Record Labels Change Minds About Sharing MP3s

Mass Defect writes "While the RIAA continues to sue people for p2p file sharing, the record labels have made an about-face and given their blessing to users sharing MP3s via the social networking site imeem.com. In May this year the site was being sued by Warner for allowing users to upload photos, videos, and music to share. However to everyone's amazement, instead of being flattened, imeem.com managed to convince the label that this free promotion was a good thing. In July imeem.com signed a deal with the label. Since then the site has added Sony, BMG, EMI, and now the biggest fish of them all, Universal. Imeem now has the royal flush of record labels supporting its media-sharing service, each getting a cut of the advertising revenues generated by their catalog. Finally someone has figured out a way to do 'YouTube for MP3s' without getting sued out of existence."

Comments

Re:30 second clips are for non-members

[Technician]

"these 30 sec peview are dumb u cant even steal songs from here how is ti possible to download. plus these are intended to have em in our page we can never put dem in our ipods and such ya know. get rid of da 30 sec limit quick or da 50 cent guy below u will be right about losing alot of members"

Clipped right from a song sample page...

"You must be logged in to hear the full song. Click here to create an account."

You can listen to the entire song.. With an account. That is why there is so much Google information of how to cheat the system and download the songs. Nobody wants a bunch of 30 second clips of songs except as ringtones.

wow

[mincognito]

Wow. How amazing that the record companies agreed to this. Low quality streaming with loads of ads and a "download" button that sends you to the iTunes store or amazon. The annoying registration box that pops up after listening to 30 seconds of a song (you must register to hear the rest) is a nice touch.

Re:wow

[Aladrin]

You call it 'low quality', but it sounds as good as radio to me. I'm not real picky about the bitrate of music I stream... In fact, low bitrate is better, since the whole office uses this crappy little connection.

'Loads of ads' is apparently 2 per page. I've learned to tune them out, so I don't care.

The 'download' button is a good alternate (read: not a flash ad) revenue source and I probably -will- use it to buy from Amazon the songs I want to keep.

Registration is free, and what -doesn't- require you to subscribe to get the full benefit these days?

It even lets you create and listen to playlists, so you don't have to play a single song at a time. It's perfect for seasonal music and all those good-for-3-months songs that are oh-so-popular these days.

Personally, I like it and it didn't cost me anything. Plus, the fact that they got some record companies to agree to -anything- is great. Maybe they'll keep continuing to gain some sense.

Yawn...

[moosesocks]

Imeem's missing the point. One of the biggest positive points of P2P is that the record companies, radio conglomerates, have absolutely no say over the selection and presentation of content.

What we're seeing here is the Record Companies trying to appeal to our better judgement, while making one last effort to maintain an iron grip over their content. And it's just not going to work.

You see.... last year was arguably one of the best years on record for independent artists and labels for this very reason. The amount of *great* content being released by small labels was staggering to say the least, and I'd be pretty certain that more than a few of these artists got their "big break" via P2P.

Meanwhile, the talent on the major labels was.... crap... to say the least, and it has nothing to do with the inevitable backlash that occurs between generations. Most of the "Top-40" artists are untalented, formulaic, and absolute rubbish.

The crackdown on P2P, and the agreement with Imeem is at least in part trying to mask the fact that the RIAA's members have completely lost the ability to identify and sign new talent. On the other hand, the indie labels have gotten quite good at it.

The days of rock stars with million dollar salaries are over. The labels need to accept the fact that music is going to become increasingly diverse over the next several years, and that their old strategy of promoting a very small number number of superstar artists just isn't going to work any more.

Re:here's the answer

[Technician]

gee... i wonder why they agreed to drop legal action against imeem.

What I wondered is how much it costs an advertiser per page view. A bunch of kids that never buy anything could prove to be expensive to an advertiser. Remember the free Net Zero? I expect the content providers to squeeze the middle pretty hard. They overcharge for any use of their product. This will be no exception. Advertisers payments will go directly to the record companies and the website will go broke. Nobody providing RIAA content is making a lot of money and negotiations often bread down. Look at the fees they were trying to charge webcasters and the higher fees they were trying to push on iTunes. This outfit is next in line for the squeeze. They will be squeezed to the point they have to raise advertising rates to the point the advertisers demand more in your face exposure for the money or they go bye bye.

pHR33 L394L /\/\P3z!!!1!!

[Novus]

I checked this out earlier when CNN pointed it out. While imeem doesn't make it easy for you to download music, they are streaming standard Flash video with MP3 soundtracks, which makes it easily downloadable e.g. using DownloadHelper. The MP3 files can then be extracted using e.g. MPlayer ("mplayer -dumpaudio -dumpfile foo.mp3 foo.flv").

End result: free, often decent quality (128 kbps), legal MP3s of music from major labels (where fair use applies; the usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer also applies).

Re:pHR33 L394L /\/\P3z!!!1!!

[Novus]

decent quality 128 kbps mp3? an oxymoron!

if you must have lossy compression, use VBR or preferably vorbis (oggs). if it's decent quality you're after, use flac.

My perception goes something like: less than 64 kbps MP3 or 48 kbps Vorbis = awful, 64-112 kbps MP3 or 48-96 kbps Vorbis = bad, 128-192 kbps MP3 or 97-128 kbps Vorbis = decent, higher lossy rates = good, lossless = excellent. YMMV (although I'm curious as to what you'd call good quality if lossless audio is merely "decent", especially since FLAC goes up to 8 channels of 32 bit PCM at more than 600 kHz). In any case, the sound on imeem is better than, for example, Youtube. Of course, if the uploader is just re-encoding a 32 kbps WMA file...

Re:A couple of choice comments on the announcement

[morgan_greywolf]

Oops, I don't mean "steal". I mean "infringe the copyright of". Because the difference totally matters, and makes the latter totally okay. There is a difference, even though copyright infringement is not, per se, totally okay.

Because the copyright system is so, "broken", you know. Gotcha. My bad. No, the copyright system isn't broken. Copyright has worked well for over 200 years in this country. (The patent system is another story). Now laws like the DMCA that criminalize what would otherwise be legitimate acts...that's broken.

Good for you! After all, if something is technically or physically possible to do, that must mean there is an implicit grant allowing you to do this. That's an entirely different argument, Dave. If someone is running a Web server on port 80 and plugged into the public internet, but doesn't have any authentication methods and just assumes that he didn't give explicit permission for anyone to access, therefore no one has access...well, that's just stupid, now, isn't it?

Yes, the convenience and ease of each of those things is why there are, and always have been, different costs for different privileges. Think it's bullshit if you want. Call copyright out if you want. But that's the current legal framework we have, and before you start tossing around terms like "MAFIAA", why not consider that there will always be groups of artists who want to control their own content, and think they should be paid X, Y, or Z for it. Some might even price things -- like the right to play it on a radio station, or be streamed in a web page, or be downloaded from an online music store, or purchased on a CD -- differently. Some might group together under common legal and marketing representation. They may call it, oh, I don't know, a music label. Some might also realize that it's smart to pool their outward legal representation under an umbrella industry trade organization, even given the drawbacks. There may be different frameworks in different countries, necessitating differing systems of handling sales, releases, and legal issues in various places to maximize one's own return on your investment as you see fit, as is your right That's right, but you also tend to make it sound like the record labels are totally benign and that artists get paid fairly. That's also not the case, as recording artist after recording artist has come out and said. You also make it sound like the RIAA don't try to control what gets played on the airwaves. They have rules, you know, for radio stations that says that if they want to play RIAA content, they can't play it alongside of non-RIAA content -- i.e., indie rock. Some radio stations have even expressed this view as completely ridiculous, but abide by it because they feel they have no choice. Doesn't this sound like the tactics of another big monopoly? One that starts with an 'M', ends with a 't' and has a Vista in the middle?

I agree that file sharing is a problem, but there are plenty of problems in the music industry and these problems have more to do with their lost revenue than file sharing itself. If the record labels had gotten off their ass and got into online music in a big way when it started, we wouldn't have this problem.

Re:Making available

[Technician]

Is this going to stop the RIAA lawsuits at all? This reads like an advertisement for the social site more than that the record companies have done an about face in policy.


Nothing changes in the P2P lawsuits. The RIAA has been solid on a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy being as good as the original copy is a bad bad thing. Making a copyable file and posting it is bad bad bad and we will sue...

This website is not P2P. It is a post and broadcast.. There is no download and pass along a copy.. well not without some google searching on how to D/L a copy in violation of the DMCA. The songs are protected by streaming flash and maybe an identifying watermark.

The site is now a web broadcaster. The site pays royalties out of the advertising revenue. There is no P2P. Copies stolen (copyright violated) may be identified for later lawsuits by watermarking or other identifiers provided at the site to prevent theft (copyright violations). This is probably why there is no listening beyond a 30 second clip without an account. With an account the info may be embeded in the clips so if they show up on Kazaa later, they know who to sue for the violation. How much personal information do you have to give to get an account? If it requires a CC number, you are pretty much a sitting duck if you D/L and post on Kazaa.

Re:A couple of choice comments on the announcement

[ATMAvatar]

No, the copyright system isn't broken. Copyright has worked well for over 200 years in this country. (The patent system is another story). Now laws like the DMCA that criminalize what would otherwise be legitimate acts...that's broken.

Some would argue that the current copyright system is broken.

The original system where a copyright:

• Had to be registered
• Lasted 14 years
• Provided for an additional 14 year extension if applied for

was far more sane than what we have now.

Re:here's the answer

[aadvancedGIR]

So, do they realy get $7500 in ad revenues per downloaded song?

Re:The content is fingerprinted..

[Technician]

From the terms of service page...

"Any audio that you upload to the imeem service will be filtered by an audio fingerprint filtering system that prevents registered audio content from being full-length streamed to any users other than the user that uploaded it. "

This is why some tracks are fully playable without an account and other tracks are 30 seconds. They also frown on uploading content that you didn't create.

"You must not upload or present any media or content in which you do not have the appropriate rights to do so. You may be in violation of copyright laws if you do not have the appropriate rights to the media or content you upload or present on imeem. imeem will not tolerate known infringements or misbehavior by its users."

Most disturbing part of the terms of service is they claim you retain your copyright when you upload, but in uploading you provide an unrevokable license to them.. This is bad.

"Member Content, you agree to and hereby do grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, imeem, its contractors, and the users of the imeem Site an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully sublicensable, fully paid up, worldwide license to use, copy, publicly perform, digitally perform, publicly display, and distribute such content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such Member Content on the imeem Site or Service."

Basicaly you give them a permanant license to use your content in any way they want forever including distribution. They could compile your work and then sell it worldwide and you would get jack for royalties.

Common sense?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

This isn't an outbreak of anything but more crap. Who would use this service? It's like going to a news site where all they do is provide a brief, degraded version of an actual news story...

Re:"Stealing"

[gutnor]

"Copyright infringement is a DIFFERENT THING."

Indeed with stealing you can get away with a mild sentence or some community service when caught. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, will probably put you in debt for the rest of your life.

Re:A couple of choice comments on the announcement

[Maniac-X]

Uh no, sorry. http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/firsts/copyright/ (with photographic proof) Original copyright law was 14 years, extendable one time for an additional 14 years. The original penalty for violation of the copyright law was, turn over the infringing material to the copyright holder for them to destroy, and pay 50 cents per page you had to turn over. The act was signed by George Washington and went into effect in 1790, and DID NOT CHANGE AT ALL until 1891 when copyright protections were granted to non-citizens. Currently, copyright does not expire until 70 years after the death of the creator. Research has been done to suggest that 12-14 year copyrights are optimal, as it allows the creator to get a bunch of money out of it, and then after it goes out of print due to lack of salability (NES games?), it returns to the public domain relatively quickly so anyone interested can get ahold of it. This is how it should be, but its not.