Slashdot Mirror
Study Suggests Music Industry Embrace Piracy
unassimilatible writes to tell us that according to the Financial Times, the music industry should embrace illegal file-sharing websites. A recent study of the recent Radiohead album release found that huge numbers of illegal downloads actually helped the band's popularity and, by extension, concert ticket sales. "Radiohead's release of In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want basis last October generated enormous traffic to the band's own website and intense speculation about how much fans had paid. He urged record companies to study the outcome and accept that file-sharing sites were here to stay. 'It's time to stop swimming against the tide of what people want,' he said." Update 19:46 GMT by SM: Several readers (including the original author) have written in to mention that it isn't stressed enough that this study was engaged by the music industry itself, making the findings that much more interesting. Take that as you will.
Not very many people know this, but the RIAA almost went bankrupt in the 30s with Radio, because they didn't have any licensing fees or "royalties" associated with it. And people stopped buying records because they could listen to it on the radio.
The RIAA should embrace technology. Because that is where the world is headed. Any idiot can see this. So instead of fighting, go with the flow, because you cannot change people. No matter how much you sue, how much fucking money you waste trying to convince people they are stealing if they think of the song in their head.
I hereby kick the RIAA in the nuts.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It helps their artists (and them as well), but it also helps artists who are not uinder contract with its members.
The RIAA has radio and empty-v to advertise its wares, as well as internet radio and P2P. Their competetion (the independants) only has internet radio and P2P. Killing internet radio and P2P is a blow against the indies, and since the RIAA has radio and empty-v, they can do without the internet. Their competetion can't.
What they are doing is blatantly illegal, but the government is their pawn. We, the People, are defenseless.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
People want *everything* for free.
I don't want everything for free. In fact I have very little pirated content in my music collection - there is some, but it's gotta be less than 10%, maybe less than 5%.
Much of my music collection was bought years ago, before downloading MP3 was even an option. These days, I only really "follow" a handful of mainstream artists and buy CDs when new ones are released. I do this only grudgingly, especially in those cases where the artist releases under a RIAA label. My preference is to buy indie music, preferably at a gig where the artist is playing and I can literally hand cash to them and tell them how much I enjoyed the show.
In general, my response to the RIAAs tactics - even though I'm not a "downloader" - has been to shun them and the bands they work with.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
The music industry (and the movie industry) has a business model where they control the conduit between the "talent" and the "customer." They make their money by controlling that conduit ... we have a number of laws that outline the dirty tricks used by these folks to control the distribution conduit, right up to the control interface on your wallet. The Canadian blank-media tax basically siphons cash out of your wallet regardless of your music/entertainment purchases, and gives the lion's share of the funds to ... wait for it ... the distribution cartels. They have a plan for distributions to artists, but that's after they've taken their cut.
Any proposal that lessens their ability to control the market will be opposed quite vigorously. They already know they're obsolete. What makes you think they're going to give up voluntarily?
This is it, exactly.
Distribution has changed, but marketing and promotion needs are still there. While it is possible for an artist to succeed with marketing on their own, no small acts have access to the marketing channels that the big companies have -- and so it is unlikely that an artist can succeed in marketing their own product.
The big labels need to retrench and get out of distribution. They could be very, very successful (& profitable) if they realize this. They need to sell off their distribution arms (only the first one or two to do so will realize anywhere close to value, IMO) and do what they are best at, which is controlling what the market "demands".
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I have to disagree...
Here at Brazil there are dozens of local bands that I never heard about, but are able to market themselves and earn money. These bands basically perform at regional shows, sell their albuns themselves and basically are ignored by the mainstream music industry. The music is basically "pirated" by the artists themselves, because it's sold on a such informal way directly by the band or by street vendors that copy and resell the albums as much as they want to.
Eventually some of this bands get attention from the general public and become know nationwide... And some even internationally, see the Calypso band for an example... not my kind of music, but they managed to make some shows on Europe and USA! And this without the help of any major label.
See, if a kitschy band from the brazilian countryside (hey, by countrysite I mean near the f*sk amazon forrest!) can reach international success all by themselves... Well, I think Record Labels are no longer necessary!
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Who needs labels anymore anyway? If someone is interested enough in truly making music, they should find a way to do it and make money off it.
Like picking a label that is not evil. Many artists do not enjoy the day-to-day work of finding distribution channels, doing promotion, calling magazines, radio stations, TV stations, etc. Labels CAN provide a valuable service. Nowhere near as valuable as they are making themselves out to be today (with some notable exceptions -- magnatune.com seems to be a decent label, for instance.)
It isn't like labels are really promoting anything worthwhile anyway. They're more like a marketing machine. Miley Cyrus or Cute Cookie Cutter Female Singer #324,234,465 hardly qualify as "artists".
And some truly good artists ALSO are represented by these so-called machines. Stands to argue that those artists produce something worthwhile.
What's needed is iTunes that let's anyone on and you screw all to the record companies by finding a way to record your music w/o them.
You /CAN/ get your music on iTunes. There are even services that do it for you. You can also use some of the alternate download shops or labels that engage in such.
Home recording is hella cheap compared to a couple decades ago
And still, as a rule, hella crappy too. It's great for a jam session, it sucks if you want to do any well-engineered album.
Again, labels /can/ provide valuable services. The trick is to not let them treat you like a piece of property, keep your options open, and never, ever give perpetual exclusive licenses to your work to anybody.
Actually they probably could,they would just have to go back to the "old" way of doing things. My mom talks about the way bands worked when she was a kid,and how you would get one "semi-famous" act,along with up to a dozen smaller acts. The smaller acts would all have self pressed 45 records for sale to the audience after the show,and the concerts were such a good deal price wise that it left the kids with plenty of money to snatch up those 45s the bands were selling.
I think going back to a more "carnival" atmosphere,with the bands having little booths to sell cds,t-shirts,keyrings,etc would work,and they would end up with a lot more money than selling themselves to a record company. I know that when i went on a southern tour with the college band I was playing with we were getting between $400-800 a night easy,just from selling our wares to the audience. And there were plenty of other ways to promote yourself. We would put up "Win one of the bands guitars!" flyers around before a show and take a cheap Kramer that we bought online and play it for the last 3 or 4 songs. After which we would sign it and have a raffle and everyone who bought any of our merchandise got a ticket for each item bought. Sales went up a good 40% and the fans loved it.
So yes,I think it can work for the little guys too,they just can't sit on the butts and expect the money fairy to drop a sack on their lap. They have to be willing to hustle and put in the effort,but the rewards are well worth it. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Don't forget the "Hollywood accounting" principals that say if you don't show any profit, you don't get taxed. That check for $500,000 the band got was for "unreimbursed expenses" and such. No, there isn't any profit here, none at all. Check Mr. IRS Man, and you will see all our books are clean. No profit.
Are there bands that make lots for their manager, agent and record company without ever getting a dime themselves? Sure, they spent their entire advance (and then some) and finished with less than steller sales. Does this happen often? Absolutely. Want a bowlfull of caviar before every concert? Sure. Someone will get paid for it in the end.
At the same time there are so many ways to hide income (ala "profits") that it would make your head swim. Anyone with a lick of financial sense hides as much income as they can, because the alternative is to losing it. It also isn't the sort of thing you tell the fans about because it might get around to the IRS Man and that would just ruin everything.
...would be:
Rights holders would create copies of their movies/music/etc. using a standard program that "imprints" it with a demo indicator. For video, this would mean a message appearing at the start, end and in the middle of the screen every 20 minutes or so saying this was an unlicensed copy and to license it, go to this website. For music, it would take the form of an audio announcement along the same lines at the beginning, middle, and end of the song.
When you go to that website, you can download an app for your particular platform. The app would be fairly simple, so there's really no excuse for not supporting Windows, Mac, Linux, and maybe even BSD. This app is like iTunes Music Store in that it lets you whip out a credit card and pay money for the music/movie. It then downloads from the server the diff that would take those announcement bits out and replace them with the normal audio/video. It also tack on to the beginning and end of any video the purchaser's name, with a short (less than 5 second) screen saying that the following movie was the licensed property of (purchaser's name). For audio files, it would probably be best just to have that put in the tags. Hopefully some place it would be obvious on playback/browsing.
And that's it. No more DRM. No phoning home, no device lock in for the stuff you already purchased. Just a simple screen to prevent casual copying (who wants to give other people stuff with their name and maybe city/state on it). The knowledgeable crowd will know how to fix that, but there's no point in trying to stop them, anyway. They'll always figure out a way around and you can save yourself millions of dollars in creating elaborate DRM schemes and lost sales because people don't like elaborate DRM schemes.
You charge VERY low rates for these files. We're talking 10 cents - 50 cents a song and around $1-$2 a movie. You make up for the price in volume, especially on the movies because now you can really give the movie rental places a run for their money. You not only stop trying to squash bittorrent, you embrace it. You get your imprinted copies on every decent tracker and you help seed them. You make it as easy to download your imprinted copy as it is to get a pirate one.
If you've got the money for development/bandwidth, you can also create your own iTunes-like store where they can directly download from you. But you keep putting it on the torrent sites, too, because this is all about making paying for content as close to as easy as not paying for it and only slightly more expensive. If you're a smaller player, you team up and do package deals. This would narrow down the number of sites that have activation apps that you'd have to download. I figure each of the big music labels would want to do their own (BMG, Universal, etc.) and then you'd get indie collectives.
The payment method could also be abstracted so that you never give your financial information directly to the companies but only get sent through other payment systems like paypal, Amazon, etc. Heck, maybe even the activation apps could come from these "trusted" third parties. The content owners could keep them in line (keep them from trying to take a big piece of the pie) due to the competition between payment systems.
The companies could keep a record of the media you own, so that you could get a new copy activated if your old one got deleted. This would be low traffic on their site if they want because you can get the imprinted media from a torrent.
Note: If doing the diff thing is too difficult (because of the way various codecs work), you can also just create a file where you take out 10% of the information required to play it, basically in a worm-like fashion throughout the file. Enough to swiss cheese it. And you include a standard bit at the beginning of the file that tells you how to "activate" it. Basically like the above but without the free preview.
So, any thoughts? Crazy enough to work? Content sellers just keep trying to build a
The problems with the Radiohead album have been multifold. First, there was a lot of publicity regarding "free" distribution. At release, the Radiohead website was generally considered cumbersome and difficult to use, and was suffering from outages.
The problems downloading the album from the Radiohead site drove many to download the files from peer to peer networks, with the media-driven misconception that this album was "free". Unfortunately, the extent to which the album was "free" was greatly over-exaggerated by the media, as it was not free for redistribution. This is a fact that likely eluded the average consumer not intimately familiar with copyright law.
Above all, a user will take the path of least resistance, legal or not. For some users, they find resistance in prices they cannot afford, but that is not the only reason for piracy. Other reasons include empty store shelves, DRM (digital rights management), and uncooperative websites (as with 'In Rainbows'). All of these barriers to legal ownership result in piracy.
Almost unfortunately, record companies have already realized this. Yet, they have decided to implement these ideas backwards. They are attempting to reduce the relative barriers to legal ownership by increasing the barriers to illegal ownership. This has been done via the legal system, with their infamous lawsuits.
I agree with the general idea of that record companies must adapt and embrace free downloads through peer-to-peer networks, as NiN has done with their release of Ghosts. NiN has released their Ghosts album free for download and redistribution under Creative Commons.
Like the parent, I can't believe I'm here defending record labels, but the fact is they do serve a purpose. That doesn't mean I support everything they do or that I think their current form is right for the way music is distributed today - their business model is still very 1950's, and they need to get smaller and streamline. They also need to acknowledge that the internet is not going away. A lot of bands might not need a "full service" record label, but then they shouldn't expect as much help either (be it financial or practical).
I'm in the same boat. The big labels DO have a purpose. When you're working with a major label, it's like having a big corporation standing behind your software project. Sure, you could probably make some dough by putting up a nice website, making things available on sourceforge, selling via Amazon or something. But if ConHugeSoft Inc. decides that they're interested in distributing your software using their resources, you're gonna make a LOT more money (provided you watch your ass).
Now that I think about it, that's a really great analogy. I'll need to use it more often.
I guess they're missing the point that I bet several people downloaded the torrent, and donated. Not saying all of them did, but a lot of people, knowing that P2P is efficient and helpful, chose the different download method. Why do you think lots of companies use that as a distribution method?
Because the album is NOT the product. The live performances are the product. Albums are advertising. Record labels are not needed any more - they don't need to produce any physical media any more. That can be done in any fab place that will stamp CDs. Record labels turned the album into a product simply so they can make money off of the artists. Their business model is not sustainable, as it is going to bring about their own end.
The pirate turns into a customer if/when he decides to buy the product. Until then he is irrelevant to the industry.
I tend to buy music at iTunes for half of what the CD would cost. What makes me buy a CD instead is when it had additional stuff like DVDs or a very attractive packaging.
So: Add extras that make the purchase interesting. Added value compared to the cheaper choice, whether my iTunes purchase or the pirate's free download.