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DRM-Free Music Spells Trouble?
digitaldame2 writes "Many opponents of DRM have been overjoyed at recent efforts to free media from its grip. But PC Mag Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff believes the whole world has gone mad. His view is that our digital economy will collapse this way, and it could be followed by countless others. 'The music industry's moves have been terrified reactions to staunch the bleeding of millions of dollars in revenue down the drain. For maybe a year, music companies thought they had the situation under control, but then album sales tumbled. Retailers, musicians, and some music-industry execs thought DRM was the culprit, and they soon joined the chorus of consumers calling for its head. Now consumers are getting their wish, and the music industry will continue to crumble. Giving up control of content and giving it away free are not rational ideas in a market economy, yet everyone's cheering.'" Is the removal of restrictions from our media really that big a deal?
A brave new world: the music biz at the dawn of 2008
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/state-of-digital-music-2007.ars
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
Copying a friend's music in your home (or vice versa) isn't illegal, whether it's audio tapes or CDs using digital audio media. Thanks to the AHRA of 1992, you pay a 'tax' on every blank audio tape and audio CD for the right to make copies of friends' tapes. This is how the RIAA responded to the last wave of copying that was going to "destroy the industry".
Of course, that tax goes only to the RIAA, not independent artists. So every time you tape your local band, you paid the RIAA for the band's music.
Cool, eh?
Well Beethoven was able to write music only because people like Rudolf Johannes Joseph Rainier Cardinal von Habsburg-Lothringen, Archduke and Prince Imperial of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungry and Bohemia paid him large amounts of money to do so.
Bach, by contrast was paid to write by (among others) Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar.
I remember looking on LimeWire a few weeks after iTunes Plus launched for iTunes Plus files to see if they had indeed appeared (searched for 256 kbps *.m4a files). I didn't find any.
I found lots of AAC files ripped by iTunes users who didn't change the default ripping format (which uses 128 kbps), but none that would have come from the iTunes Store.
From TFA: "Giving up control of content and giving it away free "
Uh...who is giving away free music? Ok, iTunes has some free tracks every week and I am sure there are others but here is the point:
Removing DRM != Giving Away Music For Free.
More from TFA: "So now it's a good idea to give away music in the hope that people will think you're so cool that they'll pay anyway."
Sometimes that works. Again, not many people are doing that. The argument is against DRM.
From TFA: " Sure, we could copy some pages out of a book at the library's photocopy machine, and some people created mix tapes from their favorite albums, and others got in the habit of recording movies from TV to VHS. These were not rampant problems, and no one panicked."
Uh...actually, there was panic. From Wikipedia:
"In the early 1980s, the film companies in the USA fought to suppress the device in the consumer market, citing concerns about copyright violations. In the case Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the device was allowable for private use, thereby guaranteeing market acceptance. In the years following, the film companies found that videorecordings of their products had become a major income source. However, television networks found the widespread use of this device was threatening their advertising business model because viewers then have the ability to either fast forward through television commercials, or pause recording when they are broadcast." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCR
Again, TFA: "The music industry's moves have been terrified reactions to staunch the bleeding of millions of dollars in revenue down the drain." So? What caused the drop in revenue? Crappy product maybe? I dunno. Sounds to me like the industry is already crumbling and it has NOTHING to do with them "giving it away for free".
TFA: "For maybe a year, music companies thought they had the situation under control, but then album sales tumbled. Retailers, musicians, and some music-industry execs thought DRM was the culprit, and they soon joined the chorus of consumers calling for its head. " And what has been the result? We don't know yet. I think it is a good thing. I would rather pay a reasonable price for a single song than be forced to pay an outrageous price for an entire album. "Everyone" likes that. Why does he think iTunes has been such a hit?
Get a clue, Lance.
He projects the end of the music industry and blames it on DRM-free tracks. Sorry, the end of the music industry started well before DRM-Free music.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
They may have been great composers irrespective of whether or not they got paid. Whether they would have had the time to create such an amazing corpus of work, in between having to work as music teachers to pay the rent is another matter. The fact is that most of the historically great artists made their living by being commissioned by patrons. To suggest that remuneration has little or nothing to do with an artist's ability to find the time to create is plain silly.
For those of us old enough to remember the early days of the personal computer market and, more specifically, the IBM PC market, we will remember that the same types of doom and gloom was said about the software industry. Lotus would die if it released 123 without DRM (ok, it was called copy protection back then) or that dBase or a host of other software vendors.
But there were some that realized that two things were going on:
1) Copy protection got in the way of legitimate paying customers so more and more complex methods were invented that did things like put bad data into directory structures on the hard drive to "mark" the machine as valid and other such trick, all of which ended up causing more problems and costing tons in R&D and support efforts.
2) Those people who would not pay for the software still were finding people who had the skills to work around the security measures and still had illegal copies. In fact, some that actually had paid for the software also got these illegal versions as they did not have this other problems.
Along the same time, some smaller vendors released software at the right price and without copy protection "features" and did very well. Slowly the other vendors also stopped doing copy protection and, well, the sky did not fall. They all prospered. Those that failed did not fail due to lack of copy protection or due to too much piracy.
I have seen this cycle actually a number of times. Each time the final analysis ends up showing that more is lost due to trying to "protect" the content than is ever gained by someone maybe paying for the product that might not have done so without the measures.
Beethoven was a prime example -- in fact, the first -- of a composer who did not need aristocratic patronage. He paved the way for a self-sustaining business by publishing, selling subscription concerts, and acquiring commissions from wealthy patrons. He did not live or die by a single royal finger, though he did accept individual commissions from them.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Well, back in my day (and I didn't get to see Zeppelin), the popular touring groups of the day...ZZTop, Rush, Journey, Van Halen, Kansas, Styx....etc.....most of those concerts then were about $15-$20 a ticket. Hell, my first Stones concert in '81 was an outrageous like $40 or so I think....
You have the high priced shows (I just bought floor tix for Rush in NOLA for $115) today but, they are mostly older groups....some with a HUGE stage show...and they are marketing to the same 'kids' that listened to them in their heyday, except for now, we all have real jobs and careers, and can easily afford said tickets. I'd not expect a current band to be commanding those prices....although with inflation, I'd say a current show today should be about $40 or so a ticket....for a big group...more local stuff...$12-$15?
I'm with you...I usually prefer the smaller venues...HOB or something is fun...it is fun to be close to the band..catch their eye while jumping and dancing around...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Please, not this "theft" canard again. What is being stolen? Nothing. A copy is being made without permission, but that's not theft. Watching a Cubs game from the roof of a neighbouring house is not stealing from Wrigley Field.
The problem is that rights to make copies were codified when the technology to make copies was still expensive and rare, to encourage publishers to make copies. It does not fit the modern age where the ability to copy (and by extension create new works) is in every household.
The publisher may now feel cheated of his compensation, but nothing was taken. Instead, he merely isn't given what he feels he was entitled to.
And remember, though somebody else making money off of your work might be galling, the absolute worst thing is when your artwork goes unnoticed. With DRM, the chances of your creations being lost due to incompatibilities are enormous.
Frequently traveling around the world, I've noticed that outside of the U.S. and some Western European countries, local people laugh at the notion of copyright. They add up to most of the world population. True, they might not be actively pushing for abolition of copyright, but they certainly have no intent of respecting it.