen pirates, who only wish to bring injustice to this world...
Puh-lease. It's as transparent as any fake story I've ever seen. The Onion has made more realistic stories. So, yeah, we need a -2, Hoax moderation.
While it's not piracy related: The Dixie Chicks.
They pissed off their fans by making a silly statement about Bush -- while I'm no fan of his, I wasn't a fan of theirs either, and it wasn't even a +1 Insightful kind of statement, it was more a -1 Troll thing. However, their reaction to fans boycotting them was to throw out the name "McCarthyism" and other such whinery. They acted as though they thought that they had a right to say whatever they wanted and their fans were obligated to continue to buy their music.
I'm sure there are others, but I rarely listen to anything famous people say. Most of them are idiots (actors, singers, politicians -- all mostly stupid people), and so are their organizations (MPAA, RIAA, political parties).
The RIAA does seem to be acting as though it expects to continue selling the same or a greater number of CDs. Also, see the post I replied to where he talked about how it bothered him, as a musician, that people didn't want to pay $15 for a CD. That sounds pretty much like "you owe me."
And no, I really don't.
But this isn't about musicians demanding money, this is about people not being WILLING to pay money for music.
;)
I'm willing to pay money for music, and so are all of my friends. If the music is good.
If music is really worth it to our society, we should be WILLING to pay for it. I'm not suggesting that we HAVE to pay for it, but my problem is that many aren't WILLING to pay for it.
The RIAA labels make over $30 billion dollars a year. That's a great deal of people being willing to pay for music.
Back in the day, people paid $100 a head to see a live concert. They'd sit down, and give the musicians their full attention for an hour and a half. Now, we pay $15 for a CD we can play over and over again, and most don't even give it the time of day. Yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say that price is inversely proportional the interest in the material, at least in this case.
You can't really be comparing classical music to the low rung pop that is mass produced today. Even the genres of music I like are of a lower quality. I think it's safe to say the quality is proportional to the willingness to pay. A ton of music is mass-produced stuff to sell to their target demographic -- just look how many clones there are.
What's more is that today's album is yesterday's symphony. How would you feel, if I showed up to a concert to just listen to one movement of a symphony, and then left? That's what people are doing with CDs... they buy it for one track, and only listen to that, claiming that the rest of the CD is crap. Sorry dude, if you don't like my WORK as a whole, then FUCK OFF! I put together and released an ALBUM because I wanted to make an ALBUM, not a fucking string of songs.
1. If you show up and leave, that's your prerogative. You paid for the ticket, after all. If I sell a book and you only read the last chapter -- hey, whatever, you bought the whole book.
2. Maybe because the rest of the CD IS crap. A lot of it IS filler made to fill out the current model of CDs. That's why those songs make it to the greatest hits album. Some artists DO produce full CDs I like. I can think of three or four off the top of my head, and they're not very popular or pushed at all (though all were at some time RIAA bands).
3. Well fuck off then, too.
I don't think the album is necessarily a requirement for great music. And hardly ANY albums are a work of art like great symphonies are.
If people can't pay $15, because they don't think its worth it, they need to LOOK HARDER, because, yes, 95% of everything out there is total crap, but that's about a good 20 thousand albums, by now, that aren't.
I don't disagree with you here so much, but remember that the 95% that is shit is 99.99% of the available music. And not everyone in the 5% of good music produces full albums all the time. Some of them just release single songs, or a few songs at a time. I'd wager that there's actually a much higher percent of good music -- maybe around 50%, but the 50% that is bad is so pushed by the RIAA that it seems to dwarf the good music 95-5.
The RIAA labels are experts at producing music, almost like on an assembly line. For example, Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, etc, who don't really sing (Jessica Simpson whispers, Britney sings through her nose), with very similar sounding music. Or all the boybands, most of which were managed/produced by one guy. Or the string of typical bands who sound so damn similar. It works because people like the sound of something and want more of that something. The RIAA is right there with the next similar sounding musician or CD.
But, while I like some songs by the top RIAA artists sometimes? After a while it gets repetitive and I don't like it. Just like changing my desktop background every so often, the tune has to change. I don't listen to ONE album all the time. I listen to a large collection of them, typically on random. I rip them to MP3, put
"Piracy" didn't kill the Small Store Owner. That's mixing up chains of events. Let's back up.
We all smile ruefully at "The Way Things Were" because the 2nd half of 20th Century was a time of such thundering growth, we built a brand new civilization in fifty-ish years, call it 1950-2001.
We really didn't want Punch Cards & 45's, or MiniComputers & 8-Track Tapes. It was The Way Things Were.
The music sales model of 1950-2000 was based on artificial scarcity in all its forms. Now that music fans have a global choice, they can lurk around their own unique playlists. Like kids sneaking soda into the movie theater, there's some glamor to "Petty Sneaking". Shawn Fanning deserves credit for waking people up, right on cue with the calendar symbolism, too. What needs to happen is for the entire music industry to realize the golden age is gone, and switch models.
ISP's used to charge by the hour, until by popular demand, that crashed. Now everyone pays a flat rate for modest access. Ad-Supported Services is the model that the Net lives on, so Ad-Supported Flat Rate Music is where it's at. Make it "Free" to the consumer, because your Ad vendor pays your hard cash. If the main line is "free", then there's no point in "pirating", is there? We all know P2P copies are about price-point, not quality.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
That article is an excellent read from someone on the "inside", so to speak.
It is, however, a slightly closed-minded and selfish view.
I'm going to play the devil's advocate here; I personally do not agree with the RIAA's tactics, but I do understand them.
The RIAA's job is not to produce and inspire great works of art. They are a lobbying group who's job is to enable their sponsors to continue to rake in copious amounts of cash. They therefore will be unscrupulous and uncaring and stomp on the little guy and sponsor reports which prove their side (a common practice, even in the scientific community - although that's a little tangential to this issue), etc. The record labels are a BUSINESS. They pretty much don't care about the music, so long as it's of sufficient quality to sell enough to make a profit. This is why the indie music scene generally has to go outside the big labels (EMI, Sony BMG, Time Warner, etc) to get their first albums published; these labels generally aren't willing to take the initial risk of publishing/promoting an unknown. This is bad in general for the music industry but good for the bottom line.
Unfortunately these tactics force other labels to respond in kind. Take an indie label such as Maple Music. They publish/promote an artist who manages to get a Top 40 hit (or just good word-of-mouth) and starts to bring in money (which for an indie label is sometimes a stretch). Suddenly Sony BMG is knocking at the artist's door with a contract and a fat cheque. For most "starving artists" this kind of offer is too good to turn down. In order to prevent this kind of thing from happening, the indie label is forced to get a contract. And the cycle repeats.
I only present this in order to bring a bit of balance to the arguement. Yes, these tactics are ridiculous. Yes, the music suffers as a result. But if one of these labels was to go out of business (or if the music industry in general was to become unprofitable) we would all rue the day.
Really this is all a result of the heroification of artists in Western society; musicians, actors, sports figures (who for the sake of arguement we'll throw in here) all the most overpaid people on the face of the earth. Unfortunately we've become accustomed to paying $10 for a movie, $20 for the DVD, $65 for the in-season game, thousands for season tickets, etc. so our pockets continue to be drained.
Damned tangents again.
Godless heathen.
Didn't you know? All Christian music has the following lyric at the end of the song . .
!ti nmad
Godless heathen.
Bonus points for managing to extend the
Godless heathen.
The difference being that for a live show, the artists have to be there, but for studio recording they make once, the rake in years and millions of sales.
You missed the point TFA made: that hour's worth of music wasn't worth the $15. Modern manufactured pop icons have 2-3 good tracks and a WHOLE lot of filler. I have a hard time thinking of a North American CD I bought in the last 10 years that had more than 3 good tracks on it. Weird Al comes to mind, but even his last album wasn't that good. I think it's time to re-introduce the idea of the "singles" artist. The artist that produces mostly singles than produces an album of the best singles every 2-3 years.
Also it might be better is small record stores accept that the market has fractured. People's musical tastes are all over the map these days, and it might be better to provide multiple niche sections in your store than a single giant library. Also stock CDs from independent bands, especially in the local area, and start acting as music promoters for them in store. Listen to the stuff, find good bands and tell your customers about them. You might be surprised what happens.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Typically zero. (maybe one or two if you count the guy stacking the shelves) This is really a non-issue today, and even ten years ago AOL felt okay about subsidizing my coasters.
This is a world where you get a forty foot shipping container to the other side of the world for $2000.
It would be wrong to assume that industries find the optimal point for supply an demand, particularly when you deal with bastards like the RIAA. Look at the historic example of VHS vs. DVD. As soon as studios started selling good movies for $10, sales surged.
This says a few things.
First, it says Napster was so ubiquitous and easy to use a caveman could use it.
Second, it says that, at least at the dawn of P2P, even people who made it a big deal to live their life through religious teachings (i.e., thou shalt not steal) and criticize others for not doing so (I once stubbed my toe and said "SHIT!" and got an hour long lecture from her) saw no problem with pirating music.
But most of all it says that people didn't get P2P at the time, they just knew it gave them what they wanted. They don't want to buy CD's, they don't want to wait until the radio plays what they want, they just want to type in the name of a song and start listening to it. I honestly don't think my sister knew, at the time, what she was doing. She just wanted to listen to the songs she wanted to when she wanted to.
Schnapple
We are at a point in time where Intelectual Property cannot and maybe should not be protected by Governments. In the old days it was very difficult to copy something. To copy a book you needed a printing press, to copy music you needed expensive recording equipment, to copy any product you needed alot of experience. So at the time it was realativly easy to stop since there would be less offenders and it may have seemed like a good idea.
But today IP can easly be copied by anyone and is impossible to enforce except for making examples. So they question is should we even use government to protect IP at all? I don't think so. People instinctivly ask why should movie and music stars be so rich and how it isn't fair but they fail to grasp the real reason. The reason is they use the force of government to protect their cartel. I think we should get rid of patents and IP protection because today they stifle growth. A persons reward for creativity and creating something new is their ability to be first to market. Artists will still make money but by actually performing. A musician can sell tickets to a live show. Movies still would make money in the theater because the theaters provide an expeience you cannot get a home.
Some examples are the food and clothing industries. There are no protections for recipies or designs. You can legally make knock offs of famous dishes or clothing as long as you don't pretend they are made from the famous manufacturer. Those buisnesses thrive and come out with new designs all of the time.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
"I wasn't intending the cost thing to be the main point, I was just trying to use it as an example of the apparent value that DVDs and CDs can have. It's clearly not a good indication of the worth of particular CDs and DVDs to individual consumers. The point is simply that a lot of people would rather spend their money on DVDs rather than CDs because they value the DVDs more."
sure, if they're a real movie buff and not particularly into music. I know of people who'll watch LOTR two dozen times; I'm not one of them. I think this just speaks to the fact that different folks like different types of entertainment... there are also lots of people who'd rather spend that money toward a video game, or a trip to the movie theatre, or to the opera, or to a rave, or to a live play, or to a concert, or any of innumerable choices for spending their descretionary cash on entertainment. I don't think it's a music vs. DVD thing per se.
"What I was really meaning here is that the RIAA is ignoring the impact of DVDs in their media material. I'm sure they know that DVDs etc are eating into their sales but I don't see them acknowledging that fact or doing much to counteract it. Instead they are spending a lot of effort blaming piracy and trying to counteract it."
Again, this is more of a "music vs. all other forms of entertainment" but we can use the ten years or so as an example, as that's roughly the period that DVD sales began to explode. In the past ten years, here's what record companies have done to try to make their product more attractive, off the top of my head:
I think that when many people write "the record industry isn't adapting" what they really mean is "the record industry isn't adapting in the exact way I want it to; ie. selling DRM-free tracks for $0.25 each and not going after copyright infringers." Thus, it makes it easier to ignore the fact that the iTunes store simply didn't exist ten years ago, or the fact that downloads now make up 30% of some major labels' sales. This gives lots of folks the moral justification to keep on pirating; and the joke here is that if the record labels did start selling tracks for $0.25, the collective Slashdot zeitgeist would be that this means that the artists are also getting a lot less -- thus, the record companies are more evil than ever, and I have more justification than ever to get my music via P2P, thankyouverymuch.
I agree with you, of course, that the record industry probably hasn't changed in the exact way that you want. This is likely because their ultimate goal is to make money, and not to convert Slashdot users to customers -- that's a bit of a Sisyphian task, if you ask me!
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Agreed. I have made that point here before. Nobody seems to disagree with that, except the 1337 script kiddies whose opinion doesn't matter anyhow. What the intelligent people always disagree with me on are the semantics of the word "steal". It seems a lot of people don't feel that making duplicates of an mp3 file is stealing because you did not take something tangible. Yes, information wants to be free (so they say), and since mp3 files are computer files and therefore are information, they should be free. It's the same faulty logic you see when anyone takes a line of reasoning way further than it was intended to be taken. You know, if a little vitamin C is good for me, then I should take megadoses every day, and stupid logic like that.
Going OT now...
ugh, are you serious? I downloaded a few songs from Orphans, Brawlers, and Bawlers... from eMusic. Every stinking review was glowing, so I blindly downloaded a few tracks. Is there some hobo musical genre I have missing out on? What is the appeal of some guy pretending(?) to be a hobo balladeer? I mean, why not go down to the local railyard with an 8 track recorder and record that? I am very open minded about music, but I don't get Tom Waits. Can you explain to me what you like about it? I am trying real hard here, but I just can't dig it. I know it's an opinion and that music is very subjective, but *everyone* gave it a good review (except me). What gives?
blah blah blah
I constantly hear the argument that, 'artists don't make any money off record sales.'
Yet when I went to Istanbul on vacation and hung out with a friend of a friend who happens to be one of the biggest names in Turkish music (not to mention the first to use a fretless guitar), he said that he was significantly hurt by piracy and can no longer sell albums or make any money off of recordings. Gigs are the only way for him to make cash (though he did leave out the sound tracks...)
For a guy with two young girls to put through school and music as his only source of income, I would imagine it would hurt. He is a bit unique though because he is his own producer, he doesn't work with the big american labels, and he's big.
I'm a little veclemnt, talk amongst yourselves.
Sometimes, you can, you go to hell for the rest of your life! That's a true thing.
Repost from 2003...5
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/10/2/103735/27
n/t
I think you have it reversed. There are a few people out there who buy movies and watch them dozens of times, but the majority of people rent movies and watch them once or twice. Even when people DO purchase movies, they watch them maybe 3 or 4 times over the course of a couple years.
If what you said were the case, then there would be music rental places, and movie purchasing places. But we all know that the primary source for aquiring movies is through a rental house, to be watched once. Where-as music (on physically the same kind of media) is always purchased and owned. The medium has expectations of how many times the audience will need to, and want to view the work in order to get the full experience. Generally, an album will be listened to a good magnitude more times than a movie will be watched.
This stems from the fact that music is a bit more of an abstract art form than film. Film works on concrete ideas: dialog, photography, storylines that can be followed, etc. Where-as music is much more abstract, it sometimes takes many listens to really get the full experience of the music, depending upon its complexity. This is not always true, some very surreal or abstract art films reach the level of abstraction of music, but generally, music, as a genre, exists more in the abstract than does film.
Film also demands your attention. Except on rare occations, people sit down, shut up, and watch a film. People are much less comfortable sitting down and listening to an album to the same degree. As a musician, I'd like to think differently, but sadly, people are not as content to sit and listen to music as they are to watch a film. This is evident in the major types of live viewings of the two genres. Currently, if you were to talk in a movie theatre, you'd get weird looks and ultimately kicked out. In live music venues, all except for art music concerts, you're enchoraged to yell, screem, run around, and dance, to the point that many times you can't even hear the music. I guess my favorite venue is that of the jazz club, where you are free to move around, eat, and talk quietly, but for the most part, you are enchoraged to actually sit and take in the music fully.
Film is much more a direct interpretation of reality that we can relate to in simpler terms. This is why we've made movie watching a social event: we understand the film well enough to converse about it, afterwords. Music listening, on the other hand, is hardly ever a social event. When was the last time you invited friends over to listen to an album? I've tried it... it doesn't work. Most people can't think and talk about music intelligently enough to really socialize with it, since it deals in the abstract. You pretty much have to be a musician, yourself, to be able to converse about music in a meaningful way, where-as no one has to be an actor or director to be able to converse about the events of a film.
It's sad, but it's a reality I'll just have to accept.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
1) it takes weeks (if not months) of a musicians time, in the studio, working 10 hour days, to make a decent album.
2) Musicians make far more money on the road than they do from CD sales.
From an income standpoint, a studio recording is simply a way of getting people to come to live shows, because musicians make next to nothing in from CD sales, even over the lifespan of their carrier. From an artistic standpoing, musicians do studio recordings because they can perfect them, and have some finished archival product that could possibly be listened to, even long after they're gone.
From a work to pay standpoint, it would be much easier and less time consuming for musicians to not produce albums at all, but simply go out on the road and play. Some practically do that, and just record live albums, or "live in the studio" albums, which take much less time to baby. Then again, music is a very personal thing to a musician, and being away from crowds, sitting, and composing/recording music is possibly the most artistically rewarding.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
That was, at best, only the 2nd coolest part of DBA, though. 1st coolest was the hidden track, "White Roses," which could only be accessed via a recorded analog modem signal in another of the album's tracks. The signal pointed to, I think, a BBS site containing a message from the band's frontman (and at the time of DBA, the only remaining member of the band) on where to search. The song had to be downloaded from the internet to be played at all.
Contender for 2nd-coolest was the mere fact that track 8, "Ozar Midrashim 1.1," was the intro theme for "Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver" and later the theme for the series as a whole.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
Thanks for sharing. Your story has a wealth of information. I'm constantly amazed by how unpredictable people are.
testing out my trending skills
By the way, DVD sales numbers are a lot higher than music sales. According to Neilsen (http://www.linuxelectrons.com/news/general/9945/m usic-market-data-2006) total US album sales in all forms totalled about 630M units. If you throw in singles it still only comes to 1.2B (but obviously singles don't generate the same revenue). So I think I'm justified in saying that if even 10% of DVD sales are at the expense of music then it more than accounts for the downturn the music industry is seeing.
If what you said were the case, then there would be music rental places, and movie purchasing places. But we all know that the primary source for aquiring movies is through a rental house, to be watched once. Where-as music (on physically the same kind of media) is always purchased and owned. The medium has expectations of how many times the audience will need to, and want to view the work in order to get the full experience. Generally, an album will be listened to a good magnitude more times than a movie will be watched. I never said people don't listen to purchased music multiple times. I said that they are choosing to buy movies instead of music. It doesn't matter how many times people watch a movie they've bought or listen to music they've bought. It only matters what their perception is when they are buying it. And the sales numbers say that movie sales are up and music sales are down.I, for one, welcome our newness overlords!
SRSLY.
1. Fuck, that'd be great, as long as you paid full price. Then I could resell your seat for another full price to someone else.
2. If I can write only one good movement, why do I have a right to have you sleep in your purchased chair for another two hours? You bought the chair, that's your call.
if the music is already in digital form, there's no reason not to sell it in "print CD on demand" format or as tracks. If it isn't, it needs to be put in digital form because there is basically no path to profit for an undigitized analog master taking up space in a vault.
It's time for every RIAA label to make their entire catalogues available for purchase via their websites. Wouldn't it be nice to go onto a major label site and be able to buy anything from an obscure 13th Floor Elevator track to an Edison Wax Cylinder?
I do expect this to happen. Right after the labels go into bankruptcy and their catalogues are sold to entrepreneurs who plan to make money with them.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Well, that would make you something of an exception to the rule. Why, do you think, that even 50 years ago that the other side of the record was called "the B-side"? Nothing's changed.
Films can be cheap to produce if you don't include the wages of anyone involved.
Most marqee recording artists are paid a %. they don't get a wage. IF you include the wage the amount does not increase dramatically for the majority of albulms. A film can cost a lot even without factoring the 2 mil for the director and 5 for the marqee actor. A lot fo the budget is spend on crafts people, cameramen, editors, key grips etc... in music it's a sound engineer a couple of assistants if it's a big enough project and an editor. Ussually 1/10 as many people involved.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
On their Peace & Love Inc., album, the 12th track was a recording of, as signified by the song's name, a 300bps modem. You could type in ATA on a terminal while holding your phone to the speaker at the start of the song, and the text would display in the terminal. That may not seem relevant to backmasking, but for those of us who inherently, if subconsciously, understand modem, it was similar. Needless to say, I'm now terrified of Brazil.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
not just any dog, but the Nevaeh Ni Dog