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."
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.
That's a great example. "Ozymandias", CD only bonus track on the single "Dominion" by the Sisters of Mercy, rights owned by RIAA member Warner brothers.
Not available on iTunes, the only way to get it is via a torrent, or by spending about $50 for the original 3" CD secondhand, $0 of that $50 goes to Warners, $0 to the artist.
Have a pat on the back for a job well done, Warner Brothers, I'm sure your shareholders are proud of you.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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?
"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.
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.
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.
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)
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 don't think there is anything that could be done to save brick and mortar record stores the NYT article was bitching about either, and that was really my point. It didn't have anything to do with the RIAA, really. The RIAA was fighting for its life, and that's to be expected. They're being stupid about it, we think, and that's because we've already abandoned the RIAA's business model - we do not think it is reasonable (and for the record, I think that is precisely correct.) The thing that has changed here was the ability to get a good digital single at 2am, seconds after you discover it. From Europe, if required. No brick and mortar store can compete with that.
As far as DRM goes, that, I think, will be a drop in the bucket. I'll tell you why: Everything to do with music and video and book "formats" can trace its roots back to insufficient storage. Everyone was looking for compression. Preferably lossless, but lossy was OK too if it wasn't too onerous. Today, you can buy fast storage devices in the half terabyte range for a few hundred dollars, and there is every sign that this trend of more storage for less money will continue for a while. There's nothing stopping any musician from putting down music in uncompressed raw format and handing it out. There's nothing stopping us, as customers, from storing it. No "format" involved really, more like "lack of a format." We're not there yet for video, but I think we will be. There may yet be a few free compressed formats that we can use, too. Also, eventually patents will begin to run out; and finally, no one can tell me, as a musician, that I can't give my music away to you. There are other models besides I give you music, you give me money. I write a blog, for instance, and I make a decent amount from the google ads. You can read the blog for free. Maybe you'll click an ad, maybe you won't, but enough people do to keep me writing. I've even got some music on there. I despise DRM, but I rest content in the fairly certain presumption that it will die because it is stupid and because it has its roots in conditions that will not obtain for all that long.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I lived in China from 2002 to 2006 and there, you have a completely different dynamic. Whereas in the US it's generally understood that copyright infringement is illegal and maybe even wrong, in China, there is absolutely no respect for copyright whatsoever. Large, legit companies offer mp3 search engines that directly link to popular music. The discman and walkman were never common in China -- the mp3 player is ubiquitous, and no one really buys music. Even if you wanted to buy a CD, finding a reputable vendor that isn't just selling you a pirated copy is difficult.
So what's the deal? Why isn't the music industry dead in China, as so many analysts in the western world are predicting will happen here because of widespread "piracy"? Maybe they're just freeloading off of us? No, western music is not particularly popular in China. Much of their music comes from Taiwan and Hong Kong, but there's no respect for copyright law in those places, either. And the mainland market is growing, fast. A few years back one of the most popular songs ever on the mainland was a silly song some college kid recorded in their dorm and that spread on the internet like wildfire (Laoshu ai dami). So in a market where any artist can record their own song and make it big by word of mouth and "illegal" copying, what value-added services do the labels offer?
The answer, simply, is fame. Nowadays, recording your own music and distributing it on-line is no longer difficult. Making it sound really good might be hard, but let's be honest: the top 40 hits aren't exactly classical music. They sound just about the same on shitty iPod earbuds as they do on a 20 thousand dollar audiophile setup. So, given how much you give up to have that producer do the recording for you, maybe signing with a label isn't such a great deal anymore.
But the one thing a big label can give you is fame. Instant fame. If you want to be famous, if that's your goal -- and for many musicians, their goal is not so much making music as living like a rock star -- then the RIAA and its ilk can give that to you. In China, this seems to be their only purpose. They don't just make you into a famous musician, they make you into an idol. You sell products. You act in films. You go to fancy parties, appear on TV shows, you do all that stuff. All the bagua gossip magazines talk about you, all the kids want to either sleep with you or be you, depending on their gender. This is their value-added service: fame.
That kid who did "Laoshu ai dami" -- I don't even know his name -- produced the most played song on the mainland (and in Taiwan, too, if memory serves) for like a two year period. His song was instantly covered by all sorts of label-sanctioned teen idols, who's versions went into heavy circulation. The kid, well, I don't know who he is or what became of him. That's the difference between having a label at your back and not.
People will always want to be famous, and we unwashed masses will always want celebrities to gossip about, envy, and emulate. In a world like ours, becoming super-famous can be easy if the corporations are backing you, and without their help, it's nearly impossible to have sustainable fame.
I don't see the labels and their ilk disappearing anytime soon. But like China, they may simply have to accept the fact that people are not going to stop copying music. Regardless of whether you think it's wrong or not, understand: it's not going to stop. Trying to keep it from happening is like passing prohibition, or trying to convince kids not to have premarital sex. You might win a few hearts and minds, but not enough to matter.
The only answer is changing how your business model works, and what it emphasizes. Perhaps the Chinese model is worth a look.
You hit it right on the head. Music equipment has largely been displaced by "home theater" garbage, and by garbage I mean a 6 inch "sub"-woofer and five puny 6-watt "satellites" whose tone is about as steady as a knocked-up Britney Spears. You can't go to the local megastore and buy music speakers, they don't have them anymore. They have multi-element bullshit home theater speakers, and if you're lucky the 16 year old salesperson might be able to recommend a set that's semi-decent, but in most cases he'll push you onto whatever earns him the biggest commission.
That leaves you with the specialty shops, where you add a zero to all the price tags. I've got a few stores down the street, they've been around for ages. They're quite spacious and breathy, in that there's plenty of empty space like it's a goddamned art gallery. The sales people wear Armani, and they talk with a stupid fake accent that's a hybrid of British, Ontarian (abooot) and ASSHOLE. The answer to any question about a certain product, is the next product up in price, kind of like Scientology.
The funny thing is I've never seen anyone enter either store, which is kind of odd when the daily throughfare is around 125 thousand in this particular area. Maybe it's because the shops look so friggin' hostile that nobody dares enter, still they must catch a few rich suckers to keep the business afloat.
I guess the point of my rant is that you can't point the blame on any single entity, whether it's the RIAA, or made-up Christian Rock peddling psychopaths, or the illiterate short-bus acts that dominate the charts, or the assholes that killed the stereo business, or the people who rip and share music online. It's either everyone's fault, or no one's (direct) fault. Every aspect of human life is changing at an ever-increasing pace, that's the product of population growth and technological advances. Businesses that flourished 20 years ago are going belly up because they've gone obsolete, the same as most of today's businesses will be dead in 2027. The RIAA can't stop the world from changing, they're just making this beachball a more miserable place to live on, and 20-40 years from now, when our grandchildren discover our old MP3 stash and ask about it, we'll have to tell them the sad tale of the music industry, much like our parents (or grandparents for some of you) told the story of Buddy Holly's tragic death.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
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
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.
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