Why the RIAA Really Hates Downloads

wtansill recommends the saga of Jeff Price, who traveled from successful small record label owner to successful Internet-era music distributor. His piece describes clearly what the major record labels used to be good for and why they are now good for nothing but getting in the way. "Allowing all music creators 'in' is both exciting and frightening. Some argue that we need subjective gatekeepers as filters. No matter which way you feel about it, there are a few indisputable facts -- control has been taken away from the 'four major labels' and the traditional media outlets. We, the 'masses,' now have access to create, distribute, discover, promote, share and listen to any music. Hopefully access to all of this new music will inspire us, make us think and open doors and minds to new experiences we choose, not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want."

Comments

D'uh from these quarters too.

[The Ancients]

I wrote a (very) short piece on this a while ago, in response to an article on El' Reg.

Again, looking at the list of 'discoveries' there, and at the reasons given here, it's hard to believe that the industry hasn't already fallen over in a big screaming heap. The only thing propping it up thus far are multi-album recording contracts, and their McDonald's inspired ability to foist very average fair on to the average user.

In the last couple of years with GarageBand etc providing the ability for anyone to make reasonable music at home, the iTunes Music Store and it's ilk providing the ability for almost anyone to publish their work, and social networking sites providing the marketing (often viral), it's time these commercial dinosaurs went the way of their reptilian cousins did millions of years ago.

Re:D'uh from these quarters too.

[Jarik_Tentsu]

There will still be gatekeepers, but the new gatekeepers will be bloggers and other online communities that promote music they've heard and appreciate. I think a good example is the trance DJ, Armin Van Buuren. He mixes the weekly 2-hour trance mixes called "A State of Trance" which has tens of thousands, more likely even hundreds of thousands of downloads.

It's played on proper radio stations, but is also available free online from many, many places at around 192kbps. He becomes the 'gatekeeper' almost - putting together good selections of recent music that the audience can be exposed to - some of it is obscure, some of it are big trance releases, but in either case, it's one source where the public can filter through all the crap and freely be given a good choice of music.

Could this be a potentially good model for other things as well? Podcasts and radio shows becoming the next big thing - played both on real radio and available online? A State of Trance is a model that really, really works well - I wonder if things like this can be expanded to other genres...though, obviously certain genres and types of music - like post-rock concept albums, or really unique Progressive Metal bands, might suffer from the inability to be juxtaposed with other music.

~Jarik

Re:D'uh from these quarters too.

[sm62704]

They historically provided, out of economic necessity, whatever music was (subjectively) "the best."

You're wrong.

When I was a teenager I walked into a record store and the most amazing music was playing. Song after song. I asked the sales clerk who it was. "A new band, Led Zeppelin". I bought the album right then and there.

The critics panned them and they never got any airplay; at least until non-critics and non-radio people found them.

My crazy friend Tom Egbert called me up one day after school. "Man, you GOT to hear this album! It ROCKS!" He was right: the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Are You Experienced kicked ass! He never got any airplay, either.

The Yardbirds never got airplay. We all found out about them from the local bands covering their songs. Meanwhile when you turned on the radio you got what they called "bubblegum pop". Yummie yummie yummie I got love in my tummy" - pure dreck, not unlike what you hear on the radio today, very similar to the kind of absolute crap put out by the likes of Britney Spears or the Backstreet Boys.

My oldest daughter is mentally handicapped. She likes the rap they play on the radio. My youngest (just turned 21) otoh is "gifted". She listened to punk and ska - and you didn't hear either of those genres on the radio (and never have outside the college stations).

In short, the major labels and the radio stations they bribe with their cocaine payola never had a fucking clue what young people want, and still don't.

to the radio in your car suddenly becomes like a Google search for not-crap, every time you try to use it.

It's like that now, and always has been. Thank God and technology for CD changers.

Sometimes, Britney will do.

No, Britney will NOT do. Britney is a talentless bimbo. John Lee Hooker will do (he never got airplay either). Led Zeppelin will do. Tchaikovsky will do. Merl Haggard will do. Bob Marley will do. The Pietasters will do. The Dead Kennedys will do.

Britney spears will NOT do. The Backstreet Boys will NOT do.

You would have loved The Archies. Sorry dude but you have no musical taste whatever.

Reminds me...

[_Hellfire_]

"...not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want."

I never thought one could get pithy one-liners from a video game, but I think the GTA writers had the nail hit on the head with one of the radio station's advertisements (I think it was from Liberty City):

"We tell you what's good! Then play it 'till you like it!"

I think that sums up the Label's business methods quite succinctly.

It wasn't the cannons man!

[Cordath]

The Spanish conquest of the Americas is often overly dramatized. In all instances I am aware of, it was *not* Spanish technology that carried the day.

Takes the Aztec's for example. Many story tellers will spin a glorious yarn about the siege of Tenochtitlan. Most of those will be glad to talk about how Moctezuma revered Cortés as a god. Most will also completely gloss over the fact that the Spaniards were only a small percentage of the force that laid siege to Tenochtitlan. The Aztec's were not very popular amongst their neighbors, so when Cortés marched on Tenochtitlan the Aztec's enemies came in droves to capitalize on a change to take them down. The Inca's were smack in the middle of a civil war over succession when the Spaniards arrived on the scene, and by pure luck, managed to kidnap the heir apparent. (They held him hostage for gold and then executed him.) Their timing was fortuitous, to say the least. However, the capture of Cuzco was the real fall of Peru, and by that time the Spanish had again picked up indigenous allies to fight for them.

Finally, there is the Mayans. If you watched Apocalypto then you probably got the impression that the Maya were living in big cities and making a mess of things when the Spaniards showed up and conqured/saved them. Nope. They had abandoned their cities centuries before. Even with their civilization an echo of its former glory, the Maya put up more resistance against the Europeans than, perhaps, any other indigenous people in the america's. Unlike the Aztec's and Incas, there was no single Mayan center which could be attacked and neutralized. The Maya were spread out in some of the densest, nastiest, most brutal jungle on Earth. The Spaniards would capture one town and move on to the next only to find that they had to recapture the previous town all over again the next time they went past it. It took centuries to subdue just a *portion* of the Mayan population.

Now, it would seem that we're way off topic, but we can draw some pretty interesting parallels actually. RIAA is a centralized body, much like the Inca or Aztecs. All it would take is for one major record label to withdraw their support to RIAA and that would be their end. Likewise, a change to copyright law could doom all the labels overnight. Music pirates, on the other hand, are by their very nature decentralized. You can squash as many individuals with lawsuits as you want, but the P2P network lives on. Finding those individuals and gathering enough evidence to bring a lawsuit that has a chance of winning if they don't cave and settle is also not an easy task. They are like the Maya. Hard to find, difficult to suppress, and resilient. If RIAA and the labels somehow managed to keep going as they are now, it would take centuries to bring piracy to and end at best.

Anyways, I'm at the point where I just want easy access to good music. If the labels brought back Oink in all it's glory at $30/month I'd be their first customer. If they insist that I have to spend $10 an album for lossy DRM'd tracks on iTunes or $15 for a CD, neither of which net the artist more than $0.15, then no deal.

The way I see it, there is an answer to music distribution. Say that somebody created a private torrent tracker site where the members paid a monthly access fee. Artists could seed their music on this torrent site and be paid a percentage of the gross according to how much their stuff is downloaded. No middlemen. No record companies. Just the artists and the torrent site. Potentially, artists could make a lot more money than they are now. However, there are problems. Perhaps the stickiest is that little issue of critical mass. If a handful of independents got together and did this, they'd fail miserably. Such a site would need a *massive* catalog to get off the ground. It would have to include a very large number of artists from day 1. Still, it is a beautiful dream.

The Korean Answer for Legal P2P

[Anonymous Coward]

Soribada. A P2P network you pay a few bucks a month for membership. Korea. Files authorized to be distributed by the program are tagged with a special code in the file and only files tagged as such will be recognized by the program. Except that, MP3s flow like water and most artists in Korea have signed on so the catalog is chock full of almost every major Korean artist... Most of it lossy (but high-quality) MP3 but some are FLAC and APE files...