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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.
When the product you pay for is worse than the one you pirate you encourage people to pirate. The RIAA is getting what it deserves but alot of consumers and musicians were hurt in the process. Oh well, You have to kill Jews to for the greater good of society.
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
Q: Why does 'Open Source' software suck so bad?
A: Because the programmers can't see the screen
lol
Typical Linux User.
You have to read their stuff through a special de-warping lense. Take this article with a big pinch of salt.
My business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't sell sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase records without profanity or violent lyrics. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate. On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with pirates gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I have just written a letter to the RIAA outlining my proposal. Suing pirates one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention pirates use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of pirates would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected pirates to a hotline, similar to TIPS. Once we know the size of the problem, the police and other law enforcement agencies will be forced to take piracy seriously. They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
This evening, my daughters asked me. "Wh
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
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.
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.
"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
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
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)
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.
Who cares about small, independent music shops? Who cares about the big music stores?
They don't offer anything. If I want an easy-to-find CD, I can go to Wal-Mart or BestBuy and get it cheaper. If I want a hard-to-find CD, I can get it on the internet, for less money. AND have it delivered.
The music stores, and for that matter MOST "specialty" retail stores, had their fun. They got to be nothing but a "middle-man", and take their cut at retail for doing basically nothing but running cash registers. That's fine, but it only works in the long-term if you can get HUGE like Wal-Mart.
I always here about the death of "mom and pop" stores, and how sad it is. You know what? FUCK "mom and pop". Mom and pop pay their employees minimum wage. Mom and pop make sure all of their employees only work part-time. Mom and pop don't offer any kind of health benefits to their employees. They also have higher prices, a smaller selection, and are located in out-of-the-way places. MAYBE they have good return policies. That's IT.
In my experience, the only people that benefit from "mom and pop" stores is MOM AND POP. They make a decent living by selling stuff in locations that don't have a Wal-Mart yet. Good for them. Bad for the people that have to buy stuff there, or work there.
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.
'nuff said
/. used to be OK. Now, it's shit.
Who am I?
Someone that ..
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I Will not advertise on Slashdot. You are a bunch of comment NAZIs.
Thank you and Fuck you.
Sincerely,
Some stupid fucker who listened to the /. salesmen.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
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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/
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/
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'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.
I still haven't seen the movie about the RIAA but I would guess they are all fanatical religious types.
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.
Weebit slaps RIAA with a rolled up newspaper... bad Dog!!!!!
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
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?
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
"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.
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.
n/t
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