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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.
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
After all, they're the ones who choose not to purchase music from record stores...
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.
Almost all of the NY Times is an op-ed piece these days. They're just not all labeled as such.
That said, this particular piece was excellent. Although a bit sad, it makes me hopeful that the 12 or so great musicians/bands of the last 40 years that were actually pushed by the major labels will still find fans online, and that the thousands of artist who are just as good but I've never heard of will be able to make a living that way too.
And that I'll be able to find them much more easily.
I think the end result will be that this is the best thing that could have happened to popular music. If you're not a 13 year old girl, or a 45 year old girl with the same taste in music that you had since you were 13, the RIAA companies produced very little of value to you anyway.
Good riddance.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
As another business owner, I think I know one big reason why your business is failing... You also forgot who your customer is... What right do you have to tell that kid what he can and cant do because of a major flaw your industries business model? This kid is only doing what makes sense to most logically minded individuals that just paid >= $15 for an album. If your industry charged $2 for that album, do you honestly think that anyone would bother the pain of burning it?
What your industry should have done is realised that the individual "value" of your product was going down and reduced your prices accordingly to compete. That is what the rest of us do. They didnt, because they (indluding you) forgot that you serve the customer music... You are not the gatekeeper of music.. Those days are over... The internet is not your competitor.
Also, do not pitty me with your "loose the house" crap. As another business owner, I completely understand this risk, and it is part of being a business owner. It is not societies responsability to prop up a failing industry that is committing suicide. It is dieing and either you change with it or go broke. Oh, and I have a little advice for you since you dont seem to have gotten it yet... Get the heck out of selling music CDs... Close the doors, lick your wounds, and move on. No move or lawsuit is going to save you...
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.
When I was a teenager, almost all of the radio stations in my area were independently owned. They didn't have playlists, didn't subscribe to programming services and didn't play the same music. In fact, you were actually pretty lucky to hear your favorite songs more than once a day. The DJ played what they liked or what they felt like playing. Which made for some very interesting listening, especially at night. I swear some of 'em put on Innagadadavida just so they could slip out for twenty minutes...
I guess radio stations figured out that they were supposed to make money 'cause they started playing just the top 10, subscribing to programming services or sold out to big media companies. Things went downhill from 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.
I disagree. The market changed. There's no guarantee that says people with middleman jobs (persons who try to add value by standing between the producer of a good or service and the consumer of that good or service) will have a job forever and a day, even if it seems likely to them. Markets change. People change. For many reasons, some of them you may be in sympathy with, some of them not.
I used to run a web store, "The Martial Arts Bookstore." Very specialized. I added value by carefully categorizing the books, inventing a "virtual shelves" mechanism that fit the needs of the shoppers. I also did capsule reviews of each book (I'm a martial artist with dan ranking across several disciplines and a scholarly interest in all of them.) I wouldn't even carry the low quality books that plague martial arts; there are plenty that were very high quality indeed. Initially, it did very well. Then Amazon opened; they not only had oodles more purchasing power than I did, they were able to run at a loss for years; I couldn't possibly do that. So I ran a last fire sale (which didn't sell much either) and then closed the site. I wasn't angry, I didn't write a whiny letter to anyone, and in fact, I became a very good customer of Amazon. I moved on to something else that was more appropriate to the times, and I have no complaints at all. It was fun, it was interesting, and it wasn't permanent. I see nothing to bitch about in any of that.
Things change. Accept it, move on, STFU.
Music isn't dead, and it isn't going to die. Let's face it - as musicians, as listeners - the producers and consumers - we're going to be fine. As musicians, maybe we'll have to move to a different distribution model, and maybe it'll be different as to how one becomes top of the heap. It'll still depend on your music to some degree, though; maybe moreso. As consumers, maybe we'll have to use different skills to find stuff we like. Surely the radio hasn't been a good source for anything but the crassest pop and bottomfeeder "repeat it until it sucks" marketing mechanisms for years - personally, I look forward to changes in the landscape. As for the middlemen, things change. Maybe I'll have to close my music studio. No sign of that yet in terms of my customers, but OTOH, you can buy mixing and recording equipment for a fraction of what it used to cost, a rack-mount mastering unit that can really do a very good job... there are no guarantees, anywhere for middle people. Not in music, not in written material, and not in video. If you find a niche and you can make it work, my hat is off to you. If it stops working, though, it is you that needs to change - sniveling about how you thought you'd be able to "spend your life" doing something is just despicable.
So that's why I'm not very impressed with the article.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I think the real question everyone wants to know is, who would pirate christian rock CDs?
Wait, What?
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?
I lived in China from 2002 to 2006 and there, you have a completely different dynamic. Whereas in the US it's generally understood that copyright infringement is illegal and maybe even wrong, in China, there is absolutely no respect for copyright whatsoever. Large, legit companies offer mp3 search engines that directly link to popular music. The discman and walkman were never common in China -- the mp3 player is ubiquitous, and no one really buys music. Even if you wanted to buy a CD, finding a reputable vendor that isn't just selling you a pirated copy is difficult.
So what's the deal? Why isn't the music industry dead in China, as so many analysts in the western world are predicting will happen here because of widespread "piracy"? Maybe they're just freeloading off of us? No, western music is not particularly popular in China. Much of their music comes from Taiwan and Hong Kong, but there's no respect for copyright law in those places, either. And the mainland market is growing, fast. A few years back one of the most popular songs ever on the mainland was a silly song some college kid recorded in their dorm and that spread on the internet like wildfire (Laoshu ai dami). So in a market where any artist can record their own song and make it big by word of mouth and "illegal" copying, what value-added services do the labels offer?
The answer, simply, is fame. Nowadays, recording your own music and distributing it on-line is no longer difficult. Making it sound really good might be hard, but let's be honest: the top 40 hits aren't exactly classical music. They sound just about the same on shitty iPod earbuds as they do on a 20 thousand dollar audiophile setup. So, given how much you give up to have that producer do the recording for you, maybe signing with a label isn't such a great deal anymore.
But the one thing a big label can give you is fame. Instant fame. If you want to be famous, if that's your goal -- and for many musicians, their goal is not so much making music as living like a rock star -- then the RIAA and its ilk can give that to you. In China, this seems to be their only purpose. They don't just make you into a famous musician, they make you into an idol. You sell products. You act in films. You go to fancy parties, appear on TV shows, you do all that stuff. All the bagua gossip magazines talk about you, all the kids want to either sleep with you or be you, depending on their gender. This is their value-added service: fame.
That kid who did "Laoshu ai dami" -- I don't even know his name -- produced the most played song on the mainland (and in Taiwan, too, if memory serves) for like a two year period. His song was instantly covered by all sorts of label-sanctioned teen idols, who's versions went into heavy circulation. The kid, well, I don't know who he is or what became of him. That's the difference between having a label at your back and not.
People will always want to be famous, and we unwashed masses will always want celebrities to gossip about, envy, and emulate. In a world like ours, becoming super-famous can be easy if the corporations are backing you, and without their help, it's nearly impossible to have sustainable fame.
I don't see the labels and their ilk disappearing anytime soon. But like China, they may simply have to accept the fact that people are not going to stop copying music. Regardless of whether you think it's wrong or not, understand: it's not going to stop. Trying to keep it from happening is like passing prohibition, or trying to convince kids not to have premarital sex. You might win a few hearts and minds, but not enough to matter.
The only answer is changing how your business model works, and what it emphasizes. Perhaps the Chinese model is worth a look.
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
They don't play Christian rock backwards to hear hidden messages. They play Christian rock backwards to make it sound better.
As a musician, I disagree. There's no law chiseled in stone that proclaims a musician's right to live off album sales. Musicians historically have lived by the largesse of wealthy patrons. Selling sheet music, performances, and recordings yield a certain level of income but for the average musician who is not a star, it needs to be supplemented by teaching, whoring (i.e., playing for weddings/birthdays/bar mitzvahs), building and repairing instruments, or a part- or full-time job washing dishes, working at a music store, etc.
There's also no law that says a CD which cost about $0.50 to stamp out has to sell for $15. Cut the prices back to $5 or $8 per disk and you'll see sales go up. Record albums used to sell for $4 or $5 back in the day, then tapes came along and bumped the price up to about $10 or $12, and then CDs went through the roof. OK already, a CD *player* costs $20 so why are disks still so expensive?
The amount of money musicians see from a CD sale is vanishingly small, especially when a middle man has done the production work. Do you honestly believe that out of that $15 (or $12 or $18) the musician is receiving more than $0.25 or $0.50? Typically not. If you self-produce, as less well-known musicians are forced to do, you have to front about $20,000 in studio time, design, copying and printing expenses, and it takes a long time to make that kind of money back from sales, let alone start to turn a profit. Disks are really a calling card, a way of getting your name out there and popularizing your music rather than some kind of bread-and-butter solid income that RIAA makes it out to be. Sure, a nationally known act with a dozen recordings out is going to be making some income from record sales but the lion's share is still going to the record producer.
Because of this situation, I think it makes more sense to simply upload your music and get the public listening to it, then ask them to pay to hear you play live. People have demonstrated that they will pay for great music either live or recorded. There are people who were making thousands of dollars a month on mp3.com, though of course most of the musicians there were amateurs. Yet, mp3.com had an interesting business model and I'm very sorry it got bought out.
The RIAA is living in a time warp. It's no longer possible to monopolize sound waves. Even twenty-five years ago, we used to constantly tape each other's records and tape albums played on the radio. No one was rich enough or crazy enough to purchase every single must-have album out there, though we all wanted to of course. Now we have a much better music delivery system that will very quickly get music out to millions of people all over the world--let's take advantage of it and the money will follow. Apple, CDBaby, mp3.com--they were thinking creatively and sooner or later a business model will emerge that leverages the current technology and gives musicians back some remuneration for their efforts.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.